It’s Monday, March 3, 2008, and we’re just four days removed from the 50th Shonen Jump Championship tournament!
Shonen Jump Championship Costa Mesa Is This Weekend!
It’s almost here! The 50th tournament in the prestigious Shonen Jump Championship series will be held this weekend in Costa Mesa, California, and we’re expecting more than a thousand duelists to flood the Orange County Fairgrounds. The reason? The greatest prize pot ever offered for a Shonen Jump Championship is up for grabs, including the all-new prize card Doomcaliber Knight!
If you’re still on the fence about whether or not you want to compete, check out the official event listing for all the info you need. Make those travel bookings soon, because hotels are filling up all around Orange County. The event listing includes start time info, as well as Premier Tournament Organizer contact information. If you’ve already made your plans and are counting down the days, make sure to take advantage of the online registration for this event—it’ll really simplify your Saturday morning.
Southern California Gaming Events is the Premier Tournament Organizer for this Shonen Jump, and they’ve got a huge lineup of side events for this weekend. You can find schedules and descriptions for events on their website, so check it out. For duelists thirteen years old and younger, there are even free age-restricted tournaments with guaranteed prizes for all players. See, there’s something for everyone!
Can’t make it to the event? Follow the coverage here on Metagame. We’ll be bringing you an unprecedented amount of decks, feature matches, interviews, and tech updates! Costa Mesa is going to be so big that one reporter just wasn’t enough; join me, Jerome McHale, and some surprise contributors for extended coverage of the tournament. This is bound to be a hugely influential event, and since we’ll be coming to you live from the tournament floor, you’ll know every development as it happens.
Get ready for the biggest Shonen Jump of all time!
This Week on Metagame
I get things started today with a look at one of the more interesting tech cards played at Shonen Jump Championship Houston—Raigeki Break. Heading into Shonen Jump Championship Houston there was a small, but very vocal, crowd insistent upon the notion that the spin mechanic (returning a card from the field to the top of your opponent’s deck) was on its way out. When Day 2 rolled around, we saw the fallout: three duelists choosing Raigeki Break over Phoenix Wing Wind Blast and making it to the Top 16, with one taking third place. Why’d it happen, and what makes Raigeki Break so good? Click on over to find out.
A lot of duelists had high hopes for Grinder Golem, the Super Rare monster card from Duelist Pack – Jesse Anderson. Combined with Necroface and Inferno Tempest, Grinder Golem would have created an easy three-card deck out combo. But with Necroface down to two per deck, that strategy’s all but impossible. It’s Jerome McHale to the rescue tomorrow though, as he shows you a new, probably far easier OTK with Grinder Golem!
I’ve been experimenting with Crystal Beasts a lot lately, and I’m really loving the three-Beast-negation effect of Ancient City – Rainbow Ruins. It’s spectacular in a format so heavily shaped by spell combos and turns with multiple spell and trap effects being used. But you really need to be playing some of the new cards from Duelist Pack – Jesse Anderson to get there fast enough, and Jesse’s newest cards can be a bit confusing. This Wednesday, Curtis Schultz is going to look at Crystal Counter, Crystal Tree, and my personal favorite, Crystal Release. He’ll also answer some important rulings questions on each.
Thursday, Vincent Tundo is going to stop by to recount one of my favorite stories from Shonen Jump Championship Houston. With so much fun, awesome, and epic stuff going on at the Westin Galleria, some tales were just too big to tell, and Vince’s was no exception. After dropping to the X-2 bracket with a deck that seemed nigh unbeatable going into the weekend, he turned a frown upside down by seeing how big of a collection he could build through some creative trading. It all started with nothing but a Lucky Pied Piper, and you won’t believe what he ended up with.
Creating a new deck or refining a deck you’ve been using is one of the most challenging parts of a duelist’s career. Most duelists kind of bumble their way through this process, especially in the first few months of competitively playing the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG. There are few well-explored options for systematizing this process, and Bryan Camareno’s got a very easy one he’ll share with you on Friday. Simple brainstorming techniques are the answer, and Bryan’s going to show you multiple pen-and-paper solutions to your deckbuilding woes.
Shane Scurry created an awesome Dark Armed Dragon build for Paul Levitin and Adam Corn to play at Shonen Jump Championship Houston, and Scurry’s framework took both duelists to the Top 4. This weekend, Matt Peddle will examine what made Levitin’s specific build so potent, and he’ll show you the individual elements that contributed to a larger strategy that you can make use of, either in whole or in part.
Finally, Ryan Murphy will finish out the week with a look at a Traditional deck heavily influenced by Adrian Madaj—Recruiter. Madaj made a big impression over a year and a half ago when he used Mystic Tomato and Shining Angel to take Chaos to a whole new level in the Advanced format of the time. With Chaos Sorcerer gone from the current Advanced environment, such a deck would be pointless, but in The Forgotten Format, opportunity abounds! If you’ve been looking to play a different, more stable, Chaos build, then this article is a must-read.
That’s it for this week. Don’t forget to join us Saturday and Sunday for Shonen Jump Championship Costa Mesa. Get ready, because it looks like this is going to be the biggest Shonen Jump of all time!
See you there!
—Jason Grabher-Meyer
Contributing Editor, Metagame.com