Final Fantasy TCG Locals - September 21st, 2026

 After Labor Day meant I missed out on FFTCG two weeks ago, I was able to make my way back out to the card shop today for, well, more FFTCG. By sheer happenstance, it didn't even occur to me that today would be the last day of Locals before a bunch of the local players will be heading out for the US National Championship and the Last Chance Qualifier.

I had already been planning to play my Ice/Wind Crystals, and this turned out to be convenient last-minute practice against the deck for the players going to Nationals this weekend.

There were a total of six of us tonight, giving us a quick three-round event.

Round 1 vs Fire/Ice Warriors - Win

I had a bit of a slow start, but once I finally managed to get a couple of Forwards in play, I was able to start taking over the game pretty handily. Especially so once one of those Forwards was a Kadaj whose end-of-turn discard ability was active.

I also had a fun moment of throwing Alexander at Taivas in response to the Warrior's search ability, which turned into a fun bit of stack as I taught the Warrior player that they were able to use Taivas's freeplay ability in response to the Summon, whereupon they dropped in an Akstar.

Round 2 vs Mono-Earth - Loss

This was a close game and incredibly back and forth, at least until what wound up the last couple of turns. I made a grievous misplay by bouncing their Ingus during their turn, when they were passing priority to head to the end of turn.

I did this because I, plainly speaking, forgot that Ingus was dirt-cheap due to his own cost-reduction. Doing so resulted in Ingus returning immediately, fetching a Leo who could block the Marche I had in hand, which denied me the ability to do damage and draw additional cards.

This was enough to stop me dead in my tracks and handing my opponent the victory on a silver platter.

Round 3 vs Fire/Lightning - Loss

This was, genuinely, an incredibly cool deck. Wild, a lot of nonsense, and something I've never really seen before, but what it did was incredibly cool, as I already said. Unfortunately, because I had never seen a deck quite like it before, I made a lot of misplays and was far more liberal with my resources than I should have been. In addition to that, I wasn't sure what I should have been using those resources against, so not only was I playing more greedily than I should have been, I was prioritizing the wrong targets in a lot of ways.

After we finished our game for the round, we played a second game, and this time with me a little more aware of what I was up against, it was a much closer game and I tried to be less greedy with my resources. Plus I had somewhat better draws, which certainly helped.

Also, I'm being a little vague about what this deck did because I've never seen it before, and I believe my opponent is planning to bring it with them to the LCQ this weekend. Do I think I have any Nats Players among my (incredibly modest) readership? Probably not. But for the sake of being as safe about it as I can be, vagueness.

Conclusion

I am getting incredibly comfortable playing this Crystals deck, which is pretty nice considering the gap since my last Locals. I'm thrilled to have good Crystals deck that I'm getting decent at playing, because that's a thing I'd wanted for a while.

And tonight was also my last Locals of any flavor before my pseudo-hiatus throughout the month of October. I'll still be playing FFTCG on Mondays, but that's about the only TCG I'm planning to engage with between now and November, which isn't super great after having taken off both this past Friday and Sunday since that's a whole lot of TCGs I haven't been playing and writing about, but... Ah well.

Day Off and Upcoming Month Off

Tonight should be Commander Night. Or at least Friday Night Magic in some capacity. However, some upcoming changes at work - we're swapping a lot of our current systems to a new software by a wholly different company than we currently use - meant that I needed to go in to work this morning for training on that new software.

Mind you, I normally work night shifts. So a 4-hour training that started at 8 AM is incredibly beyond my usual scope of "hours awake", especially during my off-week.

In light of that, and in light of Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave coming out and my really wanting to play that, I'm sitting Magic out tonight. I'll also be taking Sunday off from my Pokémon League and won't even consider going out to play Gundam to take more time for Fire Emblem (and I have other plans that will keep me busy basically all day tomorrow, so I'm likely to be exhausted on top of that anyway).

Which segues into another topic of time off: The month of October. Much like last year, I'm going to be sitting most of October out for almost every TCG that I play. Thursday Pokémon League takes a backseat because quite frankly I need a day, at least, in between the end of my work week and the start of my weekend at the haunted house I work at. Magic, Gundam, and Sunday Leagues just conflict wholesale with the weekend schedule of the haunt. 

I'll still be trying to get in my FFTCG nights on Mondays, at the very least. So, hopefully, I'll be back this Monday with FFTCG.

Labor Day, Day Off - September 7th, 2026

 Today was Labor Day, so the mall that hosts the card shop closed early. Subsequently, all of their events for the evening were called off, including tonight's usual FFTCG Locals.

A few of us from my local group were considering heading out to the mall earlier in the day to get some games in, but ultimately those plans never came to fruition.

Thus a day off.

Friday Night Magic Commander Night - September 4th, 2026

 Tonight I was back for another night of Commander, which was a good thing as I had finished putting together a new deck and wanted to give it a few test runs.

Two other players joined me, giving us a pod of three for one game, and then another player joined us after our first bringing us up to a pod of 4 players for the rest of the night.

Cloud, Midgar Mercenary

The deck I played for both the first game of the night, with three players, and for our second game once we bumped ourselves up to a pod of 4, and the deck that I came out wanting to put through some paces tonight.

In the first game, I ran afoul of having too many of my more expensive cards in-hand, plus having an overzealous Oveka player decide that most anything I tried to do was going to eat either a counter or, in one case, a Commandeer, meaning that while the deck still managed to function, it was definitely less functional than it could have been. Eventually, I was overrun severely by Bard, King of Dale and the horde of Humans that his player was helming.

In the second, where we added the Arkenstone Emblem from tonight's "Heart of the Mountain" Commander event, it ran much more smoothly, even while myself and two other players were beating each other senseless over the Emblem. No Blue players meant that the deck didn't eat every counterspell available, and a few good pieces of Equipment, including the Buster Sword, meant I was able to get some incredibly solid value from him swinging.

Eventually, I took the win off of the alternate wincon, though by that point two of the other three players were eliminated and I was likely going to win via combat pretty handily regardless.

As this is the deck I was most looking forward to trying out tonight, I am incredibly pumped that it actually did work out incredibly well, maybe not exactly the way I was hoping to, but close enough that I think the deck will be well worth bringing around often for Commander Nights. I could, feasibly, bump it up to a Bracket 3 list if I wanted to try to nab a few of my Game Changers from other decks - I've been surprisingly tempted to take Teferi's Protection and Smothering Tithe out of my Winota deck, for instance, though I lack good replacements for them - but where it currently stands is still pretty solid in my opinion. It's a deck I would probably feel comfortable playing against Bracket 3 lists, though once we start getting into "high power" gameplay in Bracket 4, let alone cEDH/Bracket 5, that's where I think it drops off hard.

Winota, Joiner of Forces

For our third game of the night, I played my Winota list, and it was... a severe power mismatch. One other player was playing The Ur-Dragon and I was expecting a much more dangerous list than what actually got played. Everybody else scooped after I had two rounds of incredibly potent Winota triggers, taking us to our fourth and what wound up final game.

The Wandering Minstrel

And for that fourth game, I played The Wandering Minstrel, a deck I haven't shuffled up in what feels like ages. The deck didn't exactly run the way I would've liked it to, as I saw precious few creatures and almost none of the Enchantments that improve my tokens in any way.

While I was beaten into the dirt by Bello with a little assistance from The Ur-Dragon, Oveka was incredibly mana screwed and was a non-entity during the game. Eventually, Bello and a bevy of buffed up Artifacts overran us all.

Final Fantasy TCG Locals - August 24th, 2026

Another Monday, another night of FFTCG. With only four people showing up, tonight's FFTCG only barely fired, but it fired nonetheless.

Still wanting more practice with the deck, I shuffled up my Ice/Wind Crystals tonight. Four players meant we ran a quick, casual round-robin style event.

Round 1 vs Three-Color Warriors - Win

The newest player of the playgroup still, they made a bit of a misplay on Turn 1. They had misread Larsa and assumed they could only grab a Forward of Cost 4 with it, meaning they went to grab a Clive instead of the somewhat more useful option of grabbing a Taivas, who could've set them up more effectively. Unfortunately for them, I played a Yazoo to dull-freeze Clive.

While they were able to prime Clive into an Ifrit the next turn and remove Yazoo, I was able to play a Kadaj to bounce the Eikon and, with two Remnants in my Break Zone, force them to discard. They were soon enough left relying on their top-decks thanks to Kadaj's ability, and I was able to take control over the game.

Round 2 vs Mages - Win

This deck was so cool. Without going heavily into detail (I'm aware I don't have a huge following, but just in case, I don't want to give out too many of the deck's tricks; well, too many of the ones I could even remember, at least) it made rather effective use of the new Mages from Blissful Eternity at the heart of a control shell.

And boy oh boy did the deck hold up well. Going through the list of things I used against my opponent this game, they pointed out the way that they fought against a Marche, the Remnants, two Yuffies, and a few other of the typical powerhouse cards in the Ice/Wind Crystal suite.

I still took the win in the end, but they made me work for it.

Round 3 vs Sky-Pirates - Win, then Lose

So in the first game we played, my opponent played two Backups and had two cards left in hand at the end of the turn. On my turn, I overpaid to play a Yazoo - removing a Loz from my Break Zone that I had used to pay for it - and then overpaid to play a Kadaj - again, removing a Loz that I had used to pay. This gave me a total of 4 Crystals. I dull-froze their Filo Backup, Kadaj made them discard the last two cards in their hand, and then they scooped.

So we shuffled up for a second game and things went drastically differently, among other things that I didn't have any Remnants available to make use of their abilities. They also had a much more conservative turn 1, playing only one backup, which on turn 2 was followed up by a 7-drop Vaan that got them a Fran, Balthier, and Penelo, immediately dropping a full board of Forwards onto the table. They took the win only a couple of turns later, as there wasn't enough I could do to stop them.

Conclusion

This deck is so weird, almost inconsistent, but fun all the same.

My second game with the Sky Pirates player was a good example of what happens to me when I don't actually get any of my Crystal payoffs, as between the lack of payoffs and my opponent's Penelo being more than able to cancel my auto-abilities which made me hesitant to play the Seymour I had in my hand for much and more of the game, I didn't really feel like I got to actually play much that game.

Though I guess with how our first game had went, I suppose that's a bit of fair turnabout. Which is a little impressive, given how poor I thought my opening hand was after I had taken the mulligan.

I digress. I do think I'm getting more accustomed to how the deck plays, though I've still got a ways to go before I can really consider myself good with it.

Friday Night Magic - August 21st, 2026

 In a bizarre twist of fate, I went out to the card shop originally planning for Commander Night - it was The Hobbit Commander Party, even, and the rules for that looked like quite a bit of fun - but I ultimately didn't actually play Commander.

I got to play Pauper, instead. On the card shop's Discord server, somebody had mentioned that they would be bringing some Pauper decks along to play if people were interested. Given that I always bring my two Pauper decks along, I was of course incredibly interested.

So after finding the person in question, the two of us shuffled up to play... a lot of games tonight. They had three different decks with them, and I had my two. Hilariously, though, as I was looking up my Moxfield account, I don't even have one of the two "built" on the site. I even went to dig up my old TappedOut account that I never use anymore, and while I do have the deck list put up there, it was an out of date version of the list. So that's fun! I also just updated said list so I can link it in a moment.

I digress. The list I do have up on my Moxfield is my Monoblue Terror-Delver. The other deck I have is a Monogreen Stompy list (man, linking to TappedOut feels a bit weird).

The decks my opponent had were Tron, a Delver of their own, and "Gruul Ponza" which was largely the same concept as my Stompy, but in Red/Green, running Land Destruction, and with some different Creature choices. I digress.

I didn't even remotely keep any notes on the games we played, as each one went by rather quickly. They were all best-of-3 sets, we Sideboarded in and out between games, and generally had a good 4-ish hours or so playing some good old 60 Card Magic with each other.

I did figure out a few glaring weaknesses in my two Pauper Lists, as an aside. While the Stompy deck's weaknesses aren't as big of a deal to me - until playing today and finding out that "No this is actually a real Pauper Archetype", I thought it was just some goofy monogreen jank, but no, the list I'm running is genuinely incredibly solid as Pauper lists go, it's just that there are a few cards that would serve it rather well - the weaknesses in my Terror-Delver list I do want to iron out.

As an aside, if you're reading this later down the line, the deck list will likely already be modified to reflect the changes I'm planning to make.

Ever since I put the deck together, I knew running a playset of Force Spikes was probably a bad decision. I had the full four-pack in the list because I had actually had it put together for years as a fun little deckbuilding challenge to myself, building a paper Pauper deck long before it was made an actual, official paper format. Then when they did make it one, they banned Daze - understandable, but my deck had been running a playset. So I needed something to take Daze's place, so Force Spike was a quick answer.

Tonight being the first time that I got to properly put the deck through its paces, I finally got to see firsthand exactly how bad a decision that really was. It's great if you can have it in the first couple turns of the game, but against both Tron and Ponza, it was pretty evident how quickly it became a waste of cardboard in my hand. I also ran into entirely too many situations where I was almost out of cards in hand because I have startlingly little card draw, I've now realized. Far less than I thought I had. I need to swap some of my counter magic out to make room for a few pieces, because having answers in the deck doesn't mean anything when I can't find those answers in time to play them.

I could also use some answers for dealing with non-creature threats. We were looking at some Pauper lists after we were done but before we left, and some of the lists were running Boomerang as an option.

So in addition to draw power, I'll be working on my removal suite a little bit, rather than trying to rely on counters.

After nothing but Commander for Magic for so long, it was nice to play something else, and I have a few ideas for how to make my preferred deck a little better to boot. I honestly look forward to the next time I get to shuffle up for Pauper, though I may be playing Commander again the next time I can make it out. Time will tell, of course.

Final Fantasy TCG Locals - August 10th, 2026

 After yesterday's Local Championship Qualifier, I was looking forward to tonight's Locals for two main reasons.

Reason one, the newest set, Blissful Eternity, dropped this past Friday, and I was looking forward to grabbing a booster box. Reason two, ostensibly a little more chill night, being less competitive than the LQ.

I showed up to the shop about an hour and a half early for tonight's locals, got my box and a few other things I was looking to pick up, and cracked the box while I was waiting. I got everything from the box that I needed for modifying my decks - particularly my Dragoons and my Crystals - and made those changes before anybody else had shown up.

My pulls otherwise felt a little lackluster. I got a decent number of Legends, and a Full Art Reprint of Gilgamesh (FFBE), but nothing that felt particularly impressive.

But I digress. When the rest of tonight's players showed up - we only had four in total tonight, fewer than I had been expecting - we shuffled up and got ready to go. We ran it as a round robin since there were only the four of us, so it was a fairly quick night.

Wanting more practice playing the deck, and wanting to test my changes, I played Ice-Wind Crystals tonight.

Round 1 vs Sky Pirates - Lose

Their opening turn saw them dumping all of their resources from hand to get a board full of Forwards. Unfortunately for me, I wasn't able to capitalize on how few resources they had afterwards, and they had time to regroup and make what they did have work well enough for them to hold me at bay while they established a better line of resources, after which they just sort of took the game over too quickly for me to setup against and properly "fight back".

Funnily, the two of us had played a couple of friendly games ahead of the event starting proper, and while they absolutely dominated those two games, with one having had a similar start to the "real" game for locals, this one I was able to hold my own much better.

Round 2 vs Warriors - Win

The first couple turns of the game, I did Crystals Things™ against them. Then they handed out to drop an Ifrit (XVI) and took out my Yazoo.

I proceeded to play a Seymour and just bully them real bad with it for the rest of the game. I broke their Ifrit, kept their Seymour dulled and frozen, and their Lenna Backup was kept much the same. They were forced to discard a lot of cards, and when I dropped a Xezat - the new one from Blissful Eternity - they weren't even able to do anything about Seymour since they had to target the Dawn Warrior with their Kuja. They'd even tried to use a Serjes from the LB to freeze Seymour until I reminded them about Xezat forcing them to target him - I let them walk back that Serjes, I'm not a complete monster, and tonight was just a friendly locals, so I didn't want to punish them too badly given how hard Seymour was already locking them out hard enough.

Round 3 vs "Army of Kain" - Lose

Of the three "real" games I played tonight, this was the one that felt the closest. During our opening turns, I played a few Backups, a Vaan, and a Yuffie, while they got the SOPFFO "Crystal" The Emperor and Warped out the Kain from Dreamlike Oceans. When Kain entered, I used Vaan with his Life of Crime Special to try to wipe the board. They responded by trying to Jump with Kain. I responded to that by popping Kain with Yuffie, who in turn got popped by The Emperor since I was out of Crystals to protect her with.

At that point, we were both just sort of playing "draw-go" for a couple of turns, and they were able to start playing again a little bit sooner than I was. Part of that saw them hit me with a Dark-element Kadaj from Opus XI who has a bevy of strong on-entry auto-abilities and a self-flicker ability to make constant use of those abilities. Kadaj was devastatingly effective, and helped them take a few good points of damage before I was able to get back in their way with Forwards.

After a few more points of damage from my end, they were able to get another Kain, finally, and Warped him out. Between Kadaj and Kain, they had enough bodies and enough removal to successfully get around what blockers I had, and they finished the game out.

Conclusion

Compared to when I played this deck two weeks ago, tonight felt much more rough for me. I didn't have much difficulty generating Crystals, but it felt like I had a difficult time finding ways to spend them effectively.

The Sky Pirates playing more aggressively and not giving me time to get set up very well didn't help matters much, I don't think.

I'm still excited to play the deck more, I do think it's a lot of fun and I want to get better at playing it, but tonight was wild for me with how poorly it felt like it went compared to the last (and so far only other) time I shuffled it up two weeks ago - my game against Warriors aside, that is.