Earlier this week flyers began to appear at stores in the area surrounding San Antonio. Unfortunately an editing error led the flyer to say the format for the gp is modern.

GP San Antonio is Standard Constructed Format. We have sent new flyers to all the stores along with a letter exposing the mixup and asking them to replace the incorrect flyer with the new one.

We apologize for any confusion it may have caused the players who saw the old, incorrect flyer.

Again GP San Antonio is Standard constructed.

Stay tuned for pictures of the completed playmat very soon! The final has been approved and we’re heading to press. We are printing playmats for every player who comes to GP San Antonio. We’ll have plenty on hand and in the unlikely event we run out due to a giant surge, we will print and mail additional Playmats to anyone who doesn’t get one on site!

Steve

In the last couple days I’ve gotten the sketches for Both San Antonio and Omaha and they both look really great!  They’ve passed along to WotC for approval and pending that will get turned into full pieces pretty quickly.

Once the Sketches are Approved, we’ll share them here so you can see the beginnings of the awesome pieces we’ve got coming.

Steve

Today an announcement came down from HQ introducing the Exemplar Program as the new method of distributing foils to judges in the DCI judge program. The most immediate effect of the foil “policy” change is that judges at GP events will no longer receive foils from WotC as gifts for their efforts.  (As of 2015 event year which starts December 2014)

In the long term it means compensation for judges at GPs will be shifting and will be directly on the back of the Organizer. I feel ultimately this is a good shift and will help bring the judge organization in line with comparable organizations.

In the short term it will mean some changes to how judges are compensated and that’s going to take a little time to figure out and optimize. We (PTOs) knew this was coming for a little while, but not the extent of changes. So we’ve been waiting just like you.

My staff and I are working on our comp levels and will hopefully have something put together soon so people will be able to make intelligent choices when determining where they apply to GPs moving into 2015. We’ve had a few discussions about it already and now that we know more we’ll get that info worked out and publicized by the end of this week.

Steve

GP Minneapolis is all wrapped, events have been reported and (most of) my paperwork is done. Thanks to all 1680ish of you for coming out on a holiday weekend. I got to take my wife out for a slightly delayed Mothers Day dinner tonight after a day of wrap up work.

This was the largest single event my team has run by about 400 players and I feel like we withstood the test very well:

Thanks to the judges for their dedication and hard work.

Thanks to the standby judges who were activated to help us deal with the surge.

Thanks to the vendors who kept you all in cards

Thanks to the artists for mixing it up with all of us fans.

Thanks to the GGs and coverage crews for bringing us great stories all weekend.

Special thanks to Adrian Sullivan for working up the Planes Talkers panel, it was fun to watch and we’ve gotten a lot of great feedback. I can’t wait to do it again in San Antonio!

Thanks to my ops crew for stepping up as they always do! You all inspire me every event!

And thanks to Wizards of the Coast for the game we all love, and personally for the opportunity to do a job I love so much!

The next stop for team Legion is Pro Tour Atlanta where we’re setting up retail space for the pros and observers. Come say hi to Amanda, and Ross, and me!

Thank you all again for a great GP experience, Magic Grand Prix events are really an amazing time made up of so many pieces, not the least of which are my fellow magic fans!

Draft?

Steve

Hey everyone, quick update: the site for registration for GP Minneapolis is currently offline. it’s an external page we link to (constantcontact.com) and apparently they are having trouble right now.  I expect it wont take long and we’ll be back up and running. thanks for your patience while they sort out the issue.

Update: as of 9:30pm CST constant contact is still down and no indication of when it’ll get back online. We will keep you apprised and apologize for any inconvenience.

Update10:22pm CST: we’re back online!

Steve

I recently played with Magic the Gathering Hall of Famer Bob Maher and notable deck builder/avid board gamer, Brian Kowal, who both enjoyed their game. Bob won, of course, and Bob had this to say: “There’s nothing else like it on the market, it fills a currently empty niche”.

Legion Supplies launched our first kick starter to publish Foretold, our first board game, 1 week ago today.  We hit 20% funding very quickly and have moved up to 50% funding in just 1 week.  We think it’s a lot of fun and the expansion possibilities are great. It’s very exciting and we’re all super proud of the game. It was developed by Magic Cruise Alum, Jay Semerad. Jay has a background in the video game industry but this is his first board game. He’s come out of the box hard with a great concept that wraps you up and takes you on a fun ride.

The game has a deck-building element at its core, but you don’t ever actually build a deck! You’re drafting cards to play and you get to choose which ones you play in what formation.  It adds a tower defense mechanism to the game as you attempt to conquer tiles in your opponents’ temples to reach their temple’s heart and smite the power that lives there! The cards you purchase are grouped into a raiding party or temple defenders. Finally there are Fate cards and relics which are spells and items you can use through out the game at various times to change combat outcomes, aid a political ally, or save yourself from certain doom!

When it’s all put together the game plays a lot like EDH, and allows for dozens of different strategies and some pretty crazy combos. I’ve been having a riot playing it, and I think a testament to the fun of the game is how much time we spend after the game reliving the game we just played!  We’re hosting a live play demo on Sunday night on Legion Games Twitch TV broadcast channel. We threw one together last Sunday and it was a lot of fun! We were in a busy store with limited microphones available so you only got to hear me. The feed will be much improved this week as we come to you from a quite store after hours and will have full mic on all players. If you’d like to watch our original demo video, it can be found here.

I’ve had the opportunity to publish games in the past. but I hadn’t seen one that sparked my interest enough to do it.  I’ve heard lots of nice things from backers already (Cryptozoic, Stoneblade), and Magic Artist John Matson just posted a bit on his Facebook that made me so proud:

“I have never backed anything before on Kickstarter, but I just did tonight. For me, just his name alone being attached is enough to convince me it’s worthwhile “.

I can’t properly express how much all of this support has meant to me; these are affirmations that people appreciate the things I’ve done and have been involved in over the years.  Thank you all for your support so far, and I look forward to bringing you this excellent game.  It will make me the happiest man on the planet to know that people are loving this game and that it brings them the same joy and fun it has brought us!

Steve

We have an approved playmat for Grand Prix Minneapolis 2014!

The first 700 players to show on site (and register, or check in for their preregistration) will receive this custom, brand spanking new art playmat done by Magic Staple artist Tom Baxa.  Tom went to the north woods and found himself some timber wolves… and a bit more!

Tom will be joining us in Minneapolis along with the RK Post and hopefully 1-2 more artists to be added! (click the image for a larger version!)

The travel and hotel page has been updated with a link to reserve your rooms.  We’ve chosen the Westin Minneapolis as our hotel partner for this event. The Westin is located a few blocks from the facility, but is right on the light rail line coming in from the airport and there is a free shuttle (for those of you who don’t want to walk the 7 blocks in what is sure to be a beautiful Minnesota spring!) that runs the length of the Nicollet park Pedestrian street, with a drop off right at the front doors of the convention center.

Look for more travel information (and a local hangout guide) plus side event and vendor information coming soon!

Steve

Event packages are LIVE for MC6!  Thank you all for your patience!  Shirts and Playmats are available through this link.  The deadline for ordering these items is December 30th (I need time to get them printed and delivered so we can have them on the cruise!)

Event registration is mandatory for anyone who wants to play in the events.  If you do not register through this site for the events, you will not have product brought for you.  I will reopen registration for events only after the t-shirt/playmat window closes as we can take event only registrations right up until a few days before the ship leaves.

As it can be a little confusing the process in detail:

Go tot he Legionevents/mc page, get information for booking your cruise, call carnival, book your cruise using the group code listed there. Once confirmed with carnival, go to the event link above and purchase any tournament packages and add ons you need seperately from teh cruise package!

The event package includes 2 sealed, 1 2HG sealed, 1 Standard constructed, and EDH night and 2 draft sets plus a deckboxes and sleeves from legion supplies for your use.  We will provide all land and tournament operations as well as prizes for all events!

Tshirt and playmat samples below:  Cruise champion will have a custom “champion” playmat on this theme.

I have processed all cancellations I had marked for refunds. They should be in your paypal accounts already if you paid with available blanace, and if credited back to credit cards that may take a couple days to show on your card balances.

Please email me if you feel you should have gotten a refund and have not and I will make sure it was processed. Thank you all for your patience, it has been a long week.

Steve

well after consolidating the check in sheets from the weekend (6 different sheets, transferred all check ins to 1 sheet) I have started processing refunds (at last!) it’s taking me approximately 3-4 minutes per refund at this point. get the cancel request, check to make sure that player did not check in on Friday to get the playmat/promo or play in the event on Saturday (beyond a round 1 no show drop, some are going to be IN the beginning of the event but never actually played). then go through a series of 6 pages on paypal after I’ve searched for the transaction id on gmail.

Why am I telling this to all of you?  So you can see it’s going to take a LONG time to get through these. event longer than I thought.  I think I have about 200 total to do. at 3 minutes each that’s 10 hours of work. It will take me well into tomorrow to get this done, assuming nothing else interrupts.

I really appreciate the patience (most of) you have shown so far. thanks! and just a little longer and I’ll get you the $$!!!

thanks!

Steve