Wednesday, July 30, 2014

News: World Championship 2014 Regional Qualifier Locations & Dates

Early this morning the events page for World Championship 2014 went up on the official English Vanguard portal, heralding the dates for the upcoming tournament's regional qualifiers. As in past years, cardfighters will have to qualify at one of the regional events around the world to attend their country's invitation-only continental championship, the top 4 of which will be able to then qualify for the international grand finals in Tokyo. This year's tournament will feature an exclusive commemorative playmat for all participants, as well as the Shadow Paladin and Link Joker promo cards "Revenger, Deathmaster Dragon" and "Setting Sun Star-vader, Darmstadtium." Designed as an alternative boss card for the former clan and a new break ride for the latter, both of these cards have popular fan followings outside of the mainstream Raging Form Dragon and Chaos Breaker/Glendios decks.

The preceding WCS2013 ended with Luxembourg cardfighter Almeida Stewart being titled second world champion; however, in light of the cheating accusations and controversy surrounding his confessed robbery of the card shop La Caverne du Gobelin, many cardfighters have doubted the legitimacy of his title.

Beginning on August 30 and ending in late December, World Championship 2014 will feature nineteen regional qualifiers around the world in all, with a special qualifier held in Tokyo. Similar to the tournament held for Japan in WCS2013, this is suspected to be a qualifier which would allow its top fighters to participate directly in the international finals without previously qualifying at a continental tournament. A partial list of locations is available through the official website, but some are not yet finalized.

With many tournaments taking place around or after the release of VGE-BT15: Infinite Rebirth, alongside the existing grade 4 Dragonic Nouvelle Vague from Divine Dragon Progression, one of the major contenders in the new format is anticipated to be Star-vader “Ω” Glendios. Famous for its ability to prevent cards from unlocking through its limit break, the deck has gained some popularity in Japanese tournaments for how heavily it slows down the game in the hands of a skilled cardfighter. Even into the Legion format it has continued to hold up well under the pressures of the new professional play.