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.

Final Fantasy TCG - February 6th, 2026

 Ah yes, Friday Night. As usual, I made my way out to the local card shop to play...

Final Fantasy TCG?

Hell yeah I did. It's the night before the Winter Cup this weekend, and a handful of folks made their way out to get a few last-minute games in - some to practice, some to play a little bit of jank to unwind after the competitive testing they've been grinding out. I wasn't originally planning to go out myself, but I made the not-quite-last-minute decision to go, and I'm glad that I did.

I'm not going to get too deep into the finer details of the games I played tonight. One of the other Local players brought out a modified version of their Crystals list and wanted to get a few games in to test it out, see how it felt in its current incarnation. I obliged.

The first deck I pulled out against them, before I knew what they were up to, was my Manikins deck. I had only brought that deck along on, more or less, a lark. I figured that if people wanted to unwind and play some jank, I would do well to have an actual janky list with me as well.

The long and short of this game was that I wound up losing pretty badly. I got some fairly decent, early damage in, but once they were able to get set up, they quickly took the game over from me. Hilariously, Manikins feel like they might be able to accomplish something, but they lack staying power. With the list in its current state, if I hit top-deck mode, then it just folds.

But, I digress.

To help my opponent put the Crystals deck through its paces, and to get a little bit of last-minute practice in with the two decks that I plan to play this weekend, I pulled out first my Scions, and then my Dragoons.

Both of these decks won Best of 3 sets pretty easily, and then the Scions won a final, standalone game before I decided that I needed to head out to get home - both because I knew that it was trying to snow and I wanted home before the roads could get too terrible, and because I plan to head to bed fairly early so I can get up to get ready for the Winter Cup in the morning.

The Scions opened aggressively with Estinien, meaning I had ample extra resources from his ability to return Scions I discarded to cover play costs, and the deck's overall amount of recursion and removal kept the game in my favor even over the long-term.

The Dragoons operated on a moderately similar scale, except that the deck needed a little bit of time to get set up and going, which gave the Crystals time to set up as well. Still, Freya and LB Kain remained the deck's champions, and Game 1 seeing Turn 1 Alus certainly helped the resources out.

That said, Game 2, I made a call I don't make nearly often enough: I discarded my first and only copy of Alus that game to play a cost, instead of trying to keep it in hand to play it out. This wound up ultimately being the right call due to the fact that it left me with a different, less-expensive backup and I was able to use the short-term resource savings to good effect.

That my opponent followed that up by hitting me with 3-drop Crystal Cyan the next turn, wiping my board to where the extra resources from Alus would've been nice in the long-term is certainly a good example of why sometimes the mid-game Alus is the right call, however. Regardless, I was still able to take that game thanks to what I drew naturally, even if I also burned all three copies of LB Kain this game - only for them to all get taken down, either by Vinera Fennes shrinking them and then LB Zack finishing the job, or from LB Vincent just one-shotting them. The winning turn was off the back of 3-drop Freya, as I had three Backups, the Freya in hand, and I just needed any one other copy of Freya so I could Cherry Blossom.

Thanks to 2-drop Theatrhythm Aranea, I saw the Freya, and was able to take the game.