Announcement Day 8-31

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Happy Wednesday MTG peeps,

BIG news day for Magic: the Gathering players.  Just like back earlier this year on May 15th, Wizards of the Coast bundled a number of new product announcements.  We suggest you pop on over to the mothersite (linky here) and / or watch the video posted to You-Tube (linked here).  

Given the all the very awesome information on the next MTG set, Kaladesh, posted earlier, today's story 'A Time for Innovation' from Kim Kreines, and the general excitement as we move into this weekend's PAX West convention, we a feeling kinda dizzy.  Anywhoos, let's get churning through all the big news out today -

Reporting from the historic Paramount Theater (the central locus of Magic: the Gathering at PAX in Seattle), WotC Community Manager Nate Price leads us through a rapid-fire interaction with other Wizard staffers -

• Lead Creative Designer Kimberly Krienes talks about the back-story of Amonkhet, the set releasing April 28, 2017.  Tag line of 'Rise Among the Worthy'.  This looks to be an Egyptian-themed Plane where warriors compete in the Trials of the Five Gods and earn an honoured place in the Afterlife.  The second set in the Amonkhet block is 'Hour of Devastation' with the tag-line 'Unleash your Endgame'.

• Game Designer Gavin Verhey summaries the following upcoming products.  'Archenemy: Nicol Bolas' is the continuation of the Archenemy series pitting the dragon against two friends.  

• Senior Game Desinger Sam Stoddard talks about the following product releases -
 - Commander Anothology, releasing June, 2017.  This is to be a bundle of  previous Commander products "Heavenly Inferno," "Evasive Maneuvers," "Guided by Nature," and "Plunder the Graves" together in one package.  
 - Duel Decks: Mind vs. Might.  The teaser here is the representation of the age-old clash between mages and warriors, or brains and brawn. 
 - Modern Masters 2017 Edition, releasing March 2017.  This set is to revisit some of the most remarkable sets from recent history, representing everything from Eighth Edition through Magic 2014–including trips through Innistrad and Return to Ravnica. 

• Wizards of the Coast President Chris Cocks - an introduction to the man, the myth and legend, who is attending the very first PAX - evar.  The big reveal here is the artwork for 'Chandra, Torch of Defiance' which is to see print for the upcoming Kaladesh set.

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MTG Caption Kings

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So . . . We are asking you our loyal blog readers to put on your thinking caps and dream up a bunch of witty and waggish captions for this picture.

Yes - This is evil WoTC minion Ken Nagle cleaning up the 'Pit' at the WoTC Renton office as snapped by Kelly Digges. (It was cleaning day I guess . . . something which happens on a randomly selected Tuesday every odd year). <>


Some Captions for your consideration to help 'prime the pumps' as it were.

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'Ken considers a Halloween constume'

'Magic: the Gathering - - a game for Giants'

'Installing new office partions at WoTC'

'This Menger Sponge is gonna be HUGE!'

'Yer gonna need big mits to shuffle that deck bud'

'It's not the size of the card but the quality of the drop'

Anywho, the above image was snagged by Kelly and posted at Twitt-Pic . . . If you want to catch the Twitter craze, you might as well start out with the twitteriffic feed from Daily MTG (http://twitter.com/DailyMTG), or better yet, check out mine at CopySix MTG-Realm (http://twitter.com/CopySix).

. . . high five the internetz ! !

MTG iGoogle

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In case you have been under a rock for the last decade, I want to tell you about this internet thing. Well, there are countless pages of all sorts of things which can be delivered to your desktop in a click - finding these pages is the job of Google (the greatest internet search engine evaar !).

Anywho, I love to personalise my Google home page . . . this is called iGoogle. Currently I had it Steam-Punked but tonight I will be installing some very kewl themes. In addition to having a kewl theme, why not add news, photos, weather, and stuff (namely an rss feed from Wizards of the Coast) from across the web to your page.

Right - - back on track now . . . Wizards of the Coast is delving into the realm of iGoogle with its exclusive art themes developed by Travis Barker. So, if you use iGoogle, choose your Planeswalker now!

Hundreds of users have already declared sides, who’s will you choose?

Ajani?

Jace?

Liliana?

Chandra?

Garruk?

You can check these out these cool themes HERE.

Enjoy !

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 !