One of the benefits of the round-up style coverage is the chance to keep the current top tables more or less under your eye all at once. After watching Elton move up into these tables and triumph over previously well-established players, I knew I wanted to sit down and talk to him.
Elton is 13 years old and is a resident of Los Angeles. He came to the event as part of an unsponsored team, a ten-member group known as “Toy Soldiers.”
“I’ve been playing Yu-Gi-Oh! for about 2 years,” he said. “I had friends who played, so that’s how I got into it.” He’s certainly made good use of his time, bringing a very solid deck to the event. “It’s a sort of teched-out Beastdown,” he said.
He chose to play it as a response to the overwhelming amount of Scapegoats running around in the current metagame. “A lot of people are playing goats, and it will counter those.” For his side deck, Elton included a lot of cards to counter Burn decks, and one unique choice, Prohibition. I haven’t seen this card played for some time, and asked Elton why he’d included it. “It counters card specific decks—so if someone is playing a deck that needs one or two cards to work, it’s great for that.”
Elton didn’t come up against a wide variety of decks today, squaring off against mostly Chaos, one Burn deck, and two Zombie decks. His deck dealt with them quite well. “I was kind of surprised by the Burn deck, cause he was running Chaos as well.” It wasn’t a combo that worked against Elton.
Elton competed in Los Angeles Regionals and in lots of local tournaments. He participated in the inaugural Shonen Jump event in Anaheim, losing the first four rounds and dropping. “They’re good tournaments,” he said on the subject of Shonen Jump events. “It’s got really good prizes.”
While we were on the subject of prizes, I had to ask what his plans were for the Cyber-Stein, if he should win it. “Sell it on eBay!” he responded immediately. “It’s a piece of cardboard.”
There’s a tendency in Yu-Gi-Oh! to overlook younger duelists, and many players consider them unskilled by default. Not taking Elton seriously is a tactical mistake. He’s got the deck, he’s got the skills, and has come quite far at this Shonen Jump Championship.