Checking in with some information and thoughts on the current situation facing the gaming community.

First thing that needs to be discussed is the plethora of mandatory stay-at-home orders from our various city/county/state governments. Many of these areas are COMPLETELY shutting down everything that they deem non-essential. That of course includes our LGS’s (Local Game Store).

Hopefully with the new stimulus package coming available shortly our LGSs can stay afloat until this ordeal is concluded. That is the hope anyway.

How is the community coping with this bitter confinement? They are coming together quite nicely, actually.

Yugioh Facebook groups (such as Cyber Dragon Duelists & Harpie Duelists) are organizing page tournaments to keep the player base engaged and active using duelingbook or ygopro or however you can arrange to duel your opponent.

The players themselves are organizing these tournaments and rules for them AND supplying the prize support for the winners.

MTG Arena, Wizards of the Coast’s free-to-play online game, has been releasing new formats and content to play in order to give their players a way to still play their favorite card game.  Currently they have Pauper, standard, historic and newly released brawl formats available for you to loose yourself in.

Wizards of the Coast, in an attempt to give aid and show support for the brick and mortar stores that area facing closing their doors for good, has announced that they will be doing a reprint of their latest mystery booster release and will be donating these boosters to qualifying WPN stores so that your LGS will receive 100% of the profit to help them get back on their feet.

Make sure to scoop these up, not only will you POWER up your favorite decks but you will truly be supporting your LGS and making sure they are still around.

So It appears that even though we are on lockdown and forced to be anti-social hermits, the community (both players and corporations) are finding ways to come together to ease the burdens we are all facing currently.  This kind of support just gives me the warm and fuzzies all over.

Stay safe.  Keep brewing and theory crafting.