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magic: the gathering

Deal of the Week November 14 – November 20

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This week’s Deal of Week seems to have a board game/puzzle theme, letting gold subscribers grab these great puzzlers for half off.

Carcassonne – 400 MSP Catan – 400 …
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XBLA Wednesday: September 19
12 years ago

XBLA Wednesday: September 19

A quick reminder of today’s XBLA releases and a look ahead to the next couple of weeks. This week we have two Wednesday releases, Sega’s HD remake of the Dreamcast …
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What we are playing: June 24
12 years ago

What we are playing: June 24

With Summer of Arcade looming on the horizon, we dip back into some recent hits to tide us over.
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Magic: the Gathering Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013 – Challenges Guide
12 years ago

Magic: the Gathering Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013 – Challenges Guide

Welcome to our Challenges & Encounters guide, two of the key returning features in Magic 2013! This page is for the Challenges, Encounters can be found here. As they were in the past, these puzzles require you to solve intricate victory solutions from abysmal situations. Most of these puzzles require you to win during that one turn, making this a very small, difficult piece of Magic strategy. Since these are puzzles, however, we can solve them the exact same way every time! As such, each solution will be in step by step format, so you can’t possibly miss a beat.

Important: We strongly advise you either view every step before trying these, or you stop the timer after each move, as some steps are between individual card plays rather than entire turn phases.

Again, there are 10 Encounters to go along with the 10 challenges, so if you want solutions or help with those, head on over to the Encounters guide page. Read More

Magic: the Gathering Duels of the Planeswalker 2013 – Encounters Guide
12 years ago

Magic: the Gathering Duels of the Planeswalker 2013 – Encounters Guide

The Encounters are back in Magic 2013 and that means single-minded AIs following patterns until you win or lose. These patterns will be the same every time, but keep in mind that they will still block and attack logically regardless of the pattern. Since this is a card game and you still have to draw cards normally in Encounters, it’s important to remember that sometimes you can’t win without the right cards. That’s perfectly fine, these may take a couple tries no matter how sound the strategy is. The first three are pretty simple Encounters so their solutions are pretty straightforward, but as you progress you’ll find these Encounters get more and more difficult (and more and more unfair), so we hope you’ll find this guide useful.

Also back are the puzzle challenges. These challenges dare you to solve intricate Magic puzzles with a very specific setup and solution set. You can find our solution set to those challenges here. Read More

Magic: the Gathering Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013 review (XBLA)
12 years ago

Magic: the Gathering Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013 review (XBLA)

Magic the Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013 was developed by Stainless Games and Wizards of the Coast and published by Microsoft Studios. It retails for 800 MSP and was released on June 20, 2012. A copy was provided for review purposes.

Stainless Games and Wizards of the Coast have brought us our third iteration of the ridiculously named “Magic: the Gathering Duels of the Planeswalkers 201X” series. That means new cards, more missions, new modes, a redesigned interface, and yet the game’s name is still far too long. As such, while discussing the aforementioned inclusions, we will be referring to Magic: the Gathering Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013 as Magic 2013 for the remainder of this review.

For the uninitiated, Magic 2013 pits you against several AI duelists throughout its multiple campaigns. Use cards to generate resources which you spend to summon creatures and cast spells. Learn about the different decks throughout the campaign and unlock them for your own use. Red, white, blue, black and green cards populate each deck and all have different signatures; for instance, green features powerful creatures, where-as black specializes in manipulating the dead. Handy tips and a thorough tutorial do a comprehensive job of teaching newcomers to the franchise, so don’t be afraid to jump right in.

As an up-front for interested veterans, no you still cannot freely create decks or mix and match cards, unfortunately, however Magic 2013 has the most cards in the series to date. If you want the card game in video game form, this is it, but if you want all of the Magic: the Gathering culture, you’d best go down to your local game store and participate there. Since this is the third iteration and many of you are simply curious about what’s new here, Magic 2013’s cards are all from the upcoming Magic 2013 core set. On top of that there are four campaigns including two different sorts of puzzles and the all new game mode Planechase.

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Full deck customization in Duels of the Planeswalkers unlikely
12 years ago

Full deck customization in Duels of the Planeswalkers unlikely

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Complete deck customization is what makes collectable card games so personal and fun. Every deck is different and can be suited to the style of play the owner is comfortable with. It’s one of the reasons why Magic the Gathering has had such a long and legendary life. When Wizards of the Coast released Magic: the Gathering – Duels of the Planeswalkers back in 2009–as well as its updated 2012 edition–it felt like something was missing. While the player was provided with decks by progressing in the campaign not much could be done to make that deck feel different and special from person to person. Cards earned could be substituted while not compromising the theme of a given deck, yet full deck building has not yet been a part of the Duels series. That is not set to change anytime soon, either.

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XBLA Fans Monthly Roundup (February 2012)
12 years ago

XBLA Fans Monthly Roundup (February 2012)

We totally missed January, but the Monthly Recap is back for February! Yaaay. There’s an immense amount of news this month because for some reason February is XBLA month. There’s roughly a million game announcements and DLC as well. I suggest hitting CTRL + F and searching for the copious news about your favorite game. Or games. Or just read all the news, because that’s a good idea.

Beyond the “things that happened”, there’s also several Friday Top Fives and Most Wanted’s this month as we continue to beef up our feature repertoire. Our chief feature, A Year In Review (2011) is definitely worth checking out for some insight into the fluctuations in XBLA cost versus review scores. Lastly, amongst the five podcasts is our Music Special which showcases some of the best XBLA soundtrack tunes since its inception.

Without further ado, welcome to February all over again! Read More

XBLA brings in record revenue in 2011

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Xbox Live Arcade brought in $144 million in 2011, making it the best year for the service yet. Leading the charts in 2011 were Castle Crashers and From Dust, as they grossed around $4.6 million each, and were both among the best selling XBLA games of the year. For the full list of best selling XBLA games of 2011 read the full article.  Read More