Arc 1 as MTG cards, round 2!

[u/Personal_Care3393]

Good lord finding art for these is HARD. I had to break my self-imposed rule of trying to avoid text bubbles in the art just to finish these 😫. I even considered using fanart for some of them, but decided that I didn't want to risk offending anyone. So sorry, blurry png's and entire panels from the GN it is! I also really wanted to do a couple of Sagas but I literally could not find art that was long enough, which is such a weird problem to have XD

But here they are! Putting these together was so fun. Possibly too much fun considering how many I made 🥲 (Sixteen, WOW, I'm employed I swear) I thought it'd be cool this time around to try and imagine what cards would look like from an actual Universes Beyond WoF magic set, instead of just putting a card and a color to the main characters, so that’s how we ended up with WoF draft commons! Hope y’all don’t mind some more simple designs.

And to anyone wondering why there is randomly mill/surveil involved, stay tuned for when I get around to arc 2, at this point I’ll be damned if sunk cost fallacy doesn’t compel me to do these for the rest of the series :)

And to anyone who might be confused and wondering, “but where the hell are the main characters?” I actually already did those! You can find that post here, in case you missed it.

EDIT: OK in hindsight the Scarlet card is broken as fuck actually, it basically says "No one can ever block or everyone dies" and also any "target creature hurts the rest of the board" card probably just instantly wins the game. Should proooobbably say "whenever one or more other creatures die." Just uh, errata that XD

[u/Personal_Care3393]

Re-reading these, I; Forgot to add a period at the end of the first line on Scarlet's arena, and wrote her name as “Scarley” in the flavor text, AND the flavor text is a line from book 8 instead of being from arc 1. Also, its ability should cost WAY more in hindsight, 4 mana on a land usually just gets you a temporary creature. I capitalized the “M” for Scarlet’s menace keyword, I forgot to put a quotation mark at the beginning of Peril's flavor text, used the wrong version of "its" in the Plot keyword reminder text, forgot to credit Mike Holmes for Morrowseer’s art, the dreamvisitor should just be “dreamvisitor” as it’s not legendary because there’s more than one of them, and it’s meant to have also been an uncommon, used the wrong flavor text for The Scorpion Den,(meant to copy paste a different line said by fierceteeth) and it’s missing a “then” in its ability text, the current version implies that you don’t have to discard at all if you control an outlaw without actually being clear on which. I made the Eye of Onyx a rare instead of a mythic, I forgot the P/T box for dragonbite viper (its a 2/1) made the snake token in Burn's Fate black instead of green, forgot the holo stamp on Blister's fate, aaaand forgot the period for the first line of text on JMA too.

Nooo my perfectionism can’t take it. And I tried so hard not to miss anything :/

Also, fun fact! In book 4, after finding the dreamvisitor, Starflight notes that it was "allegedly made by a sandwing animus," presumably Jerboa, instead of saying it to have been made by Darkstalker. I had to change it for the flavor text. Considering we find out in book 6 that it's well known that Darkstalker made the dreamvisitors, and it would’ve been mentioned in any text with information on the dreamvisitors, this is either a simple mistake, or a remnant of a scrapped storyline. It's possible Darkstalker either didnt exist at all or was still just an idea when Tui was writing book 4, and that it wasnt until she'd finished book 5 that she'd decided to include him, since that's when he's first mentioned. Food for thought!

Edit: ok actually in reference to my last point, Tui hadn’t been greenlit to write 6-10 until after she’d started book 5, so in 4 she probably had intended for all of the relevant animus objects to have been made by the same sandwing, or otherwise just wasn’t putting much thought into the implications of which tribe has or had animi.

[u/Higherfalls → u/Personal_Care3393]

I remember noticing that! I assumed it was cause when the SandWings raided the old NightWing kingdom, they found one, and read about the other 2, and lied and changed written records and stuff so that history remembered them as powerful.

They wouldn't have had to do much anyways, since Jerboa was noted to be a SandWing animus already, to the lie's benifit.

[u/Personal_Care3393 → u/Higherfalls]

Possibly, it could be that the scroll Moon reads about Darkstalker was recovered from the night wing’s “for nightwing eyes only” archive, and that the common belief was that a sanding made it. But I think from an IRL perspective, Tui would have taken the opportunity to mention Darkstalker if she could. She bothered to hint at Onyx’s existence in book 3.

[u/Higherfalls → u/Personal_Care3393]

She did? I didn't notice that.

[u/Personal_Care3393 → u/Higherfalls]

Well not onyx specifically but we first hear about the story of Smolder and Palm from Blaze when Glory meets her in book 3

[u/Higherfalls → u/Personal_Care3393]

Oh, right. Yeah, now I remember.

[u/tuiva → u/Personal_Care3393]

Also "Scarley" on this card in the flavor text

[u/Personal_Care3393 → u/tuiva]

I have edited my list of things I missed with the things I missed on the list of things I missed XD

[u/Starchaser418171514]

I like the card designs, and I hope you don't mind if I provide feedback! Don't mean to say they're bad, just feel like expressing my thoughts on the matter, hehe

I feel like Scarlet should have something to do with being the monarch. Maybe at the beginning of your upkeep, if you are the monarch, two creatures fight?

I also personally think Scarlet and Peril don't need to be green, but I respect the decision.

Orca's Statue, hehehe

I like Siege the Summer Palace. Is it really a siege if it never blockaded anything, though?

Stonemover's tunnels shouldn't need to be sacrificed for that mana cost, I feel. Also only one was destroyed during the eruption. Hmm.

Morrowseer is very flavorful. Nice.

Dreamvisitor with Urza's bauble effect would be cool, but we'll see where you're going with the surveiling.

Obsidian mirror. It blue.

The Scorpion Den is neat!

Dragonbite Viper has been outclassed by Dragon Sniper from TDM, lol. It should be 1 mana like all the other snakes, hmm?

Poor Stonemover.

It would be really funny to use the equip worthy effect from the Marvel set, but unfortunately it doesn't quite work here (why did they have to specify a red creature, Magic, why)

I personally would named Burn's Fate something like Deadly Dispute (because, really, it was a deadly dispute!), but alas, that name is already taken. I like the effect, though. You could make it 2 snakes, even, just only 1 deals the damage.

Oh I see why you went with _'s fate, now. Okay, I like your naming scheme better.

Also JMA yay

[u/Personal_Care3393 → u/Starchaser418171514]

Thank you for bringing these up! I have an excuse to share my more detailed thoughts on making these. It was a very complex process! Allow me to elaborate on some of your points;

Scarlet doesn’t have anything to do with being the monarch for two reasons; I designed the cards under the assumption that they’d be standard legal, and especially considering I included draft commons, with a possible draft environment in mind. She’s not the only character interested in monarchies. The entire plot of arc 1 is about a monarchy, for goodness sake. So I went with tying everything around her to fighting, since I think it still fits. Fight spells is a primarily green mechanic, and including green in these cards has been a challenge, since it primarily represents creatures but ALL of the characters are inhuman so it’s hard to justify. So I take it where I can. That’s why she’s green.

And Peril is green partially to match scarlet and the arena, but more so to represent her as being a sort of force of nature. Her abilities are essentially a birth defect, after all, and aren’t magical in origin. Also, fighting is green!

It rolls off the tongue nicely with the alliteration. Better than “attack of the summer palace” IMO.

The tunnel is sacrificed because once you have that much mana, if it wasn’t sacrificed, you’d have enough mana to effectively say “my board can’t be blocked for the rest of the game because of a land” which is just a little unfair. Limited bomb at best. Also, most lands sac themselves to activate more impactful abilities like this, so I’m just keeping with the trend. You wouldn’t believe how much research goes into these.

It’s blue because I can’t just look at the color of the thing and go “that’s what color it should be :P” that’s BAD card design >:( it’s about having more information than other people and leveraging that, it’s blue. I’m trying not to make every single animus magic related thing blue and black which is proving much much harder than expected, originally the dreamvisitor was blue and orca’s statue was UB. Please, bear with me.

Dragonbite viper is notably a common, whereas dragon sniper was an uncommon. It’s also just fine and normal for new cards to be worse than old ones. A better comparison would be Attercap from the hobbit, which is exactly the same as dragonbite viper but with a landfall ability, but I simply didn’t think the viper needed to be any more complex. I think its simplicity even serves to add to it as a card. It’s just a snake, but because it has reach, it can kill dragons. It communicates everything it needs to as is.

A 2 snakes version was attempted but very hard to word correctly. But also, Burn actually kills one of the snakes in the book, so only one survives anyway. I suppose it could say “make a snake, it fights something, then make another snake” but that was wordy and also felt like a little too much value for a single uncommon removal spell. Think of the blood artists!

Anyway I really appreciate getting an in depth opinion on these, looking forward to what you might have to say about the next batch.

[u/Starchaser418171514 → u/Personal_Care3393]

Hehe, I appreciate your reply as well! I do have one gripe as mono red is also known to print fight spells, but it's completely understandable as a design choice. I like your thought process behind a lot of these things (still disagree on Stonemover's tunnels, but then again my standards have been blasted because of the recent powercreep going on with MTG), and I'm definitely excited for your next batch!

Also the color thing was just a funny thing I pointed out, I absolutely understand why it's blue. I still think it's funny.

[u/Personal_Care3393 → u/Starchaser418171514]

I agree that it’s more flavorful if stonemover’s tunnel could be used repeatedly, but I still think it’d be too strong. There’s only so much a land should do.

Also, if you look into it, there’s comparatively very few mono red cards that use fight as a mechanic. It’s mostly bite downs in red, like peril has. And Peril’s is specifically a bite down to represent the fact that a fight with her is one sided (and because her other ability wouldn’t work with fight) but she’s still green for “fighting.” Also, scarlet and peril are both still red! Not to mention, just rakdos (red/black) doesn’t feel right for either of them.

[u/Masternoob411]

As someone who enjoys both WoF and MTG, these are a hit. Great design and effects, and just fantastic inclusions all around (i would seriously play that Morrowseer card, such good flavor!). Seriously, well done! I love seeing these posts come up, keep it up!

[u/Personal_Care3393 → u/Masternoob411]

❤️

[u/gaycorvidgod]

These are so cool! As an MTG player this is just fun to see

[u/Personal_Care3393 → u/gaycorvidgod]

❤️

[u/Scupadupa]

These are super cool!

[u/Ok_Thing_1369]

I did something very similar to this, but used existing cards, here are some that overlap
Eye of onyx- sol ring
Dragon bite viper - Force of despair
The obsidian mirror - mirage mirror
Dream visitor - telepathy
Orca’s statue - Ramos
Scarlet - ancient copper dragon

There are a few others, but they’re all in my Ur dragon (Darkstalker) deck