Final Fantasy TCG Local Championship Qualifier - July 12th, 2026

 Today was a Local Championship Qualifier for FFTCG that I was honestly not wholly expecting that I was going to be able to attend - partly, I admit, because I forgot the LQ schedule.

But when I found out it was happening, during my week off, and that I wouldn't be needed for anything for Pokémon League (it is the Prerelease Window for Pitch Black, but today's event was already well covered by other Professors), I endeavored to head out to participate.

In an unusual change of pace for me, I decided to bring along a deck that's generally considered to be good, one of possibly the top four decks in the current metagame: Category MBM

With thirty-one players, we had five rounds before the event cut to the Top 8. Unfortunately, I didn't quite manage to make the top cut.

Round 1 vs Bartz WoLs - Lose 3-7

A slow game where neither of us could really build any sort of decent position early on, with a bit of back and forth between the two of us. The presence of a Penelo kept my opponent at bay for a while, as they were concerned about feeding Forwards to her removal ability. However, I was unable to capitalize on that open board state due, in part, to my draws not really affording me a ton of Forwards of my own.

Eventually, my opponent dropped a Refia, and while I quickly managed to break her and remove her from the Break Zone with LB Gilgamesh, she still soaked up removal that could've otherwise gone into my opponent's WoL4s, which meant that they got to stay in play, more or less unopposed. When I did find removal for WoL4, my opponent having not one, not two, but all three of their WoL4s meant it did little - if anything - to slow them down. The powerhouse Forward was more than enough to stop a lot of my offense in its tracks, and the 5k ping was more than adequate for easily removing Penelos and Frans.

My first EX Burst at damage 6 nearly spared me for a turn, until my opponent dropped a Time Magic special for more than enough to hunt down Arc and drop him into play, activating their backups and enabling them to give Arc Haste to swing in for the final damage.

Round 2 - Bye

Bye round. I looked around the store a little bit - I'd never made my way down to this shop before, given the length of the drive - and it's quite nice.

Round 3 vs Category MBM - Lose 1-7

A mirror match, and...

Man, the MBM Mirror is really unfun. A complete 180 from the Dragoon Mirror, which I love playing every time.

My opponent won the dice roll, went first, and this put me almost immediately on an insurmountable back foot. With a better opening play than mine, they had Ashe and Penelo online by turn 2, meaning it was functionally impossible for me to make my own Ashe play, lest Penelo put the Princess down before I even got close to a combat step and her "freeplay" auto-ability. This meant I had to try to play around Penelo, and when I did finally get rid of her, it wasn't long before my opponent managed to get her back.

When I finally had an opening to swing in for a point of damage, my opponent flipped over an Odin. I took that opportunity to just scoop, as I was officially too far behind in terms of board state and overall resources to have any hope of victory.

Round 4 vs Ice/Earth/Lightning - Win 7-0

The first game I had today where my deck operated the way it was "supposed" to be running. My opponent played around three Seymours against me, and each one was subsequently broken by Nono or other sources of removal. After three or four separate board wipes, I was still able to rebuild my board and maintain my advantage, as my opponent was on the defensive and unable to set much pressure back up against me.

Round 5 vs Earth/Water Summons - Win 7-1

I had a rather similar start to my Round 3 Opponent's, dropping Montblanc into another Backup - though in my case I had a Gurdy, rather than Hurdy, which ultimately made my turn 1 play significantly cheaper in practice, though it did leave me a little low on access to Water CP for much and more of the game.

Hecatoncheir from Opus XV, Crystal Dominion, was used to wipe my board on at least two separate occasions thanks to my opponent's recursion. Though I was a little bit behind on resources, the lack of board presence and pressure being put forth by my opponent meant that I had time enough to rebuild and take back control of the game.

Conclusion

In the end, with my 3-2 record, I wound up in 14th place out of 31 total competitors. A winning record, and placing me in the top half of the rankings - earning a Top 16 Promo Seymour - with a deck I haven't actually played in a while, and had never played in its current state before today.

While I would've liked to hit Top 8, I'll happily take a Top 16 placement and a winning record. It's still much improved from the last Qualifier I'd attended.

I also would've liked to have played a different deck today, but unfortunately some of the cards I'd ordered still haven't arrived. So I suppose that I'll just have to be a menace at tomorrow night's regular locals instead, assuming the cards arrive as they're currently slated to.

Friday Night Magic Commander Night - July 10th, 2026

 A little over a month ago, I did my usual blog post on my Commander Night - which also happened to be a "Magic Presents: Pride" event, which also happened to fall a scant few days after Wizards of the Coast engaged in some transphobic fuckery as part of their union-busting efforts.

Since then, I've been busy on my Friday Nights. Work, "Summerween" at the haunted house where I work, a trip to Too Many Games, more work...

This was the first time in over a month where I could even consider going out to play Commander.

I decided I was going to go. I just don't plan to spend any more money on Magic product any time soon. A little unfortunate, because there are a couple of upcoming sets I had previously been looking forward to - I am not (wholly) immune to Universes Beyond, because I love The Hobbit and would've been more than glad to pick up a fair bit from the set.

But... Not right now. Not unless I see something that indicates Wizards plans to be less of a shitty company, which is a tall order.

Which brings me to tonight's games.

I, uh, may have flown too close to the sun. Only one of the games I played today was with a pod of four.

Winota may have done her thing a little too well. Two of the four players in the first game I played tonight broke off into another pod (though I think part of that was also that they had more friends show up... but still), leaving me and the last player just playing one-on-one games against each other for the rest of the night.

I got one game in with Sanar, winning it because my opponent looked at it, wondered if it was "the meme deck", decided it wasn't, and then when I got my turn with Sanar in play, they realized it was the meme after about four or five lands.

Next up was the first of my two games with The Wandering Minstrel, which went swimmingly - I had my Token Nonsense™ set up and churning out two 4/4 Angels with Flying and Vigilance every turn, sometimes four Angels if I drew into a land!

The problem was that my opponent had a Platinum Angel with a Lightning Greaves attached, and I had no way to get around the Shroud and remove the Angel, so while I was able to handily beat them deep into a negative life total, it ultimately meant nothing in the face of their inability to lose the game.

This was followed up by a game with Ashling, which I ultimately won, my Elementals engaging in quite some shenanigans. I realized early on that Myriad of Mysteries was mostly ineffective in a one-on-one game due to Myriad doing nothing without more opponents to make copies of my creatures, but it was still a five-color permanent, letting Shimmercreep do a fair bit of life-drain thanks to Conjurer's Closet blinking it for a few turns.

And finally, I pulled Minstrel back out to play against their Yuna deck, and we had...

Frankly, a hilariously bad game where neither of us had anything going on for like, ten turns. I did a lot of work swinging with Emet-Selch and the Regalia, and finally got an 11/11 Hero out of the "Lasting Fayth" Adventure attached to Zanarkand. Combined with the Minstrel's activated ability, this gave me enough power to finish my opponent off, who had still not seen much of anything from their deck.

After that, we both decided to call it for the night.

Final Fantasy TCG Locals - June 29th, 2026

 I am so outrageously tired right now.

I was at Too Many Games, a convention near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, all weekend. I had an extra night at my hotel - the convention ended yesterday, the 28th, but I didn't check out of my hotel until this morning, the 29th. Convention was fun as hell, by the by. I spent way too much money picking up some video games I've been looking for for a while. Also got to meet my favorite Vtuber and get an autograph. That was neat.

Anyways. Today, I drove home. Around six hours in the car, almost one straight shot, bar a single stop for gas.

And then, because I am an absolute fool of a man, I chilled at home for about an hour, then turned right back around and went out for FFTCG tonight.

And I didn't play something nice and simple, oh no. Why would I do that, after a lengthy drive home after a long weekend?

No, I played my Fire-Wind Cat VII Crystals, a deck I haven't played since initially putting the current version of the list together. A deck that, being Crystals, means a whole extra resource to keep track of alongside everything else I'm already doing.

Had fun, though. We had a whopping eight people come out tonight, which is a way larger turnout than I expected immediately following this weekend's Materia Cup at the shop (still a little bummed I missed that, but c'est la vie). This gave us a solid three rounds of play tonight.

Round 1 vs Ice-Wind Crystals - Loss

Turns out that there's a reason that Ice-Wind is the current competitive darling as far as Crystal decks go.

That reason is that Ice does funny control things. Yazoo and Seymour each locking me out of Fire Backups slowed me down drastically, giving the Ice-Wind player a strong lead that I wasn't able to come back from.

Round 2 vs WoL7 - Win

Genuinely, I do not know how I won this one. I think the main thing that gave me an early edge I was able to work around was having an Amaterasu to stop the first WoL7 that they played.

And later in the game, having the resources to drop Barret on the field, with a couple of different options for Crystal-based removal, which Barret would reload for me after seeing an opposing Forward head to the Break Zone, gave me the pressure I needed to keep that early momentum swing going. Zack and Red XIII from the Limit Break gave me the opportunity to put up enough damage that I was able to basically secure the victory, especially with all of the removal I had available that would eat the blockers my opponent was able to get into play during their turn.

Round 3 vs Category MBM - Win

A very Wind-heavy game early on for me, but once I got a few Fire characters in place, the removal was enough to lock things in for me. Especially with Cyan popping their entire board with his 9k Board Wipe to clear the way for me to put game-securing pressure in place.

Friendly Game: Manikins vs Fire-Ice Warriors - Loss

I had brought my Manikins with me and was honestly tempted to play them for tonight's event, because one of the others had joked that they were gearing up for "Dissidia Locals" - several of the local players all play Dissidia Duellum, and were planning to play a game or two together before we got FFTCG Locals firing. And my Manikins being entirely Category DFF, well, Dissidia Locals.

But ultimately I decided to play my semi-real deck, the Crystals, instead. But I still wanted a game with my Manikins, because they're janky (at best), but fun.

So I asked the New Player, who has updated their Warriors List to be Fire-Ice, if they wanted to run a friendly. And, the short version of events, is that the New Player got their first win. I got a couple of points of damage in thanks to Counterfeit Youth, but once an Ifrit (XVI) hit play, I was basically done for. Delusory Knight (1-Drop Earth "Dark Knight" version) saved me for a turn once Ifrit hit the field, but the powerful Eikon was more than enough to really take over the game, especially with the general power of a Warriors list backing him (in spite of the Warriors lacking the powerhouse known as Akstar).

Still, I didn't want to play the Manikins because they're good. I wanted to play them because they're funny. I like them despite them just being a bad version of The Twelve.

Final Fantasy TCG Locals - June 15th, 2026

 After a week where other obligations got in the way of even considering TCG nights, I made it to the shop tonight for Final Fantasy. There were only a total of four of us who showed up tonight, a woefully tiny turnout. Unfortunately, I will have to return to work later this week, so I'll be missing out on next week's Locals, which will likely have much higher attendance while people try to get their last-minute practice in before the Materia Cup on the 27th and 28th.

But I digress! That's next week, tonight was, uh, tonight. I wanted to play my Scions, so I pulled them out and shuffled them up for a quick round robin event.

Round 1 vs Mono-Water Monsters - Loss

A rough game to start with. Funnily enough, we had played a friendly before our other players had arrived, and while I won that one due to having a much smoother start (and, notably, my copy of Kalmia to keep Witch of the Fens from being able to obliterate my Forwards), this one, I didn't have quite that same luck.

For our "real" game, we both had fairly smooth starts, building out our backup lines fairly well, but unfortunately, I never found Kalmia.

Not that Witch of the Fens was necessary to remove that many Forwards. Various bounces and tucks cleared away my board, and the absolute suite of Monster-Forwards that they had available gave them an incredible amount of pressure that they used to end the game in the course of a few turns once they had the board under control.

Round 2 vs Fire/Water 2025 Starter Deck - Win

The same newbie player that's been showing up for the past few weeks, now rocking some nice Bahamut sleeves and one of Ultra Pro's Final Fantasy playmats (featuring one of my favorite pieces of art from the finale/end credits of Endwalker).

Much like the past couple of weeks, I was explaining my deck to them as the game went on, explaining each piece of my deck as I used it against them.

Round 3 vs Wind/Water Gullwings - Win

This was probably the most fun game I played today strictly because I've never played against Gullwings before. It was a blast to see a brand new-to-me deck.

Part of that fun was trying to figure out what I had to do to get around their board, because I've never seen what Gullwings does. So when one of my first game actions involved discarding my Kalmia to pay for a backup, I didn't realize I was making things difficult for myself later on after they dropped Yuna from Dreamlike Oceans into play, and started using her effect to shrink and remove my Forwards.

Still, thanks in part to Scions having excellent recursion, and per my opponent my ability to keep my hand full so that I wasn't playing catch-up on resources, I was able to take the victory over them.

Conclusion

Despite only having a few players show, this was a fun night of cards. And also the last I'm going to get for a little bit - I have to go back to work on Thursday, and next week after my work week is over, I'll be attending Too Many Games, so I'll be missing out on even considering Commander Night, definitely missing out on Gundam TCG, and then between that same weekend being the Materia Cup and since I'll be returning from TMG on that Monday, I might miss out on FFTCG (a combination of people probably not wanting to play after the MC, and me possibly not getting back home from TMG in time).

Who knows? We'll see.

Final Fantasy TCG Locals - June 8th, 2026

 Following yesterday's LCQ, today's Locals were just a quiet, chill affair. A total of four players showed up tonight, including the newer player whose first Locals was last week.

All we wound up doing tonight were grinding out a bunch of friendlies together. In total, I played a good number of games, all but one of which were with one other person who was playing Category MBM, and then a final game with the newbie player.

For three of my games with the first player, I used my Fire/Ice Priming list. And those games were...

Weird. Among other things, my lack of practice with the deck really hit me a lot. I was unsure about what my deck's play lines should've been, my draws weren't presenting anything obvious, and MBM's ability to throw tons of bodies in play before using Penelo for a lot of removal was incredibly strong against a deck like Priming that usually only has one or two Forwards in play.

Their copies of Gurdy also did a surprising amount of work as removal pieces as well.

It was definitely rough going for me. Which is why I put the Priming list aside and pulled out my The Twelve instead. And those games went...

Also weird. I had a rough time getting Llymlaen in play for almost all of them except our last. One game I wound up not getting Llymlaen until about turn 3 or 4, when I had to drop LB Noctis to get a WoL4 back, using that to cover the Wind element to play the Llymlaen that I had finally drawn. This left me with almost no cards in hand and a relatively low number of backups.

Our final game wound up being an incredible, though. Neither of us were able to really build a position to "control" the game, and with the amount of card draw they were burning through using their Vaans, I wound up winning through deck out of all things. They were sitting on 5 damage for the last few turns of the game, and they were able to keep a defensive position in place that kept me from being able to get the last damage I needed in, but neither could they safely hit me back.

That was when two of tonight's players had to bounce, leaving just myself and the newbie. They had earlier in the night said that they were interested in building a Priming list - they had seen the more Ice-heavy variants that only splash Clive thanks to Torgal letting them ignore element restrictions, rather than something more like my Fire/Ice build - and so I offered to let them take my Priming list for a spin while I played The Twelve against them.

It wound up being a 7-0 game, in part because of their unfamiliarity with the deck, the fact that the deck was giving them some weird draws as well, and my The Twelve deciding to play absolutely buttery smooth for one game. That said, it still let them get a small glimpse at a Priming list, and I was able to run them through my The Twelve list after, showing them everything in the list since they had shown a fair bit of interest in that as well when I told them what I was playing at the start of the game.

All in all, it was a really pleasant night of FFTCG, a nice, chill wind-down after the LCQ, and I'm glad I went out.

Final Fantasy TCG Local Championship Qualifier - June 7th, 2026

Today was the LCQ I had been looking forward to participating in for the past few weeks. I don't know how much I'll be able to really participate in competitive FFTCG events this season, so there's honestly a non-zero chance that this is the only event that I'm able to make it to.

So when the event was announced as being 6 rounds due to a total of 33 players, I was hoping that I would at least break even and go 3-3, if not in fact manage a winning record. It...

Didn't go that way for me. I still did alright for myself, but I ended the day with a losing record, going 2-4, playing my Dragoons.

There were a few factors at play for that decision. One was, from sheer practicality, I already had a copy of the decklist printed and ready for an event. Second was that Dragoons would have been a solid call into the meta that's been seen at Materia Cups and other LCQs. Third was that despite my putting them on the shelf for several months ever since the Winter Cup, they are still probably my most well-practiced deck at a competitive level.

But despite having a losing record, I still feel incredibly proud of my performance for reasons that I'll get into later.

Round 1 vs Ice/Fire Warriors - Lose 4-7

An incredibly close game between the two of us, with Freyas putting in a lot of work and Kain helping to keep them running - even when Kain ate Amaterasus for his trouble. Unfortunately, this particular player claims to basically thrive in a more control-oriented "long game" situation, and they did run a few cards that aren't necessarily in a lot of other Warriors lists, including Ice/Lightning Zeromus, which gave them a few extra points of control to give themselves control of the game in the end.

Round 2 vs Warriors of Light - Lose 3-7

A second loss in a row, which was probably not a good omen in hindsight. This was a game where I was in a rather commanding position over my opponent until a single turn where they were able to completely turn things on their head, dropping several Forwards in play all at once, including their one copy of Refia and the LB Warrior of Light, which enabled them to remove several of my Forwards from play.

I was able to come up with two pieces of removal, taking out the WoL and Refia, but a Cu Sith bringing Refia back at the end of my turn saw both the Refia get immediately replayed, followed by a second copy of the LB WoL.

I did not have another two pieces of removal. I was stuck losing to their very well-established position.

Round 3 vs Cat IV Monsters - Win 7-0

I came out swinging fairly hard and fast, playing pretty aggressively and getting my opponent pretty well battered pretty quickly. They were a bit tilted, in their words, in part due to being 0-2 with the list while a friend of theirs, playing the same, was at the time 2-0 - the deck just wasn't working out well for them, and it was getting under their skin.

They made a few misplays in the last couple turns of the game as well, which they called out on themselves almost as soon as said turns were over, which left things open for me to finish the game rather swiftly. With us having finished as fast as we did, we reported our results, and then played a friendly with the remaining time-in-round, which I won again, this time going 7-2.

This game was why I'm proud of my performance today. The player I was up against is a Worlds-caliber player, another of my locals regularly happy to brag about a time that they took this same player to a Game 3 at a previous LCQ at some point last season.

So with my taking our "important" game 7-0, and then our friendly follow-up 7-2, I'm incredibly pumped about that, even if I wound up with a losing record at the end of the day.

Round 4 vs Dragoons - Lose 1-7

Dragoon Mirror! And it was against the same player I had my mirror match against at last week's locals.

And much like last week's locals, I got outplayed. They drew better, had access to Cherry Blossom Freya for mass removal, and generally had better value from their cards than what I was getting from mine.

I can't even be mad, all said, because the Dragoon Mirror is always a blast to play.

Round 5 vs WoL 7 - Win 7-3

I should not have won this game.

We had a pretty even pace against each other at first, but they eventually had a solid turn with several bodies in play, including Gilgamesh (FFBE) with enough Elements in their Break Zone to give Gilgamesh the buff, Haste, First Strike, and Dull-Freeze attack auto-ability. I had one blocker in play.

My opponent proceeded to swing only their 2-drop Fire/Water Firion into my blocker, letting the 6-drop Aranea devour the young Rebel. And then they passed their turn.

This gave me the breathing room to successfully get 3-Drop Freya and Cherry Blossom their board away, giving me the win. When I asked what they were thinking with the turn where they swung Firion into my Aranea, and didn't swing Gilgamesh? "I just plain forgot."

Again. I shouldn't have won this game. But my opponent making the mother of all misplays gave me the undeserved victory. I'll take it.

Round 6 vs Mono-Fire - Lose 5-7

This was one of, if not the most tense game of FFTCG I've ever played.

Neither of us could really establish a truly dominant board position over the other. I had a stronger board earlier on, but they had enough damage output to clear that board away and reduce the threat I presented. In turn, I was able to use several Freyas to wipe out their board a few times and keep them in check right back.

I eventually misplayed, popping a Backup to get a copy of Freya back from my Break Zone to fuel a Cherry Blossom. A Cherry Blossom that, due to the loss of the Backup, meant I wasn't able to break the Phoinix I was trying to catch with the removal. They followed that up with a misplay of their own several turns later, where the Zack from last year's Starter Decks took out my Freya, leaving me with only two Forwards and disabling Zack's Haste.

A few more removal trades eventually saw them with just the Phoinix and LB Machina in play. I popped Machina with LB Cloud, and waited, as I couldn't get through the bird.

This was met with The Demon, who removed my Break Zone - including all six of my "good" Freyas, the 3-drops and 4-drops both - to delete Cloud. This was the nail that sealed my coffin as The Demon made it impossible for me to build any other board state from there, and while I fought and flailed for a few turns, there was nothing I could do in the end. The writing was on the wall, I ended up scooping, giving my opponent the much deserved win.

Unfortunately, this only put them in 10th place, not quite making the Top 8 Cut, but alas.

Conclusion

I am drained. Six solid rounds of FFTCG, including some incredibly tense games that forced me to think incredibly hard about how to handle the threats I was facing down, and Round 3 having a second friendly that was even rougher than the "actual" round meaning I had seven games of FFTCG today, was a fair bit.

Even with a deck like Dragoons that I know incredibly well, that was still quite a lot for me, and there's a part of me that's almost glad I didn't get anywhere near the top cut as a consequence.

I still look forward to swinging out to my Locals tomorrow night, and I hope that I can make it to more events this competitive season.

Friday Night Magic: Magic Presents Pride Commander Event - June 5th, 2026

 Normally this would be my work week, but I decided to spend some PTO to get an extra-long vacation for myself as a small gift. Which is why I'll be able to attend the FFTCG LCQ on Sunday, and is giving me the chance to hit a few more TCG Nights than normal!

But, before I get into tonight's night of Magic, I do want to talk about something.

For just a little more than a month now, members of the development team for Magic: the Gathering Arena, the digital game client, have been working to unionize. Wizards of the Coast, or perhaps higher-ups from Hasbro, have been fighting against those efforts tooth and nail. Disgustingly, part of these efforts have included openly deadnaming trans members of said development team.

And in fact, they doubled down, doing so again earlier this week after what was evidently a mealymouthed apology, deadnaming all of these trans employees again by refusing to update forms in advance of the union vote on Tuesday. Tuesday, if you don't have your calendar handy, was June 2nd. The second day of Pride Month.

I'm cisgender. I cannot, will not claim to understand the full breadth of the bullshit and bigotry that transgender individuals experience in their day-to-day, let alone this experience, being forced to identify with your deadname, an identity that does not align with who you are as a person, all in the name of fighting for basic work protections.

Frankly, fuck Wizards of the Coast, and fuck Hasbro.

And for added insult, today, the 5th, is the first day for "Magic: the Gathering Presents Pride" events. A paltry three days after deadnaming all of their trans employees for the second time in as many weeks. But sure, let's celebrate "Gruulfriends" with a pretty Gilded Lotus that has Nissa and Chandra in the art.

Again: Fuck Wizards of the Coast, and fuck Hasbro.

Now, I said I was going to talk about that before I "get into tonight's night of Magic"... But honestly, I don't feel like it. Not in any great detail, not after thinking about all of this.

The most detail I'll get into is this: Tonight was my shop's "Magic Presents Pride" event. I played a lot of games tonight. A few with a pod of 3, a few with a pod of 4.

Most of them, I played my new Winota deck. The last, I played my Ashling. But when the shop employee was shouting out about how tonight was celebrating Pride and handing out promotional packs and pins, in the back of my mind, I just thought again about everything I lined out above.

It soured my mood a fair bit. I had already been considering not even going out tonight after thinking my way through all of this and putting all of my thoughts to proverbial paper. But I made the call to go out and play. I do enjoy the game in spite of the bullshit that WotC continually engages in. The union organizers, as far as I've seen, haven't called for any sort of boycott.

But after the way I felt my mood drop, I'm going to be rethinking my relationship with Magic for the foreseeable future. Until WotC decides to be better, at least. We'll see. I have the choice made for me easily for the next couple of weeks, since I won't be able to do Commander Night due to previous obligations.

But we'll see how things go when I'm not being given such an easy layup.