My Opposite of Loneliness

As it stands, Magic: The Gathering boasts rats galore, but mice are - as of yet - still very underrepresented. With the announcement of the release of Bloomburrow in late 2024, a set brimming with anthropomorphic animals that I am very excited for, this might perhaps finally change.

“There is but one king. Kneel to him or you will be made to.”

Coming up with new card ideas for MtG is always exciting and doing so for the Commander format even more so, at least for me. Ironically, these two bad boys here have been created as anti-commander cards, as the format is usually full of legendary creatures and planeswalkers.

Sometimes it takes days or weeks to finalize, finish, and polish a card as you go back and forth with the direction you’re trying to go, and sometimes the stars align and the creation is complete in but a few minutes. Sometimes it’s all about scouring the internet for the perfect illustration to complement your established concept, and sometimes - like in this case - it is the art itself that inspires the card design.

I don’t think there is a right or wrong way to go about expressing your ideas and it is actually quite fun to bend the rules of MtG, which has led to some of the most interesting cards we have ever seen in the past. I encorage all of you to go and see where inspiration takes you, whatever medium it may be in, and share what you have come up with, no matter how many people might get to see it.

Over the past three decades, the creative minds behind Magic: The Gathering have built and continue to expand on a vast plethora of rich and interesting lore with no shortage of compelling characters and their stories.

One of my favorite pasttimes is the imagining of what those characters, places, and concepts from other worlds might look like if they were to find their very own card representation within Magic. This notion is more and more frequently explored these days, both through major sets like Adventures in the Forgotten Realms and smaller releases like the Secret Lair Drop series, giving us an increasing number of fascinating cards from all realms imaginable, such as Arcane, Street Fighter, Stranger Things, and more.

As an avid and long-standing fan of World of Warcraft, a game with such an astonishingly abundant collective of lore, it comes as no surprise that it provides the perfect starting point and breeding ground for new card ideas.

Jaina Proudmoore has long been my absolute favorite individual within Warcraft. She is, in my opinion, one of the best written female characters in any contemporary fantasy franchise, whose storyline, role, and involvement in the events surrounding Azeroth have been major driving forces for the course of the game more than once before. As a woman with a complex personality and history, she would surely deserve numerous different iterations that showcase her growth and identity at all stages of her life - be it as a young apprentice, as a sorceress of unmatched excellence, as a compassionate diplomat, as the daughter of the sea, and many more, all of which merit recognition and can be interpreted in different ways.

This particular pair of custom cards focuses on Jaina as a seeker of knowledge and master elemental conjurer, as well as on the tragedy of the loss of her father, her lover, and her student at varying points in her past.

Here’s to all the Jaina fans out there.

-1/-1 counters are notoriously harder to design around and are generally not a feature that’s used in an expansion in conjunction with +1/+1 counters, as they cancel each other out. Hence, they are only rarely made a focal point throughout MtG’s history - most recently during Amonkhet and Hour of Devastation in 2017, almost five years ago. Their scarce appearance notwithstanding, they remain a fascinating and inspiring characteristic of card conception that is, at least for me, begging to be explored further.

Today, I bring you an angel that hopes to give you an advantage in different aspects: bolstering your life points, improving your hand, and - inspired by cards such as Smothering Tithe and Monologue Tax - increasing your mana pool, the latter being one of white’s most glaring issues.

And then there is a new Liliana. She speaks for herself. Knowing her history, it is probably in poor taste to present them next to each other like this, but here we are.

Commander has always been my favorite format of MtG, therefore I tend to create cards that might be viable as commanders themselves or fit into existing archetypes.

Lessons in Magic, Part VII

Dear friends and MtG fans,

I have just seen the first spoilers for the new Guilds of Ravnica expansion and man do they look great. I am happy to see the return of shocklands with beautiful new art and the dawn of new mechanics that represent the guilds and provide room for explorative gameplay and fun interactions while staying true to what makes each guild so vibrantly unique. What’s more, I am both surprised, intrigued, amazed, and perhaps a little bit thunderstruck by the fact that Wizards cheekily snatched the name of my mentor mechanic right from under my nose - which was their plan all along, obviously - and turned it into the idea for the Boros mechanic which is now probably much cooler and more fun to play than what I came up with. (But if they release a new land with the subtype “College” next, they will receive a howler from me. And I’ll get Julie Walters to provide the angry voice.)

Sadly, we have almost reached the end of my little journey through this unnamed land. There will be one more part before I de-part (See what I did there?) this plane and the format of six-card-posts, but not before I get to bring my mechanics back once more in full swing. After all, the mentor ability and protégé counters constitute the core of the set and its path-bound lore and gameplay. And even though I feel as if, throughout these last seven posts and their 42 cards, I have mostly exhausted the design space of what they can do, there are probably so many more unthought-of ideas, angles, perspectives, and possibilities that remain unchartered until someone thinks of them. Perhaps that will be you rather than me.

In any case and as always, thank you for reading. Do tell me your thoughts and if you like the concept. And if you don’t, that’s okay too. 

Have courage and be kind. X