50 Magic the Gathering MTG Assorted Rares for $14.99

41gzrWAhfKL._AA216_.jpgWant to get 50 Assorted Magic the Gathering cards for cheap? Amazon has a deal for 50 at just $14.95. We're not sure what you get but for $14.99 - we'll take a chance.

  • 50 Assorted Magic the Gathering Rares
  • The perfect Collection Builder
  • All Unplayed mint condition Spanning all magic sets
  • A ton of Magic rares - cheap
At 50 Magic the Gathering MTG Assorted Rares for $14.99
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November 25, 2007

Critical Gamers 2007 Holiday Gift Guide - Board Games and Card Games Galore

Welcome to the one-stop index page for all of our Holiday Gift Guides for 2007!

We know how important it is to find the right game for the right person and so we're kicking things up a notch this year by crafting up individual guides centered around particular genres of gaming. Here you'll find links to all of our artilcles, so rest assured that you'll find the right game for the right person for some unwrapping goodness in December.

Critical Gamers' 2007 Holiday Shopping Guides

If you haven't found exactly what you're looking for then please also check out our 2006 Holiday Gift Guide. It's also chalk-full of great game ideas with staying power, many are still being played on our gaming nights even late into this year.

Looking for more amazing gift ideas? Check out our extensive set of holiday shopping guides on electronics, fashion, cooking, and more.

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November 23, 2007

Cyber Monday and Holiday Board Game Discounts: Buy.com

The online mega store Buy.com is running a sale on select board games and toys, with some titles up to 60% off.

The sale includes nearly 150 items, including new games and old American classics like Monopoly, Scene It?, Sorry, Life, and titles from the Cranium Series. No Eurogames for dinner parties and the elder generations (except for Scene It?), but some great discounts for those classic family games we all grew up with.

No coupon codes required. Have at it!

If you're looking for more gift suggestions the please also checkout our own 2007 Critical Gamers Holiday Gift Guide.

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Cyber Monday and Holiday Puzzle Game Discounts: Bits and Pieces

jackson20-11-20-05a.jpgThe puzzle and game store Bits and Pieces has a 25% coupon deal running through Cyber Monday (November 26th, 2007), and other holiday deals on shipping and games through the rest of the year. They have quite the extensive selection of jigsaw puzzles, including wooden, 3D and glow in the dark puzzles (you heard us!), but also other sorts of gamin accessories. Their Outlet section has up to 75% off gaming items straight out of Spencer Gifts.

Here are the online coupon codes for the 2007 Holidays:

  1. 25% off any order - W201250 Expires 11/26/07
  2. 15% Off Any Order - W702060 Expires 11/30/07
  3. Free Jigsaw Puzzle with any Order - 14-W9914
  4. Free shipping on any $50.00+ order - W702070 Expires 12/31/07

The online store also also hosts their very own Bits and Pieces 2007 Holiday Gift Guide which has gift suggestions for Him, Her, Kids and favorites. It even breaks down each of those gift categories by price, too Sure makes life simple!

If you're looking for more gift suggestions the please also checkout our own 2007 Critical Gamers Holiday Gift Guide.

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November 20, 2007

Critical Gamers 2007 Holiday Gift Guide - Family Board Games and Card Games

For more great gift ideas across all genres of games please see our
Holiday Gift Guide Index

We kick off our series of Board Game Holiday Shopper guides with probably the most difficult of gaming archetypes: The Family Gamer. Our goal was to compile a list of fun games where each in the list spans the interest levels of younger players, and teens, and even become challenging and interesting for the elder folks playing them, too.

Our shortlist of criteria for the best Holiday Gift Family Games:

  1. Games that are interesting for adults, too. We play all of these games without any kids present because they're fun, and we're manly in our 30's.
  2. Games that are simple to learn - but yet interesting and offer a quite a few levels of depth. They have to be rewarding for everyone who comes to the table.
  3. Games that keep everyone involved from the first turn to the last, unlike the traditional family games from our past - like Monopoly.
  4. The games come to a conclusion in about an hour so they're easy to budget time for, and you won't feel that board game hangover as you burn the midnight oil.

There's no surprise that this list jives with many characteristics of Eurogames which came out of Germany in the 1990's - since they were designed for exactly this type of gaming. Also, these games listed here would be great for non families, too, like any social board game group looking to get together a few times a month to play games and just hang out.

And here's our list of Family Games for the 2007 Holiday Season without further ado:

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November 19, 2007

WoW TCG Feast of Winter Veil

The WoW TCG has just sent out a sweet little stocking stuffer for the Holidays. The Feast of Winter Veil [Amazon, Funagain] is somewhat of a first in the line of World of Warcraft Trading Card Game releases. It’s not a set, nor a raid, but instead a mini set themed release. It includes: ten rare holiday themed cards, a booster from each of the standard set releases of Heroes of Azeroth, Through the Dark Portal, and Fires of Outland, and it’s all packaged in a slick little deck box with which to lug around your favorite decks.

A very nice release we might say. In fact we do say. The cards are play dynamic on the gameplay front and are very well themed for both the World of Warcraft MMORPG Feast of Winter Veil content and for the true holiday season - which makes them fun – but they’re also quite useful, too. Going down the list we've all nod our heads in appreciation of how well these things fit into all of our decks. Plus a deck box carrying case to boot? Sign us up!

Here are the 10 cards in the Feast of Winter Veil mini-set:

  1. Hardpacked Snowball
  2. PX-238 Winter Wondervolt
  3. Greatfather Winter
  4. Great-father Winter
  5. The Abominable Greench
  6. Metzen the Reindeer
  7. Gingerbread Cookie
  8. Mistletoe
  9. The Reason for the Season
  10. Treats for Great-father Winter

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November 13, 2007

Cold War: CIA vs KGB

Here’s a slick two player strategy card game has been very well received since its release in October. Cold War: CIA vs KGB [Amazon, Funagain] pits the major cold war spy networks against each other in the cold war that fell out of the WWII.

In a series of rounds the players’ reveal an objective card, then chose one of their CIA or KGB agents to deploy to the field. Agents cannot be deployed in two objectives in a row, so strategic choices must be made to determine who to deploy and when. The Player’s agents are played face down and only revealed at the end of the round (which we’ll get into in a second). Some Agents have special abilities like Assassination who can take out competing agents, or double agents who allow the controlling player to peek at the opposition’s face down agent.

Then the main gameplay starts. The overturned objective card has a target stability number on it. Players take turns pulling group cards off the top of the deck - each with an influence value - to place the group under their control. The goal is to sum up the influence to reach the target stability number of the objective without going over. The group cards also have a faction associated with them, and a player can use their turn top tap their group to influence the game in varying ways, either removing cards (especially those that increase your influence total beyond the target stability), peaking ahead in the group deck, etc.

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November 11, 2007

Critical Gamers 2007 Holiday Gift Guide - Wargame Board Games and Card Games

For more great gift ideas across all genres of games please see our
Holiday Gift Guide Index

In our third installment of our series of 2007 Holiday Gift Guides we take a look into the titles the wargamers will eat-up this December. 2007 has a been a great year for some blockbuster wargame releases, and as usually they're centered around the great WWII. One - Tide of Iron - is our latest favorite wargames becuase it's a complete system, so its the gift that keeps on giving.

But we realize that it - and other war games - are more complicated than others, and a player usually is interested in a particular level of complexity when they sit down to capture that hill. So to that end we made our selections ascend a ladder of complexity. Titles at the top of list will fit those interested in the lighter side of war gaming - like Risk fans - and those at the bottom of the list have no qualms about slapping down a ruler to determine unit line of site, or checking for artillery hit effects in a 2d6 dice chart.

Enough talk, here are our selections for Best Wargming gifts for the 2007 Holidays:

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October 12, 2007

Illuminati: Bavarian Firedrill

The release of Bavarian Firedrill [Funagain] this week marks the first expansion to the classic Illuminati [Amazon, Funagain] card game from Steve Jackson Games in three years.

We were quite the fans of the dark humored game full of liars and backstabbers when it was re-released in the Illuminati Deluxe Edition just as we were exiting college. At that time we full of vim and vigor - we were raring to take on the sinister puppet masters of the world economies and social movements, and drink beer, and Illuminati totally played into our egotistical lifestyles. We haven’t picked it up in a while, but now it seems time to dust it off.

Bavarian Firedrill updates the game to make it more appropriate for the later years of current decade. The frankenstien monster that is FEMA is now a gropu, so are Bloggers and a new gameplay mechanic of scientific and religious artifacts enters the scene. Here’s the company line:

”Control new and terrifying groups like Bloggers, Reality Shows, and Intelligent Design. Will you use Embedded Reporters and FEMA to destroy the Webcams, or will you be defeated by Bird Flu and Bobbleheads? Fans of the mega-hit INWO will recall the Deprogrammers and Science Alarmists, as well as more of the best groups from the best-selling conspiracy CCG. BFD also introduces a new kind of card: Artifacts! Some are magical, some are technological, some are just... strange. But all of them give their owners an unfair advantage in the struggle for world domination. Hitler's Brain, the Spear of Longinus, the Screaming Meme and these are just the beginning. Bavarian Fire Drill. You know what it means, but your cover demands you pretend not to... "

Contents:

  • 110 cards
  • rules

Illuminati: Bavarian Firedrill is now shipping from Funagain Games.

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September 24, 2007

Kill the Hippies Card Game Released

A while ago we received a prerelease copy of Kill the Hippies [Amazon] for our internal review, and we must say we quite enjoyed this satirical card game. Obviously anything entitled “Kill the Hippies” must be taken with a grain of salt, and with an open mind it really tickles the dark side of our funny bones.

The players act as religious fundamentalist who are attempting to convert a series of Hippies from their pagan ways. At their disposal are a set of cards which convert the hippies either through enticing peaceful means, or through cleansing them with fire (read: blunt weapons, guns, and hand grenades).

The humor stems from the combinations of characters and weapons. For instance the Open Mic girl hippie is immune to thrown-bottle and can weapons, and the King James Bible deals more physical damage than its power to convert people.

There are event cards as well which make certain conversions impossible, or protects the Hippy from successful conversion. In the end, the person who lands the most “killing-blows” wins the hippy, and the player with the most hippies at the end wins the game.

In the preview release that we played the game sported a few too many game-breaking cards. For instance some cards would cause players to lose some of their converted hippies, putting them back into the deck and making the game last for far longer than intended. Other cards kept Hippies alive for far too long. We offered our beta feedback to Golden Laurel, but we’re not yet sure if this is fixed in the release.

Therefore we have to recommend this as a good bar-game; a setting where the resulting gameplay isn’t as important as talking over a game and having drinks while humorous things happen on the tabletop below. Those looking to sit down for a serious / balanced game will probably be disappointed after so many wins occur out of left field over a few sessions. But the humor is fantastic, and uh, not a game for kids.

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