Dragons of Tarkir is here. Prereleases are happening. Packs are being cracked. Dragons are devouring faces. That's just one of the many exciting things that this week has to offer. This week, Heather, Andrew, and Carlos share a few of their favorite pieces of gaming culture and content from the week, ranging from the GAMA trade show and tabletop simulations to going broken with Children of Korlis and Dragons of Tarki flavor. Won't you share some of our favorite things?

Picks of the Week: March 22, 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.

I took two days off work this week to hop on over to the GAMA 2015 trade show to help out in the awesome people running the Max Protection Booth. I have used Max Protection Sleeves almost exclusively for two years now, since they switched to the Shuffle Tech technology on their sleeves. I was super excited when they said they needed help at the booth because I have never had a chance to attend GAMA.

In case you haven’t heard of GAMA it is for the people who make games and gaming accessories to meet and showcase their merchandise to the people who will be buying/stocking/selling their merchandise to people like me and you. So it’s ALL business but when your business is gaming work is pretty awesome.

Before exploring could happen we had to get the Max Protection booth up and running:

When I went exploring I did of course stop by the Wizards booth (I mean how could I help myself)

I already know all the awesome that comes from Wizards (I’m sure you do too) so it was off to see what was hot and looked new and interesting. I have to be completely honest I have never gotten down with miniature based game that much, even though I do enjoy painting them for friends. So I was just as surprised as you when I spent almost thirty minutes watching a demo for Sails of Glory. It looked FREAKING amazing. I mean who doesn’t want to be a Sea Captain! I am totally going to be trying this one out. Maybe it will seduce me to the miniature side of life.

I ran into my old LegitMTG Boss who is now with the awesome gang at Crystal Commerce.

They are tasked with bring the gaming industry online. Basically if you own and operate a LGS (or want too) they got your back when you are ready to branch out online. Then I ran into my friend/creator and owner of the Sign in Blood life pads. Meeting people who make products you use daily and have known online for years is super surreal.

There was so much awesome coming out and being played I don’t have time to break it all down but I will talk about the booth I saw that was the busiest, right after I share with you some more shots from the floor:

The booth that seemed to be to most hopping the entire trade show was the Force of Will TCG booth. I mean it was constantly like ten people deep. I didn’t even get a chance to get a photo of the booth for you cause it was always to busy on my short breaks. If you haven’t heard of Force of Will well what I can tell you is it is sold out across the country. Even big boss sites, like CoolStuffInc.com have been pretty much sold out consistently. I honestly haven’t had a chance to talk to anyone who played the game or had a chance to see a demo, so I can’t tell you what game play is like. Maybe if you have played you can tell me your thoughts in the comments. I can tell you peeps at GAMA were bonkers over it.

Now with all this amazing on the gaming floor what could possibly tempt me to lay my money down it over all others? Well, I’ll tell you. It was DRUNKEN QUEST!

It is like Munchkin but adult and full of drinking. I have been wanting to get a copy of this game since the first time I heard of it! GP Vegas is soon and all my rowdy friends will be in town. I was super lucky because I got a steep discount when I walked up to the booth and said, “I’ll take one of everything on the table”. Now I am ready for whatever comes my way at GP Vegas!

XOXO

@revisedangel

Andrew Wilson is the Copy Editor for Gathering Magic. In his free time, he enjoys the Florida sun, winning games, playing Commander, and sharing some of the fun on Twitter. If you notice anything wrong, he's to blame!

A few days ago, I downloaded Tabletop Simulator on Steam. Most products on Steam are games, but this one isn’t. It’s a . . . Well, it’s a tabletop simulator. It simulates a tabletop, and it comes with a few games you can play in a 3D tabletop environment.

The simulator is quite useful for simulating all types of games, as it allows users to upload their own files as tabletops, play mats, unique cards and decks, miniatures, custom dice, and probably more. The more complicated the item you want to recreate in the simulator, the more difficult it is. For example, if you want to load a 3D miniature, you’ll need vector or polygon output from a 3D-rendering program. (I don’t know anything about 3D rendering, however, so forgive my ignorance.) If you want a simple miniature replacement, you can load a normal, flat image file as a standee.

But for something like cards, it’s as easy as uploading a file that contains all your card images and the deck’s card back. There are some tutorials on how this works on the official Tabletop Simulator website, and there is also a super-useful deck-compiling program that comes with the download.

My primary reason to download Tabletop Simulator was to prototype and easily make available Quest: Awakening of Melior, a single-player card-and-dice game I’ve been working on, on and off, for quite a while.

Quest is now available for anyone to download through Tabletop Simulator in the workshop. As someone who doesn’t play many video games, it took me a bit to figure out, but downloading a game for Tabletop Simulator from the workshop is as easy as subscribing—when you next load the program, go Singleplayer (or Multiplayer probably, though I haven’t tested this yet), click Host, and choose Workshop. All your subscribed games should show up. Click one, and load it. Unfortunately, the files aren’t stored locally and must be redownloaded every time, but I suppose that’s so the creators can update their files such that their subscribers will receive updated versions automatically. There are a ton of games in Tabletop Simulator, provided by dedicated users. In fact, there’s a Tabletop Simulator subreddit, so if you have questions or are looking for something, a helpful user—or even a Berserk Games employee—will probably jump in to assist you. Many of the games in the workshop are not properly licensed—they’re from users who have uploaded files for commercial games. That means there are a ton of options, but any of those options could disappear at a moment’s notice due to some copyright-infringement claims. As for me, I look forward to exploring more of what Tabletop Simulator is capable of. I expect it will be a great tool for prototyping and testing games I’m currently working on and will work on in the future. It can save me a lot of printing, cutting, and card-sleeving—or a lot of time and money for a more finalized prototype through the likes of The Game Crafter.

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.

 

This was an exciting week for me. I've been back in the swing of writing more regularly, which has been a blast. Actually filling out some of the decks I've had rattling around in my head for a few months has been great for bringing actual clarity and focus to the ideas. Whether they're good or not is something I'm still trying to figure out, but you'll definitely be finding out along with me. The other big piece of excitement? My girlfriend Rebecca received the fantastic news that she got into the graduate program she applied to earlier in February. We celebrated the only way we know how - dorky owl cupcakes that look vaguely like the mascot of Rowan University: the Profs.

Beyond that, there's been quite a big of Magic excitement, not the least of which is the release of Dragons of Tarkir. Since I outlined my Commander picks from the set in my article this week, I'll focus on my favorite content of the week instead:

The Flavor Judge is Back in Town

A.E. Marling's pieces here on Gathering Magic make me so very happy. I've never been one to care about Vorthos, but the combination of wit, levity, and juicy bits of flavor I missed mean that these are always fantastic reads that I look forward to immensely. Names, art, continuity, and more. Nothing is overlooked by the Level 20 Flavor Judge.

Sacrificing Children

Children of Korlis is a sweet Magic card. Since it was printed in Time Spiral, I've seen it do a couple of awesome things. One of the first combo decks I ever played was a terribad mishmash of Children of Korlis and Necropotence[/card. The first Commander game I ever played was one by someone recycling [card]Children of Korlis with Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero. Even so, I never thought I'd see the day that Children of Korlis was Legacy playable.

This week, Caleb Durward recorded some awesome Legacy videos with a blisteringly fast combo deck featuring Griselbrand plus Children of Korlis. Does drawing your deck and getting in with both Emrakul and Griselbrand on turn one sound good to you? Because I can't think of anything else I'd rather be doing.

The best part? It's resulted in me considering additional applications of Children of Korlis in my Commander experiments. Alesha, Who Smiles at Death is the first place I'm thinking about trying to shoehorn in some exciting Children combinations. Here's where I'm starting:

Can you think of any other awesome places to throw life? Because if you can, I'd love to have a Near-Death Experience.

Brainstorming

I love Brainstorm. As far as its legality in Legacy and Vintage and the sheer absurdity of the power of this cantrip relative to the rest of the format, I'm pretty ambivalent. But as far as I'm concerned, Brainstorm represents so much more. To me, Brainstorm represents all of the most awesome things about Magic: hidden complexity and utility. One can certainly argue that Brainstorm takes this a little too far and does a little too much, but I don't think that's always a bad thing.

I've cast Brainstorm in a lot of different decks to do a lot of different things. A lot of my "level up" moments in the last few years have come from identifying cool things I can do with Brainstorm. Guaranteeing a Delver flip on upkeep. Setting up land drops for Oracle of Mul Daya. Putting a Bojuka Bog on top of my deck for Druidic Satchel in response to crazy graveyard tricks. Protecting a to-be-game-winning Gather Specimens from Myojin of Night's Reach.

When someone is just starting to get excited about how complex Magic can be, Brainstorm is one of the cards I show them, because it's a card that you can always go back to and find new applications. In that way, it almost functions both as a lesson in staying open-minded when considering how to use your cards and as a way to track how much you're learning.

Inside the Deck's Throwback Thursday tribute to Brainstorm is a great rundown of one of the most iconic and controversial cards ever printed; one that means many things to many people, and which will always be one of the most skill-testing cards in the game. I've cast more than my share of Brainstorms in the last sixteen years I've been playing, and I can't to see what we're doing with it in 2031.