Magic: The Gathering Message Board

“Alice!” friends scream in my face. “You have to play Netrunner! Why don’t you play Netrunner? Let’s play Netrunner! Netrunnerrr!” I sneer dismissively but turn away to hide a single tear rolling down my cheek. I can’t play Netrunner, I just can’t. Having spent so much of my teenage years obsessing over Magic: The Gathering, I’m too afraid that I’d be held rapt by its cardboard wiles.

The annual Magic: The Gathering – Duels of the Planeswalkers games from Stainless have always given me just enough to tide me over, reminding me of how wonderful a game Magic is but being limited enough to stop me sinking in. It’s a bit concerning, then, that the newly-announced Magic 2015 edition is said to expand deck-building. … [visit site to read more]

As we approach summer 2014, it's time for Wizards of the Coast to reveal this year's digital version of its long-running card battle game, Magic: The Gathering.

This weekend, there was a Magic The Gathering tournament in Richmond, Virginia. It was one of the biggest Magic tournaments ever. For posterity's sake, one man set out to record the event in the most memorable possible: with buttcracks.Read more...

Fox has lined up writer Simon Kinberg to produce a movie series based on Magic: The Gathering. That's right. Not just one movie. A whole series.Read more...

Peter Mohrbacher is an artist best known for his work on the Magic: The Gathering card game, for which he's been providing illustrations since 2010.Read more...

Time to start going through your old Magic card collection. Or paying a little extra attention next time you're at a garage sale.Read more...

There's a custom Magic Card deck called The Indie Custom Cube. It features cards representing some of the world's most famous developers, companies, games and other assorted characters, including Gabe Newell, Notch, Electronic Arts, Phil Fish and Charles Barkley.Read more...

Sony Online Entertainment will be shutting down the servers for online turn-based strategy game Magic: The Gathering - Tactics on March 28, 2014, according to an announcement made on the game's official forums.

"Today we are announcing with our partner, Wizards of the Coast, that we will discontinue game services for Magic: The Gathering - Tactics on March 28, 2014," the initial post reads. "We are honored to have been a part of bringing you the magic of the Multiverse over the last few years. It has been a fun and memorable journey, and we thank you for all of your dedication and support."

Unfortunately, if you wanted to experience the game before the hammer comes down and hadn't yet made an account, you're out of luck; new game accounts can no longer be created. Existing players' options will soon be restricted as well, as no new packs will be available to purchase in-game after November 18 of this year, and SOE will retain all code and data from Tactics, meaning no licensed or authorized emulators or fan servers.

March 28, 2014 will see the end of Magic: The Gathering - Tactics. On that day, feel free to solemnly sing the following: Bye, bye, Mr. Minotaur Guy, tapped my blue land then my green land, soon my deck will be dry. Them good ol' boys was playin' dragons with Fly, singin' "This'll be the day Tactics diiiiies."

Magic: The Gathering—Tactics will be taken offline on March 28, says Sony Online Entertainment. Card packs for the game, which launched in 2011, will no longer be available after Nov. 18. There's more about the shutdown in this FAQ.Read more...

Assembled by a magical gathering of collectible card and video game talent, Card Hunter is a truly unique of deck building and tabletop role-playing that no fan of either should miss — and since it's browser-based and free, no fan has to. Read more...

ESPN's extra channels are usually home to some weird stuff. I've seen everything from baby cow rodeos to re-runs of old 80s strongman competitions. So I guess it shouldn't be too big a surprise to see that, over a decade ago, ESPN2 was broadcasting...Magic Card tournaments.Read more...

What's remarkable about these Game of Thrones characters re-imagined at JermTube as Magic: The Gathering cards isn't so much how convincing they look, it's how much thought was put into making them read like functional Magic cards. Here are two more sets of ten, click to embiggen: You can download them individually here, here and here. I'm not sure if these rules quite outdo the outstanding Game of Thrones board game, but man, if someone wanted to make a MTG expansion based on the Game of Thrones universe, I would play it. (Via Geekologie)

#cosplay Meet Amy Demicco. She's wearing the coolest dress in Boston this weekend at the PAX East convention. Her dress is made almost entirely out of playing cards for Magic: The Gathering. She estimates that she's got about 800 cards in this ensemble, mostly in the helmet. More »

#magicthegathering of the Coast has turned Magic: The Gathering — Duels of the Planeswalkers into geek Madden, each year releasing a fresh set of cards, formulating new challenges, and unleashing them upon a card-collecting public that never stops wanting more. This year's entry reaches a little further than 2013's iOS, PC, Mac, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, adding Android devices to the mix and making my tapping obsession all but inescapable. More »

The third and final content update for Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013 is available today, a double dose of new decks. The first deck is a blue-and-black hybrid called Rogue's Gallery, while the other is a five-colored collection called Mana Mystery.

Both decks will set spell slingers back a cool $3 (240 MS Points) on Xbox Live, PlayStation Network and PC through Steam today; however, iPad owners will have to wait until tomorrow before they can download these final decks.

#fineart It's not every day we get to feature the work of an artist who, amidst pieces drawn up for video games and trading card companies, has also dabbled in the style of 19th century battlefield paintings. More »

#magicthegathering While not a full-blown computer, as we'd know them today, a Turing Machine is nevertheless an important part of the history of the field, and its design is still studied and referenced today. More »

#fineart If you don't know Raymond Swanland by name, you may well know him by his work. A veteran concept artist, Swanland has worked across numerous fields, but around these parts will probably look most familiar to people for his Oddworld and Magic: The Gathering images. More »

#playthis I, like many a reformed* geek, have many fond memories of playing Magic: The Gathering in my youth. My time with the game took place entirely during middle school, when after school each day we would ride public transportation (this was a big deal!) and go sit with the high school kids in our town's public library. There, they would show us the ins and outs of Wizards of the Coast's sublimely compelling strategy card collecting game. More »

PC gamers inspecting the game code for Magic: The Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013, which released this week, found references to five additional decks that seem likely to be released as downloadable content later. Top Tier Tactics has all of the details. [h/t WiNG] More »

As a bonus to returning Magic: The Gathering players, a free deck key will be granted in Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013. I discovered this when first booting up my review copy from Microsoft, discovering a message of thanks for my continuing patronage.

You can use the key to unlock a full deck right away, including all of its 30 unlockable cards, or you can turn all of your cards in one particular deck into foils.

The PSN downloadable game Magic: The Gathering - Duels of the Planeswalkers is now available for download on the PlayStation store, along the PSone classic Tomba!. Find the full list of updates at the PlayStation Blog. More »

Wizards of the Coast finally realized how amazing the Magic: The Gathering Duels of the Planeswalkers series would be on the iPad, with Apple's tablet joining PC, PlayStation Network, and Xbox Live when the game's 2013 installment launches this summer. More »

#magicthegathering Internet comedian Francis, who by now has his nerd shtick almost perfected, leaves his webcam and bedroom behind and takes to the streets for a Magic Card tournament. More »

#downtonabbey Okay, yes, fine. This post is at least partly an excuse for me to finally tag something "Downton Abbey" here at Kotaku. But in this case, the tag is warranted—over at Kill Screen, writer Sarah Elmaleh (who some of you may remember as the voice of Aeris in that column I wrote about silent protagonists) and illustrator Daniel Purvis have put together a series of fake playing cards depicting a Magic: The Gathering-like Downton Abbey card game. More »

Game Rating Board, South Korea's premiere games rating board, has listed another entry in the Magic: The Gathering series of games, presumably for the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 again. As things look, Stainless Games and Wizards of the Coast have no plans of stopping the annual installments.

It shouldn't come as much of a surprise: both the original Duels of the Planeswalkers and Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 performed well, the former having sold over 500,000 copies, while the latter was one of PSN's top performers last year. Considering both previous installments launched in the summer, we're betting we'll be hearing about Duels 2013 soon.

#magicthegathering How It's Made is a TV program that shows us how common, everyday items like footballs and musical instruments go from raw materials to the finished product. More »

#magicthegathering There will come a point, some day in the future, when the lines between card games, tabletop games, board games and video games blur so much the difference becomes irrelevant. More »

#totalrecall They don't seem that familiar aside from the fact they're printed on cards, and they were never really competition, either, but in October 2003 that didn't stop the companies behind Magic Cards and Pokémon battling somewhere other than the tabletop or the schoolyard. More »