It takes a lot of determination, planning, and money to maintain a team. You have to be able to buy the cards that you need to build your decks, plan out times and places to playtest, and plan and finance trips to major events. It’s not easy, especially when you aren’t guaranteed a win or any kind of reward at all for your efforts. Regardless, teams continue to do their thing all across North America. Today I had the chance to talk to a team composed of some of the best players the game has to offer, and they hail all the way from our neighbor up north, Canada. Meet the Superfriends!
Team Superfriends has six members total, but only five of them were able to make it today. They are captain and spokesman Dale Bellido, Savage/Superfriends dual team member Matt Peddle, as well as Jason Tan, Chris Simoes, and Lazarro Bellido. This is certainly an impressive lineup, considering that they’ve never gone through an event without at least one of their players making a Top 8. They even placed members into the finals of Canadian Nationals in both 2004 and 2005! Despite all this talent, it can be quite difficult for them to keep doing what they do. The fact that there haven’t been any Shonen Jump Championships in Canada means that they’ve had to travel to the U.S. for every major event they’ve played in (with the obvious exception of Canadian Nationals). This has been a serious strain on the pocketbook, especially considering that they aren’t currently sponsored.
The Superfriends are based in Toronto at the Untouchables hobby shop. There they’ve been working hard to come up with the next big thing for our new Advanced Format. What have they come up with? “Well, four of us are playing Warrior-Toolbox,” explained Peddle, “but in the end, Dale decided to go with Tomato Control.” Certainly, those two can be seriously effective in the new format due to the excellent search effects of Reinforcement of the Army and Mystic Tomato. They claim, however, that their playtesting has yielded a special build of Warrior-Toolbox that allows it to excel regardless of whether it goes first or second. This would certainly be an impressive achievement if it works as well in practice as it does in theory.
When asked about their opinions on the new format, they seemed significantly less than pleased about it. “We’re happy that Black Luster Soldier – Envoy of the Beginning is gone, but the new list really takes out a lot of diversity that we used to have.” This confused me, but they explained. “There used to be a burn deck, an OTK deck, and a deckout deck that you could play instead of Chaos. Now, what can you play instead of Beatdown?” I may not agree with that, but I can certainly see where they’re coming from.
Our time was unfortunately cut short by some confusion over the legality of cards from the Warrior’s Triumph Structure deck, but one thing is clear: Team Superfriends is making an impact on the North American metagame, and they’re having a great time doing it.