UPDATE 4/17/2020: With the ongoing situation surrounding COVID-19 (novel coronavirus), all information below is subject to change. We will be keeping an eye on the situation and announce any updates as soon as we can.

Thank you for your understanding and patience. We hope everyone stays safe during this time.

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Hi everyone, RB here! The 2019 FFTCG competitive season was an absolute whirlwind and it’s crazy to think about how much FFTCG we experienced across NA. Between the Crystal Cups, Local Qualifiers, NA Championship and World Championship, we had an EX-citing year. The 2019-2020 Community Contest kicked off, and saw its first two winners, and we’ll have 6 more over the course of the next few months.

So now, the question on everyone’s minds is, of course, what comes next? As we head into the holidays, and the New Year, I wanted to take a moment to announce what’s to come in 2020 for FFTCG North America.

World Championship Invitations for North America

If you haven’t already heard, the 2020 World Championship will be taking place in Singapore! As the host region in 2019, we were able to acquire 4 extra seats for North America in the 2019 World Championship. In 2020, we have the standard 8 seats for North America.

Crystal Cup Events – Winners of five Crystal Cup events proceed directly to World Championship
2020 North American Championship – Top 3 of NA Championship will proceed to World Championship

2020 Crystal Cups

Format:

Day 1 – Standard Constructed Swiss Rounds
Day 2 – Top 32 – All Star Draft; Top 8 – Standard Constructed Best of 3 Single Elimination

We are once again working with Local Game Stores on holding five Crystal Cup events in North America: 4 in the United States, and 1 in Canada. They will be open to all North American residents. An official updated contest rule for 2020 will be available early next year.

The Top 4 of each of these events will qualify for the 2020 North American Championship, with the Winner also winning a trip to Singapore to participate in the 2020 World Championship!

The format for the 2020 Crystal Cups will have some similarities to the 2nd half of the 2019 NA Crystal Cups, with a slight twist. Day 1 will still consist of Swiss Rounds using Standard Constructed, but after a Top 32 cut, we’ll proceed to All Star Draft using the cube created and developed by Masahiko Morita at Hobby Japan. And after that, we will move on to Top 8 Best of 3 Single Elimination using Standard Constructed.

For those new to the idea of All Star Draft, we will curate a specific pool of card that will be used to create the packs used in draft. After the draft rounds are over, you’ll turn in the cards. We felt that while we want to keep Draft as a skill tested in Crystal Cups, this would be a way for the development staff at Hobby Japan to closely tune what cards will show up in any given Draft pool. This should help control some of the variance that comes with blindly picking packs to put together a pool. The list used for the card pool will be published on our website so you can put together your own All Star Draft events to practice.

Those of you who have had a chance to try out this format gave a lot of positive feedback, so we felt this was a great way to expand the supported competitive formats for the game. As such, we are also planning to use this format at the 2020 World Championship.

Note: This list is subject to change, and exact dates will be announced as soon as possible. But we wanted to give you a rough schedule:

POSTPONED - Originally scheduled for APRIL 4 & 5 – Sunshine Games – Tampa, FL

POSTPONED - Originally scheduled for MAY 16 & 17 – Epic Gaming PDX – Portland, OR

POSTPONED – Red Dragon Cards, Comics & Games – Ottawa, ON, Canada

POSTPONED – Collector’s Cache – Lenexa, KS

POSTPONED – Cardforge Gaming – Upland, CA

More Ways to Qualify for the North American Championship

We’re adding more ways for players to qualify for the North American Championship in 2020.

L3 Open

We’ll be holding three tournaments with the newly announced L3 format. The Top 4 at these events will qualify for the 2020 North American Championship.

More information about L3 can be found at the link: [link]

POSTPONED - Originally scheduled for APRIL 18 & 19 - Legendary Wolf Games – Omaha, NE

POSTPONED - Originally scheduled for MAY 2 & 3 - Gamers Heaven – Phoenixville, PA

POSTPONED - Desert Sky Games – Chandler, AZ

We’re excited to announce more details of these events soon.

Local Qualifiers - Postponed

We will once again work with FFTCG supporting Local Game Stores on hosting Local Qualifiers. Retailers, please be sure to keep an eye on this page, and we will work on several announcements for sign ups so stores don’t miss out.

We will require that an event has a minimum of 8 players for an NA Championship invite to be awarded. We’ve also heard your requests for more unique prizing for these events, so we’re including sleeves created specifically for Local Qualifiers in the kits to use as prizing. Check it out!

We’ll announce the full LQ kit prizing and details in the coming months.

Gen Con 2020 – CANCELLED

We will once again be attending Gen Con in 2020. We’ll have multiple, one day, NA Championship qualifying events take place Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. In addition, there will be side events, a special event on Sunday, gunslinger with Hobby Japan, our other Square Enix tabletop games, and more! Keep an eye on Gen Con registration, and we’ll be sure to give more details on Gen Con events in early 2020.

Last Chance Qualifier

Like previous years, we will hold a Last Chance Qualifier the day before the North American Championship as a one day Standard Constructed tournament, with the Top 4 players qualifying for the North American Championship. As there was some confusion this year over referring to it as Crystal Cup Dark, we will no longer be associating the Crystal Cup name with this event. Details on this and the North American Championship will come later in 2020.

Summary

So, while the locked in dates will follow after the New Year begins, here’s a look at our rough schedule for 2020 so far. Keep in mind that this schedule is subject to change:

We hope that you’re excited about these upcoming events, and are looking forward to more FFTCG in 2020! Keep an eye on fftradingcardgame.com and facebook.com/FinalFantasyTCG for updates to the schedule, and more announcements regarding these events!

Lastly, I want to give a big thank you to all of you for your support of FFTCG this year. I hope we can continue having your support and continue bringing in even more players in the coming year.

See you in 2020!