Another Year - Come and Gone

The coming of 2025 has seen a bunch of changes here at TCG Machines that we’re excited to tell you about! So gather round ye denizens of the internet as I tell a tale of gumption, gift-giving and making a go from trading card games!

One Piece

We are excited to announce our full support for the One Piece TCG on the PhyzBatch-9000 Card sorter!

After our Lorcana launch this fall, we had learned quite a bit about ways we can both improve our scanning accuracy and the usability of our UI. So, being eager to see exactly how much we had in fact learned we decided to sprint immediately into adding ANOTHER TCG to the PhyzBatch-9000. Admittedly, as an organization we didn’t know much (anything) about the game outside the fact that it was the most requested TCG (by a significant margin). And now, after having added support for the game, we STILL know very little about the game itself, however we do know the following about the cards:

• The cards are about 50% thicker than other TCG’s, meaning we’ve had to adjust the max number of cards held in each output bin to 375 per sort. This also requires a slight adjustment to the feeding gate height.
• The official reference images provided by Bandai have a charming “SAMPLE” written across the middle of the art space (which we will need to workaround).
• The art is (ahem) slightly suggestive in some cases - leading to some interesting screenshots being thrown around in the team chat.

Notice the massive, perhaps comically sized SAMPLE? Do you see it? DO YOU?

This is all to say that One Piece is now live and we are stoked to get to know more about the game!

WE ARE!

SPAM Cup 2024

Something of a local tradition here in the Calgary tech community is the annual SPAM Cup. Essentially a contest to see which participating tech company can raise the most non-perishable food and funds for the local foodbank.

Gamifying charity is a foray we couldn’t help but throw our hats into, so we partnered with our good friends and neighbors at First Player and hosted a Sealed Foundations Tournament. About 20 competitors slogged it out in three grueling rounds - but in the end, our own CEO Graeme was victorious in a 2-hour tiebreaker game wherein he used a Scavenging Ooze to great effect and ultimate victory!

Our team helped raise $500 for the cause and donated two, very heavy, boxes of non-perishable food items!

Our CEO Graeme, along with tournament participants and contributors to a great cause!

Staff Xmas Party

As per tradition, we also celebrated another year done with our new friends at Limber Disc Golf! Much merriment was made. Catering was supplied by Big T’s Barbecue, which was insanely delicious and provided us with enough leftovers for many consecutive days of meat-sweats. Dan and Graeme made a heartfelt speech - Graeme recited a full TCG Machines themed rewrite of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas’ - and I roasted everyone whilst handing out the 2024 ‘Batchie awards.

Popsicle Stick Bridge Building

Like all tech firms staffed by 20-30-and-40 somethings, we share a great fondness for the safety and simplicity of our youths. Our latest plan to harness this will-to-chill, has been taking the last Friday of each month and spending it doing something FUN: bowling, smash bros, boardgames, etc. However, for the month of December we decided to throw things back to the 9th grade and have a Popsicle Stick Bridge building contest for glory and fame! Five bridges were entered, with four bridges tying for first place! However, the rules were kind of fuzzy, soo we’re gong to say that Dan’s team were the winners at 130lbs!

Way to go Dan’s team!

A quarter-million dollars in student debt gets you some damn-fine popsicle stick architecture!

Production Push

In addition to all the merrymaking there have also been great strides in PhyzBatch-9000 making! Our elves (engineers) have been hard at work making toys (TCG sorting robots) for all the good little boys and girls (paying customers) in time for Christmas (insane retail holiday season)! We’re exceeding our own expectations and excited to be starting a new production run in 2025! Taking orders now. While supplies last. Orders will be fulfilled in the order they are received. See in-store for details.

Holiday Hours

We will be resting our weary minds and bodies for the holiday season starting today, Dec 20th and continuing on to January 3rd. This means that technically nobody will be looking into support and sales messages. However, knowing us, we will be making sure that nobody is left out in the proverbial cold.

Lastly, from all of us here at TCG Machines: have a wonderful, safe and potentially lucrative holiday season and we’re excited to see what 2025 has in store!