Drom's Blog
Stay tuned for Sterling's Blog about Magic Drafting!
Don't know about you but i think this will be intresting to read!
August, 2011 - To the Future!
Its a brand new month for Drom's Comics and Cards. We Wished one of our own the best on his future endeavors and projects. We have a new face in the shop! If you haven't seen her yet, then I invite you to come in and welcome Skye to the Drom's Madness! She is one of my favorite people and will be doing great things at Drom's. I'm going to keep this short and sweet and you guys/gals will be seeing a whole lot more of me!
September 21st 2010 - A Quick Welcome to the Students!
We haven't updated the site in a while until now, and it's still not done, but the info is now current. We'll be redesigning the site, so in the near future, there will be a fancier, prettier dromscomics.com to visit. Until then, welcome back everybody!
Saturday's prerelease! This was just the downstairs crew.
Brian breaking the shelf. This one doesn't count for the mess game because he cleaned it up. Give him a hand!
A scene from the livestream from the SSFIV release party!
More SSFIV madness!
April 28th 2010
We’ve had a pretty busy couple of weeks here at Drom’s and I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s tired. When it’s all said and done though, we got some serious nerding done and I’m pretty proud of it. Here’s a quick run-down of the past two weeks:
April 17th-18th Rise of the Eldrazi Prerelease events
April 22nd Rise of the Eldrazi Midnight Release Party (People hanging out until midnight to take their new cards home)
April 23rd Rise of the Eldrazi Release Event
April 24th-25th Rise of the Eldrazi 24-hour Draft Session
April 26th Super Street Fighter IV Release Party (People hanging out and getting some matches in until midnight to take their copy home)
Throw in a comic shipment on Wednesday and it was pretty nuts. I don’t mean to make it sound as if it’s all over though. We’ve got a comic shipment today, the first Rise of the Eldrazi FNM (and the last FNM to have Bloodbraid Elf) this Friday, and Free Comic Book Day, WPN Championship Qualifiers and a Yugioh Sneak Peek on Saturday, with another Yugioh Sneak Peek on Sunday, alongside a magic Standard tournament the same day. Whew!
The Rise of the Eldrazi Prereleases went well, even though Saturday was Picnic Day. We had 48 players that day, and not too many interruptions by drunken Picnic Day goers. We ended up going 6 full rounds, and RoE proved to me that it works as a stand-alone limited set much much better than I’d ever thought. I believe Johannan won this event, with Santi showing people the power of 11-year-old beat down (or is it 12-year-old? I forget) to take second place. A good showing from both.
Saturday’s event was 42 players, which took us to 6 rounds again. I wasn’t working this event personally so I don’t actually have any details, but we did talk about changing our Prereleases from full swiss to the larger Prerelease event style, where we only run 3-4 rounds of swiss, and people are paid prizes depending on how many wins they have, not their over-all standings. This would allow the casual guys to show up, play some cards and go home after just a few hours, and the hard-core players could stick around for a draft after the fact. I feel this would better serve everybody involved. We invite our customers to contact us with some feedback regarding this decision.
The midnight release party was nice and quick. I opened the doors around 10:30 or so and people started to show up shortly after. The news of the night? Julien stopped by to pick up some RoE! That’s right! He’s back! Again.
Rise of the Eldrazi Release Event you say? I’m not really sure. Those days around the release are all kind of a blur. In fact, I may have even mis-remembered who won what event. Maybe Joe and Santi took this one. Who knows?
The dreaded-super-awesome RoE 24-Hour Draft Session was pretty nuts. The whole thing was Riki’s fault and I stand by that claim. Everything we did was an experiment that weekend and I think we learned a lot and according to the people I’ve talked to since, it turned out pretty darn well too. We had an average of around four 8-player pods going at any one time, with plenty of people just showing up at random hours to buy in for a draft or two. People were really digging on the pack-per-win setup, and the raffle tickets made it a bit more fun as well. In the beginning (the first 8-10 hours), players really were in a hurry to get their pods started ASAP, but as they realized there was plenty of time, everybody relaxed and got into their groove. I’m very proud of how smoothly everything went regarding the temperament of our players, especially at the wee hours of the morning. Collin started off with a bang at 6-0, but in the end Alvin, Johannan and Justin took first, second and third respectively. Taz won the raffle for the foil, uncut sheet of Worldwake commons/uncommons, which was donated by Riki. I would like to say, “Thank you,” to our two helpers, Mekye and Brad, Riki for always going above and beyond to help us with all sorts of things, and to the players who all had such great attitudes through the whole thing!
Super! Street! Fighter! Four! Monday night nearly started off with me dying of a heart-attack because I thought it’d be a good idea to down a big Starbucks drink while waiting for FedEx. Normally FedEx shows up around 3:30pm, but that day they showed up around 6:30-6:45pm. After advertising to the fighting game community that we’d be doing a midnight release and would have setups for people to play the new game while they wait, I started to panic a little when it began to seem as if my delivery might not show up today. I went down to the shop around 6pm to let people in and I explained the situation. Some nervous glances from the attendees is all I got, but they had faith, and played vanilla SFIV while we waited. When I finally got the call that FedEx had arrived, I got home as fast as I could, and actually got there so quickly that the FedEx truck was just pulling away when I got there. The night was saved and all went well from there. We ended up with around 25 people hanging out and playing on four setups, with Mike from iplaywinner.com providing a live stream of some of the matches. We got to see some interesting new characters and tweaks, and people are already training for the upcoming slew of tournaments, including the Drom’s May 15th tournament and Evo 2010! The game is so popular with our community I underestimated how many copies I would need and ended up selling the store copy and my personal copy to try and satisfy as many people as I could. All in all, it was fun and I look forward to the next release.
That’s more or less what’s been going on here at Drom’s and I hope to have exciting things to say after this weekend as well.
Until next time,
Jenkins
April 22nd 2010
The Rise of the Eldrazi prereleases are now past, the full spoiler has been out for over a week and people are now working on post-ROE decks for all formats. I think there is plenty of material here to help make new decks viable, and most everybody agrees that Wall of Omens will help in the war against the over-efficient creatures that have turned Standard into a format of, “play the best creatures on your colors and throw in some removal/support spells.” I’d like to see some interesting games in Standard again, where people do things other than calculate life-totals and turn their team sideways. There are plenty of cards in the set that will find a home sooner or later, and I think one of those cards is Lightmine Field. Riki, I’m sorry but the card can be good. You really don’t want to put it in an aggro deck, but it works well in my U/W defenders build that I’m currently working on. Anyway, I don’t want this to sound too much like a forum post, and I mostly don’t know what I’m doing with Magic cards so I shouldn’t be throwing around too much advice here.
The prereleases went well with 48 players on Saturday, which was Picnic Day. I wasn’t sure if the local “holiday” was going to hurt attendance or boost it, so we were prepared for either. In the end, attendance was a bit lower than a standard Saturday prerelease, but not by much so we were pretty happy. I wasn’t sure how ROE was going to play, but the general feel I got from the set after seeing some games was R&D figured out how to get those big Eldrazi in play without breaking the game. I liked what I saw, and I even saw some things I’d like to see in standard. I think mono-green or U/G Eldrazi could be viable after some testing and tuning, but this is all just theory.
The 24-hour draft is coming up this weekend. Check the events page for details, but if you want to stop by and play some Eldrazi drafts, get some prizes and induce a delirium driven by sleep deprivation, the event runs from 2pm* Satuday to 2pm* Sunday!
The Wizards Play Network (WPN) Championship Qualifier is on Satuday, May 1st @ 1pm. It will be a $10 entry for this Standard tournament, and we will be awarding a box of Eldrazi, with additional prizes given out depending on the number of players.
We came up with a new game at the shop to deter people from leaving messes. Everytime a person leaves a mess, I will take a photo of it. Every week or two I’ll post all of the photos I’ve accumulated and people will send emails trying to guess who left the mess. The first person per photo to get the answer correct gets a point. At the end of the month, the person who leaves the most messes has to buy the person who got the most points an in-print booster pack of Magic.
In comics news, I found my comic books at home! I hadn’t actually lost them, they were just in such disarray that they weren’t very approachable, so I wasn’t reading a lot of the titles I enjoy because I was kind of scared to touch any of the piles of books laying around. Now that they are all organized, I’ve begun to read the crazy back-log of comics I have and I’ve been reminded of several fantastic titles that not many people seem to be reading. One of which is The Unwritten by Mike Carey and Peter Gross. This is a title that I really don’t think I can do justice by giving the plot here, and the reading enjoyment could easily be ruined by my opening my big mouth. What I can say is that I’ll be ordering the trade for the shelf and I really, really recommend it.
On the same note, we are interested in carrying more “must read” trades, and would like suggestions from our customers. I’m not the biggest expert, I haven’t read everything and neither has Mark, so if you have a book you always recommend to friends or have a hidden gem nobody seems to know about, we’d like to know so we can check it out and maybe even carry it.
I guess that’s enough for now. I’ll get back with pictures for the mess game and some pics from the pre-release.
Jenkins
*Event start time has been corrected.
April 6th 2010
Sunday, April 3rd was our Peasant Magic tournament that allowed nine uncommons, no rares and followed the vintage card pool. We had ten players with two goblin decks, one elf ball deck, a red/green aggro deck, a mono-green stompy deck, two mono-blue control decks, an affinity deck, a sliver deck and a white weenie deck. There were enough people to do four rounds of swiss and a cut to top four, which kept people from dropping as soon as they lost. In between rounds we did some talking and decided that in the future, we will allow Ponder as a four-of and we will discuss other cards as they come up in future tournaments. Overall, everybody seemed to have a lot of fun and pretty much everybody agreed that there needs to be more Peasant Magic played in the store. I don't really have a play-by-play, but maybe if somebody wants to start writing tournament reports for the local events, I'll post them here. The top four looked like this:
First Place:
Goblins - Blaine Christiansen
3 Goblin Warchief (U)
3 Goblin Lackey (U)
3 Goblin Ringleader (U)
4 Mogg Fanatic
4 Mogg War-Marshal
4 Mogg Flunkies
3 Goblin Tinkerer
2 Goblin Lookout
2 Stingscourger
4 Goblin Matron
4 Goblin Grenade
24 Mountain
1 Goblin Tinkerer
4 Crash
4 Red Elemental Blast
3 Seismic Shudder
3 Lightning Bolt
Second Place:
Goblin! - James Kincheloe
4 Goblin Ringleader (U)
4 Goblin Cohort
4 Goblin Bushwacker
4 Mogg Conscripts
4 Mogg War-Marshal
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Simian Spirit Guide
1 Lotus Petal
1 Sol Ring (U)
4 Sparksmith
4 Skullclamp (U)
3 Goblin Matron
19 Mountain
Sideboard:
3 Red Elemental Blast
2 Goblin Tinkerer
2 Flaring Pain
4 Gorilla Shaman
4 Goblin Vandal
Third/Fourth Place:
Kird Ape Beats! - Harris Sobattka
4 Bloodbraid Elf (U)
4 Kird Ape
4 Blastoderm
4 Flametongue Kavu (U)
4 Wild Mongrel
4 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Rancor
4 Incinerate
4 Lightning Bolt
1 Stone Rain
1 Sol Ring (U)
11 Forest
11 Mountain
Sideboard:
4 Pyroblast
1 Stone Rain
3 Swamp
7 Islands
(This deck was thrown together last minute and there was no time to assemble a proper sideboard).
Elf-Clamp - Justin Sands
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Birchlore Rangers
4 Nettle Sentinel
3 Arbor Elves
4 Priest of Titania
2 Skyshroud Elves
2 Elvish Visionary
2 Essence Warden
2 Kaervek's Torch
1 Grapeshot
1 Ashnod's Altar
4 Quirion Rangers
1 Channel (U)
4 Skullclamp (U)
4 Instill Energy (U)
14 Forest
No Sideboard.
My favorite part? Not a single deck with Force of Will made it into the top 4. The average deck cost was very low, though I'd love to see some more control decks prove themselves. It's always nice to have a format with some variance. Anyway, we all had fun and another Peasant Magic tournament will be scheduled for May, this time with more Ponder!
I'll post again this week about other cool things like Drom's shirts, ideas for the 2010 Drommies and the Eldrazi 24-hour draft!
Jenkins
April 1st 2010
Alright, time for the first relevant update in two months. First I'll address the white elephant. Wes no longer works at Drom's. It is regrettable, but it was a financial decision that was made for the store, it was not a personal decision. Wes still hangs out at the store and from what I can tell, "his" customers are still happy with our service.
People like their rumors I know, but Wes didn't punch anybody, Jenkins didn't punch anybody and Mark didn't punch anybody. There was no fighting or even arguing among the Drom's crew.
The story of Maki however, is very different. For those of you who don't know who Maki is, he's been described as a tall, incredibly good-looking, ninja-cowboy-pirate who rides a dinosaur. I'm told that Maki beat up all three of the Drom's guys, and it really wasn't pretty how it happened. That's just what I've heard though.
As for events and merchandise coming to Drom's, we've got some things up our sleeves.
-Dragonshields will be back in stock as soon as Fantasy Flight gets them to ship to us, which they believe will be in April.
-You can now pre-order VIDEO GAMES!!!! at Drom's. Or if there is an in-print game you would like us to get, we can usually get it the next day for you.
-Rise of the Eldrazi is almost here, and we will be holding pre-releases on April 17th & 18th (with more space available than before!), and the release event is April 23rd. We are currently trying to secure enough product to hold our 24-hour Eldrazi draft event. I will know soon.
-Super Street Fighter IV will be available April 27th or 28th and we will have two set-ups going for play. We are also planning a Super Street Fighter IV event for mid-May, but we've had some scheduling conflicts with other events. The site will be updated as more info is available.
For those of you were wondering what's been going on at the store, we've been working on making the store stronger than ever by cutting down on waste, liquidating stagnant product and cleaning up the shop. Will the current hours last forever? No. We know that a lot of our regulars are starting to lose their minds on Monday and Tuesday of every week, so as soon as things get worked out, we'll change the schedule to seven days a week again.
Time for me to close this session and get on to some other duties, so I'll see you at the shop!
Jenkins Mitchell
March 26th 2010
We've been really busy, but will soon take the time to get caught up with the site and post some entries about the more recent events, upcoming comic shipments and some general news about the store. Thanks for everybody's patience while we go through our most recent changes!
February 5th 2010
Whew! We are beginning to wind down a series of decent sized events here at Drom's and now to share what happened with those of you who couldn't make it. For January 24th, we were invited to hold a Magic Grand Prix Trial to award the winner of the event a 3 round bye at Grand Prix Oakland! The turnout of 22 entrants was decent, especially considering not many of our locals play much extended. I totally forgot who made top 8, so I'll have to update this weekend with names and decklists. Here are some pics though:
We had 3 judges playing out of 22 people!
The event went pretty smoothly, and we got to see some faces we haven't seen in a while. Sean Cantanese was our head judge and did a fantastic job all day! Toward the end of the day we ended up with a side event:
Backwards Street Fighter IV vs Ricky! I think Ricky may have eventually won a match, but I'm not sure.
Anyway, I'll be back to update this with results and decklists. Consider this a placeholder. (Edit: I didn't make it...)
On to January 30th and 31st! This was time for the Worldwake Pre-release! Saturday had 49 entries with Riki Hayashi judging! Before I say anything else, let me just share this with all of you. Remember Christian? The guy who beat LSV at the Zendikar Pre-release for the extra draft set? Here he is again:
It's shiny by the way. Yeah, he's THAT good at this game!
Sunday, we had 26 players and Bryce Kaff was our judge for the day. Overall, both days were a success and I hope everybody had fun.
Two side notes: First, Woodstocks Pizza has been allowing us to run our excessively large events in their building, and I ask that especially on those days we do our best to support them by ordering some food or maybe even just a drink from them.
Second, Thada Adel, Acquisitor is a silly silly legendary creature for Elder Dragon Highlander.
Ok, there isn't much to talk about for the Pre-releases because we were so busy nothing stands out in my mind. It took me a little while to ponder the set list, but now that I'm familiar with Worldwake, I really like it. I hope it brings the balance to Standard it has needed for months. Until next time!
Jenkins Mitchell
January 18th 2010
Yesterday we had our biggest Street Fighter IV tournament ever, with 37 entrants! We had players show up ranging from Reno, Nevada to the Bay Area! Mike from iplaywinner.com provided the live stream for the event, and it is still viewable here:
part 1 http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/4054643
part 2 http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/4057383
part 3 http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/4059935
Please be aware there is profane language in these videos and get parents permission if you are under the age of 18 before watching the videos.
First, I'd like to thank everybody who helped to setup, bring equipment or whatever other help was provided I'm not thinking of at the moment. Without the volunteers, fighting game events would not occur.
What was at stake here? Street Fighter is about pride and having a good time. So I hope everybody had fun, but there were some decent prizes as well. First, the top three players received Drom's Comics dustwashers! If you don't know what that is, it's ok as it's an obscure part for an arcade stick.
Prizes! Pre-event setup.
Also, first place got 70% of the prize portion from the entry money, second place got 20% and third place got 10%. Lastly, the first place finisher at a Drom's SFIV event always has to take a picture with The Belt.
Eric Choi took it down this time!
Eric Choi, from Davis won, and Ryan "Filipino Champ" took second, with Hiro taking third. Eric played with Rufus all day, while Filipino Champ used Dhalsim & Seth and Hiro played the best Blanka I've seen. There was also a lot of talk about Sicx, who played Ken to take fourth place.
Hiro, Ryan "Filipino Champ" and Eric Choi.
Overall, it was a great event and we'll be doing another one in late February or early March. Thanks to everybody who attended!
