2013 - Page 3 of 5 - D20 Games Alameda

Magic M14 Events @D20 Games…

By Ben Calica / Leave a Comment / Events, Magic

July 19th is the release date for the next set of Magic Cards, the Core 2014 (otherwise known as M14).

Events for the Pre-release for M14…the return of the Slivers!!

Prerelease:

Prerelease’s are great fun…get 6 packs of the new stuff (and a bonus special promo card) a week before it ships. Make your best 40 card deck and play for fun and prizes. Each

time has both a Casual and Competitive group. Casual plays 3 rounds for prizes, win a round and win a pack. Competitive plays for at least 4 rounds, where it takes at least two winning rounds to get even a single pack, but where the top players can end up with 8 or more packs, depending on how many players are in the group. Even if you just end up playing for the fun, for the $25 entry fee, you end up with the 6 packs of cards that you get to start with to take home and its a good time.

Release Weekend

Friday Night Magic on July 19th will be the Release for M14 and we will Draft that night at 7.
Saturday, we will do a Sealed tournament at Noon, and a Two Headed Giant at 5:30 (Get packs at 4)
Sunday, we will be doing a Qualifier for the Oakland Grand Prix that will be a competitive level Sealed Event ($35 pp). Everyone is free to try their hand, but it will be much more strict rules enforcement then at our casual events.

Game Day

Game Day for M14 will be on Saturday and Sunday, August 11th and 12th. As usual, this will be a standard format event.

D20 Update–Happy 4th–(Closed for the day..open on the 5th..)

By Ben Calica / Leave a Comment / Updates

IMPT:::Closed on the 4th…(gonna take a day off and hang with the kidlets)

HOWEVER…we will be open on Friday for FNM for the second to last Return to Ravnica Block event before we start with Magic M14

The week of the 4th we will be Pokemon and Vanguard as usual, but NEXT week (the 13th and 14th) we will be totally dedicated to the Magic M14 Pre-release with events on Sat at 10 and 4 and Sunday at 11 and 3.
This Saturday (the 6th) we will have Date Night Magic if we have enough kids in town to do it…please call or email to hold spots and we’ll let you know if it is a go…However…we are also doing a very special event that night that the kids are welcome to join (though it is more $$ then standard Date Night Magic…
Speaking of which…. on Sat. night…first 2-headed Giant with Modern Masters.

Modern Masters Packs are in very short supply and therefore very expensive. We’ve been doing a discount for the events to reward people who are playing. But even that can be too much for some budgets, so we’ve decided to do something unusual to create a more (relatively speaking) budget option.

Standard : $50 pp, with each player getting 4 Modern Masters Packs (Normally $15 each)

Budget : $25 PP, for 2 Modern Masters Packs, and 2 Modern Masters Repacks. (these will not have any $$ cards in them, but will have great cards to use to build decks.)

Sunday…Standard at 11:30 and Modern Masters Draft ($40) at 3
Next weekend (13-14th) Pre-release for M14…the return of the Slivers!! Prerelease’s are great fun…get 6 packs of the new stuff (and a bonus special promo card, and

D20 Weekly Update-6-24-13

By Ben Calica / Leave a Comment / Events, Magic, Updates

This is the big week!!! Saturday the 29th we will close the store at 5:30 for the Mighty Draft!!! Limited to 12 players, and priced at $150, this is our ultimate “find an old box and draft it” event by drafting a factory sealed box of Revised (~$1800 a box). This is box with packs that haven’t seen fresh air in 19 years, and we are going to make an evening of it, with old-school rules and good cheer and fun competition. If the event does not fill up, we will take a list before-hand of people that want packs at $50 each.

Congratulations to Marcus for “Clocking” everyone else and winning the ultimate Guild wars Competition Saturday night. We had over 20 players (more than we expected) but got the message loud and clear that people REALLY wanted more two-headed Giants. The pitch has become reality (or the other way around) and we have couple, buddies and a bunch of parent/kid combos who all have a blast at these events. I give..we’ll do more of these. As a direct result, I’m going to add an extra one in two weeks, side by side with the kid magic. This will be for a limited number of teams and will be the first (and possibly only) Modern Masters Two headed Giant. To keep the price down a little bit, we’ll be offering two options, either $50 per player for 4 regular packs, or $25 with two regular modern masters packs, & 2 repacks.)

Also–The week right after 4th of July, we will be doing the Prerelease for Magic M14. We will have events on the 13th and 14th. Entry is 25 and will include 6 packs of Slivery fun…

D20 Update-6-17-13

By Ben Calica / Leave a Comment / Updates

Fun weekend @ D20 Games. We had huge fun with the D&D Game day event. We had about 20 players of all ages in 4 different groups all ended up converging on the final battle with the Dragon Lich. We’ve had a number of requests to run it again, and we’re thinking about doing just that. We also ran two extra Modern Mastesr’s Drafts and they continue to be big fun. One of our regular fixtures at the store, Thomas, opened the best pack we’ve ever seen!!! (grr and grin at the same time…).

We are continuing to try and do our part toward an Unplugged Summer. We’ve been getting in a bunch of great games, both for travel and for game nights. For example we finally got Pandemic into stock. This is a great co-op game with everybody against the (biological) clock in this race to keep the world safe from bugs of a different kind.

This weekend is the Vegas Grand Prix, so good luck to our D20 local players who are going! But those of us left behind will have our own fun with the last Magic Guild Wars sealed event on Saturday @4. This will be a 6 pack sealed, using the special guild packs from Dragon’s Maze, Gatecrash and Ravnica. ($25 for DM, $30 for Gate and Ravnica). Guild selection will be first reserved, first served, so sign up now. Extra Bonus!!! Top two players will get the special Limited edition Return to Ravnica and Gatecrash Guild Clocks!!!

What’s happening @ D20 6-11-13

By Ben Calica / Leave a Comment / Updates

Still looking for a few more good DM’s—Sat June 15th is Free RPG day at the store, in addition to giving out a bunch of free RPG goodies, we will be Running D& to a 3-8 table joint adventure…but we need some good DM’s to help us out—So far we can run 3 tables but we’re looking for a few more.
Modern Masters has been SO FUN!!! The drafts are expensive (Going to $38) but it has been a blast to draft, even for those of us who didn’t know the cards.
ANNOUNCEMENT-Introducing Modern Masters Peasant Cube!?!?! We were struggling with a way to let the kids and those of less means to get in on the fun and came up with a great idea. We’re going to start doing a “Peasant” Cube with prizes. This is a draft where you don’t keep the cards, but can win prize packs for $6! (win a round win a regular pack.)
Taking reservations for the first (and only) Revised Box Draft –Yep…we are doing the most over the top draft ever…a factory sealed box of Revised. Cost is $150 per person to open packs that haven’t seen fresh air in 19 years. 😉 (NOTE–New date for this…June 29th!!!)
Tuesdays starting June 11th… Modern Masters League. Register here… ($100 for 6 starter packs plus 5 weekly packs…more then half sold out so far..)These packs will be cool but in very limited supply. Packs look like they will be between $13-15 per and are FULL of amazing stuff for Magic Modern.
Wednesdays…we are doing D&D encounters from 6-9. NEED A SECOND DM!!!We’ve pretty much got the first table either filled or close each week, so we’re looking for a couple more people to DM for us. Check out my newly written Intro to D&D blog post for parents and other curious types.

This weekend we had a Massive number of Events at the store (I’m still exhausted)

In 3 days we ran something like 10 events, including two that went until 1:30 or later in the morning.

For the opening weekend of Modern Masters, we started the league (I pulled a Tarmogoyf–a $120, card that in it’s foil version is the most expensive card in a new set in our memory at $450!!) I still proceeded to get beat into dust by Don’s flyer deck…ah well, live and learn). On Friday, we ran 3 Friday Night Magic Drafts, two of which were the Modern Masters. The more I played, the more I realized how much the tribal stuff was great.

Saturday’s Pokemon Battle Roads was great, although I may have done a bit to good a job at warning off the little kids. Next time around, if they want to try their deck out in a tournament, let’s bring a few more of them by. Saturday night’s two-headed giant contained to be lovely fun, with some new players joining the building crew of regulars. Once again, the Better Days were a force to be reckoned with that were just so darned gracious that they were hard to get mad at, even as they continued to rack up the wins. One more Modern Masters draft that (this time) actually started at nine, and the evening was wrapped. (Ok…9 is too late to start a draft…we get that now..).

Sunday’s standard was a bit light with many of the regulars having trouble crawling out of bed after the previous night’s fun. But many were back for the last Modern Masters draft of the weekend. The truth is that many of us were a bit mad at Wizards about Modern Masters. Why would they short print a set and make it SOO much fun to play. I also am very frustrated that it is really too expensive for the kids to play. As a result, we decided to create a special redraftable set called a cube with just the common and uncommon (not money) cards that we can use to play for fun without the bucks. We’ll do these as $6 drafts where you don’t get the cards to keep, and all the $ goes into the prizes (1 regular pack per win).

Older news—

No more Adult Yugioh @ D20 for the whole story click here.

Thanks to everyone for the post break in support..we’re doing much better.. Click here for the story.

Example Homepage Announcement

By Christina Laanen / Leave a Comment / Misc

Far far away, behind the word mountains, far from the countries Vokalia and Consonantia, there live the blind texts. Separated they live in Bookmarksgrove right at the coast of the Semantics, a large language ocean. A small river named Duden flows by their place and supplies it with the necessary regelialia. It is a paradisematic country, in which roasted parts of sentences fly into your mouth. Even the all-powerful Pointing has no control about the blind texts it is an almost unorthographic life One day however a small line of blind text by the name of Lorem Ipsum decided to leave for the far World of Grammar. The Big Oxmox advised her not to do so, because there were thousands of bad Commas, wild Question Marks and devious Semikoli, but the Little Blind Text didn’t listen. She packed her seven versalia, put her initial into the belt and made herself on the way. When she reached the first hills of the Italic Mountains, she had a last view back on the skyline of her hometown Bookmarksgrove, the headline of Alphabet Village and the subline of her own road, the Line Lane. Pityful a rethoric question ran over her cheek.

Modern Masters @ D20 Alameda

By Ben Calica / Leave a Comment / Events, Magic

Modern Masters is coming out on June 7th, 2013. This limited print set, brings back a number of the staples in the Modern Format, a style of magic play that uses cards as far back as 8th edition. Generally, the larger pool of cards a format has to pull from, the more valuable the “best” cards are in that format, so getting into Modern unless you happened to be playing and have cards from that time can be an expensive affair. The Modern Masters set was designed to let people get into the format without laying out the (too) big bucks.

The boxes come with 24 packs instead of the usual 36 and given the short print, the packs are likely to go for between $10-12 a pack, so, while this is a lower price then most of the packs that would have the cards in the set, its still not cheap. We’ve decided that since the supply is short, we’d rather make sure that everyone gets a chance to play with them rather than just selling off the boxes. So we’re going to do a League and a number of drafts.

League will be a 6 Pack sealed format starting on Tuesday, June 10th, and while the final price is TBD, we will let people preregister for $60 for the league start, or $100 for the full 5 weeks (getting one pack for free)

Drafts will be $35, with 3 rounds, a regular pack for 1 win, a Modern Master’s pack for 2 wins, and 2 Modern Master’s packs for going 3-0.

Pokemon Elite Box Tournament

By Ben Calica / Leave a Comment / Events, Pokemon

Return of the Pokemon Elite Tournament….New date…4-20-13

Event: Sealed deck Pokemon Tournament

When: 4-20-13 at 11am

Cost: $40-includes Plasma Storm Elite Trainer Box

What: Sealed Deck (Use the 7 packs included in the Elite Trainer box to build your best Pokemon Deck (40 card minimum) One hour to build decks, 3 rounds of play and prizes for winning rounds.

Great for beginners and advanced players alike. Limited to 34 players.

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Two-Headed Giant Intro Deck Battle!

By Ben Calica / Leave a Comment / Magic

We’ve never done this before! 🙂 In the great D20 tradition of weird/cool events, we are doing a special two-headed Giant where instead of the 60 cards each player from 4 packs, we’ll have 30 cards from two packs PLUS the 60 cards from one of the either Gatecrash or Return to Ravnica Intro decks. Each player gets one of the intro decks with their two packs by pulling from a box at random and the two players make their best 40 card decks each from the combo.

This should be huge fun, and as always, limited by space, so sign up early.

When: Saturday April 2oth. Get packs starting at 4, start play at 5:3o.

What: Two-headed giant team event. Three rounds (one game each), win a round, win two packs for the team.

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Special Magic Revised Box Draft at D20 Games Alameda

By Ben Calica / Leave a Comment / Events, Magic

Ok…clearly we are out of our minds. ;-).

UPDATE: Date has been changed to June 29th (Sat). We will close the store for the evening…only open to the players. (each player can invite a limted number of guests.)

BONUS… Beta card draft based on who signs up first—-Beta Lands and Beta cards—We will put in 16 beta lands, and 12 beta commons into a drafting pool that will get table drafted based on the order that people sign up.

So when you find that incredibly rare bottle of wine…you want to get some people together who will appreciate as much and make a night of it…that is exactly what we are going to do with this.We’ve managed to get our hands on a factory sealed box of Revised, and in the grand tradition of D20 Games, and we’re drafting that sucker in what will be a unique trip back in time.

NOTE: For those of us who were around in the day, the fact that the packs were easy to peek, by sneaking up the back cards and holding the pack up to the light. So old packs are almost never a good bet (even the most honest person holding onto a pack for 20 years would have a hell of a time resisting taking a peek.) So when we got a chance to get our hands on a factory sealed box, after taking a deep breath, we decided to go for it. We are vouching for the box…if it ends up being a repacked job, everybody gets their money back, I get the cards and go off hunting the person who sold it to us.

It’s important that people who sign up for this are doing so for the fun of opening up the old packs, feeling those mint cards and the trip back in time. Don’t do it as an investment, or as a gamble counting on getting the high value cards to pay back the cost. Do it for the joy of it and if you can afford it.

We’re going to draft the box and play with old school rules. That means mana burn, the old pre-stack damage rules,and just for pure fun, we’re bringing back Ante (though the Dual Lands will be excepted).

When: 6 pm, June 29th, 2013 We’re going to close the store for this one…

Cost: $150 per person. Prize will be regular packs and some special promos.

LIMIT: 12 people..(Ok…11 since Ben, the store owner is clearly in on this one.)

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