The most beautiful Magic: the Gathering cards

Now that I've returned to Magic, I want to take a moment to talk about the cards. Especially in an era of digital entertainment, part of the appeal of any card game is having the actual physical cards to handle, shuffle and look at. With Magic, this is what my high school history teacher would have called a double-barreled sword. On the one hand, I have to be honest: in terms of overall looks and design, getting back to Magic has strongly reminded me of how well-designed the cards of the Lord of the Rings living card game are. They are just lovely in a way that I think Magic cards have never been. But what Magic has going for it is sheer scale. With over 15 000 different cards, several with multiple versions, there's a huge library of cards to discover and rediscover, and whole boatloads of art. Some of it is, frankly, incredibly good.

To start with, here are some of our favorite contemporary(ish) Magic cards. We're great fans of Magali Villeneuve from her work on the Lord of the Rings card game; Arwen and Éowyn are staples of our decks and simply gorgeous cards. She's been doing more work for Magic lately, like the spectacular Wildfire Eternal for Hour of Devastation:

Her women are on another level altogether, though; Dulcet Sirens and Scrapper Champion are particular favorites of mine, but the best of the lot is surely Titania, Protector of Argoth.

Another fantastic current artist is Cynthia Sheppard, whose Shadow Alley Denizen is simply beautiful.

Dark Salvation is also a favorite of mine.

Mike Lim aka Daarken is another prominent exponent of these darker themes, with lovely cards like Shipwreck Singer and Bloodhusk Ritualist:

Looking at these images, it might not be entirely unfair to guess that he's a bit of a Luis Royo fan. That's okay, though, so are we. Here's a Barony Vampire:

For whatever reason, vampires seem to get some of the best art, but so do their opposite numbers, so to speak; as a theologian I'd be remiss if I didn't post at least one angel, so here's Avacyn, the Purifier by James Ryman.

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The above, I think, are fair examples of some of the best of the current line of Magic cards: almost hyperrealistic contemporary fantasy art of fairly uniform quality. Of course, this wasn't always the case. In older Magic sets, the quality and nature of the art varied wildly. You could get comic book art or an impressionist painting; it might be brilliant, and it might be awful. This is where you find the ugliest cards, but in my opinion, also the most beautiful. Rather than giving you a practically photorealistic depiction of what the card was supposed to represent, the older art often left you with a lot more room for imagination.

I talked about my enduring love for lands in my last post on Magic, and I think this is why I'm so fond of them. There are lots of great examples, but one that particularly stuck with me was Academy Ruins by Zoltan Boros and Gabor Szikszai.

There are lots of other lands I could mention, like Brian Snoddy's take on Urza's Power Plant, John Avon's Lantern-lit Graveyard and Submerged Boneyard by Chris Childs, and many others. Of the two-color lands that are a prominent feature of Magic Duels, I think my favorite is Highland Lake, by Florian de Gesincourt.

While I think these lands are very beautiful, none of them really stop me in my tracks. For that, we have to go back all the way to Urza's Saga, which came out in the fall of 1998, when I was starting high school. It included what I genuinely think is one of the most beautiful and evocative cards of all time, Lingering Mirage by Jerry Tiritilli.

This card has everything for me: the boat, the dramatic swell of the ocean and the wonderful range of blues in the water, from the greenish water in the distance to the dramatic dark blue in the foreground. The massively exaggerated curve of the horizon gives the picture an air of unreality, reminding you that this isn't just a painting of a boat, but a Magic card. And it really is a painting printed onto a collectible card.

Of course, this isn't a feature restricted to older cards: one of the most beautiful Magic cards ever, Seek the Wilds by Anna Steinbauer, is from the Battle for Zendikar block.

This is where my bias in favor of the older cards really shows up, though. I think Seek the Wilds is a fantastic card with wonderful art. But compared to some of the older art like Lingering Mirage, Seek the Wilds leaves less room for the imagination. It feels, perhaps paradoxically, like a more direct representation of its subject than the older, more organic images. Lingering Mirage invites me to stop and look at it closely and think about it. Seek the Wilds is just a really cool picture.

While we're on the subject of old cards, by the way, I do have to mention a card that may not be the most beautiful piece of art you'll ever see, but is by far the most kickass depiction of a badger ever: Rysorian Badger by Heather Hudson.

That is literally a badger playing a drum solo on someone's skull with their bones. You just don't get art that awesome any more. Heather Hudson also did the art for Lonely Sandbar, an amazingly beautiful card which returns us to our nautical theme.

I make no apologies for featuring ships and the sea so prominently here; having grown up by the seaside, I love them, but I also genuinely feel that for whatever reason, disproportionately many of the most beautiful Magic cards I've ever seen have featured both. A case in point is what I'd nominate as the second-most beautiful card in all of Magic: Exploration, by Brian Snoddy.

One of the particular charms of Magic has always been that it isn't tied to a particular setting. Not only does this mean that designers have a very free hand in inventing new settings and themes, but also that cards don't necessarily have to be in any way tied to any of them. They can even represent completely abstract concepts, like Exploration does. Here the combination of the title and image, but also just the image alone, suggest a story, but they leave it to your imagination. In my opinion, that's what makes truly great card art.

Finally, it's time for what I believe is the most beautiful card ever created for Magic: the Gathering. All the way from Fifth Edition, it's Reef Pirates by Tom Wänerstrand.

Everything I said about Exploration is true here, and then some. The flavor text is also pretty good, and works with the image and title to give you the idea that this is a snapshot from a much bigger story that you're free to fill in on your own. But the art itself is simply wonderful. The sky is simply amazing, and a perfect contrast with the brilliant emerald water. And the sails! Look at the sails! For me, this card has everything, from story to craftsmanship.

So yeah, I still feel that the Lord of the Rings living card game has better quality cards in general. But when it comes to individual cards that make you stop and think and feel, you'll find them in Magic.

Let's Read Tolkien 38: The Mirror of Galadriel

The sun was sinking behind the mountains, and the shadows were deepening in the woods, when they went on again.

The Fellowship of the Ring arrives in Caras Galadhon, the City of the Trees. Haldir leads them through the city, to a really big tree topped by a platform, on which stands the hall of Celeborn and Galadriel, the Lord and Lady of Lórien. The Fellowship is taken up to meet them, and they tell the story of Gandalf's fall in Moria. Celeborn and Galadriel know what the Fellowship's mission is, and Galadriel tests each member of the Company by having a staring contest with them. Only Aragorn and Legolas distinguish themselves.

The Fellowship hang out in Lórien, and the elves sing about Gandalf. As Frodo and Sam are talking about him, Galadriel finds them and invites them to look into her Mirror. It's basically a silver birdbath, but you can see stuff in it; in her words, "things that were, things that are, and things that yet may be".

Sam looks, and sees some unclear flashes of vision, and then a longer sequence where trees are being cut down in the Shire, and his dad is hauling his possessions on a barrow. Sam is furious and wants to set off home immediately, but is dissuaded by Galadriel.

Frodo also looks in the Mirror. He sees a wizard in white - either Gandalf or Saruman - and a brief glimpse of Bilbo at Rivendell, followed by a sort of credit-sequence version of the history of Gondor. Eventually, though, the Mirror is completely dominated by the Eye of Sauron.

After the vision, Galadriel reveals that she bears one of the elven-rings: Nenya, the Ring of Adamant. She spells out the fate of the elves: if Frodo fails, everything is lost, but even if he succeeds, the elves will dwindle and disappear with time. "We must depart into the West, or dwindle to a rustic folk of dell and cave, slowly to forget and to be forgotten." This is one of the clearest statements of how Tolkien saw his elves becoming the fairies and elves of folklore.

Frodo then straight up offers to give Galadriel the One Ring. She presents a vision of herself as a terrible queen, but refuses. Frodo also wonders why the Ring doesn't grant him more powers, and Galadriel explains that he would need to train his mind to use it. Nonetheless he already sees more than most, including of her thoughts. With that, they leave the Mirror.

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I have to say that in Lórien, Tolkien's powers of exposition and geography seem to fail him. It's possible that the failure is mine: I wrote these posts at a time when I was under quite a bit of stress, which is also why this blog is so abysmally late, so maybe I just completely missed all the good stuff. But Lórien never really made that much of an impression on me. There's just like a bunch of trees. Both Rivendell and the Elven-king's halls were much more memorable.

The focus of the chapter is Galadriel. One of Tolkien's ethereal faerie women, of whom Lúthien is the archetype, she embodies Tolkien's version of the Madonna-whore complex, which in his case might better be called the Madonna-invisibility complex: women in Tolkien's world tend to be either elfin, otherworldly creatures whose feet never quite touch the ground, or not there at all. There are vanishingly few exceptions. Of the women we've met so far, Goldberry and Arwen are Midgard Madonnas, while the lone delightful exception is Lobelia Sackville-Baggins.

Galadriel, though, gets to be a character, if not nearly as much as Lobelia. I've always read this chapter as presenting Celeborn as nominally in charge in Lórien, but Galadriel as the actual brains of the operation. Which, now that I think about it, might also fairly characterize Otho and Lobelia Sackville-Baggins. Galadriel speaks for Celeborn; she tests the Fellowship, and it's she who wears the Elven-ring, and shows Frodo the Mirror - which isn't the Mirror of Celeborn, after all. Although she's an example of the ethereal Madonna archetype, Galadriel is also a very strong female character, one of the most powerful beings in Middle-earth. She's part of the White Council with Gandalf, Saruman and Elrond, and if you know her history from the Silmarillion, that hardly makes her any less impressive.

She's also a foil for Frodo in the introduction of one of the most crucial themes of the Lord of the Rings: the Fall of Frodo. In their conversation by the Mirror, it's significant that we don't get any insight into what Frodo's actually thinking. Galadriel speaks of herself quite openly, but Frodo says little. When he offers her the Ring, she says: "Gently are you revenged for my testing of your heart at our first meeting. You begin to see with a keen eye." She may be joking, but I think she's more than half serious. Especially in the context of his questions about the Ring, I think Frodo is beginning to realize that as the Ringbearer, he too has power, and he's beginning to test it. Maybe Gandalf's absence also plays a part here.

But in any case, we're left to guess Frodo's sincerity in offering Galadriel the Ring, and his intentions. Whereas Sam responds vocally and emotionally to his vision, Frodo keeps his thoughts to himself, even from the reader. I think there's at least an element of mischief, if not malice, in Frodo's offer. He's feeling his power as the Ringbearer.

Next time: leaving Lórien.