MTG was about 15 at the time of the old article. So, Xth Edition or so. I can't believe we are actually in post-20th Anniversary land.....
The timeline of the writing of the articles is MUCH easier to trace than the timeline of the actual frikkin story, so that's what I'm clarifying instead.
(This is heavily based off of Yu-Gi-Oh! the Abridged Series and should be considered like...."If Deadpool was allowed to make Magic Cards, what would they look like?"
It was amazingly fun to stitch together Acererak. Not a damn one of your arguments counts against Acererak and Eternity!
However Doctor Strange is really giving me problems. As stated in Original Post, I welcome more submissions of Doctor Strange! Help me figure out what he should be! He's known for being the Sorceror Supreme, so trying to figure out how to make that a Magic card is tricky!
What color or colors would you make Galactus? The Phoenix Force? Uatu the Watcher? A Celestial? (Probably a Jund Colored Artifact?)
Also, we need some Disney and Yu-Gi-Oh! up in here! Please add stuff!
I want to start a thread specifically for Crossover Customs. Stuff that would be extremely creative and new for Magic the Gathering, but blatantly obviously ripped from somewhere else.
What would happen if DnD and MTG met?
What would happen if Marvel-616 or MCU were planes of the multiverse?
This isn't a thread for any and all crossover you can imagine-- for example, no Animorphs Transform cards, because Animorphs is just too different from MTG. Almost No Star Trek except for really Cosmic Aliens (stuff that could fit in Marvel Comics). Almost No Star Wars except for Jedi and Sith and really Cosmic Aliens.
Try to keep it roughly to High Fantasy-with-Multiverses. Mostly I was thinking specifically for DnD and Marvel, but if you think of something that's enough like the genre-intent, that's cool. Harry Potter would work because that's some type of Magic. Hunger Games would not. Twilight would not. Pokémon would not. Yu-Gi-Oh! would. Disney and Kingdom Hearts is A-OK! Get the idea? OK!
Please, this might seem like a weird request, but nothing that is 100% original. Connect it to other franchises. If you really want to make an OC, set them in one of those Universes and explain their relationship to a major character from there.
When Designing Cards, think of making sure that they have a Definite, Awesome, Place. They BELONG somewhere. Maybe they're top-down flavor home runs that recreate in Card Mechanics exactly what you'd want in a movie representation, to hell with Development.
Maybe they clearly are genre-savvy about the Rules of Magic and are aimed at a Constructed Format and a particular deck, like Vintage, and their flavor comes first from the deck.
Maybe they're for a Format, like Multiplayer, and to hell with EVERYTHING, you just want to get a REACTION of terror, confusion, and awe.
Let's kick things off with some stuff!
Aspect Of Acererak: So I here you like Dredge. Welcome to Necromancy 101, allow me to school you.
ETERNITY: Honestly this guy should be an Emblem as well but whatever. I don't think this could be almost any other set of mechanics.
Master of the Mystic Arts: This guy's going through a lot of Development. There's at least three Multiverses (Magic, DnD, and Marvel) to draw inspiration from, just too many different possible powers! He could have been a Leveler that turns into a Planeswalker that Transforms and he still wouldn't have been magic Enough, lol. But I tried to cram as much Magic as possible. I didn't have room for revealing the top card of libraries, looking at other player's hidden zones, time travel, or playing extra lands. I would absolutely love for people to submit as many variants of Doctor Strange as possible because he's frikking awesome.
Please include proper artist credit on all renders (ign.com is not sufficient). I am taking down all uncredited renders, you may edit these posts to include renders with artist credit or text versions of your cards. - Gerrard's Mom
I mean....Basic Land Tokens? That's kind of weird. We have fetch lands that search for basics already without making tokens of basics. Your card could easily be replaced with the templating of those.
Here is a slightly more serious card. I promise not to flood the thread with any more cards today but I just couldn't choose which of these two to upload first.
Edit: Artist credit should be IGN.com
I'm sorry but you'll have to use Gatherer to fully appreciate it's glorifying (that's 'horrifying glory') and awesomeness. I had to find a way to make as much text fit as cleanly as possible into the card.
Do not comment on this card if you're a developer. This card is not for people who don't like winning.
Without further ado!
Ghostfire and Ugin are awesome. Morph is a surprisingly elegant way to make it make sense and have colorless mechanics stuff be useful without
making too many Eldrazi.
Ugin and Ghost Fire stuff? Confirmed. Eldrazi? I hate to say it so vaguely-- but -- all we have is ''lack of confirmation''-- which is also a lack of denial. It's not likely. It won't be likely until we actually see them in it confirmed in next set or something. But hey, whatever, it's not impossible. Jace the Mind Sculptor getting reprinted is for example less likely.
Look at what they put out about the Bolas-related cards in M13: they're there to show Bolas is still around, still plotting, still a character. He's getting CORE set treatment because he has the Status of the Lorwyn Five as a Major Player in the Multiverse. This is a guy they want to keep around for a WHILE, and while they may think years ahead, they may talk amongst themselves in the Pit "who could kill Bolas in a fight?", for now they don't even have the guts to kill off Garruk, who really should have, story-wise, died on Innistrad.
Killing off Bolas is to Wizards like killing off Lex Luthor is to DC: The Company doesn't value the character as much as the fans do, but they're sure as hell going to keep doing things that make the company money. They have the perfect villainous Evil to keep bringing back every now and then.
Bet you anything Khans of Tarkir is what they were getting at: less than what we expect, but Wizards hasn't told us any lies and it fits: Bolas is "back" in the story, once again, being reused, just like Ajani was reused in Theros, but not particularly central or important and didn't do much.
We're looking at it from the point of view of spectators and they're looking at it from the point of view of directors. They're thinking not about the sequels to the story as -the point-, they're thinking 'how do we keep making more sequels ad infinitum', or 'how do we entertain the people who want the sequels to be the point or to have meaning.'
Currently Wizards has zero plans to tell what would be a satisfactory End to a Story, or a Completion of a Story. That would leave the audience --too-- Satisfied, -too- content, ready to move on. Wizards doesn't want us to move on from Magic. Wizards wants our money. Wizards wants us always wondering what's going to happen.
We have been given no signs of Bolas being replaced or supplanted as a feature villain. IF (and that's a big if) we EVER start to see Bolas' overall importance completely diminish, which would take the form of, rather than making him the Big Bad of a Core Set, simply Not Ever Mentioning Him Again, (the way they've treated Urza's Spark in Karn's Body- they could any day of the week bring back Urza Planeswalker through Writing Magic, but they have decided to set themselves against doing that until further notice. Same way Barry Allen was brought back through Writing Magic to the DC Universe after Decades of being 'dead'.)
LONG STORY SHORT:
Magic needs a Main, Talking, Villain Planeswalker to be written about, printed, and featured in, I think, at least Two Blocks, probably 3, before they'll consider axing Bolas. And I mean someone hyped up at LEAST as much as Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Sorin, Lord of Innistrad =combined=. Sorin is a badass in the Magic World, Jace is a Badass in the Real World of Finance. We'd need them to somehow decide to deliberately overpower a card, have it actually be overpowered in the real world, and have Another Jace Problem be Wizards' Actual Intent for showcasing off the New Horrible Uba Evil.
Because I'm fairly confidant that not even in the secret Pit Meetings are they seriously discussing "when is Bolas going to die", I can safely assume there is no WAY they are ''teasing'' it. If I start to see a villainous character take prominence, and it looks like they're building him up to Replace Bolas as the Big Bad, (currently Garruk is the closest candidate, and even that's quite a bit of a stretch. Claiming Garruk is going to replace Bolas as the main villain is like claiming Jason Todd's Red Hood is going to replace the Joker because we see this new villain. Nah. Just Nah. They'll write about a confrontation maybe, but the Established Arch Enemy is far from being Dethroned as such.)
As I write all this, there remains, in fact, one distinct possibility:
Currently, The Eldrazi themselves fit almost all of the descriptions I setup as requirements for ''conditions under which Wizards would be willing for Bolas to die"
Except.
They're not Sentient. Not a Single Eldrazi has gotten a Single piece of Dialogue so far. New Phyrexia is the other possibility, but as far as I can tell, Bolas is More Powerful than New Phyrexia and New Phyrexia has no Planeswalkers.
M13 was about simply reminding us that Bolas was a member of the house's cast of characters. If they want to hit at Bolas possibly dying, they -will- do something more spectacular than that.
Pretty much, in fact, the only conditions under which I'd actually believe Bolas was dead, is if they made that the plot of an MTG Movie. Wizards might do anything, they could go bat***** insane, but if they go too far away from audience expectations, they'll lose money and have to reverse their decision.
Right now nobody expects Bolas to die. They THINK they want to see a CLASH between all the Major Characters of Magic up until now, but nobody is looking at what Wizards is doing and actually thinking ''yeah, they will follow through with what they've given us so for.''. Wizards is still Plane-hopping making a ton of episodes without advancing the Plot very much every year.
Once they stop Plane-hopping, maybe we'll see some actual Plot Development.