Judging Big Events

Ever considering judging or volunteering at the big leagues, like the upcoming Gen Con in August? Then do read on!

Seed-3 Sneak

Will Clark spoils some more Seed-3 stuff in this interview. You don't want to miss this!

Spring Limited Championships

To give you a much needed respite from the day to day grind, The Spoils is proud to announce the Spring Limited Championships!!!!!

Seed III Preview

The Fall of Marmathoa is approaching! To celebrate, I'm pleased to unveil the latest preview card. Behold... the mighty demon knight, Geiseric, the Souleater!

Constructed History - Lesson 3

Terence Dorman dips into the past and looks back on the Constructed format. With this third installment of the two part series have reached the conclusion of the Constructed History Lessons . Enjoy! ;-)

Shade of the Devoured Emperor

Ken Pilcher opens the door to the next set after Seed-3 and talks about balancing storyline and mechanics.

Constructed History - Lesson 2

Terence Dorman dips into the past and looks back on the Constructed format.

Seed 3, SotDE, and Dragon Shield

In his latest blog Michael shares some news on Seed-3, the new set SotDE, and the running of a Spoils promotion on the Dragon Shield boxes.

Constructed History - Lesson 1

Terence Dorman dips into the past and looks back on the Constructed format.

Check out all of the latest blarg entries!

This week Terence takes you through his experience being the Tournament Organizer for a local gaming store.

Over One Million Served

Terence Dorman takes The Billionaire to the Vast Mastabatorium for him to spend all of his easily earned money.

Be Personable

Terence shares thoughts on why judges and players should interact and be personable in their contact with each other. Read it all here.

Buying Wisely

Johan 'Bizze' Bisenius guides you into the best ways to go about buying boosters and getting some good value for your money. He’ll also help with some fundamental deck ideas or combos that you can build on to create a deck that suits your style of play.

Within the Rules?

Terence talks about his cooperation with Ken on new R&D cards and the importance of making them work within the rules. Read it all here.

Get Weird!

In his new article Terence invites all of us to go a little nuts when creating new decks!!

Seed III schedule

Michael's latest blog post is live! Be sure to check it out as he discusses the Seed 3 production schedule. Read it all here.

MegaCon 2012 report

John Westcott brings you an inspiring report on what he achieved at MegaCon this year.

Should any of you reading become inspired from reading John's report, and want to set up The Spoils at a gaming convention near you, then do get in touch with us at "info (at) arcanetinmen (dot) dk" and we can do some great magic, nay Spoils, together!!

How Will became the OP Manager

In his latest blog post Will complete's his journey to becoming the Director of North American Operations. Be sure to check it out for the conclusion to his two part introductory story.. Read it all here.

What's the fun in that?

Terence Dorman's mental state is threatened when his good friend Mark proclaims that The Spoils is not fun. Surely he must be crazy - or is he right? Join Terence as he discovers the truth...!

Judge Pressure

Terence Dorman invites you to his class on how to deal with the pressure and power of being a judge. Read it all here.

Card analysis: Redonkulous

With a cost of three Redonkulous is easily affordable. It fits nicely into many situations as most players will always have at least three resources unattached during a turn so they have the option to draw cards if need be. Follow Terence Dorman as he take you on a guided tour through donkeyland!

The Player Arena

Ken takes you on a guided tour to the battlegrounds of player archetypes.. Read it all here.

Push The Spoils to your local store

New help document designed for anyone who wishes to help share The Spoils with other gamers or card players by demonstrating to them just how great The Spoils is. In this document you will learn what you need to run a demo as well as learn some tips on how to conduct the demo itself.

The Seed 3 rollercoaster

Michael shares some insight on what goes into the decision of chosing a suitable printer for The Spoils. Read it all here.

New Judge of Great Justice

Please put together your hands for our new Judge of Great Justice. His name is Kettil and he loves rules! Read his origin story here.

Gen Con: Slighing Rage

Relive Nationals at Gen Con with insight from the man that topped the game in 2011 in USA!

Influence Counter app

A good friend of The Spoils has created a nice little Influence Tracker for Android phones.

How to become an OP Manager

Right on schedule, Will Clark's first Blarg post is now live! Be sure to read his take on Gen-Con 2009 here.

Running Great Demos

A great article for anyone who wishes to help share The Spoils with other gamers or card players by demonstrating to them just how great The Spoils is. In this article you will learn what you need to run a demo as well as learn some tips on how to conduct the demo itself.

Beardy Justice

The Blarg is alive and kicking! Be sure to read Terence's first blog here and find out how he became the first Beard of Great Justice.

Drawing vs. Discarding

...While it is certainly possible to do both, The Spoils tends to lend itself to players focusing on either drawing or discarding as combining the two makes for some very strange deck constructions. So which is better...?

An Introduction

The Blarg is alive and kicking! Be sure to read Ken's exciting first article here!.

Research Investment OTK

Swedish Champion Hampus Eriksson takes you on a guided tour through "Research Investment" land. Enjoy the ride!

A Brief History

The second Blarg post is now live! Be sure to read Michael's exciting first article here!.

MegaCon 2012 - Open R&D

This year at MegaCon, in Orlando Florida, we have decided to involve our dedicated players even further in our creative process.

Warning Shot!

Terence Dorman has taking over the lead on article content, and the future is looking bright!!

MegaCon 2012 - Feb 17th - 19th, 2012

The Spoils will be at MegaCon this year! John Westcott (along with Ken Pilcher) will be in the card gaming room (230 C & D) holding events throughout the duration of the Con. There will be constructed, Draft, Sealed and a Precon events! You can talk about it here!

The Evil Alliance

What better time to spoil a new card? Discuss in the forums your thoughts as to the details of this new faction. Participate in the debate here!

Fall Limited Championship

After taking the summer off, The Spoils seasonal championships are back - and this fall local gaming establishments will be hosting the Fall Limited Championships. So join the fun!

Seed-3 preview

We now have one of the great warriors of Marmothoa. Octo-Ba-Ba will stop at nothing to do what needs to be done. Once there is blood spill his appetite for death and destruction becomes insatiable and everything in his path had better watch out. If dealing with his great armor wasn't enough, his pin point accuracy with his trident is sure to wreck havoc on any opposition.

Competition Winner!

We have found a winner of a unique forum avatar, but we would still like to hear your opinions and wishes for the future of the The Spoils homepage!

German Nationals 2011

It is time for another round of German Nationals, so get ready to battle once more for the spoils of war!!

Homepage Renovation!

We are updating the spoils homepage, voice your opinion, gain influence, win a unique forum avatar!

Gen Con videos

Team Covenant has put together a few videos from the US Nationals at Gen Con 2011.

We know that these videos are not exactly the freshest of news, but thought we would share them with you all the same :-)

Australian Nuggets

Good Games in Australia launches a special NEW PLAYER PROMOTION. And will also be bringing the Aussie players a string of Championships.

Seed-3 preview

Seed 3 is wrapping up here in the offices and we want to give you a little more of a taste of what is coming down the pipe.

So please meet "Iohane" - she is a tricksy character not too keen on showing what she is all about, so you will have to puzzle your way to her!

Essen Spiel

Again this year we look forward to meeting many new players at the Essen Spiel game fair in Essen, Germany.

But this year we´re not only offering demo games – we have also something for players that look for some competition!

The fair takes place October 20-23 – and you can find us in hall 6 at booth 6-416. Come join the good times :-)

Software update COMPLETED

The software update has finally been all updated - and everything should be back to normal. Do let us know by posting in the forum or writing to "info (at) arcanetinmen (dot) dk" if you discover some odd corner of the site that isn't working.

We hope you will enjoy the new layout of the forum.

The software update has proven to be more difficult than our external programmer had thought it to be. But he is working on it and hopefully it will be back to normal soon (but not making any promises at this time...)

The forums and Player Portal should be functioning, as well as all the pages should be functioning - they just don't look as pretty right now.

We hope you will bear with us a little longer!

OCTGN Online Play

Johan "Bizze" Bisenius has put together a beginner's guide for playing the Spoils online through OCTGN. This is not officially supported, but we do hope that you will have fun playing anyway :-)

Seeking community help

We are looking to produce a series of "Help Docs" or "How-To guides" and are wondering if some of our good community members out there might be interested in helping with this?

There have already been written about these topics many times on the forums, so in most cases what is needed is just to plow through the forums and dig out the gold!

We have created a specific thread for each of the topics. We would then need one person to spearhead each paper, but will of course encourage all of the community to chip in with good input. And once the first draft of the doc is ready, this can be posted to the forums for further input.

Queensland State Champs - NOW!!

Only a short time to react - so get your faction in gear!!

On September 10th, 2011, Good Games in Brisbane will be hosting the State Championships for Queensland, Australia. And they promise PRIZES FOR ALL!!!

So sleeve your favorite cards and get ready to battle for the throne!

Dissecting Research Investment

Johan Bisenius discusses in great detail the origins and implications of the most prevalent combo deck in constructed today: the Research Investment one turn kill. A combo that has already received a good deal of attention in the forums, Bisenius provides a critical primer for the uninitiated and the pro alike.

Swedish Nationals 2011

On the weekend 8-9th of October the Swedish Nationals will be hosted at Wizard-Games in Gothenburg. There will be one Limited and one Constructed event and we will therefore crown two champions: one Limited Champion and one Constructed Champion!

Fan fiction

Fan fiction: What you are about to read is an excerpt from the famous journal of a Sarcophyle known as Alexander Keets, published in 138 AB amid a boom of negative city-wide reaction towards Sarcophyles...

Enjoy the reading :-)

The Spoils Constructed Nationals Decklists and Limited Results!

See the lists after the jump!

Neil Crompton goes through the various Control and Combo decks in the format, explaining how they work and providing links to decklists to give you an example of what each deck could look like. Most of the decklist links also have more detailed introductions to how the decks work. Click for more!

When Seed 2 was released, we got heaps of new toys to play with, but so far there haven't been any big Open Constructed tournaments to test the latest decks in. From the discussions on the forum here and at other sites, it seems like each area has its own local metagame. That's not a bad thing, but I'd like to get some more global deck discussion going. Hopefully this will help us work out what the best decks are and what sorts of things people will need to prepare for when we're getting ready for big tournaments like GenCon.

Terence Dorman takes us on a witty tour of his judging activities. And urges anybody with a small judge inside to jump on the wagon!

Call for Article Writers!!

Spoils players the world over!

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Ian Spiegel – Blum and I will be taking over as Chief Editor and Marketing Consultant for The Spoils. Essentially, I will be responsible for recruiting writers to create content for the website and will help Kim Maita spread this wonderful game to local stores across the United States.

Thank you to all of you that has sent me emails and/or replied to the thread here. All has been read and weighed and there were many good arguments - and we have reached a decision!

**dum-dum-dah**

**dramatic pause**

All cards stay and no cards are rotated out. We decided that it was indeed too soon to rotate out cards. We will at one point in the future perhaps want to rotate, but it is not this day! And if we do then we promise that it wil be done so that there will be multiple formats, so there will always be a format where you can play with the old cards.

As most of you agreed with the decision tipping this way, then I am sure that it will be well received. But I also hope that the few that thought it would be good to rotate already now, will be able to embrace the decision anyway.

It is time for another article from the vault. This time the focus is on theme decks and on how the Missus gets her way!!

Enjoy ;-)

2nd Edition is about to hit the shelves (street date is June 27th) – and there has been quite a ruckus as to this meaning the end of 1st Edition and 1st Edition Part-2. I have been emailing with some of you already about this – and we are considering if we do indeed want to stick by the original announcement or if reversing the decision could be the right way to go?

So now we would be looking for further input from all of you great guys out there! Please shoot us an email with your reasoning why or why not we should or should not keep 1st Edition & Part-2 in the tournament card pool. Please send to "michael (at) arcanetinmen (dot) com"

Know that we WILL listen to you, our great community, for advice on the matter – but of course when there are two sides to a debate it may be difficult to heed both…

We look forward to hearing a lot of enthusiastic and eloquent defenses for either side of this case!

The day is nearing that 2nd Edition hits the stores around the world. The street date has been set at June 27th - and to celebrate this we are of course hosting a series of release events :-)

Tips, tricks and great ideas to help you promote The Spoils to new players. And if you have further good ideas how to do this, do not hesitate to post them in the forum by following article link at the bottom of the article.

Go spread some Spoils love ;-)

New insightful article for casual or new players looking to improve their game and help flesh out options for cards they might otherwise gloss over.

New Judge documents

With the convention time being rolled out before us, our Judge of Great Justice has also put together some great new must-reads for all of you judges (and other rules enthusiasts) out there!

The two new documents can be found in the download section - or right below:
The Spoils™ Rules FAQ
The Spoils™ Judge Behavior Document

It's time for one of the biggest gaming conventions of the year, meaning it's time yet again for some of the biggest Spoils tournaments of the year!

To ensure that these tournaments go as smoothly as possible I'm looking for up to three capable judges to help me run these exciting events.

After the success of the Winter Limited Championships, we here at The Spoils are proud to announce that we are continuing the Seasonal Championships.

Gen Con will be opening up for registration for events at Noon (US Eastern time) on May 1, 2011.

And The Spoils will of course be represented with a lot of great tournaments and a general good time!

The website will be down for about an hour today (Wednesday April 27th) between 10pm and 2am (US Eastern time = 6am and 10am GMT).

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

There has been several guesses as to which cards will be in 2nd Edition and which cards will be out.

Now you can stop guessing - but nothing comes free; you have to work for it :-)

This year we are offering events for both the new and experienced player. So regardless if you just started playing or have been winning for a while, there is something for you.

This year our headline event is something spectacular:
We at The Spoils will pay for you to go to Gencon!!!!!!

...One night while parent-sitting, I mentioned to her I had this hilarious card game tucked away and that we should play. Needless to say we both loved it, and the next day we drove around the greater Chicago suburbs looking for any cards we could find...

An insightful article on the changes The Spoils has gone through - and a small push for us all to get into the swing of things!

This article could perhaps even serve as intro for The Spoils on other gaming sites/forums...?

Arcane Tinmen went on a roadtrip to Cartamundi to oversee the print start of 2nd Edition - a drive of 1900 kilometers back and forth to correct the press one tenth of a millimeter.

We brought a camera along and snapped some photos to share with you all to give you a little insight into what we are doing.

Rules FAQ

The Judge of Great Justice (aka our Head Judge Coordinator Terence Dorman) has put together a Rules FAQ with the help from the good people "kallisti" and "Hordak".

It is required reading for anybody wanting to get a better grasp of the rules. Not just for judges - we dare say that anybody will be enlightened by reading this, as it has a lot of examples the leaves you with a better understanding of how The Spoils is played.

Download the Rules FAQ in the Download section.

The month of March will see Spoils visiting both the GAMA Trade Show and Megacon. You can read more about each by following the links below:
• GAMA Trade Show - March 14–18
• Megacon 2011 - March 25-27

Volunteers
If you are in the neighborhood and could be interested in helping out, then please contact Kim at "sales-usa (at) thespoils (dot) com"

Our good friends at the Good Games chain of stores in Australia will be doing Tournaments and demos at Armageddon Expo Sydney this weekend.

If you are in the neighborhood, then come join the fun :)

You can read more about Armageddon Expo here.
And about the Spoils event specifically here.

The Winter Limited Championships are about to kick off!!

Check out the website for a WLC near you.
Best of luck to you all - and have a great time!!!

In the upcoming Winter Limited Championship we will be treating all participants to a special EPIC card!!

In today's article you will get a sneak peak of the card along with an inside story from the creator of the card.

We don't want to spoil anything, but just say that he's fast and a vampire. Man, that is one fast vampire. Whoosh!!!

A new batch of wallpapers have been added in the download section.

Time to re-pimp your screen!!!

Just a quick note to say that The Spoils will be represented at these two events:
• GAMA Trade Show - March 14-18
• Mega Con - March 25-28 (booth 535)

A very, very, very casual deck - but it is good fun anyway.
Enjoy the reading :)

Are you willing to brave the cold to prove that you are the best Limited Player?

This winter The Spoils is bringing back on of the most beloved tournaments from the olden days.

Gilded Yurt may be one of the craziest cards in Seed II and really highlights the depth found in this game. The Yurt enables a whole range of powerful combinations and strategies...

We are in the process of preparing a reprint of 1st edition and Part-2 cards - and we thought it could be cool to update some (or all) of the reprints with new flavor text.
And for this we would like to hear your input

The flavor text can be anything cool. It can be something out of your own head - or it can be a memorable quote from a movie, book, tv-series, commercial, game, song, politician, artist, philosopher, celebrity, constitutions, famoues texts or anything else that is cool, fun, interesting - there are no limits!!

Check out this special holiday "treat" we have for you.

Playtesting encompasses a wide range of techinques that, when employed properly, will turn your mediocre decks into Top 8 decks.

Learn more about finetuning your decks so you will gain the upper hand!

Wherever you go, regardless of what game you are playing, you will always hear players talking about the metagame. You will hear them talking about how they changed their decks to counter the metagame, or how the metagame shifted when the new set came out...

ASS flyers

Flyers on the Afternoon Saturday Spoils have been added to the download section.

Tutorial for new players

We have persuaded our good friends at Team Covenant to let their fine tutorial on The Spoils be available to everybody free of charge.

So check out the tutorial for yourself.
And feel free to pass on the link to as many people as possible!

Our good friends at GameOx in Poland has created some nice new wallpapers for your computer screen.

These can be found in the download section.
Enjoy :-)

The Spoils will be hitting Essen Spiel again this year. Come join the fun at booth 6-226.

Play a draft, help us demo and get new players into The Spoils or just drop by for a chat :-)

New Zealand Nationals will take place in Auckland on October 10th, 2010. It will be an open event - so everybody bring out your cards and get gaming!!

Today's is the long awaited release of the new expansion Seed II: Gloamspike's Revenge. We hope you will enjoy the new set and that it will help bring in a lot of new players! To celebrate Seed II we are temporarily changing the theme of the top menu. Enjoy this and enjoy the new set :-)

The prerelease page has been updated with the info we have on stores hosting Seed II prereleases.

If your store isn't on the list then do get in touch with us to have the store added.

The first stores have signed up to introduce The Spoils to new players. See the list of events here.

If your local store isn't on this list, then consider contacting them and ask if they need any help in setting up a Starter Event.

The Spoils Tutorial

Looking for a streamlined effective way to learn The Spoils TCG?

The Definitive Spoils Tutorial paves the way for easy entry into the amusing, outrageous, and elegant world of The Spoils.

The release date for Seed II: Gloamspike's Revenge has been set at September 20th.

Prereleases can be hosted on Saturday 18th or Sunday 19th. Help your local store make this event a success!

Will Clark is having his hands full with all the OP activities, so in his stead please join us in welcoming Terence Dorman as new Head Judge Coordinator. Terence will be in charge of all judge activities including certifying new judges.

Nick Dorman of Team Hopper takes you on a guided tour through the events at Gen Con. Enjoy :-)

The Seed-2 package deals will start to ship in Mid-September.

Over the next week we will be sending out emails to everybody that has ordered these deals.