Xagor

Hello everyone, I’m Xagor. I’m currently a PhD student studying theoretical Physics at the London Centre for Nanotechnology (LCN) at University College London (UCL). For my undergraduate I did an MSci at UCL in Natural Sciences (Physical Chemistry and Atomic & Particle Physics), which I finished with a First.

I’ve been interested in games (although mainly video games) since a young age, having received Sonic 2 and a Megadrive for Christmas when I was 5. At a younger age I was a Sega fan, but moved more towards Nintendo with the N64. After that I suppose it didn’t help with Sega going out of the console business with the Dreamcast…

Over time there have been a couple of games I’ve had quite a serious interest in, such as Pokemon, Super Smash Brothers Melee and Advance Wars. The former I’ve not really played much recently, but back in 2000 went to the National Championships, even though honestly I was bad back then, but so was everyone else. The middle I’m pretty good at, but without anyone constant to practice with I sort of gave up on it. The latter I was involved with a project on the fan site Wars World News to try and get perfect S ranks on all maps with all characters on AW:DS. Collectively we managed it after well over a years work, something many of us never thought would get done.

I’ve had somewhat of an interest in Japanese culture since I was small, having grown up watching Godzilla movies. (I watched Destroy All Monsters so much the VHS broke…) Over time this has grown into an interest in anime, manga and other related products.

My first exposure to TCGs was, like many from my generation, Pokemon, but it wasn’t until Yu-Gi-Oh! that I began to get more seriously into this kind of thing. I’ve now been playing and judging (more the latter nowadays) Yu-Gi-Oh! at a competitive level for nearly 8 years. Throughout this time I’ve won the video game Nationals in 2003 and 2006, getting me trips to New York and Tokyo for the World Championships, came 2nd at the TCG Nationals in 2008 and 10th at Euros of the same year, and have judged at many high level events such as Nationals 2009+2011, Euros 2010, and YCS Paris and Bochum. Recently though I’ve gotten into the card game Weiß Scwharz, through basically a bunch of coincidences, and I’m hoping to be able to find more people to play it with.

 

I’ve previously written a couple of articles for Hyper Japan, unfortunately the old ones on Cowboy Bebop and Yu-Gi-Oh! for them are no longer around, but the more recent ones survive.

http://www.hyperjapan.co.uk/friday-focus/168-an-introduction-to-weiss-schwarz.html

http://www.hyperjapan.co.uk/friday-focus/309-a-game-play-guide-to-weiss-schwarz.html

http://www.hyperjapan.co.uk/friday-focus/246-underground-anime-time-of-eve.html