Final Fantasy TCG Locals - March 9th, 2026

 After sitting out Gundam TCG yesterday - between Daylight Savings, my general exhaustion, and a little bit of concern over the life issues that kept me away from Commander on Friday night, I wanted the extra bit of sleep - I was excited to head out for Final Fantasy TCG tonight for a couple of reasons.

One, I haven't really slung any cardboard this week. While I did overhaul my Gym Leader Challenge deck for Pokémon TCG, I didn't actually get to play with it after doing so. And two, I haven't really gotten any opportunity to test my Crystals deck ever since I shifted it into a Mono-Fire list.

So, tonight in order to give the deck some test runs, I played my Mono-Fire Crystals.

I will say, going into this, I knew full well that this list was largely just a bad version of a typical Mono-Fire deck, so my expectations were deeply tempered from the word "go".

There were only four of us tonight, so we played a relatively quick round-robin style tournament. My notes may be somewhat limited since I didn't really jot much of anything down.

Round 1 vs Water-Lightning Monsters - Loss

My opponent's first time playing the Water-Lightning version of the Monsters list, and with them getting a "last hurrah" in with the Relm from Opus XI that was recently announced to be receiving a ban at the end of the month when the next set - Dreamlike Oceans - is released.

Anyway. The long and short of this game was that I had a devil of a time trying to generate Crystals. I also found myself fairly low on cards-in-hand for much of the game, so my resources all around were a bit short. I did manage to get a Zidane in play early, which let me see that my opponent had access to a Relm, a Merlwyb, and two copies of Witch of the Fens.

In retrospect, I should probably have trimmed out the Witches, rather than getting caught up on the Relm and the searcher. Not that much use was really gotten out of the Witches either, but the threat of their removal ability should have scared me more than the Relm's ability to search out Monsters. At the time, they had no other Monsters in hand, so without Relm to grab any, they were stuck trying to draw them instead, but it ultimately did end in their favor. Like I said, Witch didn't get much done, but she was able to do enough. The Monsters took it over me in the end.

Round 2 vs Warriors of the Crystal - Loss

This was weird for me. I had a fair amount of Crystal generation, I had a decent amount of payoff, I even had a reasonable number of cards-in-hand for most of the game.

But when my turn 1 saw me hard-cast my 8-cost Bartz because the rest of my hand was that rough, the game was bound to take a turn for the interesting.

We had what felt like a solid back-and-forth, with the two of us doing a good job at keeping each other in check for a long while. I had a fairly sizeable lead for a while, oddly off the backs of my LB Ardyn and LB Vincent giving me an attacker and two decent blockers, but they were eventually able to stabilize and turn the game around while I was trying to get a few more decent Forwards I could play.

Round 3 vs Mono-Fire "Rainbow" Crystals - Win

Another sort of weird game, but one that my opponent thinks I effectively locked in on turn 2 or 3 when I hit their Guy with Amat, completely destabilizing their resources and game plan, since they didn't have a proper backup in mind.

In the end, I won the war of attrition on resources despite a few significant misplays - including that I forgot the Backup Selphie has the ability to turn herself into a not-insignificant buff for a Forward, which wrecked a few of my removal attempts.

While we waited on our other two opponents to finish up, we played another quick friendly.

I lost that one, because my opponent sort of had my number, and properly played around my Amats that time.

Conclusion

I really want to like this Mono-Fire list. It has a few consistency issues, though, where I either wind up with plenty of Crystal generation but nothing to spend it on, plenty of payoffs but no generation, or I have both of those but my normal resources are lacking.

My opponent from the final round brought up that in their opinion, that's sort of the biggest weakness of trying to do a mono-color Crystal list. There's no one element that really has enough generation and enough payoff to make a Crystal deck tick properly.

I did ask them their opinion of my list, since I knew I was dealing with those above-mentioned consistency issues, and their opinion was, well, basically what I said near the start of this: It's just a less efficient version of the "real" Mono-Fire decks. It does almost everything that Mono-Fire normally wants to do, it just took me more resources to do it.

So despite the vibe that it's a bad Mono-Fire list and an inconsistent Crystal list, I still want to try to make the deck work out, even if not as a serious Competitive contender. I have reasonably high faith in some of the new tools that will be coming out in Dreamlike Oceans, although I seem to be the minority of my local playgroup in that regard.

Day Off - March 6th, 2026

 Short post today. I was already sort of planning on skipping out on Commander night tonight, but my decision was forced by some life events going on right now.

We'll see where that goes. Regardless. I may be back on Sunday for Gundam - I've been tired tired, though, so the chance to sleep in a little would be much appreciated. I'll definitely be back with a write-up for Final Fantasy on Monday, though.

Final Fantasy TCG Locals - February 23rd, 2026

 A nice, casual FFTCG night since there was no Winter Cup for us to all be winding down from today. We had a grand total of seven players show up today, which is honestly a fairly hefty Monday night.

I was originally planning to play my newly modified, now-Mono-Fire Crystals list, but when I was musing over whether to play that or my brand new The Twelve deck, a couple of tonight's other players suggested I play The Twelve instead.

So, I shuffled up my The Twelve list.

And for my first time playing it, it certainly made an impression on me.

We had three rounds of play tonight, and I did not get the Bye in any of those three.

Round 1 vs Cat VII - Win

My first ever game actually playing The Twelve. It was tense.

I successfully got Turn 1 Llymlaen off of a Turn 1 Koana, meaning I was able to play the game in the long run since I had the color-fixing for my deck's primary engine. However, after that, my setup took me a while. My opponent was able to pretty handily beat me to Damage 6, mostly off the backs of Tifa and Zangan, all while I slowly tried to build up my Backup line. Damage 5, I hit Erenville, and used his EX Burst to take a wild swing - I searched for a Zoraal Ja, despite having no Lightning cards in hand to play him with. I then got hit to Damage 6, and needed a big time Hail Mary to turn the game around.

That Hail Mary came in the form of successfully top-decking a Lightning card. I dropped Zoraal Ja, quietly thanked my lucky stars Zangan was dull and couldn't pop the lizard, then swung in, breaking both Tifa and Zangan. Following up with a Wuk Lamat to block, I had a little momentum back in my favor. Momentum that I kept going into the next turn, when I drew 4-color Warrior of Light - who I was able to successfully cast thanks to the collection of elements in The Twelve's backups - followed up by LB Maat. Zoraal Ja again removed what Forwards my opponent put in play to try to delay me, Wuk and WoL4 put in some extra damage, and my next turn after that was all it took.

Certainly an interesting first impression, since I genuinely thought my opponent was going to take me out before I could even see enough backups to get set up at all. But once I got set up, and Zoraal Ja hit the field with his Damage 5 ability active, it quickly turned around fiercely in my favor.

Round 2 vs "Kefka Toolbox" - Lose

So ostensibly, this was a deck built around doing funny things with the Kefka from Journey of Discovery, who on entry breaks a Forward and gets back a Backup from the Break Zone.

This game, my opponent did not do that. This game, my opponent simply beat me down with Seymour from the same set.

I successfully hit Turn 1 Llymlaen again, using LB Lunafreya to dig for her, but my opponent dropped Seymour, and at that point all of my resources were gone. My two Backups were kept frozen all game, my hand was constantly stripped bare, and I just could not play the game, at all. Even my one attempt to swing in and deal a point of damage was thwarted by an Ice/Lightning Sephiroth with Back Attack who broke the LB Cloud that I had tried to swing with.

A frustrating loss, but unfortunately there's nothing to be done for it. Seymour is an annoyingly strong card, and I simply had no outs for him. Even my deck's EX Bursts wouldn't have accomplished much for me, as I didn't have enough The Twelve in play to get Althyk "online", nor for Azeyma to deal enough damage to Seymour.

Round 3 vs Ice-Light Madeen - Win

A fairly long, grindy game against a control shell that has a few identity issues.

Despite those issues, the deck did keep me held back pretty handily. For the third game in a row, I hit the Turn 1 Llymlaen, so I was able to successfully play all of my The Twelve pretty easily. Unlike game 1, I was able to get my Backup line established relatively quickly, and it was a matter of drawing enough Forwards to start establishing a real board presence.

Once I started seeing a few Forwards, however, the game quickly became mine to win. Zoraal Ja once again hit the field, and though he was broken at some point, I top-decked a second one the turn right after, bringing the lizard back into play, keeping me ahead alongside Azeyma doing much the same as Zoraal Ja.

Conclusion

The Twelve is...

Weird.

I like what they can do, and I've been on the receiving end numerous times, so I know how strong the deck can be. But in my hands, it felt slow. The setup took some time, and in Game 1 in particular I felt frustrated at how difficult it was for me to get anything established, while my opponent steadily beat me down. Game 3, however, felt like it went significantly more smoothly, but it still took it some time to get established, even if I locked the game down once it did.

It's certainly a list that I'll play again in the future, or at least I most likely will. I just need to sit on how I feel about it for now.

Gundam TCG Locals - February 22nd, 2026

After over a month - the Starter Deck Event from four weeks ago getting snowed out, followed by the usual Sunday from two weeks ago being put on hold due to the Final Fantasy TCG Winter Cup, and my typical work week preventing me from making it out - I finally made it out for another Gundam TCG Locals. Since the last time I made it, GD-03 has been released, and due to not really being completely certain what to do with my Clan list, I made only one minor change to it, swapping the Police Zakus out for the new Clan trait "Snake Eyes" Zaku from GD-03.

And with that, I settled in for four rounds of play. I technically went 1-3, though the one win was a Bye Round.

Round 1 vs Blue-Green

I won the die roll, chose to go second, and we generally had a solid back-and-forth throughout the game. The turn that won for them in the long run was one in which they swarmed the field with a host of cheap units, in particular three Guntanks that handily deleted one of my units.

This gave them a significant board state advantage that they were able to press to punch through my shields. That said, I did give as good as I got, and had them down to their last shield at the end of the game. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough, and I was unable to get a Pilot to get any other last-turn aggression.

Round 2 Bye

Bye Round. Not much to say, really.

Round 3 vs Red-White ZAFT

Won the die roll again, went second again, had another close back-and-forth. Unfortunately, I petered out in the end game, and they took over thanks to a Providence Gundam and a Rau le Creuset.

Matters weren't helped by my whiffing with the GD-02 LR GQuuuuuuX's deploy ability, meaning I didn't get the extra body that I was hoping for off of the effect. I also was not in any way helped by the fact that I saw nearly none of my Pilots, so I wasn't able to press any sort of major aggression which gave them more time to stabilize. We both thought near the end of the game that I had it nearly locked down, but the Providence, their ability to recur their bases, and my inability to draw a Pilot meant I wasn't able to get the last couple of points of damage in.

I did manage to get some incredible value out of the Level 4 Sugai's Gelgoog though, which surprised both of us. Me because I realized during Round 1 that I wasn't getting much use out of it, and my opponent because they genuinely just think that it's bad and not worth running.

Of note is that I will be making changes to my deck after I finish this post, using suggestions from this opponent as they are also a big fan of Clan, and the Level 4 Sugai's will be coming out.

Round 4 vs Purple-Green Celestial Being

Third verse, same as the second and the first. In particular, this was more a repeat of Round 3 than of Round 1. The big difference in this game was that I did see my Pilots.

I still whiffed off of the Level 7 GQuuuuuuX though. And off of a Machu Link. And unfortunately, my opponent was able to get enough aggression in place that getting a Link Unit and matching Pilot gave them exactly enough firepower to finish me off, which I suspected was happening when they swung straight for my Shields instead of taking out either of my two units, which I otherwise would've finished the game with on my turn.

Conclusion

As I said, I'm making a couple of changes to my Clan list based partially off of some feedback from my Round 3 opponent. The Level 4 Sugai's are coming out, and so is one copy of the Level 7 GQuuuuuuX, to make room for three copies of the new level 8 GD-03 LR GQuuuuuuX. Whiffing off of the Level 7 not once, but twice has soured me a little on the playset (though I do still recognize the power it can potentially provide), and removing two of its potential targets also means that I don't want the full set regardless.

I also learned that the card shop is going to be apparently hosting a Newtype Challenge in late March, which will hopefully be quite a lot of fun, especially if I can get my Clan list ironed out a little better - though I do only have one more Locals I'll be able to make it to between now and then.

Friday Night Magic Commander Night - February 20th, 2026

 Friday! Time to play some Magic, a slight derust after I spent my entire last week off playing Final Fantasy TCG (including the Monday following the Winter Cup that I didn't do a write-up on - only one other person showed up, who was new to the game, and I walked them through a game to teach them a bit better).

I showed up on my own, a newer player joined me, and then we had two others sit down to join us beside, so for all three games we got in tonight, we had a full pod of four.

In order, the three decks I played were:

1. Ashling, the Limitless
   
2. Sanar, Innovative First-Year
   
3. Cloud, Planet's Champion
   

And in short form, I won...

Exactly none of the three games.

Without going wholly into headings and whatnot, because this is going to be a short write-up week:

Ashling, I kept a hand that I knew was a mistake. I couldn't even call it greedy, but it was a bad idea and I knew it. Two lands, one of which was colorless, and the other was a Swamp, with none of the deck's precious few mana rocks. I was stuck on two lands for a good three-quarters of the game, and only barely eked my way to a playable situation when I finally drew lands 3 and 4. Unfortunately, it was too little, too late, and while I did manage to make a few decent plays, the rest of the table was far too well established for me to make any real headway against.

For Sanar, the deck underwent its sole game plan flawlessly, with me dropping Sanar on turn 4, turn 5 getting my Artillerist and my Treasure Hunt, playing a fifth land and dropping both the Creature and the Sorcery... only for one of my opponents to hit the Artillerist with Path to Exile. I summarily scooped and stood to go stretch and grab a snack from the shop

And lastly, Cloud, where I was removed from the game after my 4th turn because of an opposing landfall deck going absolutely ham. They successfully deleted myself and one other opponent, and then subsequently atomized the final player on their next turn.

Not a great night back to Magic in terms of results, but ah well. I had fun.

Final Fantasy TCG North American Winter Cup 2026 - Day 2 - February 8th, 2026

 After me and my team's abysmal performance yesterday, I was excited to head into Day 2 of the Winter Cup for the singles event. I brought along my Scions for the event, hoping that they would serve me better than my Dragoons had. Especially given that if I could make Top 48, I would receive two incredibly rare promotional cards - a Swords to Plowshares and 3-drop Fire Alphinaud that have interlinking art of Alisaie and Alphinaud.

Spoiler, today went drastically better for me than yesterday did. Not well enough to get the promos, unfortunately, but...

With just under 128 players, we had seven rounds of play today. Unlike yesterday, there was no break for lunch, nor was there any sort of a top cut.

Round 1 vs Ice-Fire Warriors - Won 7-6

An absolute nail-biter of a game where my opponent and I had a removal war running for much of the game.

Ultimately, I won because of the Scions' ability to throw three or four bodies on the field at once, and a top-deck Estinien gave me a hasty threat that allowed me to finish the game out, taking my opponent from 2 to 7 in one turn. I also, fortunately, had burst luck on my side - or rather, my opponent did not have it on theirs, as they hit no removal in the count-up from 2 to 7.

This started me off infinitely better than I, personally, had done yesterday as it meant that I had earned at least one win, starting me off with a 1-0 record.

Round 2 vs Ice-Fire Warriors - Lost 2-7

A significantly less close game. Among other things, I misplayed by trying a cute trick of using Cuchulainn against Taivas while the Warrior's search effect was on the stack, forcing my opponent to have a Warrior worth free-playing.

Or rather, my misplay was doing it twice. The first time around, I genuinely think it was the correct play to do so, even if they had the Akstar in hand. The second time around, however, was a mistake because while I didn't have an active Water Backup either time, the second time I was much worse off in terms of cards-in-hand, so discarding an entire card to cast the Cuchulainn put me down entirely too many resources, and the card draw from my summon wasn't enough to undo that damage.

This left me in top-deck for a good half of the game, giving my opponent entirely too much of a resource advantage for me to overcome.

Still, I was at a 1-1 record, so it wasn't too bad.

Round 3 vs Dragoons - Lost 5-7

Much like Round 1, this was a rather back-and-forth removal war. They had an Alus in play fairly early, which gave them a lot of extra card draw, more than I was able to get off of Tataru as the removal meant I wasn't able to keep enough Scions in play to draw off of her.

On what wound up my last turn, I made a significant misplay. My opponent had the 2-drop backup that could be cracked to bring back a Dragoon from the break zone, and 3-drop Freya in the break zone. I had two cards in hand, and could have played LB Gilgamesh to remove two cards from their break zone. Unfortunately, I did not do that, so they cracked the backup, got back the Freya, played her, and then used a Cherry Blossom to wipe my board.

I hit no EX Bursts, so they were able to cleanly swing their way through to finish me out.

My record was now 1-2.

Round 4 vs WoL7 - Lost 0-7

This was not a game.

This was a wholesale slaughter.

They hit WoL7 on turn 1, landed a Wind Y'shtola and the 3-drop Fire Alphinaud off of the ability, searching for something. If I had to hazard a guess, I assume they searched the Gilgamesh (FFBE) that they played on turn 2, which they got fully online and used to utterly destroy me on turns 2 and 3.

My last-ditch effort to save myself was trying to use Thancred to take out Gilgamesh, but unfortunately the Y'shtola stopped the removal effect.

This put my record at the much more precarious 1-3. My chances at getting into the Top 48 were at this point incredibly precarious.

Round 5 vs Knights - Won 7-2

Quite frankly, I think I got lucky. The Curillas that they played both halfway whiffed, getting them only one mostly useless 2-drop each. Subsequently, I was able to use my removal to incredible effect, keeping their board under control and grinding out the victory over them. The 9-drop LB Shantotto did some incredible work for me near the end of the game, as my opponent mentioned that if I had left them with two Forwards, they would've been in a much better place, but removing two Forwards the way I did basically locked the win in my favor.

This put me back up to a comfortable 2-3. Still iffy, but back on the right track.

Round 6 vs Ice-Fire Warriors - Won 7-1

This game was practically surgical. I had every answer I needed, basically exactly when I needed them. I didn't have a lot of my recursion, but I still had ample amounts of removal. Three turns in a row, I drew the Pulse of Creation Y'shtola and used her to handily delete several Forwards. The last turn of the game was in fact the turn I drew my third Y'shtola, using her and a W/L Lightning from my break zone to remove their last two blockers, opening up Lightning and Thancred to get the last two points of damage in.

At 3-3, I was feeling genuinely hopeful again that I might have been able to place well.

Round 7 vs The Twelve - Won 7-1

A fairly quick game because I came out with my proverbial guns blazing. I played aggressively, hit my opponent as hard and fast as I could, and while they had some solid removal that left me sweating, I was able to quickly build back afterwards and used my own removal to clear a path for more damage.

My final turn I took a gamble by playing the LB Lunafreya, successfully nabbing a 5-drop Odin that I used to pop their only blocker, then swung in with Alisaie and Thancred to deal the last bit of damage. Even if they had been able to Burst and take out Thancred, I had two cards in hand meaning I could've brought back G'raha Tia with Thancred's ability and paid 4 to go search out an Estinien who, having haste, could've finished the game out regardless.

This put my final record at a (barely, but still) winning 4-3.

Conclusion

My final placement was 54th out of somewhere around 125 (less than 128, the judges knew, because at 128 we would've had additional rounds of play, but it was around there).

If I had done slightly better, or had better tie-breakers, I might have been able to get into the top 48 and gotten the promos, but alas.

I still had a winning record and did land in the top half of the placements. I can hardly complain about such a showing, especially when this was my first time attending an event of this size.

Plus with the producer of the game present, meaning I was able to get a couple of things signed - my playmat and one of my Warrior of Light Promos - the event was memorable for a variety of reasons.

While the team event yesterday was a disappointing showing for me that had me incredibly discouraged, I still had fun the entire weekend.

Likewise, I'm glad that I didn't drop out today when my record hit 1-3, as I was able to pull myself back out and land at 4-3, which on some level helps to validate my desire to "be good" at this game and helped me feel better after yesterday's failings, as I do want to take this game as seriously as I can.

Final Fantasy TCG North American Winter Cup 2026 - Day 1 - February 7th. 2026

Today was the day - the Winter Cup.

Well, day one, at least. The Team event. Myself, another of the shop's Professors, and a friend of theirs teamed up, my Dragoons, the other Professor's Mono-Water Monsters, and their friend's Refia WoLs.

And the short version is that we got destroyed today. I didn't keep any sort of track of my teammates' games, because the sheer volume of people around me made it difficult enough to keep notes on my own games.

Round 1 vs Mono-Fire Warriors - Lost 1-7

I overextended hard on turn 1, and didn't have an Alus to give back the resources that I burned. I paid for that dearly over the course of the game, since I was unable to get anywhere close to taking them out before they got established and swiftly dominated the game.

Neither of my teammates won their games, either.

Round 2 vs Ice-Fire Warriors - Lost 4-7

I had what was a nearly ideal opening, ending with Alus and a second backup in play, and with a 4-drop Freya in hand. Honestly, all things said, I don't think I made any misplays either. But the additional control elements from the Ice kept me locked down unfortunately well. I spent a lot of my game with my field being dulled, frozen, and in one case had a Freya I targeted with LB Kain get stripped out of my break zone.

This was enough to keep me from finishing the game out, unfortunately. At the risk of sounding like the "If only I had drawn better" style of sore loser, I needed a second Freya. I had a 3-drop Freya in hand, and through my backups I had the resources to play her and - if I'd had a second Freya available - could've easily paid for Cherry Blossom to wipe my opponent's board and likely taken the win.

But, unfortunately, I didn't have a second Freya, and my opponent took me out on their turn.

Round 3 - Bye

A bye round, my team's only "win" for the day. And truly, we were the winners, as there was a lunch break after this round, and we were able to head for the mall's food court before the rest of the tournament descended upon it.

Round 4 - Mono-Fire - Lost 3-7

I didn't see an Alus until too late into the game for the Prince to really offer enough value to be truly useful. After what happened in round 1, I tried to avoid overextending to the board, and as such we both spent a couple of turns mostly setting up backups.

Unfortunately, one of my opponent's early plays was a Sazh that searched up a copy of Amaterasu, so I spent my entire game playing around the knowledge that they had an Amat in hand. This unfortunately lead to me playing perhaps too conservatively, though I did manage to make use of Cherry Blossom a good half-dozen times.

Unfortunately, despite a half-dozen Cherry Blossoms, there was nothing I could do to remove their Phoinix, so the fiery bird and a 6-drop Ace knocked me down over the course of a few turns, with a Clive priming into Ifrit as the final nail in the coffin as the mighty Eikon blew away my only blocker on the final turn.

Round 5 - Mono-Ice - Lost 2-7

The only copies of Alus I saw were sent to damage. My hand was stripped bare by discard effects, and the few things I was able to get into play were kept on lockdown with dulls and freezes.

This was not a close game, by any stretch of the term.

Conclusion

There was another round of play after this, however with our record being as abysmal as it was, my teammates both wanted to drop. While I would've gladly kept playing in the last round just for the sake of getting to play more, I was unfortunately outvoted, and honestly, that's fair enough.

Tomorrow is Day 2 of the event, and a singles tournament. I plan to play my Scions for that. I am hoping desperately that things go better for me tomorrow than they did today.