Have you ever played Magic the Gathering against yourself? I’ll tell you what, from one MTG player to another, it’s still kind of fun. But not as fun as when your beating your friend Steve’s goblin army the hell down over some chips and Mt. Dew — but what happens when Steve moves to freaking Jersey?

I talked to, Randy Buehler, from Wizards of the Coast, to see if there was a solution to my problem. Gleemax.com he told me, would cure all my ailments. And it’s balm would come in the form of a social networking site devoted to “thinking gamers” and the games they love.

“We’re kind of the 800 pound gorilla in the table top gaming space right now with Magic and Dungeons & Dragons,” said Buehler, “Now what? By moving digital we want we want to have our website become the center of the ‘thinking gamers’ universe.”

Gleemax will offer online versions of the already wildly successful Magic the Gathering Online, Axis and Allies Online, as well as the soon to be launched Dungeons & Dragons Insider, in which players can chat with each other online as they move their 3D avatars through dungeons teeming with monsters from the summer-released 4th edition.

The Rare Gleemax MTG card

Gleemax will also offer independent casual games, but not a proliferation of crappy casual games like many sites offer. The creators of Magic are only going to post a very small number of games that pass their merciless standards. And to show their dedication, Gleemax will be presenting an award for strategic gameplay at GDC’s Independent Game Festival, which Ripten will be covering later this week.

But mostly, Gleemax is where all kids, young and old, can come together and connect with each other, have their own page, blog, and play the best thinking tabletop and indy games around. It’s set to launch in all its glory this summer as early as June 7th to coincide with the release of the scheduled Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition.

Tags: gleemax, magic_the_gathering, randy_buehler, social_networking_site, wizards_of_the_coast

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