Up My Sleeve:

The World of Card Games

by David Williams

The highlight for Up My Sleeve this issue is a board game using variant rules for use with Magic: the Gathering.

The Conquering was designed as a multi-player board game and adds a completely new twist to Magic. It provides a fresh, new way to use your cards. The mapboard for The Conquering was drawn by Mark Poole, while the rules and game mechanics were created and developed by yours truly. The response during playtesting has been uniformly positive, and we're pleased to pass this variant on to you. You can expect to see optional rules and other variations for The Conquering in future issues.

The big news in card games recently is the release of two anxiously awaited games: Star Trek: The Next Generation customizable card game, and Illuminati: New World Order.

INWO (as Steve Jackson has nicknamed it) was scheduled for release on December 16th, and should be in stores right now if everything stayed on schedule. INWO is the collectible version of Steve Jackson Games' classic (arid out of print) Illuminati game, and continues the conspiracy into the new collectible card game market. Advance sales of INWO are reportedly very high, and it may be difficult to get in on the first run of this game. I had the opportunity to playtest it at GenCon, and I am very much looking forward to getting back into this delightfully warped game.

Star Trek: The Next Generation went on sale in the middle of November and sold out within days almost everywhere. Between the established Star Trek fan base and an extremely limited print run (rumored to be only 25 million cards), these cards disappeared at warp ten, and have appreciated drastically already. The cards are gorgeously designed and represent (with pictures and stats) characters, ships and missions from the series, providing the Star Trek ambiance with each game. The game's primary drawback is the "Rich Man" syndrome whereby the person with the most money to spend on cards is going to win the most games.

However, the rules are well designed, the play is smooth, and the pictures from the series as well as the "solve the problems of the universe to win the game" objective will please anyone who enjoys the tv series. The second printing of this game is due out before Christmas and may be available as you read this. It is rumored to be an equally small print run. Fallen Emphes, the fifth Magic: the Gathering expansion, began releasing in the middle of November. Early response has been generally favorable, and a variety of new (arid distressing) card combinations have already been observed in play. While the first shipment sold out fairly quickly, Fallen Finpires has a huge print run and will continue to be shipped into next yew. There are about three times as many Fallen Empires cards being printed as all of the other expansions combined.

The Magic CD-Rom computer game (for IBM) by MicroProse is due out in the spring of 1995. Not too much information has been offically released, but the game is reported to permit the play of games and tournaments on the Internet. A certain number of cards will be available to you when you buy the game (unlocked from the CD). All of the cards already out will be included, and MicroProse planed to incorporate each expansion as they come out.

TSR released the second expansion for Spellfire in November: The Dragonlance Chronicles. Based on the extremely popular series of books by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman which were also used as a series of modules for AD&D; all of the characters and magical items from the series are back and ready to play.

On the Internet, the re-organization of the Usenet newsgroups involving collectible card games passed with a resounding "YES". The bulletin-board-like groups that used to be rec.games.deckmaster are now broken down into more groups that do not use trademarked names in their titles. Look for Magic discussions in rec.games.tradingcards.magic and for Jyhad on rec.games.trading-cards.jyhad. Steve Jackson himself has left his self-imposed exile from the "deckmaster" groups and has been a presence on rec.games.trading-cards.misc. While only Magic and Jyhad have their own groups at the moment, expect any game receiving too much traffic to get its own group as well.

Look for a special edition of SHADIS, to come out early next year devoted entirely to the collectible trading card phenomenon. As with all other issues of SHADIS, this issue will focus on being a gaming tool, rather than just being a source of information. If you enjoy The Conquering, you can look forward to the game boards and rules that we will be including in future issues for use with all of your collectible trading cards. In closing, I would like to thank James Forest of Dark Forest Games in Claremont, CA for providing the Ravenloft list last issue.

More Up My Sleeve edited by David Williams

Back to Shadis #17 Table of Contents
Back to Shadis List of Issues
Back to MagWeb Master List of Magazines
© Copyright 1995 by Alderac Entertainment Group

This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com