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 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

EDHREC •

Ranking Which Final Fantasy Main Protagonists Got the Best Cards | EDHREC

The Crystal's ChosenThe Crystal's Chosen| Art by Kotetsu KinoshitaFrom scowling soldiers like CloudCloud to lovable rogues like ZidaneZidane, Final Fantasy has had a wide variety of main characters over the years.Now that the unfathomably popular RPG series has crossed over with Magic: the Gathering, how do they all stack up? Were Final Fantasy's main protagonists all created roughly equal, or do some of them just have better cards than others?Let's rank which Final Fantasy protagonists got the...
EDHREC •

The Emperor of Palamecia - Self-Mill Commander Deck Tech | EDHREC

The Emperor of PalameciaThe Emperor of Palamecia | Art by Heonhwa ChoeThe Emperor of PalameciaThe Emperor of Palamecia is the main antagonist of Final Fantasy II. While he undoubtedly has drip (just look at all of those beads, and the golden kneecaps carved to look like dragon faces) he also has a bit of a branding problem. The Emperor has never really been able to elevate himself into the higher tiers of Final Fantasy villainy. He doesn't have much in the way of motivation beyond being an evil...
Card Gamer •

3 Exciting, Upcoming Small Press Card Games From UK Games Expo 2025 - Card Gamer

At the end of May every year, tabletop gamers from across the world gather in Birmingham. Britain’s second-largest city has played host to the UK Games Expo for 18 years now, running the convention since it was established in 2007. This three day long exhibition celebrates the best that tabletop gaming has to offer. Board game companies, big and small, demo their games, indie designers bring along self-published zines and adventure modules, and there are more prints, T-shirts, and accessories th...
EDHREC •

The Dragons Approach, With Garland, Knight of Cornelia | EDHREC

Garland, Knight of CorneliaGarland, Knight of Cornelia | Art by Billy ChristianFinal Fantasy has many iconic lines and meme-worthy moments. From Tellah calling Edward a spoony bard in Final Fantasy IV, to Vaan running announcing to the whole of Ivalice that he's Basch Von Rosenburg in Final Fantasy XII, to the infamous laughing scene in Final Fantasy X. But none of these lines can hold a candle to the original, the historic meme line from Final Fantasy I.Early in their quest, the warriors of lig...
Card Gamer •

The Surprising Inspiration Behind 5 Yu-Gi-Oh! Archetypes - Card Gamer

One thing that sets Yu-Gi-Oh! apart from other card games is the varied and imaginative archetypes that it employs. These cards contain multitudes and draw from a bewilderingly huge range of sources. You can build a deck based around anything from Dante’s Inferno, to 90s era comic book antiheroes, to Dragons that are also Maids for some reason. In today’s article, we’ll go over five archetypes that draw their inspiration from truly unexpected sources. Let’s get digging.

If you’ve ever eaten sus...
EDHREC •

Under the Radar - Kurkesh Onakke Ancient

Anyone looking to slot an Ogre into their command zone isn't exactly spoiled for choice. There are 12 options to choose from and three of them are just differentdifferent variantsvariants of HidetsuguHidetsugu. While sadly there aren't any great Ogre typal options, at least not until we inevitably get Universes Beyond: Shrek, there are Ogres that incentivize a wide variety of novel strategies.Today we'll be looking at the 2nd least p...
Card Gamer •

The 10 Most Expensive Quarter Century Stampede Cards - Card Gamer

Image courtesy of KONAMI
Yu-Gi-Oh! has been celebrating its 25th anniversary for several years now. The anniversary kicked off with the release of the 25th Anniversary: Legendary Collection in April of 2023. Since then we’ve been getting a steady stream of Quarter Century Secret Rare cards. These cards have shining golden names, a special foiling treatment covering them from top to bottom, and a 25th anniversary watermark that comes into view when their text box is viewed from the right angle.
Q...
EDHREC •

Under the Radar - Silumgar, the Drifting Death | EDHREC

Tarkir: Dragonstorm has given us some beefy new Dragons. Teval, Arbiter of VirtueTeval, Arbiter of Virtue serves as a brutal reminder of the power of the delve mechanic, Ureni of the UnwrittenUreni of the Unwritten can fill the sky with Dragons alarmingly quickly, and Betor, Kin to AllBetor, Kin to All can do some truly busted things if you gather together enough high-toughness creatures, but if there's one lesson that the time-warped plane of Tarkir teaches us, it's that we should never forget...
Card Gamer •

Unpacking the Yu-Gi-Oh! April 7th 2025 Banlist Update - Card Gamer

Images courtesy of KONAMI
On April 6th, 2025, the latest update to the Yu-Gi-Oh! banlist was announced at YCS Houston. This list then went into effect the next day, on April 7th. There’ve been some seismic changes here, impacting a total of 30 cards. Some in the community are celebrating explosive archetypes getting reigned in, while others are mourning the ban hammer smashing down on their favorite decks.

Let’s go through all of these bans, and talk about what’s changed, and how the meta might...
EDHREC •

Under the Radar - Sita Varma, Masked Racer | EDHREC

Now that Tarkir: Dragonstorm has burst over the horizon, let's look back at Aetherdrift. Magic's speediest set may not have had the greatest Limited format, but it gave us a collection of cool kart-driving commanders, from the artifact-amassing Mendicant Core, GuidelightMendicant Core, Guidelight, to the cycling Shark Captain Howler, Sea ScourgeCaptain Howler, Sea Scourge, to the undead Esper Wizard Hashaton, Scarab's FistHashaton, Scarab's Fist. Of course, not every racer can make it into pole...
EDHREC •

Under the Radar - Niambi, Esteemed Speaker | EDHREC

When we think of reanimator decks, typically we think of commanders with black somewhere in their color identity. Muldrotha, the GravetideMuldrotha, the Gravetide, Karador, Ghost ChieftainKarador, Ghost Chieftain, and Sedris, the Traitor KingSedris, the Traitor King are all great at taking creatures from the graveyard and slamming them straight into play.But what if you want to build a reanimator commander, without using the game's best reanimation color?Let's say you want to build a reanimation...
Card Gamer •

7 Yu-Gi-Oh! Archetypes Getting Support in Maze of the Master - Card Gamer

Images courtesy of KONAMI
We’ve had a few weeks to enjoy the new cards from Maze of the Master now. This set hasn’t done much to shake up a meta dominated by ever-present Ryzeal and Maliss decks. Nevertheless, Maze of the Master provides support for a wide range of archetypes from the game’s past. It also introduced a brand new set of “Odion” cards, based on the deck of Marik’s favorite minion.
Let’s take a look at the archetypes supported in Maze of the Master, and weigh how impactful these new...
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 •

The New Odion Archetype in Maze of the Master - Card Gamer

Images courtesy of KONAMI
Maze of the Master is Yu-Gi-Oh!‘s latest booster set. These 112 cards cover a variety of different archetypes: there’s a new Ancient Gear card, some new Trickstars, and a thoroughly bizarre attempt at integrating Red Nova Dragon and the Earthbound Immortals. The big focus of the set, though, is on Odion’s cards.
Odion was a character from the original Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters anime. He was the adoptive brother, loyal henchman, and only friend of Marik Ishtar, the antagon...
EDHREC •

Under the Radar - Deekah, Fractal Theorist | EDHREC

Today's Under the Radar column marks a fun milestone. Back in August of last year, we analyzed Pashalik MonsPashalik Mons, an underloved mono-red Goblin who has lived his whole life in Krenko'sKrenko's shadow.A month later, we assessed Apothecary WhiteApothecary White, a mono-white Food commander, who is maybe more of a chef than an apothecary, but is still pretty great.At the start of 2025, we took a look at Old One EyeOld One Eye, a monstrous mono-green Tyranid. A fortnight ago, we reviewed Dr...
Card Gamer •

Every Summoning Method in Yu-Gi-Oh! Explained - Card Gamer

Images courtesy of KONAMI
One of the most daunting hurdles facing any new Yu-Gi-Oh! player is learning about all of the different ways of Summoning monsters. From Synchro Summoning to XYZ Summoning, there are a multitude of different ways to get monsters into play. This handy guide will outline all of the different Summoning methods in the game, and explain how they all work.

Normal Summoning a monster card means playing it from your hand into one of your five main monster zones. A Normal Summo...
EDHREC •

Under the Radar - Drana, Liberator of Malakir | EDHREC

Magic: The Gathering is full of Vampires. On Innistrad, we have Sorin MarkovSorin Markov, his old man EdgarEdgar, and Olivia VoldarenOlivia Voldaren who had maybe the bloodiest wedding this side of Game of Thrones.On Ixalan we have the saint Elenda, the Dusk RoseElenda, the Dusk Rose, the sinner Vona, Butcher of MaganVona, Butcher of Magan, and Amalia Benavides AguirreAmalia Benavides Aguirre who's neither as holy as Elenda, or as cruel as Vona, but is more capable than either of them of comboin...
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...
Card Gamer •

5 Big Changes In Yu-Gi-Oh! Since You Used To Play - Card Gamer

Images credited to KONAMI
With the Yu-Gi-Oh! EARLY DAYS COLLECTION set for release on the 27th of February, there are plenty of lapsed Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG players looking to return to the game. But the Yu-Gi-Oh! of today is very different from the game that Kaiba, Joey, and Yugi used to play back on Nick Toons in the early 2000s. There are a huge number of new types of monsters, plenty of new ways of playing, and the power level of the game has risen dramatically.
So if you’re looking to get back in...
EDHREC •

Under the Radar - Anya, Merciless Angel | EDHREC

Today on Under the Radar we'll be looking at a commander who came out a decade ago. 2015 was a crazy year, Inside Out was in theatres, Undertale had just come out, and everyone was trying to guess the color of a dress.In the world of Magic: The Gathering players were getting their hands on another set of commander precons. The theme for the 2015 decks was experience counters.The commanders of these decks would gain experience counters and grow stronger as the game progressed. This gave us severa...
EDHREC •

Aetherdrift Set Review - Enemy & Wedge | EDHREC

Today we'll be racing through all of the notable enemy color cards from Aetherdrift.All sorts of wacky racers have signed up for Ghirapur Grand-Prix, there are Shark PiratesShark Pirates, BikersBikers that look like they've stepped straight out of Tron, and even a fewfew GodsGods have turned up.Let's charge right in and have a look at the best racers that the multiverse has to offer. Magic: The Gathering's answer to Pikachu is back again in Aetherdrift in what may be his most powerful appearance...
Card Gamer •

Yu-Gi-Oh! Championship Series Birmingham Meta Breakdown - Card Gamer

Images courtesy of KONAMI
Almost 2,500 Duelists came from all over the world to attend the Yu-Gi-Oh! Championship Series Birmingham (YCS) last weekend.
Heading into the YCS, it was anticipated that the story of the tournament would be the clash between Ryzeal and Maliss. These two meta-defining archetypes both made their Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG debut in December 2024’s Crossover Breakers. Ryzeal is an XYZ archetype, capable of rushing out their threats and detonating the opponent’s cards. Maliss, meanwhil...
Card Gamer •

Quarter Century Stampede Reveals at YCS Birmingham - Card Gamer

Images courtesy of KONAMI
Quarter Century Stampede is due for release in April of 2025. The set is intended to serve as a nostalgic tour through the history of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game (or TCG). It will be the last opportunity for Duelists to get their hands on Quarter Century Secret Rare cards. At YCS Birmingham several cards due to be reprinted in Quarter Century Stampede were revealed, and we’re sharing them with you today.
Many of these reprints were chosen by Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG fans. Quar...
Card Gamer •

Yu-Gi-Oh! EARLY DAYS COLLECTION Preview - Card Gamer

Images courtesy of KONAMI
The Yu-Gi-Oh! EARLY DAYS COLLECTION will release on the February 27th, 2025. Fortunately, for those who are hungry to get some more details about the
game, Card Gamer has been granted a preemptive peek at it prior to its official release.
I was given several hours to try out three of the fourteen games in this curated card game collection. I collected some creatures in Yu-Gi-Oh! Monster Capsule, I battled my way through Yu-Gi-Oh! 7 Trials to Glory: World Championship To...
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Gaming

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