Trials of the Zodiac Braves

Greetings! This past weekend our fourth Trial of the season, Mateus, was hosted at Anime Imports, giving us a chance to once again come out to Pacifica and join our awesome San Francisco community. Twenty-one players participated and we were happy to welcome Noah S. and Alson W., who both made their Zodiac Circuit debuts! We also welcome back Jason H. and Russell P. who returned to the circuit after some time away. Also a special welcome to newcomers Jeffrey T. and Jimmy J. who participated in the All-Star Draft side event. This was our last event in the Opus VII meta, so we were very excited to see what decks everyone brought to win it all. While the last event held at Anime Imports saw a huge majority of Earth decks, there was a wide array this time around. Earth/Wind, Mono Water variants, Ice/Fire, Mono Fire, Warrior of Light, Mono Wind, Mono Ice, Lightning/Ice, Mono Earth, and Scions were among some of the decks our players brought. After 3 rounds of very competit...

Hello everyone and welcome to our third installment of Removed From Game , where we sit down with the winners of our circuit events from Trials of the Zodiac Braves  and talk about their decks, the tournament, and the current meta!  If you haven't read the previous articles in this series, you can also check those out below: Removed From Game: Brian Ng Removed From Game: Jeff Migliore January's tournament was Trial #3 - Adrammelech and saw us return to Galaxy Games in Dublin, CA.  We're used to having great turnout at Galaxy Games but thanks to a visiting crew from Sacramento we reached a new season-high of 26 players for this tournament!  Many outside-the-meta decks made an appearance, including some that found their way to the Top 8 (Dawn Warriors!).  You can read the full write-up of Trial #3 here .  The winner of Trial #3 was our Warrior of Light from Season 2, Milo Mosquera, whose Mono Water Fusoya deck brought him to victory! Image courtes...

Greetings! With 3 Trials (and 1 Side Quest) completed, we have officially passed the halfway point for Season 5. Even if we stopped here, it would be considered a great season already, but luckily for everyone, there’s more to come! Here are some of the trends and insights of the season so far: Attendance This season has been great thus far in terms of attendance. We started out slow with only 11 because many had other obligations or were celebrating the FFXIV FanFest. However, the 2 nd trial was bolstered by the SF community at their home store of Anime Imports and we saw a great turnout of 21 participants. We had not seen those numbers in over half a year and it was a welcomed surprise. We expected a bit of a drop-off by the 3 rd event, but the Sacramento crew showed up to Galaxy and we had 25 players! This puts our grand total of unique participants to 35. Parity NorCal is a region in which our talent is top-heavy. The skill within the top 6-ish is quite sta...

I never imagined I'd be traveling across the country to compete in a card tournament. The Journey I've played card games for 23 years now, from Overpower to Decipher's Star Wars and Star Trek games, Lord of the Rings, and so on.  The 'meta' was always myself and my friends, we never went to card shops for tournaments and the vast majority of my games throughout the years were against my best friend.  Almost two years ago in the Spring of 2017 that all changed when I attended my first FFTCG tournament at Isle of Gamers in Santa Clara, CA.  In FFTCG I discovered a whole new community and made a wealth of new friends. Never would I have guessed that over those next two years I would end up taking the reins of a local circuit and helping to guide it into a regular fixture of the local community.  Never imagined commentating matches and having people from across the U.S. (and the world?!?) watching and listening.  I certainly couldn't imagine havi...