It’s Monday, March 10, 2008, and the dueling world has a brand new Shonen Jump Champion! After the biggest Shonen Jump Championship of all time, the stage is set for the next several months of competitive dueling, and a deserving Champion finally has his title!
Lazaro Bellido Wins 50th Shonen Jump Championship!
Seven of the Top 8 decks were Dark Armed Dragon Return, establishing that strategy’s dominance in the current format. If players weren’t focusing on their Dark Armed matchups before, they sure will be now—it’s simply no longer a choice. We saw plenty of creative answers in Costa Mesa, everything from Black Horn of Heaven to an absolute slew of Trap Dustshoot and Mind Crush, but we likely won’t see those tech cards adopted en masse by the average duelist for a few more weeks. Luckily that’s just in time for Shonen Jump Championship Columbus, less than three weeks from today.
Our congratulations go out to all the competitors who attended this awesome event, especially Lazaro Bellido! If you missed the event, be sure to catch all the action in our triple-length coverage right here on Metagame: seventeen rounds of competition made for some great feature matches, decks, tech, and other articles, so don’t miss out!
This Week on Metagame.com
Today, I start things off with a look at one of my favorite cards in this format: Goblin Zombie. It’s no secret that I’m a huge Zombie fan, but I held off on discussing this card in my own column because Matt Peddle did such a great job on his Phantom Darkness preview piece—there just wasn’t anything else to say. Now, though, weeks after the release of Phantom Darkness and ten days into a new format, the card’s further strength has become clear, so click on over to see what impresses me now that it’s seen some real play!
Jerome McHale takes on Plants yet again tomorrow, this time taking the Gigaplant concept in a direction I don’t think many had considered. With a handful of tournament-viable Water-attribute Plant types in the environment, Jerome came up with the pretty sweet idea of combining Water control strategies with Plant special summoning tricks. The result is a really cool swarm deck that can take apart the opponent’s hand. This idea is unique, so I really consider it a must-read.
Continuing our look at new cards, on Wednesday, Curtis Schultz will discuss rulings for the newest card of them all—Doomcaliber Knight! Doomcaliber Knight made a huge impact this past weekend: over a thousand duelists scrabbled to be one of the first to own it. The card, however, is a little more complicated on the rulings side than previous Championship promos. Curtis Schultz is going to dissect Doomcaliber’s effect to show you all the ins and outs of the card. If you haven’t really give the mechanics of Doomcaliber Knight much thought, you should definitely check out Curtis’s Duelist Academy column.
On Thursday, we’ll be joined by an all-new regular writer here on Metagame. Who will it be? We’re not telling! Join us later this week to find out who’ll be stopping by, and what this mystery writer will be discussing.
Friday, Bryan Camareno will look at emerging trends and big decks in the new format. He’ll be discussing some tech cards that you can use to improve your matchups with big decks. Wondering what decks you should plan to see at your local and Regional tournament? Want to dust off some cool cards from the shoebox under your bed? Bryan’s got you covered this week in The Practical Duelist.
Samurais were a big part of Shonen Jump Championship Costa Mesa, so on Saturday, Matt Peddle’s going to examine the deck that started the Samurai craze: Jonathan Moore’s build from Houston. What made his deck so good? Was blind luck really responsible for Moore’s win? Matt Peddle doesn’t think so, and he’ll show you why in this week’s installment of The Champions.
Finally, Ryan Murphy will round out our week with yet another Traditional format version of an old-school Advanced format strategy: Merchant Pot Turbo! A deck that was shot down by format changes before it could ever really take flight, Merchant Pot is always in the back of a creative deckbuilder’s mind. Ryan’s going to show you how to relive its nonexistent glory days in The Forgotten Format.
So, that’s what’s coming up. Next week, we’ll be back with a ton of articles reacting to the events of Shonen Jump Championship Costa Mesa. See you then!
—Jason Grabher-Meyer
Contributing Editor, Metagame.com