Monday, March 24, 2025

Final Fantasy TCG Locals - Canceled - March 24th, 2025

 In what is proving to be Not A Great Week™ as far as my writing for this blog is concerned, today is yet another day without any cards or games to speak of.

This time, rather than being due to illness, or big events I need to help run, or what have you, it's a simple matter of the local FFTCG community not wanting to come out for games at the shop where I otherwise typically play on Mondays.

Part of this is evidently just life getting in the way, as it does. There's also the fact that this week should have been prerelease events for the upcoming Tears of the Planet set, but due to distributor issues, no stores in the area have received their prerelease product yet. So, in preparation for a lot of "prerelease" events over the course of next week, it seems rather like many folks from the local scene are taking some days off to rest and recharge before diving in.

Unfortunately for me, this means there's a very real chance I don't get to play any FFTCG this week. And then next week, when the "prerelease" events are occurring, I will be smack dab in the middle of my work week.

To say I'm unhappy about that would be a little bit of an understatement. But unfortunately, there's nothing I can do about it except to grumble and write up this post.

Friday, March 21, 2025

Sick Day - March 21st, 2025

 Hardly the post I wanted to make as my follow-up to yesterday's about how I'm cutting back significantly on how much I'll be writing since I plan to step away from playing Pokémon as much, but unfortunately, when life hands you lemons...

So! During my work week, I came down with something pretty gnarly. I'll spare you the sordid details beyond "I was sick enough to bounce early one night, and called off the following one", but unfortunately, America's corporate ethos being what it is, I really don't have enough PTO that I could spare what I probably should have burned to fully rest and recuperate.

And while I thought I was better in spite of that, better enough that I went to yesterday's Pokémon prerelease at my League? Well, the kick in the lungs that I've been experiencing today has informed me that I was incorrect. Or that perhaps throwing myself into a situation where I was surrounded by 40+ people in varying degrees of their own healthiness is potentially why I'm being betrayed by my own body once again.

Regardless. I'm not completely bedridden, but I'm still sick. And should take a day off from social interaction so I can hopefully get over that before I go back to the League on Sunday for our second 40-person Pokémon prerelease event.

Which is a bummer. I do enjoy me some Magic: the Gathering and got a bit of a hankering to play my Narci deck, but health takes precedence.

I should be feeling better by Monday, in time for Final Fantasy TCG. I have a newly built deck for that one which I'm eager to try out.

Thursday, March 20, 2025

Pokémon Prerelease + Content Update - March 20th, 2025

At League today is a prerelease for the next English Pokémon TCG set - Journey Together. I do not plan to participate as a player, I instead intend to help to run the event in the capacity as a Professor at the store.

Which is a segue into a small update to my plans for this Blog going forward:

I plan not to continue write-ups about my local Pokémon League events.

At least, not regularly.

I still enjoy Pokémon mechanically as a TCG. However, the direction that Standard looks like it will be taking in the near future, post-rotation and once we get into some of the sets and cards that have been being previewed and spoiled from Japan, is a direction that will be less appealing for me as a player.

Given that the majority of Pokémon events are Standard, that means that the majority of Pokémon events will be moving in a direction that don't appeal to me.

Whenever the Leagues I participate in run alternative formats, such as Gym Leader Challenge events, I still plan to play and do my usual write-ups. But for the foreseeable future, I intend to focus on my role as a Professor over playing, which means less games for this blog.

Wednesday, March 12, 2025

Final Fantasy TCG Locals - March 12th, 2025

I did go out to play Final Fantasy TCG tonight. There were a total of four players, and though there was no formal "event" happening so to speak, we did each play a best-of-3 against each other player present.

In full honesty, though, I didn't take any notes to speak of during the course of these games, and I was sidetracked from beginning this post between a few small, late-night errands I needed to run on my way home and being hungry, so I can't even say that I remember drastically much detail about any of the games played tonight beyond what each of us were playing, and the results of each of my own games.

I played my Scions list, because while I had honestly wanted to play a new, different deck I ordered pieces to build, a few cards still have not arrived in the mail.

Game 1  vs. Sky Pirates - Win

I have actually played against this Sky Pirates deck before. Sort of. Last time that I played against it, this player had also been running a package of Noctis and his Retainers from FFXV in the list, but they've since been removed, which threw me off to some extent when I was expecting to see them.

Regardless.

I won in our first game, lost the second, and then won the third. I believe the major difference was, as it usually winds up being, that I was unable to get an Estinien on the table in Game 2, and my opponent who was using three elements in their list actually saw the Earth-element cards that help to fuel a decent portion of the deck. In games 1 and 3, I had Estinien, and they didn't see enough of their Earth cards to make the deck tick properly.

Game 2 vs. Warriors of Darkness - Win

A wholly new deck archetype to me, I've never seen Warriors of Darkness played before.

And while I didn't get any notes down, the deck looked like an absolute blast. This deck was running the Noctis/Retainer package I had been expecting from the Sky Pirates player, which was the pivot for the deck when I fought through Nacht and the Warriors of Darkness. One of the three games was full of board wipes, with an Earth element Neo Exdeath, a backup Shantotto from the earliest set of the game, and I'm fairly positive at least one other wipe that I'm forgetting off the top of my head as I write this.

I also forget which of the games was the one I lost. I just know that I did take two of the three, with our third game having been a quick scoop due to my opponent not paying the game enough attention and deciding to just call it early.

Game 3 vs. "The Tax Man" Ice - Win

I have no idea what to refer to this list as beyond being a primarily-Ice control list, but with numerous "tax" effects increase costs of most any actions taken against them, or to punish wide board states. The player of the deck was leaning heavily into the tax-heavy nature of it, jokingly referring to themselves as "The IRS" and that they were here to "make sure we'd paid our taxes". The list was evidently built partially to leverage the effects of a Light-element Yuna that's been previewed for the as-of-this-writing upcoming 25th set, "Tears of the Planet", which obviously has not released yet, so the deck was in a technically-unfinished state, with some filler choices made to fill out the space. They had also never had an opportunity to play the deck prior to coming out to tonight's games, per their own words.

But I digress. In short, it was a heavy control list, playing against my heavily aggro Scions. I'm fairly certain I lost game 1 because I wasn't sure what my game plan against the deck needed to be resulting in me getting denied basically any and all resources, but in games 2 and 3, I knew I needed to have more Backups in play to get around the tax and discard effects that otherwise stripped me of my resources. Taking a somewhat slower start so that I could build up a wider board of backups, I was able to play even with my hand stripped bare during each of my opponent's turns.

Thursday, March 6, 2025

WEEK OFF

As I said during my previous post, some unusual circumstances this week means that I won't be able to participate in any of my typical TCG Nights this week, so there won't be any posts from me due to not having any games to write about.

The potential exception to this is if FFTCG locals fire on this upcoming Wednesday, March 12th, and I make it out to participate. But that's to be determined - I don't know if Locals will happen, nor if I will be able and willing to participate myself.

Final Fantasy TCG Locals - July 30th, 2025

 I wasn't originally planning to go out to the other card shop today for Locals. But, honestly, I was a little disappointed with  Monday...