Card Talk 22

Cactuar card art

Time for Card Talk! Reminder how this 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 . . .

Aurification—a rare enchantment from Onslaught.

This card puts a gold counter on any creature that does damage to you, which makes it a wall (in modern terms, it gives the creature 'defender,' so it cannot attack). If Aurification leaves play, all gold counters are removed. Interesting stuff! This basically lets any creature attack you once but only once. This card would be good in a control deck that looks to keep opponents at bay while you build up to a finishing move. And it is apparently pretty effective—it costs $7.32 as of this writing, putting it in the top 15 cards (value-wise) from the Onslaught set. Speaking of . . .

Onslaught was released in 2002. It is the first (and large) expansion in the Onslaught block (the two subsequent sets were Legions and Scourge). And this is the last block that used the old card frame; starting with Mirrodin in 2003, Magic went to a completely new look.

Onslaught had a tribal theme (which they now call typal . . . or kindred . . . I don't remember). Basically, creature types matter. Birds, Clerics, Soldiers, Wizards, Beasts, Zombies, Goblins, and Elves feature heavily.

Magic has a lot of cards that make counters. This concept of a 'gold counter' shows up on only one other card: Dragon's Hoard, and it means something different there. And don't confuse them with gold tokens, which are referenced on The First Iroan Games card and have since been functionally replaced by treasure tokens (I think).

Until next time . . . keep exploring.