Mike Elliott (sometimes credited as Michael Elliott) is a Seattle-based board game, card game and mobile game designer whose titles include Magic: The Gathering , Thunderstone , and Battle Spirits Trading Card Game . Magic head designer Mark Rosewater called him "one of the most prolific Magic designers in the history of the game." [1] He was inducted into the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design Hall of Fame at the 2017 Origins Game Fair. [2]
While living in Phoenix, Arizona in the early 1990s, Elliott and several of his friends were active bridge players and competed regularly in tournaments. One evening after a tournament, a friend introduced the group to the Magic: The Gathering trading card game. When Elliott returned home he purchased the game and began playing in Magic tournaments. While at a Magic tournament at Arizona State University Elliott told two fellow attendees what he thought was wrong with the game. During the conversation they revealed that they worked for Wizards of the Coast. One of them, Joel Mick, invited Elliott to fly to Seattle and interview for a position with the company. [3] [4]
Elliott started at Wizards of the Coast in January 1996 as a developer. Afterward he was promoted to designer, and then senior designer. [3] He worked on approximately 30 Magic expansions and introduced new mechanics such as slivers. [1] His Magic related expansions and project included:
Designing
Developing
While at Wizards of the Coast he also designed non-Magic games including Harry Potter Trading Card Game , Neopets Trading Card Game , Hecatomb , and Duel Masters Trading Card Game . [3] Elliott left Wizards of the Coast at the end of 2005. [3]
After leaving Wizards of the Coast, Elliott worked for WizKids until the company closed its Seattle office. [5] His titles for WizKids included Star Wars PocketModel Trading Card Game , Halo ActionClix , and DC HeroClix: Batman (Alpha).
As a freelance game designer and developer, Mike Elliott, has designed dozens of games. [6] Notable titles include Battle Spirits Trading Card Game , Thunderstone , Quarriors! and Star Trek: Fleet Captains [7] He also designed Card-Jitsu, an online mini-game in the Club Penguin children's MMO [8] and worked on Hearthstone in early 2017. [9]
In 2008 Elliott designed the Battle Spirits Trading Card Game for Bandai. Part of the Battle Spirits franchise—which also includes several anime series, manga serializations and other merchandise such as toys and video games—the TCG was released in Japan in September 2008. Battle Spirits became one of the top selling trading card games of the year. [10]
The game's popularity led to Elliott's appearance in promotional videos, [11] and a new character based on him being added to the anime series Battle Spirits: Shōnen Toppa Bashin. The "Michael Elliott" character was an eccentric American game designer who created the titular Battle Spirits card game played in the series.
Battle Spirits Trading Card Game was released in the United States by Bandai of America on August 14, 2009. [10]
In 2009 Elliott designed Thunderstone card game for Alderac Entertainment Group. The game won several awards and nominations, including 2010 Golden Geek Best Card Game Nominee, 2010 Japan Boardgame Prize Voters' Selection Nominee, 2010 JoTa Best Card Game Audience Award, 2010 JoTa Best Card Game Critic Award and 2011 Fairplay À la carte Winner. [12] Alderac relaunched Thunderstone in 2017 as Thunderstone Quest with a Kickstarter that raised more than $500,000.
In 2012 Elliott designed the Quarriors! dice building game. [13] Published by WizKids, the game won the 2013 Origins Awards for Best Family, Party or Children's Game. [14]
The Quarriors! Dice Masters system expanded to include The Lord of the Rings Dice Building Game , Marvel Dice Masters, DC Comics Dice Masters, Dungeons & Dragons Dice Masters, Yu-Gi-Oh! Dice Masters, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Dice Masters. [15] WizKids reported that Marvel Dice Masters: Avengers vs. X-Men sold out within its first week of release [16] and in 2015, Marvel Dice Masters won the Origins Vanguard Award. [17]
Eliott helped design Shadowrun: Crossfire, The Adventure Deck-building Game for Fire Opal Media and Catalyst Game Labs. Released in August 2014, the game is a cooperative card game that combines elements of roleplaying games and deck-building card games. [18] Dragonfire, a cooperative deck-builder game based on the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game and using the Crossfire game engine, was launched in 2017. [19]
Magic: The Gathering is a collectible and digital collectible card game created by Richard Garfield. Released in 1993 by Wizards of the Coast, Magic was the first trading card game and has approximately thirty-five million players as of December 2018, and over twenty billion Magic cards produced in the period from 2008 to 2016, during which time it grew in popularity.
The Multiverse is the shared fictional universe depicted on Magic: The Gathering cards, novels, comics, and other supplemental products. Though Magic is a strategy game, an intricate storyline underlies the cards released in each expansion. On the cards, elements of this multiverse are shown in the card art and through quotations and descriptions on the bottom of most cards. Novels and anthologies published by HarperPrism and Wizards of the Coast (WOTC), and the comic books published by Armada Comics expand upon the settings and characters hinted at on the cards. WOTC also publishes a weekly story in the Magic Fiction column, previously known as Official Magic Fiction and Uncharted Realms.
Star Wars: The Trading Card Game is an out-of-print collectible card game produced by Wizards of the Coast (WotC). The original game was created by game designer Richard Garfield, the creator of the first modern trading card game, Magic: The Gathering. After its initial release in April 2002, the game was 'put on indefinite hold' by WotC in late 2005. The Star Wars Trading Card Game Independent Development Committee was created by a group of fans to continue development of the game. They design new cards that are available as free downloads at their website.
Magic: The Gathering Online is a video game adaptation of Magic: The Gathering, utilizing the concept of a virtual economy to preserve the collectible aspect of the card game. It is played through an Internet service operated by Wizards of the Coast, which went live on June 24, 2002. Users can play the game or trade cards with other users.
Mark Rosewater is the head designer for Magic: The Gathering, a position he has held since 2003.
Unglued is a Magic: The Gathering expansion set, the first satirical, non-tournament-legal expansion set released. It came out in August 1998. Its symbol is a cracked egg. Among the themes of the set were chicken, dice rolling and multiplayer Magic games.
The Odyssey is a Magic: The Gathering expert-level block. It consists of a trio of expansion sets: Odyssey, Torment and Judgment.
Invasion is a Magic: The Gathering block that consists of the expert-level expansion sets Invasion, Planeshift and Apocalypse. The Invasion block centered on multicolored cards.
The collectible card game Magic: The Gathering published seven expansion sets from 1993–1995, and one compilation set. These sets contained new cards that "expanded" on the base sets of Magic with their own mechanical theme and setting; these new cards could be played on their own, or mixed in with decks created from cards in the base sets. With Magic's runaway success, many of the printings of these early sets were too small to satisfy the rapidly growing fanbase. Cards from them became rare, hard to find, and expensive. It was not until Fallen Empires and Homelands that Wizards of the Coast was able to print enough cards to meet demand; additionally, Wizards of the Coast published Chronicles, a reprint set that helped fix many of the scarcity issues with the earliest sets.
Mirage was the first official block structure in Magic: The Gathering. This new block structure consisted of three expansion sets and would continue for nearly two decades, finally ending with Khans of Tarkir in 2014. The new block structure also set up the precedent that the first set in the block also became the name for the entire block. Mirage block consisted of three sets: Mirage, Visions and Weatherlight.
Darwin Kastle Mess, more commonly known as simply Darwin Kastle, is a champion Magic: The Gathering player from the United States of America, and was a member of the inaugural class elected to the Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour Hall of Fame in 2005. Kastle also ranks 12th on the all time Pro Tour earnings list. Kastle's likeness is depicted on the card Avalanche Riders, which he also designed after winning the second Magic Invitational.
Robert R. Dougherty is a professional Magic: The Gathering player from Framingham, Massachusetts. He was inducted to the Magic Hall of Fame in November 2006. He is also a tournament organizer and the founder of Your Move Games. Your Move Games is the name of one of the most respected teams in the history of the game as well as the name of a chain of game stores owned by Dougherty.
Masters Edition is a series of Magic: The Gathering expansions that have been released exclusively for Magic: The Gathering Online. Each set consists of reprints from early Magic sets that had yet to be released to Magic Online. To date, four incarnations of Master's Edition, as well as a spinoff have been released:
In the Magic: The Gathering trading card game, a Legendary card or Legend is a card that represents a unique individual or thing with a specific name, rather than the generic, unnamed things that most cards represent. For example, while the card Raging Goblin could be any goblin, the card Squee, Goblin Nabob is a specific goblin with a personality and a history.
The 1999–2000 Pro Tour season was the fifth season of the Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour. It began on 3 September 1999 with Pro Tour Boston and ended on 6 August 2000 with the conclusion of 2000 World Championship in Brussels. The season consisted of twenty Grand Prixs, and six Pro Tours, located in Washington D.C., London, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Brussels. At the end of the season Bob Maher, Jr. was awarded the Pro Player of the year title.
A collectible card game (CCG), also called a trading card game (TCG), among other names, is a type of card game that mixes strategic deck building elements with features of trading cards, introduced with Magic: The Gathering in 1993.
The Artifacts Cycle is a tetralogy of Magic: The Gathering expansion sets centered on the exploits of Urza Planeswalker. It consists of the expansions Antiquities, Urza's Saga, Urza's Legacy and Urza's Destiny. The latter three sets are sometimes referred to as an "Urza block" for tournament purposes, since there have been formats and time periods in which cards from the later three sets were legal but cards from Antiquities were not. However, the books "The Brothers' War", "Planeswalker", "Timestreams", and "Bloodlines" unambiguously confirm that, from a story and thematic point of view, "Artifacts cycle" is correct and it begins with the events depicted in Antiquities.
The Masquerade Cycle,, sometimes incorrectly referred to as the "Masques block", is a Magic: The Gathering cycle that is set on the planes of Mercadia, Rath, and plane of Dominaria. It consists of the expansion sets Mercadian Masques, Nemesis, and Prophecy. Mercadian Masques was the first set that is not subject to the Wizards of the Coast Reprint Policy, meaning that none of its cards appear on its Reserved List.