It’s the first of May, and the beginning of an action packed month for duelists!

Countdown to Shonen Jump Championship Columbus

Only four days remain between today and the unveiling of a brand-new Shonen Jump Championship prize card. With Des Volstgalph retired, duelist communities have been abuzz with rumor and speculation: Upper Deck Entertainment has kept the new promo card under tight wraps, and no one has any clue as to what it might be.

Thinking of heading out to compete, but haven’t finalized the details yet? Check out the official website of the event’s Premier Tournament Organizer team, Professional Event Services, right here. Event times, side event info, directions to the venue, and much more can all be found on the PTO’s website.

Returning to the site of its biggest tournament ever, the Shonen Jump Championship series continues to define the direction of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game. Be with us here at Metagame.com this Saturday for coverage of the event. We’ll have all the hot feature matches, decks, tech, and duelists of the weekend available for your reading pleasure, plus live round-by-round updates. Hundreds of duelists, perhaps even a thousand, are preparing to go head-to-head for the highest honor in the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG. If you can’t be one of them, then be here bright and early, because you won’t want to miss one of the most intense Shonen Jump Championships of all time.

More New Promos on the Horizon

Along with the new Shonen Jump Championship card comes a pair of new offerings exclusive to the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG’s two League programs.

With last month’s Hobby League kit dwindling, hobby stores should receive their new kits soon. Each will contain an allotment of yet another parallel ultra rare promo, and this time around, it’s the classic monster destruction card Fissure! I’ve actually seen people in some areas using this card over Smashing Ground in their main decks, strictly to get rid of Spirit Reaper. Card-for-card monster destruction seems as if it will remain an important part of the game for a long time, so having a couple copies of this blinged-out Hobby League exclusive is a good idea.

Meanwhile, competitors who enjoy the casual environment of the Duelist League at major chain retailers will get their chance at yet another type-specific Dark Hole. This League season’s promo card is the brand-new Breath of Light! Arriving just in time to tech the upcoming Invincible Fortress Rock Structure Deck, it destroys all Rock-type monsters on the field. As a super rare holographic card, it’s only available at participating stores!

Enemy of Justice Previews Begin This Week on Metagame.com

Sneak previews for what is being widely hailed as the most playable expansion set in ages are just two weeks away, so it’s time to start givin’ you the goods! Every day this week, we’ll be bringing you some exclusive insight on a card that you’ll find in Enemy of Justice!

Jerome McHale gets us started with a double dose of preview goodness today, as he looks at two of the most anticipated cards in the entire set: Macro Cosmos and the mighty Grand Convergence. Want to create a cool new strategy? First, take Macro Cosmos, a card that counters virtually every standard strategy available. Then, allow the duelists using it access to Grand Convergence, a quick-play version of a card that’s currently forbidden in the Advanced format, and that dishes out damage to boot. Jerome will show you the ins and outs of both cards, demonstrating how you can get the most out of this killer combo.

Mike Rosenberg follows up on Tuesday with one of my favorite cards from the set, Bountiful Artemis. Counter traps have seen a slight resurgence in top-tier competition lately, and Artemis is exactly what that oft-derided class of purple power needs. Mike evaluates this monster’s potential while showing you some of the best traps with which to abuse its effect. Is it worthy of tournament play? It sure is, and tomorrow you can see exactly why.

Enemy of Justice is jam-packed with cards that are going to make you rethink your perception of Fairies. The biggest and the baddest that this set has to offer is Majestic Mech – Goryu, and we put Julia Hedberg in charge of showing it off. She’ll go beyond this monster’s immense ATK value and pierce damage by revealing some cool combos that will let you get the most mileage out of your Mech. All you Chaos, Return, and Aggro duelists, be here on Wednesday.

Maintaining Tuesday’s theme of counter trap support and Wednesday’s theme of huge freakin’ Fairies, I’ll be speaking out on Voltanis the Adjudicator on Thursday. What cards should you run with it, and which should you perhaps steer clear of? How does it work in a Fairy deck, and how does it fare in a strategy that isn’t built with Fairies in mind? Join me on Thursday as I look at one of the set’s new ultra rares.

Jae Kim is up on Friday, getting down to the nitty-gritty of Cyber Phoenix. One of the strongest cards to come around in years for both the Machine and Fire themes, it’s got a pair of effects that are both knock-out winners. Jae discusses how the Phoenix protects your investment on the field, what it protects your Machines from, and the role it will play in future decks.

I’ll round out the previews this week with an investigation into the viability of Super-Electromagnetic Voltech Dragon. Not just a pretty name, this monster carries its own toolbox on its back wherever it goes and single-handedly makes the Batteryman monsters a viable deck theme. One-turn kill strategies, negation, and a lethal late game await those willing to take the Batteryman plunge: I’ll show you how Voltech Dragon turns a joke of a strategy into a potential threat.

And that’s just our first of two preview weeks!

Plus, we’ve got plenty more articles for you in addition to our scheduled preview content. On Thursday, Curtis Schultz swings open the doors to his weekly Duel Academy lessons, and this time the focus of his lecture will be Dark World. Sure, you might know how the Dark World Nobles’ effects work when they’re discarded by Card Destruction or Graceful Charity, but how about Mind Crush or Dragged Down into the Grave? Read up on some cool combos, a few “non-bos,” and the rulings to go with each in this must-read article for Dark World duelists.

Also this week, Julia Hedberg continues her Solid Ground series on chaining. This time around she looks at what you cannot chain to, and describes precisely why you can’t. Expanding on last week’s information on spell speeds and including a definition of what does and doesn’t have one, this article provides important fundamentals for those of you who truly want to understand one of Yu-Gi-Oh!’s most important mechanics.

Finally, James Pennicott gives us another entry in his monthly Breaking the Format column. Looking at one card, one combo, and one deck that each have an edge in the current top tier environment, he’ll show you some of the most advantageous tricks you can use to claim tournament wins. Taking pages out of the books of both Shonen Jump Baltimore champ Shane Scurry and the creator of P.A.C.M.A.N., Andrew Bollinger, James will help you see your local metagame in a new light. Then he’ll help you beat it into submission with the blunt object of knowledge.

Want to check out even more new cards from Enemy of Justice? You can see two of the set’s new ultra rares over on the official Yu-Gi-Oh! website. In season 2 of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, a new student will arrive and shock the Academy by defeating some of its top duelists. Many of his monsters will debut this month in Enemy of Justice, and while we’ll show you one of the coolest ones next week, you can see two right now: Elemental Hero Phoenix Enforcer and Elemental Hero Shining Phoenix Enforcer!

Don’t forget to be here Saturday morning as we kick off what might be the most intense weekend of dueling that the Shonen Jump Championship series has seen yet. New decks, new duels, new drama, and a brand-new never-before-seen championship prize card await!

Get ready for a killer month of dueling action.

—Jason Grabher-Meyer

Contributing Editor, Metagame.com