Author: basilisk

  • Wizards of the Coast Announces Major Security Breach

    April 20, 2011 – RENTON, WA – Wizards of the Coast, publishers of the popular trading
    card game Magic: the Gathering, announced today that, in an apparent security breach
    unprecedented in the 21-year history of the company, the entire Homelands spoiler has
    been released to the public. Anonymous Internet hackers were able to gain unauthorized access
    to the confidential information through a previously-undiscovered security flaw in the company’s
    Gatherer database. Rules text and art for all 140 cards in the set were downloaded hundreds of
    times over before the hole could be closed.

    “This leak was huge,” said Magic Brand Manager Paul Levy. “We thought we had Homelands
    locked down tight, but apparently this flaw in Gatherer has been there for years, and no one noticed until this morning.”

    As the leak spread, fan websites for the game were bombarded with heavy traffic from players
    interested in seeing the spoiled cards. Player reactions ranged from indifference to outrage.
    A large contingent of users from the popular website MTGSalvation threatened to boycott the
    set entirely, due to cards that “violate the color pie.” Most players were in agreement that
    the set’s power level was exceptionally low. Professional Magic player Luis Scott-Vargas
    tweeted, “There’s no set like Homelands. At least, I hope there isn’t, because these
    cards are all terrible.” Disgruntled players began to use the Twitter hash tag #HomelandsSecurity
    to mark their tweets about the leak, comparing the usefulness of the set’s cards to that of the
    security screens now commonplace at U.S. airports.

    “This was just about the worst leak we could have had,” said Levy. “The Dark,
    Fallen Empires, Prophecy, those sets are all bad. But Homelands? It was
    like the Virtual Boy of Magic sets. And now it’s out there on display for everyone to see.
    I mean, what the hell does Giant Albatross even do? Just forcing myself to read
    the card makes me feel like I’m stabbing my eyes out.”

    “At least nobody figured out that the booster packs only have eight cards in them,” he added.
    “Then we really would’ve been in trouble.”

    Shares of Hasbro, parent company of Wizards of the Coast, were down 17% in the morning’s trading.

  • Mirran Field Report, Final Transmission

    Phyrexians came through means unseen,
    They brought us pain and misery.
    They killed our tribes, they killed our sea,
    They bent our suns to their own need.
    We fought them hard, we fought them well
    Out on the plains we gave them hell
    But soon there came too many to see,
    Oh will we ever be set free?

    Riding steeds on the glimmering wastes
    Galloping hard on the plains.
    Chasing the Aurioks back to their holes
    Fighting them at their own game
    Global compleation, a stab in the back
    Women and children, a horror’s attack

    Run to the hills! Run for your lives!
    Run to the hills! Run for your lives!

    Horrors stalk in the razor brush
    With Leonin men as their game
    Crushing the myrs and compleating the men
    The only good Mirrans are tame
    Breaking their spirits, replacing their gold,
    Enslaving the young and destroying the old…

    Run to the hills! Run for your lives!
    Run to the hills! Run for your lives!

    –End of transmission–

  • Exclusive Preview of Dual Land from Innistrad

    Over the years at GoodGamery we’ve had our fair share of exciting preview cards. As part of the Rise of the Eldrazi alliance we spoiled the Timmy-est card in a Timmy set, Spawnsire of Ulamog. For Magic 2011 we eschewed such whimsy for a card the average player on the street could really connect with: limited workhorse Quag Sickness. Those were heady days indeed, but two sets have gone by since then without so much as a whiff of exclusive news. Has GoodGamery been forgotten? That’s a rhetorical question. The answer is no.

    Today we are privileged not just to kick off the Innistrad spoiler season, but to give a tantalising glimpse into the fabric of the block itself. We have been entrusted with one of the fundamental components of the Innistrad universe: its dual lands. From Tundra in Alpha to Flooded Strand in Onslaught, from Hallowed Fountain in Ravnica to Seachrome Coast in Scars of Mirrodin, dual lands have always been a cornerstone of both fantasy worlds and tournament environments.

    But what exactly is a dual land? The Oxford English dictionary defines a dual land as “a land card that provides two colours of mana, or an indirect means of acquiring two colours of mana.” While technically accurate, this definition fails to account for the soul of the dual land, an intangible phenomenon that has touched the hearts of countless magic players. An exciting new dual is the perfect way to kick off exploration of an exciting new block, and we’re pleased to say our dual is quite a doozy. Are you ready to discover the horror lurking within? Don’t worry, we’ll be right there with you. Let’s go!



    (This land has, of course, been generated randomly for your convenience by the magical dual land generator. To share this specific card with other people, click here and use the share code at the bottom of the page.)

  • Magic Cardnames: A Helpful Guide

    It’s Friday night. After weeks of trying, you’ve finally convinced your powerful wizard friend to lend you a legacy deck and let you take a shot at the local monthly eternal event. You haven’t slept for days; you’ve spent every available moment reading up on the format and desperately trailing twitter feeds to look for the newest tech. You’ve turned away phonecalls from your family and your girlfriend. You’ve quit your job. There’s no way you can lose.

    You’re sitting down for the first round. Your opponent is in his teens and tells you cheerfully he’s never played the format before. Inside you’re fistpumping, but nothing shows on your cold, steely face as you draw your seven. Your opponent wins the die roll and leads with Vault of Whispers, Springleaf Drum, Ornithopter, and Frogmite. You put him on affinity, drop one of your friend’s FBB Tropical Islands, and cast Pithing Needle. “Naming Glacial Plating,” you announce coolly. Your opponent frowns at you, visibly unsettled, then untaps and, slowly, announces that he’s casting a Cranial Plating. The judge nods and, two minutes later, you’re two games down and out of the running.

    Don’t worry, reader, that wasn’t actually you. But it could be unless you know your cardnames! In this article we’ll go through some of the most common mixups and how to avoid them.

    Isochron Specter and Hypnotic Scepter

    One’s an iconic Alpha/Beta/Unlimited artifact, commonly called ‘scepter’. The other’s a powerful modern combo piece known simply as ‘specter’. See the problem? Luckily, it’s not difficult to figure out which is which if you think about it: scepters are tools for spellcasting, but specters are scary flying monsters, and thus are more likely to eat people than hypnotise them.

    Time Crypt and Mana Walk

    People misremember Mana Walk because its actual effect is almost impossibly bad. This unique promo was designed, along with Pale Moon, for a ‘mana colour matters’ set that was ultimately scrapped. Despite this, both cards were recycled: Mana Walk as a promo, and Pale Moon as a junk rare a few years later. Time Crypt, on the other hand, gets mixed up because people can’t believe quite how good it is. A prime example of original designer Richard Garfield not knowing how powerful certain effects would be, Time Crypt’s negligible drawback has allowed it to become a cornerstone of vintage.

    Welder and Goblin Tinker

    It’s easy to confuse these two artifact-based Urza’s Legacy Johnny cards. The best way to identify Goblin Tinker is from its amusingly non-functional printed wording. All three of the ‘then shuffle your library’ tutors (Goblin Tinker, Impulse, and Goblin Retrievers) were given errata in time for the Urza’s – Mirrodin extended season, where both of these cards saw fringe play.

    Ancestral Hymn and Recall to Tourach

    Frankly, I’m not sure how so many people manage to mix up a piece of the power nine with a quirky draw spell from Fallen Empires. Maybe they were thinking of some other game.

    Sylvan Winter

    The confusion around Sylvan Winter arises from a famous incident at PT – Los Angeles when pro player Shawn “Hammer” Regnier, on hearing the card’s effect, thought it was so powerful it must be a two-card combo. People have been referring to decks including a ‘Sylvan Such-and-Such’ or a ‘Winter Whatever’ ever since, although the original card has since fallen out of favour amongst deckbuilders.