It’s been a massive month for dueling! Light of Destruction: Special Edition hit stores and brought us Kuraz the Light Monarch. The European Championships and American National Championships have come and gone, and now, one of the world’s greatest duelists has earned the title of Canadian National Champ.

Lazaro Bellido Wins Canadian Title

113 of Canada’s best duelists traveled to the Metro Toronto Convention Center this past weekend, and while they ran different decks and had different play styles, they all shared one common goal: to become the Canadian National Champion. Big-name duelists like Matt Peddle, Yannick Dubeau, and Jason Tan all made it to the Top 8, but at the end of the day it was innovator and Team Overdose member Lazaro Bellido who took home the title. It’s Lazaro’s second Championship win this year, following his victory at the 50th Shonen Jump Championship in Costa Mesa in March. The man knows how to pick his spots.

Piloting Gladiator Beasts, Lazaro plowed through a mirror match with first seed Nik Ristoski before receiving a concession from Jason Tan in the semifinals. A surprising upset led Omar Beldon to defeat Matt Peddle in the semis, and Lazaro narrowly edged out Beldon’s Dark Armed Dragon build in a nail-biting three-game finale!

There were some interesting trends and some very cool decks played in Toronto this past weekend, so if you didn’t catch the coverage live, be sure to check it out. If you’re going to one of the two upcoming Shonen Jump Championships you especially shouldn’t miss this, as the trends set at Canadian Nationals will have a heavy influence on tournaments over the coming weeks.

Gladiator Beasts and Dark Armed Dragon are most certainly on top right now, but Monarchs, Gadgets, and Lightsworn have all seen serious innovation at the two recent National Championships this past month. Those three decks (and others) will play a big role in the weekend’s metagame, but with everything changing so quickly, the shape of Philadelphia’s tournament landscape is a tough one to predict. The duelists who succeed in this tournament will be the ones who studied recent tournament results and adapted the quickest, so if you’re going to throw your hat in the ring be sure to do your homework.

Haven’t finalized your travel plans yet? Be sure to check out the official event listing for all the basic details you need.

See you there!

Honolulu may not be the biggest Shonen Jump Championship of all time, but it’s definitely going to be one of the most memorable. Held in the Hawaii Room of the Neil Blaisdell Center, this tournament is the perfect chance to mix dueling business with vacation pleasure, and flights are still available from the West Coast for surprisingly low prices.

Want to play in this historic event? You’ll find the must-have info over at the official tournament listing, but there are more resources for you than that.  Check out www.sjchawaii.com the official website created by the event’s premier tournament organizer. It’s got more than the usual in-depth information about the tournament and side events. There’s a "Stuff To Do" section with info about local attractions and sightseeing, and best of all, online registration! You can actually pay your entry fee without standing in a registration line the day of the tournament, saving a lot of time and hassle. Pretty awesome.

This Week on Metagame

Next, Jerome McHale takes a different look at Prime Material Dragon, approaching it from the perspective of a Gadget duelist. Can Gadgets beat a monster that can negate virtually all the traditional Gadget removal cards? Jerome thinks so, and inspired by Jordan Nasser’s tremendous showing at U.S. Nationals, he’s going to create a Gadget build that can take on the fast-approaching metagame. This one is gauntlet-worthy for any tournament player, so don’t miss it.

Shifting gears, Curtis Schultz begins a new series in his Duel Academy column, as he tackles the task of explaining trigger effects. Riddled with intricacies, tiny variations, and important wordings and timings, different types of trigger effects can behave in massively different ways. In order to play trigger effects to their fullest you really need to know how they work, and even veteran players will probably find some useful information they weren’t aware of in this series.

On Thursday, I’ll take a break from the uber-competitive focus to kick back and relax with an old pal we all know and love—Skull Servant. Ever wanted to see a competitive Skull Servant deck? Have you doubted that such a thing could even exist? I’ll wrack my brain this week in The Apotheosis, as I take up the challenge of fixing a Skull Servant build. The result is an awesomely fun, incredibly inexpensive deck that would be a blast to take to your next tournament.

A few weeks ago, Bryan Camareno discussed some of the basic math that can help you make better plays in the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG. This week he’s back with more, and he’s going to teach you about the roles of permutations, combinations, and what they mean. This week’s Practical Duelist article covers more of the mathematic skills and formulas you need to know if you want to be a serious competitor, so this is yet another don’t-miss article.

Saturday, the Prime Material Dragon hits just keep on coming! Matt Peddle deconstructs Adam Corn’s deck from U.S. Nationals this week in The Champions. What made Corn’s deck so good, and what observations did the general dueling public perhaps miss? Matt’s going to answer a lot of questions as he delves into the depths of this deck, and his insight into his teammate’s build is a unique perspective.

Finally, Ryan Murphy follows up on Sunday as he takes Corn Control, mashes it up, and rebuilds it in The Forgotten Format. The key strategies at work in Corn’s Nationals deck actually translate between formats, so Ryan’s got a really unique Traditional version of Corn’s deck for you to check out. As always, the extrapolation of this deck from one format to another makes many things clear about the Advanced version, so even if you don’t play Traditional yourself, there’s a lot to learn in Ryan’s latest offering.

And that’s it for this week! Be sure to join us Saturday morning for Shonen Jump Championship Philadelphia, and until then, thanks for reading Metagame.com.

—Jason Grabher-Meyer

Contributing Editor, Metagame.com