Last year at SHONEN JUMP Championship Indianapolis, Fili Luna won with an aggressive Blackwing Deck powered by the newest cards from Raging Battle. Now, just 8 months after his last Championship victory, Luna is back with another Blackwing Deck. This time he’s playing a number of secret weapons, including a classic Trap Card that’s won multiple Championships before: Skill Drain. Read more…
Battle Fader has been seeing play in several different Deck types, but few can use it as effectively as Anthony Kelly’s Fader Salvo Deck. Kelly uses Battle Fader to stop his opponent in his tracks, and then puts it to use once his next turn begins. With 3 copies of Dimensional Alchemist in his Deck, Kelly can recycle his Battle Fader to repeat his Deck’s best combos, including the Summon of powerful Level 8 Synchro Summons using Black Salvo as the Tuner. Read more…
Looking around the tournament floor this morning, Blackwings are clearly a top pick for hundreds of Duelists here today. With a long history of success in big tournaments like this one over the past year, Blackwings are a strong and established strategy that make a strong choice in a tournament as wide and varied as this one. If a Blackwing Duelist builds his Deck well this weekend, he could easily find himself in the Top 32 tomorrow, and his Deck might look like this one: Read more…
Ryan Spicer aimed to reinvent 2009’s Synchro Cat Deck for use in today’s tournament. His creation? Caliber Cat! Spicer uses Rescue Cat to swarm the field and Synchro Summon big monsters. Then he uses Doomcaliber Knight to pin down his opponent’s monsters. His Deck takes advantage of monsters that have destruction effects, like Ryko, Lightsworn Hunter, and recycles them with Pot of Avarice to draw new cards. Read more…
While Paul McCann’s Machina Gadget Deck focused more on defense and control, and Mark Garcia’s focused on all-out aggression, Noah Young is way on the other side of the map. He’s hanging out in Geartown! Young is using the framework of a basic Machina Gadget Deck and adding a handful of cards to turn it into a different apparatus altogether. With Ancient Gear Gadjiltron Dragon and Geartown, Young’s created something totally different from the average Machina Gadget build! Read more…
Paul McCann’s Machina Gearframe Deck showed us a Gadget build that focuses on card searching, plus responding to the opponent’s defensive moves. But not all Gadget Duelists are playing at a slow, controlling pace. Some are attempting to do the opposite, including 2005 World Championship competitor Mark Garcia! Read more…
One of the most popular Decks here today is Machina Gadgets, a Deck that’s easy to build thanks to the Machina Mayhem Structure Deck, and even easier to customize and reshape. Machina Gadget Decks focus on the Gadget monsters (Red Gadget, Green Gadget, and Yellow Gadget) and Machina Gearframe, replacing each monster with another from the Deck thanks to their effects. The Deck generates a steady stream of monsters without running out of cards, and its focus rests on using simple monster destruction like Smashing Ground and Dimensional Prison to eliminate bigger threats. This lets the Gadget Duelist make direct attacks and quickly leaves the opponent with no cards left to defend themselves.
While the Gadgets and Machina Gearframe are constants in every Machina Gadget Deck, the rest of the cards in the Deck decide the direction the Deck will take. In the case of Paul McCann, he likes to use Gearframe to search his Deck for Machina Fortress, a popular (and powerful) choice. He also uses Machina Peacekeeper to get more copies of Machina Gearframe from his Deck, plus a lone Machina Force that he can use to Special Summon his Fortress from the Graveyard. Machina Armored Unit ties it all together to make 1 slick, resilient Machina Gadget Deck: Read more…
Flamvell Decks are gaining a lot of popularity as Duelists are looking for explosive new combos to unleash. Rekindling allows Duelists to swarm the field with Synchro Monsters that will overwhelm an opponent with more monsters than he can handle. Chris Oyola’s Flamvell Synchro Deck is one of many Flamvell variants entered into today’s tournament. Oyola’s Deck contains the perfect mix of defensive and aggressive cards that let him dictate the pace of the Duel and make game-winning plays when he’s ready to end it. Read more…
We already took a look at Sorosh Saberian’s Quickdraw Dandywarrior Deck, a great example of a focused Quickdraw build with all the plays and combos you can expect to see in the months to come. Now, we’re going to look at a Duelist who’s taken the strategy in a new direction: Michael Smith-Grant is playing a similar core of cards, but he’s using them in different ways to surprise and outplay his opponents. Check it out: Read more…
It’s early here today at the New Jersey Convention and Exposition Center, but the buzz is that the new Quickdraw Dandywarrior Deck could have a huge impact in this tournament. A number of experienced Duelists are each running their own versions of this strategy, capitalizing on their opponents’ lack of experience playing against it. With so many flexible card choices there’s lots of room for customization, and that makes it a top pick for veterans.
One such competitor is Canada’s Sorosh Saberian, playing a version of the Deck with his own personal spin. Here’s what he’s running: Read more…