Grip.Cards

Star Wars Unlimited ships March 8th, 2024

From dicebreaker.com

Star Wars Unlimited is probably one of the designs I'm most interested about, since basically no other shipping games use a no-response pass-and-play setup at the moment.

It's going to go up on a bit of a busy season: against the third Lorcana set, the regular-cadence Standard set for Pokémon, and between two higher-interest releases for Magic — right against their audience play with their Universes Beyond Fallout collaboration, and immediately before the highly anticipated Wild West-themed set Outlaws of Thunder Junction.

Null Signal publishes the Netrunner Worlds 2023 Schedule

From nullsignal.games

The larger xCG competitive season is coming to a close, just a handful of days after the biggest of its events — with Jean-Emmanuel Depraz taking the Magic World Championship in Vegas.

I think it's almost time to sit down and think about summing up the year, with the Netrunner Worlds tournament as a very nice stopping point as we start a cycle anew with the holiday season to come.

Lorcana’s Magic Bones, Showing Through

From youtube.com

To my earlier point: the bones are similar enough that existing MtG experts can just apply their skills and be kind of instantly really good.

Last Lorcana link for a while, mostly prompted by MtG content creators like Rebell and LoadingReadyRun taking a stab at it today, though I may return to it briefly as a comparison point.

Lorcana's First Chapter reprints not hitting store shelves until 2024

From dotesports.com

Disney responded to the shortage of products available on Aug. 31, announcing booster products that should trickle in throughout Sept. and Oct. A reprint of The First Chapter is also taking place, with products slated to drop during the first quarter of 2024, shortly after the release of The Second Chapter in Dec.

Last bit of banging the Lorcana drum here, and moving soon off of the thing, but… wow. Wow. What a fucking mess.

Flesh and Blood's Round the Table: TCC × LSS

From fabtcg.com

I don't usually cover product launches because that's most, if not all, of the xCG coverage you can get from literally every interested site. Making an exception for this one, though, as I've been surprised at how much I'm liking the idea of a ready-in-box symmetrical multiplayer experience as an entry point (and possibly even stopping point!) for games, and this one is designed in collaboration with The Professor from Tolaria Community College, whose passion and intense care never fails to reflect in his output.

This is notable as being the first product support LSS has produced for Ultimate Pit Fight — no cards were tailored for multiplayer play in FAB prior to this point. This was a particular sticking point because multiplayer formats reward social interaction, but interactions in UPF are usually limited to players to your left and right; two out of the four heroes in the package both have well thought-out carve-outs that circumvent this restriction.