Hey everyone, just some awesome updates in the Trading Card Game world!
First of all, Wizards of the Coast unveiled the third of three sets that are in the Zendikar block. Rise of the Eldrazi, codenamed “Prosper”, will be joining Zendikar (October 2009) and Worldwake (January 2010) to complete the block. The set is announced for April 23, 2010, with prerelease events held in participating WPN (wizards play network) locations the week before. This will be a 248-card set and previews will start on April 5th on magicthegathering.com.
The upcoming Pro Tour and Grand Prix schedule was also posted. The stops cover 16 countries and numerous states. Some of the big ones are Oakland, CA and Houston, TX for the States, as well as events in parts of Europe. All grand prixes will feed into the pro tours for the respective area, IE Oakland’s grand prix and others in the surrounding areas will feed to the San Juan pro tour. The promotional card is an old favorite from Kamigawa, Umezawa’s Jitte. This card will only be available while supplies last. The first stop is, in fact, Oakland, on Valentine’s Day weekend (February 13-14).
In the world of Yu-Gi-Oh!, there has been an announcement from Konami about a new Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s league. The Pegasus League is already proving to be a test for any duelist’s deck-building skills. Konami will regularly select a new deck format for players to test their skills. For November, the challenge is for any deck built must contain four monsters of the following elements: Water, Fire, Earth, and Wind. Every time the format is updated, the changes will be posted on www.yugioh-card.com.
The final stop on the Shonen Jump Championships came to Columbus this past weekend. More than 800 players showed up to compete, and one man, Vincent Ralambomiadana, took the top prize. He was playing a French Twilight deck against second place Kevin Slapnik’s Destiny Hero / Zombie deck. Again, the top finalists from this championship have earned invitations to their respective country’s 2010 National Championships.
It’s been a busy few weeks in the world of competitive card games, so bust out those deck you’ve been meaning to play and have some fun!
So here we are, Day 2. We are the underdogs, the “Good Guys” as dubbed by ourselves and the community. We all arrived at breakfast pretty well rested and ready to take on the day. We ate and talked a lot about magic, including how our addition of Multiball would affect things. Multiball was something thrown at us mostly to boost scores. Our last member, John, arrived late last night, so we became a team of 9, as it wouldn’t be fair to just kick Randy out. The multiball round was a multiplier. If the multiball player won 3 games, we would get a 3x score modifier. For 2 wins it was 2x, while for 1 win, it was 1.5x. The first round was MOMIR basic while the rest of us played Unified Standard Construction.
Unfortunately, the Standard format didn’t go so well. I had a lot of issues with my edited deck as some of the key components were missing which caused me, in part, to go 0-4 for the round. The others did fairly well, but there were some issues with decks and, let’s face it, the Wizards team knows what they’re doing. I did get the chance to talk to both Adrianna and Tolena between matches. These two ladies were amazing. Adrianna even got other WotC members to come and check out my deck, including the lead of R&D, which was just amazing. By the end of all 4 rounds the Community was still down quite a bit.
Then we had lunch. Yukino seemed especially interested in this subject on twitter (<3), so I figured I’d share. We had tacos, chips, sodas, and other tasty deserts. Somehow during the 3rd round of Standard, sodas and candy managed to show up with the water bottles, chips, trail mix and granola bars. It was nice because we got to relax and prepare for the draft.
Of course the draft is what it all came down to. It went well. We were in two different groups for the draft. It went really well and we took 12 of the 24 rounds. Bubba got us a 3x modifier on our score, so it was looking good. Results will come later, as soon as we get them.
Hey everyone. Just a little announcement about something super exciting that’s going on Thursday and Friday this week. It’s called the Magic: the Gathering Online Community Cup Challenge. The basics of it are: 4 press members and 4 online community leaders face off against 8 of the Wizards of the Coast staff members in 4 different online play formats. The formats are: 100 card singleton, a standard constructed, and two drafts, Zendikar and Invasion. It will be held at the Wizards of the Coast headquarters in Renton, WA. for almost the entire two days. If Wizards staff wins, the community will get a free promo card online, but if the Community wins, the community will get a special avatar and access to awesome events online.
And guess what? Yours truly is participating on the Community Team. All I can really say is that I’m so excited about this. I’ve been an avid Magic player in paper form for years… I think I’m nearing my 6th or 7th year (I’ve lost track). I’ve entered and ran tournaments, but this is something entirely different.
If you want to play with me on Magic Online anytime between now and tomorrow night, I should be on the server most of the time when I’m not at school. My username is CC_GamingAngelSam. If you want to just chat with all of us, there’s a room for you to come and meet us and even practice with any of the 8. Just type /join CCC in a chat window and enter; the chat will open straight up.
Here are some articles my teammates and the Wizards team have written that you might enjoy are below.
The official announcement made a couple weeks ago.
Pete’s “Playing Nice Together”. He even has the complete deck lists of what we’re playing. I love how my deck is literally called “Sam’s Mill”.
Meet the Wizards Team posted by Mike Gills of the team. Just a nice getting-to-know-you thing and here’s the one for the community members.
The image above was made by Thomas, another member of the team, as a badge for us on MyMTGO, the site he runs for all MTGO players.
Sony Online Entertainment and Wizards of the Coast have announced a new collaboration: Magic: The Gathering – Tactics, a new turn-based strategy game for PC and PS3 set in the universe of the card game. Tactics puts players in control of “dramatic 3D figures” in single-player or online battles, with spell cards taken from the Magic series.
Of course, it’s not Magic without frequent, additional purchases, and SOE promises “regular content expansions,” which will no doubt become a de facto requirement for highly competitive tournament play. The game is being developed by SOE’s Denver studio, and will be out on PC in early 2010, with the PS3 release to follow.
Sony Online Denver is working with Wizards of the Coast to create Magic: The Gathering – Tactics. The title is set to be an online, 3D turn-based strategy game based on Magic: The Gathering.
“By collaborating with Wizards of the Coast, we’re able to combine the strengths of both companies to develop an innovative, online, 3D game based on an extremely popular IP,” said John Smedley, president, Sony Online Entertainment. “We’re going to be taking the Magic: The Gathering Multiverse places players have never seen.”
Magic: The Gathering – Tactics will put everything into 3D and players can play single player or PVP action against others worldwide. SOE also expects to feed the game with regular content expansions, a tournament environment, rankings and achievements and the stories from Planeswalkers.
Magic: The Gathering – Tactics is set for a early 2010 release on PC but will be coming to the Playstation 3 after that.
“The growing Magic: The Gathering community has an insatiable desire for great strategic game experiences. Sony Online Entertainment is the perfect partner to transform the best of Magic’s story, strategy and competitive play into a fantastic ‘Tactics’ game experience for current and new Magic fans,” said Greg Leeds, president, Wizards of the Coast.
In the world of Yu-Gi-Oh!, there has been an announcement from Konami about a new Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s league. The Pegasus League is already proving to be a test for any duelist’s deck-building skills. Konami will regularly select a new deck format for players to test their skills. For November, the challenge is for any deck built must contain four monsters of the following elements: Water, Fire, Earth, and Wind. Every time the format is updated, the changes will be posted on www.yugioh-card.com.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_c.png?x-id=f4b8d176-e441-4a4e-99b3-cf5c324248e7)
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