With both The Automata Initiative and the 2023 Continental Championships on the immediate horizon, we know many players are keen to hear about whether the new set will be legal for Continentals. Following internal and external discussion, Null Signal Games Organized Play have come to a decision:
The Automata Initiative will be legal for ALL 2023 Continental Championships.
This also means that the new Standard rotation will be in effect for these tournaments – cards from Data & Destiny and the Flashpoint Cycle will no longer be legal for Standard play (excepting those cards that have been reprinted in another Standard-legal set).
Our existing policy is that a set is legal for tournament play the second Friday after the set is released. In this case, enforcing that policy would result in the Asia-Pacific Continental Championship (APAC) having a different legal cardpool than the other Continentals. For many reasons, we see that as an undesirable outcome, so we are making an exception to our set legality policy in this case. Organizers of other tournaments may act in line with this exception or stick to the policy as they prefer – TOs should determine what makes sense for their own events.
We realize this gives APAC players an extremely short window to practice with The Automata Initiative, but on balance we thought the player base would be more enthusiastic about getting a chance to play with the new cards. We have been in communication with the Jinteki.net development team, and we believe we are on track to deploy the new set in time for the event. We cannot guarantee that implementation will be 100% complete or bug-free, but if necessary we will make accommodations to assist players in using the new cards during APAC.
For American Continentals, A.K.A. Cascadia, we’re working on an arrangement with the venue, Mox Boarding House. We are hoping to arrange for Mox Boarding House to be able to sell copies of The Automata Initiative at the event, and will provide updates on this as soon as we are able.
We hope you enjoy playing in the new Standard format at the highest level this Continentals season!
