If you’re a fan of Yu-Gi-Oh!, you may want to check out Duel Art: Kazuki Takahashi Yu-Gi-Oh! Illustrations, just released by Udon Entertainment. The book is 128 pages of full-color magazine covers, card artwork, rare illustrations, and rough concepts from Kazuki Takahashi, the original artist from the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga.

Cover price is $39.99, but you can find it for around $28 at Amazon.

Yu-Gi-Oh! has been around for 13 years in North America, and still has a strong fan base. Having recently gotten into the game myself, I’ll at least give this a browse if I can find a copy in my local book store. I’m a fan of Takahashi’s style, and would love to see how the art has evolved over the years.

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On October 2nd you’ll be able to snag these new, 9-card boosters for Yu-Gi-Oh!

High-Speed Riders is a 60 card set broken down to the following:

• 27 Commons
• 12 Rares
• 10 Super Rares
• 6 Ultra Rares
• 5 Secret Rares

Many of the cards will have synergy with Crossed Souls cards, and cards in the upcoming Dimension of Chaos set. There’s brand new Syncro cards, along with the new Speedroid, Hi-Speedroid, and Goyo Synchro monsters.

Each High-Speed Riders booster pack will retail for $3.99.

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Yu-Gi-Oh! is really the king of CCG releases. With the Clash of Rebellions Special Edition boxes you get 3 booster packs with a guaranteed 1 of 2 Super Rare variant cards, plus 1 of 2 foil version preview cards of non-foil cards from the upcoming January set. The new Super Rares you can snag are Ultimaya Tzolkin or Frightfur Tiger. New themes added with these boosters include Igknights and Aromages. Igknights burn up cards in order to summon more powerful cards, while Aromages beef up your Life Points and provide other special powers as long as you’re in the lead.

We won’t be seeing these boxes until the holidays, but they’ll be worth, considering you can snag ’em for less than the price of 3 boosters alone.

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The Yu-Gi-Oh! Synchron Extreme Structure Deck hits retail August 28th with 10 brand new cards, including two ultra-rare and three super-rare. Designed to spice up monster-summoning, the 44-card deck intruduces Jet Synchron, Rush Warrior, and the 3000 ATK Stardust Warrior.

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If you’ve got $19.99, and a love of Yu-Gi-Oh! (plus a PS4 or Xbox One) then you might be interested to know that Yu-Gi-Oh! Legacy of the Duelist is now available on those consoles. There’s also add-ons available right away for $4.99 each that contain content from Yu-Gi-Oh!, Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s, and Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL.

The game contains an extensive tutorial for new players, and exciting challenges for long-time players. A full deck editor is available, as is online Battle Pack Sealed Deck and Draft play.

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This isn’t coming out until November, but when it does it’ll make a great holiday gift for any Yu-Gi-Oh! fan. The King of Games: Yugi’s Legendary Decks contains:

• A 41-card Deck used by Yugi in the first season of the original Yu-Gi-Oh! animated series, including his initial Duel with Seto Kaiba and his adventures in Duelist Kingdom.
• A 41-card Deck inspired by Yugi’s Duels in the Battle City story arc from the second and third seasons of the original Yu-Gi-Oh! animated series, featuring – at long last – Arkana’s long-awaited “red” Dark Magician!
• A 41-card Deck used by Yugi as he battled The Pharaoh himself in the final Duel of the original series, focused on “Gadget” monsters and the “Silent” series of “LV” monsters.
• 3 brand new Secret Rare cards: Electromagnetic Turtle, Dark Renewal, and Black Illusion.
• 3 Ultra Rare collectible (non-playable) historical cards celebrating the Duelist Kingdom storyline, including Glory of the King’s Hand, Set Sail for The Kingdom, and the Duelist Kingdom itself
• 3 Ultra Rare collectible (non-playable) Egyptian God Cards: Slifer the Sky Dragon, Obelisk the Tormentor, and The Winged Dragon of Ra.
• 1 Ultra Rare “Yugi” Token Card

These babies will retail for $29.99, which is a pretty sweet deal considering what comes inside of them.

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Konami Digital Entertainment has just announced that Yu-Gi-Oh! Day 2015 events will be held on Saturday July 25, or Sunday July 26 at Official Tournament Stores in both North and Latin America. The event this year will be showcasing the Synchron Extreme Structure Deck that releases on August 27th, and to show off Yusei and his Synchro Monsters on the special event prizes.

A detailed FAQ, list of locations and dates for Yu-Gi-Oh! Day can be found online at http://www.yugioh-card.com/en/events/ygoday.

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I was never a big fan of play mats until very recently. Since then I’ve been on the looking for cool looking mats, and these minimal mats from Legion Supplies are pretty awesome. Each 14” x 24” mat is rubber backed and retails fro $20. They’ll be available soon, and I’ve got my eye on the Triforce one.

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On July 17th a new, all-foil set of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards will be released. The set, Dragons of Legend 2, contains 45 cards that break down to 26 Secret Rare and 19 Super Rare cards. Dragons from both Legendary Knight Critias and Legendary Knight Hermos join cards used by Pegasus, Kaiba, and Joey, as well as several characters from the Arc-V TV series.

Each 5 card pack will retail for $3.99.

While you’re not getting a ton of cards in these packs, each one is sure to pack a punch.

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Brigitta Sinka of Hungary has broken the world record for total number of simultaneous Chess games played in a lifetime. The record was previously held by Cuban grandmaster Jose Raul Capablanca (1888-1942) and now stands at 13,600 (though by the time you read this, she’s probably played a few hundred more).

World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen crashed on home turf, finishing in the bottom half of Norway Chess 2015 (also the first stop of the $1 million Grand Chess Tour). The winner was Vaselin Topalov, with former world champion Viswanathan Anand coming in second.

Bridge has been admitted to the 2018 Asian Games (to take place in Indonesia) by the Olympic Committee of Asia. Its bid (as well as that of Chess) for admission to the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, however, was denied.

The winner of the World Crokinole Championship, Justin Slater, has been gunning for the position for 5 years, twice in that time coming in second.

A new world record has been set for solving a Rubik’s Cube with feet. Jakub Kipa did it in 20.57 seconds at the Radomsko Cube Theory in Poland.

The United Kingdom’s National Schools Top Trumps Tournament, sponsored by Winning Moves, started with 2,000 school-level tournaments, narrowed in an online round, and went to a live final. Coming out on top was William Gooch from Elloughton Primary School in Yorkshire.

Yu-Gi-Oh! events are divided in to two sections, one, Dragon Duels, for younger competitors (currently those born in 2002 or later), and one unrestricted. At the North American World Championship Qualifier event in Nashville, the winner in the open section was Noah Reid of Georgia; the winner in Dragon Duels was Austin Wesley Colling of Ohio. Both received similar prize packages included a trophy, complete sets of Secrets of Eternity and Crossed Souls boosters, an iPad, and expense-paid travel to the World Championship in Kyoto, Japan.

Indian Chess players performed well in recent tournaments. The world’s 25th ranked player Pendyala Harikrishna defeated defending champion Vassily Ivanchuk (ranked #27) in the final round  of the Edmonton International to claim the trophy. Abhijeet Gupta won the Commonwealth Chess Championship with a score of 8.0/9.

Nine year old Mhage Gerriahlou Sebastian of the Philippines qualified as Woman Candidate Master after winning gold and silver medals at the 16th ASEAN + Age Group Chess Championship.

A dedicated player who along with her late husband founded the Trinidad and Tobago Scrabble Association in 1985, Patricia John finally won the local Scrabble Masters Tournament herself and will be representing the country at the World English-Language Scrabble Players Association Championship, November in Perth, Australia.

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