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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