Cards & Boards

Wizards of the Coast has just started their daily previews on the next upcoming Magic: the Gathering expansion set, Dragon’s Maze.

Well, it’s good to know that the game’s still trucking along fine. (Yeah, I’m still out of touch, TCG-wise.)

The third and concluding set in the Return to Ravnica block, is set to wrap things up for the ten guilds, bringing along brand-new mythics and cool cardboard. More overpowered cards, and yes, more shifting of the metagame. Will Jund be even stronger, with all the new stuff that’s been shown so far? How many boxes does it take to own four of everything, including the mythics? Will you be attending the prerelease party and the release event?

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Playing TCGs online may be an alien concept even to the most hardcore card flipping fanatics, but with Wizards of the Coast’s latest announced changes, perhaps some might start changing their minds.

The biggest draw about playing online is the flexibility in getting a game almost anytime, any day, with a human opponent. Chances are, the guys playing in these places are not your casual newbies, but battle-hardened card veterans.

Yup, in other words, Magic Online is a definite professional players’ favorite avenue to hone their tournament skills. Hey it’s not exactly super cheap, and is arguably more expensive than the physical counterparts, but you can count on loads of cool stuff, and guaranteed stiff competition from players all around the world.

Do check out Wizards’ latest announcement above. New cards, and new ways to play: quite literally a breath of air if you’re still used to physical cards.

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Magic: the Gathering fans must be lapping up all the Return to Ravnica spoilers that’s pretty much being revealed one by one, by the official game producer, Wizards of the Coast,  as well as numerous fan sites.

Plenty of interesting stuff has been revealed already: from awesome-looking and very powerful planeswalkers, to the tons of useful spells and what-not. Don’t forget the whole reprinting of the original cycle of Ravnica shock lands are causing quite a stir as well.

Well Wizards seem to be milking the hype for this pretty well. When the original Ravnica set was made available, the cycle was memorable enough. Plenty of powerhouses and staples, and thematically a smashing success. Would you blame Wizards for this encore? (Though it did sound a little lame when the first announcements hit – here we go, Scars round two!)

As an MTG-neutral gamer now (thought about returning, but nah, the love for TCGs is still missing somehow), this looks like a pretty darned impressive set. If only these things would be less expensive, LOLs!

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It’s halfway through August, and what do you know, Wizards of the Coast has just announced a new Duel Decks set, as a nice lead-up to the Return to Ravnica block that’s incoming, in around a month.

Duel Decks: Izzet vs Golgari gives us a glimpse on what the “new” Ravnica block is all about – across two what is likely to be very fun and interesting 60-card decks.

The previewed cards so, looks awesome too I must say. Hmm, will it tempt me to return to my Magic ways, after being off it since late last year?

All I can say is, I’m sure you’ll be curious to find out more about this noob-friendly set. Can’t wait!

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So by now you would have seen the bulk of the Magic 2013 previews. Wizards of the Coast just started officially previewing the first official spoilers, but if you look hard enough, most, if not all the cards, are already available for viewing, somewhere in the interwebs.

What does everyone think? I no longer play and collect, but IMHO I do see why some fans are disappointed. The card pool looks mixed at best, despite several new incarnations of planeswalkers, and the return of the almighty Nicol Bolas, in his planeswalker iteration.

The dual lands prove to be disappointing, but on the flipside, it matches what Wizards set out to do, which is to maintain the ease of entry for the new guys. The experienced can probably skip this set, and not be hurt very much by it – or so I think.

At the very least, people will be wondering about the next block, Return to Ravnica. Will it rock? Well, I’ll continue to keep my distance from Magic, and concentrate on the World of Warcraft TCG. Much better art methinks!

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It’s been a long time coming for Magic: the Gathering fans, but another new core set beckons!

This time, it’s M13, and this has been confirmed for some months now. Except, that it’s now spoiler season for a brand-new core set.

Officially, the Wizards of the Coast website MagictheGathering.com has already kicked things off by lining up M13 spoilers alongside its previews for the latest edition electronic game, Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013.

Well, the set’s still a month away from release but there’s already a whole bunch of spoilers all over the inter-webs: check out GatheringMagic.com for a comprehensive dose of it.

M13 releases globally on July 13, with pre-release events hitting us the weekend before.

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Work’s picked up again for yours truly, which accounts for the silence on the blog for a good week plus.

The good thing is, there’s been a slew of updates gaming-wise, so let’s get right to the heart of things shall we?

Firstly, Fantasy Flight Games (FFG) finally gave Star Wars gamers a solid reason to rejoice, as they finally gave a solid release timeline for its Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Game. This summer release looks like a solid combo of painted, high-quality miniatures and cards that depict the pilots, equipment and equipment that these little beaters pack.

Yes, there’s even astromech droids, dice and some funky tokens to go along these starter sets. The game will be sold in Core Sets, which presumably is enough to start anyone off, as well as the X-Wing, TIE Fighter, Y-Wing and TIE Advanced Expansion Packs, which add more fighters and pilots to the mix.

In other news, Wizards of the Coast has finally unveiled the entire card spoiler list for Magic: the Gathering’s newest set, Avacyn Restored. Being out of the scene for awhile now, what do you guys think?

And finally, I thought it’d be fun to highlight a pretty fun-sounding FFG boardgame, called Ugg-Tect. The team-based game has players racing to complete monuments in the cavemen era, accomplishing and performing “grunts” and actions along the way.

Sounds like another fun party game to me!

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Wizards of the Coast has certainly been not averse to revisiting older expansions, in churning out the new stuff. Yeap, here’s looking at you, Scars of Mirrodin.

Looks like mixing up the new and the old, will once again be the theme for the upcoming Return of Ravnica block, which has just been announced last week by Wizards.

The original Ravnica block gave us some pretty fun and memorable times, with plenty of thematic storytelling involved. The different guilds, powerful critters and spells, and of course, the now-super-pricey shocklands – ah, that block was one of the best in recent years, in my books.

How will Wizards reimagine this classic? How can they top the shocklands? Will some of the original set’s heavy-hitters make a reappearance? Find out in September then!

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Magic: the Gathering fans would no doubt be ooh-ing and ahh-ing at the new stuff that’s being spoiler-ed online.

Yeap, a new set means we are go on spoilers, and what better way than to kick things off with this?

For more spoilers, do check out the GatheringMagic.com as well as the official Magic webpage of course. Don’t forget the official Magic: the Gathering Facebook page too – some exclusive content will be shared across there first.

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TCG (trading card game) fans always get plenty of cool swag when playing in pre-release events, but I bet you haven’t seen anything as cool as a “Helvault.”

The upcoming Magic expansion, Avacyn Restored, will feature exclusive Helvault kits, which are essentially mock-ups of the Helvault so central to the final story arc of the Innistrad block.

The bad news? Not all stores worldwide will have Helvault kits. Will Malaysia have it? We’ll have to wait a little longer then!

Meantime, check out the cool teaser for Avacyn Restored, in the very article which talks about the Helvault events, here.

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