(MetaZoo TCG Weekly News)
A new document was released detailing everything we need to know about the tower events and there’s some very interesting information that you’re going to want to know.
Let’s Talk MetaZoo
Last Monday I participated in a livestream with Turmentic and CNO from TCGIsland. I had a blast talking with both of them about what got us all into MetaZoo and just having a really fun MetaZoo related chat. It was my first ever live stream, so it was the first time I ever got to interact with a live chat which was just amazing. In the middle of that interview Andy had pinged me and said hey how would you like a spoiler for Native. So it was unplanned but we got to actually show everybody what the Winalagilis looked like from Native. If you missed that live stream last week you can catch that on Turmentic’s channel in the thumbnail below. We got together for a part two of that discussion on Monday February 6th. You can find the link to Part 2 below.
Winalagilis
For new native teases this week let’s talk about Winalagilis. It’s a 1 Water/3 Dark Aura Beastie. You can have three per spellbook, and it has 80 LP. It’s a trap with First Strike and it has bonuses for both Nighttime and Ocean. It can be contracted anytime an opposing caster declarers an attack with a Beastie, and when it’s contracted you can then destroy a Beastie in the arena with First Strike. So that’s really interesting again something like a Quetz. You contract this Beastie and Quetz just goes bye-bye.
You can also pair that with lightning in a bottle on your turn. You lightning in a bottle your opponent’s Beastie, giving that Beastie first strike. You then contract Winalagilis on your turn, and you can destroy that Beastie. The attack that it has is called Invincible Assault, and does 30 damage with an additional 20 to Lightning. So this was really built to combat Lightning spellbooks. If you’re wearing fake blood the attack effect gives a Beastie you control Immortal. So this is honestly one of the cards that I’m most excited for so far for Native, just because of the versatility here to destroy opposing beasties. Dark is also my main Aura, so it could be something I could easily Splash into any of my dark spellbooks that build. It only needs one water Aura for the other Aura type, so I can’t wait to see some of the spellbooks that are built with Winalagilis in them. If this is going to be a contender for the Dark Tower.
Ababinili
We also got a partial tease of an Ababinili. This is the Flame Beastie. We don’t know the LP, but we know you can have 3per spell book and it has Fleet, Flying and Spirit traits. Terra bonuses for Daytime and Desert. So depending on the Terra that are active for the Flame Tower this could be something that we’re going to be seeing a lot of.
Issitoq
One of the coolest teasers that we got this week, in my opinion, is for Issitoq. It’s a 9 Dark/9 Light cost Beastie making it the most expensive Beastie in MetaZoo! It has 100 LP, you can only have 1 per spellbook. For traits it has Flying, Immortal, and Magic Proof. It has really good bonuses for both Nighttime and Daytime. Now the catch here is that it can’t be contracted, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get it in the arena. Contraction and placing a Beatie are two different things. As of right now there’s only a few pages that can place beasties in the arena.
The first one is Snipe. Snipe has a power that allows you to search your Spellbook for a Beastie and place it in the arena. You then have to show shuffle your Snipe back into your Spellbook. So that’s one way to get Issitoq into the arena. The other would be All Hallows Eve, which allows you to take things from your Afterlife, Cemetery and Limbo. Then bring them into the arena.
Another thing to note here is that this page can’t be affected by non-light or non-dark pages, so you wouldn’t be able to hit it with a Toxic Water to remove the Magic Proof, and then hit it with a Powerup Red. You can’t even get around that by paralyzing Issitoq after hitting it with a Toxic Water because this Beastie cannot have any status effect indicators on it. At the start of your turn, you and a target opposing Caster both discard a card from your chapter, so this mills down your chapter as well as an opposing chapter. Which doesn’t seem great until you look at the attack effect. Here the attack effect is that this Beastie gains 100 attack every time it attacks, and that’s permanent. So the first time it attacks, it attacks for 100. The second time it attacks it attacks for 200, third time 300, and so on. If you pair this with a few Lightning In A Bottles you could actually get this out and win the game with your opponent being at a 1000 Health in one turn. This is still one of the coolest cards that I’ve seen in MetaZoo that really makes you think how to get this into the arena and use it. I also imagine after seeing this that we are going to see a few more ways to place Beasties into the arena with Native.
Native Spoiler Packs and NYC Gala
Now we know we’re going to be able to first see pages for these beasties in hand at the Water Tower with the Native Spoiler Packs. It was also announced this week that everyone on the content creator and influencer list is going to be sent Native spoiler packs. To open on their respective channels or social media. While we’re on the subject of native, it was announced that the New York City Gala will be based around Native, and have auctions that are going to benefit Native American Tribes. It will take place in New York City on April 13th.
Digital TCG Client – Code Cards
Code Cards have been announced again, this time for War. As we know from the road map released in early January. War comes out in August, followed by the online TCG in September. Code Cards will be color-coded and for War. It’s going to include all of the sets up until War. So your War packs will include code cards for Cryptid Nation, Nightfall, Wilderness, UFO, Séance, Native, and War. After War the code cards in each core set will only be for the specific core set. Starting with SCP you will only see SCP-Related Code Cards in the packs. Everyone can’t wait for this, it is going to make the code cards from Cryptid Nation all the way up to War very rare. When you consider that there’s 7 sets that that one core set needs to take care of. With a print run of 50k.
Mystery Envelopes
Starting this year, MetaZoo announced that they’re going to have mystery envelopes. Now these will be sold at Conventions, which also includes Towers. It’s going to have a card in it with a list of MetaZoo items you will receive. That card will also have a code that’s redeemable on a website that is undisclosed at this time. The items listed on that card are going to be incredibly interesting. It’s going to be different items from different MetaZoo sets, from Cryptid Nation all the way up to whatever’s currently available. It can include direct-to-consumer products such as Magikist or Valentine’s boxes. It’s also been hinted that this is going to be the way we’re going to be able to get some of the Ambassador cards we haven’t seen yet. Such as Loch Ness, or Jin. There’s also going to be a mystery envelope stamp spoiler from the most recent set, so there’s going to be special stamped cards that you can get in these mystery envelopes. Definitely keep an eye out for those if you’re going to conventions. I think this is an amazing way to get rid of some of the back stock. It’s really important for newer people at the conventions that may not know what MetaZoo is. They may decide to drop a few bucks on a mystery envelope and then get a bunch of MetaZoo from a bunch of different core sets over the course of the lifetime of MetaZoo. I’m really hopeful for this idea and I hope it’s going to do well at these conventions.
Looing for Card Translators
It was announced that they’re looking for native speakers of Japanese, Mandarin, Spanish and German to help fill positions because they’re working on their first International set. This is good news for us that want to expand beyond Cryptid Nation, and yes I know we’ve had a few beasties outside of Cryptid Nation already. If you fit that description and want to apply you can email your resume to HRMetaZoo.com
Valentine’s Plushie
2023 Valentine’s drop has come and gone. They announced it about an hour before the drop went live on the MetaZoo Marketplace. The 2023 Valentine’s promo is called “Valentine’s Plushie” and it has a power that if you and an opposing Caster decide to hug, you both recover 100 LP. We’ve seen this a few weeks ago and for the Valentine’s set. It comes with a corresponding plushie. There are two versions to this plushie. The normal version with a red heart and a NFT version with a gold heart. For the normal version we do know that there’s 500 of those. I don’t know the print run of the Gold version or if it’s included in that 500. If you did miss out Partners do have access to these plushies now.
Additional Announcements
We have a few smaller announcements. The first being that these Séance playtester cards are shipping this week so if you’re looking to get your hands on a silver bordered Possessed Aura those are going to be in the wild soon.
Mike had teased the words American Dream Mall which is a mall in New Jersey. There’s not a lot known about what this could mean exactly, but it’s possible that they’re looking to open a store in the American Dream Mall or there’s a lot of events that are held in the Mall as well. This could be hinting at a future event, maybe a Tower.
Mike had hinted that MetaZoo is going to be starting a podcast where Mike and staff will talk about Cryptids, Beasties, and have special guests on. I think this is a great idea and I think this is a great way to get Mike and staff in front of more people. Growing the brand not just the brand of MetaZoo but the people running it. So Mike, good luck starting that and I really hope for a content creator medal for you.
Water Tower Signup
This week’s top story we got a lot of really cool interesting information about this year’s Tower events so let’s talk about that.
Again the sign ups for the Water Tower we’re a little over a week ago but last week people found out who got accepted. In total a little over 500 people signed up for the Water Tower which is amazing considering that’s the number that signed up for Casters Cup last year. Now 128 of those casters were accepted and as you can imagine there were a lot of unhappy people now. As the chat was erupting from people being a bit unhappy that they were not chosen, Mike had then announced in the chat that every everybody in the top 32 from last year’s Caster Cup would be invited to the Water Tower. Now a good friend of mine, fellow content creator on the Cryptid Conversations Podcast is among the top 32 of last year’s Caster Cup. Deadly was originally denied access to the Tower, and then a few hours later given access to the tower, because of his performance at Caster’s Cup. With the addition of the top cut from last year’s Casters Cup that brings the player cap of the Water Tower to 158 participants.
MetaZoo Tower Event Document
There was also a document released on Saturday that details all of the information that we need to know about Towers. This will be a living document so a lot of the information isn’t there for future Towers. There is a bit of new information that we can gather from the document. The first thing is that every participant is going to be getting a badge. That badge will have stars added to it for every tower that they complete in 2023. So the more towers that an individual Caster attends, the more stars they’re going to have on their badge. MetaZoo has likened this to an oak leaf cluster in the military. There will also be Aura specific plushies, mini binders, lanyards Etc. These won’t just be at the tower event but these will also be given to LGSs to promote the tower during local events. For me the most exciting thing that I see in this list is the mini binders because it’s another way for us to store some of our special cards that might be outside the confines of a set. Hopefully the mini binders will have enough slots to be able to hold all of these special promos from the tower packs. That we have a nice way to keep that together in a themed binder.
In terms of gameplay we did find out some very interesting things about the fourth wall and Terras. There are going to be specific fourth wall items which haven’t been announced yet. For the Water Tower that will always be active and there will be 6 Terrras Active. Those 6 are Fog, Island, Lake, Ocean, Raining, and River. That’s not all that they’re doing special with the Terras. All of those Terra bonuses will have 3x the effect that they normally have on the cards! In this example here of Black Demon it’s going to get a bonus not of 25 but of 75 and when you look at something like Water Baby which is a one drop and you can have 6 per spellbook, that’s going to be hitting for 90. So if you can get a Water Baby out on turn one you’re in a pretty good position. Now I do think that the rule for three times effect of the Terra bonuses is going to reduce the diversity in the spellbooks, that we’re going to be seeing at Towers. I feel like it’s going to be much more of an Aggro, get as much as you can out fast to hit really hard, kind of event. I am really interested to see the combination of cards that people try to use to win as fast as possible.
Registration for the event starts at 9AM Eastern time per this document, and the first rounds are going to start at 11AM eastern time or noon Central where the event is taking place. The majority of the event will take place on Saturday March 4th with the top cut taking place on Sunday March 5th. If you can’t make it to the tower it was mentioned that they will be streaming this on Twitch. So you can still watch from home as well.
Earth Tower
We look forward to the Earth Tower in April. It was announced that these signups will be on March 1st for that event. This means that you have until the end of February to compete in a sanctioned event to qualify for the Earth Tower. It was also announced that all 32 of the Top Curt for Casters Cup will be invited to that Tower as well. I do expect that to be a common theme for all Towers this year.