Magic: The Gathering
Magical Thinking: Future Sight
Welcome back to Magical Thinking, a look back at the cards and art of Magic: the Gathering, set by set, from the beginning. All through the eyes of a casual player. This week we’re looking at the final expansion of the Time Spiral block, May 2007’s Future Sight.
Things are pretty bad for Dominaria right now: Freyalise is gone, Terferi is gone, Karn is gone, Leshrac is back, and time is still falling apart. Is this the end for Dominaria? Probably not all things considered, but let’s see what happens anyway.
Does this card look familiar? It should, because it’s pretty much a functional reprint of The Cheese Stands Alone from Unglued. Yep, were starting off with a card that’s a reprint of an Unglued card. That’s how you know we’re in for a ride.
That’s a very nice gift. You better make sure not to take it for granite. Ha Ha, I should be the highest paid comedian in the world.
And here we have a sampling of the newest cycle of Magi. This time they have powers based on famous enchantments. Imagine combining creatures and enchantments. How ridiculous. Like that would ever happen.
Saltskitter is a pretty shy little guy; he doesn’t like meeting new people, but if you give him a little patience he’ll open up to you. Kind of like me, really.
And here we have this set’s time shifted cards, meant to represent a potential future for Magic and what new mechanics and creatures may show up in future sets. Apparently a lot of these new mechanics were just spun out of the ether with no intent to use them, but some of the new things would see use later on. I think Tribal spells will play a big role in the next block, for example.
However we also have to talk about the new “future shifted” card design. I like to think this was a focus test for a new card design, and good thing too because people seemed to universally hate this design. I’m ambivalent myself, though I think it makes Magic look like one of the many knock off CCG’s that rose and fell in Magic’s shadow. I’m glad that they didn’t keep it.
Oh hey, it’s that thing I alluded to with Magus of the Moat. An enchantment creature is like an artifact creature, only with enchantments. Enchantment creatures will feature more prominently in Theros, the “enchantments matter” Magic set, but more on that later.
This card is more of a direct preview of the next set Lorwyn, since it features a Kithkin (Magic’s equivalent to Hobbits) and it references Lorwyn lore in the flavor text. Also, this set introduced a lot of new keywords that would go on to become evergreen, like Lifelink.
No idea who Seht is, but I hope they come pick up their tiger soon. I also hope said tiger is well trained. I think its eyeing the Kithkin and it looks hungry.
I really like the flavor here. I love it when they come up with new ways of messing with keywords, and suspending your enemy’s spells seems like a lot of fun.
We’re still in this period where Magic was afraid to make creatures too powerful, so here we have a 5/6 flyer for 8 which you can morph for 3, but it comes into play with vanishing for 2. A reminder there’s a card that was in standard last year which was a 5/5 flyer for 6, and it bounced something when you played it.
Pact of Negation: When you don’t have five mana to pay, but you still want to go out being the saltiest jerk who ever played Magic.
I was gonna talk about Venser since he’s got a card in this set and he’s kind of the main character of this set, but at the same time… BLEB! Look at this cute little blinky boy. I think I made the right decision.
And we’re back to the future cards. Delve is a mechanic we will see again in Khans of Tarkir as the signature mechanic of the Sultai.
This card was eventually printed for real in Guilds of Ravnica, so I had the privilege of playing against a deck that used it in Arena a while back.
Sadly, not every card is a winner. Not every mechanic gets love. Here we have Fateseal, a mechanic which was considered no fun by R&D, so will probably not be seen again any time soon. I can kind of see why. You’re always gonna send the monster you put on the top of the deck to the bottom, aren’t you?
It’s amazing how much flavor you can squeeze out of a card with no flavor text. Apparently at some point in the future, Dominaria gets Vedalken (or we visit a world that has both Vedalken and Slivers) and said Vedalken have figured out how to tame or control Slivers. Now that’s a setting I would like to see.
Ah, yes. The classic symptoms of jawbreaker addiction: The distended jaw, the discolored gums. Remember, the main cause of Jawbreaker addiction is ignorance. DO NOT BOIL YOUR JAWBREAKERS PEOPLE. COSPLAY IS NOT CONSENT. Wait, what were we talking about? Oh right, here we have Hellbent and Madness, two great discard themed mechanics that go great together.
Yep, I imagine no Black deck has ever had to wait the full seven turns to get a suspended Nihilith out.
Putrid Cyclops: The one time you actually hope you hit a land with a scry effect.
Hey, what’s worse than rats? Intangible shadow rats that can somehow still bite you (Writers notes: rats are actually sweet adorable creatures, please do not buy in the propaganda that rats are bad. Please hug a tame pet rat today).
Yeah, here’s another dead-in-the-water mechanic. Although I imagine this card became pretty popular when Phyrexian Obliterator got printed (But more on him later).
One of the things I do like are these experimental full art vanilla creatures that showed up in this set. I mean, Mass of Ghouls just plain looks cool.
Weirdly enough the snake cult initiation involves licking toads (Not Thallids though, as we established last time that never ends well).
Well I guess this settles that Dominaria is going to be okay. Also, I think this is the first time we’ve seen a monster with a negative attack score before that wasn’t an Un set or something.
Hey, Mariah used her Stand Bastet on your creature card (And yes, this is a Jojo reference).
Magus of the Moon, when you hate your best friend’s affinity deck so much that four Blood Moon’s just aren’t enough to deal with all their artifact lands.
Come on guys, you don’t have to go this hard on the kobolds. Haven’t they suffered enough? Why do the kobolds insist on living so close to dragons? This isn’t DnD!
Don’t worry, I’m a coward too.
I kind of wish they would make more coward interaction cards. We get one once in a while, but I want a whole coward sub-theme in a set for once.
And here we have our first reference to Ugin, the spirit dragon (and Nicol Bolas’ brother). If you are playing in the current standard of Magic or are on Arena, odds are pretty good you already know Ugin…and you hate him and all his board-nuking shenanigans. But this is the first reference to him, and also establishes what he’s about: Being colorless.
And of course we have more slivers. Slivers you can now cycle to get better slivers if you don’t like the slivers you currently have in your hand and you want a better sliver. Sliver.
Oh dear. They certainly didn’t know what they were building.
Steamflogger Boss was never meant to be anything. The whole contraption and assemble thing was never meant to be anything but an example of an out-of-context card from a future set that would never be. R&D thought that the fans would just leave it at that. It’s almost adorable when you think about it.
But yeah, eventually we did get context for contraptions in Unstable. Thanks to Future Sight, this is the only legal in tourney Un card ever (Not counting functional near reprints like Barren Glory up there). Not that you would ever play this in any deck that didn’t include other Unstable cards, but still…
Hey, Kavu are back! And so is Convoke. Two great things that go awesome together. Big thumbs up!
Well this is neat: A spellshaper that actually creates creature cards. Now you too can have an endless army of Llanowar Elves with their stupid glasses from Alpha.
And hey, I just found a good use for all those extra elves you just made. Get to making that Green mana, boys.
Not really seeing how sacrificing saprolings for Mana leads to utopia. Wait, is this meant to be a stand-in for Birds of Paradise? Man, this was a bad apocalypse. Of course, I think all the Birds of Paradise migrated to Ravnica.
Grandeur is a neat mechanic, since it lets you use those extra copies of a legendary you already have out. Sadly, Commander’s singleton format pretty much kills the potential use of grandeur.
Yeah, don’t even think about trying to give this guy that cheap mana from your elves or rocks. He wants the GOOD stuff. The pure stuff. This is a giant lizard of class.
You know, I’ve been doing this series for a while, and I still have no idea how to pronounce Ouphe. Is it Oof? Owphe? Your guess is as good as mine.
I also can’t pronounce Lhugoyf, but I’m not touching that one.
But wait, look at that list of card types? Planeswalkers? PLANESWALKERS? That’s not a card type? Or is it? More on that little wrinkle next time. Oh, we have such sights to show you!
Ah, Akroma’s Memorial. It may as well read “Here lies a really angry pretend angel that was dreamed up by a wizard who was pissed his girlfriend died so they almost murdered the world.” A comedy in three parts, soon to be performed by the 2021 graduating class of Prismari.
I feel like this would be really good in certain aggro decks, since you can just endlessly spam little creatures and build up its time counters. White and Red must love this thing.
And lo, the only fortification card ever made, designed basically to be equipment for lands. It was decided to be too difficult to implement by head boss Mark Rosewater, and I can kind of agree. A shame, though. It’s a neat concept.
And of course we need a cycle of lands to prove that yes, Dominaria is all better now. Everyone is fine and there are no more wars or traffic accidents (at least until the next apocalypse in about three weeks or so because this is Dominaria and this place attracts world-destroying events like a Donald Trump rally attracts gullible idiots, and with pretty much the same results.
Obviously we needed some future shifted lands as well. Like this one, which is a land and a creature. I don’t think this one ever caught on either, but again, it’s a neat concept.
And with that we leave Time Spiral block firmly in the past where it belongs. Next time we move on to a new era of Magic, with a new expansion, in a new plane, with a new generation of Planeswalkers. Yep, next time we go to the Magic plane designed by Jim Henson: Lorwyn. But until then dear readers, stay Magical.
