Welcome to this months SOTG. First I want to congratulate the new UK champion Joe Hill, who also was runner up at worlds this year, well done Joe!

Tekken is out now and seems to have gotten a good response. The new rotation is in full effect now with several reports of renewed play groups with players coming back to the game now that it is fighting game again. I know this was a highly debated issue but it was clearly the right thing to do.

We have announced store championships, see this article for details if you missed it http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=807

Currently I’m playing Astrid, Zi Mei, promo Jin, Kazuya, and Mitsurugi from the next set. the most decks I’ve had built in years. Mitsurugi has only lost to Hata playing himself and it came down to game 3 when he killed me he was at 4 life.

At Gen Con I talked about set 14, Soulcalibur IV, releasing in October. With the renewed interest in the game and returning players rushing to catch up with set 12 and the excitement surrounding set 13 we have decided to release it the first week of December instead. This blocks cards will be around for a very long time and this should give everyone plenty of time to get what they need the long run and to fight it out for the store championships! Remember you can play in as many store championship tournaments as there are stores running them that you can get to, how many titles will be able to take? City championships will start early 2010.

Pushing the release of set 14 back will also help ensure that we are back on a regular three month release schedule, with set 15 coming out in March 2010.

As I’ve stated the sets will get bigger with set 15 to help balance out having less sets release in a year while still making sure it is not to much product a year. We want to make sure we find the best possible balance. Which will mean reviewing the release schedule over the next several months (listening to players, retailers, and distributors along with reviewing several factors,etc.) to see if it might be better to maybe release six sets a year (basically every other month) or maybe five sets year (one every ten weeks). As I said we will be looking at this very hard over the next several months.

No bans this month.

That’s it for now, short and sweet. Until next month...

See you in the arena,

Steve

Ahem.... Excuse me... I'mma let ya finish (ok ok I'm done honest ) but told ya so.... AGAIN!

Since we are waiting until December for the next SCIV set, can we maybe get some spoilers or at least a list of characters that will be showing up in the set?

hankahn said:

Mitsurugi confirmed, Xianghua rumored from cards Hata was playing at Gen Con.

Fantasy Flight will never release a set when they say they are going to, are they? I was looking forward to SCIV so that maybe I can play a symbol other than fire.

Homme Chapeau said:

Pretty straightforward SOTG - thank you Steve.

1) next release december, try to get to every 3 months therafter - possibility of increase in frequency down the road. We are not surprised, my group was thinking mid/late November, first week December makes sense.

2) mitsu is playable? Not surprising granted most characters are seemingly more playable.

3) rotation is/was good so far. Noted.

4) championships to begin ASAP. Seems most store championships will be pre- SCIV2, and city championships after?

5) no bans. Not surprising, but here's hoping cards are carefully watched as store championships and regional-esque events results start piling in. Would be better to nip problems early rather than later in the block if and when they are identified.

Summary: Enjoy the current, incomplete but altogether more balanced, meta for the next 2.5 months ^^

- dut

I heard Amy, but eveerything else is speculation. As has been mentioned earlier, Rock and Yoshimitsu are the two still covered by the current SoCal license that haven't had support in the longest time.

EDIT: Release being pushed back 2 months is absolute weaksauce as my whole group is ready and waiting for the next set. I sure hope they move to 5 or 6 releases a year to make up for this year's terrible amount of releases. Just so I don't sound completely negative, I am enjoying standard the way it is currently and agree that nothing is banworthy at this time.

Aww... and PotM remains untouched.

Personally I agree with the pushing back of the next soul cal set. Steve is right with set 12 now being legal for play for a length of time now players do need a chance to catch up. I know I have had a hard time finding boxes let alone a case of Soul Cal: ToS but by pushing back Steve is right it will help those of us who need to catch up. And the for those who dont need to catch up, Get packs/boxes and find the cards they need and use them for trade fodder when the next set dose hit. Its a win win for everyone honestly.

I'm also curious on the characters in the next set. Also, any idea what the sets passed SoulCal are going to be?

Hey look, my renewed interest in the game has been killed yet again.

the current format is about as balanced as post set-8. The only reason I was fine with that was because SCIV had the cards necessary to balance out the other symbols against Fire. and now it's being delayed... again...

I guess my store can expect to see me again sometime next year. Since lord knows SCIV will probably be delayed into Feb.

i say good move waiting until december to release then do 4 sets a year too many cards in the cardpool leads to problems, it would be awesome if it was possible to have 1 set from each license legal at a time and rotate them out

Haha...wow...more delays....Well its FFG so thats to be expected. But what a delay it was O_O All the way to December? You gotta be kidding me. Expect all the Store championships to be dominated by Fire.

Also why didn't you talk about Prize support Steve? There was a lot of Issues with this last months support(Mostly being that 90% of it was 4 point) and you don't adress it whatsoever? lame.

Well heres hoping we get some preview to make up for this long wait. And I don't mean the usual like 5 previews I want lots. Or someone could just link me to the PDF that everyone seems to have >.>

hmmm...a delay? sounds good to me. it gives me more time to collect tekken 6. Thanks. Anyways, I think you guys should say projected date in the future. Oh well, I would probaly be delaying left and right if I was doing it.

What a surprise, another delay -_______-

No complaints on the pushback.

Gives those of us who just came back to the game time to catch up, which is a plus.

You know, if I missed EVERY deadline at my job, I would be out on the street. Note to self: Win 2 world championships, get a job at FFG, slack off, and make money while doing it. I thought the product was at the warehouse, ready to go.

I'm with Quzark and postman (we are in the same playgroup) I'll be taking a break the next few months. I just cant stand how much fire is in the game atm. I was tolerating it because I know Sciv balances fire out (throw hate). There really isnt any point of playing a symbol other than fire. We were joking last week about banning fire decks, now we just might have to lol.

Postman197865 said:

It is at the wearhouse ready to go. They're trying to return to releases on time every three months. Read Steve's SotG post - they're trying to give a full three months to each set, rather then do a staggard releasing every couple of months which would be crappy. You guys and your play group do not like it. Many members of our playgroup do. There's no pleasing everyone.

As for your "veiled" attacks at certain individuals, they are grossly unfair. Since they are completely inaccurate, and totally off base.

Honestly, I'd give you less then 30 days before you'd be fired / quit out of being overwhelmed and not able to handle the workload. <PS others can make unfair statements without knowing the person too.>

bloodocean said:

Again if anyone wants to send me the spoilers that somehow got out

Sol Badguy said:

It's called "Go to Worlds and PLAY against STAFF."

I was out of line. For that, I apologize.

But, it's very frustrating to sit back, watch all my four point cards, some of which I had only had for a few weeks, get rotated for no reason (in my opinion, you can have your own Antigoth) in the middle of the year. So okay. I lost out big then. So I start playing tiny STD format, and it's pretty good. Most symbols are playable. So it's kind of fun. The Tekken VI come out and the meta is reduced to the stupidity of Cutting Edge era. (te difference being instead of playing control, you now play fire throws.) But I said to myself. Fine, Steve said we'd have SCIV in October. With this state of the game, I now have to wait until December until we can stop playing the Universal Fire System.

So, not much going to be happening in Rochester, seeingas at least four of us are done playing until December. Because unlike some play groups, we want to play something else than fire aggro in a stale enviorment.

Once again I apologize for my possibly untrue statements about folks at FFG.

Antigoth said:

Is this what the FFG opposition has gone to? Christ on a stick I did a far better job of it back in the day.

kiit said:

Actually there is a PDF with all the cards from the next set that is what I am talking about a lot of people seem to have it or at the very least have seen it =(

I havn't seen anything from sciv, I just know (as in educated guess) that something will be coming out to help balance against all the throw abuse.