to everyone calling fake, this was taken from the official distributor of the Nordic countries; here's there website; http://www.enigmadistribution.com/
Everyone, I don't see any reason whatsoever to think this is a fake. The card image we've gotten of prerelease cards in the past has often been a mockup like this one, without all the relevant bits 100% correct.
Even if you disagree, people really need to stop "calling" fake. If you have a reason to believe some information is inaccurate, provide it; trying to be the first or the loudest to express doubt doesn't help anyone figure out whether info is real, it just makes threads harder to read and makes arguments more likely.
Really? I can see it with the Mirrodin cards that introduced the practice, but on a lot of them I'm really shocked anyone could prefer the original art. All the Ravnica cards have almost ludicrously superior art on the playtest versions, I find, and the prerelease Korlash is nothing short of gorgeous.
These dates may not apply to the US. They are not the prerelease and the launch party because they are only one week apart, whereas, characteristically, the launch parties are two weeks after the prerelease.
I think that this is the worst SHA art I have seen yet, and though this card being the prerelease foil was predictable, it is in no way satisfying.
The reason I think it is fake...
The artist is a new artist to Magic and I just doubt that they are going to have some new artist's "crappy art" be the Pre-Release Card Commission. It just doesn't "feel right" something about it isn't sitting well with me.
Something else I was thinking about....
The art here has NO relevance to the regular versions art. Most alternate art at least "resembles" the regular art.
Everyone, I don't see any reason whatsoever to think this is a fake. The card image we've gotten of prerelease cards in the past has often been a mockup like this one, without all the relevant bits 100% correct.
Even if you disagree, people really need to stop "calling" fake. If you have a reason to believe some information is inaccurate, provide it; trying to be the first or the loudest to express doubt doesn't help anyone figure out whether info is real, it just makes threads harder to read and makes arguments more likely.
Really? I can see it with the Mirrodin cards that introduced the practice, but on a lot of them I'm really shocked anyone could prefer the original art. All the Ravnica cards have almost ludicrously superior art on the playtest versions, I find, and the prerelease Korlash is nothing short of gorgeous.
My three main questions I believe bring this card's authenticity into question are:
1. Who is the actual artist? Most fake cards don't have an artist's name. This one barely has any text for the artist.
2. There's no watermark in the text box of the Shadowmoor symbol. If this was a real scan of the Prerelease card, the watermark would show up even if the foil didn't (however, most, if not all, foils show up when scanned into a computer).
3. The actual picture of the Demigod does not match the alternate art in some key features. Real Demigod has horns, some sort of Mohawk feature on his head, and has curled tips at the point of its wings. The "Phallic" Demigod has no horns, no Mohawk, and has small hands at the point of its wings (if you look closely, you'll see what I mean). If one feature was slightly altered, I can understand. But three key features that don't match? Shenanigans.
Unless someone can come up with a solid, evidence supported reason to any of these questions/points, I will gladly accept it.
I just wanted to add one more thing. Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't some non-US cards have varied or different art than their US counterparts? Seeing as how this is from a Nordic website, it could just be different art for Europe or Nordic countries.
The card is from the official distributor. Calling it fake is like calling a card on wotc's website fake: a loss of time.
Okay. Why the different art features if it's supposed to be the same creature? Why do they look different in several categories? Who is the actual artist? Where's the watermark?
1. Who is the actual artist? Most fake cards don't have an artist's name. This one barely has any text for the artist.
It looks like it's a short one-word pseudonym. Other artists have been known to go by handles or a single name on the cards they illustrate.
2. There's no watermark in the text box of the Shadowmoor symbol.
It's a computer mockup given out by Wizards for distributors to use in their advertising. It wouldn't necessarily have the correct watermark or appear to be foiled. (Mockups are used in most cases to advertise prerelease cards until someone actually gets their hands on the product.)
3. The actual picture of the Demigod does not match the alternate art in some key features.
This actually tends to be true whenever the two illustrations are by different artists. Check out Korlash, Heir to Blackblade for an example.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't some non-US cards have varied or different art than their US counterparts?
Only China, only when the art depicts nudity or skeletons, and 90% of the time the art is just computer-altered to an acceptable state.
It looks like it's a short one-word pseudonym. Other artists have been known to go by handles or a single name on the cards they illustrate.
It's a computer mockup given out by Wizards for distributors to use in their advertising. It wouldn't necessarily have the correct watermark or appear to be foiled. (Mockups are used in most cases to advertise prerelease cards until someone actually gets their hands on the product.)
This actually tends to be true whenever the two illustrations are by different artists. Check out Korlash, Heir to Blackblade for an example.
Only China, only when the art depicts nudity or skeletons, and 90% of the time the art is just computer-altered to an acceptable state.
God, I will never ever be able to play this card art or face it without snickering. I keep visualizing an episode of Yugioh, with someone casting this spell and shouting, "GO FLYING WANG OF DOOM!"
*dissolves into another giggling fit* I think our D&D group thinks i'm insane, I kept bursting into giggles all afternoon after seeing this.
It's definitely nice to see a good, playable card as the prerelease, though the art is just well below standard. The last several promos have set a high bar, and this one falls flat on its face.
I like this art a lot more than the original. This looks more like Revenge, the chains and binding, than a random, green monster ripped out of any given comic book/PG-13 horror movie. The original art was one of my least favorites from those shown, so just about anything would be an improvement.
Also, art is opinion. I remember seeing a painting in a nearby national art museum. It was brown rectangle over a blue oval on white canvas. That's it. I, personally, thought it was god awful since I, having no artistic talent, could produce it. However, there it was hanging in a museum...
Unlike most people, i like both arts for this card.
Evil winged thing normal art and evil winged pirranhalike bat critter promo.
If anything I like this one more than the other as it seems more lorwyn/shadowmooresque than the other which could have been a rav art easily...
I think he prerelease art however would look better unfoiled and the normal art would make a good foil.
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"But then are we most in order when we are most out of order."-Jack Cade
"That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die."
- H.P. Lovecraft
If this is legit, (because i believe it to be fake) , i am reading the artist to be Izzy, if this is true the artist is most probably Izzy Medrano, he has worked with WOTC with D&D art before. Just unusual to see only one name for the artist.
God, I will never ever be able to play this card art or face it without snickering. I keep visualizing an episode of Yugioh, with someone casting this spell and shouting, "GO FLYING WANG OF DOOM!"
*dissolves into another giggling fit* I think our D&D group thinks i'm insane, I kept bursting into giggles all afternoon after seeing this.
It's definitely nice to see a good, playable card as the prerelease, though the art is just well below standard. The last several promos have set a high bar, and this one falls flat on its face.
Agreed on all counts here. It is a nice creature. But the phallic allusion is a little too strong.
omg a 6/5 flying ***** that can attack the turn it comes down!!! if they showed this thing on tv it would have to be pixelated. seriously that is some really bad art and i can see everyone laughing at the artist for making this.
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Life moves pretty fast sometimes, if you don't stop
and look around every once and a while you could miss it. - ferris bueller
OK, I hope this is real. I, for one, would love to smite mine enemy with a ***** Monster. That would be awesome, a swarm of ***** monsters... *giggles madly*
Legacy/Vintage GWREnchanted Eve (building) ~ BPoxy Pox
Standard WUMeow-Go~BU Infection
Casual BWAngel Doom ~ GRWWarpride ~ WGUStoic Control (ARG)
EDH BRGWUScion of the Ur-Dragon ~ BSiezan, The Perverter of Truth ~ W 8.5 Tails (needs work) All my Decks.
The odds that the only card we already know being the prerelease card are actually pretty good, by my reckoning.
Consider that the prerelease card is in many cases the first card that's "unofficially" spoiled, or at least one of the first ones. Rather than taking the risk of having it spoiled wrong, or without art, or with a goofily translated name from another language, Wizards was able to cut it off by previewing it all pretty on their site.
Second, they're looking for similar qualities in the prerelease card and in the card they previewed on the site in the preview pack - a big, splashy probably-a-creature rare that shows off the main set theme.
Just look at the cut. The plainness of the card + prerelease-announce text. Think about that art. Look at the artist's credit! I can't tell who that says, can you?
'SHOPPED.
So my theory is that Gwendly found this, but unbeknownst to him, it's just a fake floating around the web from some guy.
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Well, from my perspective. Both art renditions of the card do have value you to me from sort of an artistic standpoint. Both fit the context well in a sence to the name and the flavor text of the card (although, we don't know if it has any implications in the storyline of Shadowmoor).
From what I've gathered so far that Shadowmoor is going to be a bit of a dark, morbid kind of block WotC is going to release. At the same time, not too dark so that parents are going to want to keep the cards away from their kids since this is a game that's supposedly rated for the ages of 13 and up.
Anyway, what I'm getting at is that the prerelease version is a reflection of how ghastly or how (what's the word I'm looking for here...?) for lack of a better term, ghoulish that the card is supposed to be. Let's take a look at it's name, for example, and dissect what it means.
Demigod:
Quote from thefreedictionary.com »
1. Mythologya. A male being, often the offspring of a god and a mortal, who has some but not all of the powers of a god. b. An inferior deity; a minor god. c. A deified man.
2. A person who is highly honored or revered.
Revenge:
Quote from thefreedictionary.com »
1. To inflict punishment in return for (injury or insult). 2. To seek or take vengeance for (oneself or another person); avenge. n.
1. The act of taking vengeance for injuries or wrongs; retaliation. 2. Something done in vengeance; a retaliatory measure. 3. A desire for revenge; spite or vindictiveness. 4. An opportunity to retaliate, as by a return sports match after a defeat.
Now, we can see here that demigod has some sort of foundation in mythology as a god of inferior status to that of a superior god that may or may not be defiled in some way, shape, or form. This gives us a basis for how the creature may look like in the card but it's too broad a term to give us any real significance as to what was actually commissioned by WotC to the artist that took up the task. But, what we do get from this is that WotC has in the past and probably with cards they make now loosely (and I do mean loosely) base some cards on mythology or other tidbits of lore.
If I were to hazard a guess, I would think that WotC acknowledges this fact in the form of the cards creature types: Spirit Avatar. Which is interesting if you take the definitions of both, yet again, from thefreedictionary.com...
Spirit:
Quote from thefreedictionary.com »
4. A supernatural being, as:a. An angel or a demon. b. A being inhabiting or embodying a particular place, object, or natural phenomenon. c. A fairy or sprite.
Avatar:
Quote from thefreedictionary.com »
3. A temporary manifestation or aspect of a continuing entity
Granted I only took snipets of the full defintions of both from the site, but I think these parts are the most relevant to the discussion. As we see with the word spirit, it suggests that the creature in the card is of a supernatural origin. And with avatar we see that the entity may or may not be always manifest in a physical form. The point here is that with the cards name being that of Demigod and it's creature type being that of Spirit Avatar, each is in direct correlation with each other concerning the flavor of the card.
Secondly, we have the word: Revenge. Which solidifies the card to indeed be dark and/or morbid by the term defined according to thefreedictionary.com. It gives us more of an idea what the artwork may or may not look like as a finish product. In conjunction with the other words provided on the card this creature the card is perpectuating can be that of a creature we see in the prerelease version (as well as the regular version).
A dark entity that is hellbent on getting revenge on those who have done wrong to it. Maybe not necessarily that, but in the the prerelease version you can clearly see that it is bound by chains, straps, etc. and it appears to be breaking out of them. It's face is visably anguished by the pain it's in. For the regular version, it seems to be emerging from some kind of pit of dark substances (maybe a spawning pit?) Both artworks have a moon of some kind in them and both are apparently been portrayed as taking action in the night, which adds to the atmosphere of being dark or morbid.
Next, we have it's flavor text.
"His laugh, a bellowing, deathly din, slices through the heavens, making them bleed."- The Seer's Parables
As we can see here, the name of Demigod is reinforced in the format the flavor text is presented. It mentions the word heavens and is to be attributed to a source named The Seer's Parables. We all know that the word heaven is a direct reference to the state and existance of a spirit world in which the phsyical realm is separated from. This is prevelant in a few of Magic: the Gathering's expansion blocks, most notably: Kamigawa. The notion of this flavor text leads me to believe that it does play somewhat of a role in how the artwork may have been created. Although, that's a bit loosely speculated on my part but it does kind of fit into both artworks a little bit.
Lastly, I guess what my main reason for these artworks is that it's supposed to be dark and just because you may or may not like the artwork doesn't make it crap right off the bat.
Although, as it was posted a lot earlier, the prerelease are does resemble the male genitalia a little bit; which is kind of disturbing. I guess only twisted mindsets would only think of it that way but I'm not going to get into that here. There's no reason to.
So my theory is that Gwendly found this, but unbeknownst to him, it's just a fake floating around the web from some guy.
Please read what's in the thread before posting.
The picture comes from a major distributor of Magic product, on their official tournament site. There is no reasonable explanation for this besides the site receiving the image from Wizards for purposes of advertising their prerelease with.
Honestly, if anyone thinks a card is Photoshopped, they should go out and find the art before posting. In the past, cards with art pulled off the 'net have been exposed very quickly by dilligent searchers; if you can't establish a source for the art then the most important question ("where'd the art come from?") is unresolved and we have nothing but people's (extremely unreliable) opinions of whether a picture is real or not to go on.
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Even if you disagree, people really need to stop "calling" fake. If you have a reason to believe some information is inaccurate, provide it; trying to be the first or the loudest to express doubt doesn't help anyone figure out whether info is real, it just makes threads harder to read and makes arguments more likely.
Really? I can see it with the Mirrodin cards that introduced the practice, but on a lot of them I'm really shocked anyone could prefer the original art. All the Ravnica cards have almost ludicrously superior art on the playtest versions, I find, and the prerelease Korlash is nothing short of gorgeous.
I think that this is the worst SHA art I have seen yet, and though this card being the prerelease foil was predictable, it is in no way satisfying.
The artist is a new artist to Magic and I just doubt that they are going to have some new artist's "crappy art" be the Pre-Release Card Commission. It just doesn't "feel right" something about it isn't sitting well with me.
Something else I was thinking about....
The art here has NO relevance to the regular versions art. Most alternate art at least "resembles" the regular art.
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?p=5401186#post5401186
My three main questions I believe bring this card's authenticity into question are:
1. Who is the actual artist? Most fake cards don't have an artist's name. This one barely has any text for the artist.
2. There's no watermark in the text box of the Shadowmoor symbol. If this was a real scan of the Prerelease card, the watermark would show up even if the foil didn't (however, most, if not all, foils show up when scanned into a computer).
3. The actual picture of the Demigod does not match the alternate art in some key features. Real Demigod has horns, some sort of Mohawk feature on his head, and has curled tips at the point of its wings. The "Phallic" Demigod has no horns, no Mohawk, and has small hands at the point of its wings (if you look closely, you'll see what I mean). If one feature was slightly altered, I can understand. But three key features that don't match? Shenanigans.
Unless someone can come up with a solid, evidence supported reason to any of these questions/points, I will gladly accept it.
I just wanted to add one more thing. Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't some non-US cards have varied or different art than their US counterparts? Seeing as how this is from a Nordic website, it could just be different art for Europe or Nordic countries.
Okay. Why the different art features if it's supposed to be the same creature? Why do they look different in several categories? Who is the actual artist? Where's the watermark?
It looks like it's a short one-word pseudonym. Other artists have been known to go by handles or a single name on the cards they illustrate.
It's a computer mockup given out by Wizards for distributors to use in their advertising. It wouldn't necessarily have the correct watermark or appear to be foiled. (Mockups are used in most cases to advertise prerelease cards until someone actually gets their hands on the product.)
This actually tends to be true whenever the two illustrations are by different artists. Check out Korlash, Heir to Blackblade for an example.
Only China, only when the art depicts nudity or skeletons, and 90% of the time the art is just computer-altered to an acceptable state.
Okay. Thanks for the explanation.
God, I will never ever be able to play this card art or face it without snickering. I keep visualizing an episode of Yugioh, with someone casting this spell and shouting, "GO FLYING WANG OF DOOM!"
*dissolves into another giggling fit* I think our D&D group thinks i'm insane, I kept bursting into giggles all afternoon after seeing this.
It's definitely nice to see a good, playable card as the prerelease, though the art is just well below standard. The last several promos have set a high bar, and this one falls flat on its face.
Clan MTGSalivation :: Trade Thread
"In another life, in another dream,
By a different name,
Gave it all away for a memory and a quiet lie.
But I felt the face of a cold tonight,
Still don't know the score,
But I know the pain of leaving everything very far behind.
And if I could cry,
And if I could live,
What truth I did then take me there,
Heaven Goodbye."
-Heaven's Not Enough, by Steve Conte
nudity?
where? when?
Nudity beyond whatever standards the Chinese censorship rules consider inappropriate, which would be in practice certain levels of scantily-dressed.
Also, art is opinion. I remember seeing a painting in a nearby national art museum. It was brown rectangle over a blue oval on white canvas. That's it. I, personally, thought it was god awful since I, having no artistic talent, could produce it. However, there it was hanging in a museum...
Evil winged thing normal art and evil winged pirranhalike bat critter promo.
If anything I like this one more than the other as it seems more lorwyn/shadowmooresque than the other which could have been a rav art easily...
I think he prerelease art however would look better unfoiled and the normal art would make a good foil.
"That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die."
- H.P. Lovecraft
Agreed on all counts here. It is a nice creature. But the phallic allusion is a little too strong.
and look around every once and a while you could miss it. - ferris bueller
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GWREnchanted Eve (building) ~ BPoxy Pox
Standard
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BWAngel Doom ~ GRWWarpride ~ WGUStoic Control (ARG)
EDH
BRGWUScion of the Ur-Dragon ~ BSiezan, The Perverter of Truth ~ W 8.5 Tails (needs work)
All my Decks.
Consider that the prerelease card is in many cases the first card that's "unofficially" spoiled, or at least one of the first ones. Rather than taking the risk of having it spoiled wrong, or without art, or with a goofily translated name from another language, Wizards was able to cut it off by previewing it all pretty on their site.
Second, they're looking for similar qualities in the prerelease card and in the card they previewed on the site in the preview pack - a big, splashy probably-a-creature rare that shows off the main set theme.
Just look at the cut. The plainness of the card + prerelease-announce text. Think about that art. Look at the artist's credit! I can't tell who that says, can you?
'SHOPPED.
So my theory is that Gwendly found this, but unbeknownst to him, it's just a fake floating around the web from some guy.
Awesome avatar provided by Krashbot @ [Epic Graphics].
From what I've gathered so far that Shadowmoor is going to be a bit of a dark, morbid kind of block WotC is going to release. At the same time, not too dark so that parents are going to want to keep the cards away from their kids since this is a game that's supposedly rated for the ages of 13 and up.
Anyway, what I'm getting at is that the prerelease version is a reflection of how ghastly or how (what's the word I'm looking for here...?) for lack of a better term, ghoulish that the card is supposed to be. Let's take a look at it's name, for example, and dissect what it means.
Demigod:
Revenge:
Now, we can see here that demigod has some sort of foundation in mythology as a god of inferior status to that of a superior god that may or may not be defiled in some way, shape, or form. This gives us a basis for how the creature may look like in the card but it's too broad a term to give us any real significance as to what was actually commissioned by WotC to the artist that took up the task. But, what we do get from this is that WotC has in the past and probably with cards they make now loosely (and I do mean loosely) base some cards on mythology or other tidbits of lore.
If I were to hazard a guess, I would think that WotC acknowledges this fact in the form of the cards creature types: Spirit Avatar. Which is interesting if you take the definitions of both, yet again, from thefreedictionary.com...
Spirit:
Avatar:
Granted I only took snipets of the full defintions of both from the site, but I think these parts are the most relevant to the discussion. As we see with the word spirit, it suggests that the creature in the card is of a supernatural origin. And with avatar we see that the entity may or may not be always manifest in a physical form. The point here is that with the cards name being that of Demigod and it's creature type being that of Spirit Avatar, each is in direct correlation with each other concerning the flavor of the card.
Secondly, we have the word: Revenge. Which solidifies the card to indeed be dark and/or morbid by the term defined according to thefreedictionary.com. It gives us more of an idea what the artwork may or may not look like as a finish product. In conjunction with the other words provided on the card this creature the card is perpectuating can be that of a creature we see in the prerelease version (as well as the regular version).
A dark entity that is hellbent on getting revenge on those who have done wrong to it. Maybe not necessarily that, but in the the prerelease version you can clearly see that it is bound by chains, straps, etc. and it appears to be breaking out of them. It's face is visably anguished by the pain it's in. For the regular version, it seems to be emerging from some kind of pit of dark substances (maybe a spawning pit?) Both artworks have a moon of some kind in them and both are apparently been portrayed as taking action in the night, which adds to the atmosphere of being dark or morbid.
Next, we have it's flavor text.
"His laugh, a bellowing, deathly din, slices through the heavens, making them bleed."- The Seer's Parables
As we can see here, the name of Demigod is reinforced in the format the flavor text is presented. It mentions the word heavens and is to be attributed to a source named The Seer's Parables. We all know that the word heaven is a direct reference to the state and existance of a spirit world in which the phsyical realm is separated from. This is prevelant in a few of Magic: the Gathering's expansion blocks, most notably: Kamigawa. The notion of this flavor text leads me to believe that it does play somewhat of a role in how the artwork may have been created. Although, that's a bit loosely speculated on my part but it does kind of fit into both artworks a little bit.
Lastly, I guess what my main reason for these artworks is that it's supposed to be dark and just because you may or may not like the artwork doesn't make it crap right off the bat.
Although, as it was posted a lot earlier, the prerelease are does resemble the male genitalia a little bit; which is kind of disturbing. I guess only twisted mindsets would only think of it that way but I'm not going to get into that here. There's no reason to.
Please read what's in the thread before posting.
The picture comes from a major distributor of Magic product, on their official tournament site. There is no reasonable explanation for this besides the site receiving the image from Wizards for purposes of advertising their prerelease with.
Honestly, if anyone thinks a card is Photoshopped, they should go out and find the art before posting. In the past, cards with art pulled off the 'net have been exposed very quickly by dilligent searchers; if you can't establish a source for the art then the most important question ("where'd the art come from?") is unresolved and we have nothing but people's (extremely unreliable) opinions of whether a picture is real or not to go on.