The Art of MtG Spider-Man, part 1

I’m going to start by putting aside any discussion of card quality, necessity of printing, cost of cards, anything like that. This post is not a forum for my opinions on the state of the game. I’m just here to look at the art on the cards. Who made them, what else they’ve done across Magic and other properties, are there any cool references, things like that. We’re here to celebrate artistic achievement.

There will also be criticism of any non-standard frames, alt-art styles, anything that messes with the normal layout of the card. Some of these are great, some of these are problematic.

Oh, this also might not be an exhaustive list. So many people make art for Magic, I’ll try to highlight the most interesting ones, but you should support everyone (who doesn’t get caught plagiarizing). I’m also only doing 5 at a time, so I can put these out at a reasonable pace, rather than wait a while and put out a gigantic post.

Let’s start near the top of the alphabetical list with Aunt May.

Randy Gallegos might be familiar to anyone who has been playing Magic for a while. A lot of the artists that draw for modern Magic started relatively recently, but Randy is part of the old guard. Nemesis all-star Accumulated Knowledge? There’s Randy. Excellent reanimation spell Dance of the Dead? Randy again. The very first printing of Shock? It’s your boy. He’s been drawing Magic history for decades.

Also, shoutout to his art series Hearts for Hardware, a series where he paints classic video game hardware. Now I want a Secret Lair with the Sega Dreamcast in it.

All right, who’s next? Ooo, Beetle.

Carlos Dattoli has only done four cards for Magic, all for Spider-Man. This is a good sign that he’s done significant work elsewhere, and indeed he has. Looking through his ArtStation profile, looks like he’s done a lot of Power Rangers comic covers, along with some splash art for Marvel and TMNT. Time will tell if we’ll see Carlos again for the TMNT set.

How about some Carnage?

That’s an interesting name, Lordigan. His real name is Pedro Sena, and if you couldn’t guess from the art on this card, Lordigan draws some pretty metal artwork. No, really. Album covers for metal bands. Here’s his ArtStation profile, but be prepared. It’s very pointy.

Time for another big splashy card with fun art history, Cosmic Spider-Man!

Again, those with an eagle eye will look at the artist and say, hey, wait a minute. Boros…like, the color pair? Oddly enough, that’s a coincidence, like Doug Bowser being the president of Nintendo America. But he is one of the longest tenured artists for Magic. At time of printing, Scryfall has him on almost 400 cards. Highlights include the Boo token for Minsc and Boo, classic cEDH annoyance Dargo, and a snazzy store league promo Soldier token. I’ll get working on my token appreciation posts eventually.

OK, one more, who is it…Eddie!

Another serious Magic veteran, Greg Staples is also on over 300 cards. Some of them are, in fact, staples, or at least fairly iconic. Baneslayer Angel, Buried Alive, and Chain of Smog, and that’s just on the first Scryfall page. He’s also know for a bunch of Judge Dredd comic book art.

All right, that’s the first five I’m going to look at. Right now, I’m working my way through Spider-Man, while collecting info about Avatar, Lorwyn, and TMNT as they become available. Expect those to start around the time that the full set spoilers are released.

Plus, I’ll be doing a deep dive on the history of tokens, so I can start up a post-release series on the tokens that each set adds to the game. How useful they are, should they slot into specific archetypes or general token strategies, etc.

I’m coming back, folks. I need stuff to keep me focused, and I think talking about Magic is that thing, at least for now. I’d appreciate feedback. Do you want me going more in-depth on artists? More examples of non-Magic artwork they’ve done? I’m here to make it happen.

See you next time, and remember, as much as the game changes, the art is always cool.

Commander Primer #5910

So I realized that not everyone who’s reading this plays Commander. Or Magic. And while I can’t make a perfect explanation of everything, I can give a general overview of Commander. Not Magic in general. At least not yet. Maybe I’ll put something together about how to play Magic one day.

Anyways, Commander.

Featuring Sean Connery

Commander was once known as Elder Dragon Highlander. It was named because you needed one of the five Elder Dragons in your deck, and much like the movie Highlander, there can be only one! …of any card in your deck. That is, your deck contains only singleton copies of cards. The idea of the format is a more casual way to play Magic.

One departure from more competitive Magic is the play group. Competitions for normal Magic is one on one. Commander is best played in a group of four in a multiplayer game. The singleton format is also a significant factor. Normal Magic is played with 60 cards, and you can have multiple copies of good cards. Not counting a normal land count of 20 or so, if you play the full 4 copies of a card, your deck is just the best 10 cards for your gameplan. Compare that to Commander’s 100-card deck, and required “only play one”, and now you’re playing at least 60 distinct cards (and also lands). You simply can’t have as effective or consistent of a deck with that much variety.

So why would you want to play a larger, less consistent version of a “normal” deck? Like I said before, it’s a more casual way to play. Commander has a significant social aspect. Instead of constantly trying to mush your enemy’s face, you’re laughing about misplays, telling stories about the last time you saw that obscure card, complaining about poor draws, etc. Does this mean you don’t want to win? No, of course not. But the course of play, and the people you play with, are just as important.

So now you know what you’re up against. 100 cards, no duplicates, let’s have fun. How do you do that?

Master and Commander (and partner and friends forever and doctor’s companion and background)

The most important part of your deck is your Commander. Your Commander can be: any legendary creature not currently banned in the format, or any legendary planeswalker that has the printed ability of “can be your Commander”. Some legendary creatures have extra rules text that let you play either a second legendary creature as a second Commander, or an enchantment as a second “commander”. But no matter if you’re on one card or two, your Commander(s) do something very important for the deck.

You cannot include any cards in your deck that do not share a color identity with your commander. Color identity includes: mana cost (for example, Eternal Witness is green, mana symbols that are part of the card text (for example, Copper Myr is green), or any color indicators printed on the card (for example, Dryad Arbor is green). This does limit what cards you can play, and makes your Commander selection important. If you want to play all these great green cards, your Commander has to have green in it.

Important Things: Mana

Commander is a bit of a slower format. Older competitive Magic tends to get things done around turn 2-4, depending on the format. Commander goes much slower, on average. One of the limits of how much you can get done is your mana. Magic is balanced around getting to play one land per turn, so you gain a maximum of +1 mana per turn. So, a good way to get ahead of the game and play your game plan faster is to get more than 1 mana per turn. Some colors are better at this than others. For example, green. For another example…no, it’s pretty much green. There’s other options, obviously, but green is the single best color for getting ahead on mana. Red gets temporary mana, white gets mana if it’s currently behind your opponents, blue’s mana tends to be for limited use, and black doesn’t really have much these days. Of course, some decks don’t want to waste their time, and playing a card that will get you mana later doesn’t do anything the turn you play it. But those are pretty big exceptions. Most decks want to have some sources of extra mana.

Important Things: Card Draw

Another aspect of balance in Magic is that you get to draw one card per turn. Once you’ve started to make more mana than you’re supposed to, you’re going to be able to play more cards per turn. So, now you need to draw more cards so you can play those more cards. This can come in a lot of ways. Blue is the best color for straight up “draw cards”. Black is second best, though their card draw usually comes with an extra payment, such as killing your stuff or losing life. Green and white don’t get great card draw, but it’s there, usually based on playing creatures, which both colors are good at doing. And red has two ways to get more cards. Either drawing and discarding, or getting temporary access to cards for a turn or two. It’s not as good as straight card draw, but if you can play those temporary cards, then it’s like you drew them! There’s plenty of other ways to get more cards too.

Important Things: Removal

This point is controversial, and it really shouldn’t be. If you want to eventually win the game, sometimes you need stop your opponents from winning the game. And sometimes, your opponents are stopping you from winning the game, and you need to stop them from stopping you.

That being said, stopping your opponents generally doesn’t make you actually win, so as with the other important categories, removal cards are cards that don’t advance your game plan, so having too many of them often creates problems, either from not enough ways to win, or from your opponents throwing you through a plate glass window.

Each color has its own type of removal that it excels at. Black removes creatures and makes people discard cards before they play them. Blue counters spells before they even happen, and returns things already played back to the hand. White removes cards entirely so they can’t be replayed, and also gets enchantments. Red blows up artifacts, and also gets direct damage that can kill creatures or players. And green is mid at artifacts and enchantments, and gets to make creatures fight each other, which can be good or bad.

Important Things: Winning the Game

Finally, we get to the part that you’ll focus on the most when making a deck. Up until this point, all the sections are cards that, in general, don’t make you win. Yes, more mana will eventually help you win. Drawing cards gives you a better chance to get the cards that make you win. Making sure your opponents don’t win is the first step to winning. But they’re not actually making you win, directly. That’s what this section is for.

Most of the time, this will be a selection of cards that turn your incidental cards from “ok, it’s mana, sure” into “oh, wow, this can kill people”. Making your creatures bigger, or unable to be blocked, or a big spell that deals a lot of damage. It’s the card you play when you’ve got just enough advantage that you can take a risk and try and win.

Another set of cards you’ll find here are powerful cards that can turn the tide of the game. Not necessarily cards that finish the game off, but allow you to take control of the game. These are the big splashy effects that force your opponents to have an answer, or else you’re going to start winning sometime soon.

The third set of cards you’ll find here are combos that finish the game. I personally don’t run a lot of combos, but this is where they go. Sometimes, your deck’s winning plan is to stall until you can just win on the spot.

Miscellaneous

Not every card neatly fits into these categories. I don’t always split my deck into these nice neat sections, but for now, I’m going to simplify things. If something doesn’t go in another place, it goes here.

Tutors (search your library for a specific card) will go here. Yes, tutors are often the best form of card draw. But in the spirit of a singleton deck, I consider tutors as a special inclusion. Argue about this with me later if you want.

This section is a little hard to nail down, hopefully things will make sense as we go.

Lands

A deck can’t survive without lands. Except when it can. It’s complicated.

When I’m making a deck, my default number of lands is 36, out of a 100 card deck. A little more than 1/3 of the deck. The goal is to play one land per turn for the first 4-5 turns of the game. 5 turns is 12 cards looked at, and on average, 36 lands would get you just over 4 lands. It’s the right math.

Got all that? Good. That’s what we’re playing with. Make your deck, shuffle it up, and get ready to play.

Return of the Mack

It’s 11pm and I’m putting words to digital paper for the first time in three years, at least on this site. Why? It’s not because I’m back to being unemployed. Far from it, actually. I’ve had a good job for these three years, and I’m looking towards higher education to get an even better job. But…I find myself needing to fill my time after work and before sleep in a more productive way. For now, that plan is going to be writing. Get ideas out of my head, make myself a little portfolio, maybe use it to get published on a real site once or twice. Wouldn’t that be nice?

I’d like it if people would read this, but honestly, I’m doing this to get shit done for myself. If no one reads this, I still wrote it. I still used my creativity in a way that makes me feel better. That’s what this is really about. But if you do run across this, or if you see me posting an ad somewhere and you like it, stick around. If things work out, you’re going to be seeing a lot.

What, indeed, will you be seeing? Well, my major hobby, the thing I spend money on almost as much as food and bills, the thing I think about too much, is Magic: the Gathering, predominately the Commander format, as well as cool art and story bits. So that’s what I’m going to write about. Yes, it’s a relatively limited topic compared to all the stuff I’ve written about before. But it’s something that I think I can speak on decently well, across a wide range of specific topics.

I’m still narrowing down the schedule. Do I want to write once a week? Four times? I’ll figure something out. But here’s the general idea.

There will be a cycle of posts, each cycle having 4 posts. Each cycle will be themed around a color combination for Commander.

I’ll cover the deck I’ve built for that color combination. It won’t be an in-depth look at every card, but I’ll cover what I consider the important categories of cards, and highlight anything in the deck that I consider non-“standard”.
I’ll pick a different commander from that color combination and put a deck together for it. The goal will be to make a very different deck, not just a few different cards, in order to show the great variety possible.
The best general cards/categories of card for the color combo. It’s not just “here’s the staples”, it’s the best cards for what that color combo likes to do.
Miscellaneous. I get one post per cycle to write about something Magic related that’s not those three topics.

Seems reasonable? Cool. Look for the first post about the first color combo, Colorless, sometime soon.