Magic: The Gathering
Magical Thinking: A Retrospective on the Art and Cards of Magic: the Gathering
Unlimited Edition
If my previous article about the history of Thrulls is any indication, I love Magic: the Gathering. In fact, I love a lot of fantasy games: DnD, Pathfinder, Hearthstone, and also Magic. I spent the last few years playing Hearthstone, but recently dropped it due to Blizzard’s recent…decisions. So I got back into Magic: the Gathering via their Hearthstone equivalent, MTG Arena. That motivated me to look back and see some of the amazing art and unusual stuff in the older sets.
And it’s also inspired me to write about it. This series will look at some of the most interesting, beautiful, and weirdest cards from past sets. This will not be an exhaustive look at Magic’s past by any stretch. So join me on my trip down memory lane, wont you? This is Magical Thinking.
We begin our look with the Unlimited edition. This is technically not the first expansion, as it’s preceded by Alpha and Beta. But these three have all the same cards as near as I can tell. This is the genesis of Magic, the near-beginning where they began to define the game and what the various colors do. Let’s take a look at what we start with.
Oh dear.
I am getting these images off of Scryfall, probably the best resource for looking up Magic cards on the internet. They provide the best images of the cards and close-ups on their art where needed. They also organize the cards by color (White, Blue, Black, Red and Green) and in alphabetic order.
This is the first card you see in this section. Animate Wall. This probably isn’t the card Wizards of the Coast intended to lead off with, but it’s the one I am.
I honestly don’t know what’s funnier here: The woman standing there with her hands up (either because she’s casting the spell, reacting with abject horror at the abomination before her, or both) or the animated Wall itself, with a face that says ”Yep. This is my life now”.
Hey, it’s Thanos’ favorite card. You know, in case you ever want to reenact the ending of Infinity War in your Magic game (Or not, since this card is banned pretty much everywhere). Also, it’s worth mentioning these cards are now super expensive. This card goes for 75 dollars on Scryfall, and that’s not even in the upper echelon for these cards.
This is the definition of somebody having a bad day. Can you imagine being the poor 1/1 soldier token who gets this cast on them when they’re facing down an entire army of dragons, giants and demons? Talk about a job that’s not worth the money.
Fun fact: he’s not really bringing him back from the dead, he’s just tickling his nose until he wakes up. Also, I’m like 50% sure that’s the guy from The Crow.
I believe it was John Lennon who once said “instant karma’s going to get you”. Ironically the card Karma is not an instant, it’s an enchantment. But I find it hard to think of someone whose been gotten harder than the poor guy in this art. It’s easy to forget, but White in Magic does not mess around. It can get downright mean, something we will see more of in later sets.
The thing about this art is not the swords themselves, but what they are apparently holding back. Just what IS that big green blob with red eyes? There’s no creature like it in Unlimited. There may not be any creature like it anywhere in Magic. Perhaps it will be something to come back to down the line.
Most of the Blue cards have some really high concept art, which inspired me to do this retrospective. All I have to say about this particular piece is that it must really hurt for the brains.
This one just makes me smile. Poor guy looks so disappointed his spell didn’t work. Don’t worry buddy, you’ll get it next time.
Fun fact: the art for this card was actually done by Magic creator Richard Garfield’s aunt, an established artist in Seattle. Which is why we got some art gallery style art for this card. I love this piece because it captures the surrealism of Blue magic from this particular era of the game. The nice touch is the palette in the middle which has the five colors of Magic on it.
Speaking of surreal art. This is Time Walk, one of the so called “Power Nine”, one of Magic’s most broken cards, and probably one of the most broken cards for any game ever. But in this case I care less about the card and more about the art.
What is going on in this piece? What are those skeletons with clock faces? Are those the personification of time? Are they what you look like when you are time walking? Are they what other people look like? I have so many questions about the logistics here.
And now we get to Ante cards. It figures that Black, the “evil” color of Magic, would be the first color to get Ante cards. Ante was phased out of Magic rather quickly because it’s basically gambling. We’ll see a few more Ante cards in the coming sets. Mostly artifacts and Black spells and creatures. I chose this one in particular because I like the art. The Devil judge just looks so grumpy. I love it! Of course, actual creature Demons in Magic usually aren’t so humorous.
I really love Demonic Hordes’ art. The black shadowy demonic humanoids with glowing red eyes and sharp fangs really convey the unending legions of Hell (Or wherever MTG Demons come from. Phyrexia probably?). Unfortunately, moral guardians would force Magic to abandon demons, so this and another one were the only ones we were going to get for a while. Moral guardians: ruining everything for everyone, ever.
Yeah, this art doesn’t exactly convey fear, does it? That lady looks more pleasantly surprised than afraid. Like “Oh wow, someone polished my skull collection! And stacked them! How thoughtful!”
Here’s Magic’s other demon from Unlimited. The big guy himself, the Lord of the Pit. I like how they took the stereotypical idea of what a demon may look like, then made it entirely skinless. Also, we have the weird demonic sigil in the upper right-hand corner. What is it? What does it do? What’s the significance? Who knows. This was the wild frontier of Magic.
Um, you okay buddy? You doing alright? You need a napkin for that drool? No? Alright then. It really can’t be understated how great the art for Black was. The above art for Pestilence is some genuinely creepy stuff.
Sengir Vampire is one of the most iconic monsters of Magic, but I got a few things to say about this guy. First, apparently becoming a vampire makes you as smooth as a baby’s bottom. Secondly, what is this guy standing next to? What is that big red vein thing? Is it from a creature? Is it growing out of the ground? Is it part of the wall to give him blood like a blood faucet? I feel like this piece needed more than a head shot for us to comprehend what is going on here.
I am really sorry the unicorn mole thing in the artwork was never made into a creature.
Wow, the OG Earth Elemental is an absolute unit, isn’t he? That is one big boy if ever I saw one. I love the rough edges on the art, as well as the vacant, expressionless face.
And on the opposite end of the spectrum, sexy fire lady. I was going to say there seems to be a bit of a disconnect between the art and the flavor text which calls her a ruthless inferno beast. But hey, these two things aren’t mutually exclusive. You do you, fire lady.
I’ve always been fascinated with monsters with multiple heads, especially two headed humanoids, and the Two Headed Giant of Foriys is no exception. Apparently Foriys is just a place in Dominaria where two headed giants are so common the locals have become adept at fighting them. Also, please excuse the both racist and ableist flavor text. Apparently it’s removed in more recent printings.
This is considered one of the most poorly understood and complicated cards in Magic, but I don’t think it’s as bad as all that. Basically, when you attack, you cast this spell, you put your monsters face down, and your opponent has to block them blind, and blockers who can’t block their target don’t. Simple. Of course if you have time to read a War-and-Peace-sized novel you can look at the oracle text for this card, which makes it way more complicated and confusing than it needs to be.
I havea soft spot for Fungusaur. Back when WOTC bought the rights to DnD, I wrote up DnD stats for a Fungusaur (Or maybe they appeared in an issue of Inquest, whatever). I like the monster design, and I also like the flavor of the monster and the fact its adaptive growth is referenced in the flavor text.
Once again, we have an iconic creature: The Llanowar Elves. The original Mana dorks. But this art for them is ridiculous. Why are they albino? Why are they snarling? Why fangs? And what are they wearing? Is that some kind of headgear? Nothing about this screams elf. With the same profile I’m not convinced this isn’t just Sengir Vampire going to a KISS concert.
Here is another piece of art where I’m sorry they never made this a creature. I mean, who is this weird bird-tiger-man? Is he a wise sage? A powerful Druid? An avatar of nature itself? Is he the reigning dodge ball champion of Dominaria? We’ll never know because he’s not a creature.
Chaos Orb is one of those cards that just makes you shake their head and wonder what the Magic designers were thinking. I mean, credit where credit is due: they were making the first TCG, and when you teach a bear to waltz the amazing thing isn’t that they waltz well. It’s that they can waltz at all.
But this card is just absurd. I kind of love it. It can also go for over 800 dollars, so I’m never going to own one. Not that I would be able to use it if I did since it’s banned everywhere. Ah well.
This is one of the very few early on references to H.P. Lovecraft in Magic. It specifically cites Leng, the alien demiplane which is the home to the malformed slavers known as the Men of Leng. Name drop!
Eesh. Speaking of Lovecraftian, we have this abomination. I didn’t notice this before I looked at the full-sized art, but this living wall is pregnant! Um, congratulations? This has the makings of the weirdest episode of Maury Povich ever.
Another classic card. I love the art of the amulet being a mouth with tentacles coming out. It implies that it eats everything in range until it runs out of food, and then devours itself. The magical equivalent of the nuclear option. Probably not something you want to leave laying around.
And for our final card, lets look at Sunglasses of Urza. Urza is one of the iconic characters of early Magic. He was a driving force for a lot of the events in the early expansions, with his actions having long lasting repercussions that can still be felt today in the narrative.
This is one of the first items to name him specifically, his literal rose colored glasses that let him use White mana as Red mana. Not exactly an auspicious start for him, but we’ll be seeing more of this later.
And that, gentle viewers, concludes our first look at the cards of an early magic set. Next time we will continue with Arabian Nights.
