SJC Edison Recap: What We Learned

SJC Edison was a huge success for the future of Yu-Gi-Oh! trading cards. The attendance figure of 2,000+ duelists was astounding and I have no doubts that the excellent staff at Konami will continue to promote the game of Yu-Gi-Oh! and expand its audience through the Yu-Gi-Oh! Championship Series.

While it’s difficult to exactly quantify the effect that premier events such as the Shonen Jump Championship (now the Yu-Gi-Oh! Championship Series) have on net sales, we are very fortunate that Konami still considers the serious tournament player worthy of tender loving care and attention.

During my brief hiatus from blogging, Konami was just gathering momentum in setting up a proper tournament staff and system. As many of you know, the counterfeiting scandal from UDE  occurred about a year before their contract was to expire; Konami was caught off guard and took over the game with no real knowledge of tournament organization and event management. When talking with some of the top level 3 judges at the time, I was told that Julia Hedberg inherited an Organized Play structure that had very little funds and experience. In less than a year, with the help of others, she transformed it into a juggernaut drawing record attendance levels.

We should be very grateful to all members of Konami, the judging staff, or the coverage team that helped smooth over the transition from UDE without leaving competitive Yu-Gi-Oh! in the dark. While I personally have had my share of differences with many of these people, our game would probably be dead without their hard efforts and contributions.

The next time you see one of these people (or anyone who seems remotely Konami-affiliated), feel free to wrap them in a bear hug or perform some other act of awkward physical intimacy. They will secretly enjoy the warmth; all of their hard efforts are directed towards making sure Yu-Gi-Oh! players can continue this wonderful hobby. Thank you.

My most recent Pojo article (link upon posting) will address the concerns I had after attending SJC Edison. It is intended to hopefully gather some feedback for Konami to perhaps implement in the future. This blog post will focus on Yu-Gi-Oh! strategy.

What Did We Learn?

Most of the top players I spoke with before the event were divided on what Yu-Gi-Oh! strategy to choose. The sheer variety of the expected metagame led to suitable variety of eventual choices as well. Players chose Gladiator Beasts, Cat Synchro, Blackwings, Frog Monarchs, and Quickdraw Dandy Warrior (I use this Konami-coined term because it is a fantastically dandy name).

I personally chose to play Quickdraw. The concept of Quickdraw originated from Southern California; a duelist named Pete Navarro (who has always been an amazing innovator) started playing the engine and it spread on the internet like wildfire. My version of Quickdraw was very well-tested and I chose to rely on certain cards that would further the goals and required game states of the archetype. On the morning of the event, I spent some time consulting with a few Yu-Gi-Oh! monsters professionals and decided to implement a few changes.

Unfortunately, my day ended in a saddening manner. I took a round one loss to Gladiator Beasts (Quickdraw’s worst matchup). After recovering, I then faced an X-Saber deck played by an interesting player. After having my hand discarded multiple times, I found myself in a favorable position but down to 900 life points (!) with time dwindling down.

The judging staff was swamped and we had spent about fifteen minutes waiting for a ruling. We were confirmed as having a time extension but when time was called, there was no way for the judge to verify this. I took a match loss after being down 1-0. It is unfortunate; I would have likely conceded the game and moved straight to game 2 with this knowledge.

At 1-2, I won a few matches to get to a respectable x-2 record. At the end of round 6, I discovered my deckbox was missing. While looking for it, I was dropped from the tournament. I would imagine my tiebreakers were terrible due to my early losses; winning 6 matches in a row would have been a difficult feat regardless.

Fortunately, I managed to find my missing deckbox during round 7 at the judge station. Thank you to whoever returned it! I have personally returned about 7-8 binders and deckboxes in my Yu-Gi-Oh! journeys so perhaps karma decided to give me a high five!

The Edison Metagame and Future Ramifications

Jeff Jones’s victory pleased me for two reasons. One, he is a legitimately skilled duelist who has the respect of almost everyone in the community. And two, his win showed me that me and my good friend Sandtrap (Evan Vargas) had made the right metagame call. I find it extremely interesting that one set of players (Dale and Lazaro Bellido from Team CardMasters) chose to scrap their excellent Quickdraw build while another set (Jeff Jones, Adam Corn, and Jerry Wang) felt it was the best choice of the format.

I think the moral of the story is that any player can disagree on certain card choices or even entire archetypes! Feel free to experiment with your own personal style and preferences. Jeff’s build incorporated a copy of Solemn Judgment and a copy of Starlight Road along with two copies of Hamster to create a more closed and controlled game-state. Mine personally featured multiple copies of Dust Tornado without the Solemn Judgment/Starlight Road to create a more open state.

And while Jeff won with an exceedingly stable and controlled Quickdraw build, the runner up was a Gadget player that apparently maxed out copies of Fissure while treating the floaters as expendable. While it is admittedly a small sample, I will take his excellent showing as a vindication of my Gadget theories found here at TCGPlayer:

http://yugioh.tcgplayer.com/db/article.asp?id=2443

At future events, I will expect players to tech cards in the mainboard for the Quickdraw matchup while also devoting more sidedeck slots as counters. As such, it may be very difficult to continue playing the Quickdraw strategy to success. Stay tuned for a “Getting There” write-up on the archetype this week at TCGPlayer.

I may possibly write a set review of The Shining Darkness. Please write in the comments or e-mail me if you would be interested in a write-up (and a few short sentences) about every upcoming card in the new set and its impact on the Yu-Gi-Oh! Championship Series.