It’s Monday, August 4, 2008, and both the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game 2008 World Championship and The Duelist Genesis Sneak Previews are this weekend!
The Duelist Genesis Sneak Preview This Weekend
It’s almost here! The Duelist Genesis Sneak Preview is this weekend, and with earth-shatteringly good World Debut cards being revealed all over the place this is going to be an event to remember.
Sneak Previews give you two ways to try out new cards before they hit store shelves: Swiss Tournament competitions, and a loosely organized casual-play format. Participants of the Swiss format will go head-to-head against other duelists. Each player will receive five packs of The Duelist Genesis with which to build a twenty-card deck. At the end of the tournament, top finishers will win more packs of the new set. If casual play is more to your liking, the casual-play format doles out five packs of The Duelist Genesis to each player. Players build decks from the five packs, challenge five other duelists, record the results, and receive a sixth pack for their efforts.
No matter which format you register for, you’ll get a copy of the world debut promo card Avenging Knight Parshath—we’ll be discussing that very card here on Metagame later this week. You’ll also get a shot at winning a Duelist Genesis T-shirt.
There are a ton of powerful, tournament-level cards coming out in this set, so if you want to get a jump on the competition, attending a Sneak Preview is the best way to do it. You can find a Sneak Preview in your area using the handy event locator over on the official Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG site, and there are hundreds of venues to choose from worldwide. If you’ve never been to a Sneak Preview before, this is the perfect one to dive into.
Shonen Jump Championship Indianapolis Is Right around the Corner
The "Best Four Days in Gaming" kicks off less than a week after the Sneak Previews, as Shonen Jump action returns to Gen Con Indianapolis. Four days of dueling culminates on Saturday and Sunday with a Shonen Jump Championship that marks the arrival of one of the year’s biggest cards to premier competition: Mezuki.
The new Premium Pack 2 booster will be legal in Indianapolis, raising questions about the shape of the metagame for this event. Indy is always one of the biggest Shonen Jumps of the year, and with huge numbers in Philadelphia, as well as the U.S. National Championship, we can expect another massive event this time around.
You can find basic info over at the official event listing. Then, you should definitely hit up Professional Event Service’s SJC Indianapolis page, because you’re going to want to scope out all the side events. The full schedule hasn’t been posted yet, but I’m sure they’ll be up soon. Knowing the folks over at PES, I think it’s safe to anticipate a massive lineup of tournaments around the clock!
SJC Indianapolis heralds the beginning of an era of change, and if you can’t make it to the big event, Metagame.com will be bringing you live coverage from the tournament floor on Saturday and Sunday. If you’ll be in attendance, we’ll see you there.
This Week on Metagame
Jerome started our week off with a bang, continuing our preview profiles of The Duelist Genesis with an all-new World Debut card: Charge of the Light Brigade. Charge revolutionizes Lightsworn by bringing back one of their most important opening moves, granting a level of control and speed that would, otherwise, be impossible. What does it do? Click on over to find out!
Tomorrow, Bryan Camareno gives you an in-depth look at the impact of another World Debut card. Hand of the Six Samurai represents a number of firsts for the Samurai archetype, but it also brings older support cards back into competition. Which cards get better, which matchups get easier, and why is the Hand so good? Bryan will answer those questions and more tomorrow.
On Wednesday, Jerome is back, serving his duty as our resident Fairy King and showing you an all-new Fairy card that imported straight from Japan: Splendid Venus! Venus plays two important roles for a number of Fairy builds. Jerome’s going to tell you which builds these are, how she helps them, and how she might make a new deck possible.
If you’ve been hanging out in the right circles these past few days, one big piece of news that might’ve caught your eye is that Toy Magician, a well-loved Japanese promo card, is making its TCG debut in The Duelist Genesis. It’s one of my favorite cards of all time, and on Thursday, I’m going to show you why. I’ll also discuss why it’s a surprisingly effective card in the cu
rrent format.
Also on Thursday, Matt Murphy returns to
Metagame.com as a guest writer to talk about Fish! Fish get two unique support cards in
The Duelist Genesis, and the result is some cool combos and some more tricks for
Superancient Deepsea King Coelacanth. Fish are now a viable deck for local-level competition (I’ve had my Fish deck built for weeks!), and Matt’s going to show you all the new plays you can pull off.
Friday, Matt Peddle joins us to tackle one of the most-anticipated new additions to The Duelist Genesis: Kunai with Chain. A dual-purpose card with a ton of tactical potential, Kunai has been on the wanted list for years. In a format where attacking is so important and mirror matches are so common, it can definitely make an impact. Matt puts it through its paces one night before the Sneak Preview weekend!
Then, I’ll dissect Avenging Knight Parshath, the Sneak Preview promo card for
The Duelist Genesis. There’s been a lot of talk about this card, but few duelists have keyed into its real purpose. If you’ve underestimated this all-new Synchro monster, be sure to check out my article on Friday, because you might not want to trade yours away just yet.
On Saturday, Curtis Schultz’s Duelist Academy column will close out his current series on trigger effects. He’s got a little more cleanup work to do to teach you everything there is to know about trigger effects, and Kuraz the Light Monarch, Dark Magician of Chaos, and Jinzo are just three of the cards addressed in Curtis’s latest installment. Don’t miss it!
Finally, Matt Peddle closes out our enormous week with an article that proposes a unique perspective on deckbuilding and your own awareness of your options. This week’s edition of Battlefields is rich in examples pulled from Matt’s own experiences, and it all draws to an intriguing conclusion. Definitely check this one out.
That’s it for this week, but I’ll be back in another seven days as we here at Metagame begin investigating the fallout from The Duelist Genesis. Until then, see you at the Sneak Previews!
—Jason Grabher-Meyer
Contributing Editor, Metagame.com