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.

Starting May 12, 2010, the newest expansion of the Pokemon Trading Card Game (TCG), Unleased, will be released. This set will feature more than 90 cards including six new Pokemon Prime cards, including Tyranitar and Steelix. Also being released are the legendary dogs, Entei, Raikou, and Suicune, which will appear in pairs on Pokemon Legend cards. The new theme decks will be Chaos Control and Steel Sentinel. The theme decks will sell for about $12 while booster packs are $3.79 per pack. For more information, visit www.pokemon.com.

This set features his most famous (and infamous) cards for a grand total of 40 to collect. That also makes this the largest Duelist Pack to date. It will feature a new Blue-Eyes White Dragon effect monster as well as five Ultimate Rare versions of his most forbidden cards like Pot of Greed and Cyber Jar. Some of these cards even feature brand-new art, like the XYZ-Dragon Cannon and Vorse Raider.

If that wasn’t enough to give you an edge, two of the biggest monsters ever created in the game, Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon and Dragon Master Knight, have been included. Players will have the chance to get popular but rare cards like Fiend’s Sanctuary. Each pack will contain a tip card to help you re-live some of Kaiba’s greatest moments in dueling.

Again, this Duelist Pack will be released April 20th and sell for about $2.

Some new cards have been released into the world of Yu-Gi-Oh! Let’s see what’s in store for all you trading card fanatics out there…

The Duelist Pack Collection Tin 2010 is perfect for players that want to add popular cards to their collections and test their luck at booster packs. Included in the tins is the “Starlight Road” card, 3 packs of “Duelist Pack-Yusei 2″, 1 pack of “Ancient Prophecy”, and a special 3-card all-foil pack with three of Yusei’s favorite cards from the animated series. A beginner’s guide is also included.

A new structure deck called Machina Mayhem includes 11 brand-new cards and gives players the cards they need to play big monsters to dominate the game. This structure deck introduces the “Machina” series of Machine-type monster which you can equip to other machines to pump them up. Machina Mayhem includes “The Big Saturn”, a card from the Yu-Gi-Oh! GX manga and is one of the biggest Machines to grace the game. The deck is 40 cards, including one Ultra Rare and 2 Super Rare foil cards, and is available for about $10 at most hobby and retail stores.

And a quick congratulations to Satoshi Kato from Tokyo, Japan who out-played the field of 716 other players to claim the title of champion at the Shonen Jump Championship at Nashville.

Then we got into the box. My half of the packs featured Jace, the Mind Sculptor’s art and a card unknown to us. We were sad to find that there are only three different pack designs when there are usually four. My second pack of the box, my third for this new set, gave me a very nice surprise. Jace, the Mind Sculptor himself! This is the only planeswalker for the set, and the card I was wanting the most. This guy alone pretty much made whatever else appeared in the box not matter at all to me. I did get a few nice rares, like Abyssal Persecutor and another Novablast Wurm, along with a foil and non-foil copy of a rare land.

So you could imagine my surprise when, as I return home, to see a package with a few more packs and a couple intro packs. Thank you very much, Wizards! The vampire intro pack seems very interesting. I’ve been working on a vampire deck (which I’ll be talking about in an upcoming Deck Building 101 article), and this pack is filled with some very nice additions to any mono-black deck. The blue-green Mysterious Realms is one I haven’t checked out at length, but I am hopeful that it provides some nice landfall abilities.

Overall, I’m still very excited for this set and glad it’s finally released! It’s a great distraction from the looming Grand Prix and Pro Tour season that’s gearing up and kicks off in a little town near me called Oakland, CA. Happy playing everyone, and if you pull something awesome in a pack, leave me a comment! I want to know what everyone’s getting.

Players are welcome to create 3D avatars for use in game, and Konami has enhanced the basic mechanics of dueling online. The most duelist-friendly change is that duels will now be free! Players can buy “Boosterpass” points to add new cards, and the points can be bought via credit card or PayPal. In the new version, players can trade cards with other players and lend cards to their friends and team members.

Konami has opened free Beta-testing trials of the Duel Accelerator now, and the Beta will be open until the end of February. You can check it out by going to www.yugioh-online.net. It will run alongside the current Duel Evolution service, which will come to an end when Duel Accelerator launches  next month!

orites such
as Yugi, Kaiba, Jaden and Princeton.

Players are invited to create 3D avatars for use in the game, and KDE has
enhanced the basic mechanics of online Dueling, too. The most
Duelist-friendly change is that Duels will now be played at no cost. Players
can buy BOOSTERPASS points to add new cards to their Decks, and these can be
acquired by credit card or PayPal. In this new version of Yu-Gi-Oh! ONLINE,
players will not only be able to trade cards with other players but also
lend cards to their friends and Dueling team members.

Konami has opened free Beta trials of *Yu-Gi-Oh! ONLINE DUEL ACCELERATOR* now,
which will continue until the end of February. It can be found at
www.yugioh-online.net, and will run alongside the existing Yu-Gi-Oh! ONLINE
DUEL EVOLUTION service, which will come to an end when *Yu-Gi-Oh! ONLINE
DUEL ACCELERATOR* launches in March.

On the ranking screen, there will be two tabs. One is Preliminary and the other is Verified. Preliminary rankings are a running total of all results that are in the system to date, and they show how duelists stack up against each other. Because the TCG is a global game with so many players, there might be delays in tournament results being uploaded. This is what the Verified rankings come in. When KDE (konami digital entertainment) confirms that all results have been put in, the rankings will become official and duelists will know where they officially stand against every other player.

And speaking of the Shonen Jump Championship…a congratulations to Stephen Silverman from Philadelphia, PA who won this year’s first Shonen Jump Championship. He out-dueled the field of 1,632 players to claim the title at the first of over a dozen Shonen Jump Championships scheduled for this year.

For all of those out there that are excited to see what is in store for the booster pack world, the first Sneak Peek event of 2010 is being planned. This sneak peek will feature the soon-to-be released Absolulte Powerforce booster set. Absolute powerforce will be released first at Official tournament stores participating in the sneak peek on either February 6th or 7th, depending on the store’s choice. This set will be available nationwide to all stores starting February 16th. Starting this year, each duelist can only play in one sneak peek event a day. It’s going to be an exciting year!

Anyone who knows me knows that I love opening packs of trading cards. There’s something about the mystery and suspense of what might be in the packs that makes me anxious. It’s the same whenever I open up new Magic: the Gathering cards.

So, of course I tear through the four packs that come with the really pretty tin and foil, promo Arceus lvl X card. I felt myself feel very happy as I recognized most of the cards looked so familiar from when I played with my school friends years ago. I think I was the most excited about being able to remember the rarity levels!

With my luck, I managed to pull out two star-marked cards, one foil and the other not, from the same pack. We call this “double raring” in Magic. It’s very uncommon, but it’s so exciting to see it. I’m realizing just how many times I’m using the words ‘exciting’ or ‘excited’, but that’s really the only way to describe how I’m feeling right now.

After all of the packs were open, I proceeded to sort them into foil and not foil. I took a break and dug into the giant box of various trading cards and lo and behold! I found a small stack of my old, original pokemon cards from the age of the Dark creatures and the first Team Rocket set. I noticed that I had some cards from then that were updated in the cards I had just opened. Woo-hoo! Two Geodudes, two Gravelers, and a Golem. Hey, I sense the making of a new deck!

In all honesty, just getting to open the packs and take a little trip down memory lane made all of this worth it. Though I have to give some credit, I actually want to go out and get one of the new Heart Gold or Soul Silver starter decks I talked about earlier and make a deck of my own. If I do, that would be a whole different adventure! For now, though, I think I’m going to drool over this shiny Arceus card now. Ta!

First up, there’s Path of the Planeswalker. This is a solid 200+ page graphic novel featuring the webcomics that can be found on the Wizards of the Coast website as well as a new story only to be found in the book. For those who haven’t read any of the comics, each one focuses on two or three of the five main planeswalkers, Jace Beleren, Ajani Goldmane, Liliana Vess, Garruk Wildspeaker, and Chandra Nalaar, and the adventures they have. This book is going for about $15 in bookstores now, as it was released January 5th. Graphic novel and Magic: the Gathering fans should pick this up and add it to their collection.

Next is the all-foil booster packs. This isn’t much different than normal booster packs except that every card is foil. The cards come from the Alara block which consists of Alara Reborn, Shards of Alara, and Conflux. These will hit store shelves on January 8th. If anyone gets them, let me know what you think! I’m really curious. Keep in mind, these will only be available for a limited time.

Worldwake and M11 comes this year, as well as Rise of the Eldrazi. Worldwake will be making waves starting February 5th. Prerelease events will be January 30th and 31st. For those that love the spoilers, those will start appearing on January 18th on magicthegathering.com, so keep a look out for them. The fun thing about M11, the core set for this year, is that it will stay in Standard with M10 until the October cycling, when M10 will be ‘demoted’ to Extended only.

A new duel deck set, Phyrexia vs The Coalition, will be released on March 19th. Phyrexia, the mono-black army, will face off against the Coalition, who represent the five-colors of magic. Duel decks are really fun because they allow two players to split the cost and each get an amazing preconstructed deck made to play right out of the box.

Whew! That’s a lot of excitement for the first half of this year! Keep on the look out for all these exciting products and whatever else the Wizards of the Coast team will come up with.

Magic: the Gathering
Februrary 13-14: Grand Prix Oakland, CA; the first Grand Prix
April 3-4: Houston, TX
July 31-August 1: Colombus, OH
October 9-10: Sydney, Australia
October 23-24: Toronto, Canada
November 27-28: Florence, Italy; the last Grand Prix