I took a look around the event to see what people were playing—and the results may surprise you.

#1 Chaos Return

So maybe this isn’t so much of a surprise. Chaos Return has been the hands-down most consistent deck in the format since April. With the combination of Chaos Sorcerer’s amazing ability (and cost) and the incredibly powerful Spirit Reaper and Zaborg the Thunder Monarch, Chaos Return is far and away the most difficult deck to consistently beat right now, even if you’re playing it yourself. This has led many people to take a route that directly opposes Chaos Return, bringing us to the second most popular deck of the day . . .

#2 Anti-Chaos Return (Decree/Swap)

There are two distinct varieties of the anti-Chaos Return deck right now. Those that run Sorcerers themselves, and those that don’t. Unsurprisingly, the ones with their own Sorcerers have been rising to the top while the other ones based on more . . . “creative” monster groups. Insect Anti-Chaos Return hasn’t exactly been successful by any stretch of the word. The strength of the Anti-Chaos Return lays in its ability to shut down the primary win conditions of Chaos Return, that being Return from the Different Dimension. In addition, Royal Decree ensures that there will be no sneaky Mirror Force to stop the Anti-Return player’s attacks. Finally, most decks of this type use a Tomato Control engine along with Asura Priest in order to maximize the utility of one of this format’s surprising stars, Creature Swap. Creature Swap is simply brutal, especially when combined with Asura Priest or a search monster capable of brining out a monster with a discard effect. Monsters like Mystic Tomato and Shining Angel are amazing right now, and it appears a number of duelists have taken note, leading them to play . . .

#3 Macro Cosmos

I was really hoping that there would be some adventurous souls out there to give Macro Cosmos a try at this event, and it looks like my dreams came true in this department. Macro Cosmos is another effective counter to Chaos Sorcerer by stopping the food from ever making it to the graveyard. It also stops the effects of any other monster that needs to go to the graveyard in order to claim its effect, like the aforementioned Mystic Tomato, and the even better Sangan. Macro Cosmos also lets you use cards like D.D. Survivor to keep your field presence up, regardless of what your opponent is throwing at you. This also allows the deck to make use of many different tribute monsters in order to dominate the board. Monarchs are the most popular, but I also saw a variant packing Hino-Kagu-Tsuchi and Yamata Dragon. If the Cosmos players can deal with the consistency issues native to their chosen deck, we could very well see our first Macro Cosmos deck in the Top 8 today.

#4 Rogue Elements

There are always plenty of rogue decks out there at each Shonen Jump Championship. There weren’t any as high profile here as Max Suffridge’s Clockwork Control, but a couple of other rogue decks appeared to try to fill the gap. There were a few Ojama Trio based lockdown burn decks (I can see Curtis at home smiling as he reads this), a copy of Tim Willoughby’s Ghandipants, and a few copies of Vincent Tundo’s Life Equalizer/Blasting the Ruins deck. Rogue decks are a great way to take opponents off guard, but most of the time their players don’t spend the time necessary playtesting to get it done right. The most important thing when constructing a rogue deck is to consider how you’re going to beat the most popular deck at the tournament. In this case, it’s Chaos Return, so the Equalizer/Blasting players have an innate advantage in that they don’t necessarily have to give the Chaos players a turn. If a rogue deck is going to make it all the way today, my bet would be on Tundo’s deck.

That about does it for decks that I’ve seen here in Denver, but check back later on when I go over the latest tricks and techs from the top players right here on Metagame.com!