“The Great Work is Complete,” said Grand Cenobite Elesh Norn. “The stain of imperfection which is Mirrodin has been scourged and in its place we have shaped the face of New Phyrexia.”

The New Phyrexia set for Magic: the Gathering will be released on May 13, 2011. This is 3 of 3 in the Scars of Mirrodin block. Keep an eye out for pre-launch events happening in the week before launch (May 7 & 8). Check out the trailer:

“With more than 12 million players and fans in more than 70 countries and 500,000 units of Duels of the Planeswalkers sold on XBLA, Magic is experiencing record growth and delivering players a truly integrated gaming experience across both digital and real world.”

There are new modes in the 2012 version of Duels of the Planeswalkers as well as new Planeswalker opponents, decks, puzzle challenges as well as other new features when the game launches this summer.

Duels of the Planeswalkers will have a tutorial mode which will be a good way for new players to learn the game. Players used to Magic: the Gathering will want to check out the new Archenemy mode where you and two friends can combine your forces against one enemy, this is based on the card Archenemy version of the game.

If you’re at PAX East this weekend, you can get your hands on the game, to check out this new Archenemy mode, and if you’re completely new to it, they’ve got card game demos happening as well.

Wizards of the Coast are announcing their brand new twitter name for all things Magic: The Gathering.

As you may have guessed, it’s @wizards_magic.

The new channel will be good to follow for Magic fans because they will be doing announcements, promotions and spoilers for upcoming releases.

In fact, things launch starting today with a preview card from Mirrodin Besieged.

The Magic World Championships have started and Wizards was kind enough to send us some initial pictures! I love the picture of the female in the Kimono drawing her draft. I hope she continue to kick butt with her picks!

Not only that, but after getting the core game for $9.99, all three expansions are available for $4.99 a pop, adding more playtime to the virtual version of the card game. (That third expansion has yet to hit the 360, if their website is to be believed.

After purchasing the game, you can visit www.duelsoftheplaneswalkers.com to get a free art foil promo card as thanks. Well, as long as they’ve got them, anyway. (Downloading the game nets you a special code to enter to claim your card.) You can also visit that website for more information about the game and an introduction to Magic.

It’s called TweetMTG. And it’s going to be a delicious addition to your weekend multiplayer gaming. That is, if you can tune in for the weekend of July 31-August 1.

How do you join in? Simply follow @TweetMTG on Twitter. Or, for the Twitter-impaired, watch the feed on Wizards.com. From there, get ready for the Multiverse to unfold in ways you’ve never seen before.

Top minds in Magic R&D have compiled some of the finest and most plot-foiling effects they could find and will unleash them on the TweetMTG Twitter feed every few minutes for an entire weekend. Before each game, each player joins the team of one of the five Planeswalkers (Ajani, Jace, Liliana, Chandra, or Garruk) from the Magic 2011 core set. Some tweets provide benefits for players on a certain Planeswalker’s team. There are also a few tweets that are unaligned and will affect everyone equally.

This is a move that is beautifully creative, and I can’t wait to see how much it is going to help or hinder the game.

So hop on board and enjoy this small step that hybridizes collectible card gaming and social networking. For more information, head on over to Wizards.com!

If there’s one thing to be said about Wizards of the Coast, it’s that they know when they’ve found a good thing and that good thing is Twitter. It doesn’t get much sweeter than combining Twitter with Magic the Gathering. You read that right: Magic the Gathering played over Twitter.

Be still my social media fueled heart.

The R&D department over at Wizards of the Coast has been cooking up some nasty plot-foiling effects just to unleash them on the @TweetMTG twitter feed every couple of minutes for two days.

Before each game, each player joins the team of one of the five Planeswalkers from the Magic 2011 core set. Some tweets provide benefits for players on a certain Planeswalker’s team. There are also a few tweets that are unaligned and will affect everyone equally. Some sample tweets:

• Each player gains 5 life. Ajani’s team gains 10 life instead.
• Until next tweet, Jace’s enemies play with their hands revealed.
• Liliana’s team gains 2 life for each Swamp on the battlefield.
• Until next tweet, creatures Chandra’s enemies control can’t block.
• Until next tweet, all creatures gain trample and creatures Garruk’s team controls get +2/+2.

There are also a few tweets that are unaligned and will affect everyone equally.

Check out the complete rules for the full details, but here’s the gist of what’s going to go down during this wild slice of CCG meets Twitter:

Get some friends together.

Make sure they each have a Magic deck. (If they don’t, you can visit one of the many locations that sell Magic! Don’t worry, we’ll wait. We have all weekend.)

Join the team of one of the Magic 2011 Planeswalkers: Ajani, Jace, Liliana, Chandra, or Garruk

Tune in to TweetMTG’s Twitter channel.

Play as normal. The tweets will add randomness to the game every few minutes.

Play again and again, because as soon as it hits July 31 anywhere on the planet, the feed begins and doesn’t stop until the final seconds of August 1. That’s three days of game play! For you time-zone challenged, here’s some help:

• UTC: Starts at noon on July 30, ends at 11:59 a.m. on August 2
• New York City: Starts at 8 a.m. on July 30, ends at 7:59 a.m. on August 2
• Moscow: Starts at 4 p.m. on July 30, ends at 3:59 p.m. on August 2
• Sydney: Starts 10 p.m. on July 30, ends at 9:59 p.m. on August 2

And remember, this is a casual format. Be nice or your friends might take their revenge in a game that really counts

From July 31st to August 1st, get ready to get your Magic on all over the Twitterverse. Follow @TweetMTG to watch the pandemonium unfold.

Instead, he opted to teach me the right way to build a character in Dungeons and Dragons (D&D); the right way to corner a Supra Class car in Gran Turismo for the PlayStation 2; and the importance of tactical mastery in Warhammer 40K. As a second generation geek, I didn’t know that being a geek – especially a female geek – was generally considered odd. To me, it was the only normal I knew. When I came home crying in the eighth grade, it didn’t take long for my parents to figure out why. The girls were mean. The boys were meaner.

Geek just wasn’t cool.

Lucky for me, I wasn’t into cool. I was into geek. So I kept on playing D&D and Magic: The Gathering with my nerdy friends, in spite of the permanent stain on my high school social status. Before I knew it, I’d gathered a bunch of the geeks, nerds, and misfits from school and put them in the only place I knew that catered to our kind: my parents’ house. By the time twelfth grade rolled around, the LAN parties my brother and I threw had become a thing of legend. Geeks and gamers from all over our hometown clamoured for admission.

After I graduated, the geek love accelerated. Suddenly, the guys who picked on me during high school were wondering what my Xbox gamertag was and if I’d be willing to play Halo on Xbox Live. The girls were wearing “I <3 Geeks” tshirts when, just minutes earlier, I had been socially ostracized because I didn’t fit the mould. Gone were the days of hiding my comic books behind a Cosmopolitan. Gone were the days of hiding in my parents’ basement, rolling d20s and d6s long after the sun had gone down and come back up again.

En masse, geek was cool, hip, and, as they say, perhaps even bangin’.

There are conventions – Cons, as we call them – for every kind of geek. Anime geeks have SakuraCon, Anime North, and Anime Expo. Comic Book geeks have ComicCon. Gamer geeks have E3, the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX), and BlizzCon. There’s even a Con for the multi-disciplinary geeks: DragonCon. There is all kind of love for geekery, especially amongst the geeks themselves. On my way to see The Old Republic panel at PAX 2009, there was an abundance of high-fives and hugs on the way into the panel. Groping aside, it was a show of comradery I hadn’t been party to before the abundance of Cons.

Geekery may be on an upswing but we’re still wary. You may see your local comic book store brimming with curious hipsters and trend-watchers, eager to catch the next boat to Geekdom, but you won’t see the old-school geeks there, especially the ones like my Dad and his friends. They’ll be swigging beer and tossing dice, laughing about the good ol’ days when there weren’t any conventions and when being a geek meant eternal torment from the Flash Thompsons of the world. They leave the hipster wrangling to us. We Padawans, not yet Jedi Masters and no longer considered younglings, are able to bridge the gap between the wannabes and the nerdcore.

As for me, geek chic or not, I’ll continue to proclaim my geek status to anyone who will listen for longer than a nanosecond: no, I never downed Onyxia as a prot-specced pally but yes, I have sat up all night to contemplate how to turn my favourite movies into pen and paper roleplaying games. It’s just more fun that way.

These decks have been created mainly for people who have been playing Duels of the Planeswalkers online and want a smooth way into playing Magic: The Gathering itself. Wizards of the Coast have come up with a starter deck for most of the mana colours*, and these decks are constructed so that beginners and online fans alike will enjoy them. 

Decklists and descriptions below are from Wizards, and link to Wizards of the Coast’s community blog.

Hands of Flame – The Chandra Nalaar Deck

Burn them all with Chandra’s red deck.  Put your opponent on the defensive, then unload an awesome arsenal of fiery destruction.

Teeth of the Predator – The Garruk Wildspeaker Deck

Harness the power of Garruk’s green deck.  Take advantage of its abundant resources and devastate opponents with awesome creatures.

Thoughts of the Wind – The Jace Beleren Deck

Manipulate the fabric of the Multiverse with Jace’s blue deck.  Watch the fumbling attempts of your opponents as you counter their spells and turn their creatures against them.

Ears of the Elves – The Nissa Revane Deck

Elvish dominance continues with Nissa’s black and green deck.  Decimate your opponents with a legion of elite elvish fighters.

Eyes of Shadow – The Liliana Vess Deck

Rain down despair with Liliana’s black deck.  Master the forces of malevolence and death, and punish opponents with a suite of discard effects.

Sounds like another fun summer activity after the Magic World Tournament in Puerto Rico last month. Looking forward to hearing more about our readers using this deck!

* Many thanks to Brian for pointing out that Wizards have not released a white deck for this series.

Pro Tour – San Juan will be held this weekend (May 28-30), at the Puerto Rico Convention Center.

The Magic Pro Tour is considered to be the highest form of competitive play for Magic: The Gathering, hosting a “main event” for the world’s top players. However, not only will the world’s foremost Magic players be present, but Wizards of the Coast are inviting local fans and friends to the event as well. New and seasoned players will have the opportunity to participate in side events, including tournaments, game demonstrations, and artist signings.

The Pro Tour is also boasting a Massive Multiplayer Magic event, something that sounds creatively chaotic!

There will be a multitude of contests over the weekend, with the ultimate prize being a free trip to the next Pro Tour, to be held in Amsterdam.

For those of us who are stuck at home, you can tune in to the Magic Pro Tour information page for more details and a live webcast on May 30.