Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG's New Team YCS Winners Prove Why the 3v3 Format Works So Well

The second Team Yu-Gi-Oh! Championship Series event took place over the weekend in Las Vegas where [...]

The second Team Yu-Gi-Oh! Championship Series event took place over the weekend in Las Vegas where a new team of champions was crowned. Team "Gonna Finish That?" was the winner of the two-day tournament that consisted of 490 teams and 1,470 players, a team that consisted of three players: Dominic Couch, Scott Page, and Stephen Silverman. The story of how they managed to make it so far in the tournament – let alone win the whole thing – is the perfect example for why the fledgling 3v3 team format works so well and should be used in more official events.

For those who aren't familiar with it, the Team YCS format has only been around for around a year. Players are assigned positions as Player A, B, and C and face off against their counterparts from other teams in separate, simultaneous 1v1 matches. Individual players who win their best-of-three games earn their team a match point, and teams who obtain two out of three possible match points win that round.

Couch, 18, was the team captain and had only been playing competitively for around two years. He'd never won a YCS event before his victory from this weekend, and he was also dropped from his previous team just days before the event took place. Page, 28, had been playing for around 10 years with breaks over time and had never won a YCS event. Silverman, 33, had been playing the longest and was the only one who'd won a YCS event and gone to Worlds, but a lengthy break he took meant he essentially didn't even play Yu-Gi-Oh! anymore before the event, the team said. As a team, they'd only been together for a few days with a few recaps on the basics and some practice to prepare them for the event.

So how did the team manage to win the event under those kinds of circumstances? Much of it had to do with their own skills and choosing powerful decks – Couch ran a Shaddoll Invoked deck while Page and Silverman used nearly identical True King Dinosaurs decks – but the victory was made possible because of the team format itself.

Yu-Gi-Oh Team YCS Winners
(From left to right: Stephen Silverman, Dominic Couch, and Scott Page/Photo: Konami)

Couch's team credited him with carrying them seeing how he only lost one round during the tournament, but he said their win wouldn't have been possible if his team hadn't stepped up when it mattered most.

"That was my only loss in the entire tournament," Couch said of his defeat during the Top 8 pairing. "For them to secure it so I could even have the chance to pop off in Top 4 of the Finals is just great. It was definitely a team effort."

The team format also allows players to coach each other so long as it doesn't stall the game out. This rule exclusive to the Team YCS system was essential for Silverman since he hadn't been actively playing the game. Page and Silverman sat by one another which allowed Page to coach his teammate at times since the two were using decks which were structured the same.

"You still need to be confident in your teammates, because a lot of the times, you're still playing your games, so you can't play the game for someone," Page said on coaching teammates during matches. "You just help them get to the right decision tree. And then once you go from there, you still have to do a little bit by yourself."

He added that it makes the win feel that much better when you know you essentially beat three players at once, assuming the other team is coaching as well.

There were some things the team said could be changed about the format though. Page said one of the rules allowed a player to tell their teammate what was in that teammate's opponent's hand if they managed to catch a glimpse of the cards. They have to announce that they'd seen the hand, but Page said it's "literally cheating" and is a "bad situation overall." Players can also speak foreign languages during the competition but must be willing to translate at a team's request. During these timed games, Page said it's difficult to know when they should ask a team to translate what they'd said because they don't know what's being said in the first place.

Couch looked back on the team's win and said there's nobody else he'd rather play with.

"It was literally like a fairytale, us winning," Couch said. "And as soon as we made Top Cut, I turned to both of them and was like, 'There's nobody I'd rather win with. There's nobody I'd rather sit beside.' Even if we lost somehow – which was never happening – we would play together again."

When asked whether they'd be returning as a team next year, the three said they'd absolutely be participating in the next Team YCS tournament to defend their title.

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