Wizards of the Coast announced today that the company will take its franchise collectible card game, Magic The Gathering online. WOTC is hoping that Magic can cast its spell online, and will be able to compete with popular online games like Everquest , which have become huge cash cows --but some retailers are worried about the effect the online game will have on in-store sales.

We'd been hearing about confusion over the release schedule for the Judgment expansion for Magic: The Gathering , which is starting to arrive now, so we checked with Wizards of the Coast.

This week we spoke to two retailers with medium size stores that also use events to build sales: Chris Petitto of New World Manga and Robert Nicaise of Dr. Bob's Game Shop.

Although the Spider-Man movie did not debut until May 3, its influence was already apparent in the Top 10 Cool products in several categories in April.

Non-sports trading cards can be a successful product category, so we sought out a couple of retailers that we were told do an especially good job of merchandising and promoting entertainment cards to find out their secrets.

The GAMA Trade Show, the gathering of the RPG, CCG, miniature game, and board game industries, recently wrapped up in Las Vegas, with a record number of exhibitors and stable attendance vs. 2001.

Two #1 products repeated in February, a testament to the strength of some recent releases and the weaker competition scheduled for this normally weak month.

A spokesperson for Wizards of the Coast has confirmed to ICv2 that the company has laid off 50 employees today at its headquarters in Renton, Washington.

A flurry of posts to at least two Magic: the Gathering Websites has raised the question of whether the sequence of rare cards in boxes of Magic the Gathering: Odyssey Booster Packs is truly random.

A visit to the Wizards of the Coast section of the Hasbro Building at this year's New York Toy Fair leaves no doubt that WotC will be very busy in 2002.