Card Talk 4

Arni Metalbrow card art

Today is the fourth post in my Card Talk series.

Reminder on how Card Talk works:

• I go to Scryfall and select 'Random Card'
• I present and blog about the card. I could discuss any aspect: the art, abilities, cost, set, impact on the game, and so on. Stream of consciousness.

Card Talk is a fun, uncurated way to look at Magic's cards, mechanics, history, art, sets, and so on. And of course it exposes some of my own preferences, biases, and memories of the game. 

Today's card is . . .

Rubinia Soulsinger

Hmmm. A multi-colored legendary creature from Commander 2013. But not originally; she was first printed in Legends and reprinted several times thereafter.

I like legendary creatures so much that I dedicated a month of posts to them. And I enjoy multi-colored ones in particular; those gold-bordered cards caught my eye when first playing Magic (I enjoyed the Chronicles set because of them). They are visually pleasing, and often powerful to boot. Rubinia is no exception.

Rubinia's power is in her ability, allowing you to gain control of an opponent's creature (for as long as you like, if you can keep Rubinia alive). And you can exchange control for another creature if a more powerful one hits the board. What a great way to take your opponent's weapon and turn it against them. 

I don't know how much play Rubinia sees; her cost suggests "not much." (More recent reprints go for less than $0.40.) She is an easy target, with only 3 toughness, and would die to many removal spells. Still, she would be a fun addition to casual drafts or decks.

This version of Rubinia appeared in Commander 2013, which was a set of five preconstructed multi-colored commander decks. Wizards started their Commander series in 2011, releasing preconstructed decks as a way to gain interest in the Commander format, introduce new cards specifically designed for the format, and reprint important cards to make them accessible. Some commander products have greatly increased in value over the years; more recent offerings are on the weaker side.

Card Talk 3

Arni Metalbrow card art

Today is the third post in my Card Talk series.

Reminder on how Card Talk works:

• I go to Scryfall and select 'Random Card'
• I present and blog about the card. I could discuss any aspect: the art, abilities, cost, set, impact on the game, and so on. Stream of consciousness.

For me, Card Talk is a fun, uncurated way to look at Magic's cards, mechanics, history, art, sets, and so on. And of course it exposes some of my own preferences, biases, and memories of the game. 

Today's card is . . .

Wingfold Pteron

Hmmm. A blue dinosaur from Ikoria.

Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths was the first set released in the pandemic (it came out in April 2020). I was initially excited at what the name implied—I love big creatures—but my anticipation waned as the previews came out. I didn't care for the mutate mechanic (it was complex in paper) and other elements of the set annoyed me, too, as I discuss here. The set is probably most remembered for the 'companion' debacle, where the companion ability (found on 10 cards in the set) was far too powerful and forced a rules change shortly after the set was released.

Original companion rules text: 

(If this card is your chosen companion, you may cast it once from outside the game.)

Adjusted rules text: 

(If this card is your chosen companion, you may put it into your hand from outside the game for {3} as a sorcery.)

Anyway, back to the blue dinosaur.

Dinosaurs came to prominence with Ixalan's release (2017). Though about 170 dinos have been released to date, only three are mono-blue.

Note Wingfold Pteron's enter the battlefield ability: a choice of counters. Ikoria was the first (and I think only) set to introduce counters that were 'ability' counters: counters that gave your creature an ability (like flying or hexproof, in this case). While I like the concept, in paper that gets hard to track. Ikoria may have been the first set, between mutate and ability counters, that indicated Wizards might be focusing more on digital Magic. Digitally, things like this are easy and cool. 

Final comment: I don't recall seeing this card before. That's one thing I enjoy about Magic: you can be aware of a set, and have studied many cards in it, but still be surprised by ones you never noticed before. There is a lot to explore here.

Card Talk 2

Arni Metalbrow card art

Today is the second post in my Card Talk series.

Reminder on how Card Talk works:

• I go to Scryfall and select 'Random Card'
• I present and blog about the card. I could discuss any aspect: the art, abilities, cost, set, impact on the game, and so on. Stream of consciousness.

For me, Card Talk is a fun, uncurated way to look at Magic's cards, mechanics, history, art, sets, and so on. And of course it exposes some of my own preferences, biases, and memories of the game. 

Today's card is . . .

Pestilence Rats

Rats. Another black card. Anyway . . .

Magic has a fair number of rat creature cards (73 as of this post). Almost all are mono-black; five are either white/black, blue/black, or black/red. But you get the point: rats are evil little creatures. A handful of rats have discard or exile effects, but I will focus on a more intuitive ability for this creature: strength in numbers.

Pestilence Rats gets stronger when other rats are on the battlefield. Anyone's rats—even those controlled by other players. This "even opponents' creatures matter" theme is typical of older tribal cards (see Lord of Atlantis or Elvish Champion as examples). More recent cards in this vein tend to focus on your creature only (Blex, Vexing Pest or Captivating Vampire). But I digress.

Rats like other rats, so casual decks focusing on this creature might include Pack Rat, Rat Colony, Plague Rats, or Relentless Rats. Two of those (Rat Colony, Relentless Rats) let you violate the "only 4 copies of any card" rule. (I have a fun blue-black rat deck featuring 20 Rat Colony pairing with Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugivite to make them unblockable.) 

Pestilence Rats came out of Ice Age. Released in 1995, I was getting into Magic around that time, and Ice Age helped draw me in—I loved the packaging art (see below).

image from here

The art was cool, but the set wasn't; Ice Age had cards that were too wordy and too weak. Even today, the most valuable card from the set goes for just over $30; most other sets in that era are far more valuable. And Pestilence Rats is an example of that: it is underpowered for its mana cost (and still cheap; you can get a copy for $0.34 even though it was never reprinted). To have any hope of viability, you would need 4 copies in your deck and require one (or more) opponents to have the same. Almost certainly will not happen.

Speaking of art, this artwork was done by Jeff Menges, who drew 58 Magic cards, 15 of which were in the first set, Alpha. His Black Knight, Grizzly Bears, Bog Wraith, Merfolk of the Pearl Trident, and Swords to Plowshares stand out to me.

What I like most about Pestilence Rats? The set it belongs to and the associated memories. I do not think I own the card, and would never play it if I did.

Card Talk 1

Arni Metalbrow card art

It's been a slow few months for Magic in this house. I haven't enjoyed, collected, or played the last few sets (save exposure to them on Magic Arena), and have been involved in other tasks that have dominated my time. But I haven't forgotten about this game, and so today I kick off a series I've been thinking about for some time: Card Talk.

Here is how Card Talk works:

• I go to Scryfall and select 'Random Card'
• I present and blog about the card. I could discuss any aspect: the art, abilities, cost, set, impact on the game, and so on. Stream of consciousness.

Card Talk should be a fun, uncurated way to look at cards throughout Magic's history. And it should reveal some of my own preferences, biases, and memories of the game. Here goes. The first card in this series is . . .

Demon of Dark Schemes

Ugh. I am not excited that this was the first card, for two reasons. 

First: I never played this card, nor enjoyed this set. Kaladesh was released in September 2016. The first of a two-set block (Aether Revolt followed in January 2017). Set on a then-new plane, it had a steam punk motif that I didn't particularly enjoy. Nor did I like the energy counter concept (which you see on today's card). Energy counters were just 'one more thing to track' and I felt they did not add enough benefit to the game to warrant use. Kaladesh was significant for another reason, though; it introduced a new card subtype: vehicle. (Mark Rosewater talks about that process here.) Vehicles are artifacts that become artifact creatures when 'piloted.' The ability is called 'crew' and reads as follows on all vehicles:

Crew [x] (Tap any number of creatures you control with total power [x] or more: This Vehicle becomes an artifact creature until end of turn.)

Second: demons are creature types that upset some people. I am a Christian; I believe angels and demons exist. So it is easy to get antsy when I see card types like this. Nevertheless, Magic is a card game that makes no attempt to be imitative: it is fantasy with no desired connections to real-world beings. On my other blog, I discuss how Christians should approach content consumption. That summary post links to other posts in the series including guidelines for evaluating things like fantasy and games. Following those guidelines, I relax a bit. In Magic, the color black represents evil, and it is okay to play a game and be the bad guy because games are closed environments (read the linked article for more). That said, I still prefer my white angel deck.

Other card observations:

• The date embossed in gold indicates that this is a prerelease card; it appeared as a single card in a prerelease kit, which is a box containing 6 packs plus one single card (and one die). Prerelease kits are sold one week before set release at local game stores, enabling players to explore the new set by playing sealed format (you have six packs and build a 40-card deck out of those cards, adding basic lands).
• Ignoring the energy ability, this card is still pretty powerful. Six mana for a 5/5 flyer isn't bad, and its 'enter the battlefield' ability can board wipe some deck archetypes (like red burn or white weenie).