This rather strange announcement over on the Upper Deck page about the TCG (in which, by the way, they admit that all of those problems you contest winners have been having giving your codes to Landro are completely intentional -- they're joking, in case you're wondering) is all about one of the cooler things they're doing with the TCG tournament system, something called
Hero of the Year.
The world champs have already been chosen, but as I understand it, these are like points winners: they may not have won the championship, but they earn points for placing in each tournament, and at the end of the year the person with the most points gets named Hero of the Year, and wins all the prizes associated with that: a free year of Upper Deck product and play, years of GameFly and Netflix, and of course lots of loot cards and exclusive loot. 2009's Hero of the Year is a guy named Jan Palys from Germany -- congrats to him and the rest of the top 10, called the Elite Minions.
There's some other fun with this as well, especially if you're planning to hit up an event next year: for the next 12 months, anyone who
beats one of these winners in tournament play will get a special exclusive card called Mystic Denial that will block any card your opponent plays. It's a cool idea -- gives you something else to chase as you hit up whatever Upper Deck event happens to show up in your town.
Tags: contest, gamefly, hero-of-the-year, jan-palys, netflix, tournament, tournament-play, upper-deck, upper-deck-contest, winners, world-champs, wow-minis, wow-tcg, wow-tgc-tournament
Filed under: Events, Fan stuff, WoW TCG
Oct 26th 2009 at 4:00PM 
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
mtsadowski Oct 26th 2009 4:08PM
The Card Game loot is dumb. While the mounts and stuff are cool, the points that you get can get you... a tabard. What else? A.... another tabard. That's it! Thanks Blizzard!
Nicknin10do Oct 26th 2009 5:23PM
Well, there was an Ogre costume, thought that was pretty cool.
(don't know if they still offer it)
kabshiel Oct 26th 2009 4:22PM
The Warlord TCG had a similar system, where some top players were given special powerful cards and other players were able to challenge them at events. If they won the game, they got to keep those cards and other people would challenge them. I never played that game, but it seemed like a cool idea.
jfofla Oct 26th 2009 4:22PM
Of course it is a German.
Hal Oct 26th 2009 5:54PM
It's an extended art version of Mystic Denial that you can win, not a regular copy of the card itself. Extended art cards are quite popular, as they show off the artwork that goes into these things much better, and are often quite exclusive or rare.
Miri Oct 27th 2009 2:14PM
Interestingly enough, one of the "Minions" seems to live near me...like next town over...I wonder if he attends the Tourneys at my local comic book store (owners are huge WoW fans)....I'll have to ask on my next trip in...