It’s over! More than a thousand duelists battled their way through ten grueling rounds here today at the Costa Mesa Fair Grounds, and now that the smoke has cleared just 32 competitors remain. Tomorrow they’ll battle their way through four more rounds of Swiss before a final cut to Top 8. Then, three more rounds will decide a winner.
The field was full of surprises from Round 1 on here this morning. Dark Armed Dragon, Oppression Gadgets, and Diamond Dude Turbo led the pack, but a vast number of alternate strategies were designed to beat one or more of these strategies. The Top 32 decklists will not be published, or even gathered tonight, so tomorrow’s field is a mystery, but it could include any number of metagamed deck themes. Today we saw Macro Cosmos, Exodia, Gladiator Beasts, Zombies, Monarchs, Burn variants, and more take prominent wins, so tomorrow’s a complete tossup.
Popular tech picks for the weekend included Black Horn of Heaven, Kinetic Soldier, and Shadow-Imprisoning Mirror, but the defining tech card of the weekend was most certainly Royal Oppression. Shutting down everything from Dark decks and Diamond Dude Turbo to much-feared single cards like Monster Reborn and Zombie Master, Oppression seems like a defining card for the next six months.
Tomorrow we’ll see duelists from six different countries in competition: the US, Canada, Australia, Italy, Germany, and Mexico will all be represented, making this an event of incredible international scope. National Champions Adam Corn, Michel Gruener, and Jorge Olivella will proudly represent their countries, alongside competitors like the Bellido Brothers, Shane Scurry, Kris Perovic, Vittorio Wiktor, Hecto Heras, Jason Holloway, Augustin Herrerra, Cedric Sequerra, Sang Bui, and many more. Competition is going to be intense.
We’ll have extended feature match coverage tomorrow morning, starting with Round 1 of Swiss competition at 10 AM. We’ll post the Top 8 decklists once the Top 8 is decided, and the remaining 24 decks of Day 2 will be right here on Metagame after the tournament. Seven rounds still remain in this, the biggest Shonen Jump Championship ever, so get ready because the action is far from over. In less than nine hours the final chapters of this epic tournament will begin — don’t miss a single moment of Day 2, here at Shonen Jump Championship Costa Mesa!