G
Gizmo
Guest
1) this place still exists
2) I remembered my password
2) I remembered my password
T
train
Guest
at least its not Detroit...
G
Gizmo
Guest
Amazingly, I was actually going to go to PIttsburgh - we'd earmarked that as our next 'three amigos' trip.
Unfortunately it turns out that Pittsburgh clashes with a WoW TCG Darkmoon Faire that I'll be writing for.
Unfortunately it turns out that Pittsburgh clashes with a WoW TCG Darkmoon Faire that I'll be writing for.
G
Gizmo
Guest
The WoW TCG is in rude health and growing rapidly.
It was previously run by Upper Deck, who had good people working for them but at a corporate level would struggle to find their ass with both hands. If UDE ever did manage to find their ass they would then go on to mutilate themselves savagely by mistake. For evidence of that see their retarded Yu-Go-Oh lawsuit with Konami, where UDE fraudulently printed fake copies of their own ultra-rare cards in order to insert them into expansions they couldn't otherwise sell. (It's like WotC taking back Kamigawa boosters, randomly inserting 10,000 fake Black Lotuses in them, and putting them back out on sale. With the added kicker that it was Konami who owned the rights to print Black Lotuses, not WotC, and WotC had to steal copyrighted files from Konami and smuggle them to a dodgy chinese printing house to make it happen).
Recognising UDE as the retards that they were, Blizzard took the WoW license back,and formed their own company to create board/card games called Cryptozoic. Cryptozoic immediately hired most of the excellent people who had worked for UDE, and with the marketing backing of Blizzard have set about a reboot of the WoW TCG. They was a brief hiatus while Cryptozoic got themselves sorted out and it looked for a while as though the TCG was going to die, but once Crypto got the basics sorted (like getting offices, and chairs, and an internet connection, and a website, and a printer for the cards) they've barely put a foot wrong.
WoW TCG was already the best TCG in the market, all they needed to do was get people to try it. They finally figured out that things like starter decks were quite important at getting players to start playing their game, streamlined the rules a bit, refreshed the card layouts, and basically dusted the whole thing off and polished it up.
It's Magic 2.0 and I love it.
If anybody is interested - Crpytozoic have signed up with Penny Arcade to produce a range of other games as well...
http://www.cryptozoic.com/
It was previously run by Upper Deck, who had good people working for them but at a corporate level would struggle to find their ass with both hands. If UDE ever did manage to find their ass they would then go on to mutilate themselves savagely by mistake. For evidence of that see their retarded Yu-Go-Oh lawsuit with Konami, where UDE fraudulently printed fake copies of their own ultra-rare cards in order to insert them into expansions they couldn't otherwise sell. (It's like WotC taking back Kamigawa boosters, randomly inserting 10,000 fake Black Lotuses in them, and putting them back out on sale. With the added kicker that it was Konami who owned the rights to print Black Lotuses, not WotC, and WotC had to steal copyrighted files from Konami and smuggle them to a dodgy chinese printing house to make it happen).
Recognising UDE as the retards that they were, Blizzard took the WoW license back,and formed their own company to create board/card games called Cryptozoic. Cryptozoic immediately hired most of the excellent people who had worked for UDE, and with the marketing backing of Blizzard have set about a reboot of the WoW TCG. They was a brief hiatus while Cryptozoic got themselves sorted out and it looked for a while as though the TCG was going to die, but once Crypto got the basics sorted (like getting offices, and chairs, and an internet connection, and a website, and a printer for the cards) they've barely put a foot wrong.
WoW TCG was already the best TCG in the market, all they needed to do was get people to try it. They finally figured out that things like starter decks were quite important at getting players to start playing their game, streamlined the rules a bit, refreshed the card layouts, and basically dusted the whole thing off and polished it up.
It's Magic 2.0 and I love it.
If anybody is interested - Crpytozoic have signed up with Penny Arcade to produce a range of other games as well...
http://www.cryptozoic.com/
G
Gizmo
Guest
http://www.wowtcg.com/tournaments
All the old cards still function in the game. The game has created it's own version of 'Standard' which is known as Core, as opposed to Classic which allows every card ever printed.
Core is the last 3 years of sets (so currently Drums of War onwards) and Core tournaments are intended to be attractive to players who don't want to spend their entire day playing cards. With that in mind rounds are Best-of-One, no sideboard, and with a time limit of 30 minutes. You'll play slightly more rounds to make up for the fewer games per round (might play 5 rounds instead of 3 in a Battlegrounds) but I see that as a good thing - more opponents, play against more variety of decks, meet more new people... it's all good.
They've really focussed on Core a lot recently. I'm in Cologne this weekend for the Darkmoon Faire (like an MtG Grand Prix) and it's going to be the first major Classic event in a long time - something like 1,000 new cards have been printed since the last major Classic event so it will be interesting to see what people play!
All the old cards still function in the game. The game has created it's own version of 'Standard' which is known as Core, as opposed to Classic which allows every card ever printed.
Core is the last 3 years of sets (so currently Drums of War onwards) and Core tournaments are intended to be attractive to players who don't want to spend their entire day playing cards. With that in mind rounds are Best-of-One, no sideboard, and with a time limit of 30 minutes. You'll play slightly more rounds to make up for the fewer games per round (might play 5 rounds instead of 3 in a Battlegrounds) but I see that as a good thing - more opponents, play against more variety of decks, meet more new people... it's all good.
They've really focussed on Core a lot recently. I'm in Cologne this weekend for the Darkmoon Faire (like an MtG Grand Prix) and it's going to be the first major Classic event in a long time - something like 1,000 new cards have been printed since the last major Classic event so it will be interesting to see what people play!
T
train
Guest
WoW has a TCG? i don't think I'd noticed...