upper-deck
Latest
WoW TCG: Darkmoon Faire Orlando this weekend, and new boosters to come
The first Darkmoon Faire event of the year is set to kick off this weekend (and indeed, has probably already started) in Orlando, Florida. If you're around down there and have any interest in the TCG at all, it's a lot of fun -- they're going to have lots of beginner and advanced tournaments, of course, and an ingame leveling contest on an event server, as well as tips on how to build the best deck and do some card crafting. I went to the Chicago event a little while ago, and I can confirm it's a fun way to spend a weekend afternoon. As always, if you go, take pictures and drop us a note when you get back.In other TCG news, reader Dave (thanks!) sent us a note about what looks to be a brand new booster set, called The Hunt for Illidan. The set was announced quite a while ago, but with a release date of July 2008, retailers are just now ordering the cards. And there will be new loot cards in the new set, so we'll keep an eye out to see what else Blizzard has up their sleeve for new TCG rewards.
Samwise and other artists hold book signing
Today's the day for Blizzard art news, it seems -- next Saturday, Blizzard is holding that Art of Blizzard benefit show, but this past Saturday, Samwise Didier and a few other Blizzard artists stopped by the Barnes and Noble in Huntington Beach, California to sign copies of Upper Deck's The Art of the Trading Card Game book.Glenn Rane is the other artist sitting next to Samwise (who you may also recognize as the frontman for L70ETC), and also in attendance were Tom Bava, Randy Gallegos, Terese Nielsen and Justin Sweet, along with Ben Thompson, who we're told was a big part of putting the book together. I suppose it's too much to ask for Blizzard to leave sunny Southern California sometime to do these signings and meet some of us who aren't lucky enough to live there? It is? Oh well -- at least it keeps them close to their real work.%Gallery-17698%
Upper Deck's Spectral Safari tourney is tomorrow
Tomorrow's the big day for the Spectral Safari tournament that Upper Deck is organizing. At various locations all around the country, TCG players will be competing for prizes of all kinds, including the coveted Spectral Tiger mount. The good folks at Upper Deck have also posted a guide for would-be tiger winners -- they've broken down a few classes in the TCG game, so even if you haven't been practicing maniacally for the last few months, you can still read up and and have a chance at winning the tournament.And don't forget that even if you're not playing, Upper Deck wants you to go anyway; send them pictures or reports of the event, and you might get chosen to win even more prizes. And if you do go, drop us a note here on WoW Insider about what it was like -- obviously, UD is hoping for this to be a big event tomorrow, so it'll be interesting to see who shows up at the various locations. If you are going to compete, good luck! Win yourself a tiger mount!
Upper Deck seeking Spectral Safari Field Journals
The powers that be at Blizzard are really going all out with the Spectral Safari stuff lately -- first Upper Deck announces a series of TCG contests at stores around the country, and then Blizzard announces an official screenshot contest, and now there's a meta contest for the TCG events.Yup, be a reporter for Upper Deck's TCG site, and you could win a Spectral Tiger card of your own. All they're asking is that you go to one of their events next week, bring a camera and a notepad, and the best stories from the event will win prizes, either a Spectral Tiger card or a box of March of the Legion.Pretty cheap way to get someone writing for you, but then again our overlords here at WoW Insider pay us in Savory Deviate Delight and Conjured Glacier Water. So count your blessings, I guess.
Details on the WoW Minis game
WoW Insider has obtained a copy of the "sell sheet" sent to distributors about the upcoming WoW minis game, and it contains information about pricing, pack size, and even some hints at a release date. var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/pc_games/WoW_Insider_obtains_details_on_the_upcoming_WoW_Minis_game'; Basically, the minis will become available in three different ways: there will be the core booster sets, which will contain three minis of the same Horde or Alliance faction, plus three character cards and six ability cards, and will have a suggested retail price (SRP) of $14.99 per booster. Additionally, each booster will have a chance to include an ingame Loot Card, supposedly from the Trading Card Game (there is no word if there will be loot cards specifically for the minis game), and a 1/8 chance to have an "epic" character.More info on the starter sets, including the full text of the "sell sheet," after the break.
A closer look at the WoW miniatures
Are you looking around your WoWspace and thinking, "gee, I could really use more World of Warcraft action figures" then you may just be in luck. As we announced recently, coming this fall, from Upper Deck Entertainment, is the World of Warcraft Miniatures Game. You will be able to acquire miniatures that will serve as both game pieces and collectibles, as each one "will be mounted on a uniquely engineered removable base". Each miniature will reportedly be a highly detailed 3-D rendering of characters in the game, including not only each race and class, but bigwigs like Thrall and, evidently, Leeroy Jenkins, who has already appeared in the Trading Card Game. Your minis will face their opponents in head-on battles as well as raid and dungeon scenarios, which can include player co-operation, much like in-game. These little guys and gals even have their own site, over at WoWMinis.com. Let's take a sneak peak, shall we?
Upper Deck announces WoW minis game
Upper Deck has dropped an announcement about the final conquest of the Warcraft universe over the complete whole of nerd-dom: they're going to make a WoW minis game (yes, there's already an RPG system, so until someone puts together an official LARPing league, I think we're done here). The miniatures will come out in Fall of this year, and the game will feature standalone raid and dungeon scenarios, which means you can play against your friends or play by yourself against "automated dungeons." Upper Deck also says that there will be an Organized Play structure for the game, including Local and World Championships.There's nothing yet about any "loot minis"-- Blizzard is apparently working closely with Upper Deck to put this together, so you'd think they might try to replicate the loot cards of the TCG, but I'm sure that if they do come up with something like that, we'll hear about it. There's also no word on actual gameplay yet, but Upper Deck says that they'll update the site with a downloadable gameplay demo, so we can see exactly how it will work.Excited about this? Halo has been to the mini universe already, as has Marvel and DC. Will Warcraft have success in this, the last of the realms of nerd-dom?
Upper Deck announces new booster set and Spectral Safari details
Two big pieces of news today from Upper Deck about the WoW TCG-- first of all, they've announced details about their latest booster set, called Servants of the Betrayer, and available this coming April. The set will have new sub-factions, new ally types, and heretofore unreleased abilities for your deck. Additionally, the booster packs will continue the trend set in the last expansion, and contain 19 cards per pack, with those extra loot consumable cards showing up more often.Second, Upper Deck has also revealed details of the Spectral Safari, a series of events at local card stores at which players will be able to win the Spectral Tiger Mount card. The contests will take place on March 1st at selected retail locations, and the winner of each contest will take home a Spectral Tiger Mount, while a Robotic Homing Chicken will be given away as a door prize, and Upper Deck will give out other prizes to winners as well.So mark your calendars for March 1st if you plan to attend one of the tournaments, and look out for Servants of the Betrayer in stores in April (that's the booster set, not actual servants of Illidan).
Upper Deck interviews TCG artists Zoltan and Gabor
Upper Deck continues their series on the art of the game by talking to two artists who've done some terrific work for the TCG, Zoltan Boros and Gabor Szikszai. The two partners talk about how they make some of the art of the card game (with a Wacom Cintiq-- drool), and specifically how they made a couple of multi-card pieces. For the most recent raid deck, they had to make a mural of Magtheridon and his channelers that went across five cards, and that the challenge wasn't just creating an interesting piece of art overall, but also making each card interesting enough to stand on its own.Very cool interview, and definitely neat to see what these two guys are like, working on the forefront of digital painting.
Blizzard working with ESL on offline tourneys
Lots of people (including MMO Champion) reported over the weekend that according to this interview with David "Shawn" K of the Electronic Sports League, Blizzard is lending their support to get offline tournaments up and running. Blizzard apparently gave ESL a special event realm to run their tournaments in (Upper Deck has also used an event realm to run online tournaments and instances at their TCG events), accounts on those servers with tons of gold and PvP gear per player, and has also implemented special UI modifications for observers.Interesting. So it seems that the ESL might be stepping up to fill in the space that the WSVG abandoned when they fell apart. In our interview with then-WSVG president Matt Ringel, he also mentioned that they were getting support from Blizzard in the form of special realms and UI mods. So it looks like ESL is now benefiting from the work Blizzard did there.Of course, the other question we have about these types of updates is when, if ever, they'll be placed in player hands as well. Players have wanted an observation system for PvP, especially in the Arenas, for a long time, and it's not a stretch to think that if Blizzard is developing tools for professional tournaments, they might also have a plan to get those tools into player hands in some form. But even if we don't see them in the game for a long time, it's good to know that tournament development on Blizzard's end didn't die off completely with the WSVG.
WoW Idol voting begins
WoW Radio (home of our illustrious podcast) has announced the finalists in their WoW Idol contest, and you can listen to and vote on them right now over on their web site. There are a ton of interesting choices, too, from Sevhnn's dance-hop flavored "MS Warrior Tribute," to Selserene and Rob Munsch's delicate classical turns on Azerothian themes.I have to say that I especially like Jeff Wichtowski's "Keep the Tank from Dying," just because it sounds so perfectly like one of those songs. But these are all good-- "Strength and Honor" from Liquidator and Threat sounds good (is that a Fort Minor sample at the end?), and "I Smile When I Gank" (by Daryl Brewer, who apparently won the last WoW Idol) is hilarious (love the backing vocals), and the Hyskelettes' "Heal!" is a great Beatles cover/parody.But only one can be the WoW Idol popular choice, and win some great prizes (WoW Radio has also added some new ones in-- I believe the winners are also going to get some Winter's Veil boxes from Upper Deck). So definitely run over there and get your vote in ASAP.
New loot cards announced for TCG Servants of the Betrayer expansion
Upper Deck has announced the loot cards that will be appearing in their new Servants of the Betrayer expansion pack for the TCG. As seen on their website, the new loot cards are: Papa Hummel's Old-Fashioned Pet Biscuit, the pet-enlarging consumable that we heard about here yesterday. A "Personalized Weather-making Machine," that will create a random weather effect over a person's head. The options we've heard so far include, sun, blue skies, thunder, rain, and snow. And an X-51 Nether Rocket, which is an epic flying mount. Yes, finally, you can ride around the skies of Outland Slim Pickens-style, on the top of a rocket. Unfortunately, the mount doesn't go rocket speed, it just goes regular speed-- it's available in regular or epic flavors, just like the other loot card mounts. Pretty cool, I guess. The rocket will probably end up being the fan favorite. Although considering that the Pet Biscuit is supposed to be pretty common (it is a consumable, after all), that's probably the one we'll see the most of.In fact, the most interesting thing about the expansion isn't even these loot cards-- it's the fact that these boosters will also have a new hero type in them: "Traitor heroes." For the first time, TCG players will be able to play non-Alliance or Horde NPCs. Interesting. The booster set releases in March of 2008.
TCG goes on a Spectral Safari
Our friends at Upper Deck have announced an interesting series of tournaments with one of the best prizes they could give out: a Spectral Tiger card. There'll be more info on January 31st, they say, but apparently retail outlets all over the country are going to hold tournaments of their own, and the grand prize at each and every one is a Spectral Tiger mount card.There'll also be booster packs given out (of course), and a lucky door prize winner at each event will pick up the Robotic Homing Chicken card. Pretty cool to see that UD is going to spread the love around a bit (although they haven't yet announced just how many tournaments are going down). If there are a lot of retail places participating in this, you could see a lot more ghostly tigers around the realms.More info is coming to Upper Deck's site on January 31st. We'll keep an eye out and let you know when and where your chance to pick up the loot cards will be.
WoW TCG 2007 reviewed, 2008 previewed
Our friends over at Upper Deck's WoW TCG site have been running a little review of their biggest stories from 2007 over the last week (including this terrific piece about the Lady Kath card), so if you haven't been keeping up over there all year, or just want to look back at what happened in the trading card game, go check them out.They've also posted two pieces looking forward as well. The first is a look at what the Organized Play schedule looks like for 2008-- they're going to have a new award to honor the Player of the Year, starting with the just-finished World Championships, and they're also going to have a Group Championships tournament as well. They're also looking for names for both events, so if you'd like to win a Wraith Scythe card, check the bottom of that page.And there's a preview of what's coming in 2008 as well-- an art book is due out soon, and the Magtheridon's Lair raid deck is coming out soon also. We'll keep an eye on what else they've got planned over there-- while the online game is headed to the Sunwell, they've only just scratched the surface of possibilities on Burning Crusade content.
TCG World Championship winners officially announced
Upper Deck has officially announced the winners from their World Championships a while back, and here's all the info on who won and how much.As we noted previously, Guillaume Matignon, a 26-year-old from France, took home the $100,000 1st place prize. He played a Blood Elf Paladin deck, and went 6-3 on his first day, and an incredible 6-0 on Day Two, beating over 400 entrants to win the championship. Impressive.Second place was $25,000 (still nothing to laugh at) and went to Eric Prieur, a 30-year-old from Montreal, and Brad Watson (whom we interviewed before the tourney) and Matt Loomis, both of a team called Cheateyface from Chicago, won 3rd and 4th place, $10,000 each. Upper Deck tells us in a press release that there was also a Ladies' Championship (so ladies weren't actually participating the regular championship?), and it was won by Jacqueline Spreadbury, another of Watson and Loomis' team members.Congratulations to everyone who took home prizes from the event (and it sounds like many, many prizes were given out), and a big grats to these guys. Winning thousands of dollars in a collectible card game tournament-- who knew?
Last chance for Feast of Winter's Veil TCG giveaway
Don't forget that today is your last chance to enter a comment on our contest post (not this one) for your chance to win one of two Feast of Winter Veil TCG gift sets from Upper Deck. These sets are the perfect gift for the TCG player in your life-- they come with: 10 exclusive Feast of Winter's Veil set cards that you can't get anywhere else (including this Gingerbread cookie card) Two pet mini cards (for the TCG, not the online game) A holiday deck box with special artwork And booster packs-- one Heroes of Azeroth, one Dark Portal, and one Fires of Outland pack. Yes indeedy, there's nothing better for a WoW TCG fan this time of year. Our contest ends at 3pm EST, so you have until then to go over to that post (not this one), and leave a comment proclaiming your entry.Good luck!
Enter to win a TCG Feast of Winter's Veil set from Upper Deck and WoW Insider
Didn't (like most TCG players) win anything in this past weekend's World Championships? Worry not! Upper Deck has kindly provided us with not one but two special Feast of Winter Veil collector's gift sets (valued at $24.99) to give away. Yes, just in time for the holidays, here's your chance to win a set for the WoW TCG player in your life (even if that's you).To enter, just leave a comment on this post telling Greatfather Winter what you want for Winter's Veil (and no, saying "a Feast of Winter's Veil gift set!" will not help your chances of winning these) before Friday, December 7th at 3:00pm EST. You can enter only once (and we'll know it if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness' sake!). Two winners will be selected randomly from all the comments on this post within that time to win a set each, so use your real email, and check it within 24 hours of the contest's end, or you'll lose your prize. You must also be over 18 and a US resident due to legal red tape-- click here for official rules.Good luck everybody, and have a merry Winter's Veil!Update: Contest over, comments closed. Check your email.
WoW TCG World Championships wrapup
Upper Deck's first WoW TCG World Championships are over, and the $100,000 winner is Guillame Matignon, who crushed his opponents (including the US Champ Brad Watson) with-- what else-- a Blood Elf Paladin. Unfortunately, it looks like UD's Ben Drago was far too busy to blog, but UD's official site has lots of great information and recaps. This really was a World Champs-- players hailed from countries all over the globe. Here's a great walkthrough of the artists' table, including a few good insights from the artists about where the card art comes from. Unfortunately, Upper Deck didn't let us into that dinner with the developers that they held, but here's the two guys who got to go. And finally, the players: they put together not only profiles of the top 8 players, but after it was all said and done, an interview with the $100,000 winner. The French player ran undefeated for 12 rounds to win it all, and how'd he do it. "Aggressive Horde, always." For the Horde! All of Upper Deck's coverage is available on their website. Odds are that you didn't win the tournament, but worry not-- WoW Insider has your chance to win another WoW TCG prize later this week. Congrats to all the winners in San Diego, and cheers to Upper Deck for putting on what sounds like a terrific TCG event.
Friday at the TCG World Championships
The competitors are just getting started this morning in San Diego, but here's a wrapup of everything that went down yesterday at the WoW TCG World Championship tournament there. First and foremost, they played some cards. Brad Watson, who we interviewed, is doing well, and Upper Deck also put together a huge list of the top constructed decks from Day One. Today, we hear, will be all about Draft decks, as players continue to fight for the Top 8. Here are the standings as of round 9. Manager of Organized Play Ben Drago made some announcements regarding the future of organized play for the TCG-- he rounds them all up on his blog. Looks like UD is going to choose a "TCG Player of the Year," and the contest starts right now at World Champs. Multiple TCG artists were in attendance at the event, including Blizzard's Samwise, a Warcraft icon (literally). Bloody Mary, he says, is his favorite card. There was also some chaos from the online game, as Blizzard reps went head to head against a Warsong Gulch, and brought everyone from Jaina Proudmoore to Hogger into the battle. Upper Deck: you've got to give us bigger versions of those pictures. That looks hilarious. Lots of fun in San Diego. Stay tuned to both Ben Drago's blog as well as Upper Deck's official coverage page for more as we head towards a $100,000 winner at the end of the weekend.
Upper Deck's WoW TCG World Championships coverage begins
Upper Deck has begun their live coverage of the biggest event the TCG has ever seen: the World Championships. They are live from San Diego, as a few hundred players are battling it out in the card game for a $100,000 prize. There are other tournaments going on there as well this weekend-- the Darkmoon Faire is in town and giving away tons of great loot. And Blizzard is there as well-- they're even giving away a Dinner with the Devs, where winners of a certain tournament can sit down and talk shop with the devs: Chris Metzen, Shawn Carnes, J. Allen Brack, Lee Sparks, Scott Mercer, Cory Stockton, Travis Day, and Tom Chilton. Artists are in the house, too: Samwise, Glenn Rane, Alex Horley-Orlandelli, Jonboy Meyers, and Dan Scott will be signing cards and doing sketches for attendees throughout the weekend. Pretty rad if you happen to be as big a fanboy/girl as we here at WoW Insider are.Ben Drago, the manager for Organized Play (who we interviewed a while back) is also blogging live from the event, and been posting updates, both small and big, from his hotel room and the tournament floor. Expect to see lots more coverage, including photos and results, from Upper Deck on the tournament over the weekend.And we'll have more here at WoW Insider, too-- our coverage started yesterday with an interview with one of the top TCG players, and we'll be keeping an eye on the results all weekend. And even if you're not in the tournament at all, you still have a chance to win something-- watch WoW Insider all next week for results of the tournament and our very own consolation prizes.
