Travis Norman

I can hear this picture

A Magic: The Gathering token featuring an advertisement for Duels of the Planeswalkers game

A Magic: The Gathering token featuring an ad for the Mirrodin Besieged set coming out in 2011

A soldier taken from Magic: The Gathering with an armored soldier in the art, wearing a helmet and holding a sword.

A Magic: The Gathering token featuring an ad for Scars of Mirrodin 60-card preconstructed decks.

A Magic: The Gathering token featuring an advertisement for FNM, aka Friday Night Magic

A Magic: The Gathering token featuring an advertisement for a novel about the planeswalker Tezzeret

Do you ever pick up old tokens and read what’s on the back?

Is that a Roller Coaster Tycoon playmat? 👀

1,000th post for this site? Let's do this:

Our daughter arrives about 7 weeks from now. Today my son and I heard the first mourning dove of 2026. My wife finished the first draft of her book. Things aren't easy but I'm still the richest man in the world.

hell yeah

A sunset across a bay, with ice cakes floating on calm water. The sky is colored like rainbow sherbet ice cream, and snow-covered rock formations line the coastline across the bay. Pine trees poke up from the blanket of white snow.

Yeah, you should come visit the UP sometime.

I’m no judge, but I’ve always had the active player draws first is first, and there’s no casting Misinformation between the first and second draws.

Glad you’re having fun with JundJund, it’s great to see people out there playing it.

Letting Go Of The Past To Move Into The Future Travis returns to his old local game store, Battlegrounds in Norwalk, Connecticut.

It’s too difficult for me to pick from other writers, but here’s the one I reread when I want to keep the embers glowing.

www.hipstersofthecoast.com/2022/09/lett...

Moe in the Simpsons holding two knives while smiling, then looking up to say “I gotta tell you. This is pretty terrific.”

me playing Gaea’s Cradle and Serra’s Sanctum together in cEDH

Over 2,000 words into my most ambitious Magic article to date. This one has been a long, slow burn, but it'll be worth it.

Two people playing Magic: The Gathering at a brewery, using JundJund, a shared deck format.

Some friends borrowed JundJund at the brewery last night.

Grinding it down to the final few points, with a graveyard the width of the playmat. No one remembered how many turns had passed.

JundJund how it was meant to be.

Parenthood is often measured, or joked about, by all the time you can't spend on other things. But those few moments become so much more in focus when you have less of them. Bet the beer tastes amazing when you do this.

@shivambhatt.bsky.social Krynn got a new explorer, and I'm jealous they got to start this early.

The cover of Shadow of the Dragon Queen, a Dungeons and Dragons supplement featuring the world of Dragonlance. The cover features a rider atop an adult red dragon, with draconian soldiers in the foreground, and a dark helmet with glowing eyes (Lord Soth) in the background

A book cover of for Dragons of Fate, featuring three adventurers in the foothills of a mountain pass, with a silver dragon behind them.

I volunteer at my local library, running a D&D campaign for local early teens. Time is limited, so I'm doing an abridged version of Shadow of the Dragon Queen.

Last session, one of my kids brought in a novel they started reading because of our game.

This is what it's all about, folks.

Don’t know this one 🫣

ball knowledge on display

A scene from the movie Porco Rosso where Porco and Curtis have a boxing match in shallow water while a crowd of onlookers stands around.

me and my buddy playing JundJund in front of the Commander players at the game store

Eight men standing in various poses in a convention center, posing for a a Top 8 photo

This weekend I made Top 8 in a 41-person Premodern 1K.

1v1 Magic is alive and crackling with energy.

Hey Robert, first time long time.

Do you think Magic players will start changing their usernames to reflect the deck they're playing? Like you're 3-0 in the challenge and you queue up against "FoodChainGoblins2SlingGang"

Thanks, I'll hang up and listen.

Two Olympic figure skaters wrapped in an embrace, while spinning atop a sheet of ice.

A still from Svedka's ai-generated ad, featuring dancing robots drinking cocktails

I think figure skating at the Olympics is thriving, in part, because of generative AI commercials.

Gen AI images are so lifeless that figure skating is hitting us like smelling salts. The movement on ice is irrevocably human. It has passion, pressure, tragedy, and joy.

It's art that breathes.

Prof if you want to play JundJund sometime, just say the word and we’ll make it happen.

A pile of blocks labeled “all my hopes, dreams, and aspirations as a Magic player” with the foundation held up by a tiny block labeled “fireshoes sharing a wild brew that finished 15th in a MTGO challenge”

Designing JundJund: A Deep Dive Into Card Choices Travis gives a closer look at the cards not included in this shared deck format, with some design philosophy along the way.

A year of playtesting, dialogue with players, and numerous edits landed us here. Cool thing about the shell is that you can tweak it, but I often found that more powerful cards didn’t always equate to a more fun play experience.

Here’s the card choice FAQ

www.hipstersofthecoast.com/2025/03/desi...

need to make everyone in San Francisco watch this video every morning and every night

Decklist for interested parties:

archidekt.com/decks/761806...

JundJund has been running around for a little while now, but there hasn’t been any gameplay footage.

That changes today:

A black t shirt with the white and pink Hipsters of the Coast logo across the chest, paired with a teal promo card from Stitcher’s Supply, an apparel company.

hell yeah @stitcherssupply.bsky.social

The internet used to be so cool.

You'd be researching for a book report and stumble upon sites called "Joe's Civil War Corner"

It would be independently run. You'd find endless pages of forums, filled with arguments over what would happen if the Union had more 12-pounder Napoleons at Bull Run.

the magic the gathering card Yedora, Grave Gardener

a fantasy image of a humanoid tree tending a sapling in a spooky woods with bones under the ground glowing with green magical energy

did y'all know that Yedora, Grave Gardener by Matthew G. Lewis has a whole bottom half of art hidden by the textbox?

www.lostkeep.com #mtgart