In celebration of Valentine's weekend, Team Gathering Magic is sharing some of our favorite things, from Magic to gunslinging mayhem. Whether you're looking for board games, nostalgia, or even more exciting stories from Pro Tour Fate Reforged, we've got a little of everything just for you.

Picks of the Week: February 15, 2015

Heather Dawn Lafferty is the Community Manager for Gathering Magic, collector and creator of the 20 Tweets series, and resident Angel.Speaking of tweets, you can tweet her with your thoughts regarding Gathering Magic content, Magic, or Nintendo at @Revisedangel.

After crushing the soul of my Commander group every Saturday with my brutal and beautiful Kaalia deck I decided to take a break this past couple of weekends and break out the board game treasure trove. I needed a game that was easy to learn, fun to play, could play as little as four people and as many as nine. After perusing my board game stash…

…I decided on Cash and Guns. A looting, rooting tooting, scandalous good time. A game where you and your best friends, your posse, your crew have successfully robbed a vault full of diamonds, famous paintings and of course the all mighty cash. It is now time to divide up the loot and naturally you want the largest share. You must bluff, threaten, and blast your way through your fellow thieves to get it.

It really doesn’t get any easier to learn or play a game then Cash and Guns. First let’s meet the crew:

Now the crew is gathered it is time for all players to pick up their treacherous guns…

There is a stack loot in front of you. The GodFather (the oldest player naturally) counts to three and you immediately draw your gun and point it at another play to try and intimidate them into knocking over their avatar (basically folding) or standing strong against your threat and hope your gun isn’t loaded. At the beginning of the game you are given only three real bullets and the rest are blanks (click cards). Only you know when you draw your gun if it is loaded or not. If you get shot by a loaded gun you get a booboo and are out on collecting loot for that round.

Now this game can get really hilarious when you have over four people playing with guns, loot, threats  flying in all directions. I found myself sitting a table with my Sister, Brother, Husband and best friend.

I think this could be a fun game for a smarter person then me to observe the nature of relationships. While I never once loaded the gun when pointing it at my husband, I did draw my gun on him several times to try and bluff him into submission. I drew my gun and fired at least once on everyone else at the table except my Sister. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t raise my fake foam gun and point it at her. I did however shoot my brother twice after he shot my Sister. She quite frequently shot my brother. My Husband and Brother had no trouble at all shooting me with a loaded gun but my Sister never raised her gun at me either.

It takes me a long time to decide on a Commander so I will try and review and share the different board games my Commander Group plays while the GREAT COMMANDER SEARCH is on. I almost always buy boardgames based on recommendations from friends. So hopefully if you have been looking for something fun for your group, one of these reviews will spark your interest.  I will still of course be playing Kaalia (always) but spice is the stuff of life and such. I really want an INNISTRAD theme/based Commander, so if you have any idea, I am idealess. Leave suggestions in the comments.

XOXO

@RevisedAngel

Alex Ullman is Associate Editor for Gathering Magic, a renowned Pauper (cube and Constructed) player, and member of the victorious 2009 Magic Online Community Cup team.You can find him on Twitter as @nerdtothecore.

My days have been filled with a fairly standard gray. I live in New York City, and while the first snow of the year is always enjoyed the clean up after is despised. Piles of white stained gray, brown, and yellow, slowly melting but never really disappearing. Coupled with perpetually overcast skies and my past few weeks have looked more like a washed out photograph than actual existence. Cabin fever is real and it comes with a free pair of long johns.

Pro Tour Wrap Up

We've reached the denouement of Pro Tour Fate Reforged. We've washed upon the shores of a new Modern rife for exploration and found Splinter Twin sitting atop the mountains here as well.

The more things change, the more things stay the same.

The week after a Pro Tour tends to contain some of my favorite articles of the year. We see reports from newcomers and veterans alike, explanations of tech and choices, and recaps of every stripe. Here are some of my favorite:

Limited Resources: Grand Prix San Jose Champions

In this episode Marshall and Luis Scott-Vargas talk about Fate Reforged/Khans of Tarkir limited after the Pro Tour. The insight provided by LSV is invaluable and the ease at which he discusses advanced attributes of the game is admirable.

Predictably (from the title at least), the story turns to his victory with Eric Froehlich and Paul Cheon at Grand Prix San Jose. It is in this recounting where we learn about LSV's predilection for drafting Jeskai tempo decks featuring Whirlwind Adept and Temur Battle Rage. It must have worked out for the Hall of Famer since he used the same strategy to win his match in the Grand Prix finals and to 3-0 the first draft of the Pro Tour. Luck, skill, and victory indeed.

Measures and Milestones

Did you know our very own The Stybs is a member of the official coverage team? Did you know he wrote this awesome wrap up of different milestones for various players? Well, now you do – you should go read it.

So often we get lost in the tale of the top 8 but there are hundreds of stories at every Pro Tour (and Rich Hagon often knows them all). Here, Adam manages to highlight a few from some of the games' greats. What's special here, though, is the way he weaves the tale. Pieces like this can often feel stilted and connected by forced segues. Stybs manages to avoid that and creates a wonderful narrative that feels like it belongs on the front page (which is right where it was found twice last week).

Digging Deeper at Pro Tour Fate Reforged

With what's become a recurring feature for the Friday after the Pro Tour, Brian David-Marshall takes us from 9th to 16th place. I always find it fascinating to see who gets the short end of tie-breakers – call it the rubber necker in me.

BDM is very matter of fact – staccato summaries to hammer home points. There is nothing incredibly special about this information, yet for some reason BDM makes it a must read. Maybe it's because I wanted to find out exactly how absurd Jon Finkel has been since his return (answer: very) or exactly how dominant Team MTG Mint Card was last weekend (answer: very).

New MTGO Event Schedule

In my other life I care a lot about Pauper Magic. This format, nurtured on Magic Online uses only commons. I was a key figure in the early days of the format and have been a long time supported. In the wake of the crashes that plagued the program in November 2013, the number of Pauper events was drastically reduced. Slowly more events came back on the weekends. First there were weekend challenges, which didn't fire. The attendance requirement was lowered, and then they struggled to fire. Eventually four-round Swiss tournaments known as Daily Events were returned to Pauper and the format came back to life.

Now, Lee Sharpe is at the helm of MTGO Events and Pauper has gone from three Daily Events a week to nine (effective February 19th). Not only that, events are going on a staggered schedule. It appears that the powers that be at Magic Online are listening to the people, at least a little bit.

Selfishly though, this means more Pauper. And that means more people doing battle in a format where you can still play four copies of Treasure Cruise. So the question is, will you come sling commons with me?

Carlos Gutierrez is an Associate Editor for Gathering Magic, an engineer-in-training, and a Commander and Pauper enthusiast. By day, he works as a STEM educator, but he spends his weekends hitting all his land drops and trying new board games, puzzles, and video games.You can find all of him sharing Commander craziness, baked goods on Twitter, and complaints about graduate school at @cag5383.

Bang!

My family has broad and disparate tastes in games. Some of us like really simple card games. Some of us prefer complex board games. Some of us prefer action-packed video games. We have a pretty extensive collection of family games that we try to break out every few weeks, but it's rare that we find something that everyone can agree on.

Recently, we've all been able to agree that Bang! is pretty great. This game is themed like a spaghetti western, complete with card text that has been poorly translated into English from Italian. It plays like a strange combination of Mafia/Werewolf and a strategy card game. You'll get a role such as the Sheriff, deputy, outlaw, or renegade, each of which have their own win conditions and goals. You'll get a character, each with a unique and interesting ability. You'll be dealt cards that help you shoot, drink, and explode your way to victory.

Bang! is quick to learn and play and a blast to play with most groups we've tried it with.

Banjo Kazooie

Recently, I've been on somewhat of a nostalgia kick. Games these days just don't feel like they live up to the standards of my childhood, and so instead of buying games with the best shooting mechanics and most insane graphics, Rebecca and I started by playing through Ocarina of Time with one of her friends, but quickly moved on to the likes of Super Mario 64 and my personal favorite.

The late 90's were a golden age for platformers. The addition of a third dimension created more immersive experiences. The industry was still finding its  legs and so there was a lot more creative freedom for developers. Banjo Kazooie is a rare combination of comfortable gameplay and an incredible environment. Everything from characters to level design to music is incredibly well done. In a lot of ways, the writing has grown up with me, as there was a lot of material that I just didn't understand as a small child that, as an adult, I can't believe made it into the game, even in the 90's.

Copies of the game don't cost much anymore, and I never got around to playing the sequel, so I can't tell you how excited I am to reexperience one of the iconic games of my childhood.

The Melee Games

Often, competitive Super Smash Bros. Melee comes down to singles. That's where most of the glory is. If people are interested in team play, it's often doubles that gets all the attention. While these are often exciting and interesting in their own ways, there's a new competition on the block: The Melee Games.

The Melee Games is an intercollegiate league where schools assemble teams to compete in Crew Battles. The teams move along a localized bracket for their region, slowly making their way to higher and higher levels of competition at larger events. The games started as a regional event for the North Atlantic region, and has grown to include the mid Atlantic, Midwest, and even some schools from the West coast and Canada.

From what I understand, teams get a fixed number of lives. Each team sends in a player, and those two will battle it out until one of them has run out of stocks. That player's team will send in their next teammate to try to take the remainder of the other players stocks. That repeats until one team is out of stocks to give. This leads to interesting dynamics about drawing out the best players or characters, setting up matchups and stages that are favorable for particular team members, and all kinds of interesting strategic decisions that normally just don't come up.

I'm excited to be representing Rowan University in the Melee Games this semester. We've got our first bracket match this coming weekend, and I can't wait. There's plenty of learning and training to go yet, but hopefully we can represent South Jersey well and crush some of the competition.