Event Review
Registration started at 9AM.
Doors opened at 10AM.
Tournaments started at 11AM.
There were two major tournaments, that were held that day, which were 3v3 Team Battle and Title Tournament. The other events were Random Battles that took over the Wolves Den event from previous events, On-Demand Drafts, All-Star Drafts, and the exclusive Boss Fight
Registration
Honestly, I wasn't expecting much at this event. Unfortunately, I was already disappointed before the event even started during registration when the Title tournament got filled way too quickly. 😞 The cap was at 16, which was way too low for a 125 player cap event. To participate in the 3v3 Team Battle, you had to pre-register your team weeks ahead, so they should've had an idea of the number of participants that wanted to do Title. These were the first two tournaments of the day, so the majority of the players would be in the two tournaments, with a few not participating at all and waiting for the other events to start. There were several of us that wanted to do Title, even some were quite angry when it was filled up, so they added extra spots to the tournament.
Title
Two of my favorite Title decks are Type-0 and Tactics. I was debating which I should play between the two, but I knew that Tactics would've been the better, safer choice. And that it's Tactics. It's awesome. 😏 This was my first Title tournament. I've only done a few Title matches back in 2017 and the day before Fan Fair, and they were only against another Tactics deck. I didn't have any experience with playing against any other Title deck so I didn't know what to expect. Tactics was a safe all-around deck, with a version I made to have answers and fail-safes against many problems I thought I might encounter. I was expecting a super OP XIV Scions deck, but luckily I didn't see it or at least didn't go up against it. I knew that XII was also considered a good Title deck and I saw several people playing it. Other Titles I was worried about was X and XIII, but didn't see too much of it. What I couldn't anticipate was the categories that I'm not too familiar with and the characters they contain, like the earlier FF titles. I basically had to wing those matches and be prepared for anything. Oh, what was reeaaally nice was those Exbursts. 😏 I'm not used to having so many Exbursts in a deck, so they helped me in almost every match. 😏
Matchups
Round 1: Category VII (maybe? Not sure if correct 😕) - can't remember much.
Round 2: Category IV (maybe? Not sure if correct 😕) - quite hazy. I have the memory of a goldfish. 😕
Round 3: Category IX - Geez she rushed me hard. Lucky ExBurst to help me and enter effects like Zalbaag and Mustadio to help me stabilize.
Semi-Finals: Type-0 - Eliud is my Type-0 rival! I'm glad we got to play again. Back in the day, we tested our Type-0 constructed decks against each other. I think he won. Maybe. It was over a year ago. Revenge is sweet. 😏
Finals: Category IV - This was a difficult match at the beginning from what I remember. I'm not familiar with FFIV so I don't know what characters and cards to expect. At one point, he had 4 forwards out. I haven't seen the Yang Ursula combo out in a while so that was scary. Luckily, I had the right cards, Zalbaag and Mustadio to help me stabilize, on top of a lucky ExBurst. Towards the end, it became too lopsided that my opponent conceded.
Overall for the Title tournament, it was major fun. Win or lose, this is definitely a format I enjoy. Luckily, I did win and got first. 😁 Oh, and apparently, there were trophies for the Title and 3v3 Team Battle tournaments. That was not announced and a nice surprise. I bet if that was announced, it would've been a bit more competitive than the casual setting it was.
Title Tournament Brackets
As for the tournament structure, the brackets were very... whacky. With the odd number people that were added last minute, the numbers were off to make a clean bracket resolution. To answer this, Cascade Games gave byes to many people throughout the tournament. This was a very bad idea that many did not like due to the nature of these single elimination tournaments.
Prize Winnings from Stamp Rally and 1st Place Title. It was sweet. They never announced prizing for tournaments, so it was a nice surprise that Top 4 automatically got the stamp rally card filled out and ready to redeem. It makes sense though as we had less time in the day to do other events. I only managed to do two slips for Random Battles (explained later) before the activities ended at 5pm to start the panel. And of course the trophy. Me and several people did not expect that so it was a great surprise.
3v3 Team
This was regular constructed format with a deck restriction of having only 3 of one card across all three decks. I didn't participate in this tournament, but it did have the same problems as Title with the odd brackets. I heard that there were four teams that had byes the first round. There were many complaints with how the tournaments were run. What also irked the players was that there wasn't any info regarding the rules and how the tournament was conducted until right before it started. Some players thought that they could choose who on their team gets to go first and that the matches were played Best of 3, but that wasn't the case. Your team captain chooses who on the opponent team is in their first seat. The opponent team captain then chooses who on your team is in the first seat. Then it goes back and forth with choosing the order of members in the seats. All three players play a match at the same time. There's also a discrepancy with this if it's even a rule at all. Apparently, there were some that didn't do this choosing method at all and the players just played against whoever they wanted. And another unexpected rule: there is no contact with your teammates during the matches. Whether any of this is true, I'd think one of these are. This is all just stuff I heard from other players. Anywho, congrats to Joey, Alex, and Sherry! 😊
Congrats to Joey, Alejandro, and Sherry!
Random Battles
These were constructed format matches with other players. You fill out a slip that you get signed by a judge after each of the three matches you play. You turn in the slip for a random foil promo card. There were some really awesome goodies in the box of foil cards. The judge handing out the cards said there was an untouched foil Japanese Maria Hero in there. 😮 Lots more were included. My two cards that I obtained were plain English common foils. 😒 It was unlimited with how many times you could turn in slips, so the more games you played, the more cards you could get. Players would also document their achievements by writing it on the back of the slips before turning it in. Congrats to Greg Cole AKA Warrior of Light for getting the Most Wins achievements. There was prizing for each achievement and the Most Wins won a Bring Arts Estinien figure signed by Kageyama-san.
I actually was holding my own Gunslinging matches since a lot of other people were doing it. I gave away a Chapters Lightning promo card to those that I lost to (if I could remember to give it to them. 😑) That made some people happy. And if they didn't care for the item, it's definitely tradable. 😊
Boss Fight
Uhhhh.... Can't say much about this since it was pretty exclusive to participate in, which I really didn't like. It was lottery style. You put your name in a pool and you need to be chosen to participate in the Boss Fight. There probably like 4 or 5 matches only throughout the day. I'm guesstimating that number, but it was very small, so not many could try out this new format, which is a big shame. This was the streamed highlight of the event. You can watch it on
Square Enix Presents YouTube Channel and get an idea of how it's like. Stream was hosted by The Break Zone.
Producer Panel, QnA, and Trivia
Uhhhh.... It was a looooong day as we had to wake up early to get there on time, so I was quite tired during the day. I was playing Title against Dan N. during some of the panel (so glad that I didn't have to go up against him during the Title tournament btw 😅). By the time right before we got to the Legendary spoiler for Opus VIII, I put my head down and crashed immediately. I didn't wake up until Trivia was starting. I fell asleep again at the final rounds of the Trivia so I can't even report much on that either. Whoops. 🙄 Oh, but I did manage to hear my question during the panel. Unfortunately, Kageyama-san said it was unlikely that there'd ever be unique FFTCG characters made for the game. 😞
The panel has been summarized by
The Mysidia Post. You can check it out and see all the details from the panel on their blog. RB also posted his
review on the event on the official websiteThe Trivia was made a bit more complicated this year than last year. We had to use the stamp rally card that has black on one side, while the other side is white. The Trivia question was on the TV screen and we gave our answer by holding up the side of the card with the correct answer corresponding to the color on the Trivia question on TV. If you get it wrong, you sit down in your seat. In the Trivia finals, the finalists were pulled onto the stage to answer more trivia questions and received prizes as they answered more correctly. Again, I crashed and fell asleep during this part. Whoops. 😕
Merch Store
Merch store was a bit lackluster for me, so much that I didn't buy anything. The only thing new was the FFXIV carabiners, which I'm not too interested in. There were several people going in and buying and trading the keychains. There was a good lot of us that already did that at Nationals 2018 though so we didn't need to buy anymore.
Credit Card Kupo!
Post Event Dinner, Hotel Lobby Hangout, and Unofficial Day 2
I'm surprised the hotel didn't kick us out. There was a big group of us hanging out in the lobby, playing games, and drinking bottles of beers. It was fun. 😊 There was six of us that ended up doing a draft. I used six of the packs I won from the title tourney. I didn't sleep until 2am that night. 🙄 I was expecting to go to the tournament hangout the next day at Spellhold Games, but it was too early, which was necessary for those that needs to fly back early that night. It was also a far drive for many. 😞
Came across this bus stop ad for KHIII on the way back to hotel from our dinner spot. 😁
Critical Feedback
- One of the biggest gripes for the event was the tournament organization. Yes, these were casual tournaments, but they still need to be done correctly. They were run very unprofessionally with weird brackets and multiple byes. With single elimination, it just doesn't make sense to give multiple round 1 byes.
- It was a big mistake making the Fan Fair only a 1-day event. People flew in for this event and spent a lot of money to be there. It sucks that they didn't get enough value that they could've gotten had it have been a 2-Day event. There wasn't much time to do many things and it went by way too quickly.
- It was an even bigger mistake making the cap too small. So not only was it a one day event, but they capped it at 125. Really Square Enix? 125? Nationals 2017 was held in the same room and the cap was 200. I get that they needed more space for tables and setups, but that was a big step backwards. The community has grown considerably since then. A different venue a should've been considered to have a larger cap.
- I would've like to see some fun activities aside from the tournaments. This event was meant to be a community-driven celebration. A photo booth was what I had in mind and would've been a really nice addition to the event. A lot of the community have become great friends. I think it would've been perfect to have been able to the photos with each other on a FF themed back drop.
Positive Note
One thing I was talking about with someone was how the topping players and winners for the Fan Fair event weren't the familiar competitive players that we usually see at the top. It goes to show that anyone can really win at this game. There's much diversity in the winning circles and we don't see the same people always winning, which I think is pretty healthy for the game. Find the format you like and enjoy it. You just might be good at it too.
Swag Bag
Black FFTCG tote bag, FFTCG black and white stickers, the Stamp Rally card, Yuna Alternate Art promo, Noctis poster, Light and Dark Dice (not the water wind as shown in picture, I accidentally grabbed those for the pic instead of the light dark dice set), and of course, the exclusive Fan Fair WoFF playmat. Sweet swag bag. We were a bit disappointed at first that the dice included was the old Light and Dark dice and not the new water wind dice. But then we received them during the event for filling out the Stamp Rally card. 😊
Special Thanks
I wanted to thank Trevor Charbonneau for giving me his ticket for the Fan Fair. I was unfortunate to have seen the sales ticket page a few hours too late and it sold out before I could buy one. I'm just glad that we're able to transfer tickets for this event, unlike previous events where the tickets couldn't be transferred and they'd go to waste. So again, much thanks to him and his generosity for messaging me and offering his ticket.
