It’s Tuesday, October 10th, 2006, and after reeling from the weekend’s clash of firestorm monarchs, smoke grenades, and killer koalas, the dueling world has a brand new Shonen Jump Champion!
Tristian Patillo Wins SJC Austin!
Tristian Patillo shocked onlookers this past weekend at Shonen Jump Championship Austin, when he defeated crowd favorite and smart-money bet Ryan Spicer of Team Outphase in the last match of the tournament! After losing to Spicer in the Swiss rounds on Saturday, Patillo came back to score a 2-0 victory in the finals, which pitted both of Day 2’s Monarch decks against each other in a mirror match.
The decks used in the Top 8 have dueling communities buzzing. Though two Monarch decks took first and second place, Day 2 also featured three Warrior Toolbox variants, one aggro Beatdown, an OTK Stein, and even a dedicated Gearfried deck featuring Blast with Chain and Smoke Grenade of the Thief! Our congratulations go out to all the competitors of SJC Austin, especially your new Shonen Jump Champ, Tristian Patillo!
Less Than Three Weeks Until SJC Seattle
With Austin now in the history books, duelists are starting to look ahead in anticipation of the next Shonen Jump Championship tournament. The Seattle Center and the good folks at Cascade Games will play host to the first West Coast SJC in months, when top-level dueling action returns to the Emerald City. The last time SJC action hit the Pacific Coast (at SJC San Francisco), we saw a ton of firsts. Matt Laurents came out of nowhere to score a surprising Top 4 finish, exploding out of the gates to start his competitive dueling career. His opponent, Manuel De Oliveira, was the first Swiss duelist to ever make Day 2 at a Shonen Jump Championship. To top it off, Fili Luna scored an upset win over Jonathan Navarro in the quarterfinals, and captured the entire tournament with an astounding dark-horse victory.
With this new format so open to creativity and innovation, it’s anybody’s guess as to what we’ll see played in Seattle. There are sure to be plenty of Monarchs, Warrior Toolboxes, and Beatdown decks, but we’ll also probably see duelists drawing inspiration from Kevin Donnelly’s Cyber-Stein build in Austin. And will Seattle have its own Matt Stille? Can another totally rogue deck make Top 8? You’ll find out when the duelists onsite do, because Metagame.com will be there live, bringing you extended coverage from both days of the tournament. The West Coast’s best are itching to strut their stuff once again, and we’ll be there on October 28th and 29th to bring you all the great feature matches, decks, and tech you crave, plus interviews, top table updates, cool stories, pics, and savage scrubbings in the Metagame blog!
This Week on Metagame.com
We’ve got a great lineup for you this week, and if you were with us yesterday you’ve probably already seen how we got it started! Mike Rosenberg cracked open The Binder on Monday to show you one of the format’s most debated (and arguably most powerful) trap cards. Deck Devastation Virus is a blessing for aggro decks, a powerful tool for Warrior Toolbox, and an absolute bane to Cyber-Stein. Fitting into a surprising variety of strategies with equally surprising ease, this underrated card killer has the potential to be huge in the current format. Check out Mike’s article to see how to play it, what it can do, and tips for how to make it more effective.
Today, Jerome McHale looks at a favorite pick for duelists in this format, but one that has yet to break into the Top 8 of a Shonen Jump Championship. Ratbox, a strategy that revolves around the various cards searchable via Giant Rat, gives a duelist an exceptional level of access to a wide range of useful monsters. Injection Fairy Lily and Exiled Force are both mainstays of the archetype, but Jerome takes the deck to new places with tech like Dream Clown, Cat’s Ear Tribe, and well . . . you’ll have to read it to see what else! If you’re looking for a new addition to your testing gauntlet, I can’t recommend it highly enough!
On Wednesday I set to work in The Apotheosis to fix up an interesting concept deck. The key mechanic? Spin: sending your opponent’s on-field card back to the top of his or her deck so that it’s out of your way and in his or hers! Spinning cards is frequently superior to destroying them or removing them from play, and this deck uses some of the game’s best spin effects to continually disrupt the opponent. If you’ve never played cards like Phoenix Wing Wind Blast or Back to Square One, you should definitely check this out. If you have used those cards before, then you’re probably going to enjoy this deck.
Check into Curtis Schultz’s Duelist Academy this Thursday and you’ll get a double-dose of rulings clarifications and tactical tips. The focus this week is Sneak Preview promo cards, and Curtis will take you inside the mechanics of Hidden Soldiers and Toon Dark Magician Girl to answer your rulings questions and show you what these cards can do for your game. Toon Dark Magician Girl has some interesting applications in real, competitive decks, so this is a crash course you won’t want to miss!
On Friday we’ll feature two articles from Julia Hedberg, and this time around it’s another crossover between Agents of Judgment and Solid Ground. In the first, Julia will show you judges out there how to identify, address, and deal with rule sharks. In Solid Ground, Julia starts a two-part series intended to show you as a player how to recognize and manage such players and the issues they can cause. We’ve all gone up against rule sharks from time to time, and Julia’s going to help you by outlining what you should and should not do when you’re facing one.
Finally, Matt Peddle will finish out the weekend taking a look at Keith Gibson’s Top 8 OTK deck from SJC Boston. Gibson took monsters like Cannon Soldier and Cyber Phoenix all the way to the top tables, and his deck provides a fascinating counterpoint to the OTK variant Kevin Donnelly was so successful with this past weekend at Austin. For extra fun, read this article side by side with the Top 8 decks from Austin and compare it to Donnelly’s. OTK players have never had so many viable options, and Matt’s going to show you what makes Keith Gibson’s build so viable for your own use.
We’ll have all that and more this week, so be sure to hit us up every day for more articles about the game we all love. With the new format now in full swing, and a new Structure Deck, new Collectible Tins, the Champion Packs, and the upcoming Cyberdark Impact expansion all on the horizon, it’s a great time to be a duelist!
As always, thanks for spending your time with us here at Metagame. Enjoy the week!
—Jason Grabher-Meyer
Contributing Editor, Metagame.com