Card Talk 24

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 . . .

Triskelion—a rare artifact creature from Dominaria Remastered.

Artifact creatures can be targeted by anything that affects either type (artifacts or creatures), making them slightly easier to remove. But their benefit is in their utility (for colorless artifacts, anyway): they can be included in any color deck. That is powerful.

Most artifacts are colorless. All were, in fact, until 2007's Future Sight set, which introduced the first to require colored mana. Shards of Alara (2008) introduced 33 more (of 43 total in that set), and Core Set 2020 developed it further. I still think of the classic artifact as colorless, though.

Triskelion's ability bears mention. It comes into play with three +1/+1 counters on it. You can remove them (one at a time or all at once) to deal damage to any target. That's pretty cool, but it is made better in decks that love adding +1/+1 counters. Commander decks with the "proliferate" mechanic should consider this an auto-include. That mechanic, from the official rules, is:

(Choose any number of permanents and/or players, then give each another counter of each kind already there.)

So keep at least +1/+1 counter on this guy and proliferate can make him into a damage machine.

Triskelion has been printed 13 times, the first dating all the way back to 1994's Antiquities set. Three of those printings, though, were in the Dominaria Remastered set. In addition to the one above, they had the regular frame and retro frame printings:

I've blogged a few times about the "frame explosion" in this game. It is both fun and maddening. Personally, I like the full art ones the best, and hope the game trends that way. 

Dominaria Remastered was the third release in that vein, including cards from 27 previous Dominaria-based sets(!). I blog at length on what a Remastered set is here.

Until next time . . . keep exploring.