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It was Team Savage versus Team Comic Odyssey in a direct clash for the second Cyber-Stein! |
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At long last, it was time for the Top 4 playoffs, and the chance to claim the second Cyber-Stein. Brodie and Tony squared off for the first round. Both players were alert and ready to go, and play went fast and certain.
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Flores was representing Team Naruto, while Kevin Hor was fighting for Team Comic Odyssey. If Kevin won this match and his next, he’d score his second Cyber-Stein. Winning the opening roll, he was itching to take another victory. |
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Check out bios of the Top 4 side event players as they battle for the Cyber-Stein! |
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If you stay closely involved with a game for a number of years, you get the opportunity to meet a lot of people. I always look forward to seeing what Evan Vargas will be playing, because it’s practically guaranteed I won’t have seen it before. |
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Never before has one major event focused so strongly on team competition. |
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When I interviewed Juan Cardenas, he mentioned being impressed by a Mill deck he saw in the early rounds and was destroying its opponents. A few rounds later, I think I witnessed that deck firsthand, bouncing up and down the four tables. I’ll cut to the chase, and tell you that Jonathan Navarro has one insane Mill deck. |
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Every event has popular cards that once weren’t popular, and if you’re a longtime reader you know that such tech thrills us to no end here at Metagame. |
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Eleven rounds across two days boiled down to just one final match for the event’s last two duelists. Having vanquished Team Savage from the main event in the semifinals, Eric Wu represented Team Comic Odyssey against the unaffiliated Keanson Ye. |
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This semifinal round saw Team Savage and Comic Odyssey facing off for a spot in the finals. Both strong members of their respective teams, it looked to be a matchup with a lot on the line. |
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Cho won the opening roll, and both players set to the task of pummeling each other in record time. |
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Elton Cho is the youngest competitor in the SJC Top 8, and is sitting at second seed. He was playing a highly teched Beast-based deck. Mike Rosenberg is seventh seed and was playing his “Masks of Tsuku” Control deck. |
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I was really looking forward to covering this match. Both duelists played quite well yesterday, so it promised to be an exciting matchup. |
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Unfortunately, teammates sometimes face off against teammates in the Top 8. Both members of Comic Odyssey were paired up in the semifinal round, and faced the fact that only one member of their team would be moving on. |
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Check out information about the Top 8 players here! |
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Game one did not open well, as Evan Vargas seemed to be facing down the famed “god luck” that always seems to ruin his chances. |
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Check out decklists from the Top 8 here! |
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Jonathan led off in the first duel, rapidly taking control of the game. He pulled what he needed, and wiped his opponent out of cards. “I had 18 cards in my hand, and he plays Card Destruction, then Serial Spell!” |
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Lots of players run Lockdown Burn, and seemingly even more do now that the new Advanced format has rotated in. But, in a field of cookie-cutter Burn decks, Deithrich Shelton-Evans stands apart. |
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One of the benefits of the round-up style coverage is the chance to keep the current top tables more or less under your eye all at once. After watching Elton move up into these tables and triumph over previously well-established players, I knew I wanted to sit down and talk to him. |
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Arguably the single best player in the building, John Umali, ran into the one person apparently invulnerable to his head games—thirteen-year-old Elton Cho. |
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"He'll topdeck Black Luster Soldier now, just watch," smirked Umali. Ghorbani didn't. |
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“He made me forfeit!” he said, pointing at his opponent. “I had no cards left, and there wasn’t any point in continuing.” |
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Jae Kim, a.k.a. “Jaelove,” is one of the most recognizable duelists on the Internet. In this tournament, he ran a revamped, and very smart, Chaos variant tailored for the new format. |
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Since the new Advanced format only kicked in yesterday, it still remained up in the air as to what to expect to see on the floor. It’s a prime time to experiment, since at best, you’ll be second-guessing the metagame. |
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Everyone seems to want to be part of Comic Odyssey if they’re in the Pasadena area, and Hor’s success is part of that. |
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I used to see Robert all the time when the mall tour was running, but I haven’t run into him for a while, so it was great to get to see him again at this Shonen Jump. We caught up a bit in an interview, and I got to hear about his deck, his reaction to the event, and more. |
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Team Comic Odyssey has a lot of well-recognized, outspoken individuals, but Juan Cardenas isn’t one of them. |
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Robert Smith has done it all—and here's the deck he's playing today. |
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Team Savage has some well-known members who have already made names for themselves on their own, so pooling their talents might give them the edge to rival previously established teams. |
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The environment of any major Yu-Gi-Oh! tournament is highly unpredictable, and as a result a player can easily improve his or her chances of earning top prizes by teaming up with others and agreeing to split the loot. |
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