Its sad that I have to say goodbye to this game. I love it with all my heart and it is my favorite game out of all games out of all genres released. Ive put my heart and soul into spreading as much love as I could for this game over here in Sweden. I had plans for going to the summer champs in 2015 and maybe even move to the U.S. for a couple of months just to get a chance to qualify and be the only swede to compete in the championship (and possibly the only European in the tournament). Id do that just to meet up with all you people and get new friends and get an experience lasting a lifetime. Wizards now killed the game a long time before the promised date and all my effort suddenly feels useless. The Kaijudo scene here in Sweden is approx. 20 people, and remember, all this started with me spreading the love of my favorite game to as many people as I could. I have been spending multiple hours of my time to host several tournaments and sell and buy cards to and from other swedish players and also buy cards from people over in North America. Ive let my own account balance get very low lots of times just to get more Kaijudo merchandise and get more people interested in the game. It all started back in 2005 when I started playing Duel Masters. We didnt have any scene to brag about, but there still was some organized play. I instantly fell in love with the game and spent thousands of dollars on cards that I still have in my collection after all these years. I never participated in organized play since I was a kid back then and there was no organized play in the north. I have approx. 5000 cards or so from Duel Masters that are taking up a lot of space in my bookshelf. The announcement of Kaijudo was a big turning point in my life. I was browsing through youtube when I suddenly found the kaijudo channel. I thought to my self: Awesome! Now I can watch some DM content here!. After Id watched a couple of videos, I saw that a game called Kaijudo that was based off of the old DM had been announced a couple of weeks before. The level of excitement was way too real. The game I loved so much was coming back in a new fashion, and I couldnt be happier there and then. I placed an order of Kaijudo cards a short time after the release of Evo Fury. I ordered 2x 2-player starter kit, one of each starter deck from Evo Fury and one box each of Evo Fury and rise or the Duel Masters. I shared those cards with my two friends in Pajala that I used to play DM with, Anton Törmä and Erik Lassinantti. We all built our own decks and showed the game to our friends just to spread the word. I hosted my first draft tournament in the end of november 2013. Since the game didnt have any player base, I decided to make it a free event where the players would give the cards to me when the tournament was over, but that the players with the best placing would get some singles from my own collection. The event was a success with 12 participants showing up to duke it out. Anton, Erik and I decided that we three should be a Kaijudo team since we three after all were the guys who started the scene over here. We finally decided to be a team and to call ourselves Team Hoja. Ive been hosting draft events once every two months, with the exception being July since most people are busy during the summer, since the free event in november last year. In May, we went to a convention called Nordsken where we in Team Hoja (mainly Anton) built a mascot for our team out of Cool Cubes (picture on the left). After receiving lots of viewers for our 10 people draft, the host of Nordsken asked me personally if I wanted to make the Kaijudo draft into an official tournament next year. I answered that Id have nothing against that as long as hed let me organize it so that I could be sure that it would run smoothly. In July, I went to the market in Pajala together with Anton, Erik and a couple of other people. Anton came up with the idea that we should make our own caps to do some advertising for Team Hoja in future tournaments. Erik and I both thought it was a good idea and all three of us bought one each (they were approx $22 each). We decided to take a team picture, the picture to the right, with our caps on just to have a picture representing our team. My cap has now been re-sown since the biggest cap was too small for my gigantic head. The random guy in the front of the picture is a friend of ours that just wanted to add a little comedy to the picture. I will continue hosting Kaijudo events with the incoming one being an Open tournament that will be held august 30th. The videos will as always be uploaded later to youtube/user/ratmforthewin I would like to thank all of you for keeping the game alive this long and for giving me a great time. Shoutouts to: Anton Törmä and Erik Lassinantti for being awesome, both as friends and as team mates. Marcus Larsson for always making me sweat whenever I go up against you in tournaments. Greven Hertzberg and Michael Calace Olofsson for being really cool guys that really seem to be enjoying the game a lot. Erik Karlsson for throwing awesome after parties, housing people, making awesome fika and contributing with some comedy to our team picture. Joakim Svensson for being one of my best friends and for supporting both me and the community. Josefin Jojjäh Persson for spreading the love of the game even without facebook. Kim Nygren for always bringing music and a good spirit to the tournaments and housing people. Niclas Berg for providing us with a place to host the tournaments. Cory Linhares for providing the best content and getting me into the scene. Robert Hebert, Min Seo and Shaun Bell for great deals when Ive been buying cards. Jason Marella for challenging me in both DM and Kaijudo. I am really sad that the challenge wont be accepted anymore since I dont have any reason to go to North America after the retirement of Kaijudo. The rest of the Kaijudo scene, for keeping the game alive this long I will sincerely miss this game, and Ill make sure to get at least a playset of every card. Kaijudo will always be in my heart and I will never forget what it has done for me. That you all for the support! Ratmforthewin and Team Hoja will live on!
Posted on: Fri, 22 Aug 2014 11:31:20 +0000