Imagine Texas Hold'em with a good deal of memorization required - you need to be able to calculate some basic numbers, allocate resources, and account for the human and luck factors(what cards your opponent may be using and how they would change your strategy and tactics). It's been a while since I've done more than give a cursory glance to the card sets, so there have probably been some theoretic and strategic advances since when I last played.

It's a fun game, and had I not given it up in college I'd probably still be playing today.

as someone who started playing magic when he was 13 (i turn 26 in september) and played other strategy games religiously even earlier than that, it's hard for me to answer that with a reasonable sense of perspective :-P we specifically designed the wow TCG to be both accessible to non-gamers and somewhat familiar to dedicated TCG players, though, and the way a lot of things work will generally be pretty intuitive for anyone who plays wow regularly.

Will there be a VS like tournemant scene with comparable payouts? Do you think it will be as easy as VS to make money at? ;-P

Ill give you an EJ invite for a turtle mount

the exact details of our OP structure aren't exactly ironed out yet, and certainly aren't public yet, so i can't really answer that question :-P and what do you mean VS is easy to make money at? clearly my PC win was the result of groundbreaking deck design and impeccable play that could only have come from months of dedicated playtesting!

Hold out for a raid slot! ^_^

Yeah, right, anand has a top 8 for god sake, nuff said.

for the art people - another piece just got revealed, so i figured i'd share it here. this is one of my favorites in the set, by greg staples:

Ran out of Magic players/judges in the San Diego area?

I stopped playing Magic when they introduced the dumb Weatherlight storyline. I never tried for pro-level but I did well in those tournaments I did enter. I enjoyed the mechanics of CCGs though. This should be interesting if I can find other people to play with.

The WoW TCG will be previewed at GenCon Indy. The first set doesn't release until October, so you won't get to walk away with any real product yet. We will be running long (45 min - 1 hour) demos of the WoW TCG throughout GenCon. Spots for the general public may be very tight - every retailer, distributor, magazine, blogger, etc will be begging for a slot, and we'll try to fill as many industry requests as possible. But if you ask politely, I may just be able to fit you in.

wtf i didn't know you read this site! :-P

. . . let's just say that when I read EJ, pretty much the last thing I expect to see is some random dude laying beats on me, personally, by name. Absolutely unreal. Anyway, my top 8 was mostly the result of stumbling onto a variation of the best deck in the format. VS is a fine game, very skill-intensive, and the only reason that making money in it is so easy for a lot of MTG vets at the moment is that basically everyone is terrible. The game is still in its infancy, and even the best players don't play anywhere near perfectly. Guys who have done this kind of thing for a decade have a leg up because they already have so much experience with some of the fundamentals (drafting, deck construction and tuning, etc.). So, yeah, they are doing disproportionately well for now. This is going to change as people get better.

Back on topic for the thread: I'm the guy who does the content for the website. If you have any feedback about the articles we put up, any sort of feature you'd like to see, anything like that, send it my way. I was going to write more about the game and the site, but I think that Kibler has covered pretty much everything already. Also, I have already wasted most of the night waiting out a blackout, so I am probably due for some sleep

Are the cards with the scratch-off section gonna be rare ?

I hope you enjoy my money you bastard.

I need a fucking turtle mount.

If this game comes out blazing like the first editions of magic, and is really well put-together etc., etc., etc. I have ONE thing to beg of you:

Please - don't - €$"#ing - ruin - it - like - magic - was! :)

Magic was great all the way up to 5th edition or so and from there, the editions just got worse and worse. :(

OMG, this totally made my day. Jesus half the VS community must be on this damn site, is there a VS/MTG guild somewhere? Is all of TOGIT on here? Sorry man I thought Kibler would get a kick out of my comment, gratz on the top 8. I only used your first name anyway, there are at least 10 guys on the tour named anand :D

So what, if any can you guys tell us about game mechanics?

not much yet you can't find elsewhere. i'll confer as to what is secret and what is public and post what i can, though :-P

more art! don't worry, i'll stop the blatant whoring soon ;)

Playing one of these types of games is generally very easy. Being good at them is somewhat difficult, requiring actual thought. Being good enough to play professionally is very hard, and also requires some luck and a lot of skill. Texas hold'em has always been the best comparison, a bit of luck, a bit of skill, lots of known information, lots of unknown information, and you will win games you played technically perfect just because it was 'in the cards.' Add to this the meta-game thinking that we're familiar with from raiding, but shifting constantly with each week of the tournament season.

Oddly. the high end of the PvP system in Guild Wars is loosely based on MTG, where the construction of your group and your individual skills versus the group composition/skillsets you're likely to face are just as important if not more important than how you actually play during a match. The same kind of thinking goes into these games, where one must not only play well but analyse what types of decks they're likely to face and plan accordingly. As a result, the high end is ultra competitive.

I saw that the WoW TCG site was updated (via http://www.penny-arcade.com/, which has the Leroy Jenkins card).

The official site has a Healer and Mage heros, and various spells on it, http://entertainment.upperdeck.com/wow/en/.

The mechanics are similar to Magic: TG.

WTB [Carl Critchlow Art] and [Kev Walker Art] for WoW TCG