Yu-Gi-Oh! Legendary Duelists Season 3 Review

One of the greatest things I love about a hobby is how the year is punctuated by events and recurrences linked to it. There are the seasonal tournaments, the great conventions and fairs and most important: the new releases. When it comes to Trading Card Games like Yu-Gi-Oh, these could be either new decks or sets or a new release of a specific series like the one featuring the Legendary Duelists.

Released for the first time in 2020, Legendary duelists features beloved, hard-to-find cards from “Legendary Duelists” and “Legendary Duelists: Ancient Millennium” series. Each year the collection focuses on different heroes and villains providing an opportunity to strengthen your existing deck or to start a new one based on your character of choice.

This year, Legendary Duelist reaches Season 3 and this time the collection includes cards based on Bakura's and Yugi's deck. Yes, that means it features a lot of cards centred around the Dark magician and this is a lot of fun for all those who like this character like me. Let's have a look together into this year's Legendary Duelists series to understand what you can find and if would be worth buying it.

Box Composition: What Would You Get?

Each box of Legendary Duelists: Season 3 includes 2 packs of 18 cards each, one special dice and 1 Secret Rare variant card.  Considering the average price of the package, the number of cards and the rarities you get are quite good.

Inside each booster pack, you will find 15 commons and 3 Ultra-Rare cards.  For this release, all the Ultra Rares will come in the colours of the 3 Duel Academy dorms. As each pack will always have one card per colour, once both booster packs are opened you will have 2 red Ultra Rares for Slifer Red, 2 blue Ultra Rares for Obelisk Blue, and 2 standard Ultra Rares for Ra Yellow. If you are looking to make a deck of your Duel Academy dorm of choice these cards could be a great addition.

Together with the two booster packs, each Legendary Duelists: Season 3 box will also contain one of several collectable dice featuring famous monsters or symbols associated with the cards and duelists of the set. If you do not have any Yu-Gi-Oh! dice, these sets are a great way to get some nice ones for your matches.

Last but not least, each box also has 1 out of the 10 Secert Rare cards of the following collection:

"Curse Necrofear", "Predaplant Triphyoverutum", "The Dark Magicians”, "Soul Servant", "Elemental HERO Liquid Soldier", "Elemental HERO Sunrise", "Mystical Elf - White Lightning", "Kaiser Glider Golden Burst", "Giltia the D. Knight - Soul Spear", "Harpie's Pet Dragon - Fearsome Fire Blast".

Set Composition: Secret Rare And Ultra-Rare Cards To Look After

This year's collection of the Legendary Duelists is slightly bigger than the one released last year. Overall, the set features 30 Ultra Rares and 98 Commons in addition to the 10 Secret Rares. Among the 138 cards, only 4 are new cards although some of the Ultra-rare ones have been updated to show names in different colours.

Looking at the list, the general impression may be that most of the cards featured in this set are not strongly tournament-level although there is a very clear and strong thematic feeling in this set. At the same time, I can easily see a few re-print cards that would probably be on a lot of players' wish lists like “Elemental HERO Liquid Soldier” and “Magicians' souls”.

A few examples of those I wish I could pull from Season 3 boosters are (in no particular order):

• Soul Servant (Secret Rare, Magic card): In essence, this magic card allows you to search your deck or graveyard for a card that lists "Dark Magician" or "Dark Magician Girl" in its text and place to place it on top of their deck. It does not seem too spectacular although the card has a secondary effect that allows players to banish it from the GY and draw cards equal to the number of "Dark Magician", and/or "Dark Magician Girl", on the field and in the GYs. If your deck is based on Dark Magician, this card can pull out a good trick for you.
• Pet Dragon - Fearsome Fire Blast (Secret Rare, Lv7 monster): This is a nice lv7 monster that could provide a real good support to any Harpie-based decks. First, it could be Special summoned from your hand if you control a Lv6 or lower WIND monster. Second, once this raging pet is on the field, Monsters cannot target Lv6 or lower Harpie monsters. Have I also said that this Dragon has 2000 ATK/ 2500 DEF?
• Dark Magician Girl (Ultra-Rare, Lv6 Monster): I am a big fan of Dark Magician Girl and I am always looking to pull her our from a booster. It is not only sentimental of course as she could be a pretty nasty monster with 2000 ATK and 1700 DEF and the ability to gain 300 ATK for every "Dark Magician" or "Magician of Black Chaos" in the Gys.
• Magicians' Souls (Ultra-Rare, Lv1 Effect Monster): This card has been largely used in the past years on a lot of tournament-level decks and for good reasons. First of all, it could be easily searched for and could then get to the field quite quickly. Once there, a player can send up to 2 Spells/Traps from their hand and/or field to the Graveyard and than draw that many cards. If this would not be already enough, if you have this card is in your hand, you can send 1 Lv 6 or higher Spellcaster monster from your Deck to the GY and then either special summon Magicians' Souls or send it to the Graveyard and Special Summon "Dark Magician" or "Dark Magician Girl" from your Graveyard. Awesome.

I must admit I have been quite lucky as I pulled Magicians' Souls in the first box I opened. Now I am obviously hunting for all the others...

Is This Set Worth Buying? Final Thoughts

In Yu-Gi-Oh, Legendary Duelists sets are always a bit difficult to judge. The main reason is that every Legendary Duelists set always includes a very small number of extremely good and expensive cards among a lot of low-value pulls. In addition, most of the cards are very thematic and not every player is on the hunt for each set.

Having said that, I personally think the card list for Legendary Duelist Season 3 set has been thought a bit more than the ones I saw in the previous two seasons. Moreover, it includes long-awaited reprints from “Magical Hero“ and “Immortal Destiny” sets making it a must-have if you are on the look out for nice magician cards.

Playability-wise, the cards released in Season 3 are not very competitive but they are for sure thematic and a lot of fun to play with.  I think this is one of the aspects I love more about Legendary duelists collections as it pushes the need to get a deck with cards you love, not just those that could be stronger in a tournament.

Overall, I think the box has good value for your money and I would definitely recommend buying a few of them at least for the fun of opening these types of boxes. Sure, you could look to get only the singles you are after but opening these boxes is definitely much better and you get so much more in these sets than in other similar products.  Also, remember you get a Secret Rare and a nice collectable dice.