The New Gatherer

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Happy Friday MTG peeps,

As it is Friday, you know what to do - head on out to your local gaming store and get some Magic: the Gathering games in to kick off your weekend.  If you've just moved to a new town and need to find where your local Friday Night Magic event is going down, check out the handy Store & Event Locator here.  We'll be off to our local card shop, OMG! Games here in Barrie, Ontario with one of these decklists.  On Saturday, they'll be running a 'Full Metal Budget' tournament and for Sunday, the Standard 'Win-a-Box' event.  Also on Saturday, Midland (a nearby Town) will be holding its annual Butter Tart Festival where
 it is estimated that 50,000 of these pastries will be consumed.

Anywhoos - on to today's Magic: the Gathering news - There's a new Gatherer that went live yesterday.  Yep - after WotC slapped a new coat of paint on it and jazzed up the interface a titch, it now looks like a cooler more hip version of its former self.

What's a Gatherer precious ?  No worries.  is Wizards of the Coast's searchable database of Magic: The Gathering cards. You can use it to:
  • Look up the current wording of a card
  • Find cards of a given color or creature type for your theme deck
   • Search for cards illustrated by your favorite artist
   • Determine format legality of any card
   • Track the various printings of a card through Magic's history
   • Search all Magic flavor text
   • Get an export of the Oracle for a given format

Since going live on the interwebz back in September of 2004, this page has been the 'go-to' page for MTG players to check out the 4.1.1. of their cards.  It was originally built by Doug Beyer who was doing web development work for the mothersite back then.  It's most common use is to assist in assembling a decklist and here at MTG Realm, we cannot recall a week that we've not popped on to it.

Back in 2004, it looked like this -

In 2008, it had a much-needed face lift with additional functionality included -

THEN - yesterday, when we popped on to look up some cards we were considering, we had this message -

As you do get this error page from time to time when WotC is doing server maintenance, we did not think much upon it - UNTIL - this fella showed up -

Wow - a face lift - and it looks pretty good.

It should feel very familiar to users and overall not very much has changed with the functionality.  Good job Wizards!  If you are looking for help with a feature, just click on over to this help page.

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Gathering Gatecrash

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Happy Wednesday MTG peeps,

At midnight, Wizards of the Coast upload all new Gatecrash cards to Gatherer, the Magic: the Gathering database.  If you are a MTG player who has been brewing up decklists for a while, then you know just indispensable this searchable databse is.  For a round-up of frequently asked questions as to some of the finer points on how to search for a card or a series of cards given your query, then check out the Gatherer FAQ page here.

Why are we yattering on about Gatherer just right now?  That's a good question.  Going into the Gatecrash PreRelease weekend (in just a few very short days), we like to pop onto the database and begin to evaluate some of the cards we would likely see in a sealed pool.  Basically, one could count on seeing a good spread of commons in your pool and this is essentially the foundation upon which you will build your prerelease success.  So, for this reason, as we already know which Guild Pack we will have reserved for us at the store, we'll look to evaluate all commons that could possibly advance our cause.

 

Anywhoos - which Gatecrash Guild are you playing at the PreRelease ?
Oddly enough, from on on-line poll of over 500 mtg fans attending this weekend, there appears to be very little difference in popularity compared to the prerelease for Return to Ravnica.  In order of choice, Simic (127 votes), Orzhov (107), Boros (105), Gruul (99) and Dimir (68).  Each of the Guilds have their very own tech to contribute - we think only after this weekend will we be able to determine which one may be more suited to a sealed format.  You may recall that Selesnya (at least from all we heard) performed slightly better than the others, who knows where the guilds stand at the end of the weekend.

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Innistrad Community Picks

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Happy Friday MTG peeps,

The latest Magic the Gathering set, Innistrad, has been now with us for more than a month now, which means it may now be a good time to take a look at what players think. Specificallly, we want to look on the Wizards of the Coast MTG card database, Gatherer, to look at the top-rated cards of Innistrad. Here are the top 9 cards as rated by the players along with a select comment from the participants.


Doomed Traveler Rating: 4.634 / 5 (71 votes)
You're basically getting two 1/1's for {W}, what's not to love about that? - Posted By: BlackFlameAshura

Mindshrieker Rating: 4.611 / 5 (54 votes)
It's going to eat people in limited and hold swords like a boss in constructed. - Posted By: auriscope

Parallel Lives Rating: 4.593 / 5 (75 votes)
Parallel Lives. Doubling Season. Precursor Golem. Rite of Replication.
= break all calculators in a 12 mile radius. they spontaneously combust, and are removed from the game. But you can runic repitition them back, then flash them back again. repeat for infinite exploding calculators. - Posted By: DarthParallax

Cackling Counterpart Rating: 4.592 / 5 (49 votes)
I pulled this and a Skaab Ruinator at the prerelease. Much beatdown ensued. But the most fun I had with this card was fighting against a werewolf deck and using this to copy my Creepy Doll twice. That was the highlight of the night, honestly...I kept giggling like a lunatic. And then my opponent asked me to stop, because he'd just watched the Doctor Who episode "Night Terrors" not too long ago... - Posted By: The_Stray

Mikaeus, the Lunarch Rating: 4.589 / 5 (56 votes)
Yo dawg, we heard you like counters... - Posted By: Polychromatic

Grimoire of the Dead Rating: 4.587 / 5 (75 votes)
Klaatu, barada, ni...uuhhhhh...*cough*nicolbolas*cough* ...Aww shi-*dies* - Posted By: Minus_Prime

Champion of the Parish Rating: 4.582 / 5 (67 votes)
WTF? Half these Innistrad humans are also soldiers. Way more than half the soldiers already out their are also humans. This is gonna be ridiculously good, especially outside of standard. - Posted By: NozzDogg

Delver of Secrets / Rating: 4.333 / 5 (57 votes)
Insectile Aberration Rating: 4.582 / 5 (55 votes)
I never thought I would ever see the creature type "Human Insect" actually printed. - Posted By: Totema

Heartless Summoning Rating: 4.575 / 5 (73 votes)
Can't help but laugh hysterically when I drop 2 and play Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite for 1WW - Posted By: infernox10
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Anywhoos - Make sure you get outta the house and play at an Friday Night Magic event tonight. Play it safe - use card sleeves.
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Finally,
The folks over at MTG Mint Card is having another give-away. Check out their FaceBook page and enter - contest closes November 11th, 2011.
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Conflux on Gatherer

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Just after noon today, Conflux was loaded up and is now live on Gatherer Beta. If you spend any time playing Magic, you will know just how indespensible it is to be able to hop onto Gatherer (the card database) and quickly find the right card you need for your next winning deck.


Although I find the text spoilers on the forums great, nothing quite compares to not only seeing the card art and flavour text but also being able to efficiently sort cards for review.

I also have to say that the new Gatherer is a HUGE improvement over the old data base in terms of the high number of variables the user can insert into a query. I also appreciate viewing the page in standard, visual, compact checklist and text summary.

For those of you who do not know yet, Gatherer is the Magic Card Database. Search for the perfect addition to your deck. Browse through cards from Magic's entire history. See cards from the most recent sets and discover what players just like you are saying about them.

If you are looking for the full Conflux visual spoiler - here is the handy LINK. Just browsing through this, I have to admit that this may very well be one of the best sets artistically yet with the small exception of the aptly named 'moo moo clow plow' (a.k.a. Thornling).

The New Gatherer

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Gatherer is the Magic Card Database. From a skim of my internet browser history, you will find that this is the site that most often I visit and use for hours on end researching new evil combinations.


The much anticipated new beta version of Gatherer is now up and appears to be operational. The new dB has a number of improvements, including the ability to use an advanced search to do complex filters on all aspects of a card, a more visual and sortable interface for search results. I also appreciate that a new section has been added which allows you to rate, comment on and rate comments on each card.

Here's a short list of some of the new features you'll find in the new Gatherer:

> You can sort your results using multiple successive sorts. So for example, you could search for all Goblins in Magic, and then sort them by color, then converted mana cost, then name. Sort options are in the "Search Options" expandable area on the Search Results page.

>You can view ANY set of results as a Visual Spoiler! So for example, you could look for all of the Planeswalkers in Magic, and then switch to Visual Spoiler view to see them as a grid of cards. Visual Spoiler is a link in the same "Search Options" expandable area on the Search Results page.

>You can get a random card by clicking Random Card in the top navigation. (This is one of my favorite things to do on the new Gatherer.) You can also see the entire set in which a card was printed, or the entire works of that card's artist, by clicking on the links on the Card Details page.

> You can see statistics on another user's ratings and comments by clicking their name next to a comment they've made on a card.

Since I am always determined to be the first kid into the sandbox, I had already provided a rating and some individual card comments / discussion for Deathbringer Liege as shown below.

Thanks Wizards !