Friday Night Magic Commander Night - November 13th, 2026

My first Commander Night back after the Haunt Season came to an end, and tonight was a night to break out a bunch of decks I haven't played in absolute ages.

I got through four games tonight, three with a "full" pod of four, and one with a pod of "only" three, and each and every game was played with a deck that I haven't shuffled up in at least six months or more.

Game 1: Valgavoth, Harrower of Souls

It's Friday the 13th, I had to break out a deck starring the villain from the Horror Movie Set™.

And like basically every game I've ever played with this deck, I was able to become a menace quickly - Turn 2 Razorkin Needlehead, turn 3 dropping a Sol Ring and Valgavoth himself - but wasn't able to seal the deal with the game.

One opponent, running the new Blue Samut as their Commander, letting another, who had Ramses, Assassin Lord (well, the Assassin's Creed Secret Lair version, Basim, Master Assassin) hit them completely unblocked with my Alexios certainly didn't help.

Because this meant that they were at a low enough life total for the Ramses player to remove them from the game with a trigger from their Shadow, Mysterious Assassin. Which in turn, due to Ramses's triggered ability...

Game 2: Narci, Fable Singer

So this one was a rough game for me, mostly because I had more mana than I knew what to do with, but for the life of me, I couldn't actually draw any gas to use that mana on. Even with one or two Enchantress effects to draw some additional cards, I couldn't get much of anything going on. I had a few Angel tokens buffed by Mirari's Wake, but wasn't in a position where I could safely swing out despite my Sphere of Safety. An Inundate later from the Samut player wiped my Tokens away, and without more Enchantments in-hand to play to replenish my field with Sigil of the Empty Throne, I was mostly stuck playing defense and trying to slow the table down until I could draw more.

I did get to play an Out of Time that had 19 Time Counters on it, though, so that was hilarious. In the end, last game's Ramses Player, now running Wilhelt Zombies, took me out thanks to the realization that they were rocking Swampwalk and enough mana to swing a few decently-sized bodies at me. Combined with several triggers that made me lose half of my life total - rounded up - meant I was going to be dead, or at least near dead. I decided to kingmake a little bit by pinging myself with my Talisman of Hierarchy to trigger one of those half-life triggers early, so that the swings would take me - and thus, my Out of Time - out of the game. This gave the Blech, Loafing Pest player the means to dominate the field with literally dozens of Pests and Insects that all got absolutely massive due to a ton of lifegain triggers.

Game 3: The Fourteenth Doctor/Rose Noble

At this point, the Ramses/Wilhelt player had to leave, so this was the game that was played in a pod of 3.

I had a much better time going into this game, building up a decent board state with a couple of Doctors and one or two Companions, an As Foretold sitting comfortably at 9 Time Counters to allow a lot of spells I could play to be largely free. The problem for me was that I wound up running out of gas, so to speak, having run my hand pretty close to empty and having little luck drawing the card draw that is in my deck - or even more of my Doctors or Companions to draw off of Rose.

Fortunately for me, the previous games' Samut Player decided to help out with their Bard, King of Dale deck. Unfortunately, they went too far with their assistance, setting up an infinite combo with Bard, two copies of Smothering Tithe (one made off of a Storm of Saruman), and a Gleaming Splendor to force myself and the other opponent to draw out.

Game 4: Ashling, the Limitless

I admit, I mostly pulled out Ashling because the box I keep her in - along with all of my dice and life counters and whatnot - got inadvertently knocked over by a player beside me in another pod when they were putting their own things away. Since the deck was already out of the box, and I was in a mood to play lists I hadn't touched in a while...

Bugger it, why not, right?

In what became a common theme for the night, my card draw was lacking, and while I was able to come up with a genuinely terrifying board state after a board wipe cleared everything away, I was taken out by the Samut/Bard player from the previous three games, although this game they were running Bruenor Battlehammer as a Boros Voltron list. One round of Double Strike, a Greataxe, and a Whispersilk Cloak later, I was knocked out of the game - and rightfully so, I had the most dangerous board position and would have started eliminating other players on my turn - by a 13/3 Unblockable Double Striking Dwarf.

Conclusion

I genuinely had a blast playing these four decks that I haven't touched in ages, but I was also reminded of why I haven't played any of them in so long. Most of them need some additional tweaking in some capacity I'm sure - additional card draw wouldn't hurt any of them, frankly, though looking at the deck lists only Ashling really has a significant problem with how much draw I run - and some of them just paint targets on their back that they aren't fast enough to deal with the amount of aggro that they draw. Which, I guess, goes back to the lists needing some tweaking to account for that.

Still, I'm glad to have gotten a good game in with each of them.

Content Update - November 2nd, 2026

For the second of my available Mondays in a row, FFTCG night failed to happen - not enough people have been able or willing to commit to show up to the local card shop. 

Which is unfortunate, but I suppose we are sort of in the off-season right now - if I remember the schedule correctly, the next major tournament happening is Worlds, which I'm not sure any of my usual locals qualified for, and some folks are a little burned out. 

Hopefully in the next few weeks, we can start getting Locals firing again. 

That said, haunt season has run its course! So I should be able to start my usual schedule of posts back up - though I suppose that the only thing I've really been missing has been Magic/Commander on Friday Nights, given how infrequently I actually play the Pokémon TCG, and that it's been months upon months since the last time I made it out to play Gundam.

Regardless, my usual schedule of posts should resume with my next off-week. Until then, cheers!

Final Fantasy TCG Locals - October 5th, 2026

Only three players showed for Locals tonight, myself included, so unfortunately we didn't have enough players to run a "proper" event. That said, the three of us did run a few friendly games, especially as one of the players who showed tonight has been unable to show up for a few months due to life issues getting in the way of their ability to engage with TCGs.

As I've been playing nothing but Ice/Wind Crystals for the past few months, and since we're now all but officially in the "off-season", I decided to play two other decks that are both entirely different from that: My Scions and my Dragoons.

I managed to get two games in with each of the decks, which was a pretty nice change of pace after all of the Crystals I've been playing.

Friendly Best of 3 Set - Scions vs. Earth/Wind Cat VII

This set was played with the player who hadn't been around for a few months, and we started "early" while we were waiting on other players to arrive as we had a number of folks who had said they were "Maybe" going to show tonight.

As I haven't touched my Scions in ages, I wanted to pull them back out. We wound up playing a Best of 3 set in which I won both of the games.

In the first of the two, I played entirely more aggressively than I should've, and had no Backups until near the end of the game. There was a 5-drop Yuffie that was incredibly frightening for a couple of turns, but eventually I managed to take her out with an Odin, freeing me up to take the rest of the game from there.

In game two, I played comparatively a bit of a slower game, actually spending some time to get some Backups in play, but I still amassed a critical mass of Scions and had solid control for basically the entire game.

Friendly Game - Dragoons vs Three-Color Warriors

I didn't think things through at first and kept an opening hand with no Alus in it. When I top-decked Alus for my Turn 1 Draw, I realized what I had done and was incredibly thankful that my deck decided not to punish me for my error. I immediately dropped the Prince and another Backup, emptying my hand, but with Alus I knew that I was probably going to be able to reload my hand fairly quickly.

I emptied my hand again a few turns later to remove a Yuzuki and a Taivas from the field, and when I swung in I was met by a Damage 1 Burst, with a Selphie returning the Taivas to my opponent's hand. Not long after, my opponent got a decent board set up, including an Ifrit (XVI) that took out chunks of my board. This was in turn met with LB Sephiroth to take the Eikon down, and LB Sephiroth did a lot of work for me over the game, serving as a powerful source of both removal and damage over a few turns.

Eventually, I did take the game in part because my opponent never played another Yuzuki, and in part because of a play error where my opponent chose the wrong 3-drop to freeplay off of an Akstar on-entry auto-ability.

Friendly Game - Dragoons vs Earth/Wind Cat VII

And back to my first opponent of the night, the returner, who asked me to play the Dragoons again because they just enjoy watching the Dragoon Engine doing its thing.

I remembered to mulligan my opening hand to look for an Alus and was rewarded with having a turn 1 copy of the Prince, along with another backup and I had another card in hand on top of that. This gave me the start I needed to be in control of the game almost the entire time, even through the 1-2 combo of Tifa and Zangan, as I was able to swiftly remove Tifa and in turn drastically reduce Zangan's potential bite. While Zangan was bigger than any of my Forwards and I didn't want to throw anything in the way to block him, meaning Zangan was able to put a few points of damage on the board by himself.

However, I was entirely too far ahead in resources and board position even despite that, and a Cherry Blossom Freya on the final turn of the game cinched it for me.

Conclusion

Gods it was nice to play decks that weren't my Crystals for a night. I love that deck a lot, don't get me wrong, but I've been playing that deck an awful lot trying to practice it and get decent, if not good, at piloting it.

Pulling out my (relatively) simpler Scions and Dragoons tonight was nice for a good, chill round of friendly games, especially with my brain still slightly mush after this past weekend, the opening weekend of the haunted house where I volunteer, which was a lot more exhausting than I was expecting it to be.

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.