It’s Monday, July 21, 2008, and as the days tick down to the release of Premium Pack 2 and The Duelist Genesis, things are heating up north of the border.
Shonen Jump Championship Toronto This Weekend
Canada has had its share of Shonen Jump Championships, both in Montreal and Hamilton, but never before has the ¸berhuge tournament series come to Toronto (my hometown). Scant weeks remain until game-changing releases bring new cards to the play pool and huge shifts to metagames worldwide, but for now, the current environment has one last hurrah.
Hundreds of duelists from both the U.S. and Canada will clash at the Metro Toronto Convention Center in the heart of downtown Hogtown, competing for prizes, fame, and the glory of a Shonen Jump Championship. After consecutive wins in St. Louis, the American National Championship, the Canadian National Championship, Philadalphia, and Hawaii, Gladiator Beasts continue to be the number-one deck to beat. But the format has crystallized into a defined field. Lightsworn, Monarchs, and Dark Armed Dragon have continued to make repeated Day 2 performances, and for the first time in months, we can anticipate a clearly established metagame. But that just means one thing: opportunity to innovate.
Will big changes come a few weeks early? We’ll find out, as Metagame.com brings you live coverage from the tournament floor. Still deciding on attending the tournament? Hotels in the Toronto area are still available at affordable rates, and your starting point is the official event listing. Then, check out Professional Event Service’s SJC Toronto page for details on side events, prize distribution, and even links to help you figure out fun stuff to do during your stay in Toronto.
Premium Pack 2 Next Week and The Duelist Genesis Right around the Corner
The new Premium Pack 2 launches in hobby and mass-retail stores on Tuesday of next week, bringing twenty new cards to the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game. The contents of the set were a closely guarded secret until a recent retailer solicit leaked six of the twenty cards. Even more cards were released when World Championship competitors received the format list for Worlds earlier this week. The list included a number of unreleased cards, which we believe is safe to assume are in Premium Pack 2. Derived from that list, the hesitant contents of the Pack appear to be the following cards:
Terra Firma Gravity
Elemental Hero Voltic
Super War-Lion
Lion Ritual
Elemental Hero Terra Firma
Elemental Hero Inferno
Rose Bud
Hero’s Bond
Carrierroid
Mezuki
Evil Dragon Ananta
Athena
Hecatrice
Valhalla, Hall of the Fallen
Sengenjin
Elemental Hero Woodsman
Elemental Hero Knospe
Elemental Hero Poison Rose
Elemental Hero Heat
Elemental Hero Lady Heat
If this is indeed the lineup for Premium Pack 2, the set is markedly stronger than last year’s Premium Pack 1: Mezuki, Elemental Hero Woodsman, Athena, Valhalla, Voltic, and more are all tournament-level cards. The set includes only one reprint: Sengenjin, a normal monster that was previously only available as a participant prize in Video Game Championships years ago.
Looking a few weeks ahead, The Duelist Genesis Sneak Preview Weekend is August 9 and 10. In less than three 
weeks from today, duelists across the globe will get their first chance to crack packs of the latest booster set, which is filled with support for Gladiator Beasts, Fish, a new monster-type called Psychic, and the game-changing Synchro and Tuner monsters.
Head to a Sneak Preview in your area, where you can participate in Casual format dueling or a Swiss tournament, in which you build your deck from five packs of the new set. Every attendee will receive a copy of the world-debut promo card, Avenging Knight Parshath, as well as a chance to earn more boosters and a Duelist Genesis T-shirt. To find a Sneak Preview in your area, check out the official event locator. If there isn’t a Sneak Preview listed in your area yet, keep checking back, as events are still being added.
I think a lot of duelists are going to be underestimating the importance of Synchros to begin with, so the Sneak Preview is a great opportunity to get one or two copies of all of them before everybody else figures it out how good they’re going to be. That’s what I’ll be doing!
This Week on Metagame
Some weeks I love my job more than others. And this week is one of those weeks! Today, I get to wax poetic about my new favorite card: Premium Pack 2’s hard-hitting Zombie powerhouse, Mezuki. If you haven’t seen this card yet, you definitely need to read The Binder today. But if you are familiar with the undead’s latest trump card, or if you’re a Zombie duelist yourself, the article might be even more important. It’s easy to see why Mezuki is good, but the underlying factors that make it truly great are a bit tougher to see, and I’m going to lay it all out in today’s article.
Tomorrow, Jerome McHale brings us one more deck before we hit the all-new era of Synchros. It’s a clever strategy designed to be impervious to one of the most annoying cards in the format: Crush Card Virus. But designing your deck to dodge just one card, while still winning against everything else, is tricky. How did Jerome do it? Find out tomorrow.
Curtis Schultz joins us again on Wednesday, with a follow-up to last week’s piece on optional trigger effects. Curtis has been working hard these past few weeks to show you all the ins and outs of these effects and other triggered abilities, but he’s not done yet. This week, he’ll get down to the details of special summons, missed timing, and chain building with multiple triggered effects. It’s a must-read for serious players.
Thursday, Matt Peddle writes what I think is one of the most important articles he’s ever created. When many of the tournament-caliber duelists are making similar plays and having similar thought processes but no one’s codified those moves yet, a writer that discusses those moves gives players the means to talk about those issues. I think that’s what Matt does in this week’s edition of Battlefields as he gives a name to a big concept in the current format: freezing.
Next, Bryan Camareno brings us a follow-up to his article a few weeks ago on how to get back into the 
game. Bryan talked about a lot of things in that column: how to bring your knowledge base up to speed, researching expected metagames, and getting back your footing in tournaments. The one thing he left out, though, was how to get the cards you need. This week, he’ll begin discussing techniques that returning players can use to hit the ground running while they’re recovering their collections.
Erin Diaz and Jerry Wang brought an inventive new strategy to Shonen Jump Championship Philadelphia just weeks ago; however, as we saw in Jerry’s first-round feature match, luck was not on their side. Chris Bowling took a build of that deck to SJC Hawaii and redeemed their efforts, losing only to the tournament’s eventual champion. What made his unorthodox strategy so good? Find out, when Matt Peddle profiles Chris Bowling in The Champions this Saturday.
Finally, Ryan Murphy continues his stint of transposing Advanced Format decks into Traditional competition to gain insight into their strategies, as he brings Big City into The Forgotten Format this Sunday. I shouldn’t be surprised by Ryan anymore, but the results are really impressive: he makes some intriguing observations about the deck as it exists in both formats, and suggests at least one big idea that directly translates to Advanced play. It’s the perfect finale to a really strong week here at Metagame.com!
Next Monday, we’ll kick off our countdown to The Duelist Genesis release, as I show you the brand new mechanics, lingo, and one big Dragon. For now, though, enjoy the articles, and thanks for reading!
—Jason Grabher-Meyer
Contributing Editor, Metagame.com