It’s Monday, June 26, and the dueling world has two brand-new champions!

Canada Crowns New National Champion

More than half of Canada’s qualified players showed up to Hamilton, Ontario this past weekend to compete for the title of National Champion. One of the last Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG National Championship competitions of the year, it was perhaps one of the most competitive on a pound-for-pound basis. Duelists like Dale Bellido, Matt Peddle, Jason Tan, Andrew Hayton, Chris Simoes and many more duked it out in a ten round battle royale for supremacy on the National level. Even former National Champions Joseph Leung and Dexter Dalit were in competition, with the latter breaking into the Top 8 yet again.

In the end it was former Top 8 competitor Calvin Tsang who took the top honors, battling his way through Dexter Dalit, and then taking on Team Xtreme’s Chris Pittao. Eking his way out of two duels where Pittao had control of the game right up until the last moment, he used a blend of Cyber-Stein tech in a non-OTK deck to steal the championship right out from under Pittao’s noise. With an incredible finish that defied all odds, this one will be a tournament for the ages!

Check out our on-site extended coverage from the Ramada Plaza Hamilton, and see all the decks, feature matches, happenings, and goings-on that defined the weekend.

Shonen Jump Championship Denver Awards New Two-Time Champ!

For the event that was supposedly going to be the most subdued of the year, Denver tore the house down. With a Top 8 that featured Ryan Hayakawa, Emon Ghaneian, and Chris Mooseman, Denver acted in concert to cement the rise of Cyber-Stein as a tech card.

Making his fourth Shonen Jump Top 8, Emon Ghaneian added yet another wreath to his continued string of laurels, capturing yet another Shonen Jump Championship! After beating out Hayakawa in the quarterfinals, he went on to claim the entire event as his own and match Hayakawa’s formally unparalleled achievement of winning two Shonen Jump events. Can anything stop the tour de force that is Emon Ghaneian? We’ll see at Shonen Jump Championship Philadelphia on July 22, when Metagame.com will be live, with extended feature match and blog coverage.

Upcoming Tin Release Shocks Duelists and Collectors

Duelists last week were surprised to see an announcement on the official Yugioh.com website that the upcoming series of Yu-Gi-Oh! Collector Tins will include incredible promo reprints. Cyber Dragon, the first promotional secret rare reprint to be announced thus far in the series, sent shockwaves through dueling communities when it was previewed at the official information source.

Reactions to the announcement ranged from highly excited duelists to slightly trepidatious secondary market collectors, but if previous tin trends are any indicator the re-release of Cyber Dragon will do little to mar the collectability of its original super rare and ultimate rare forms. A boon to those of us who really need that third Dragon, or perhaps even that second playset, these tins are already generating a huge amount of interest on the hobby store level despite only one of them being announced.

Watch Yugioh.com for more surprise announcements as we draw closer to August, and the release of the latest Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG Collector’s Tin set.

This Week on Metagame.com

It’s big, it’s dead, it’s a Raigeki on a stick! Mike Rosenberg opens up our week with a look at Dark Dust Spirit, one of the best cards ever printed for generating momentum and field control. With the release of Treeborn Frog, this big red terror became infinitely more playable, but Mobius the Frost Monarch and Zaborg the Thunder Monarch stole the Spirit’s thunder. Think you’ve got a good grasp on how to use it? Check out this article because Mike’s got some tips on how best to abuse Dark Dust’s very specific card text in order to get the most mileage out of the experience. If you run Monarch Control, this is a must-read.

Then, I take a look at a somewhat confused Machine Toolbox deck. “Machine Toolbox?” you ask with a look of confusion. Yeah, that was my reaction too, and with good reason. I take the philosophy that guided the submitted deck, point it in a new direction, and create a new spin on a deck you may have heard of—Canceller Control. A unique and highly potent control deck that creates defensive synergies amongst its monsters, it should be a hit for Machine fans looking for a reason to play the archetype yet again.

If you haven’t noticed, Last Will is huge right now. The reason? A series of re-rulings that changed the spell’s function, making it more flexible and far more useful, have brought it back into the spotlight for top-level competition. Want to know what they are? Tune in Thursday to Curtis Schultz’s Duel Academy, and you’ll learn all the ins and outs of the “new” Last Will.

Julia Hedberg steps up to bat on Friday, and if you think you’re a “cerebral” duelist, boy, do you need to read this article. There’s been a disturbing trend recently wherein duelists have been pushing the limits of sportsmanship and the defined player conduct guidelines in an effort to get a mental edge on , and many tactics going around are flat out illegal. Julia begins a two-part series defining what is and is not acceptable under UDE tournament guidelines, and shows you what not to do if you want to stay off the suspended list.

Following up on the Machine theme from Wednesday, Jae Kim rounds out the week with yet another deck that takes advantage of Cyber Phoenix. This time around it’s a revamp of one of my old favorites, Machine Chaos. Using Cyber Phoenix to keep big hitters on the field and protect them from targeted threats, this deck uses all the power of Chaos Return with a ton of new tricks to kick out big damage and maintain board presence.

That’s it for this week! Head back to Metagame.com in another seven days for more of the best in Yu-Gi-Oh! strategy, plus release info on the a brand new Structure Deck.

As always, thanks for reading Metagame.com!

—Jason Grabher-Meyer

Contributing Editor, Metagame.com