It’s April 3, the new format is upon us, and a summer full of Shonen Jump Championship action is just over the horizon! We’ve got a veritable “newsplosion” for you today, so let’s take a look at the next seven days in dueling.
Expanded Coverage For Shonen Jump Baltimore This Weekend
Shonen Jump Baltimore is just five days away, and Metagame.com will be on-site live to cover all the action. The University of Maryland will be the setting for the latest competitive extravaganza, and plenty of East Coast stars and teams are sure to be there. For example, Team Overdose has already confirmed its intent to attend. Many individual stars of note, such as Zachary Austin of Evolution, have also finalized their plans to compete, and the decks that some of these independents are putting together will be like nothing you’ve ever seen before!
With everyone eager to see what the first Shonen Jump of the April 2006 Advanced format will produce, we’ll be providing expanded coverage for this event. Julia Hedberg will be on hand looking at all the stories we’d often miss, checking out interviews, single cards, cool decks, and more! I’ll be there as always, covering the hottest feature matches, decks, teams, duelists, and highlighting innovative tech. On Sunday we’ll even have expanded Top 8 coverage, bringing you more quarter- and semifinals as the weekend draws to its conclusion!
Are you considering showing up to compete, but haven’t locked in all the details yet? There’s still plenty of time to plan! Check out the Premier Tournament Organizer’s website for Shonen Jump Baltimore, Dream Wizards, for all the important info on event start times, directions to the venue, entry fees, and even hotel information, right here.
With round-by-round updates, plus constant blog entries, you won’t want to take your finger off the refresh button. The best of the best are showing up to show off the results of weeks of testing, and the new Advanced format is going to start off with a bang! Be here on April 8 to see all the format-defining trends, live, as they develop.
Regular Edition Starter Deck In Stores Wednesday
If you’re like me, you really need some copies of Skelengel for your dueling collection. The little formless Faerie saw a ton of play at Shonen Jump Long Beach, contributing to many Chaos decks and helping its controller diversify around the threat of Nobleman of Crossout. In the new Advanced format, where Noblemen are literally wandering around in pairs selling their services door-to-door, that diversification is going to be even more important.
But the Deluxe Edition version of the Starter Deck has been tough to find in some areas, and though its bells and whistles are great if you’ve got the dough, some of us want to buy three of these things to get a playset of Skelengels. All exclusive cards aside, the Starter was also made to introduce new players to the game, and frankly, you’ve probably got more than one or two friends that you’d like to start dueling, if you could.
Enter the regular edition Starter Deck! Without the DVD or alternate art Elemental Hero Spark Man, the regular edition version has the complete 40-card deck (including Skelengel . . . man, I need some of those) and Beginner’s Guide all wrapped up in one slightly-more-economically-aerodynamic package. Costing less than the deluxe edition, the regular Starter Deck will also be available in all retail venues, meaning that it’ll be a lot easier to find. It hits store shelves this Wednesday, so look for it this week!
Target’s Yu-Gi-Oh! GX Special Edition Pack in Canada
Speaking of stuff that’s been hard to find, my inbox has been stuffed with duelists asking me whether or not our statement about the release of the Target-only Yu-Gi-Oh! GX Special Edition Pack, the set of three boosters that comes with an exclusive Ultra Rare Elemental Hero Wildheart card, was erroneous. Turns out many duelists are having difficulty finding the set due to certain Target locations either missing the boat and not ordering any or selling out instantaneously.
Our launch date was indeed correct, but now we’ve got even more information for you! Canadian duelists can find the set in many hobby stores across the nation as of last week. I was pretty stunned when I walked into my local tournament and saw a stack of the sets for the sale. There are looking to be pretty rare, even by eBay standards, so it might be worth picking up a few if you can find them in your corner of the great white north.
Nationals 2006 Info Posted, and World Championship Location Revealed!
Info for both the US and Canadian National Championships has been posted over on the official TCG site.
Check out all the important news about US Nationals right here, including main event info, side events, and invitation information. With hundreds of qualified duelists, the finale to the 2006 season goes down in San Francisco on June 3.
Canadian Nationals venue and event information can be found right here. Scheduled for June 24, Canada’s best will duke it out to crown a representative to send to Japan.
If you notice that your name isn’t on the invite list, but you believe you’ve qualified for your National Championship, just follow the directions on the site. Just send your name, UDE number, and the date and venue of the event you qualified at, plus the place you took, and send it to player@upperdeck.com with your inquiry.
Don’t email me, because I won’t be able to help you—as many people this past week have already discovered.
Also of note is the fact that the link to the Nationals section of the site declares Tokyo to again be the site for Worlds 2006. Now, granted, I hear Tokyo is kind of a big place, so whether or not the Championships will again be held in the Tokyo Bay area like last year, or in a completely different area of the Tokyo prefecture, is unknown. But for those hoping that being the best in their country would win them a trip to Japan, instead of say, Carlsbad, you should be pleased.
This Week on Metagame.com
With the new format finally in place, we’ve got a ton of forward-thinking articles for your reading enjoyment! Don’t know what to play yet? We’ve got the perfect lineup for you.
Mike Rosenberg begins our week today, reflecting on his impressive showing at Shonen Jump Long Beach with a modified Ghandipants build. Based off of Tim Willoughby’s deck that he posted here a few weeks ago, it looks to completely avoid battle and deck the opponent. The core of the strategy is Morphing Jar #2, an amazingly powerful monster that gives unmatched control over the field, and that can quickly eat away at an opponent’s deck. Mike shows you the ins and outs of running the “forgotten” Jar, both in and out of its bifurcated garments. It’s a definite must-read!
Next up, Jerome McHale shows you the exact shenanigans that top players were lauding at Long Beach when they said that Dark World was the wave of the future. Blending an aggressive, controlling Dark World build with the ridiculous format-shaping power of Deck Devastation Virus, Jerome’s “Heart of Darkness” deck makes Spirit Reaper cry. Flat out, if you don’t have a Dark World deck in your testing gauntlet yet, use this one. It’s a perfect example of why Goldd, Wu-Lord of Dark World and its nefarious little pals could own the months leading up to Enemy of Justice.
On Wednesday, I take a look at an anti-metagame Final Attack Orders deck. The goal? Use plenty of synergistic tech and high-utility monsters to counter virtually every card that will be considered “cookie cutter” in the new format. Stun your opponent with battle tricks that have lain dormant for years. Punish Spirit Reaper and slow tempo decks in general. Attack over Goldd and Sillva with level 4 monsters. Some times I fix fun decks. Other times, I team up with a submitter to show you how to beat the tar out of your opponents and win tournaments. This article? Definitely the latter.
We take a step back from intense face-smashing on Thursday, and take a bit of a breather at Curtis Schultz’s Duel Academy. There, hell teach you all about the tricky rulings you’ll run into playing Hamon, Lord of Striking Thunder. It’s the first part of a series that covers all the rulings on the thrilling new Sacred Beast cards, the flagship monsters from Yu-Gi-Oh! GX!
On Friday, I owe Julia Hedberg a lunch. While Internet message boards provide the basis for academic discussion of the game, jargon is often difficult to clarify, and the result is that many duelists will use a term incorrectly. The recent misuse of the term “over-extension,” treating it like a purely negative concept, is a big example of an ongoing problem. Julia sets that right this week, though, defining exactly what an over-extension is and what it isn’t. Julia shows you how over-extending can be both helpful or harmful, depending on the game’s conditions, and illustrates how you can work the theory to your practical advantage.
Then, we’ve got another hit deck from Jae Kim. Jae divides tribute monsters into three categorical divisions before showing you how to apply those categories to a very cool deck—a redux of the Reasoning/Monster Gate deck that players like David Simon and our own Curtis Schultz made famous! The release of Treeborn Frog, and the return of Graceful Charity have both made tribute monsters far more playable, and nothing beats getting out a big thug for free with Reasoning or Monster Gate. An evolution of one of my favorite decks of all time, Jae’s creation is just as deadly as it is fun to play.
Finally, we round out the week with the first in Matt Peddle’s ongoing column, Back 2 Basics. Each week Matt will look at an in-game mechanic, strategy, tip, or trick, and show you how you can apply it to your dueling habits and gain an edge over the opposition. In his first offering, he looks at the mechanic of attack and dissects what attacking really means to a duel. Sounds simple? Don’t count on it.
Whew! Talk about a must-read week. We’ll be back in seven days with more articles, including a look at the current State of the Game after Shonen Jump Baltimore. But for now, get ready for a ton of new decks and top-notch theory articles, all leading up to the most anticipated Shonen Jump Championship of the year!
Thanks for reading!
—Jason Grabher-Meyer
Contributing Editor, Metagame.com