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It’s May 22, one day after Shonen Jump Championship Chicago, and we have a new Shonen Jump Champion!

After 12 long rounds across three days, and an epic semi-final clash against Dale Bellido, former Hunger Force member turned Rampage posterboy Brent Yetter has claimed his first Shonen Jump Championship title!

After a Top 8 appearance at Shonen Jump Boston last year, Yetter endured a string of disappointing experiences. The disintegration of the Scoop/Force Alliance, which united Hunger Force and Team Scoop, led to the fall of Hunger Force in its entirety, and this year has been full of disappointing almost-ran showings. After consecutive bubble match failures in feature matches at both Shonen Jump Baltimore and Shonen Jump Columbus, Yetter broke his streak and took the first seed position at the end of Day 1 this past weekend. He then eked out a win against teammate Edgar Flores, dominated Dale Bellido due to some one-sided draws, and beat out newcomer Adam Baxter in an intense, aggressive finals match that went to game three.

Our congratulations go out to all competitors at Shonen Jump Chicago, especially Brent Yetter and Team Rampage!

Another big story of the weekend was the super-successful Team Challenge held as a side event in the later rounds of the Shonen Jump Championship’s Day 1. A whopping 23 teams gathered to play 3-on-3 match format games, dueling for glory, prizes, and the largest Yu-Gi-Oh! trophy ever awarded!

In the end, it was Team Xtreme that took home the title! Andrew Hayton, Chris Pittao, and Rob Cedar dominated the opposition, extending the team’s impact from the Shonen Jump Top 8 (Robert Morgan represented the team there) to the biggest side event of the weekend. Congratulations to all the teams who competed!

After several technical difficulties that resulted in both of the Shonen Jump Columbus Shrink promos being taken off of eBay, the main event promo cards has now been re-posted. So far there has been no public sale of a Shrink, so the true market value of the long-sought spell card is still up in the air.

Just eleven days remain between now and Saturday, June 3, the date of the 2006 US National Championships! A year of Regionals and Shonen Jump Championships has boiled down to one huge tournament of masters, and one more duelist will join the elite ranks of Theeresak Poonsombat and Max Suffridge to represent his or her country as the face of Yu-Gi-Oh!

The top four duelists of the tournament will be awarded invites to the World Championships, as well as travel and accommodations to Tokyo, Japan later this summer. Laptops, Xbox 360s, digital cameras, trophies, and more are all on the line as prizes get ramped up like never before. If you’re qualified, you won’t want to miss this epic event.

Not qualified yet? No worries, as the Friday preceding the event will see three Last Chance Regionals held to admit more duelists to the tournament. You can find all the info on invited players, last chance qualifiers, and venue, time, and entry details right here at the official Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game website.

As always, if you won’t be on site and in the competition yourself, you’ll be able to check out all the action here on Metagame.com. We’ll be there Saturday and Sunday providing live coverage of all the action, and there’ll be plenty of intense stuff going on. Several of the game’s top players are planning innovative decks for this event, and a variety of Macro Cosmos builds are just the beginning. Team Overdose and Team Rampage will clash, and Team Comic Odyssey will be out in full force, since the tournament’s practically in their back yard! Don’t miss a minute of the action on June 3 and 4, when we give you extended coverage from multiple Metagame.com staff members!

Premier Tournament Organizer Star City Games has announced that they'll be hosting a year-long Team Challenge program at all of their Yu-Gi-Oh! Regional tournaments for the 2006/2007 season. Teams of three duelists will be able to register for the Challenge when they register for any Regional event hosted by Star City, and once a team is registered, they'll earn points for match wins in Star City Regionals. Those points will be tracked for the entire year, and each Regional event will add to the team's running tally. A single match win will earn your team one point, but if all three of your team members win in a given round, an additional two points will be awarded.

At the end of the '06/'07 Regional season, all registered teams will be invited to the Star City Games Yu-Gi-Oh! Team Challenge Finals. The points earned there get added to the team's grand total, and the team with the most combined points at the end of that event will win the title of Star City Games Yu-Gi-Oh! Team Champion.

Team trophies and product prizes (that's cards, folks!) will be awarded to team competitors at all Star City Regionals! If you compete regularly in Star City events this is just one more way to have some extra fun, and win some more great stuff. If you've been thinking of heading out to some, or just want to make a name for yourself and your team, this is a great reason to do so.

Mike Rosenberg opens up the week today with an in-depth look at My Body As A Shield. Continuing his foray into the strange and often traumatizing world of aggro decks, he looks at how the card functions in an aggressive setting. With aggression being directly responsible for the past two Shonen Jump Championship victories, and with Nationals just days away, it’s a great time to consider this underrated spell. Field control was a huge issue at Shonen Jump Chicago, and Mike will show you how My Body fits perfectly in the current environment.

Then, changing gears entirely, Jerome McHale builds a deck around Destiny Hero – Diamond Dude. He combines what might be a surprisingly conservative, yet surprisingly effective, spread of killer spells with plenty of Dude support, resulting in the first of what is sure to be many viable Diamond Dude builds here on Metagame.com. If you’ve been looking for a hardcore Destiny Hero deck that runs a lot of the new Hero characters, this is the deck for you. See it here on Tuesday!

Exodia has always been the epitome of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game. It’s the biggest monster out there, and its effect blends luck and skillful strategy in a way that captures that Yugi-magic. But it’s been a little absent lately, don’t you think? I’ll fix all that on Wednesday, when I take on an innovative Manticore Exodia build that’s held together with new cards from Shadow of Infinity. If you’ve mourned the loss of Painful Choice in your Exodia deck, dust it off, because Exodia’s back!

On Thursday, Curtis Schultz has all the important rulings you’ll need if you want to play with the new Hero Flash!! spell. Detailing all the technical nitty gritty ins and outs of H – Heated Heart, E – Emergency Call, R – Righteous Justice, and O – Oversoul, this is a must-read for any fan of Elemental Heroes. Want to know how to get the most out of the new suite of support spells? Check back later this week for Curtis’s tell-all article.

Friday it’s a double-header dose of Julia Hedberg, as she brings two articles to the table for your reading delight. The chaining lessons continue this week and become quite a bit more advanced as Julia looks at how targeting effects the resolution of chained effects. How about the advantages of Widespread Ruin over Sakuretsu Armor? Maybe you’d like to stop Pot of Avarice dead in its tracks? This article is packed with tricks and tips for diligent duelists. Then, Agents of Judgment is a must-read for anyone who ever head judges a tournament. Ever wondered how to make the most of a limited staff when you’ve got hundreds of duelists and too few judges? Julia will share her experiences, and give plenty of advice for those situations where there just aren’t enough hands on deck.

Jae Kim rounds out the week with a drastic new take on the Scapegoat/Monster Gate concept. The secret ingredient? Winged Beasts. No, seriously, Winged Beasts. Icarus Attack fuses with Reasoning to create an innovative and downright weird concept deck in this week’s installment of Jae’s New Grounds Concept column!

That’s it for this week! Don’t forget to mark down the weekend of June 3 to catch all our live coverage from the US National Championship. Conflicts of epic proportion are about to boil over, and out of the sea of duelists four champions will emerge to represent America in Japan this summer at Worlds. Who will they be? You’ll know when we do, right here on Metagame.com!