Many of you know me from the various events I have judged over the past five plus years for this great game we all play.  However, I'm sure there are many more of you who don't know me.  Well, my name is William Zobac aka Zo.  I'm a thirty-one year old college professional.  I work in information technology and I play, judge and volunteer for Cryptozoic and the World of Warcraft Trading card game. 

I am the most active CZE Volunteer for the Dallas / Fort Worth area of Texas.  I currently attend and run four battlegrounds every week.  I plan to get many more up and running in the area over the next few years. 

At this past Gencon, I came to a realization that I love judging but I miss playing competitively.  I always wanted to play at the highest levels of competition, but after a year of failure when the game first came out, I realized I just wasn't good enough to compete at the level of play that I thirsted for.  Luckily for me, there was a man who convinced me that I could still participate and...

So I've just come off the back of another day at work. Crazy ideas were born to fruition in my mind's nest, feeding off of each other until only one bloated idea remained. I quickly passed this idea onto my associate Martin Clement, but we both agreed it was promising and worth looking into.

Most people I talked to after Element's release agreed that there was very little in its crinkled foil boosters that would impact Core, at least not whilst the power house of Drums was still beating through the tournament scene. As such most of the guys I test with were caught completely off guard by the Egg deck, and now we know there won't be changes made prior to EUCC we're rushing for answers.

We don't really think many good players will turn up with it, even with the short hand code for the graph paper. Those that do we'll be ready for, so we're just finding a deck that suits our playstyles rather than hard card tech.

My favourite decks always draw lots of cards and/or create obscure card advantage (see...

Don't worry folks, this is not another post about some honky tonk come deck that demonises the game. I've got nothing more to say on the subject until Patrick Sullivan of GGSLive fame gives us the official CZE opinion.

No no, instead I'm going to talk about my upcoming PPV event, the EUCC in Rimini. Having been forced to skip the World Cup due to store shenanigans I'm really looking forward to flopping some cards with the best Europe has to offer.

I've completely forgone testing anything until now because I like to have a meta to play with, and I was slightly worried that with the Totem changes and a whole new set that I'd miss something fundamental whilst I was busy putting 4 [Dimzer the Prestidigitator] into [Searing Light] and Everlasting Barrage.

I've spent today at work, but i've been busy grinding the idea gears none the less. The first thing I noticed was that players are really trying to stay off of Tuskarr Kite if they can, or if they're on it having other draw options. It's pretty sage...

With NACC finished...

Somehow managed to lose this entry to the nether twice. On tilt. Very short update. Apologies.

        I finished finals last week and have been able to play test ever since. Luckily my grades were pretty sweet, 2 As and a C in a graduate level math class.         The important thing is I've been able to play between 200 and 250 games of the Core format. Some of these games were pleasant, and some not (Workstation is always a struggle). I've played with and against dozens of different decks and have learned a lot from my friends.       One thing that is important to finding a good deck to play is having a good network; fortunately for me I have quite a few people I can talk to about what's good and what isn't.       One thing that I have learned for sure is that Vorix Zorbuzz is the deck to beat. It's got solid match-ups for the most part and is definitely capable of winning against nearly every other deck. It's a little late for advice about this, but you need to be able to at least compete with Zorbuzz.       Another important thing is to have some sort of card advantage outside of Tuskarr Kite....

Now a short distance away from my home island and very high over the Pacific Ocean en route to Las Vegas, I am unable to return my tray table to its original position, tucked away in a compartment under my armrest, as the gentleman next to me was gracious enough to show me. "No matter, I'll work around it," I said to myself. As a bonus, there's not much work to be done on an airplane alone, aside from your too-close neighbors and, in this case, my wonderful girlfriend who is a flight attendant for this very airline (Hawaiian, naturally), on this very flight (#18). That said, this stupid table is making me look--or at least feel--like one of those buffoons who has never traveled before and approaches every otherwise natural occurrence with clumsy suspicion. Thankfully I still remember how to use the seat belt and lavatory from my jet-setting days that were recent enough to still feel fresh in my mind. Another somewhat tilting thing is that I am seated in the bulkhead, directly behind the back wall of first...

poot!

Video supplements for "We Talkin' 'Bout Cactus!"