If I was preparing to play in this event, I would be very, very worried. We’ve seen such a variety of decks over the past three Shonen Jump Championships that trying to predict exactly what will go down here is essentially futile. Let’s take a look at what we do know from the results of Houston, Columbus, and Montreal. First off, burn is back in a big way. Jasmin Gauthier very nearly won SJC Montreal with a new build of Chain burn, a deck left for dead after the Limitation of Chain Strike in March. At that very same event, members of Team Overdose took 3 of the Top 16 spots, including Anthony Alvarado who went undefeated on Day 1 with a burn deck. Burn is definitely a serious concern today, and, as a result, I think we’re going to be seeing a lot more of Twister and Dust Tornado, along with more of the theme specific spell and trap removal available to decks like The Six Samurai. Specifically, people will likely main deck Dust Tornado and then side deck the full 3 Twisters while Samurai players will continue to main deck three The Six Samurai — Yaichi and also move The Six Samurai — Kamon from side deck to main deck status. Face up spell and trap removal is huge right now, and players would be foolish to not include any in their decks.

In a similar vein, I think we might actually see Monarch decks start to run Jinzo in addition to their multiple copies of Mobius the Frost Monarch. Mobius is fairly useless when every card he hits is chained, but given burn decks’ general inability to get rid of the Machine (Lava Golem is their best bet, and it can be played around) I really think that Jinzo is worth a slot in most aggressive decks at this point. For the same reasons, Des Wombat and Royal Decree will probably be seeing some serious side deck play today as well. There are some out there who are probably thinking that no one here will play burn today because now people will be ready for it. I think that people will play it, regardless of whether or not the rest of the players will see it coming, just because of its usefulness against Demise OTK and Diamond Dude Turbo. Speaking of those decks, based on previous results, I see no reason to discount them as serious contenders today. Well-prepared players ought to have a full set of Banisher of the Radiance hiding somewhere in their decks to handle all the graveyard related shenanigans that these decks tend to produce. Banisher is also great at shutting down any number of decks based on Card Trooper, in addition to smashing Dark World. Dark World hasn’t really been seeing much play as of late, but previous events held in this area lead me to believe that the locals have a penchant for Dark World, especially Comic Odyssey members. Banisher shuts all these decks down, and, as such, it’s still my top pick for someone looking to make Day 2 of an SJC. The player meeting is starting and I’m out of time for now, but make sure you keep checking back to see how it all turns out, right here on Metagame.com!