I’m pretty psyched for Christmas – mainly because of a nice little break from work directly following my viewing of The Rise of Skywalker on Thursday night (Hype!!). As a gainfully employed adult with a nice side-hustle there isn’t a lot I want for Christmas, which annoys family and friends – everyone is sick of getting me Starbucks gift cards and Babysitting coupons so I can go to my gaming tournaments, but that’s what I need!

Anyway, my wife always bugs me about what I want for Christmas because she wants to get me something cool. While I’ve got no good answers for her, I sometimes lie awake at night and pretend that it’s FFG that’s asking me what I want for Christmas and not my lovely wife. If FFG did ask me for my Christmas list, this is what it would be… (btw, if you don’t celebrate Christmas I hope you enjoy whatever you do or don’t celebrate this time of year. The end of a year, whether it was good or bad, is a nice time to reflect and spend time with family [chosen family or forced]).

1 – A Set 11 Announcement

Normally I abstain from the classic Destiny Facebook Group argument following a set announcement that invariably arises because of the timing of said announcement. It’s usually right after the previous set drops, and people get annoyed because we usually haven’t even played with the newest cards and we already have preview cards of some far off set to think about; people are trying to load them up on TTS, and are all excited about some new character that won’t get cracked out of a pack for months if not years. I abstain from this argument because I really don’t care, but I usually side with the people who are annoyed with the big, new announcement.

Now I see why we get that announcement, to make the community and buyers of Destiny product feel safe about their purchase. “Don’t worry everybody! Spend as much as you want on Set X, because Set Y is just around the corner!” Well, how are you all feeling about your CM pre-sale purchases? I’m a little worried, and I would love to hear that something exists beyond set 10, which I have confirmed has been playtested and should be the biggest, gamechanging set ever. Even back when I was a playtester, the hints of what set 10 were going to do for the game were mentioned often. With all my connections nobody has been able to confirm that set 11 exists, only that it has been mentioned by Jeremy though not submitted for playtesting. Time will tell, but I hope we get the announcement soon after CM, right along the set 10 announcement.

2 – Destiny Gear

It might be a licensing issue (like how there can’t be a video game version of Destiny because EA has the exclusive rights to make Star Wars Video Games), but I would love to have Star Wars Destiny clothing. Most of the art in Destiny leaves something to be desired, but some of it is actually really great; and CM’s move towards a more photorealistic image style has me excited to put some of the new cards on table.

Argent Saga is a new game I’ve been dabbling in, and they have some awesome hoodies. I love our Loops hoodies, but Destiny tees and hoodies, or hats and bags, would be a really great addition to prize support. Sizing can be somewhat of an issue for shirts, but bags and hats are generally one-size fits all and would be something we can actually get some use out of as opposed to Kylo/Rey mat #47.

3 – Rise of Skywalker Cards in CM

I’m in the group of people who think the CM delay has something to do with its inclusion of Rise of Skywalker details, and I’m hoping that’s true for two reasons; one it would be a justified Lucasfilm regulation to keep spoilers under wraps — more importantly I want a sweet new Rey and a sweet new Kylo. I want a good Rose, and the new girl who rides a horse (is that a spoiler?) and I for SURE want Keri Russel in my game.

Without spoiling things, Rise of Skywalker seems to have a bunch of cool things in it that I think would lend itself nicely to our game. I’d love to go into more detail but I don’t want to spoil things for people who don’t watch any TV spots or Trailers (there are some of those people out there, don’t @ me), but if you’ve been following the production and have seen some of the crazy images in the trailers, then I think you’re with me.

4 – Stickers!

I love stickers. You love stickers. Destiny should have stickers. From the token images to the card art images, I think we should have large stickers, round stickers, small stickers, and more. Hell, if FFG wanted to get really crazy they could even have stickers of the game’s most famous lineups. They would be collectible, people love to jam stickers on their deckboxes, backpacks, and dice trays; they’re huge in the X-Wing community and even pretty big among Destiny Content Creators, but FFG should really step up and deliver on another fun, cheap new prize that isn’t the 758th version of a resource token.

5 – An FFG Live Stream with Jeremy and Andrew Rothermel

I knew my big ask was going to be some media attention from FFG, and my first idea was to have FFG maybe stream a local regional. Like, FFG has their own streaming equipment, they host a regional in their game center, why can’t they stream it?! People would watch the FFG stream (I think), even if it was just a regional. FFG’s stream set up is nice (even though they refuse to let North American Champions play on their official worlds streams), and it would be a huge boon if they were to stream a Minnesota event, especially because there are so many good players in Minny. BUT, I don’t think that’s the best use of their time/efforts.

Then I was thinking how it would be nice to even just get an FFG Live stream of Destiny – It has been months since Destiny has been featured, and even several months since it was even mentioned officially. Whenever FFG posts their FFGLive schedule for the month and people complain at the lack of Destiny, someone points out that there’s nothing for them to stream, but I respectfully disagree – give me a game with the designer and the world champ.

Rothermel has his own style of play, and we know that Jeremy is a competitive gamer from his Netrunner days. It would be cool to have these guys go at it with either meta decks or jank decks that were equally balanced (maybe JMag build them, LOL). But, seriously… The world champion is one of the best Destiny players in the world, his team puts out some pretty crazy decks, and Andrew himself is prone to aggressive, all-in, action-cheaty builds. It would make for a great stream to pit Jeremy against him, and just let them riff about the game while they play a BO3 for 90 minutes.

Give it to me FFG.

That’s all for today. I might not write about Destiny next week, but I’ll write about Star Wars at least, and why it’s so great, even if I don’t end up liking Rise of Skywalker, but I think I will. I don’t love TLJ, it certainly has some WTF was that moments that took me out of my viewing experience, but I do enjoy a lot of it; I have faith that JJ and Keri Russel are going to bring the goods this week. Either way, I’m quite sure I’ll still love Star Wars regardless of how I feel about the new movie.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you get everything you want this holiday season.

BobbySapphire