Following its excellent Lord of the Rings cards, Magic: The Gathering…

There are now three Magic: The Gathering cards for Sting, the magic sword Bilbo claims from the troll hoard. To be fair, they're all mechanically distinct. In The Lord of the Rings set there was an artifact card called Sting, the Glinting Dagger, and an instant called Hobbit's Sting that did more damage the more food you had. Several the hobbit-themed cards are empowered the more food tokens you have piled up, which is a flavorsome idea.

The upcoming Hobbit set adds a card called Sting, Bilbo's Sword, which uses the new mechanic hone, which lets you add +1/+0 to a creature with equipment—a mechanic that mostly shows up on dwarf cards. As you may remember, there are a lot of dwarves in The Hobbit. extract-html.com

There are also now three cards for the One Ring. The Hobbit set adds My Precious, representing the Ring as Gollum's, whereas The Lord of the Rings set had it as both Bilbo's Ring and in its final form as The One Ring. (There was also an instant called Slip on the Ring to represent the act of using it.) Again, the cards are all mechanically distinct and depict a different aspect of Tolkien's story. But at the same time, it's tough to see the slight differences between the 2023 Middle-earth set and the 2026 one as demanding a whole separate release.

There are a couple of other brand new mechanics alongside hone. The dwarves get storied, a condition that activates when they have "three or more artifacts, legendaries, and/or Sagas" and has different consequences based on the dwarf. Dáin, Lord of the Iron Hills, for instance, makes your opponent pay a point of mana for each creature they want to attack you with if you're storied enough to deserve it.

The humans of Laketown get recruit, which lets them draw a card and discard one, giving them a 1/1 human soldier if that discard was a nonland card. Meanwhile, amass, which was used to build armies of orcs in The Lord of the Rings, can here be used for armies of goblins—only fair since The Hobbit doesn't use the word orc for its equivalent monsters.

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Each of these additions is fine, and I'm pleased to see several new adventure cards in this set, and the return of saga cards based on Tolkien's songs, because The Hobbit includes such bangers as Roll-Roll-Roll-Roll and the goblin singalong classic Burn, Burn, Tree and Fern. There's definitely a more whimsical edge to this set, with dancing bears and trolls turning to stone, making it feel more like the charming talking-animal set Bloomburrow, which is no bad thing.

But I'm glad it's a smaller release than the deluxe-sized Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth was. Nobody in their right mind would try to stretch something based on The Hobbit to be the same size as The Lord of the Rings, would they? Surely not.

Magic: The Gathering The Hobbit will be in prerelease from August 7–13, with a digital release in Arena on August 11, and its full tabletop release on August 14.

A very Quake-themed QuakeCon kicked off today, with John Romero and current id studio co-director Marty Stratton speaking on a panel celebrating the shooter's 30th anniversary. A new 19-level Quake episode was announced and released during the panel, which also featured a brief livestreamed appearance from Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor.

Reznor famously composed the music for Quake, which was a very big deal at the time. If ever there was a more 1996 cultural artefact than Quake I don't know what it could be (maybe Space Jam?). Reznor's industrial tumult definitely fit the grimier, darker, browner mood of Quake, compared to the MIDI thrash metal of Doom. I remember sometimes having to mute the music because it made me feel too tense.

"When I first encountered Wolfenstein it felt impossible," Reznor said. "Nothing was like that. It was a radical departure from what I'd known as videogames. I went out and bought a PC just to play it."

But it was Doom that sealed the deal. "Jump ahead a few years, Doom comes out, and it was like a bomb went off," he went on. "It was not only technologically advanced, but there wasn't anything like that. It felt like no adults were involved, nobody said no, it was free, and it was fantastic. In some ways I felt a parallel with what I was trying to do with music, by misshaping things and trying to express myself. I really felt a connection to it."

"[I] crossed paths with the id guys and hit it off, became friends, and I'm grateful to be invited to be part of the Quake team working on music and sound effects. And you know of all the things I've done in my career I'm extremely proud of that, and I think the game holds up today."

Reznor was hardly going to make an appearance at QuakeCon in order to distance himself from Quake and its soundtrack, but it's interesting to hear him draw parallels between Doom and his own music at the time. It's a reminder that the nowadays quaint-looking shooter seemed utterly terrifying in 1993. I remember the music in E1M3 sending shivers down my spine. The first pinkie demon encounter in that level prompted a quick shutting down of the game. Similarly terrifying: hearing the radio edit of Closer on the top 40 countdown.

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Quake, a bunch of Nine Inch Nails Quake-themed gear has been released. You can get an ammo box (it really is just a $30 empty box), a t-shirt, a keychain, a hoodie, and the soundtrack has been reissued on vinyl. It's all extraordinarily expensive but you may find yourself buying it anyway.