MTG Guildpact Spotlight

The last Cheeto will soon hit the floor at the Magic The Gathering Guildpact Prelease events wrapping up across country. If you weren't able to attend then you can still checkout some of the great Guildpact official-content online.

First stop should be the the Guildpact FAQ page, which has links to some great Guildpact card preview articles written by the Ravnica designers. The expansion includes three new Ravnica Guilds: The Gruul (red/green), The Izzet (red/blue), and the Orzhov (white/black). The card-previews are mostly focused on the various guild rare cards, so they're all awesome and very much overpowered. But with that said -- all of these guilds do an incredible job of combining the mindset of the two correspondng colors. Our favorites include Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind which does some amazing things to turn blue decks into red decks (we realize that's the point), and Ghost Council of Orzhova which perfectly combines the controlling and anal white with power-in-death and leaching aspects of black.

Finally, there's a plain-text Guildpact Spoiler Page that lists each of the 165 new Guildpact cards from A to Z. If you don't mind a few more clicks of the mouse, then the official card database 'Gatherer' also contains all of the Guildpact cards in a far friendlier format.

Guildpact will be available in stores in the form of Tournament packs on February 3rd, and it'll release on Magic-Online February 27.

Can't freakin' wait.

Critical Gamers Staff at Permalink

On the Horizon: Battlestar Galactica CCG

Battlestar Galactica has reinvigorated our thirst for high quality SciFi Television. The show rocks (hands down) with complicated plot lines, deep characters, internal conflicts, and - oh yeah - there's an evil race of immortal robots who've set-out on a pilgrimage to wipe-out the entire human race in hopes of getting closer to God. Mommy.

Today Wizkids (Crimson Skies, Pirates) sent out press details of their Battlestar Galactica Collectible Card Game. The game will ship in May with two starter packs heavily themed with the story of the first two seasons of the show. One collection of cards is led by the militaristic Commander (Admiral?) Adama, while President Roslin heads-up the other, more politically themed deck. Both packs will contain 61 cards, and retail for around 11 bucks. Fifteen-card booster packs (4 dollars US) will also be available, and will contain the standard card-distribution of commons, four uncommons, and one rare in each. The game's first series has 144 cards in total.

Stay tuned - we'll let you know more about the game as soon as we get our hands on it. Until then, check out the official BS:G CCG website for more details.

Critical Gamers Staff at Permalink

Grooming Those Fragile Little Egos

Early-on kids learn the delicious jive of smacktalk from their peers , but before that there's a small window when their only opponent is a parent. As an adult, you're (usually) a better gamer than your child, so you have control over the ultimate outcome of the game. Do you fold your cards when you're ahead so your child doesn't develop self-esteem issues, or do you win hoping that your child learns the art of a graceful loss?

Tough question. We're no Doctor Spock, so we don't have the answers, but there's a great article and discussion on this very topic over at BloggingBaby.com.

Critical Gamers Staff at Permalink

Philips 'Entertaible' Blows Our Minds

Philips just announced their 'Entertaible' at the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas. Lay this 30" LCD screen down on a table and it becomes a digital game-board with "touch screen-based multi-object position detection, and all supporting control electronics." That's MIT-smart talk for playing games by pushin' cubes across a touch-screen.

Continue reading: "Philips 'Entertaible' Blows Our Minds"

Critical Gamers Staff at Permalink