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Recapping our Riftbound Summoner Skirmish - October 1, 2026
We've been running Summoner Skirmishes at all sorts of days and times--Saturday is a popular one, but we also recently ran a tournament on a Thursday night. The event didn't start until 6:30p, meaning our dedicated players were here until at least 2a. First and foremost, thank you to everyone who hung out with us in the middle of the night, grinding competitive rounds in the dead of night. Y'all are the reason we do this and you make it worthwhile! I also want to thank our team for being to work ridiculous hours to make these events happen. But, without further ado, let's talk about the event. Top 8 and The Winner Congratulations to Jacob Snodgrass for taking down the event with his Jayce Aurora deck! The rest of the top 8 competed fiercely, and all deserve recognition, too. Here's the full standings: Winner: Jacob Snodgrass (Jayce Aurora) Finalist: Braden Van’t Hof (Ornn) 3/4: Austin Yee (Irelia) Leanna Harrison (Vex) 5-8: Cam Delcourt (Rengar) Sabian Grodkiewicz (Proving Grounds Master Yi) Jee Balangan (Kennen) Ryan Song (Irelia) Final Thoughts It's always a pleasure running events for the local Riftbound community. Word on the street is you're the biggest, or nearly the biggest, Riftbound community in the United States! So that's pretty cool. If you're excited for Riftbound: Radiance, we have two pre-rift events coming up on Saturday, October 17, at 12p and 5p. It'll be our first time using the new Riftbound Event Software, so we're excited to see how it goes. You can pre-register for those events here: 12p, October 17. 5p, October 17. Then, we'll have release for Riftbound: Radiance on October 23rd. There will be a limited supply of booster packs, showdown decks, and vaults that morning, so please stop by and say hello!
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Reality Fracture Prerelease Weekend
Thank you to everyone who attended our Magic the Gathering: Reality Fracture prerelease weekend from September 25 to 27th! We sold out every ticketed event (Friday night, both time slots Saturday, and our Sunday Two-Headed Giant), and saw plenty of you for Sunday night's walk-in event despite the overlapping Broncos game. We even had a player pull off the Splinter Twin combo with Divining Duelist during our Two-Headed giant tournament, creating infinite tokens and winning the round. What is a Prerelease? If you've never been to a prerelease or aren't familiar, here's the basic idea: a week before a new Magic the Gathering set comes out, we host a weekend of preview events. These events are all sealed, meaning you don't need to bring any of your own cards. Everything is provided to you through the Prerelease Packs, which include a foil rare or mythic rare card, six booster packs of the upcoming set, and a fancy spindown D20 dice. Before the event begins, we check everyone in and get everyone seated. Then our tournament organizer (one of our staff or owners) makes a few announcements. Then our judge (a highly-skilled and knowledgeable Magic player) explains any weird, set-specific rules, gives an introduction to how prerelease is played, and starts a short informative video on the set. You then get 50 minutes to open your six packs and put together a small deck. We're not talking a full 60-card or commander deck, mind you, but usually a 40-card deck that's a mix of 2/3 colors, composed of 23-25 of the best cards you opened and 15-17 land cards. We provide the basic lands in-store so you only need to worry about adding fancy lands you opened out of your packs and balancing how many of each you want to include. Once you have your deck together, the rounds start! Tournament Rounds In a typical prerelease, we play 4 rounds of Swiss (best-of-3). You win prizes if you win more than half your matches (winning 2 matches, losing 1, and tying 1 is the lowest score you can get to qualify). In each round, we post the pairings directly to your MTG Companion App and display them on our in-store TVs, complete with your opponent's name and table number--all our tables are numbered, so you can find your seat easily by following their order. Then, you sit down with your opponent, introduce yourself, and make a little small talk (or stare in silence as you focus your mind on the upcoming battle) and shuffle your deck. You two will decide who goes first, usually by rolling a dice, and then present your decks for the opponent to cut (taking the top half of the deck and putting it on the bottom to make sure they aren't up to any funny business). From there, you're playing Magic! The person who loses game one gets to decide who goes first in game two and, assuming they come out victorious, the series goes to a third game to break the tie. If one player wins the first two games in a row, the round ends, and that player is the winner. Players report their results through the MTG Companion App or by asking our judge, and once everyone's reported, the round ends and we create pairings for the next round. Round pairings after the first are decided first by standing (winners pair with winners, and so on) so you're playing on an even field against people with a similar record. Two-Headed Giant Every Sunday morning of prerelease, we host a special type of prerelease called two-headed giant. Most of the rules above apply, except for a few particular changes: instead of playing alone, you play as a team of 2 and face an opposing team of 2 (the two-headed giant, if you will) you and your partner share life (30 instead of 20) and take your turns at the same time. Your decks and battlefields are still separate, but you play as a unit. during deckbuilding, you share your two prerelease kits (12 packs total) to build your decks. This means you can share cards to make two decks that each end up feeling more consistent and stronger on average than during a regular single-player prerelease. we play five best-of-1 rounds instead of the usual four Swiss rounds. Two-headed giant games take longer, so there's only time for 1 game per round. The winner takes all. But, because we all love playing Magic, we add a fifth round so you get a little more gameplay than a typical event. prizes are awarded, in even numbers, by team so you and your partner share the spoils. Attending Prerelease We always put up preregistration for 4/5 of our prerelease events, with the exception being Sunday night which we always reserve for walk-in customers in case the weekend sells out and someone hasn't gotten to play. Our usual schedule is: Friday at 6p - sealed Saturday at 11a - sealed Saturday at 5:30p - sealed Sunday at 11a - two-headed giant sealed (play as a team of 2 and take your turns at the same time) Sunday at 6:30p - sealed Preregistration is always found here on our website, nested in our online store under Event Tickets. The two-headed giant ticket is a single ticket for both players--you figure out who you're bringing on your own. To check out our upcoming prerelease (and other) events, you can visit our Event Calendar. That's the best place to find out what's coming up. You're also encouraged to join our Discord community, where we post about upcoming events, answer questions, and share exclusive behind-the-scenes peeks and pre-orders to our most loyal customers. Star Trek Prerelease Our next prerelease is for the Universes Beyond set: Star Trek. Tickets are already up on our website, in fact! Prerelease is a great time for new players to get into the game, for people who used to play to get back into the game after years away, and for existing players to preview the new set and get the cards early. It's one of our most beginner-friendly Magic the Gathering events, and it's also just a great time all around. The people are friendly, the cards are new and exciting, and the vibes are excellent. We'd be so happy to see you at our next event, or any upcoming sets if Star Trek isn't quite your thing! *All image credit goes to Ryan Taylor.
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Recapping our Riftbound Summoner Skirmish - September 5, 2026
Thank you to everyone who showed up to our first Riftbound: Vendetta Summoner Skirmish of the season this past weekend on September 5. It was a ton of fun hosting everyone! As many of you might have noticed, Ryan Taylor was walking around taking pictures of the event. He's been helping us capture the excitement of our tournaments, and you'll notice the photo quality of the pictures in this post is much nicer that when I do it myself. Tournament Recap This tournament saw a diverse meta game filled with a variety of players both veteran and beginner. At the end of the swiss rounds we were left with four different decks for the Top 4: Vex, Hook Kennen, Rek’sai and Lux Combo. Congratulations to Kyle for taking down the event with Kennen! A round of applause, too, to the top four: Kyle - Kennen Jason - Vex Moe - Lux James - Rek'Sai Below, we'll highlight some especially good moments from the event. Semifinals Our semifinal between Moe (Lux) and Jason (Vex) came down to game three where Ahri Alluring’s powerful hold ability applied enough pressure to beat Lux’s looming infinite combo. The other semifinal saw Kyle (Kennen) going tall and wide, utilizing cars like Illaoi Prophet of the Great Kraken and Up From the Deep, to stave off James’s (Rek’sai) swarm of units. And with that, the stage for our final was set: the less popular but still powerful variant of Kennen, utilizing powerful token generating cards alongside Baited Hook to generate an army of units, versus Vex, generating advantage through unbreakable holds backed by potent purple interaction. Finals Game one started with Jason creating a small lead and putting some units on both battlefields to start developing the powerful holds Vex is known for. After a small exchange earlier on turn three, Kyle recognized a window to play an aggressive Grand Stratagem utilizing his remaining four units to try and take the battlefields. Kyle was unsure whether this next play would win or lose him the game, but seized the window and played the card with the +5 might making his units strong enough not only to clear, but conquer both battlefields. Having all of his early development reset to zero was too much for Vex to overcome and it would be enough for Kyle to secure game one. Game two saw Jason get off to an early lead utilizing his legend to gain significant card advantage. An early Lightning Rush played by Kyle ended up putting Grand Stratagem into the trash with both players chuckling about the card that ultimately decided game one not being a factor. Through careful development and some timely interaction Jason was able to secure a victory and force a third and final game. Game three had both players employing their plans smoothly. Jason carefully built up a formidable hold on their battlefield while Kyle started amassing an army trying to find an opportunity to attack the defenses on each battlefield. Entering the final turns of the game, Jason was threatening the win through a significant hold while Kyle's base had what seemed to be a million units. Recognizing that there would be no other time to strike, Grand Stratagem was again played and suddenly Kyle’s small units had grown to an insurmountable size. Jason played all the interaction that they had to try and fend off Kyle’s bolstered units, but ultimately didn’t have enough to defend the massive attack. What is a powerful, but sometimes unassuming card (Grand Stratagem) ended up being the defining factor for the final and after a tense match and skilled play from both players our Skirmish champion was crowned. Image Gallery Here's how it looks to attend one of our Riftbound events! *All image credit goes to Ryan Taylor.
Learn moreMagic: Final Fantasy Prerelease Primer
Edit: we had a fun and successful Final Fantasy prerelease weekend! Thank you to everyone who stopped by, whether to pick up pre-orders or play in our events. Other edits are in italics throughout the post. It's almost here! Magic the Gathering: Final Fantasy prerelease weekend starts on June 6th, just under a week away. If you haven't seen the card spoilers already, you can check them out on Scryfall here. There are some incredible cards in both the regular set and the commander set, and considering the regular set will be legal in 60-card formats like Standard and Modern, it's going to be interesting to see which cards get played in competitive formats. Because this is already the best-selling Magic set of all time, and because we're seeing incredible demand for this release, we wanted to go over what to expect this week, what's the same, what's different, and how to best navigate the Final Fantasy prerelease weekend. Pre-Orders Pre-orders for Final Fantasy have been closed since early May. We had Play Booster boxes available in our online shop but our remaining stock is reserved for in-store customers until Wizards of the Coast completes a reprint of the set. If you did pre-order, then you'll receive an email on Monday, June 2 with details for how to pick up your order. We'll have two lines going on Friday morning, one for customers who prepaid to swing by and pick up their items, and the regular line at the counter for anyone looking to shop. If you did not pre-order, then you'll have to stop by on Friday morning or throughout the weekend to pick up the items you're looking for. We'll have plenty of singles and Play Boosters, but are going to run out of Commander Decks, Collector Boosters, and Bundles pretty quickly so please plan your trip accordingly. In the future, for highly in-demand releases like these, we typically offer pre-orders ahead of time through our Discord server of nearly 2,000 members. All you need to do to enjoy these perks is to join our community here! Item Availability Because Final Fantasy is so popular, and because just about every store in the country got allocated down from our original order requests, some items are going to disappear fast this weekend. We tried really hard to get as much of this release as possible, but because allocations were so tight it's important to recognize the real constraints facing the following items: Collector Boosters - we're not selling full boxes on release. Instead, we're limiting sales to 6 packs per person. We got less than half of what we ordered and are expecting to be sold out before the end of Friday. Collector Commander Decks - two of the decks are available: Counter Blitz (FF X) and Scions & Spellcraft (FF XIV). The other two decks already sold out through pre-orders. Commander Decks - we'll be low on Limit Break and Scions & Spellcraft, but have a decent supply of the other two. These were the most pre-ordered items overall and will be limited on release. The good news, though, is commander decks aren't a single-print-run item so we will be restocking them in the future. Bundles - we got very few of these from our distributor, so they'll go fast. On the other hand, we have plenty of Play Booster Boxes to go around, and are opening a ton of singles from the main Final Fantasy set so you can get all the goodies you need to upgrade your decks, build new ones, and fill out your collection. Prerelease Events Unlike normal prerelease weekends, you must have a ticket ahead of time to attend our events. Eventlink doesn't enforce a player cap, but we only have 66 chairs, so we're selling tickets ahead of time to guarantee your admission to each event. If you buy a ticket, you have a spot in that event. Please be aware that tickets are nonrefundable. Buying a ticket is a commitment to attend an event that stops someone else from being able to play, so we want to make sure everyone who has a ticket will be attending the event. That said, if something comes up, please let us know and we'll do our best to work with you. You can purchase a ticket for the Friday night event, Saturday morning and evening events, and our Sunday Two-Headed Giant event right here from our website by clicking on the products below. Please note that both you and your partner must separately purchase a ticket for Two-Headed Giant so we can register both of your names. Our Sunday night event at 6p is walk-in registration only to end the weekend on a more casual note. Event tickets removed since they're in the past.In the future, visit our shop tab to preregister for our events. If we have spots leftover for any of our events, we'll open up registration to in-store customers about an hour ahead of the start time. For sold out events, we'll have a waiting list where you can put your name ahead of the event in case anyone no-shows or we end up with extra space. Promos We'll be giving out the crystal d10 dice to each person who attends our events this weekend while supplies last. It'll be given to you when you check in for the event, and you'll also receive a special token of Tim! One of our good friends made custom tokens and we chose to turn Tim into his very own 8-bit Final Fantasy persona. When you attend your 2nd prerelease of the weekend, we'll also be giving out commemorative Final Fantasy dice bags. These are extremely limited and will also go out on a first-come basis based on when you check in for your 2nd event, so please plan accordingly. Miscellaneous Events If you are not a Magic player and are looking to use our gaming space this weekend, please understand we expect to be absolutely packed and may not have room to accommodate you. Call the store ahead of your visit (303-482-1829) so we can let you know if there's room. Closing Thoughts It's going to be an incredible weekend! Please be courteous to one another and to our team, and have fun playing in the most highly-anticipated Magic the Gathering prerelease of all time! We're so excited to have you come game and shop with us, and will do our best to make sure it's a fun and successful weekend for all of us. PS, look at Vivi. Look at this cute art. This set is amazing!
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