Are you an avid gamer? Learn about ETIAS Europe now so your 2023 Gamescom visit to Cologne, Germany goes without a hitch!

It’s no question that video games are a favorite pastime for many. This year, there are an estimated 3 billion gamers worldwide, and the industry garnered over 200 billion dollars in revenue (Statista, 2022). We’re also seeing a boom in new gaming models like NFT gaming.

Because of the overflowing popularity of gaming, gaming conferences emerged. One of the most famous is the European-based Gamescom, attracting over 300,000 visitors over the past few years (IGN, 2022).

Gamescom is famous as an exciting meeting place for video game companies and creators to showcase their upcoming releases, gaming promotions, and software/hardware innovations. Gaming enthusiasts flock to meet an inclusive community rooted in their love for gaming. Expect to see incredible live performances, cosplays and exhibitions, and friendly gaming competitions! Gamescom is a one-of-a-kind extravaganza gamers should visit.

We’re excited to share that Gamescom 2023 will be held in Cologne, Germany this August 23-27!

So how do you travel to Cologne, Germany?

Getting to Cologne can either be by airplane or train. For accommodations, Cologne offers a variety of options from hostels to hotel rooms (20-100 EUR price range). Per day, expect to shell out 60- 250 EUR for accommodations, food, and transportation.

If you’re coming from a non-EU country, take note that there’s a new ETIAS visa required by European countries in the Schengen area (including Germany) launching in 2023. The ETIAS Europe is required for adults traveling for less than 90 days. You can apply online with only 3 steps – fill out, pay, and receive an ETIAS visa via email.

Are you excited to visit Cologne and experience Gamescom? Plan your travel now and see you there!

 

Did you know that Magic: The Gathering is the most popular tabletop card game today? Starting in 1993, it now has 21 core sets in its gaming universe and over 20,000 cards that you can use to build your decks.

If you are interested in jumping into one of the most popular battle strategy games, start your training with Magic: The Gathering Arena. It is the online version of the beloved tabletop game that you can enjoy when your playgroup is not available for a traditional game.

Play standard format to learn about cards from the most recent sets. Modern features cards from cards since the Eighth Edition set’s release. Try a standard or historic brawl to build an army around a specific card designated as your commander.

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1. Understand How to Cast Spells

To cast spells, you must have what is called mana. Mana comes from the land cards that are in your opening hand or what you draw from your deck during your turn. You can play one land card each turn.

Let’s talk about spell casting. If you want to cast an Arcane Signet, which is a two-drop colorless artifact card that allows you to tap the card and add any one color of mana, you need to tap any two colors of your mana to cast the spell.

Say that you want to cast a Negate, an instant card that helps you to counter a noncreature spell. You would have to tap one color of any mana and one blue mana to cast the card. This means that a spell your opponent casts, except creature spells, can be negated as if it was never cast for lack of a better word

2. Complete the Tutorial

A tutorial takes you through a bot match so you can learn the mechanics of the different cards available to play. For example, creature cards line your battlefield with the defense you need to ward off the other creatures on your opponent’s side of the battlefield.

Instant and sorcery cards are additional options for interacting with the battlefield. An instant card allows you to cast at any time whether on your turn or an opponent’s turn. A sorcery card can only be cast during your turn.

3. Understand the Mechanics

There are so many cards in Magic: The Gathering that it can be overwhelming at first to mold a specific theme around a deck you want to build. However, start by reading as many cards as you can. Discover which mechanics speak to you such as vigilance, trample, death touch, and life link.

• Vigilance: The creature stays untapped when it attacks.
• Lifelink: When you deal combat damage or block with this creature, you gain life equal to its power.
• Deathtouch: If another creature blocks a creature that has death touch, it will annihilate the opposing creature.
• Trample: If your creature has higher power than a creature that blocks it, any remaining damage will carry over to reduce the controlling player’s life points.

4. Try Out the Precon Decks to See Synergistic Deck Mechanics

When you start your MTG Arena journey, you will be given precon decks to help you learn how to play the game. Precon means that they have been pre-constructed for you to use right away without having to build the deck yourself. Playing precon decks can help you see how different cards are synergistic together to increase the overall value of your cards and can produce a home-field advantage against your opponent.

5. Choose a Deck Theme When Building Your Own

Once you are comfortable with how to cast spells and how the card abilities work, choose a theme that you want when building a deck yourself. When choosing a theme, you have to think of your desired win condition.

Do you want to outvalue your opponents by reducing their life total as you gain life points? Maybe you prefer fast play with ramp spells that increase mana in your pool more quickly to cast creatures with larger power. The possibilities are endless in the way you can win in Magic: The Gathering.

Have you jumped into the Magic: The Gathering (MTG) Arena craze yet? MTG Arena is the digital version of tabletop Magic: The Gathering with over 10 million users as of 2021. Hence, it’s a never-ending gaming experience on this computer and smartphone game!

One of the most fun ways to play Magic: The Gathering Arena is picking a specific legendary creature that acts as your commander and building a deck around this creature with synergistic cards that fit its abilities.

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What Is the Brawl Format?

The brawl format is almost like Magic: The Gathering tabletop Commander format. The commander format allows you to choose one card as your general or captain over your creature army. The other creatures are your army support while the instant, sorcery, artifact, and enchantment cards are the supporting pieces to protect your army and give them extra perks. The tabletop commander allows you to start at 40 life while playing brawl is a quicker game with players starting at 25 life.

Choose Standard or Historic

Standard brawl allows you to use cards that are currently legal in the standard format from the most recent sets such as Dominaria United, Kaldheim, Dungeons & Dragons: Adventures in the Forgotten Realms, Kamigawa Neon Dynasty, and others.

Historic brawl allows you to use cards from older sets that are currently considered not standard sets such as Core Sets 2019, 2020, and 2021, Kaladesh, Ixalan, Dominaria, Guilds of Ravnica, and others.

The main difference between standard and historic brawl is that the standard deck is 60 cards and the historic deck is 100 cards. Your commander is the one card that will return to your command zone if it dies while on the field. When you have to recast your commander from the command zone after the first cast, it costs an additional two mana for each time it has returned to the command zone.

Find a Legendary Creature

To start your brawl deck, you must select a legendary creature. This creature will be your commander. Once you make this selection, you can build your deck based on your commander’s color identity.

For example, if your creature has green in the casting cost, you can only use green instant, sorcery, artifact, and enchantment cards. If the legendary creature has red and white, you can use those colored cards. The more colors that you have in your commander’s color identity, the more access you have to different popular cards in the format.

Any colorless cards such as artifacts, which are cards that either tap for mana beyond lands or you can equip to your creature for additional benefits, can be included in your deck no matter what colors are in your commander’s color identity.

Choose Your Supporting Cards

The amount of cards that you have of each kind depends on your deck’s theme. Blue decks usually run more instant and sorcery cards as they can mill a player’s deck to where they can draw no more cards or they can counter an opponent’s spells.

If your legendary creature relies on other creature spells to be cast for a specific trigger to happen, you may want more creature spells than others. The same is true if your commander needs enchantment triggers to create creature tokens.

Get creative with how you form your deck. For starters, here are some suggestions for counts of card types for 60-card standard brawl decks and 100-card historic brawl decks just to get an idea. Tweak the counts per your legendary creature’s build theme.

60-Card Standard Brawl Decks

• 24 lands.
• 17 creatures.
• 4 artifacts as mana rocks.
• 5 instant cards.
• 5 sorcery cards.
• 5 enchantment and/or equipment cards.

100-Card Historic Brawl Decks

• 38 lands.
• 27 creatures.
• 5 artifacts as mana rocks.
• 10 instant cards.
• 10 sorcery cards.
• 10 enchantment and/or equipment cards.

Multiplayer Tennis games are some of the most popular ones today, and they’re also the kind of games that bring people together. Whether you want to play against other players or join into a game tournament where all of the teams try to win, multiplayer tennis or casino online games offer plenty of ways to spend time with friends and family.

Interactive Tennis Games

The first thing to note is that not all multiplayer tennis games will work on every platform, either because they don’t have network features built-in, or because they’re only compatible with certain platforms. Many multiplayer tennis games include cross-play support, meaning that you can connect to the online network through another device and still be able to play with your existing team;

1) Tennis World Tour

One of the top-rated titles in this category, the best online casino game includes two modes: singles and doubles, which means it comes with four different characters for each player. You can find the game here at Xbox Game Store

2) Table Tennis Free 2

If you like playing table tennis on your smartphone, then you may enjoy the free version from Play store. It’s got enough features to keep most users happy and it should take about ten minutes to master. Check out the video below to see what you’d get if you decide to pick it up.

3) Crazy Striker Online

This one is available for PC, Android and iOS devices. Although it doesn’t come with any tournaments or events right now, there’s definitely an easy way to start off by simply entering your name and choosing a character to compete as.

4) Team Sports Club

This app is basically a social network for sports lovers who want to meet new friends while enjoying their favourite sport. Players can create profiles, add photos, share updates, invite friends and even challenge them to matches. There’s no need to download anything else and use this application can be played anywhere, anytime.

5) Smash Court Tennis

This is another free, great multi-platform multiplayer tennis game, ideal for both beginner and advanced players. If you love real-time competition but don’t want to shell out cash, this could well be your next best bet.

Conclusion

With some of these games allowing you to play real-money online tournaments, there’s certainly something for everyone. But the bottom line is that they make the perfect gift idea for anyone who enjoys playing tennis.

 

Block puzzles are also called tangram puzzles, tans, and seven pieces of cleverness. In a classic block puzzle, seven blocks of different shapes must be arranged to form a particular shape (the goal). A diagram illustrating how to assemble the pieces into the goal is included with each puzzle.

There are various types of classic block puzzles. We’ve discussed them below;

1. Jigsaw puzzle

Jigsaw puzzles are the most popular form of puzzles. This is one where a picture is cut into several pieces, which you have to put back together. Jigsaw puzzles come in many shapes and sizes, from puzzles with just a few pieces to those with thousands of pieces.

1. Woodoku

Woodoku is a new type of puzzle game that combines all the best parts of Sudoku, Kakuro, and Tetris. It is the perfect game for puzzle lovers who want to play something new.

The goal of Woodoku is simple- fill each row and column with the digits 1-9. There are also nine sub-grids (3×3) within the grid that must be filled as well. In addition, there are colored blocks on the board that show where each digit 1-9 can appear in each row and column.

1. Tetris

Tetris is a block puzzle game where you need to fit blocks together to make lines. Tetris is a free online game available to everyone and it’s fun.

Tetris is a great game for people who have time to kill and want to relax. It can be played on your computer, phone, or tablet. You can play it on your lunch break at work.

The game is easy to learn. All you have to do is place blocks in the correct spot and make lines. If you get frustrated, many tutorial videos are available online that will help you get better at the game. Tetris will help you relax and stay calm under pressure.

1. 1010! Block Puzzle

1010! Block puzzle game is one of the most popular block puzzle games that you can play on your mobile device or computer. The game was released in 2014 as a part of a series of various puzzles from Gram Games. It features simple yet addictive gameplay that is suitable for any age. While the game is free to play, there are some in-app purchases that you can purchase if you like.

1. Woody block puzzle

Woody block puzzle is a type of wooden block puzzle based on the famous Japanese game “Boxxle”. The player has to move the red block out of the box. The object is to slide the blocks so that they form a picture.

You are given several wooden blocks in different sizes and shapes. The goal is to place them inside the given frame, using as little space as possible. The game has various levels, each with a different arrangement of pieces and frame size.

1. Blockscapes

Blockscapes are distinguished by their distributed shape. They are built from adjacent blocks in a two-dimensional grid, where the “adjacent” relation is restricted to horizontal and vertical neighbors. An example of a blockscape is the game Tetris, in which blocks fall from above, and you have to arrange them in some order to make them disappear. The gameplay of Tetris involves rotating and positioning the falling shapes but never rearranging the ones that have already been placed.

Finally, you can do either of these block puzzles with your smartphone and from the comfort of your home.