​After a Top 8 studded with team members from Comic Odyssey, Team Savage, Crew!!, Team NANA, and Team Blaze one winner has finally emerged. Team Overdose’s Anthony Alvarado has won Shonen Jump Championship Charlotte!

Picked as one of the top two members of the team by his teammates, Alvarado proved that today he was the luckiest, smartest, and best duelist in Charlotte. Beating out Team Blaze’s Jimmy Bueno in the quarterfinals, Comic Odyssey’s Eric Wu in the semis, and finally coming up against Jae Kim in the finals, Alvarado had to face some of the greatest duelists in North America to win his title.

​Jae Kim is a Southern California native, and a widely-respected innovator within several online communities. This is his first SJC T8 finish. Tyrome “T-Money” Cox, from Richmond, Virginia has made the Top 8 in three Regional events in the past year. This is also his first SJC T8, representing Crew!! “With two exclamation points.” Right on, T-Money. Right on.

Both players exchanged some casual discussion beforehand, recognizing each other from their online reputations. “Have a good game, man,” said Kim. 

​Anthony Alvarado was the lone representative of Team Overdose who made the cut to Top 8. With Top 8 contenders Rhymus Lizo and Kris Perovic narrowly knocked out of the race in Round 9 yesterday, Alvarado was the team’s last hope for a Cyber-Stein.

Jimmy Bueno was one third of the Top 8 entrants representing Team Blaze, a hot new group from Archdale (no pun intended). With three competitors in the Top 8, this local team of understated powerhouses outshone every other team in the metagame!

Check out the top 8 decklists from SJC Charlotte here!

​It all comes down to this! With 7-1 records each, Kris Perovic squared off against Jae Kim in a match that would decide who would advance to Day 2. 

“Have you seen his mat?” joked Perovic before the match. “He has a nice mat. I’m gonna try and play him for it. I’ll laugh if he agrees.”

Jae Kim arrived, and the weekend’s first Savage vs. Overdose game was ready to begin!

​Kim and Perovic exchanged some pre-match banter, and Kim noticed Perovic was from Overdose. “You’ve heard of us?”

“Nope” replied Kim, shuffling his deck. Zing.

​Feroze Ramcharan was representing Team Nexus, while Wilson Luc, SJC Las Vegas Champion, was represting Team Comic Odyssey. Luc was playing Thousand-Eyes Restrict Lock, but Ramcharan was running an innovative Machine deck. 

“So this is an . . . original deck?” Luc rubbed his hands together like a bear eying a honey pot, or a wolf stalking a tasty lamb.

“Yeah, you could say that,” replied Ramcharan with his usual ever-present smile.

​I love tech. While the work we do here at Metagame.com towards building teams and individual players is invaluable, sometimes it’s nice to just dive into a big pile of under-appreciated cards. Join me as I explore four of today’s most influential pieces of tech!

​Feroze Ramcharan is one of the star members of Team Nexus, and a well-versed, well-recognized Level 3 judge. Though his efforts at running Machines in the first Shonen Jump Championship last year at Gen Con So Cal met with resistance, he’s persevered to create a very cool Machine variant that’s taken him to impressive standings midway through today.

Here’s the Gravity Bind Machine deck Ramcharan was running.

When I saw Feroze Ramcharan bearing his usual smile, I went up and greeted him, as always. Ramcharan and I go way back, and as one of the game’s more productive Level 3 judges, he’s highly recognized for his contributions to the game. At the same time, he’s often the source of witty observation and general hilarity, so he’s always worth talking with.

My first question for him today was about what he was wearing. Normally wearing some sort of polo shirt or an elegant button-up long-sleeve shirt, today Ramcharan was sporting a big black t-shirt with the words “Team Nexus” written in bold red text.

​Kyle Duncan took sixth at the recent Canadian Nationals. He made the trip down to Charlotte with three other teammates and is representing Team NANA—“Non-Asian, Non-American” he explained with a sly smirk. So Canadian.

Dwayne Nunez is best known for his Top 4 finish at SJC Columbus. Representing Team Comic Odyssey, the sixteen year-old Nunez was looking to extend his 4-0 lead.

Nunez won the opening die roll—“I haven’t won a die roll like, ever” he admitted.