The year is drawing to a close and the 2008 season is cooling down, but in less than four weeks hundreds of duelists will converge on San Francisco for the first Shonen Jump Championship of the year!
Shonen Jump San Francisco Right Around the Corner
After some brief confusion last week regarding event cancellation, the official word is that Shonen Jump Championship San Francisco will continue as scheduled! On January 10 and 11 the West Coast’s greatest duelists will meet to compete, duking it out for the title of Shonen Jump Champion.
Last weekend in Detroit we saw a huge number of surprises. Gladiator Beasts and Gadgets fought their way back into Day 2 in the hands of Manuel Gonzalez and Robbie Kohl respectively. A newly focused Calvin Tsang exploded from obscurity to take a creative new TeleDAD variant to the finals, while Steven Harris captured his second Shonen Jump title with some defensive tricks and a little help from Black Rose Dragon.
With two more decks now proven as serious competitors in high-level play, the field is wide open in San Francisco. There’s still plenty of time to book your travel plans, so check out the official event listing over at the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG site to get started. Then visit Cascade Games’ page for details on the tournament venue, start times, prizes, and more. California is one of the world’s biggest dueling hotspots, and this event is going to be huge. If you have any chance to make it to this tournament, make sure you get yourself there so you can take your shot at dueling glory!
This Week on Metagame.com
We’ve got two more weeks of fresh-out-of-the-oven articles for you before we take our annual break over the holidays, and I get our last push started today, as I look at a new card that I’ve got high hopes for: Shiba-Warrior Taro. A surprise bonus in Target’s new Shonen Jump Anniversary Pack, Shiba is exactly what Ratbox duelists needed, and I’m going to discuss why.
Tomorrow Jerome McHale joins us with more Black Garden craziness, as he creates one of the slowest decks we’ve ever seen. Black Garden, Threatening Roar, and Necro Gardna. It all builds toward the reliable abuse of a forgotten spell card, and the result is a surprising (and downright funny) strategy that can devastate competitive opponents. Cool stuff!
Curtis Schultz dips into his year-end mail bag one more time this Wednesday, as he answers questions from readers about Stardust Dragon, Light and Darkness Dragon, Gorz, and a personal favorite of mine: Cloak and Dagger. All four of these cards have obvious competitive potential, making this another must-read installment of Curtis’ Duel Academy.
On Thursday you get another visit from yours truly, as I build a deck that I’ve waited almost two years to make. The reprint of Blizzard Dragon in Dark Legends has finally made one of the best Dragon cards of all time accessible to the average duelist, and I’ll put it to work in a deck fix this week, as I change a strategy centered on Horus the Black Flame Dragon into much, much more!
Friday, Michael Kohanim follows up on last week’s Taking Sides article with Part 2 of his two-part series discussing side-deck strategies for Gladiator Beasts. This time around Michael sets his sights on Zombies, Royal Oppression decks, and the Gladiator mirror match, showing you how you can side for each matchup while weighing the importance of each.
Then Ryan Murphy closes out our week with yet another competitive deck that you can build without breaking the bank. This time around, The Budget Builder is tackling Six Samurai: discussing not just why it’s a competitive strategy but how it’s the perfect gateway for new duelists as well.
That’s it for this week, but join us in another Seven Days as we prepare to ring out the year with one more week of new columns! After that, we’ll spend two weeks highlighting our favorite articles of 2008 before returning in the New Year. See you next week!
—Jason Grabher-Meyer
Contributing Editor, Metagame.com