This week at The Gathering Place: we’ve got a special Saturday appearance of Comedy n’ Dice, the next MTGPunks series tournament in the form of a Pauper showdown, a Riftbound Summoner’s Skirmish on Sunday, and another round of Combat D&D with Kelly and the last Specialty Draft of June: Mystery Booster 2!
Before we move on to other in-store events and things happening at TGP as June ends and July begins, a quick note about some new stuff!
If you haven’t checked out the TGP Online Store in a while, we’ve added a new feature! The Commander Assistant, formerly only available at our in-store kiosk, is now online in the shop! It’s a tool that uses EDHREC as a base to tell you which cards you might want to consider for your Commander of choice, but it’s specifically linked to the inventory on hand at The Gathering Place. So you can see cards that you might want, add those cards to your cart, and get ’em from The Gathering Place all in short order! It’s pretty neat, check it out if you’re so inclined.
We’ve also been working on expanding our higher-end inventory, so keep an eye on the display cases in the shop for anything new that pops in — especially after a certain be-mohawked man returns from travels to Vegas and Amsterdam in a few weeks.
We’re going to link the social media post for this Sunday’s MTG Draft below, but if you’re curious about what July has in store for Sunday drafts, we’ve already got that sorted out! Here’s what to expect:
Sunday, July 5: Time Spiral Remastered: 24 cap, $50 entry Sunday, July 12: Foundations: no limit, $25 entry Sunday, July 19: Unstable: 24 player cap, $30 entry Sunday, July 26: Modern Horizons II: 24 cap, $40 entry
Pauper is the “oops! all commons!” format of MTG where low-rarity cards produce some interesting, fun, shockingly complex gameplay.
While TGP is proxy-friendly in a great many cases, all cards played in Pauper tournaments must be the real deal.
Entry per player is $30, entry goes back to the prize pool, and the MTGPunks tournament series continues with additional bonus prizing straight from the Dungeon for each tournament! For this month’s Pauper tournament, that prize is an especially pretty Dom! art Counterspell, the DCI Legend Membership printing!
Riftbound continues to be a hit at TGP and beyond, and we’ll be closing out May with another Summoner’s Skirmish!
This tournament will be run at a competitive rules enforcement level. 32 player maximum, $20 entry per player, Swiss rounds followed by a cut to top. If you’ve ever wanted to give serious competitive Riftbound play a shot, now’s your chance!
You can also pop in the newly-created Castaway League channel on the TGP Discord, currently moderated by Wubahg, Spirit of The Island. For the duration of Castaway League, Wubahg will be your guide, host, savior, antagonist, trickster god, and whatever else The Island may require.
Wubargh, Spirit of The Island
For anyone interested in joining Castaway League: you are welcome to join after League begins next Tuesday, June 30. That said, only participants who register by midnight on Sunday, June 28 will be eligible to win a special prize designed to kick off Castaway League in style.
See you on The Island!
D&D Learn to Play
Wednesday, July 1, 6:00 p.m.
The first Wednesday of each month, TGP’s own Ben Creed (a friendly face known for comedy, trivia, and TCG excellence in both One Piece and MTG) will be your guide as you take your first steps into the Forgotten Realms.
The Learn to Play session starts at 6:00 p.m. and players don’t have to provide anything but themselves. Well, themselves and also a general openness, a will to learn and the expectation that role playing might feel a little goofy at first — but, the knowledge that the more you lean into it the more fun you’ll have. If you’ve always been D&D curious, if you’ve seen it portrayed in popular media, if you’ve been watching actual play shows or listening to podcasts like Dimension 20 or Critical Role, this is your opportunity to start your own story!
Girlypop Magic Commander Night
Thursday, July 2, 6:00 p.m.
We are honored to be hosting local femme-forward all-stars Girlypop Magic the first Thursday of each month at The Gathering Place! Join us for a free and fun night of MTG Commander-focused events for femme, non-binary, and gender expansive folks!
GPM comes by TGP every month, so come back the first Thursday and play some fun games with some truly excellent people!
Each month, The Gathering Place holds a CEDH tournament where the prize is based on attendance, and every entrant has a chance to battle it out for a Dual Land straight out of the TGP display case!
This month’s is on Saturday, June 6, starting at noon.
$30 buy in, Dual Land goes to first place, payout prizing to Top 4, and other / additional prizing based on attendance. Come battle it out for Duals, for glory, for love of the game!
Full proxy is permitted, all proxies must be clearly representative of the intended card and contain all information the official printing does in an easy-to-identify fashion.
MTG Modern RCQ High Roller Tournament “Ocelot” (Monthly MTG Series)
Saturday, July 11, 12:00 p.m.
Modern is a tight, quick, cohesive way to play competitive Magic. Encompassing decades of MTG history and comprised of the landscape born from experiencing Magic: The Gathering’s growing pains, Modern is a slower format in terms of cards added and lack of rotation, but much faster in every other way.
Monthly cash tournaments at The Gathering Place rotate between Modern, Legacy and Vintage, and June it’s clearly all about Modern! Cash tourneys, RCQs, the works! While Legacy and Vintage are both full-proxy friendly at TGP, Modern is zero proxy. All cards are required to be the real deal.
For this tournament, entry is $30 per player, entry contributes to the prize pool, so more players means bigger payouts. TGP will also continue adding bonus prizing to the cash tourney series, since folks have been AMPED about that recently and there’s certainly plenty to choose from when deciding on Modern-relevant prizing! For this tournament, that extra prizing comes in the form of the special Store Champ full-art Ocelot Pride!
$55 entry per player, MTG Marvel Super Heroes packs. Six packs per player, Top cuts to a Draft. This is a one-slot RCQ at CompREL, so come prepared to play! To sweeten the pot for this particular RCQ, The Gathering Place is contributing $50 of TGP store credit to the prize pool, with all fifty bucks going to our first-place winner!
That feels like more than enough for this week’s post. As always, thanks for reading! There’s a lot to talk about when it comes to planning and running events at a local card bar + card shop, and we remain grateful to our community for hanging out with us, playing games, and being the best dang cardboard-loving group of folks on the Eastern Seaboard.
This week at The Gathering Place, Marvel Super Heroes crash into our shelves, we’re drafting Ikoria on Sunday for this week’s TGP MTG Draft event, and we’ve got some special happenings in store for Friday!
With Marvel Super Heroes being the banner item this week, make sure you visit the TGP page / post / announcement for the Marvel Super Heroes Prerelease Weekend. Online preregistration for all Sealed events will remain open until 24 hours prior to the start time, and the amount of slots are limited. If you’re planning on showing up to play prerelease weekend sealed with Marvel Super Heroes, it is in your interest to preregister sooner rather than later.
This Friday, June 19, TGP is going to celebrate Juneteenth with help from two local Black-owned businesses! We’ve got The Flying Pierogi on deck with a special menu parked in the TGP lot right next to the Alpha Pie patio AND we’ll have a selection of sweet treats from Tonya’s Bake Shop upstairs at the bar. Both offerings will be at no cost, to anyone, while supplies last, but patrons are encouraged to pay what they can — and every cent of what people pay goes straight to the respective businesses. We’ll have payment methods available at each spot for those direct contributions and we look forward to seeing folks on Friday!
This Sunday’s MTG Draft is Ikoria, and this particular trip back to the lair of behemoths runs at a $35 entry per player with $10 per win in TGP Store credit awarded for every player with a winning record across three Swiss rounds, with bonus prizing for the top / undefeated player. Next Sunday’s is our April MTG Draft finale, and we’re going big mode with Mystery Booster, so we’ll see you there!
Last week, we talked about Jank 6 and some crazycolorshifted Commanders! Signups for Colorshifted cEDH are still open in-store, so come on down and claim your spot!
Speaking on in-store signups, registration for Castaway League is still open, and the Island will become a MTG Commander battleground starting Tuesday, June 30. For eight weeks you’ll form alliances, scavenge for resources, and scrap with your fellow survivors to be the last castaway standing for TGP’s Summer League. Check out the details and register for Castaway League here.
As an additional Castaway League note, while signups will remain open once League begins for any stragglers, anyone who registers will be entered in an exclusive drawing! The Castaway League channel will be open on Discord, and one single winner from the pool of people who preregistered for League will be selected to win a League-eligible [REDACTED] (a $60 value!!!) which, hey, either you could *really* use that in your deck, or it’ll be FANTASTIC trade leverage as League kicks off! Sounds like you might want to see more details and preregister for Castaway League, huh?
In other news, the next Comedy n’ Dice show is coming to TGP on June 27, starting at 8 p.m. — bringing another round of the hysterical and TGP-target-market-aligned Dungeons & Dragons & Comedy show full of thrills, laughs, and genuine peril back to The Gathering Place stage! Check it out over on the TGP Instagram, and we’ll see you there!
That about wraps it for this week’s Dispatch! As always, thanks for hanging out with us, thanks for reading, and we’ll see you around!
TGP Dispatch 6/9/26: New Cards, Pride Parties and The Return of the Jank
It would be a waste to not put the “June at TGP” post at the top of the second week of the month’s Dispatch, so here it is again — along with a promise that it won’t be taking up space at the top next week.
Another quick hit from previous announcements, MTG Draft nights at TGP are officially different now, and this past week’s LOTR Draft was a nice chance of pace for all of us! That FNM focus and Sunday afternoon speciality draft format continues this week, with more Strixhaven on the docket and a Sunday draft of Conspiracy: Take the Crown. So, we’ll see you there!
Before we get to the bigger announcements and breakdowns and the usual schedule you see, a quick moment to address the HVAC situation at TGP.
Veterans of the shop know, summertime can be a tough time for our long-serving and battle-worn HVAC units on the roof. Last year we got some pretty significant repairs done during a heat wave induced failure, and this past weekend things got a little hot when one of the ol’ girls kicked the bucket.
We’ve got one unit functional, fans in the shop positioned for optimum airflow, and we put a temporary wall unit in to keep things extra-cool. Repairs are expected to be completed tomorrow, and we’ve lined up a contractor solution with a rental HVAC unit for this weekend just in case we get some bad news tomorrow morning.
The bottom line is, we’re on it!
MTG Vintage Cash Tournament (Monthly MTG Series)
Saturday, June 13, 12:00 p.m.
The Gathering Place’s monthly cash tournament series continues in June with another Vintage Cash tourney!
Vintageis powerful, expansive and a popular way to play competitive MTG! Every card, every set, spanning decades of Magic and shaped by the future of the game itself.
At TGP, Vintage tournament decks are full throttle, and full proxy is permitted. All proxies must be clearly identifiable across the table and representative of actual MTG cards.
Entry is $30 per player to clash for cash in Magic’s most expansive and highest power format, and that entry contributes to the prize pool, along with bonus prizes added to the pot by TGP itself. For this month’s Vintage tournament? We’ve got a Demonic Tutor in the pool!
Crafts! Door prizes! Karaoke! Drink Specials! This year’s Pride Party at TGP is proof you can indeed have it all! We hope to see you, yes YOU, there! Celebrating one of Chapel Hill’s weirdest places where freak flags of every color fly with pride, this party is the night-before bash preceding our MTG Pride Tournament. But you don’t have to take *my* word for it…
All decks have a mandatory mana base of five colors. All Legendary creatures and Commander-eligible cards have Partner, but your deck MUST include all five colors! $10 entry per player, half of that goes straight to charity. We’ll have raffles and all kinds of fun stuff all day long. All game changers are banned!
It’s also being talked about in the shop, it’s on the Discord in the #jankchat channel, of course we’ve got to take a moment to talk about Jank 6: Colorshifted cEDH!
Ready for a real deckbuilding challenge? Welcome to Jank 6: Colorshift cEDH!
This tournament bridges the gap between top-tier cEDH power and wild creativity. Upon registration, you’ll be randomly assigned a colorshifted cEDH commander (or partners). Your job is to take that legend and build a competitive list capable of taking down the pod.
Please note: these color shifts affect the global card pool for the event. If a commander has changed colors, the “normal” version is no longer legal anywhere in the tournament.
As always with Jank tournaments, we are running a strict I.D. policy. Play for fun, and play to win!
Also as always with Jank, full proxy is permitted!
Everyone gets a limited-edition playmat, there will be prizes galore — including an altered Dual land — Top 8 prizing in the form of TGP store credit, and more!
Entry is $50 per player, register to play in Jank 6 at The Gathering Place starting right now, today, this moment!
The next entry in Magic’s expansive Multiverse collides with another setting that’s continually racking up the cosmic scoreboard: Marvel Comics! We’ve seen glimpses of what’s coming in June through Secret Lair releases and Spider-Man’s MTG debut, and the release of Marvel Superheroes in MTG promises to be another set going bigger!
Here’s days, times and links to preregistration for each of the weekend’s Sealed events! Keep in mind, preregistration will close online 24 hours before each event. If you want to secure your spot, sooner is better than later! Once we’re 24 hours away, any additional entry will be in-person only, first-come, first-served.
Marvel Superheroes sealed product will be available for purchase during prerelease weekend at The Gathering Place, no preorders for sealed product or singles are being taken at TGP.
Prices for in-stock Marvel Super Heroes product at TGP are as follows:
Collector Booster Boxes: $500 Collector Booster Packs: $50 Beginner Box: $25 Scene Boxes: $40 Play Booster Boxes: $160 Play Booster Packs: $6
We’re kicking off June at The Gathering Place, and we’ve got a full month of events, tournaments, activities and more all lined up! For a full rundown of everything happening at the shop, check out our June at TGP announcement post, or check out the events pages up top of this week’s Dispatch!
It’s been pretty well announced by now, how TGP does our weekly MTG Draft events is changing starting this week. June will the first month of the new style: Friday Night Magic is always standard, with Wizards promo + pack prizing, and Sundays will be TGP Specialty Draft events with booster boxes pulled from the Distro Dungeon and prizing in the form of store credit. You can read the full announcement here.
The Sunday Drafts this month are as follows:
LOTR / Week 1 – $50 , 24 player cap
Conspiracy: Take The Crown / Week 2 – $35, 24 player cap
Ikoria / Week 3 – $35, no cap
Mystery Booster / Week 4 – $55, 16 player cap
This week, as is the usual flow at TGP, the banner item is our big Dual Land cEDH tournament on Saturday. We run one the first Saturday of each month, and cEDH players from far and wide have started making it a habit to come compete for some of the biggest and best prizing around. It’s also great practice runs for Black Lotus Invitational runs, just saying. Most cEDH players are probably already on top of it, but just in case it’s your first rodeo, you can find registration and details over onTopDeck.
What else is happening this week? One Piece! OP-16 is dropping in a big way in the immediate future, and we’ve got a Prerelease Event Sunday, June 7! The Time of Battle is NOW, entry is $30 per player, details and signups are here. We’ve also got D&D beginner-friendly sessions, the combat-focused sessions with Kelly, and more! Check out our calendars and pages! They’re cool and helpful!
Otherwise, here’s a look at other near-future events + tournaments:
MTG Vintage Cash Tournament (Monthly MTG Series)
Saturday, June 13, 12:00 p.m.
The Gathering Place’s monthly cash tournament series continues in June with another Vintage Cash tourney!
Vintageis powerful, expansive and a popular way to play competitive MTG! Every card, every set, spanning decades of Magic and shaped by the future of the game itself.
At TGP, Vintage tournament decks are full throttle, and full proxy is permitted. All proxies must be clearly identifiable across the table and representative of actual MTG cards.
Entry is $30 per player to clash for cash in Magic’s most expansive and highest power format, and that entry contributes to the prize pool, along with bonus prizes added to the pot by TGP itself. For this month’s Vintage tournament? We’ve got a Demonic Tutor in the pool!
Every card, every era, possibilities and combos abound!
All decks have a mandatory mana base of five colors. All Legendary creatures and Commander-eligible cards have Partner, but your deck MUST include all five colors! $10 entry per player, half of that goes straight to charity. We’ll have raffles and all kinds of fun stuff all day long. All game changers are banned!
It would most likely be a mistake to kick off the month without talking about the upcoming release of Magic’s new set: Marvel Super Heroes. Marvel Super Heroes sealed product will be available for purchase during prerelease weekend at The Gathering Place, no preorders for sealed product or singles are being taken at TGP. For those interested in preregistering for the prerelease events at TGP, here’s links to each day:
You’ll hear more about that in the next couple weeks, obviously. Same for the Pride Party and Pride Tournament, and all the other stuff this month. We’re already working on July, we’re excited for summer in town, and we’ll see you around!
Product Release(s) in June: MTG UB: Marvel Superheroes, One Piece TCG OP-16
D&D Learn to Play
Wednesday, June 3, 6:00 p.m.
The first Wednesday of each month, TGP’s own Ben Creed (a friendly face known for comedy, trivia, and TCG excellence in both One Piece and MTG) will be your guide as you take your first steps into the Forgotten Realms.
The Learn to Play session starts at 6:00 p.m. and players don’t have to provide anything but themselves. Well, themselves and also a general openness, a will to learn and the expectation that role playing might feel a little goofy at first — but, the knowledge that the more you lean into it the more fun you’ll have. If you’ve always been D&D curious, if you’ve seen it portrayed in popular media, if you’ve been watching actual play shows or listening to podcasts like Dimension 20 or Critical Role, this is your opportunity to start your own story!
Girlypop Magic Commander Night
Thursday, June 4, 6:00 p.m.
We are honored to be hosting local femme-forward all-stars Girlypop Magic the first Thursday of each month at The Gathering Place! Join us for a free and fun night of MTG Commander-focused events for femme, non-binary, and gender expansive folks!
GPM comes by TGP every month, so come back the first Thursday and play some fun games with some truly excellent people!
Each month, The Gathering Place holds a CEDH tournament where the prize is based on attendance, and every entrant has a chance to battle it out for a Dual Land straight out of the TGP display case!
This month’s is on Saturday, June 6, starting at noon.
$30 buy in, Dual Land goes to first place, payout prizing to Top 4, and other / additional prizing based on attendance. Come battle it out for Duals, for glory, for love of the game!
Full proxy is permitted, all proxies must be clearly representative of the intended card and contain all information the official printing does in an easy-to-identify fashion.
The Time of Battle is RIGHT NOW, One Piece TCG players! OP-16 prerelease is the new set, based on the Paramount War, and things are heating up with new Leaders, new treatments, and a boatload more from One Piece’s trading card game component.
Entry is $30 per player, TGP will have promos and Bandai-provided prizing as per usual. This event is capped at 32, so snag those preregistrations sooner rather than later!
The Gathering Place’s monthly cash tournament series continues in June with another Vintage Cash tourney!
Vintage is powerful, expansive and a popular way to play competitive MTG! Every card, every set, spanning decades of Magic and shaped by the future of the game itself.
At TGP, Vintage tournament decks are full throttle, and full proxy is permitted. All proxies must be clearly identifiable across the table and representative of actual MTG cards.
Entry is $30 per player to clash for cash in Magic’s most expansive and highest power format, and that entry contributes to the prize pool, along with bonus prizes added to the pot by TGP itself. For this month’s Vintage tournament? We’ve got a Demonic Tutor in the pool!
Every card, every era, possibilities and combos abound!
All decks have a mandatory mana base of five colors. All Legendary creatures and Commander-eligible cards have Partner, but your deck MUST include all five colors! $10 entry per player, half of that goes straight to charity. We’ll have raffles and all kinds of fun stuff all day long. All game changers are banned!
The next entry in Magic’s expansive Multiverse collides with another setting that’s continually racking up the cosmic scoreboard: Marvel Comics! We’ve seen glimpses of what’s coming in June through Secret Lair releases and Spider-Man’s MTG debut, and the release of Marvel Superheroes in MTG promises to be another set going bigger!
Marvel Superheroes sealed product will be available for purchase during prerelease weekend at The Gathering Place, no preorders for sealed product or singles are being taken at TGP.
Pauper is the “oops! all commons!” format of MTG where low-rarity cards produce some interesting, fun, shockingly complex gameplay.
While TGP is proxy-friendly in a great many cases, all cards played in Pauper tournaments must be the real deal.
Entry per player is $30, entry goes back to the prize pool, and the MTGPunks tournament series continues with additional bonus prizing straight from the Dungeon for each tournament! For this month’s Pauper tournament, that prize is an especially pretty Dom! art Counterspell, the DCI Legend Membership printing!
Riftbound continues to be a hit at TGP and beyond, and we’ll be closing out May with another Summoner’s Skirmish!
This tournament will be run at a competitive rules enforcement level. 32 player maximum, $20 entry per player, Swiss rounds followed by a cut to top. If you’ve ever wanted to give serious competitive Riftbound play a shot, now’s your chance!
Last year, we laid down a solid foundation – Commander League: Summer Session was a surprise smash hit, and became the inspiration for so much more we’ve been doing at The Gathering Place since.
To that end, for 2026, we are delighted to introduce something entirely new for the Summer League at TGP: Castaway League.
If you’d like to know everything there is to know about Castaway League at TGP, here’s our post with details:
This week at The Gathering Place, we’re sending the month of May off with a full weekend! Flesh and Blood is running a prerelease this Friday, there’s an MTG Old School Cash tournament, and Sunday features a Riftbound Summoner’s Skirmish plus another round of combat-focused D&D with Kelly!
Find all the details over on the TGP events page, and here’s the details taken straight for there for folks who don’t like to click links.
Flesh and Blood: Omens of the Third Age Prerelease
Friday, May 29, 7:30 p.m.
A new FAB release, a new Friday stacked with stuff!
The MTGPunks tournament series at TGP is a monthly rotating cash tournament series of community-driven and fan-favorite formats for Magic.
May is Old School’s turn in the sun. We’re talking $30 entry! All Buy in going back into the prize pool! Old School at The Gathering Place, played using the Eternal Central guidelines!
Play Magic the way that Richard Garfield intended; with a nostalgic card pool from Alpha to Fallen Empires—where every deck is a time machine! Relive the aesthetics and power of iconic cards and strategic depth from ’93-’94, all while embracing the charm of old-school gameplay.
Riftbound continues to be a hit at TGP and beyond, and we’ll be closing out May with another Summoner’s Skirmish!
This tournament will be run at a competitive rules enforcement level. 32 player maximum, $20 entry per player, Swiss rounds followed by a cut to top. If you’ve ever wanted to give serious competitive Riftbound play a shot, now’s your chance!
As we announced last week, we’re switching up how we’re running MTG Drafts at TGP in June. You can read the full announcement here, if you missed it. TL;DR — FNM Drafts are always going to be new, Standard sets. Sunday Drafts will be special events with sealed product pulled from the Distro Dungeon vaults.
We also introduced the next Commander League concept last week, the Castaway League, which kicks off at the very end of June. Click here for our full post about Castaway Commander League, with all the details about the event. But, that’s a ways away — and you’ll see a full “June at TGP” post later this week with all the breakdowns, events, outlines, and everything else you’re expecting. For now, know we’re excited about Pride weekend in June, with our party on Saturday and a 5-Color Commander MTG x Pride Tournament on Sunday. We’ll have more posts soon, but we had to let the Pride Possum do an intro today.
The Gathering Place is changing how we run our weekly Draft events for Magic: The Gathering starting in June of 2026, and we’re excited to outline the roll out of our new Draft plans for any established enjoyers of Limited play and any newer folks who’d like to give cracking packs and playing cards a go.
Friday Night Magic is a long-standing tradition in the MTG community, and here at TGP we want to do our best to continue cultivating a strong Magic community. Part of that is making sure Friday Night Magic (FNM) is a big deal with a firm focus on what’s currently happening in the game.
Starting in June, Friday Night Magic Drafts will be whatever we have in stock that’s the newest Standard set in MTG. Price for entry will reflect that, as will pack prizing and the promos provided by Wizards. We’re going to kick FNM firmly into gear when it comes to running events live and direct with what’s fresh off the presses.
Of course, The Gathering Place doesn’t just run MTG Draft events on Fridays — we’ve been hosting Sunday Draft events for quite a while! Since Fridays are now exclusively for what’s new, hot and happening with MTG we’ve opened up some space for fun stuff on Sundays! To prove the point, here’s what we’re drafting in June on Sundays:
LOTR / Week 1 – $50 , 24 player cap
Conspiracy: Take The Crown / Week 2 – $35, 24 player cap
Ikoria / Week 3 – $35, no cap
Mystery Booster / Week 4 – $55, 16 player cap
Prizing for these TGP Draft events on Sundays will also be handled differently. Instead of packs, prizing will be given in the form of store credit. $10 per win for anyone with a winning record across three Swiss rounds, with a Foil Promo Pack for the top / undefeated player.
You’ll see signups for these Sunday MTG Drafts posted online over on the preregistration section of the TGP Online Shop soon. Thanks for reading, and we look forward to hosting some great Draft tournaments in the immediate future!
This week at The Gathering Place, we’ve got Flesh and Blood getting some love on the calendar, a whole lot of One Piece action, and a few events helping us close out May strong before we crash headlong into June 2026!
The FAB Team Trios event on Saturday, paired with a projector-in-the-back-of-TGP watch party for the Prague tournament, and Sunday that cruises straight into the One Piece TCG Extra Grand Battle — which, if you haven’t heard, if One Piece’s way of saying “we’re not going anywhere” by introducing a historic + non-rotating format.
A little further out in the future, we’ve got a new FAB set prerelease, an MTG Old School cash tournament, more Riftbound competitive space, and a great deal more. But, before we get ahead of ourselves, here’s the breakdowns for the rest of the events in the month, straight from the TGP events page.
Flesh and Blood Team Trios Tournament & World Premiere Prague Watch Party
Saturday, May 23, 12:00 p.m.
It’s an all-out FAB brawl at The Gathering Place! Saturday, May 23, starting at noon, we’re running a Team Trios tournament sure to knock the socks clean off all who dare step into the ring.
$20 buy in per player, each member of the team must use a different hero, prizing based on attendance. All three matches will be Classic Constructed, and we’ll have a FAB judge on hand. We’ll also tie this into putting the World Premiere FAB matches on the TVs over the tournament tables, so come hang!
Congratulations to One Piece for having made it into the hallowed halls of TCGs that need to introduce a historic format. As cards rotate out and the current meta shifts, One Piece Extra Grand Battle is a non-rotating all-time bangers way to play. TGP is running a tournament for EGB on Sunday, May 24, at 1:00 p.m. with $20 entry per player, pack and promo prizing, and the tournament will continue until there is a single undefeated player, an Extra Grand Champion!
The MTGPunks tournament series at TGP is a monthly rotating cash tournament series of community-driven and fan-favorite formats for Magic.
May is Old School’s turn in the sun. We’re talking $30 entry! All Buy in going back into the prize pool! Old School at The Gathering Place, played using the Eternal Central guidelines!
Play Magic the way that Richard Garfield intended; with a nostalgic card pool from Alpha to Fallen Empires—where every deck is a time machine! Relive the aesthetics and power of iconic cards and strategic depth from ’93-’94, all while embracing the charm of old-school gameplay.
Riftbound continues to be a hit at TGP and beyond, and we’ll be closing out May with another Summoner’s Skirmish!
This tournament will be run at a competitive rules enforcement level. 32 player maximum, $20 entry per player, Swiss rounds followed by a cut to top. If you’ve ever wanted to give serious competitive Riftbound play a shot, now’s your chance!
With that done, let’s start looking into the future — specifically, the month of June! There’s already all the month’s events planned out and listed on the TGP events page, and you can expect to see a monthly roundup as we get closer to the end of May. But there’s two big-picture items well worth covering this early in a Dispatch: first, we’re changing how MTG Draft happens at The Gathering Place and, second, we’re formally setting sail with Castaway Commander League at the end of June!
About Draft
We’re going to change up how MTG Draft events happen at The Gathering Place. It’s a long-standing tradition for Friday Night Magic (FNM) to be a big deal with a firm focus on what’s currently happening in the game, and we’re going to adjust our schedule to reflect that.
Starting in June, Friday Night Magic Drafts will be whatever we have in stock that’s the newest Standard set in MTG. Price for entry will reflect that, as will pack prizing and the promos provided by Wizards. We’re going to kick FNM firmly into gear when it comes to running events live and direct with what’s fresh off the presses.
Of course, The Gathering Place doesn’t just run MTG Draft events on Fridays — we’ve been hosting Sunday Draft events for quite a while! Since Fridays are now exclusively for what’s new, hot and happening with MTG we’ve opened up some space for fun stuff on Sundays! To prove the point, here’s what we’re drafting in June on Sundays:
LOTR Week 1 – $50 , 24 player cap
Conspiracy Week 2 – $35, 24 player cap
Ikoria Week 3 – $35, no cap
Mystery Booster Week 4 – $55, 16 player cap
Prizing for these TGP Draft events on Sundays will also be handled differently. Instead of packs, prizing will be given in the form of store credit. $10 per win for anyone with a winning record across three Swiss rounds, with a Foil Promo Pack for the top / undefeated player.
About Castaway Commander League
Last year’s “Summer Session” of TGP’s signature Commander League was where Commander League X and beyond began to find footing, and this year’s Summer League is going to keep up the trend we’ve seen through 2026 of League experimentation and innovation. To that end, we’re excited and delighted to announce: Castaway League!
Picture this: you’re marooned on an island, with nothing but the few Magic cards you were able to save from the shipwreck. Over the course of Castaway League, you’ll take those humble beginnings and turn them into a tournament powerhouse alongside (and occasionally against) your fellow castaways. Eight weeks, two tournaments, events and challenges à la Survivor reality TV nonsense, it’s gonna be a whole thing. It’s going to be Castaway League. It starts on June 30, and we’ll see you on The Island!
As always, thanks for reading this week’s Dispatch. As temperatures and humidity levels rise and the weather outside becomes progressively more true to North Carolina’s temperate rainforest classification, we’re continue to be your air-conditioned indoor haven for games galore. See you around!
Last year, we laid down a solid foundation – Commander League: Summer Session was a surprise smash hit, and became the inspiration for so much more we’ve been doing at The Gathering Place since.
To that end, for 2026, we are delighted to introduce something entirely new for the Summer League at TGP:
You signed up for Cruise: The Gathering, a promised couple weeks of fun in the sun and sand with some of the world’s foremost players of Magic aboard the SS. Richard Garfield. Islands both Tropical and Volcanic, lush jungles and white sand, it was all lined up to be the perfect summer.
Unfortunately for you, the summer you expected is not the summer you’ll experience.
A sudden Thousand-Year storm at sea, paired with a series of mechanical malfunctions below decks, has left you and your traveling cohort marooned! After being adrift aimlessly for the better part of three days, The SS Garfield has now run aground on an uncharted island. Listing dangerously and unsafe to inhabit any longer – to say nothing of unpleasant, you know it smells crazy in there – all hands and all passengers have abandoned ship to seek refuge elsewhere.
The rescue party, if it ever arrives, is surely weeks away.
In the meantime, you’ve got to do the best you can to survive. Both on your own, and as part of the burgeoning castaway society operating by the rules of a shonen anime. Power and position, privilege and progress all hinge on one thing: playing MTG. It’s up to you to have the wits, the skill, the heart to prevail on The Island.
You were able to save just 11 cards through this ordeal : your favorite Commander, and 10 others. From there, your only hope of surviving the island hinges on scavenging supplies from the shipwreck of the Garfield, dangerous forays into the depths of the jungle, salvaging resources and playing pitched games of Commander where the winner decides how the spoils are split.
Eight weeks. Two tournaments. Castaway League.
Sure, that’s a fun dramatic scene-setting introduction and all, but here’s the actual structure for this summer’s Castaway League.
Entry is $45 per player, and entry is all-inclusive for beginning materials and both tournaments.
Each player will provide 11 cards on their own: a Commander, and 10 spells and/or lands as a base for their deck. Cards classed as Game Changers, as well as cards present on the Banned and Restricted lists, are not permitted. Players must submit their list of 11 cards for review + approval before they will be allowed to participate in Castaway League via this signup form. The Commander you start with is not required to be the Commander you keep forever, flexibility is paramount in a League environment and The Pivot is always possible.
At the start of Castaway League, each player will receive a pack of 100 Dragon Shield sleeves, six booster packs of randomly-determined MTG sets from TGP stock, and a randomized selection of evenly color-distributed MTG cards assembled into a roughly 50-card Supply Crate. Resources are scarce, so trading within League will be more important than ever while you’re marooned on The Island.
Castaway League players will be eligible to pick up one traditional Commander League pack slot per week, permitting them to specifically choose / purchase an MTG booster pack. From there, all other League pack pulls will be from the Magic Hole (a box of random packs from TGP stock both off the shelves and from the Distro Dungeon). Each pull from the Magic Hole will cost $13, and each player can scavenge for resources from the Magic Hole a maximum of three (3) times per visit to TGP.
Additional “resource gathering” will be accomplished both individually and together through weekly goals, trials, and challenges. Castaway League players can expect to be split into teams, vote on certain outcomes / events, and other reality show adjacent nonsense. You’ll be spinning wheels, completing scavenger hunts, and more.
Commander meetup days will remain on Tuesdays, Thursday and Saturdays. Castaway League will have a separate signup sheet from Commander Meetup, and players choosing to play within Castaway League on any given night will need to sign up / in to receive credit + recognition for their attendance and gameplay performance. League decks, as always, must remain at The Gathering Place for the duration of the event. Speaking of duration:
Tuesday, June 30 – Castaway League begins
Saturday, July 25 – Mid-League Tournament
Saturday, August 22 – Castaway League Finale Tournament
To summarize:
Entry is $45 per player, each player will provide 11 cards of their own choice and begin with sleeves + a starter kit from TGP.
Packs can be purchased weekly through two main methods: pack slots and random pulls, and there will be additional opportunities for pack slots and Castaway League bonuses through participation in League events / challenges / milestones throughout the season.
Meetups are Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, players are not required to attend every single meetup to participate in League. The Mid-League tournament is on 7/25 and the Finale Tournament is on 8/22.
If you have any questions or would like any clarifications, don’t hesitate to get in touch with Victor either on the TGP Discord or via email (victor@thegatheringplacegames.com). League is for anybody who wants to participate!
That’s a lot of dry bones, but hopefully you get the gist of what we’re going for here! Castaway League is somehow both lower, and higher, stakes than any League before it. We’re getting goofy with it, and prioritizing fun weird stuff “it could only happen in Commander” type MTG in a big way. You’ll be trading cards week over week, making treasure out of trash, and steadily assembling a deck with the juice to carry you to victory and crown you Castaway Royalty – provided you get off The Island at all.
In terms of prizing, we’re still getting it all together – you can expect to see some fun + on-theme alters, Secret Lair printings, boxes of boosters, and perhaps even something more…. Reserved if things REALLY get popping for Castaway League signups. You can preregister for League starting today, and we’ll see you on the beach!
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