Thursday Game Night: Cry Havoc

Cry Havoc is a 2016 release by Polish publisher Portal Games. We think Portal has hit a solid mark with this release, blending territory control and deck building with a strong “economy of action matters” style of gameplay. You’ll often find yourself thinking two, or three, moves ahead to find the optimal sequencing of plays.

But, that seems like a standard description of any strategy game. Where Cry Havoc sets itself apart is with its Skill Cards system, and the semi-complex player combat mechanics that is almost good enough to be repackaged as an entirely different game.

Anyway, check out this review below to see what’s up.

This was only after a couple turns. Good sequencing can lead to some explosive turns!

Materials: 9 of 10.

Cry Havoc is dense. With over two hundred and fifty working parts and tokens (not counting the playing cards!) included in the box, you would normally expect some quality control issues. We found each piece to be cut precisely and with a fairly high level of detail. The figures look great. The cardboard tokens are thick, and for the most part, cut into special patterns so that they can mesh with other pieces.

The card stock is the usual plastic/fiber blend you’d expect from a deck of playing cards. Nothing spectacular, but certainly not below average.

Between the cards, tokens, figures, and the gigantic board, the art quality is outstanding as well, with plenty of intricate details.

Gameplay: 8.5 of 10.

With any strategy game, a pool of new players will always be off to a rocky, non-stop rules-referencing wreck. The same holds true for Cry Havoc, but we found that with some smart design techniques, Portal Games was able to make quite a few of the game mechanics feel intuitive and easy to grasp. The amount of times we said “Oh, that’s right!” far outweighed the amount of times we said “Wait, but why?”.

Your action pool consists of: “Move”, “Recruit”, “Draw Cards”, “Build/Activate Structures”, and “Activate Scoring”, which furthers player’s progression towards ending the game and provides a slight Victory Point bonus to the person who takes that action.

Cry Havoc plays off of its deckbuilding aspect here, in that cards are played from your hand to take one of the above actions, with the strength of the action based on how many cards you play for it. Once your deck is depleted, you’ll shuffle your discards back into your deck, and draw from there. Over time, you’ll acquire more and better cards to enhance your actions.

However, from the above actions, you are allotted three per round. If you chose to “Move, Recruit, and Build”, then you’ll have missed your chance to acquire new cards from the available card decks. On the reverse, if you did choose to Draw Cards to supplement your card pool, you’ll have forfeited a different action!

The more territories you control, the more points you get. The more battles you win, the more points you get. Fairly standard fare!

Where Cry Havoc really hits its stride is the battle mechanic. Players choose to assign their available units in a “battle region” to any of the three tasks: “Region Control”, “Capture a Prisoner” (there’s a ransom system!), and “Attrition”. The more units you assign to a task, the more likely you are to succeed versus the defending forces. However, after all units have been assigned, players may then play cards from their hand to alter the course of the battle. Units could be destroyed, or reassigned, or more! After the smoke clears, the balance of power may shift, prisoners may be taken, or units may be killed and placed back into the reserves to be recruited again.

After all the battles have been resolved, points are scored and a fresh round begins, possibly with someone else going first due to the Initiative system.

Originality: 8 of 10.

Cry Havoc bears a fairly strong resemblence to other recent releases such as Blood Rage by publisher Cool Mini Or Not, but only in specific gameplay mechanics. Outside of the similarity of some of the mechanics, Cry Havoc does a great job of giving each player a unique play experience, and even includes some background lore for the four races present in the game. Each nation shares the same basic “grunt unit”, but has all unique structures and Skill Cards.

The Humans rely heavily on territory control and structure expansion. The Wraiths feel similar to the Protoss from StarCraft II in that they rely on crystals, one of the game’s resources, and have “warpgate” style gameplay. Watch out for that hidden pylon! The Machines employ a strong drone-based attack and ORBITAL ION CANNONS, among other spicy toys in their arsenal. The Trogs are the native fauna of Cry Havoc‘s world. They’re basically dopey golems out to defend their homeland and stop the other three races from taking their crystals. They’re craftier than you think, though, as they can travel through hidden tunnels and plant traps around the map to help ward off invaders.

And all of this was only with the default Skill Cards that were suggested for “New Players”.

Replay Value: 10 of 10.

As just said, all of this was just from what you could probably refer to as a tutorial experience.

With the additional tactics cards, skill cards, event tokens, exploration tokens, and some good old Trog ingenuity, we’re expecting to get many, many, sessions of this game in.

Overall Average: 8.9

Pros: Accessible, yet deep, strategic gameplay. Beautiful presentation with top quality materials. Fantastic and unique battle system.

Cons: Some rules were placed in places that seemed slightly out of the ordinary, causing some confusion during scoring turns. This is absolutely still our fault, but we feel the particular issues (Scoring for Crystals as Trog, for one) could have been presented in a slightly more “HEY, THIS IS IMPORTANT” manner.

In the end, Patrick took home the win with Humans at 108 points. Pete, the runner up, played Wraiths to a solid 84 points. Willie, the Machines, took third, sneaking in on the last turn to pass me at 68 points. And myself, Tyler, brought up the last place position as the lowly Trogs, despite my best efforts to defend my homeland.

I hope you’ve enjoyed our review of Cry Havoc. Check it out as a potential Christmas gift for that special board gamer in your life. You can find it in stock at Jacksonville Game Center, of course! Give us a call any time and we’ll be plenty happy to set a copy aside for you before they sell through.

I consider it a solid addition to my personal selection of games, and look forward to playing it again, soon! Probably as the Machines. ORBITAL ION CANNON has a nice ring to it.

Black Friday – 2016

**Foreign Box Pricing link updated!

Hello everyone!

One of the most common questions we’ve been receiving recently, as expected, is, “What kind of sales will you be having for Black Friday?” The answer is quite simple!

Almost everything!

Here’s a big post about a lot of the things we’ll be having on sale this weekend, up and through Cyber Monday.

PPTQ Nashville Wrap Up

Decklists are at the end of the post!

Tyler here!

Forty players came in today to do battle and earn a spot for the upcoming Regional Pro Tour Qualifier for Nashville, and after six rounds of swiss and a fight through Top 8, Top 4, and the Finals, Jonathan Marsh took home the invite! BG Delirium certainly had a healthy showing today, but he managed to pilot his version to the top spot tonight!

Thanks to everyone who attended today! Special shouts out to our Judge staff, Gawain and Andreas, along with Jonathan, and all of the players involved to help us run a smooth event! We hope everyone had a great time, and we look forward to seeing you again!

Thursday Game Night: SeaFall

This post contains SPOILERS near the end!

The world is emerging from a dark age where history and knowledge were lost. The great provinces have just begun re-establishing seafaring technology. Wealth and fame await leaders who are cunning and brave. Explore the coastal islands. Discover lost civilizations. Sail the open sea in search of new lands. Uncover long buried secrets. Sail until the sea falls off the edge of the world!

Last night, myself and three swarthy gents, Brandon, Pete, and Will, joined up to play through the Prologue game of SeaFall. SeaFall is a “legacy game”, in which choices and actions made by players can have permanent consequences for future games. The board, and even player cards, become modified over time by stickers and overwriting text.

Hope you’ve got a big table!

SeaFall is designed to be played with a minimum of two players, up to a maximum of five, with the designer’s intent to be best with four players. After completing the prologue, the box provides additional content to be played through fifteen, or more, additional times, between new islands being discovered and permanently added to the board, or player Provinces rising or falling in glory as the game sessions progress.

 

Many of the major components of the game have their names left blank, to leave room for the players to write in a name of their choice as they acquire them. We themed our provinces, ships, captains, and eventually even islands that we discovered around different mythos.

The Captain’s Booke

Exploration, trading, building, and naval combat are strong themes present while playing, especially when you’re instructed to read through the Captain’s Booke, at which point the game takes on a feel of “Choose Your Own Adventure”. Every entry is coded to a specific number found in the Explorer’s Map, located in the opening page of the Booke. Be very careful not to read ahead, as you’ll risk revealing hidden information or spoiling certain plot lines that may be relevant to future games your group will play!

We also didn’t know that you could use purchased goods to discount buildings and upgrades until the final turn of the game!

This game is dense. There are quite a few subtleties to the mechanics and actions players can take that are not intuitive or obvious. We highly recommend checking out some “Watch it Played” videos, or consulting with someone familiar with the rules to make sure you’re not missing anything very important. We didn’t find out about appellations until our first Winter round!

Thoroughly reading through the rulebook would also help, of course. The full descriptions of what an action does are important, as many of the minor details are included towards the end of the entry in the rulebook.

Spoilers ahead! Ye be warned!

One of the common recurring themes in the game is that Choices Matter. Of course, in the normal flow of a game, your choices usually do matter for that session, but as this is a Legacy title, the consequences of your choice may be a little more dire than you’d expect!

Pete looking slightly uneasy after destroying one of my cards.

Not only are names created and written, and stickers added to the board and cards, but at some points, the game even instructs you to destroy certain pieces, ensuring they cannot be used again in the future!

We decided to go with the authentic experience, and literally destroy our materials when the game prompted us to, but if you are so inclined, you may wish to create proxies, or merely note that an item has been destroyed, rather than truly destroying them as we did!

The Isle of New Carpathia, where Count Vlad Dracula established a small foothold.

Everything gets a name, too! During the prologue, at certain points, players get to name an Island, and it then becomes a permanent fixture on the board. These modifications carry over to future games, so now we’ll be sailing to islands such as “New Carpathia”, “The Three Sisters”, and “The Animal Kingdom” (an annex of The Magic Kingdom).

We’re amped for next week when we’ll finally begin “Game 1”, with a new set of goals and our own islands on the board. We’ve named our ships, and our provinces, and are striving to obtain the most Glory so that we may eventually succeed to the Emperor’s throne!

Also, as mentioned, this was merely the Prologue of the game. Once we reached the end of the session, it was discovered through a journal entry that we were playing the lives of our forefathers! Game 1 will take place in current day, and our chosen leaders are long dead. The Captain’s Booke instructed us to destroy our leader cards, along with any appellations and titles they had earned during the session. It was quite the twist!

Rest in pieces.

This game is highly recommended, as long as you are able to assemble a group of dedicated players that will be able to play through multiple sessions after the first, so that the game can evolve over time.

Catch us again next week for a look at this holiday season’s most hyped strategy game, Cry Havoc.

It’s the Little Things

Hello everyone, Tyler here. My facebook is set to private by choice, so I am unable to easily share content that I post there to other platforms. Here is a quick and dirty copy & paste from my feed of a recent two paragraph story I wrote up about an event that transpired during the recent Eldritch Moon prerelease weekend and the days shortly after.

Story time!

During prerelease weekend I hosted the Homeschool event again, with a few new faces. One of them, also named Tyler, had an “audio processing disorder”, so I had to be very deliberate and clear in my speech, more so than I normally would when playing games with or teaching children ages 8 – 12. We ran out 3 rounds, and all of the kids got packs and that super sweet Chris King playmat which they thought was “AWESOME!!”.

Anyway, a few days later, Ryeland and I are working on online orders, and after I get back from a break, Ryeland tells me “your pizza came in while you were out”. Tyler’s mom placed an order for a “dinner box” for delivery and left a note saying thank you on the receipt.

Score! Thanks for reading.

This was from the most recent prerelease, Eldritch Moon. Our first event of this type took place during the Battle for Zendikar prerelease. Here’s a bit of backstory of how this all got started.

We were approached a while back about the possibility of hosting a “kid friendly”

The note left by Tyler’s Mom.

prerelease event for a local homeschool co-op. Of course, we wanted to immediately, but had to make sure everything was all on the up and up with regards to event sanctioning, allocations, timing logistics blah blah blah, you can unglaze your eyes now.

I enrolled myself in the event and waded into the middle of everything to try my best to help everyone understand the cards they wanted to play. Of course, I took the opportunity to hastily construct my own sealed deck and join in, between answering as many rules and interactions questions as possible! After that, we paired up for rounds, greeted everyone, and began playing. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy being an experienced Magic player in this tiny pod. “Undefeated in the Junior League” may or may not have been the theme of the day. Imagine an evil sounding laugh while reading this sentence.

Shame, shame, I know. But here’s the thing! If you haven’t had a chance to play a game with a group of kids (or players of any age, really) who are just genuinely excited to play all the new stuff, don’t have a concept of tempo or mana curves, and just want to slam big vanilla 6/6 creatures on the table while singing John Cena’s theme song, let me tell you this: it’s absolutely refreshing. I haven’t had this much fun playing Magic in the longest of times. We immediately saw to making this a reoccurring event.

Cue my favorite story thus far. During the Oath of the Gatewatch kid’s prerelease event, I assembled a value packed U/G Eldrazi list full of 2/1 flying creatures and tons of removal. I paired up with a fairly shy member of the group, who had assembled his deck entirely on his own. Game one ended quickly, with me being on the receiving end of a 7/4 trampler three times. While shuffling up, contemplating the recent series of events, all around me were joyful shouts of “get rekt!” as one of the other kids played a counterspell. Apparently Deceiver of Form’s real name is John Cena, as another kid found out in short order. Game two between myself and my opponent ended very quickly again with a great curve on my side, and land flood on his. We proceeded to shuffle up for game three and wished each other good luck. After he stumbled on land drops for multiple turns, my Skyspawners crashed in one final time for a lethal attack. To recap: he had crushed me game one, then proceeded to get land flooded in game two, and then missed land drops to close out game three. Most players would be saltier than the Dead Sea.

But, after realizing that he had taken lethal and the match was over, he looked me square in the eyes, extended his hand, and said “good game!” with a beaming smile on his face. I was floored, and after exchanging the handshake, I asked if he could point his parents out to me. All of the parents of the co-op were right nearby, enjoying the show and conversing. I approached my opponent’s parents, and with a slightly bewildered look on my face asked them “Do you know what your son just did?”, which may have set off some alarms in their head. I relayed the story of their son’s sportsmanship and watched their faces shift from “Oh man, what now” to “That’s our boy!”.

Working these side events has been very rewarding, and a great change of pace from my usual activities during our absolutely massive prerelease weekends, which, to be sure, I also immensely enjoy! With the addition of the “fresh faces” I mentioned in the Facebook post, hopefully we’ll see even more of a turnout for the upcoming Kaladesh event.

 

Thank you, everyone, for taking the time to read this. Myself, and everyone else at Jacksonville Game Center, hope to see you soon!

Tyler

Not An Average Saturday

Hello everyone, Tyler here with a story to tell you.

About two weeks ago, we at Jacksonville Game Center were contacted by one of our regulars that goes by the name of Oreo, about the sudden passing of a long-time member of the Jacksonville gaming community named Scott Young. Scott passed in his sleep due to an infection that had spread to his heart, and was survived by his family of a fiance-of-seven-years Jessica, and three children.

Scott Young and Family

Oreo worked together with his long time friend Tea Rorstrom to set up a GoFundMe for Scott’s funeral, which as of this typing has reached $2100 out of the goalpost set at $2000, raised by 32 people in 11 days. About a week ago, we were approached about the possibility of hosting a charity and remembrance event, to which we decided to create a Magic: The Gathering tournament and place a booster box of Eternal Masters into the prize pool. The plan was that the tournament would cost $20 to enter, and that there would be raffled giveaways that were provided as donations by the community, with additional tickets available at $1 each.

At the end of the day, all of the combined fees and ticket sales were to be combined and put towards the family in as a donation.

The outreach from the gaming community was instant and powerful. Expensive product and cards from people’s personal collections began flowing into the prize pool, along with actual donations via “ghost raffle” purchases. To be honest, the amount of promotion we put into this event paled in comparison to the spread by word-of-mouth by friends and family of Scott, and local gamers here in Jacksonville. People were eager to give, and it showed. With over $450 in raffle ticket sales alone, there were prizes worth winning.

We also ran a livestream “feature match” tables during the event via Twitch.tv, and kept a running track of how much had gone into the donation pool. It was around this threshold of donations that several players stepped up between rounds to announce they were adding more cards from their collection to the raffle prizes in order to break the $1000 mark. We even received a phone call from a regular who was watching us on Twitch, who had just placed an order through our website, asking us to place the items he ordered into the raffle prizes.

We’re happy to report that the $1000 barrier was successfully broken.

Jessica arrived later in the night after leaving her workplace and picking up her children. Her friends had only informed her that there was a check available and waiting, but had not informed her as to the total value. When she arrived we all said hello to the kids and stood around for a few minutes, greeting each other as most of us outside of the know had met for the first time that day.

I was unsure of the reaction that I was receiving at first as I handed her a check for $1039, the total sum contributed by the twenty six (and those at home or away) players of the evening, possibly disbelief even, but then a shift of tone followed shortly after. As Jessica’s close friends, Oreo, Chuck, and Tea, explained how much love they had for Scott, informed her that the GoFundMe they had established in her name had recently passed $2000, and how most of all of the events had transpired today, the emotion in the room was absolutely palpable.

Hugs, tears, and thank yous began flowing. It took a bit of strength to not openly join in.

We sincerely wish to thank the community, players, regulars, and strangers alike for not only allowing us to hold such an event by coming together to join in, but also for the staggering amount of generosity shown by all who participated and donated above and beyond from not just their wallets, but their personal possessions as well.

Our wholehearted thank yous,

from Tyler, Jonathan, and all of the JGC crew.

RPTQ Madrid Weekend – Recap

Hey everybody, Tyler here. It consistently blows my mind that Jacksonville Game Center is just under three years old. In that time, we’ve grown from a Gateway store hoping to fire booster drafts for Friday Night Magic, to being selected among prestigious names such as Channel Fireball and Hareruya to host a Regional Pro Tour Qualifier. To be able to host such an event was very much a privilege, and wanting to leave a good impression for our first time, not only did we do our best to ensure the event was ran smoothly and comfortably, we also held what could even be called a “Miniature Grand Prix” worth of events all weekend long! We certainly had our hands full, but to say we had a fantastic time hosting everything would be a tremendous understatement. What follows is a brief synopsis of the flurry of competitive play that took course over the weekend.

Night of the First Day – Friday Night Magic

Less than half of the total player pool!

We kicked off our usual Standard event with seventy-one players in attendance, and that’s not counting the 12+ Commander players and Modern/Legacy players! The finalists enjoyed a cool $400 in the prize pool to be split among the Top 8 after five rounds of swiss. That’s where the “normal” part ended. We also added an achievement rewards program to the mix, that we called Challenges, to the first player to complete them in the night. For example, if you were able to successfully deal 20 damage in one turn and were the first to do so, we awarded you $5 in store credit. That’s fairly simple, so for something along the lines of say “Kill an awakened Waste using the triggered ability of Wasteland Strangler” (aptly named ‘Choking On Puns’), the player was awarded $45 in store credit. Many other difficult challenges were available, and our floor staff was running back and forth to calls of “Judge!” to confirm and record when the achievement was off the books.

From there, a multitude of side events were available. Events that fired included Two-Headed Giant, booster drafts, Legacy Win-A-Box, Modern Win-A-Box, and several pods of Win-A-Fat-Pack Commander. We ended the night with a thorough cleaning, and double checking to make sure everything was hunky dory over in the “Annex”, a private suite we set aside for our higher level competitive events.

Dawn of the Second Day – Last Chance Qualifier

Player Meeting at the beginning of the LCQ.

The Last Chance Qualifier kicked off with almost double our expected attendance: fifty-eight players! They were seated in what we refer to as our Annex, to provide a quiet, cool atmosphere conducive to higher level play. We furnished clean tables and chairs, and provided a large screen to post pairings and timers digitally for easy access for the players. After six rounds of swiss and a cut to the top 8 players, Forrest Mead ended up securing the Regional invite piloting this value-packed U/R Eldrazi list:

Deck: 1st – Forrest Mead (UR Eldrazi)
Main		Sideboard
4	Foundry of the Consuls	2	Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
4	Wandering Fumarole	2	Rending Volley
3	Corrupted Crossroads	1	Eldrazi Obligator
3	Mountain	1	Dispel
4	Thought-Knot Seer	4	Disdainful Stroke
2	Reality Smasher	1	Tears of Valakut
4	Hedron Crawler	2	Chandra’s Ignition
2	Hangarback Walker	2	Boiling Earth
4	Vile Aggregate
2	Eldrazi Obligator
4	Eldrazi Skyspawner
3	Matter Reshaper
1	Island
4	Tomb of the Spirit Dragon
3	Pia and Kiran Nalaar
3	Drowner of Hope
4	Roast
4	Shivan Reef
2	Spawning Bed
60	cards	15	cards
Display deck statistics

Afternoon of the Second Day – PPTQ Sydney

The Top 4, being spectated by Bryan Prillaman.

After Round 3 of the LCQ, we followed up with a fifty-one player Preliminary Pro Tour qualifier. We chose this start time to be able to include the players who missed out or didn’t run hot at the Last Chance Qualifier, and for those that were either already qualified for Madrid or just interested in the Sydney season. Another six swiss rounds down, another champion to take down the first place prize!

I personally had a great time conversing and functioning as floor judge to one of our staffed L3s, Bryan Prillaman, one of the hosts of JudgeCast, and someone who’s knowledge of the game, implementation and theory of policy are absolutely commanding.

All the while, a few doors down, the Last Chance Qualifier was winding down as Forrest Mead swept his way through to the finals, while Dustin Thornton piloted quite a pleasantly surprising choice, Jund Midrange, to the top of this PPTQ to secure a Regional invite for the upcoming Pro Tour Sydney (Eldritch Moon) season. Check it out:

Deck: 1st – Dustin Thornton (Jund Midrange)
Main		Sideboard
4	Sylvan Advocate	1	Self-Inflicted Wound
2	Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet	4	Transgress the Mind
2	Nissa, Vastwood Seer	1	Pulse of Murasa
4	Den Protector	2	Roast
2	Pia and Kiran Nalaar	3	Painful Truths
3	Goblin Dark-Dwellers	1	Ultimate Price
1	Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker	3	Flaying Tendrils
1	Ob Nixilis Reignited
2	Chandra, Flamecaller
2	Duress
4	Fiery Impulse
2	Grasp of Darkness
2	Kolaghan’s Command
2	Murderous Cut
2	Ruinous Path
3	Forest
2	Mountain
2	Swamp
4	Bloodstained Mire
2	Cinder Glade
4	Hissing Quagmire
2	Llanowar Wastes
2	Smoldering Marsh
4	Wooded Foothills
60	cards	15	cards
Display deck statistics

Dawn of the Third Day – Regional PTQ Madrid

The Regional is underway!

This is what we were waiting for! Some of the players that joined us had arrived from as far south as Fort Lauderdale, and as far north as Birmingham. While registrations and check ins were underway, we received quite a few frantic phone calls regarding traffic delays. Upon investigation, apparently at a substantial junction point on the northbound interstate, there was a crash blocking off multiple lanes, and traffic was being rerouted. A minor inconvenience, under normal circumstances.

Unfortunately, in the DOT’s infinite wisdom, the traffic from this junction was being rerouted through Daytona Beach, which at the time just happened to be hosting one of the biggest tourist attractions of the entire year in their city, the Daytona 500! So, not wanting to ruin some players only realistic opportunity to participate in an event that they had earned the privilege of attending, we announced to the players that the player meeting was delayed thirty minutes to accommodate. Onward, to the event proper!

The judges on staff included L3 Justin Turner (Regional Coordinator for the Southeast, and Head Judge for our event), L3 Bryan Prillaman, and our local L2 Gawain Ouronos.

Gawain, collecting deck lists as the players await their pairings for round one.

It was another six round event, but with far more on the line than just a solid prize pool. For those unfamiliar with the prize structure of a regional, here’s a quick breakdown. Once you’ve earned your invite by taking first place at a PPTQ, you receive an awesome promotional card (Snapcaster Mage) just for attending the event. If you battle through the field and make it to Top 8, you’re walking out with a booster box and a half, minimum, and an invite to the next regional! If you win your Top 8 match, you’re walking out with a travel voucher, airfare paid, good for one round trip to the Pro Tour! Essentially, if you’ve ever caught some coverage of the Pro Tour on Twitch or overheard players discussing it and wondered “How does one get into the Pro Tour?”, this event is the Last Train to Clarksville, so to speak. The metagame was quite varied, with showings from Bant Collected Company, UR Eldrazi, BW Tokens, GR Ramp, and even a Top 8 finish by William Bouton, playing UG Lands! You can view all of the Top 8 by clicking here, but here’s Keith McLaughlin’s Esper Dragons list, which he piloted all the way to a plane ticket to Spain!

Deck: Top 4: Keith McLaughlin (Esper Dragons)
Main		Sideboard
2	Swamp	1	Negate
1	Plains	1	Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
4	Island	2	Dispel
3	Prairie Stream	3	Infinite Obliteration
4	Flooded Strand	3	Flaying Tendrils
4	Polluted Delta	2	Arashin Cleric
3	Bloodstained Mire	1	Virulent Plague
3	Sunken Hollow	1	Painful Truths
3	Shambling Vent	1	Surge of Righteousness
1	Murderous Cut
4	Grasp of Darkness
4	Dig Through Time
2	Utter End
1	Painful Truths
4	Silumgar’s Scorn
1	Scatter to the Winds
1	Silumgar, the Drifting Death
1	Dragonlord Silumgar
4	Dragonlord Ojutai
4	Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy
1	Foul-Tongue Invocation
2	Duress
3	Ojutai’s Command
60	cards	15	cards
Display deck statistics

Afternoon of the Third Day – GPT, FOW, and YGO, oh my!

Our facilities were pushed to the maximum. With the RPTQ in full swing over in the Annex, it was time to bring the house down with three more events in our main store. Our staff was all-hands-on deck, and if I had any hair it would have certainly been on fire. We got the ball rolling with Grand Prix Trial: New York.

Gawain broke off from the RPTQ to come and Head Judge this event for us, in order to shadow Abe “Danger” Pfeffer as he gathered experience as a floor judge to work towards his L1 certification. The Yu-Gi-Oh! and Force of Will players began to pile in, and things started to get quite hectic! After redirecting all power to the forward thrusters, we fired off our Force of Will State Championships (hosted by us for Alter Reality Games), our usual Yu-Gi-Oh! Locals tournament, and even a Modern Win-A-Box, almost simultaneously!

Abe and Gawain supervising the Finals of GPT New York.

Once things settled down and the players got into their respective zones, it was smooth sailing from there! The players who did not make it to the top of the RPTQ began to filter back over to the main store to fire side event after side event. Trades abound!

At the end of the day, when the Top 4 was decided and paperwork was filed, what we were left with was, in a nutshell, a learning experience. What we did right, what was possibly unexpected and could be handled better next time, and overall what we each individually took home from the experience was essential.

As I said in the opening paragraph, it was an absolute privilege to be able to host this series of events for the community, both locals and non-locals alike. The feedback we received from players not familiar with our store and staff was invaluable, and like any feedback, integral to any future growth, which we certainly plan on continuing with through the support of the community. This could not have been possible without the support of you guys, the players, for helping us get to where we are today from whence we came.

Thank you, local gaming community, for your past, present, and future support!

Sincerely,

Tyler Karle

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P.S.: Huge shout-outs to the staff (Brian Harris, Jonathan Pennell, Andreas Womack, Ryeland Barnard, Robert Jones, and Langston “Shawn” Burgess) and supporting members (Timothy & Jennifer Miller, Stepfon Walden, and Charlie Chaplin), and Turner and Prillaman and Gawain. This massive weekend would literally have not been possible without you. ❤