The Magic: The Gathering 2012 Core Set is now available in stores.

Core sets represent the ‘base cards’ for Magic: The Gathering (M:TG) for the coming year. They’re officially tournament legal but tournament players usually don’t buy many core cards.

In the coming months these cards will quickly be replaced in tournament decks by often more powerful and more interesting cards from upcoming expansions.

Wizards of the Coast has a new installment of its Duels of the Planeswalkers game coming June 15, 2011. These games allow players to try their hand at the immensely popular Magic:The Gathering collectible card game over PlayStation Network, Xbox Live and Windows. The game is tailored to newer players, featuring simpler rules and a limited card pool. Developed by the UK’s Stainless Games, DoTP passed the half a million sold mark in January 2011.

As of right now, some PlayStation Network services have been restored in North America. You’re now free to play online, sync Trophies and gawk at your friend’s list. The PlayStation Store isn’t back online yet and we aren’t sure when it will be. Sony Online Entertainment services are also back online. SOE previously announced it had put together a welcome back program to compensate its customers for the difficulties they’ve had to endure, and it has now been put into action.

Good news if you need a new free-to-play game, Sony Online Entertainment has you covered. This time, it’s a strategic game that will appeal to card game fans. That’s right, it’s time for Magic: The Gathering Tactics! Took them long enough! Of course, it’s not like we can really complain, it essentially being free and all.

As you may recall, Magic: The Gathering Tactics has been a long time coming…

On November 23, 2010, Wizards of the Coast (WotC) announced the release of Magic: The Gathering – Duels of the Planeswalkers for the Playstation 3 (PS3), along with three expansion packs.

The online version is already fairly popular on the PC (through Steam) and Xbox Live, so it really it’s about time they spread it to other platforms.

To pull in collectors who might already play the game, WotC has included a special

Interested in trying out the world’s most popular collectible card game (CCG) without leaving the comfort of your home? Lucky you as Duels of the Planeswalkers allows you to play Magic: The Gathering on PC.

The third expansion for the best-selling game lands on Steam November 3, 2010, for $4.99. The primary boss in this expansion is Magic‘s unstable planeswalker Sarkhan The Mad. See, you can tell he’s crazy because he’s got “The Mad” right there in his name. Sarkhan The Friendly and Well-Adjusted is not the sort of character that sells virtual cards.

Dear Wizards of the Coast,

With all of the franchises that have had Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) of various sorts, there is a lot of promise to get new interest into older franchises. There’s the Conan, Warcraft, Lord of the Rings, Warhammer Fantasy, soon-to-be Warhammer 40,000, Star Trek, Star Wars, Dungeons & Dragons and a whole host of other long running gaming franchises whether they are pay to play, free to play, graphics or text based, so on and so forth.

There is one thing that has yet to get the true MMO-treatment: Magic the Gathering (MTG).

If, like me, you’re a student, you’re probably nearing finals and are on the verge of an educational burn out. Sometimes all you need is something fun to play to distract yourself for a short time and so you can relax. After all, a calm mind will help you in the long run.

Here are a few tabletop games you can play to help you relax along with a few additional suggestions that should help rest (or reset) your mind…

In the past I’ve been asked how to create good Magic team decks. While I am not an authority, I have been a competitive player for two years and competed in multiple 2HG (Two-Headed Giant) tournaments including Pro-Tour Qualifiers. I’ve noticed some things that work really well so here are some tips that can work wonders on the table…

The latest set from Magic: The Gathering is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, the set was broken into two mini-blocks (Lorwyn and Shadowmoor) with two expansions each. Second, the set has two of the best story cycles written in the game’s history. For the purposes of this article the focus is novels.

The block novels for the current set begins with Lorwyn, named after the plane that it takes place on. The plane of Lorwyn is one that is stuck in midsummer, full of color and life. The story follows a motley crew of characters from every walk of life while they try to stop the elves and treefolk from what seems to be…