Suarez, a member of the SCG Staff in the official Discord, posted the following this morning:
“Important announcement regarding the Regional Championship in Portland. After discussions with Wizards regarding the availability of Aetherdrift cards for the Regional Championship in Portland, we’ve mutually agreed to exclude Aetherdrift cards from this event. While cards typically become legal on prerelease weekend, we, in concert with Wizards, are making this exception for this important tournament to ensure players can properly prepare and secure cards for the event. To accommodate this change, deck lists will now be due by Thursday, February 6th, at 6 PM PST. Last Chance Qualifier winners will have their deck list reviewed by staff and entered manually. Please note, this update only applies to the Regional Championship. All other events that weekend, including LCQs, ReCQs, and the $10K/$5K opens, will allow Aetherdrift cards. This is a one-time exception to accommodate the timing of this event and does not affect future events or legality.”
SCG: Portland is taking place the same weekend as the Aetherdrift prerelease.
Please note that in addition to Aetherdrift cards not being legal for the event, the deadline for decklist submissions has been moved 24 hours earlier. Typically SCG sets the deadline for the Friday before the event, but for this event only it will be on Thursday.
According to Jared Sylva, the reason for this switch is that setting submissions to Thursday allows Melee not to accept Aetherdrift cards automatically. If deck submission remained on Friday it would require manual verification of all lists.
Additionally, Aetherdrift cards *will* be legal for Last Chance Qualifier events. If someone wins an LCQ with Aetherdrift cards in their deck, they’ll have to submit a legal decklist for the RC with no Aetherdrift cards to a staff member who will manually verify it.
