TCG NEWS! FOW Release Disaster, New Circuit Series, Chrono Clash News!





If you prefer a video version of the new, click below:





We have 2 weeks worth of news to get to, and a lot happened so let’s get going!







SET RELEASED:









So let’s just start with the big one. The set officially came out and had a pre-release before that! Now a lot of interesting things have come from that so we’ll make this one big section about the set’s pre-release and release.





Pre-release:





So there were a lot of questions going into pre-release from the community. How do we treat Runes? What quantity are the card’s pull rates? Is drafting possible if too many Runes are pulled? etc. Unfortunately with no answers from the company, and still as of yet no word on if we’ll hear back from that ‘Q and A’ that was run months ago, the community was left to fend for themselves. This lead to probably the biggest mixed bag of a pre-release in the game’s history.





There were some people who were able to make the most of it with house rules, but based on posts and comments online it looks like even with house rules (such as making all runes rune/chants etc) it still left a lackluster pre-release. The low pull rates of most the new cards made creative deck building harder as well, and a little less exciting for opening packs.





Release:





The actual release of the set was pretty interesting. So during pre-release, everybody got their pre-release kits without any problem. There are even some you can still get places because of the proper arrangement of quantities. However the main set release is quite different. You can check out our video on the channel where we go into some details, but the amount of product that ended up at stores was significantly lower than expected in some cases.





It is almost impossible to figure out the root cause of this, but we got several reports of stores not getting their full allotments, which translated to many players not getting their full allotments. In the US, the main distributor that can be linked to this is GTS Distribution. Not sure the exact distributors, but this problem occured in Germany and New Zealand possibly as well. Other countries had shortages, but they were shortages after pre-orders were met, where as the 3 listed before had pre-orders cut by as much as 80% some people alleged.



Rudy of Alpha Investments made a video going over the shortages as well, saying that he thinks it could have been deliberate by the company to raise box value. When we asked him, he said his boxes that he had ordered from the company went from 120, to 60, to 30, then finally 12 at the end. He said FOW literally made the exact number of boxes that distributors pre-ordered and nothing more (usually FOW prints to order plus 10%). He personally thinks it was that combined with something happening to the product, either being lost or damaged.



Unfortunately the biggest takeaway here is if you want product guaranteed going forward, you need to pre-order. And not just regular pre-order, you need to do it by the distributor pre-order deadline. Because if FOW doesn’t print extra again, there will be no way to affordably get product. Currently as of writing the booster boxes are sitting at $150 minimum, with single prices extremely high across the board. Pre-order deadline for distributors of the next set possibly is September 11th so put those in! Happy Little Hug Factory already has pre-orders up for the next set so be sure to click the banner ad on this page to head over there.



Moving on to other notes on the release. Secret Rares are gone now. They are replaced by a second god pack. This set has 20 SR’s instead of the normal 10, so one god pack literally has 10 High Gods in it, and the other god pack has the remaining 10. The print quality of the set is really good though. We talk about it in our box opening, but the quality is some of the best FOW has done, with full texturing, really nice foiling, and not grimy feel.







The moon token is using art from Alice cluster, while the cat token is using art from a Casters related board game I think. Not a huge fan of the cat art. The Satan promo is in the box, however the Kaguya buy-2-box promo has been delayed for a significant amount of people. Hopefully they all make it in and don’t end up being hoarded by distributors again.





Inside the booster box in the box with all the stones they included 2 sets of 2 tokens. 2 for the Moon additions, and 2 cat tokens. This is awesome they finally are doing tokens again, even in the smaller capacity.The moon token is using art from Alice cluster, while the cat token is using art from a Casters related board game I think. Not a huge fan of the cat art. The Satan promo is in the box, however the Kaguya buy-2-box promo has been delayed for a significant amount of people. Hopefully they all make it in and don’t end up being hoarded by distributors again.



That’s most of the main ‘release’ points. Hopefully that covers everything!







ERRATAS:









So with the company walling itself off of communication with players, we are left to our own devices for some things. One of these is erratas. As of now there are at least 2 cards that are significantly different depending on the language. They are Lucifer and Utgarda Loki. Lucifer in English says you gain life if you lost it. In at least 1 other language it says instead you gain life if you lost or paid for it. This is quite a huge difference with big gamechanging possibilities.



The second one is Utgarda Loki. In English it has all the abilities for being played from hand (discard, lose life) except the destroying of a J/Resonator. In some other languages it includes that destruction as well. This one specifically we will talk about because it is something some parts of the community have weighed in on. It seems (from what we can tell) certain groups in Australia have ‘ruled’ that Loki will be ‘errated’ to use all abilities including the destruction. Putting aside the fact that this potentially is extremely strong, this is very hard to figure out for the game. Now instead of just doing what cards say in your language until we hear otherwise, cards will be played drastically different based on the country you’re in, the locals you are at, or the event you are attending.



So whenever you are going to an event, it is very important to ask what their ruling is on this, because it will greatly affect testing and deck building. One example is the upcoming FOW Festival Event being put on by Ruler School. They have officially confirmed they will be using the errated version of the card. So it’s good they are getting this information out early so everybody knows ahead of time. But this is going to be a literal case by case basis depending on locals etc, and new players will have a very hard time with this because there is no official ruling. A large chunk, if not technically a majority of players don’t use Facebook. And if they do they would only follow the official FOW page. So without an official ruling displayed on the website or Official FB page people just won’t know. And if you try explaining that it was a community ruling made by people who aren’t officially part of the company (or even judges, since the judge program no longer exists), people won’t believe you or will simply ignore the ruling.



So as of right now for Utgarda Loki, chunks of players are adapting the errata, so it may be up to you and your locals on whether to do so as well. Just keep in mind to check before each event or interaction how to properly use it or possibly Lucifer if that gets brought up as well.







NEW CIRCUIT SERIES:









As we mentioned last time, Jeremy of Ruler School is running a big FOW event! This is an event being held October 12th in Michigan. For full details check it out HERE

But there were a couple cool announcements regarding this event, and a whole slew of possible other events! Jeremy announced that Vite Ramen (You may remember them from sponsoring our very own Oscar to commentate a WGPQ earlier this year) will be creating a brand new FOW Circuit Series! There isn’t a whole lot of details yet, but it was promised that stores will be able to order kits eventually to participate in the circuit. We’ll hopefully get dates and more details soon.





With that announcement it was said the Festival will be the first event of the series! The winner will get an invite to the eventual Nationals Tournament they will be hosting (with more details on that coming later). It will also include an exclusive Vite Ramen Top 8 playmat! I’m really excited to see what comes of this. The guys at Vite Ramen have been super cool when we worked with them, and they are really passionate about FOW and helping the community. So it’s great to see something like this. I am not sponsored, but I’d also highly recommend people try out their Ramen to show their support! It’s actually really good and healthy 😉







NEXT SET ANNOUNCED:











The next set, as well as details about it were released! Announced was Alice Origin 1 and Alice Origin 2. We can assume that is the name of the cluster. A minor note is that the booster packs for Alice Origin 1 are blue now!





Full details on the set were somewhat given out. Keep in mind that FOW ever since the new company took over is pretty terrible at sales sheets, so we’ll do our best to convey it correctly. First is the next set comes out in November! It is officially going from 36 pack booster boxes to 20 pack boxes, the first time FOW has ever changed box size. The new price, which you can see on HLHF, is now at $48, which is roughly 11 cents more per pack.





The pre release kit will have 60 packs, down from 72, meaning less people can play at a pre-release per kit. The order due date for this is for sure the 11th, with release on November 4th.



There will be 2 starter decks released as well, one for Melgis, and one for Faria. As you can see they are trying to replicate Alice Cluster in some fashion. They will be releasing different starter decks with each booster box (no word on if they would ever reprint them, so be sure to pre-order once again!). These starters are on HLHF for $15 each.











Full card ratios were released for the next set, which is it will have 147 cards, including 29 normal, 19 rare, 19 super rare, 80 memorial, and basic magic stones. Starters will have 61 cards, one ruler card, 2 special magic stones, a basic magic stone, and a random 5 cards, and an unnamed additional card. So there is a couple things to break down with that information. First, is the set size. This may be a product of bad sales sheets, but that number is abnormally large. Second, common/uncommon rarities are gone! They have been merged into the new ‘normal’ rarity. What this means, we are not sure, but it may change pack ratios. And hopefully it does, because SR’s are at 19! This would lead to the same problem we are having now of abnormally high priced/hard to get staple carrds. That many SR’s also means large power spikes potentially, unless the company doesn’t repeat this set and moves forward with a better plan for cards. Lastly is memorial cards. We have no idea what this is, but my fear is this sounds very very close to sounding like a reprint. Hopefully it isn’t and it’s some sort of weird new rarity or something!





So that’s the new set. Like mentioned, be sure to pre-order quickly! Happy Little Hug Factory has over 200 boxes up for pre-order, but they tend to sell fast so get those and starters soon as you can.







CR UPDATE:









Now with a new set release, usually the week before pre-release we get an update to the CR. Seeing as we are a week out of the actual release, obviously we haven’t gotten one yet. Luckily there is hope we might!





In a comment thread on Facebook, two people at least, including Stephanie Shaw said they had talked to people who are in the know, and a CR update should be coming between now and October. This is very good news at least! If true we could possibly get a CR update before the next Major FOW event. The CR has been very much needed, seeing as new abilities and interactions were introduced in this set. Things like how Alice, Zeus Incarnate might work in a couple ways is the perfect example.



Whether this update might include possible erratas is yet to be seen, but it’s probably safe to say a ban list update is completely out of the question.







CESSPOOL:









So this is a weird one. A poster was received for this set, Decisive Battle for Valhalla. This is already weird because for this and the last couple sets they have been sending posters to stores etc to advertise the current set, rather than the next one. So this poster for DBV got in and as you can see above it has a very weird ad on it.



Now this is already weird, because it feels automatically like the company doesn’t have faith in FOW enough to even give it a full poster. But on top of that Cesspool just looks like a weird game!



In it you enter the city of immorality and do a crime management simulator with the them of narcotics manufacturing and smuggling. If that doesn’t get you excited I don’t know what will. It is a game that has been in Japan since 2017 and it looks like Eye Spy may have bought it and is releasing to the US soon. So, look forward to that?







GODZILLA SPOILERS:









Moving onto Chrono Clash, spoilers have started for Godzilla! There was already an initial dump of spoilers, but now we are in a somewhat steady release of cards from the set. Best way to follow them is to join the Chrono Clash Facebook page, as they are released sporadically and looks like some are being released to content creators as well.





We won’t be covering the spoiler release, as we are still familiarizing ourselves with the game. But expect a full breakdown once they all are revealed!







NARUTO EXPANSIONS:









Another set of Chrono Clash news is the announcement of new Naruto sets! This was a long running concern of the community, that there would never be (or at least there would be long gaps) another Naruto release in Chrono Clash. Luckily they are getting not 1, but 2 new expansion sets for the main games! No other details or spoilers, but the fact that support is continuing for the sets is very promising, and gives hope they might do the same for Godzilla as well.





With that announcement they also said they will have a new tournament kit to go with it, and will be doing reprints of the original set for people to get as well!





Expect Chrono Clash content from us soon. We were delayed due to circumstances, but have some really cool and unique plans that I think a lot of people will want to watch, even those that don’t play the game! So stay tuned!











That’s the big info dump of news for this week! See you all next time!







