This has been an exciting week for Magic, packed with players around the world beginning their preparations for one of the biggest weekends in the history of Magic. Modern Masters: 2015 Edition is coming to Las Vegas, Chiba, and Utrecht on May 28th-31st. That'd be exciting enough on its own, but we've also got the Magic Online Championships happening this weekend in Seattle, where the best digital wizards will be battling it out in Modern, Vintage, and more. Between these sweet events and sets, as well as all kinds of exciting content from Magic and beyond, we hope you'll spend some of your Sunday with Team Gathering Magic as we share our Picks of the Week.

Picks of the Week: May 17, 2015

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 has been one of the most hectic weeks of my life, and next week already promises to top it. Between submitting the manuscript of my honors thesis, publishing my first academic paper, and preparing to defend said thesis later this week, it's been something else trying to get it all done. That's kept me pretty busy, but I've got my eye on a few things that I couldn't be more excited to spend some free time on in the hours and days following my big presentation.

Art Lessons with Mike

When I look at Magic art, I really don't know what kind of things I'm looking for. I don't have a strong background in anything artsy, so it's hard for me to appreciate what the real gems are. I know which pieces I enjoy and which ones I'm not as excited about, but I couldn't tell you why.

Modern Masters: 2015 Edition had a number of pieces that fell flat for me. In this article, Mike does a great job of explaining what we should be looking for out of alternate art for reprints, and gives some fantastic insight into the kind of details we should be looking for. What does the art have in common with its predecessor? How does it fit in to what we know about the plane as we left it last? These questions are important for figuring out how this new art fits into the Magic universe, and are ones I imagine I'll be asking much more frequently.

Flex

Fair warning: I have not read a word of this book yet. I purchased a copy on the recommendation of Alex Ullman in a previous Picks of the Week, as its exactly the kind of book I enjoy reading, and sounds like a blast. Reading for pleasure instead of academics is not something I've had the time to do recently, and I cannot tell you how much I've missed the feel and smell of a good paperback. All I know is this: I can't wait to find a warm, sunny place to sit down for a few hours and devour a great story.

Puzzles, Dragons, and Plumbers

I am a pretty big fan of the Puzzles and Dragons mobile game. The combination of elements from Pokemon and JRPGs, combined with the puzzle-oriented gameplay is everything I'm looking for out of a game. You move through the game by beating dungeons, and collecting new team members to use along the way. Over the course of the game, you'll build many teams, swap out leaders and other team members; there are infinite opportunities for customization, which is absolutely incredible.

My one gripe? I absolutely hate in-app purchases, as much as I understand why it has to be there in a free game. I'm happy to pay to support the people who have developed something I've enjoyed this much; I just wish it was an up-front cost to access content in its entirety, with the ability to play whenever and however I like.

Fortunately, this coming Friday, that opportunity has presented itself. I don't know much about Puzzles and Dragons Z, or the Super Mario variant that comes packaged with it, but I know I'm going to own a copy, and I'm going to play it to death. If you're curious, I cannot encourage you enough to give the app a try to see if its for you. Personally, I think I'll be more than happy with the 3DS version, but it's hard to beat the immediacy and availability of a mobile game.