Home Articles Videos Contact

Article Archive

 I have written a large number of pieces, primarily focussed on gaming and nerd culture. Trading Card Games are a special focus of mine.  I have played Magic: the Gathering since I was 8 years old. I love to explore the ways that TCGs convey emergent narratives through gameplay.

Card Games

Wargamer •

New Super Shredder MTG card is going to absolutely tear up games

Of all the cards previewed for Magic: The Gathering's TMNT set, ferocious Black two-drop Super Shredder might be most worthy of our fear.Wizards of the Coast's upcoming MTG Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles crossover has received a frosty response from some Magic: The Gathering players. Just like other Universes Beyond offerings before it, disgruntled fans have been quick to dismiss this Ninja Turtles release as a cash-grab. Love it or hate it, though, you can't deny the sheer power of many of the TM...
Wargamer •

Are Pokémon TCG Mega Heroes Mini Tins weird, or is it just me?

Many Pokémon TCG expansions, although not all of them, feature Mini Tins: little metallic tubs containing two boosters and some added extras. The newest Pokémon set, Mega Evolution, continues this trend, with chunkier booster boxes and ETBs releasing alongside a "Mega Heroes Mini Tin". Naturally, like all other Pokémon products on the planet, most retailers have either already sold their stock of these tins, or they're only available at a wildly higher rate than their recommended retail price of...
Wargamer •

I want to love MTG's new 5 color Ninja Turtles commander - but it's such a mess

Heroes in a Half Shell may be a powerful five color commander in Magic: The Gathering's new TMNT set - but holy hell, it's weirdly designed.So it's official, Magic: the Gathering will once again return to New York, in the upcoming MTG Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles set. After swinging across the skyline in Marvel's Spider-Man, we'll be delving down into the sewers next. And, speaking of cramped dark places, one of TMNT's new commanders was clearly dredged from a particularly sinister corner of the...
Wargamer •

This Gen 5 Pokémon card's price spiked 500%, but fans aren't sure it's worth it

Solosis 118/086, from Pokémon TCG's Black Bolt set, exploded in price from $10 to $62 last month - but now its star seems to be falling.Generation five gave the Pokémon TCG plenty of powerful pocket monsters, from brutal, three-headed menace Hydreigon to draconic legendary Pokémon Zekrom and Reshiram. Forget about those titans, though; over the past few weeks one of Unova's smallest Pokémon has been on a massive journey in the collectors' market. Solosis 118/086 from the set Black Bolt has seen...
Wargamer •

New Heroes of Might and Magic card game banks $800k in crowdfunding launch

Archon Studio's shiny new HoMM card game started crowdfunding on Gamefound on Friday - and it's already raised over $800k in pledges. A day after its crowdfunding launch on Friday, October 10, Archon Studio's Heroes of Might & Magic: The Card Game has already amassed over $800,000 from backers on Gamefound, having hit its initial $58k goal in just over five minutes.
If you've somehow never heard of Heroes of Might & Magic, it's a collection of PC strategy RPGs known for their expansive maps, gri...
Wargamer •

This MTG Spider-Man commander is so bad, only one person picked it

Only one Magic: The Gathering player on the internet has posted a Beetle, Legacy Criminal deck - what makes this card so epically unpopular?In the Spider-Man comics, Janice Lincoln, a.k.a. "The Beetle" is a formidable threat to New York and its arachnid protector. She's a member of the Sinister Six, a group of Spider-Man's most infamous adversaries, and founder of the Syndicate, a league of criminal superwomen. In Magic: the Gathering, however, Beetle, Legacy Criminal has been done dirty. She's...
Wargamer •

"Awesome" and "unique" Pokémon Mega Evolutions Yveltal promo is, sadly, neither

The Pokémon TCG's Mega Evolution set comes to Europe with an Yveltal promo card - but it's a sour deal compared to what US fans got already.After a two week delay compared to the US,  European Pokémon TCG fans will finally get their hands on the newest Pokémon set, Mega Evolution, on Friday, October 10. And alongside all its shiny new, mega evolved 'mons, European players buying the new set from one of 18 stores can get a special edition Yveltal, described by The Pokémon Company as "an awesome p...
Wargamer •

Why you should never draft Red in MTG Spider-Man

It's no secret that the MTG Spider-Man set sucks. It's gotten many Magic: The Gathering players as riled up as J. Jonah Jameson on a slow news day, and collector booster prices have plummeted quite as fast as Peter Parker would with broken web slinger (that's enough now - Ed.) There are many reasons this set didn't stick the landing, but for me, the biggest is that its all-important Limited gameplay simply isn't fun. Spider-Man drafts are poorly balanced, and, above all, Red cards are almost unu...
Wargamer •

Famously useless Pokémon card sees $100 price spike in just two weeks

Magikarp may be appalling in battle, but Pokémon TCG collectors love the Paldea Evolved Magikarp IR card so much, it's now worth over $400!Magikarp is, canonically, one of the most pathetic pocket monsters in the entire Pokémon TCG. All it's capable of doing is splashing, tackling, occasionally flailing about, and eventually evolving into Gyarados. Despite being the fishy punchline of the Pokédex, though, Magikarp does sometimes get a moment in the sun. In 2023's Paldea Evolved set, the floppy f...
EDHREC •

Ranking the New Spider-Man Sagas | EDHREC

Images courtesy of Wizards of the Coast and MarvelThe new Spider-Man set has given us an exciting cycle of Sagas, one for each color. These Sagas depict four beloved Spider-Man story arcs, and also The Clone SagaThe Clone Saga. The cards in this cycle are not created equal, and some of them are significantly stronger than others.This isn't unusual. In fact, most cycles are uneven like this. Everyone remembers Syr Konrad, the GrimSyr Konrad, the Grim from Throne of Eldraine. Few recall Konrad's p...
Wargamer •

Magic: The Gathering's Furby crossover is deliciously deranged

Magic: the Gathering is releasing a batch of five Furby cards which reimagine the fluffy, talking toys as horrors from beyond your worst nightmares. Secret Lair x Furby: The Oddbodies is just one of three Furby themed Secret Lairs arriving on October 13, as part of Wizard of the Coast's enormous Secret Lair: Secret Scare Superdrop.
Although a collab with The flippin' Office was just announced, this still has to go down as one of the strangest Secret Lairs in Magic's history. An Oddbody is a fan...
Wargamer •

We're getting The Office MTG cards, because no one is safe from Dwight Schrute

The Office's Dwight Schrute gets his own suite of Secret Lair Magic: The Gathering cards in October, because human culture is eating itself.A brand new MTG Secret Lair has been announced at MagicCon Atlanta featuring, for some reason, Dwight Schrute from The Office. Secret Lair X The Office: Dwight's Destiny has artwork of Dunder Mifflin's hardest working, and most arrogant, employee pasted over 6 pre-existing Magic Cards.
The drop will release on Monday, October 13 2025 on the dedicated webstor...
Wargamer •

Pokémon Phantasmal Flames' Japanese golden Charizard price tops $600 in 48 hours

Mega Charizard X ex was released in Japan on Friday, and its most valuable gold variant is already selling for over 600 bucks on Ebay!Three things in life are inevitable: death, taxes, and Charizard Pokémon cards spiking to ludicrously high prices. Inferno X - the Japanese precursor to the English Pokémon set Phantasmal Flames - released in Japan on Friday, and its chase card Mega Charizard X ex has hit the market like a truck. Several variants of the new 'zard card are available - but the most...
EDHREC •

Madness and Mayhem - Comparing Magic's Discard Mechanics | EDHREC

Alchemist's GreetingAlchemist's Greeting | Art by Jakub Kasper | Electro's BoltElectro's Bolt | Art by JB CasacopReleased in February of 2002, the second set of Odyssey block, Torment, is one of Magic's strangest expansions. Its unique selling point is that it's deeply asymmetric. Most sets contain, roughly, the same number of cards of each color. Torment, in contrast, is weighted heavily towards black. There are 40 black cards in the set, while the other colors have between 21 and 28 cards.This...
Wargamer •

The MTG Spiderman bonus sheet has some epic cards, and Shock, for some reason

The Source Material bonus sheet for Magic: The Gathering's Spider-Man set is full of powerful cards - and one weakling put there as a joke.One in every 24 MTG Spider-Man play boosters, and every Collector Booster, contains a card from the "Source Material bonus sheet". These are reprints of cards from Magic's past, featuring artwork from the Spider-Man comics. Many of these cards are powerful staples that will slide into any Commander deck as easily as Spider-Man slings his way across the New Yo...
Wargamer •

Classic Pokémon card Birthday Pikachu abruptly doubles in price

Birthday Pikachu and other cards from Pokémon TCG's Celebrations Classic Collection have spiked in value ahead of the game's 30th year.Birthday Pikachu is one of the Pokémon TCG's most eye catching cards. While most printings of this cake-eating electric mouse cost upwards of $50, often climbing into hundreds, there was (until recently) an affordable way to get a copy. The newer Celebrations: Classic Collection version used to be cheap, at just over $6. Now, the card's price has more than double...
Wargamer •

There's a Morbius MTG Card now, whether you like it or not

The new MTG Spider-Man set contains some unusual cards, from Imposter Syndrome, a delightful reference to the Spider-Man Pointing meme, to the absurdly powerful Spider-Punk. Maybe the strangest card we've seen so far, though, is Morbius the Living Vampire: a vampiric villain revealed this week in a set otherwise swarming with arachnids.
Morbius is a Spider-Man villain who's been vamping around since the seventies, but this bloodsucking bad guy is most famous (or perhaps infamous), for being the...
Wargamer •

Pokémon TCG's new Mega Venusaur ex has more HP than any card ever printed

Mega Evolutions' Mega Venusaur ex has the most HP of any legal Pokémon card, but will its in-game power match its astronomical hit points?The upcoming Pokémon TCG Mega Evolution set is shaping up to be pretty massive. True to its name, the set will feature a wide variety of mega evolved Pokémon. One card stands just a bit taller than the competition, though: the new Mega Venusaur ex has the biggest HP total in the history of the game.
Mega Venusaur ex is a powerful card, made all the stronger by...
Wargamer •

Nab this lightweight, light hearted Game of Thrones board game for under $10

A Game of Thrones: Hand of the King is no masterpiece, but it's a decent little Westerosi game of wits, well worth a sub-ten-buck price tag!They say that when you play the Game of Thrones, you win or you die. Not every battle for succession has to be so bloodthirsty, though; A Game of Thrones: Hand of the King is a friendly, casual little board game that appeals to the schemer in all of us, without being too complex. An empire toppling masterwork for the ages it ain't, but for $9.95 at Amazon US...
EDHREC •

Hei Bai, Spirit of Balance - Spirits and Sacrifices | EDHREC

The new Avatar: The Last Airbender set may not be due out until November, but we've already seen plenty of spoilers for the upcoming crossover. From AangAang, himself, to TophToph, and everyone else in the Gaang.Of course, a show is more than just its main characters. When the new Avatar set comes out, we're going to get a selection of legends that are less well-known ready to slide into the command zone. In The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth, we had Erkenbrand, Lord of WestfoldErkenbr...
EDHREC •

5 Fantasy Book Series That Would Make Great Universes Beyond Sets | EDHREC

Heirloom EpicHeirloom Epic | Illustrated by Fiona HsiehFor better or for worse, Universes Beyond is fully integrated with Magic: The Gathering now. The game can now be used to model a fight between Spongebob SquarepantsSpongebob Squarepants and Sonic the HedgehogSonic the Hedgehog (apparently, Spongebob trounces Sonic; who knew?). The Magic multiverse now contains multitudes.You may have already read Cooper Gottfried's piece regarding 5 video games that would make great Universes Beyond sets. If...
EDHREC •

The 10 Best Creatures for Stationing Spacecrafts | EDHREC

Infinite Guideline StationInfinite Guideline Station | Art by Piotr DuraMagic: The Gathering has officially gone into hyperdrive and taken us to the sci-fi inspired Edge of Eternities. To fit this new interstellar setting, there's a new artifact subtype: Spacecrafts.Spacecrafts, and other cards with the station mechanic, gain charge counters by tapping down their controller's creatures, gaining one counter for each point of power possessed by the creatures stationing them.EDHREC has already publ...
Card Gamer •

Indie Game Spotlight: Turbulence - Card Gamer

Tabletop games offer insights into areas of history that are left unexplored by other forms of media. Armando Canales’ The Cost shines a light on the brutal practices of the asbestos industry, Splotter Spellen’s Horseless Carriage allows players to experience the absurdly unsafe world of early automobile transit, and Resist! depicts the doomed but noble war waged by the Maquis against Fascism in Spain. Turbulence is a project currently undergoing crowdfunding that describes a similarly underrepr...
EDHREC •

Alpharael, Dreaming Acolyte Reanimator Deck Tech | EDHREC

Alpharael, Dreaming AcolyteAlpharael, Dreaming Acolyte| Cristi BalanescuAlpharael, Dreaming AcolyteAlpharael, Dreaming Acolyte doesn't look like anything special. This is the sort of signpost uncommon that you'd see in any Limited environment, and it's certainly not much compared to its mono-color counterpart,Alpharael, StonechosenAlpharael, Stonechosen. Unremarkable cards like this can serve as exciting commanders because they grant you a degree of design freedom that more streamlined, powerful...
Load More

Gaming

SUPERJUMP •

Stewpots and Space Travel: An Interview With Takuma Okada

Takuma Okada is a tabletop game designer based in Portland, Oregon. Going by the title “No Road Home” on itch.io, Okada has been designing games about identity, isolation, and exploration since 2018. Their works include Stewpot: Tales from a Fantasy Tavern, a game about retired adventurers settling down and opening up a pub, which has been nominated for the 2025 ENNIE award for “Best Family Game”. They also created the Alone series, a selection of three solo-journaling games about exploring wond...
Wargamer •

Look out Wingspan, a new birdy board game just launched on Kickstarter

Isle of Feathers has arrived on Kickstarter - a tile-laying puzzle board game where players compete to build their vision of an avian paradise.Ever heard of a Sandy Gallito, Varied Tit, or Chatham Shag? No, these are not 19th-century innuendos, but birds in the new Kickstarter board game Isle of Feathers, which arrived on the crowdfunding platform on September 28.
Isle of Feathers has the tagline 'A Love Letter To Strange Birds', and as you'd expect, it's absolutely full of feathered freaks. In...
Wyrd Science •

Girl By Moonlight: Hope, Transcendence, Transformation

Hope can be a powerful thing. The desire to believe, to push on in the face of adversity has been the subject of countless stories. From Star Wars, which asserts that "rebellions are built on hope", to Warhammer 40,000’s more cynical message that "hope is the first step on the road to disappointment."  Discussions about the strength, or the futility, of hope have rumbled on for as long as people have told stories. Whatever other vices may have burst forth from Pandora’s Box, or jar if you’re fee...
SUPERJUMP •

Galactic Glitch Review

Galactic Glitch, by Crunchy Leaf Games, is a sci-fi shooter with a roguelike progression system. You’ll be blasting your way through space, getting blown apart, and then returning to action stronger and ready to progress just a little bit further.

The game attempts to differentiate itself from other roguelikes through its physics-based combat. You’re able to lift destructible space debris and even smaller enemies, and bombarding opponents with them.

All of Galactic Glitch’s sci-fi shootouts ta...
SUPERJUMP •

Now Playing at SUPERJUMP, Issue 33

We're back with a brand new Now Playing, and we've reached the third-of-a-century mark!! Some of us are playing more games than usual, and some are sticking with the games they've been hooked on for a while. No matter what we're playing, we want to share with you and maybe send you down the path to try something new. Let us know in the comments what you're playing and what news has you excited for the future!

Magic: The Gathering recently crossed over with Final Fantasy. While this move was cer...
SUPERJUMP •

Synergy Invites Us To Question Our Assumptions About City Building Games

From RPGs to action games, every genre carries its share of baggage.

The exploration, expansion, exploitation, and extermination necessary to progress in Civilization and other 4X games define success in rigidly specific form. To win the game, a player’s civilization must prove itself superior to the competition. Rivals must be crushed militarily and outstripped scientifically. Their competing religions must be consigned to history, and the player must develop a hegemonic global culture that en...
SUPERJUMP •

TTRPGs Can Help Build Positive Communities

Tabletop RPG characters are constantly thrust into dangerous situations. Whether they’re vanquishing a dragon, navigating a dungeon, or dethroning a tyrant, the lives of the characters that we dream up are always fraught with risk. But that danger should always be restricted to the realms of our imagination, and everyone gathered around the table has the right to feel secure and comfortable while they play. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. The internet is rife with horror stories about...
Card Gamer •

StarVaders Review - Card Gamer

Images courtesy of Pengonauts
Invaders are attacking the earth, invaders from beyond the stars. StarVaders, if you will. Using mech and a deck you’ll fight to save the world in this deckbuilding robo-roguelike, from Pengonauts.
Slay the Spire has inspired countless successors, and players are spoiled for choice when it comes to choosing a new roguelike deck builder these days. Does StarVaders blast open a niche for itself, or will it end up engulfed in a swarm of similar titles? Does it rise to...
SUPERJUMP •

An Interview with the Developers of Microtopia

An interview with Cordyceps Collective on how real insect behaviour inspired their design and much more

There is more overlap between video games and insects than you might expect. Satoshi Tajiri was inspired to create Pokémon by his time hunting bugs as a child. Hollow Knight shows us that insects can be as central to a Metroidvania game as vampires and space parasites, and Animal Crossing would just feel incomplete without the trusty bug-catching net.

Cordyceps Collective are a Netherlands-...
Card Gamer •

Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection Review - Card Gamer

Images courtesy of KONAMI
The Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection, which releases today, is a compilation of 14 different Yu-Gi-Oh! games from the late 1990s and early 2000s. KONAMI is making a clear appeal to nostalgia here. This collection puts the original Duel Monsters anime in the spotlight, embracing the game as it was before the modern complexities of Synchro, XYZ, Pendulum, and Link summoning.
The duels you’ll play here will be clashes of old cards like Ocubeam and Uraby. There are some grea...
SUPERJUMP •

2024 Games of the Year

Welcome to SUPERJUMP's annual Games of the Year celebration. As always, I like to introduce these awards by expressing gratitude for the year gone by.

Thank you game developers. You are creating marvels of art and science - important cultural artifacts - under increasingly difficult circumstances. Whether you work for a large studio or you're a solo developer: thank you. We are all living in an increasingly dangerous and intolerant world, where the moral pendulum appears to be swinging in a vio...
SUPERJUMP •

Dungeon Inn Review

Inns in RPGs are truly miraculous.  However bruised and battered your adventuring party may be, if they rest up for the night at an inn then they will emerge the next day fully healed and ready for more.  Dungeons, meanwhile, serve the opposite purpose. A fresh and ready adventuring party delves down into a dungeon and emerges exhausted and beaten, but hopefully with huge loads of loot.

Dungeon Inn is a game all about running an RPG inn of your very own, located conveniently at the entrance to...
SUPERJUMP •

Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes Embraces Silliness

There’s a single moment, roughly a quarter of the way through Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, that perfectly encapsulates the spirit of the game. The party is delving into a mystical forest dungeon called the Proving Grounds. An enigmatic cloaked bandit known as Hurstwine cuts through the murky woods ahead of them, the heroes in hot pursuit.

Both the player characters and Hurstwine are seeking a primal lens, an ancient and powerful artifact that lies at the heart of the dungeon. It’s a race...
SUPERJUMP •

Potionomics: Bring Your Best Brew

Potions are the lifeblood of all RPG adventuring parties. No one would get beyond the first floor of any dungeon without guzzling down a frankly unhealthy amount of brightly coloured magical goop. Potionomics puts the player into the shoes of a potion vendor, ready to provide the heroes of the world with the colourful healing concoctions they so desperately need.

The game is a bubbling melting pot of various genres, mixing business management elements with deckbuilding-based haggling gameplay a
SUPERJUMP •

Total War: Attila and the "Dark Ages"

Total War: Attila portrays the collapse of the Roman Empire as an unmitigated tragedy. How does this depiction measure up to scrutiny?

These words are gruffly recited by the narrator of Total War: Attila towards the end of the game’s introduction. This quote paraphrases two verses from the book of Revelations which describe Conquest, the first of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, being unleashed upon the world. Accompanying this narration is footage of a pitched battle being waged at night b
SUPERJUMP •

Are Golden Endings Always the Right Path?

One thing which makes video games unique is their ability to tell stories with branching narratives. This is something that isn’t possible using other mediums, outside of experimental choose-your-own adventure stories like Black Mirror: Bandersnatch and The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. The interactive nature of video games makes it possible for them to have multiple different endings depending on the path the player takes through the story. This means that players can get endings tailored to the
SUPERJUMP •

Storyteller Review - A Tale Worth Telling

Storyteller is a puzzle game created by Daniel Benmergui, an Argentinian game developer who is probably best known for creating the adorable art game I Wish I Were The Moon.

In Storyteller, the player is given a magical book that they need to fill with insightful tales. Every level is an individual story that the player needs to bring to life. Each story provides the player with an objective that needs to be accomplished by utilising a series of different characters and scenes. For example, pla
SUPERJUMP •

Dragon Ball: The Breakers Review

The Dragon Ball series is famous, or perhaps infamous, for its bombastic battle sequences. Shirtless space aliens, with absurdly sculpted physiques, scream and launch energy blasts at one another. Villains loudly monologue about their invincibility, before the heroes eventually bring them down after a five-minute-long transformation sequence. All of the attacks have wacky names which fans can recite by heart. Because the series is extremely action-oriented, there have been innumerable Dragon Bal
SUPERJUMP •

Why Do Birds Fly? The Moral Philosophy of Tales of Berseria

“Why do you think that birds fly?”

This strange sentence is not an excerpt from a book on falconry. Nor is it a question from a biology exam or a promo for the Philadelphia Eagles. It’s from the 2016 Bandai Namco RPG Tales of Berseria.

The game’s primary antagonist, Artorius Collbrande, uses this question as a means of evaluating people’s moral principles. But how does a basic question about the biology of birds tell us anything about someone’s morality?

More to the point, does this question

Other Articles

South West Londoner •

Review: See How They Run

See How They Run is a comical whodunnit, which lovingly spoofs the murder mystery genre with the care and affection that only a sincere parody can provide.

There are some great laughs, but it builds towards a disappointing conclusion. The film is certainly funny, but it’s hardly a mystery of Agatha Christie’s calibre.

Our leading duo consists of the eager and excitable rookie Constable Stalker (Saoirse

Ronan) and her boozy superior officer Inspector Stoppard (Sam Rockwell).

The pair have a d
South West Londoner •

Thor: Love and Thunder proves lightning does strike twice

There have now been four Thor films and their quality varies wildly – but Thor: Love and Thunder is among the franchise’s best.

The Original Thor (2009) was a perfectly serviceable superhero origin story, that did a fine job of introducing Chris Hemsworth’s titular character without excelling enough to be truly great or being inadequate enough to be truly terrible.

Thor: The Dark World (2013) ranks among Marvel’s most forgettable films, as it features an utterly generic plotline performed by a
South West Londoner •

Elizabeth II: The Queen & history's other longest reigning rulers

In February of 1952 Queen Elizabeth II became the queen of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth.

Her platinum jubilee, in June of 2022, marks the official public celebration of her 70 year long reign.

Elizabeth II is one of history’s longest reigning rulers, however, she does not have the longest reign of all time.

Several other rulers have had reigns which have rivalled, or even exceeded, her 70 years.

Here are a few of their stories…

Louis XIV ruled France from May 1643 to September 17
North West Londoner •

Labour keeps control of Enfield but Conservatives make gains

Labour kept control of Enfield council on Thursday after holding the 38 seats they took into the 2022 election, but the Conservatives had a successful night gaining seven councillors and shutting out any other party from the area.

The election results mean that all of Enfield’s 63 seats are held by either Labour or Tory councillors, after the Greens, the Liberal Democrats and the Independent Community First Group, a group of former Labour councillors, lost their two, one and seven councillors r
South West Londoner •

Fundraiser launched for injured Croydon swan

A fundraiser is in progress to assist the treatment of a swan from Croydon who was hurt in a dog attack.

Wayne the swan was injured on the afternoon of the 7 February after a dog bit him on the beak.

The Swan Sanctuary is a wildlife rescue service based in Shepperton, specialising in treating swans.

The sanctuary took Wayne into its care on 8 February.

In a Facebook post The Swan Sanctuary announced: “Wayne was attacked by a dog and has suffered a life changing injury to his beak.”

“We are