Hey, you! We hope you enjoyed your Easter break. With the end of the financial year, we've got our eyes set on new horizons (including Modern Horizons 2! But we're getting ahead of ourselves). There's a lot to cover, so let's get to it.
Strixhaven: School of Mages
Enrollment starts now! We've made the entire range of Strixhaven products available to preorder on our website, and we've opened pre-registration for our Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (Two-Headed Giant) (Pre)Release events. The reason 'Pre' is parenthetical in this case is because Strixhaven has been delayed across Oceania. The start of pre-release weekend and release day now coincide on Friday, 23rd April 2021.
If you're looking to preregister for pre-release events, do keep in mind that the prerelease packs are themed around the Strixhaven houses this time around! If you reeeally want to rep a certain house, be sure to let us know when you preregister! We have a limited supply of packs for each house, and they'll be handed out on a first-come-first-served basis.
Calico Commander League - Season 3 Results and Season 4 Changes
First, we've got some winners to announce. Congratulations on scoring some sweet prizes!
1st Prize - 50 Points - $100.00 Store Credit
N/A
2nd Prize - 40 Points - $25 Store Credit
James Hopkinson - 45 Points
Kyle Amptmeyer - 45 Points
Domanic Lapslie-Rogerson - 43 Points
Scott Pettie - 40 Points
3rd Prize - 35 Points - $15 Store Credit
Vaughan McCardle - 36 Points
4th Prize - 25 Points - 1 Set Booster
Kit Latimer - 32 Points
Patrick Curran - 28 Points
Joseph Mason - 26 Points
Those who've won store credit will find it on their customer accounts, ready to be spent. Those who've won boosters, please come in-store to collect!
Now for the interesting part.
For Commander League Season 4, we're going back to our roots. There will still be the theme nights that you've come to know and love (or loathe), but the points system has been simplified.
There has been some heated discussion amongst our players over the past month about where best to draw the line between card power levels, availability, and whether to soft- or even hard-ban certain cards. One problem that we've identified is that the presence of high power-level cards correlate with how much an incentive is placed on winning. So, we've done two things;
1) We've removed all point penalties and pseudo-restrictions.
2) Points are now awarded for league night and theme participation only. Additionally, participation points are awarded for each night you attend (i.e. if you play both Tuesday and Friday in the same week, you will receive points for both)
You guys can go ahead and read the fine print here, but it all comes down to encouraging participation in the community without the fear of getting stomped out of prize brackets. The league prize structure will remain the same as last league (but the top payout has been reduced); the only way to score the top prize is to attend all nights and participate in all themes!
- 50 Points - $50.00 Store Credit
- 40 Points - $25.00 Store Credit
- 35 Points - $15.00 Store Credit
- 25 Points - 1 Set Booster
Calico Keep Weekly Event Roster
Flesh and Blood Road to Nationals - Sunday, 9th August 2020
We'll let you in on a little secret... we've actually been firing MTG Drafts for a while at Calico Keep now, for the last three weeks in a row in fact! Every Thursday for the last three weeks, we've gathered together a group of our regulars to see if we'd have consistent numbers to get a weekly draft happening again in Paraparaumu, and the results have been promising!
On April Fool's Day, our players competed in a Time Spiral Remastered draft to claim the coveted top prize of our copy of Secret Lair Drop Series: April Fools. Feather, the Redeemed shifted through Time and Space to help Steve Arthurs take out the top spot. Congrats Steve! That full-art foil Storm Crow looks mighty fine :)
With the trial run complete, it's time to make it official; Calico Keep will be holding weekly MTG drafts on Thursdays at 6:30pm! Our new event schedule now looks like this:
Monday - N/A
Tuesday - Commander League @ 6:30pm | Flesh and Blood Armory @ 6:30pm
Wednesday - D&D @ 6:30pm | X-Wing Meet-Up @ 6:30pm
Thursday - MTG Draft @ 6:30pm
Friday - Commander League @ 6:30pm
Saturday - N/A
Sunday - N/A
Demand for Junior League on Sundays has dwindled significantly, but the kids still come every Sunday for some friendly games of Commander! Feel free to pop in for some games over the weekend; we've always got players raring to go!
That's all the news we've got for now.
Time to do some final prep before we open back up again tomorrow.
See you soon!
