Poison and Remedy

If you know anything about Magic: the Gathering (MtG) then you know there are several ways to win the game.

Over the game’s 15 year history, more and more cards have been printed that say something like, “If you control 1, 2 and 3 and an X, Y and a Z you win the game.” As a result, there are now all sorts of conditional winning effects.  Wizards of the Coast (WotC) even expanded the rules to use conditional effects for not losing the game.  Platinum Angel is a prime example, the card text of which says, “You can’t lose the game and your opponents can’t win the game.” To avoid the obvious confusion when effects interact or contradict with one another and occur simultaneously, there’s a primary rule in the game which states that: “102.3e If a player would both win and lose simultaneously, he or she loses.”  That such a rule is necessary is a sign of how crazy things became.

Breaking News – MTG PTQ Kyoto will be at Gaelcon!

Small details have yet to be decided but the Gaelcon Con-Director (Hugh Lardner) confirmed today that Martin Kenny of Models Inc in Dublin has organised this year’s PTQ to run at Gaelcon.

That’s pretty good news for the card gamers who go to Gaelcon and great news for the Gaelcon Committee. Last year saw a resurgence of CCGs at the IGA’s annual convention but this will hopefully give the Con a boost and get the “Card Flopper” numbers right back up there!

While Hugh Lardner doesn’t “do quotes”, he has gone on the record as saying he’s very excited about this and more than happy to accomodate the hordes of Magic players who will be beating down the castle doors!

For more information see www.wizards.com (particularly helpful page here).

Wizards of the Coast (Not the web?)

One of gamings “greats” (WotC) has made The Daily WTF…

The feature is about how WotC “fixed” Leaping Lizards Magic Online product and is entitled “Do You Believe In Magic… Online” Nope, unfortunately I don’t, I wish I could!

Ahh the infamy!

Still – at least the CCG has taken a turn for the better with the last few releases! I’ve thouroughly enjoyed Lorwyn^TM and Shadowmoor^TM releases

Wizards of the Coast kick off a new row over game licencing!

After this announcement about WotC’s new GSL (Game System Licence) there was a bit of furore on various discussion boards. Some things got said by Linae Foster on this particular thread that are pretty worrying regarding the future of OGL products and in fact any other product that small publishers may want to release a D&D 4th Ed version of. There has been a bit of scaremongering and the usual sensationalism over the whole thing (this article on BoingBoing floated through reader at me this morning).

One person has kept a fairly level head about this and hopefully he is right – it is all speculation and rumour and misunderstanding. I can’t see any court upholding claims that publishing the same work under another system violates the GSL; if the original work is the IP (Intellectual Property) of the publisher then they should be free to publish it in any system they please (you can’t copyright a number system / rules system AFAIK). We shall just have to see how it all pans out…

Thanks to glimeral for his post which sifted out all the relevant comments, from Linae Foster and Scott Rouse, in the thread that kicked off most of the fuss…