It’s Tuesday, February 26, 2008, and after taking a day to recover from the unpredictable, Mariner-tastic, Six Samurai–dominated weekend, we are back from Shonen Jump Championship Houston with another seven days of article previews and news!
Jonathan Moore Wins Shonen Jump Championship Houston!
Dark Armed Dragon
decks designed by the likes of Shane Scurry and Karim Ahamjik took a total of nine spots in the Top 16 this past weekend, but when the smoke cleared and the final round was over, it was Jonathan Moore and The Six Samurais who defeated American champion Adam Corn in a drag-down 2-1 brawl. Moore’s aggressive play style coupled with three copies of Great Shogun Shien made for a deadly combo that was perfectly in tune with the metagame, resulting in the first-ever Shonen Jump Championship win for Samurais!
The impact of Phantom Darkness was certainly felt, with fifteen of the sixteen Day 2 duelists playing cards from the new set. Miss the coverage this past weekend? Be sure to check it out, because Houston was full of surprises. Gladiator Beasts, new Demise variants, and even Elemental Heroes got their moments in the sun, and Houston proved to be one of the most memorable Shonen Jump Championships of all time.
Speaking of memorable Shonen Jumps, the 50th Championship in Costa Mesa is less than two weeks away! With exclusive playmats for all competitors (at least until they run out), an awe-inspiring prize scheme for the Top 4, and the debut of the newest Championship promo Doomcaliber Knight, the 50th Shonen Jump is pretty much guaranteed to be the biggest Shonen Jump of all time! Still haven’t booked your travel? There’s still some time left, so check out the official event listing and get to it.
Can’t make it to compete? Then, join us here on Metagame.com, because we’ll be bringing you live coverage from the tournament floor with an extended coverage team! Jerome McHale, myself, and a few surprise contributors will be onsite to show you the decks, tech, and feature matches that define the weekend, as well as the best interviews and coolest blog entries. If you can’t get to Costa Mesa yourself, then our two-day coverage bonanza is your best bet for all the breaking news, live as it happens.
See you then!
Phantom Darkness TV Campaign This Week
This week, Upper Deck Entertainment and the Cartoon Network are launching a television campaign to promote the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG and its latest booster set, Phantom Darkness. The campaign will last all week and features a thirty-second spot that will air on Cartoon Network, guiding viewers to a new part of CartoonNetwork.com that focuses on Phantom Darkness.
The Phantom Darkness page features a memory-type game with three difficulty levels, each unlocking more dueling tips in text and video formats. It’s kind of cool because like a standard memory game it challenges you to match cards, but it also asks you to match regular and Dark versions of newly revamped monsters too. The Cartoonnetwork.com website is also going to be plastered with banner ads for Phantom Darkness, which should be pretty cool. In the meantime, click here to check out the Phantom Darkness memory game.
This Week on Metagame.com
I get things started today with a look at one of the tougher questions posed by the latest Advanced List: Why is Monster Reborn back? And what effect will it have on competitive metagames? The swap of Call of the Haunted for Monster Reborn has a lot of long-term impacts that aren’t being discussed right now, and I figured this was a great chance to bring some not-so-obvious issues to light. If you’ve been wondering about Monster Reborn’s return, this week’s installment of The Binder may hold the answers you’re looking for.
Tomorrow, Jerome McHale constructs an ambitious, deadly Dark deck around The Beginning of the End. Over the course of Shonen Jump Championship Houston, we saw plenty of top duelists make successful showings with Darklord Zerato—removing this world-exclusive from play and then special summoning it back. Jerome’s deck takes that concept to all-new levels though, and the result is a brutal deck that plays Return from the Different Dimension to the hilt. Check it out!
Curtis is back on Wednesday with one of his uberpopular mailbag articles! He’ll be sifting through his inbox for the most pressing questions he can find, answering some of your very own reader-submitted questions. This week he’ll address queries about Light and Darkness Dragon, The Six Samurai, and Chimeratech Overdragon, so if you’re a competitive player, you’ll definitely want to drop by Duelist Academy and read up on Curtis’s rulings.
One-Turn Knockout decks have been the topic of a lot of discussion lately, and on Thursday, Matt Murphy will be fixing up a Fairy deck to create one you may not have seen before! The Agent of Judgment – Saturn is the focus of this week’s deck in The Apotheosis, and the result is a divine strategy that can destroy your opponent’s with a few life-gain cards. Sound cool? You bet it is, so be sure to join us on Thursday to see the deck fix and the final list.
Finding the right deck for your style, skill level, and taste is never easy. Too many players just get their decklists online (our bad?) or copy decks from their friends. But if you find the right deck for you—a deck that you can win with and use to grow as a duelist—you’ll find that you’ll have a lot more fun and win a lot more tournaments. This week in The Practical Duelist, Bryan Camareno will show you how to choose the right deck.
It’s no secret that Macro Cosmos variants have been huge over the past several weeks. One of the best was Danny Brown’s, and on Saturday Matt Peddle is going to show you what made Danny’s build so good—and so innovative. With Dark Armed Dragon storming the scene at Houston, and the Dragon being a definite top pick for Costa Mesa, Macro Cosmos may be on the comeback trail. If that’s the case, then Brown’s deck could be highly influential, so don’t miss it.
Finally, Ryan Murphy finishes out the week with an article that takes Dark Armed Dragon straight into The Forgotten Format! A Traditional Dark Armed Dragon deck is a totally different beast than an Advanced format build, and Ryan’s take on the theme is a really interesting example of how a successful strategy from one format can be lifted into another. If you’re a Traditional format player, or shelled out for Dark Armed Dragons and want to juice a little more fun out of them, then this article is a must read.
That’s it for this week! Join us in another seven days as we count down the final hours remaining before Shonen Jump Championship Costa Mesa. Get ready, because it’s going to be the biggest Shonen Jump of all time!
See you then!
—Jason Grabher-Meyer
Contributing Editor, Metagame.com
Can’t Stop Playing That Memory Game