An essential guide to Magic the Gathering, comparable in a number of ways to Generation Decks and other related works. Essential reading for card gamers.

Magic - The Gathering Cards is an encyclopedic look at the cards, sets, and promo cards associated with MtG. It's set up as a valuation guide as well as a pictorial guide to the cards themselves. Released 30th Oct 2018 by collector/ephemera mavens Krause in partnership with F+W Media, it's 512 pages and available in paperback and ebook formats.

I grew up near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, an early avid market for MtG. We used to gather often at a local comic shop and play magic and hang out. Eventually, I graduated, got married, had kids, etc, but I still remember the games very fondly. At this point, my son (who is geeky and a gamer) also plays MtG and the cycle continues.

This book has a relatively specific focus. It won't help with strategy or deck building or any game play. What it does, and does very well, is contain pictorial references and values for all the cards. There is a bewildering array of different releases and versions. This book also does a pretty good job of explaining the differences between the different editions.

I enjoyed the sidebars about alternate cards from other countries including some fun trivia about alternate art on different releases and promos.

Four stars, good book with a specific focus that it does very well.

I only got partially through this book before having computer issues and not being able to re-download it, but from what I gathered during that time, this is a great book for collectors of Magic the Gathering. I play ed a long time ago and have recently been getting back into it. I really like the collectors aspect of it and found this guide pretty informational and think that if the Magic community know about it they will be interested as well.

Librarian: I don't know how well this book would fit in many libraries. On the one hand public libraries in particular do have a need to stock things like collector price guides. The thing is they don't always circulate that well, even for really popular collectibles, so that can make the decision to purchase them a bit iffy.
Still, I know that there's been a big push to get Magic into libraries, whether through clubs or events, so perhaps this book would be valuable to librarians for that purpose.
Reader: I do not play Magic. Nor really do I have any interest in playing Magic. But my brother-in-law does play casually, so I passed this book to him. He found it interesting, but determined that Magic really does have too many cards at this point.

A book for true collectors who are interested in learning the value of their collections. I'm an ebay shopper who makes decisions based on value information so this book has been a very great help to me. New players and old will appreciate this book!

This book had some interesting stories in the introduction, and at the beginning of most sets it has brief overviews of the story and main cards. Too much is spent on the price guide, though among price guides there is a good amount of nuance and expertise by the author. It is good for what it is, but I would have liked more background for each set (at least a page)

AS a Magic the Gathering player, I really enjoyed reading it. I think this would be a great book to sell in stores that sell the cards. I found it interesting and helpful.

I have played M:TG since the beginning, having been introduced to it at our Los Angeles game store (the now defunct South Coast Game Association). It's been amazing to see the evolution of the game: sets ranging from broken (Legends) to bland (Fallen Empires), local tournaments to Pro Tours. All along we felt it was a flash-in-the-pan yet it kept on gaining momentum, even to the point of being bought out by a major toy company (Hasbro - though we all thought they wanted the Pokemon card license and not the M;TG one). Back then there were few resources for trading/collecting/valuing cards. Today, we have great resources such as this one by Ben Bleiweiss.

The book has a quick introduction of the history of the game, the set up of the cards, and then a breakdown of every single card in the game. Values are given and there are copious amounts of pictures (though, of course, most cards are not pictured or the book would be a brick). For collectors, it's a great way to be able to catalog whole sets and also get a rough estimate of a card or collection's value. Of course, these are retail prices and cards go for much less on the secondary/resell/trade market.

The book is comprehensive, however, and I appreciate the amount of time taken to format and present the sizable M:TG card output. Each set has size, release date, expansion symbol, expansion code, languages in which it was released, and an overview of the set. I also really like that the sets are color coded, making it easier to navigate the book.

In all, clearly a lot of work was done here and this is a great resource for players and collectors. And it's great to be able to keep track of my collection's value. Reviewed from an advance reader copy provided by the publisher.

This catalog is so cool! It takes me back to 8th grade when I would try to play Magic: The Gathering with friends, but didn't know what I was doing. Page 25 shocked me a bit because I used to have multiple copies of almost all of those cards. I'd have so much money if I had kept them and sold them nowadays! I don't even know what happened to those cards.

The file didn't load after page 120 - it could be my computer's fault though. (Nevermind! I got it to work!) Even so, this catalog is great, the layout is nice, the art looks fantastic, and the text explanations are good!

This book is a very thorough and impressive inventory of the collectible Magic: The Gathering Cards. I remember playing the game in the early days and now wish I still had my cards because they might have been worth something today, if they hadn't been played, that is! Definitely recommend this comprehensive reference to MTG enthusiasts.