PLAY'S · News · 13 Sep 2026

The rival won

Channabe won, reportedly with Water/Dark Magic Tools, beating Dapico in the final. The official column had named exactly those two decks two days earlier — but it expected the other one to take it.

And during the broadcast, Takara Tomy put up a teaser for the next set. Its name points at a paper release from 2018.

Grand Prix 2026 · Makuhari Messe

Channabe

Water/Dark Magic Tools · defeating Dapico in the final

The column called the matchup and missed the result

Kono Masanari's pre-event piece named Dapico as the deck with the fewest weaknesses and expected it to convert best at the top tables. He named Water/Dark Magic Tools as its main rival. Both reached the final. The rival won.

Which is a better outcome for the point this site keeps making than a clean prediction would have been. On the ranked ladder in early September, Raid was the most-played deck at 19.8% and Dapico second at 12.1%; Magic Tools sat sixth, at 6.2%. Those figures are here.

The most-played deck did not win. The deck the analyst expected to win did not win. The deck that won was sixth in play rate. What gets brought, what gets predicted, and what gets there

Confirmed by a second source — and still not by the publisher That Channabe won with Water/Dark Magic Tools is now carried by two independent Japanese sources: a blog covering the broadcast, and a major Japanese strategy site, which listed the winner and the deck type the following day.

The official results page still says the rounds will be published at a later date. Four days on. The player does appear in the publisher's own tournament ranking — tenth, with the Grand Prix points already counted — but that page does not say what anyone won or played.

Which is worth sitting with for a moment The same publisher runs full text coverage for its paper Grand Prix events — match-by-match write-ups, published per event, going back years. PLAY'S has no equivalent.

This is the structural reason a site like this one ends up citing strategy sites and blogs. Not preference. There is no official record to cite.

The reaction

Paraphrased from public posts in the half hour after the final. No individual is named beyond the winner, who is the subject of the news.

The final itself Repeated descriptions of a comeback game — people reporting they shouted at the screen, one saying they burst into tears without quite understanding why. Several posts call it the best match they have watched.

Players who went out early A striking amount of good humour from people who dropped at 1-3 or 3 losses. One, who had played Dapico himself, wrote that watching the final showed him what the deck could really do, and signed off with next time I win.

Lapsed players More than one post along the lines of: this makes me want to play again. That is the same effect the collaboration had three weeks ago, from a completely different direction.

The room emptying One observer noted the chairs visibly thinning out over the course of the day — a 3,500-player single-elimination bracket does that — while the noise from those who stayed came through on the broadcast.

Set 37

Teaser only — no date, no cards 『虹帝∞命動 -FINAL ORAORA RINGFINITY!!-』

Tagline: let the circling rage break the world 廻る怒りよ、世界を壊せ. A second post carries a line of dialogue — gather beneath my rage. The teaser has 300,000 views. There is no page for it on the official site yet.

The name is doing the work here. "OraOra Ringfinity" is lifted from a paper set released in 2018 — DMRP-08, the closing release of the Twinpact Series, built around the boss character Baraghiara.

The teaser shows the cards

It runs to just over two minutes, and around the eighty-second mark it puts up five Twinpacts of the same creature, side by side. They are not five different creatures — all five are Nature creatures with identical stats, cost 9 and power 17000. What changes is the spell printed on the other half.

Spell half	Civilization of the spell
Rinne Bōen 輪廻暴炎	Fire
Rinne Bōsei 輪廻暴聖	Light
Rinne Bōhyō 輪廻暴氷	Water
Rinne Bōmei 輪廻暴冥	Darkness
Tenjō Tenge Rinne Dokuson 天上天下輪廻独尊	—

Four follow one naming pattern and the fifth does not. The odd one out is named after the phrase the Buddha is said to have spoken at birth — above heaven and below heaven, I alone am honoured — with one word swapped so that the cycle of rebirth is the thing standing alone.

These are reprints

The paper originals are from December 2018 All five appeared in DMRP-08, the fourth Twinpact Series expansion, released 21 December 2018 and long out of print. Same names, same five-way split.

Their shared keyword is written 輪廻∞ and read Rinfinity — it lets you cast the spell half while the creature stays in play, paying the cost, with an effect that scales off how many copies you control. That is where the set's English name comes from. "RINGFINITY" is not a coinage for the teaser; it is a keyword ability from 2018.

Which tells you something about what set 37 is. PLAY'S rebuilds the paper game's back catalogue a few years behind, rebalancing as it goes. This is the 2018 finale arriving in the digital game, eight years later — and the word FINAL in the title is doing the same job it did then.

What the 2018 cards actually do

The creature half is the same on all five. Described rather than quoted:

Shared creature side Nature, cost 9, power 17000, Master Hazard / Grand Sect, T-Breaker.

When summoned, it untaps your entire mana zone — so casting it does not end your turn. And Rinfinity lets you cast the spell half while the creature stays on the board, paying the cost normally; doing so ramps you one card for every copy of the creature you control.

That second ability is the engine. Each copy makes the next spell cheaper to afford, which is what the wheel in the name refers to.

Spell	Civ	Cost	What it does
Rinne Bōen 輪廻暴炎	Fire	3	Grants a creature Speed Attacker for the turn, and destroys opposing creatures up to a combined power of 3000
Rinne Bōhyō 輪廻暴氷	Water	4	Looks at the top three cards, keeps two, bottoms one
Rinne Bōsei 輪廻暴聖	Light	5	Shield Trigger. Taps two of the opponent's untapped creatures and draws you a card
Rinne Bōmei 輪廻暴冥	Darkness	—	Not read — this one has not been checked against a source
Tenjō Tenge Rinne Dokuson 天上天下輪廻独尊	Nature	8	Gives every creature you control +8000 power and World Breaker for the turn, and forces the opponent's creatures to attack creatures next turn where possible

The expensive one is the weakest. Japanese analysis from 2021 makes the point that a cost-8 spell fights the Rinfinity engine rather than feeding it, and that giving an entire board World Breaker is overkill when three shields are usually enough. It is also the only single-civilization card of the five, which is why it is the one that still costs money.

The whole set is named after a wheel 輪廻 is samsara, the cycle of death and rebirth. The tagline is circling rage. The set is Ringfinity — ring plus infinity — and carries an ∞ in its Japanese title. None of that survives translation, which is why the English name looks like noise and the Japanese one does not.

The teaser also shows two new cards resolving as Shield Triggers, one Nature and one Darkness, neither named on screen. It closes with coming soon and no date.

Timing, if the usual cadence holds: PLAY'S releases a numbered set roughly every two months, and the current one landed on 23 July. Release calendar.

The reaction: will it even work here?

Paraphrased and anonymised from public posts within two hours of the teaser. Engagement figures given where a view was widely shared.

Delight, first A lot of straightforward pleasure — people saying they love this card and have wanted it in the digital game. Several noticed that the teaser appears to show all five arriving together, the same way the paper set distributed them.

The board limit · the substantive worry PLAY'S caps how many creatures can be in the battle zone. Paper does not. Rinfinity scales off how many copies of the creature you control, so the deck wants to stack them — and that is exactly what the digital game's limit prevents. One post, widely shared, says they are excited but nervous, and asks whether the developers can really be planning to bring it across with no adjustment at all.

A blunter version of the same thing Another, similarly shared: this card's abilities do not seem suited to PLAY'S — is it coming as printed?

This is a real question, not a complaint. PLAY'S rebalances rather than ports, and has rewritten card text before. A mechanic built on having many copies of a nine-cost creature in play at once is a genuine test of that.

Someone noticed the timing One post puts it as: this month PLAY'S gets five Baraghiara and paper gets a sixth. That is accurate — the paper game reveals a new Baraghiara Twinpact of its own for the set arriving 19 September, six days after this teaser. Its spell half is all five civilizations at once.

And immediately, speculation about what else is in it Other names from the same era started circulating within the hour — and a running joke that a set with five of the same character must mean a quintuplets anime collaboration is next.

Everything else that was shown

The broadcast ran through a long slate of announcements. Dates first, since those are the actionable part:

Date	What
19–20 Sep	Duema Card Lab — a broadcast slot
21 Sep	Duepure Juku, the teaching programme
24 Sep	Story EPISODE 37 — the in-game narrative chapter for the new set

A new character was introduced alongside it: Ga Ryumizu ガ・リュミーズ, voiced by Yukana. The card-exchange lineup has also been widened — Super Rares from the first fourteen sets are now available through it, which matters for anyone building out of an older card pool.

Cards shown beyond Baraghiara

Names only, from the teaser and the slides. No text was shown for any of them.

Minogami 始虹帝ミノガミ — the rainbow-emperor figure the set is named for
Oramacha the Johnny オラマッハ・ザ・ジョニー
Kyōki Rōgō Meravolgal 凶鬼老号メラヴォルガル — cost 8, power 11000
Manji Shinsekai Manji 卐新世壊卐 — cost 2

Two lines of teaser text point at what the set is doing narratively: the master of the Jokers returning with a new weapon, and a new Mugetsu gate opening. Both name mechanics that already exist in the game rather than new ones.

Also announced

Ultimate All Division Deck 2026 — a preconstructed deck for the non-rotating format, built on Fire/Light Apollonus. Its card list was shown during the broadcast. All Division gets far less attention than New Division, so a supported precon for it is worth noting.

And a giveaway: ten free packs through the official web shop, framed as thanks for the current set selling well.

What is not known yet

The deck distribution. 3,500 decklists were submitted in advance. Whether the breakdown gets published is a separate question — nothing about this game's statistics is automatic. If it appears, it will be the largest sample the community has ever had.
The winning list. Not yet published at the time of writing.
Card text and costs. The teaser shows names and artwork, nothing else.
A release date. The teaser says only "coming soon".

This page will be updated as those land rather than replaced.

Sources

Result, finalists and the winning deck type: public posts from attendees, a Japanese TCG news blog covering the broadcast, and a major Japanese strategy site's Grand Prix page, updated 14 September, which names both the player and the deck. Still not confirmed by an official announcement — the publisher's results page continues to say the rounds are to be published later.
That the player sits tenth in the publisher's own tournament ranking with Grand Prix points already counted: that ranking page, on the publisher's domain.
That the paper game receives official text coverage per event and PLAY'S does not: the publisher's paper coverage index, which lists write-ups by event.
Set 37 name, tagline and dialogue: @dmps_info, 13 September 2026.
The five card names were read from the teaser video itself, which displays them on screen around the eighty-second mark. Names only — no card text appears in the video, and no artwork is reproduced here.
Paper originals — set, release date, civilization, cost, power, the Rinfinity keyword and four of the five spell halves — from Takara Tomy's card database entry for DMRP-08, cross-checked against retailer listings. Effects are described in plain English rather than reproduced. The Darkness spell has not been checked and is marked as such.
The assessment that the cost-8 Nature spell works against its own engine: Japanese card analysis published in 2021, paraphrased.
The new paper Baraghiara for DM26-RP3, out 19 September: Duel Masters Wiki entry.
Reaction: public posts on X within two hours of the teaser, paraphrased and anonymised.
The DMRP-08 connection: the English Duel Masters Wiki entry for the Twinpact Series, which lists that set under the title the teaser borrows.
Pre-event predictions: Kono Masanari's column, 10 September.
Ultimate All Division Deck and the pack giveaway: @dmps_info. Full decklists here.
Dates, the new character, the card-exchange change and the other card names: announcement slides shown during the broadcast, 13 September 2026. Names and dates only — no card text was shown.
English names follow the community patch where it has one. The patch is the only English naming this game has, so matching it matters more than any preference of mine — Ga Ryumizu and Minogami are spelled as the patch's maintainer spells them.

Corrected 13 September The first version described the five Twinpacts as one per civilization. That is wrong — all five creature halves are Nature, with identical cost and power; only the spell half changes civilization. Also added that these are reprints of 2018 paper cards, and that the set's English name comes from their shared keyword rather than being invented for the teaser.

Corrected 14 September The first version said Channabe won with Dapico, beating Magic Tools. That was my own inference — I had one post naming the finalist decks and another naming the winner, and joined them the wrong way round. Reporting from a blog covering the stream names the winning deck as Water/Dark Magic Tools, which inverts the outcome: the column's favourite reached the final and lost to the deck it had named as the main threat.

17 Sep: a second independent source now carries the same result, so the correction holds. The publisher still has not published anything.