It’s Monday, October 2^nd, and I’m here with a brand-new Seven Days to help take the sting out of the start of a new week. This time I’ve got last-minute news on this weekend’s Shonen Jump Championship, some exciting first-look info on upcoming promos that I guarantee you don’t know about, and lots more!

Shonen Jump Championship Austin Hits This Weekend!

On October 7-8, the place to be will be Park Plaza in Austin, as the next Shonen Jump rolls out. Plenty of well-known players and teams have already started the buzz about new decks and hot tech they’re bringing to take home the Shrink, but don’t underestimate the players who will show up waiting to hit the spotlight for the first time. The last time SJC action hit Texas, it was a surprise team that dominated the Top 8 and took home the title gold.

If we’re to believe the hype, there will be all kinds of new hotness to read about, so make sure you don’t miss our coverage of the event starting bright and early Saturday. Both myself and Julia Hedberg will be live on site, bringing you extended coverage of all the goings-on. Thinking of attending? For official information regarding the event, you can check out the tournament listing right here.

Hobby League Promo News

If you’ve been keeping up with rumors or talked to someone in the know at your local hobby store, you might already have heard that the next Hobby League Parallel Ultra Rare promo will be Mystic Tomato, which should make a lot of you happy. The more shine the better, right? Let’s hear it for Mystic Tomato!

What you probably don’t know is the promo card after that. We have it on good authority that the next Hobby League promo will be none other than a Parallel Ultra Rare version of Royal Decree! Remember when this was just impossible to get? Now you’ve got an even blingier option when you want to shut down traps. Get thee to a Hobby League!

In Other Promo News

While we’re on the subject of promos to come, I’ll just mention that reliable sources at Upper Deck have indicated that they’re working very hard to bring us Dragon Master Knight before the end of the year. While it’s not a sure thing yet, that’s the goal, and considering the large number of promos UDE has given us recently, it’s certainly a possibility. Dragon Master Knight is yet another card that collectors have been coveting for ages. The art is gorgeous, and the effect is pretty cool: he’s a Fusion of Black Luster Soldier and Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon, and his ATK increases by 500 points for each Dragon-type monster on the field. At 5000 ATK and 5000 DEF to start with, he’s an utter leviathan.

New Writer! New Column! New Ideas!

As if we didn’t already have lots of new content every week, we’ll soon be bringing you even more. Metagame.com welcomes Vincent Tundo to the roster, and you can look forward to a new offering from him every month! Tundo’s offbeat and devastating approach to building decks is world-renowned, and now he’ll be sharing the fruits of his labors with you. Life Equalizer OTK was just the beginning, so you won’t want to miss this new feature. The goal? To bring you competitive decks so original and crazy, that you probably never even thought of them.

This Week on Metagame.com

Mike Rosenberg starts things off with a look at the use of Nightmare’s Steelcage in control decks. This card was introduced to the card pool in the Spellcaster’s Judgment Structure Deck. Mike will explain how it can enhance a control strategy with its ability to hold off the opponent’s attacks, giving you the time you need to take over the duel. Control decks have been hampered somewhat by the loss of some cards in the current Advanced format, so canny players are looking elsewhere for new cards to provide the effects they need. Nightmare’s Steelcage might be just what they’re looking for.

Next, Jerome McHale takes a cue from a deck Jae Kim presented some time back, and reworks it a bit to frustrate your opponents even more. He’s going to show you a Water-themed deck designed to keep your opponents from drawing cards. Bogging them down with preventive effects that strip cards from their hands and render their on-field effects useless works out well in a format with an accelerated pace. If you’re looking for something that takes a bit of finesse to pull off, you won’t want to miss Jerome’s article this week. He lays it all out in detail, so you’ll know just what to do.

On Wednesday, I dig into the forgotten tech binder to teach a new dog some old tricks. The concept of attacking twice with a single monster has come up a few times lately due to the release of some new cards, and this deck focuses on exploiting that ability. At the same time, it also seeks to employ burn damage, and some twisted combos to create a two-pronged threat that the opponent will have a hard time adapting to. How will it turn out? Check in on The Apotheosis this week to see!

Curtis Schultz echoes Jerome’s theme somewhat as he walks us through Forced Requisition in this week’s Duelist Academy. This is a tricky card that can trip up players and judges alike, so you’ll want to take advantage of Curtis’s detailed explanation of when and how it can be activated. He also offers some suggestions for incorporating it into your duels. There are some ingenious strategies there you won’t want to miss.

After spending years shaking her head over the inattention that so many players lavish on their cards and decks, Julia Hedberg decided to address that issue in this week’s Solid Ground. Oh, you might think you’re doing a good job of protecting your cards, but there’s always room for improvement. You won’t get far at a tournament if you can’t pull the cards together to build your deck, or if you show up and suddenly don’t have a deck, so do yourself a favor and check out what she’s got to say on the subject. Finally, Matt Peddle’s The Champions gives us a closer look at Robert Ackerman’s inventive and efficient approach to Cyber-Stein by analyzing his Top 8 deck from