The New Gatherer

Basics | Advanced Searches | Browser Tips | Community

Gatherer Basics

First thing's first: everything you have been able to do up to now in Gatherer, you can still do! The interface has changed slightly, but more importantly, you have many more options to configure your search and display the results in a way that makes sense to you. You can find Gatherer at http://gatherer.wizards.com/.

The old, retired version

The new, improved version

 

Some of the most important changes are to the way you can view your search results. There are two entirely new modes: the Standard mode, which shows a small card image along with the Oracle text, and the Visual Spoiler mode, which shows all of the cards in the results as large card images. Gatherer still has Compact, Checklist and Text Spoiler modes, with some added bells and whistles including an optional hover-over card image and many more sorting options with successive multiple sorts.

Visual Spoiler mode

Updated Compact mode

 

You can find a number of useful tips on how to use the new version of Gatherer in the Help section, specifically how to use the default Simple Search and how to interpret the Search Results page.

Check out the next section for a quick walkthrough of the most powerful new feature of Gatherer, the Advanced Search.

Using Advanced Search

The Advanced Search page is at the heart of the powerful new engine of the new Gatherer.

The Advanced Search page, at a glance.

Wow. There's a lot going on there, so let's break it down piece by piece.

1. Search filters and terms: You can see a number of text boxes here, each one describing a part of the card - name, rules text, power, subtypes, etc. You can enter as many terms as you want for each filter, and all the terms will apply to your search. Clicking the "Add" button or pressing the ENTER key adds the term to the search.
2. Boolean operators: You can choose whether each term you add to a filter is a required term (AND), an optional term (OR) or a forbidden term (NOT). For instance, you can add the term "comes into play" to the Rules Text filter with "AND" (meaning, require this term), and then add "leaves play" to the Rules Text filter with "NOT" (meaning, require results DON'T have this term).
3. Numerical "comparison" operators: For the filters in the Numerical section, you can specify a region of matches using comparison operators. For instance, if you wanted to find all the creatures with power 2 or less, you can add the term "2" to the Power filter with "AND" and "<=" as the comparison operator. Mana cost also has a "fuzzy" match option (which is equivalent to "this mana cost contains {term}") available.
4. Additional filter options: Types, Subtypes and Colors allow you to specify additional options that apply to the whole filter. "Exclude unselected terms" means "find me cards that match my terms, but no other terms". For instance, if you wanted to find all the white and/or green cards for your Rhys the Redeemed EDH deck, you could exclude cards that are some color other than white and/or green from your search. You need to apply the additional options after you are done specifying terms for that filter.
5. Load previous searches again: If you perform a search and then realize you want to refine it, just return to the Advanced page and hit this link. Your previous search gets reloaded just as you specified it.
6. Your current search: You can see the terms you've already specified for your search here, organized by aspect of the card (filter). The little red "x" links will remove the term (or filter) from your search.
7. Search!: To actually perform the search after you've configured it to your liking, hit this button.

This new version of Gatherer is very powerful: we are essentially letting you run real database queries through the Gatherer interface! But with great power comes great responsibility... in the form of spending a little extra time configuring your search properly. If spending this much time configuring a search isn't your thing, you can always just search card names, types and text using the Simple Search box at the top of every page, or the intermediate filtering options on the main page of Gatherer.

Creating and Refining an Advanced Search

Let's say we're creating a deck and we've happened upon Mudbutton Clanger. We want to build a deck to maximize this little guy, so we start our search.

• Go to Gatherer and click the link to the Advanced page.
• Enter the term "goblin" (without the quotes) in the Subtypes filter box. Then click "Add" or press enter. You'll see "Subtype: DOES contain goblin" appear in the Search Parameters box to the right.
• Enter the term "warrior" (without the quotes) in the Subtypes filter box. Before clicking "Add" or pressing enter, change the Boolean dropdown that currently says "and" to "or". Then add the term to our search.
• Maybe we decide we should start with red goblins, to make the deck a little easier to build. Enter the term "red" (without the quotes) in the Color filter box, then add the term to our search.
• Perform the search by clicking "Search", then view the results.
• That result set was a bit too large. Let's refine our search: click back to the Advanced Page, then click the "Load Previous" button.
• Let's restrict the cards to those in current Standard. Enter the term "Standard" into the Format filter and add it to our search.
• We noticed on the first result page there were a couple of gold cards that contained red but weren't ONLY red. So let's click on "More Options" under the Color filter and click the "Add" button next to "Exclude unselected terms". You'll see this adds the condition "and NO other color" to our search on the right.
• Perform the search again.
• We want a lot of smaller guys to support our "beat them up with ferocious Clanger" plan, so let's return to Advanced and Load Previous.
• Enter the term "3" (without the quotes) in the CMC filter, and set the comparison dropdown to "<=", then add to our search.
• Search again, and we can start making a deck from the results!

For more detail on configuring Advanced Searches, see the Advanced Search Help section on Gatherer.

Browser Search Tips

Modern web browsers these days have built-in ways for you to search different search engines. For example, Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 both have separate search boxes in the upper right hand corner of their window that allow you to search different sites. These can be used for searching the new version of Gatherer as well. Here are instructions for searching Gatherer with different browsers:

Firefox

If you would like to add Gatherer to the search box:

1. Download and save this file: http://www.wizards.com/mtg/misc/gatherer/firefox_search_plugin/gatherer.xml to your "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins" (where "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox" is the directory you installed Firefox to) directory.
2. Restart Firefox.
3. Now, you should see it in the search dropdown list:
   
4. If you wanted to make Gatherer the default search engine, you could do that through the "Manage Search Engines…" dialog.

If you would like to make a search keyword for Gatherer:

1. A search keyword is a quick search you can do from the main Firefox address bar. Firefox provides an automated way to do this by right-clicking on search boxes and clicking "Add a Keyword for this Search…". However, to add one for Gatherer, go to your bookmarks menu and right-click in the folder you want to add the search to and click "New Bookmark":
   

2. In the dialog box that comes up, enter the following values:

   

   Where "Name" is the name of the bookmark as it will appear in your bookmarks menu, "Keyword" is what you will type first in the address bar when you want to do a search, and "Location:" is the search you would like to perform. Change the "Location:" field based on what you would like to search:

   Just Card Name:
   http://beta.gatherer.wizards.com/pages/search/default.aspx?name=[%s]
   Card Name, Type, Text:
   http://beta.gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?name=[%s]||type=[%s]||subtype=[%s]||text=[%s]

   The idea here is that you can use any Gatherer search that you're able to perform and substitute in the search terms into the query. For example, if you wanted to just search artist you can go to the Advanced Search page, and do an artist search. The search string would look like:

   http://beta.gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?action=advanc...[artistnameyoutypedin]

   Then, just substitute the "artistnameyoutypedin" with the "%s" value and you have your automatic search.

3. Now, you can try out your new search by typing the keyword and search terms into the address bar:
   
   Which should automatically perform the search for you and take you to the results page.

Internet Explorer 7

If you would like to add Gatherer to the search box:

1. Click on the little drop down next to the search button and select "Find More Providers…":
   

2. On the webpage that that option takes you to, fill in the following information for the "Create Your Own" section:

   

   URL: http://beta.gatherer.wizards.com/pages/search/default.aspx?name=[TEST]
   Name: Gatherer

   Where, same as for Firefox, the URL is customized to the search you would like to make. If you wanted the same name, type, and text search, the URL would look like this:

   http://beta.gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?name=[TEST]||type=[TEST]||subtype=[TEST]||text=[TEST]

   When finished, click "Install". You can customize your search providers through the "Change Search Defaults" menu option on the menu of step 1.

Although the steps and menu options may be slightly different, you should be able to employ the same technique for other browsers which have search boxes.

Community Features

The new version of Gatherer allows you to speak up about cards you care about. Each card has a Player Rating and a space for Comments. You'll have to sign up for an account first, if you don't already have one.

Things you can do in the new Community section of Gatherer:

• You can rate each card.
• You can see what the community at large things about a card.
• You can comment on each card.
• You can see what each person who cared to comment things about a card.
• You can rate each comment.
• You can see the rated history of each user's comments (so, for instance, you could see if the commenter's comments are generally well rated).

You can read more about what the Community section of Gatherer has to offer in the Card Discussion section of Gatherer's help.

Basics | Advanced Searches | Browser Tips | Community