Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “Tom Anderson”
Who says you can’t teach an old game new tricks? Magic might be almost old enough to run for president, but in the last few years it has been evolving and exploring new horizons at a blistering pace. Recent sets have embraced tropes and genres from space opera to cyberpunk to westerns to noir detective fiction and modern cinematic horror. …
It may not be as exciting as seeing all your favorite comic-book characters come to Magic, but Marvel’s Spider-Man is also the harbinger of some big shifts in how we play Limited. Wizards has made it clear the set has been designed to be drafted with “Pick-Two” rules, where players get to take two cards instead of one each time …
Magic players have become well-accustomed to Universes Beyond products of late. We’re reaching the point where it’s no longer a novelty seeing pop-culture icons clash with planeswalkers on the tabletop. But the upcoming Marvel’s Spider-Man release is an exception even in its own exceptional class. Despite a huge number of flashy legendary cards, with effects primed to appeal to casual …
Magic’s long and unbroken history of development makes it truly unique among strategy games – three decades of evolution and expansion, stretching back towards Antiquities. The constant churn of new cards and new mechanics keeps Magic fresh and current. It also creates something akin to “generations” in its audience. We each discover and learn the Magic of our own time, …
I don’t know if anyone has noticed this, but there are a lot of Spider-Man cards in Marvel’s Spider-Man! I don’t just mean cards that relate to Spidey or depict him in the art, that was to be expected. I mean there’s a shocking number of actual creature cards which represent various versions of Spider-Man. We’ve got Peter Parker and …
Counterspells are a core building block of Magic: one of the fundamental effects that make up its periodic table. By this point in history we’ve seen literally hundreds of variations on the original Counterspell, and you can still rely on at least one or two new ones appearing in every set. Of course, not all counter-magic is created equal. In …
It might be weird to say I feel sympathy for a Magic set. But Edge of Eternities really got a raw deal: not only was its debut slotted between huge Universes Beyond sets like Final Fantasy and Marvel’s Spider-Man, but it also had the challenge of launching the game’s first “space fantasy” setting. Could this one release manage to make …
Magic: The Gathering is the kind of game you can play forever, which is one of the most special things about it. Having players all over the globe – and nowadays on digital platforms – mean you can always find a time and place to play. If the games start to feel stale, don’t worry: there’s a huge variety of …
Do you ever see a new mechanic get spoiled and start rubbing your hands gleefully, or even remark aloud something like “they made this just for me!” I’ve been thrilled by almost everything Wizards have revealed from Edge of Eternities so far, as it all seems to lean into my pre-existing playstyle preferences. But the station mechanic I find particularly …
I’m not sure whether this counts as a hot take, but I think prereleases are by far the best event on the Magic calendar. They’re not just hype incubators for new sets like Edge of Eternities: I could go on and on with this kind of praise. But I assume that most of you like prereleases – or at least …
