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17 Days to Go: The Blissful Eternity Midnight Prerelease Is Coming!

We are officially 17 days away from the Blissful Eternity Midnight Prerelease! It’s time to stop wondering and start preparing. Are you ready to try your luck and chase that ultra-rare, Tetsuya Nomura-illustrated Sephiroth Gold Stamped Signature card?

Here is everything you need to know to join the Kardboard Korner crew for our favorite community tradition.

📍 Where Are We Meeting?

While we primarily operate as an online shop, we love bringing the local community together. We’ll be hosting after-hours at our usual haunt:

🏠 Mr. Gyros 📌 9229 S. Cicero Ave, Oak Lawn, IL 60453

⏰ When is the Kickoff?

🗓️ Friday, July 31st, 2026 The main tournament event starts exactly at Midnight, but the doors open early at 9:00 PM.

  • Early Birds: Come hang out for some casual play, trading, or just grabbing some food.

  • New Players: If you’ve never played FFTCG, show up early! We’ll be running demos and teaching the basics before the tournament officially kicks off.

🏆 How Do I Win?

We’ve been hosting these since Opus XIV, and we like to make sure everyone leaves happy:

  • The Grand Prize: Secure 1st place and you’ll walk away with an extra Blissful Eternity Prerelease Kit!

  • Top 4: We’ve got dedicated prize support locked in for our top finishers.

  • The “Everyone Wins” Rule: Even if the packs aren’t in your favor, everyone who participates walks away with at least one free booster pack.

💰 Entry & Kits

  • Tournament Entry: $50.00 (Includes your first Prerelease Kit containing 9 booster packs, an exclusive promo, and sleeves).

  • Additional Kits: $45.00 each for those looking to stock up on the night.

Why Attend?

Aside from being among the absolute first to crack open Blissful Eternity and hunt for those stunning new Noir cards like Cloud, it’s all about the atmosphere. There’s something genuinely special about grinding through a tournament until 3:00 AM with a group of people who love this game just as much as you do.

Are you planning on coming out? Drop a comment below so we can get an accurate head count, or let us know which card you’re hunting for most in this set!

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Terra Luck, Cleat Fails, & Windows 11 Breakthroughs

What a week! I finally found a sliver of free time to actually play some Final Fantasy TCG instead of just sorting it. I packed up my Moogle Bounty Mayhem deck and headed over to Game Knight in Summit to check out the setup my buddy Leo has going on.

Most of the usual FFTCG crew was there, and honestly, it was an absolute blast. As for how I actually did? Let’s just say my Moogle Bounty Mayhem didn’t quite break the meta this time, and I walked away with a few losses. But hey, I’ve never claimed to be a world-champion player, and I don’t get to play nearly as much as I’d like to—so I’m strictly blaming it on rust!

The Golden Touch 🃏✨

The real highlight of the night came after the games. I grabbed my Journey of Discovery consolation pack and handed it right over to my daughter, who came along for the ride. She has notorious good luck, so I told Leo right then and there: “She’s pulling the Terra.”

Sure enough, she rips open the pack, and right there on top is Terra! It wasn’t the massive Gold Signature version, but pulling the clean Foil version right on cue gave us a great laugh. We jammed one more casual game and headed home happy.

🚨 Countdown to Midnight: Blissful Eternity Prerelease!

The countdown is officially on! We are just 25 days away from the Blissful Eternity Midnight Prerelease on Friday, July 31st.

We will be dropping a dedicated blog post with every single detail tomorrow, but here is the quick rundown of what you need to know:

  • 9:00 PM: Doors open for casual games, trading, or just hanging out.

  • Midnight (12:00 AM): Pre-release kits hit the tables and the tournament kicks off!

  • The Prizing: Winner takes home a full kit, and absolutely nobody walks away empty-handed.

Hanging Up the Cleats (That I Never Had) ⚽🤕

Outside of the card shop, soccer season is officially spinning up—and I’m coaching the little ones this year!

I took the kids down to the local field down the street for practice, and in a momentary lapse of reason, I decided to show off a bit. I tried to pull off a slick Rabona kick, completely miscalculated, kicked the heel of my own standing foot, and went down hard. Naturally, because I never learn my lesson, I got right back up to try it one more time and promptly tripped right over the ball.

I guess it’s finally time to admit I’m not young anymore and hang up my cleats… which is easy, considering I never actually owned soccer cleats in the first place. And, that means that I can’t hang them up. I’ll be still out there playing.

In Other News… 🖥️

I am slowly but surely making peace with Windows 11. There are definitely still some features that drive me crazy, but I’ve managed to find a few solid workarounds for my documents and layouts. If you’re struggling with the update too, hang in there—there is light at the end of the tunnel!

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What a weekend we just had!

While everyone else was out enjoying the 4th of July, we were dealing with a different kind of fireworks—tech problems. Once again, an SSL malfunction reared its ugly head, and we spent the holiday weekend trying to get it sorted out. From the looks of it, everything is finally back to normal and the site is stable. It is always incredibly frustrating when your website goes down out of the blue, especially when you are actively trying to prep the shop for a major set release.

Speaking of which, the Blissful Eternity Midnight Prerelease is right around the Korner! We are officially 25 days away from Friday, July 31st. We will be dropping more specific venue details later this week, but if you’ve already been to one of our midnight events, you already know what kind of hype is in store.

The Great Windows 11 Document Headache 🖥️

In other tech news, I finally got a new work computer, and I’ve gotta say: I am absolutely not liking Windows 11 right now.

The biggest issue? They completely stripped away native support for Rich Text Documents (.rtf). Since the vast majority of our operational files, lists, and templates were built using Rich Text, it’s created a massive headache. Now, I have to go through the painstaking process of converting all those old files into simple text documents or finding a workaround just to access our data. If you’ve got a smooth trick for handling this transition, my inbox is wide open.

Lorcana Flash Sale (And How We Got It) 🧚

If you’ve been keeping an eye on our TCGPlayer store over the last few days, you might have noticed some Disney Lorcana singles hitting the shelves. Well, blink and you missed them, because they have been absolutely flying out the door. We had one massive batch of listings that completely sold out before morning!

Does this mean Kardboard Korner is officially breaking into Lorcana? Probably not. We aren’t planning to stock it regularly, but I definitely won’t second-guess buying a collection next time someone brings one to the table. We actually almost turned this specific batch down entirely, but it was bundled into a much larger, high-value Final Fantasy TCG collection that we just couldn’t pass up. Our loss is your gain, and the local Lorcana community wasted no time clearing it out!

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Blissful Eternity

The Final Fantasy Trading Card Game community is buzzing today with the official reveal of Opus XXVIII: Blissful Eternity. With a heavy focus on one of the franchise’s most beloved entries and some high-end collector’s items, this set is shaping up to be a monumental release for 2026.

Here is everything you need to know about the upcoming set.


Mark Your Calendars: Release Dates

The summer is looking hot for FFTCG players. Set your reminders for these key dates:

  • Midnight Prerelease: July 24, 2026

  • Official Launch: July 31, 2026

Note: Stay tuned for more details on our Midnight Prerelease event coming soon!

The Year of Final Fantasy X

It’s no coincidence that Tidus is gracing the box art for Blissful Eternity, following Yuna’s appearance on the Dreamlike Oceans (Opus XXVII) box art coming this March.

As we celebrate the 25th Anniversary of Final Fantasy X, the game is clearly taking center stage. Fans are already speculating that this could mean the return of the “YRP” (Yuna, Rikku, Paine) meta. Will we see new versions of the iconic trio to shake up the competitive scene?

The Return of “Noir” and Gold Signatures

Collectors, get your top-loaders ready. The Noir style—first introduced in the FFTCG Special PR Collection Noir—is making a comeback. These striking black-and-white reprints featuring Tetsuya Nomura’s signature are highly coveted, and this set brings a heavy hitter:

  1. Noir Reprint: Cloud (11-127L)

  2. The Gold Treatment: A brand new Sephiroth (29-087L) will receive the Full Art Gold Signature treatment.

With two Gold Signatures in one set, the hunt is on. I’m personally curious to see if the pull rates for these will be identical; I have a sneaking suspicion that one might end up being the ‘ultimate’ chase card of the set, but we’ll have to wait for the official drop to find out.

Set Breakdown & Legacy Cards

Opus XXVIII is packed with value, boasting a massive 36 Full Art cards. We also have confirmation on the Legacy Card slots, which feature some powerhouse reprints:

  • Gilgamesh (14-023L)

  • Warrior of Light (21-121L)

  • Mont Leonis (22-113L)

First Look: New Artwork

While we don’t have the full text for these cards yet, the artwork for seven key characters has been teased. The lineup includes:

  • Seymour, Eiko, Yuna, Kelger, Roche, Faris, and Zidane.


What are you most excited for in Blissful Eternity? Are you chasing that Noir Cloud, or are you hoping for a meta-defining YRP comeback? Let us know in the comments!