Magic: The Gathering
Magical Thinking: Shards of Alara
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 fan. This week we begin a new block, the Alara block, starting with October 2008’s Shards of Alara.
Alara was once a singular plane, rich in mana, but long ago a planeswalker ripped it into five separate pieces (Spoilers: It was Nicol Bolas). Now Alara exists as five different planes in one, each one representing a combination of three allied colors: The peace loving and chivalrous Bant, the land of magical cyborgs Esper, the nightmarish hell world Grixis, the predator’s paradise Jund, and the jungle world of Naya. What wonders will we find on this new world? Lets find out.
Hey, it’s my favorite Sevendust song!
Wait, no no, that’s Angel’s Son. My bad. Joke retracted (Not like anyone got it anyway).
Here we have one of this set’s new keywords: Exalted. Because Bant is all about chivalry and honor, its guys prefer to fight one on one, so exalted creatures get a bonus for fighting by themselves. Unlike a lot of mechanics, exalted isn’t too broken or hard to use, only ranking a 4 on the Storm Scale. It has shown up other times over the years.
Here’s one of my favorite planeswalkers: Elspeth Tirel. This was way before Elspeth became the slayer of gods we know and love today. At this point she was just living her best life on Bant after coming there from her original life as a Phyrexian slave on an unknown plane. Unfortunately, things won’t be going so smooth for Elspeth going forward.
Invincible Hymn: probably the only time you actually want to run one of those decks with over 200 cards. Probably too slow and impractical for commander, though.
Alara block introduced the concept of artifacts which were colored, whereas before they were always non-colored. Also, say hello to one of the denizens of Esper, the Blue (with White and Black) shard of Alara. Their gimmick is they are all magical cyborgs made out of a material called etherium.
Seems like a natural progression to me; we have birds and cats and elephants, so why not rhinos? Sadly I don’t think rhino people have caught on like those others I mentioned.
Mufasa has been working out in the afterlife. When those hyenas get done with Scar, he’s gonna get his pound of flesh too.
You know what, they’re pretentious as heck, but I’ll take this over the racist Lorwyn elves any day.
I’m not sure that’s how you do the “live long and prosper” gesture. Of course I think you’re from Grixis, so you probably don’t know much about either of those things anyway.
Here is another Esperite (Esperian? not sure what to call these people). You can kind of make out the etherium bits, but it’s not as clear as it will be on some other creatures from this world.
This is a better look at the etherium parts. I think the Esper cyborgs are really neat-looking. And hey, it’s the return of my favorite Blue race, the Vedalken. Haven’t seen them since Time Spiral I think. Still as pompous as ever, too judging from that flavor text.
Here we have Grixis’ keyword: unearth, which lets a creature come back one more time for a final attack. And what a creature to start it out with. They always talk about the one that got away. This is the story about how you got away from it (Spoilers, you didn’t).
Even in the distant realm of Alara DRM is a pain in the ass. Support the right to repair! You should own the items you pay for!
I think I found Jeff Goldblum’s favorite card. Life finds a way indeed. Have I mentioned I love Sphinxes? This one in particular has a great design.
AND THEN THERE’S THIS ASSHOLE. Yeah, spoiler warning, but Tezzeret here ends up becoming a big time baddie, acting as Bolas’ personal stooge. He’s still at large in the Magic multiverse.
Teenage mutant Spartan turtles. I mean, considering how much time-traveling the turtles get up to, and the ties to Frank Millar, a TMNT/300 crossover would not be the weirdest thing they have done.
He better hurry up and pick one. HR Geiger needed him on the set five minutes ago. In an older set I joked about this artist being a TOOL fan, but just look at this guy.
Prince of Thralls better be a damn good creature to warrant all this hoop jumping and building a deck specifically to get him out.
There’s a word I wanted to use to describe this card. Now what was it? Oh yes…AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!
Seriously, this is one of the more disturbing Magic creatures of all time, and we’ve some weird stuff on this series. It’s one of those pieces that becomes worse the longer you look at it.
Wasn’t this guy in Young Sherlock Holmes? Also, how can you be an illusion and an artifact at the same time? We haven’t seen the Illusion creature type a long time.
As you have probably picked up, Shards has a cycling theme. If you forgot, cycling is a gimmick where you can pay a cost, discard, and draw. In this case, the cycling cost is way higher than normal, and it can do some cool stuff when you cycle it. So you’re getting more bang for your buck.
I question the flight capabilities of this creature. Call me crazy but I have serious doubts here. But it has regenerate! Take a picture because that’s not gonna be around much longer.
Devour is the Jund keyword and the last of this set’s new keywords. Basically Junds like to eat things smaller than themselves, so if you feed them your other creatures they get bigger. And they can do other stuff, like making your opponent discard. Devour is a 6 on the Storm Ccale, and is more narrow and less popular than the other abilities in this set, but I like it.
Naya doesn’t get a keyword. Tather they are focused around creatures with toughness 5 or more. So we get this lady here who is basically a giant monster rodeo clown (I was gonna make a twitter bully joke, but those are passe are they not?)
Jund is the land of survival of the fittest where everyone is food, and of course on the Red-focused domain the biggest of the big are dragons. Maybe they should swing by Naya and see whose really the biggest. Better yet, Ikoria.
That is one creepy goblin. They got some real Gollum energy to them there.
Shrek: The bad end. I kind of assume this guy is from Grixis since they are talking about mutation and infection and stuff, but who can say? Also, wow this is a bad card. A 5/1 vanilla for four? That is bin fodder if ever I saw it.
That seems a bit redundant. Aren’t all dragons predatory creatures? I don’t see many dragons chomping down on a bowl of kale.
Hey, here is a creature we haven’t seen in a good long while. I think this is the set that established devils as being the Red demon equivalent, more wild and feral and mischievous than MTG demons. We’ll see more devils when we get to Innistrad.
Hey, Viashino! That’s another creature we haven’t seen in a good long while. Umm… looking good there buddy. You lost weight?
The footprint isn’t what throws me. It’s the fact the footprint is on fire. At least I really hope those are foot prints. Otherwise someone needs to learn how to curb their giant monsters.
Green always gets the best mana dorks, and this one is better than most. Like they’re two colors short from being a Bird of Paradise. That’s pretty good.
I am really a fan of weird, non-standard versions of monsters, and you don’t get more of that than with this card. A tiger-hydra is amazing! I may have to do an article talking about my favorite MTG Hydra. But that is for another day.
I feel like maybe Naya has an unfair advantage over the other shards in terms of Mana production. On the other hand that’s kind of always been Green’s deal, hasn’t it?
Expert pun work! Anything I add would just cheapen the experience.
And making its big return, one of the big iconic green cards, Naturalize! Artifacts and enchantments, beware.
I really like the Rhox. I wish they got more play, since this is the last time they show up to my knowledge.
Oh hey, it’s Pathfinder lead artist Wayne Reynolds! And he’s bringing us one of the local Naya cat people. How nice of him. Speaking of catfolk…
Ajani is back, and it looks like he’s getting in touch with his inner barbarian. Oh, and this is done by Wayne Reynolds too. I didn’t even realize that when I was picking these out. Weird.
And now that we are moving into the multicolor cards, we have these ultimatum cards, which are ultra powerful effects that exemplify the plane they represent. Pretty sure this is the Esper ultimatum.
…So who does a demons say their prayers to? Asking for a friend.
Well I guess this settles that ogre mutants are from Grixis. Glad we got that out of the way.
See? I told you! Dragon’s ain’t got squat on Naya creatures. Look at that thing! The chin game is on point. And it makes copies of itself.
Of course we need a cycle of these little spells that can do multiple stuff based on their color identity and you get to choose the effect. Almost standard at this point.
Poppies will make them sleep…or not I suppose. I guess that’s what we call a flower child.
Okay, I will admit, that is definitely worth the investment.
They are also masters of ultimate frisbee apparently.
Goddammit! I was hoping we’d have a few sets before talking about this guy. This is Sarkhan, number one dragon fan, and the WORST. PLANESWALKER. EVER. Seriously, this guy is terrible. Why? Well, wait till we get to Tarkir block and we’ll talk all about it.
Yeah, you never want to run into a guy named the Traitor King. That name never means good things, does it? Look at the bones behind him. Pretty sure he didn’t buy them at a Spencer’s gifts.
Vince Russo: planeswalker. Now we just need to have the Black Lotus on a pole match an we’ll be set.
I like the wing design, but I’m not sure if it flew into an iron fence, or if that’s some drizzled delicious chocolate on its wings.
See, these are the kind of Esper folk I like to see. Look at her arms. Now that is a neat design. I hope they go back to Alara someday so we can get more Esper creatures.
This is some Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark stuff right here (I say that a lot). Of course, I’m not gonna tell her that her reflection doesn’t look true to life. Hmmm, I wonder if that mirror works with Tinder…
Obligatory Mana rock, ladies and gentlemen.
And tri-color tap lands as well.
And land you sacrifice to search for the appropriate basic land is pretty much a gimme at this point.
And on that , we wrap up our look at Shards of Alara. Man. It looks like these five planes are doing fine on their own. They are all different, but they are working out in their own way (except maybe Grixis). But I wonder, what would happen if they suddenly began to merge back into one plane?
Find out next time, in Conflux, when that happens. Until then, friends, stay Magical.
