Robot Viking

Sure, it’s Magic Week here at Robot Viking, but sometimes Magic is a little too complicated for the younger gamers in your life. You need a gateway game to teach them the fundamentals of card advantage, hand-quality, and creature combat. How about Kaijudo? The upcoming Dojo Edition will feature this creepy squid creature, Vikorakas.

Wizards of the Coast has been working on a new user interface/client for Magic Online for 180 years*, and this week they finally opened it to a public beta test. It vastly improves some aspects of the old client, but needs work in some key areas. Which sounds about right for a beta. *actual time [...]

I haven’t been playing much constructed Magic lately, so I won’t fake my way through an analysis of M13 for competitive play. Instead, here are ten cards from the set, both new ones and reprints, that I think are particularly interesting. It might be because they’re a sleeper draft pick, a surprising reprint, a fun [...]

It’s Magic Week at Robot VIking! What does that mean? That I’m going to talk about nothing but Magic all week. Duh. Hope you like Magic! Anyway, let’s get things started by roping up all of the wild bits of Return to Ravnica info that Wizards let loose at San Diego Comic Con (SDCC to [...]

Duels of the Planeswalkers lets you play Magic: the Gathering on your computer or gaming console, against the computer or online friends. It’s a standalone game — no card collecting — and it gets updated every year. It’s sort of the Madden of strategy/puzzle games, and this year’s edition is fantastic.

The release of Magic 2013 is just about a month away. Over at io9 today there’s a gallery of new images from the set, including five new characters being introduced to Magic mythology. The Robot Viking faithful get a special bonus — M13 wallpapers.

Once upon a time, we had a cookout at my house, tried out the new (at the time) Archenemy multiplayer format, grilled food and generally had a good time. So we decided to do it again! This time, Planechase 2 was being tested.

Today I’m here to introduce you to Quarriors. It’s a queer game about quarriors questing the quaking quay for quarry. Forgive me, but I’ve been saving that for weeks. Behind the ridiculous puns and over-the-top marketing that sometimes border on aggressively stupid there’s quite a fascinating game. I’ve described it to people as Dominion Dice [...]

I haven’t been specifically trying to design Magic cards lately, but now and zen an idea pops into my head. This card started out as a solution to an annoying Commander problem, then got a little more interesting.

I haven’t done a Crash Test Magic in ages, but I had an odd idea for a new card that I wanted to try out. I’ve been trying to figure out a way to do Voltron in Magic card form forever, and the Soulbond mechanic in Avacyn Restored indirectly inspired me to give it another [...]

This is an image from one of the cards in the upcoming Magic set, Avacyn Restored. Does it make you uncomfortable?

The upcoming set for Magic: the Gathering tells the last chapter in the story of Innistrad, a plane that seemed doomed to despair as it was overrun by vampires, zombies and werewolves. Now it seems their angel protector, Avacyn, will be released from the Helvault — along with one seriously wicked demon. Our exclusive preview [...]

We’re halfway through the new 4-issue Magic: the Gathering series by IDW, and it’s been chock full of stunning spells and bloody vampires. The likely-to-be-rare promo cards are a nice touch, too.

You’ve probably heard of Shadowrun, the cyberpunk/fantasy RPG created by the now defunct FASA Corporation. What you may not know is that in 1997 FASA also made a Shadowrun Trading Card Game. It didn’t take long to track down a sizable quantity of cards and start hacking, rigging, gunning and ‘running.