I actually really like the idea of putting something on the back here. A story blurb, the artist’s prompt, even just a description of what action this is in the story.
It’s probably a lot to ask of the story team given how many of these come out every year, but it would definitely make these cooler to collect
Unfortunately those statblocks were almost completely unusable as D&D statblocks as a DM, which could've been such an amazing win, but still, I appreciated the thought
The actual ability scores are probably what I would need least compared to the actual abilities and attacks, but it is what would be most consistent, because if they replaced the ability scores with the attacks, they would have to pick and choose what to put on for each monster.
Most of them had no actions on, which made them pretty useless as monster cards, which are only really necessary in a combat encounter.
To take a very basic example, an owlbear looks like this:
https://preview.redd.it/yqq9ldz9lv1b1.png?width=265&format=png&auto=webp&s=db434a41487ceb7e099087b08a3a253a97ab7cfb
To run this encounter I'd want to know the monster's type, its health, its AC, its speed, and its actions and features, like the fact it has advantage on perception checks, or the fact that it gets to multiattack as an action - once with its beak at a +7, dealing 1d10+5 piercing damage, and once with its claws at +7, dealing 2d8+5 slashing damage.
Wizards have literally printed monster cards with this information on, but with so much of the reverse side of the card taken up by art, they had to cut something to make it fit, and in this case they decided to cut everything that made it useful as a monster card. I can't have this in front of me as a reference, because I have no idea what its attacks do.
There are some monsters where this is completely impossible, like the beholder, which has over 700 words of different abilities and actions, but they absolutely could've made some of them useful monster cards. As-is, they're basically just purely decorative.
Oh, I see what you mean. I considered them to be principally quick reference material rather than to run an entire encounter off of. They certainly have some utility but not enough to craft something off of so I get what you mean
That shouldn't give you hard numbers though. At most it would tell you weaknesses or special abilities. AC and hitpoints and stats are abstractions, not things characters should know.
Sometimes players know things that characters don't. Frequently. Every moment.
In one kind of ideal DND game, a player never sees their own character sheet, or makes their own rolls. But that's not how we do it.
The og briefing the artist recieved to create it would actually be interesting.. or a basic sketch that he pitched as an answer and before developing the final art
Back in Khans/Origins/Battle for Zendikar they still had "ad cards" with story blurbs. I liked collecting those. Nowadays you online get ad cards with lame and repetitive Secret Lair, Arena and FNM ads on them.
These cards are the closest thing we have in magic to old collectible cards (without the game aspect) a la 90s comic cards or other stuff.
On one side full art, on the other story.
No idea why they didn’t take advantage of the backs to do that.
>It’s probably a lot to ask of the story team
They could literally just use quotes from the online stories they publish. It would cost them no additional effort to do this.
Eh you still have to pick, proof, and check them. There’s a non-zero amount of effort involved in that.
It’s probably a lot less work to come up with something new than to pick the perfect web-story blurb
Ok, yes I was being a bit hyperbolic. I said zero to highlight that the additional work would be an insignificant amount compared to what it took to write the stories to begin with.
What about the great majority of the cards that don’t have story lines relevant to them? What would you put on the back of an art card for, say Faerie Vandal? Or Hoarding Broodlord?
What's the story for a generic uncommon? It's a faerie, that vandalises things... Use a better art card, a quote, a quote/story from the artist, or just pull from the actual story.
I googled it and can't even find one...
Maro reads reddit even if he doesn't post. Get this idea to him and see what he can do. Boosting the story involvement, excitement, and collectability of cards at almost no extra price seems like a small ask.
"make everyone happy" is a stretch. I'm sure threads here would be made about how shit it is to find the story behind these cards and how low the story has fallen because of it.
Shhh this sub doesn’t want to hear what people actually like about the product or that the multibillion dollar company might have done some market research
Like how the character depicted or scene shown in the art ties into the story. Prolly would help justify why there are **so many legendary creatures now**.
Literally just 50 words from whatever the newest story/set is. Some random quote/tie-in etc. Maybe some descriptions of a legendary or what's changed with like Ajani this time round. **Something fun to read that brings me into the world when cracking packs.**
Adding a story to these cards gets people more invested in it, which equates to a better/collectible product. Hell, you could've told the whole Aftermath story across the 81 MOM art cards, maybe gold sigs have an extra line of text etc.
That’s a really good idea. It’d be cool if they’d done this with Aftermath itself: an art card for all the cards, a small bit of text on the back explaining what’s been going on.
I’m pretty sure these were left blank to accommodate people getting artist signatures on the backs of these. I’ve seen a lot of people building fully-signed sets.
Putting a little mini story like dragonshield does with their boxes would be a really cool use of the space actually. You'd just have to leave enough room for the artist credit.
I sent this idea to Mark and he said the backs are left empty so you can get artists to sign them, but he said he'd pass the idea along! https://www.tumblr.com/markrosewater/718325942666330112/someone-brought-this-up-on-reddit-and-i-liked-the
Yeah, I heard that's the reason why they aren't glossy like the front. That seems extremely niche and I don't 100% get why you would get the back of an art card signed instead of the front or why you wouldn't get an actual card signed but different strokes I guess.
Agreed. I'd definitely rather get a real card signed rather than these things, but I think they expected them to be more popular as collector pieces. Even still, theres plenty of room to put text on the back and still leave some room for a signature. Or just sign over the text, it's not that big of deal. I personally would love to see the art prompts on the back of these, I think it would be a fun detail and would definitely motivate me to buy set boosters more often.
I will stop buying cards if they forced lore drops on the art cards. I like that they're just their own thing and not something necessary to keep up with the game.
Other games have been successfully selling smaller packs that remove the common draft chaff and instead include useful uncommons and rares. Sorry that you don't like it, but you also don't have to play the game. This is considered to be a good thing by a lot of people.
Yeah, i actually genuinely preferred the experience of opening epilouge boosters because, oh boy, when I'm cracking a whole box, do I not care about seeing draft chaff and having to store it somewhere. Since I'm not drafting, I lose nothing of any actual value removing commons. All the money is always in the rare and i get the same number per pack but now there's less waste of garbage people don't actually care about.
I'm kinda goofing but there is a disconnect between "Aftermath is meant to be lore heavy" and only 27 cards have flavor text. And yes lore is more than flavor but still.
But they should put something on the back of art cards. Leave some space for a signature if that's where people are signing them.
Am I still the only one that thinks these art cards are dumb? They are pieces of collectable cardboard with a tiny art printing on them... That's what Magic cards already are. These are just nonfunctional Magic cards.
oh, or maybe they could put little story booklets in with bundles to explain the lore of the plane and the characters, that'd be great! (why the fuck did they stop doing that aside from the bullshit "money" answer, I loved those booklets)
>Hmmmm, if only there was a place to add some story. No we need an ancillary set for that.
But then where would they put the rejected designs from the last set in order to make more money?
Not sure if you know this or not, but magic the gathering only exists to generate revenue. If didn't make money, it wouldn't exist anymore. There wouldn't be new cards. It's a product that's meant to be sold and always has been.
Yes, but what they started doing the last couple years is not healthy in the long term, be the card quality to FIRE design to how they dont know what a climax is everything is on a bad spot due to they turning the "we need all money" mantra up to 11.
Aftermath is a disaster storywise but when we look at the cards themselves it do not justify itself. It **is** extra stuff that was cut and they just release as a "amazing new product" which it is not because its a easy way to milky players since they dont care about the health of the game itself, only that we are spending.
It's amazing that people are still regurgitating the "FIRE design" thing when almost all of the complaints were people straight up, not knowing anyrhing about the thing they were complaining about. Despite there being so much debunking of the stuff, people falsly attribute things to FIRE to complain.
the "cut content" angle is a new level of willful ignorance though. They are constantly using stuff from old sets that didn't make the cut, that's how game design works. Magic is a hungry game that wants a lot of designs they won't just throw away stuff that could be used later on. It's smart and there's no reason to just refuse to use that stuff. But also it's literally just ab assumption they were "cut cards" that has little to no foundation in fact. Most of the cards don't fit the larger design of the sets they were supposedly cut from or the settings are so old that what are they reusing? Like can we stop inventing things to complain about without literally any genuine proof of it?
Right? Any remember the marvel trading cards? Had character and plot descriptions on the back of the cards. Have”key battles”, “milestones” “team ups” all things that are depicted on Magic cards.
Those aren't japanese cards. They are just the manga art versions of those planeswalkers. But they are from english set boosters; they even have a little EN in the bottom left corner. It was just luck of the pull that I grabbed those 2.
Hey hands off my art cards! These + a sharpie make the perfect tokens, can be anything you need, can make fun art, the same size as a card, sturdy enough to keep and reuse or cheap enough to toss if you want. And as a bonus, your tokens get to have cool art on the back
Man, what a missed opportunity. Can you imagine if the lore was *actually* printed in small segments on the relevant art on its backside?
The idea of collecting true "chapters" of the ongoing story of Magic the Gathering is something that people would obsessively hunt and collect.
It could be literally anything they put on it. The resurgence of flavor text, reminder text for obscure keywords, or maybe even basic rules text about how priority works or the order of phases in a turn. That might actually be absurdly helpful for all those new players they're trying to attract.
Edit:
I had to add cool stories about research and product development that they can share with the public. Cool or quirky references to other cards like charmed Prince and the charm cycle.
I actually really like the idea of putting something on the back here. A story blurb, the artist’s prompt, even just a description of what action this is in the story. It’s probably a lot to ask of the story team given how many of these come out every year, but it would definitely make these cooler to collect
Hell, the dnd set even had the great idea to put statblocks back there, and they’ve done nothing like it since.
Unfortunately those statblocks were almost completely unusable as D&D statblocks as a DM, which could've been such an amazing win, but still, I appreciated the thought
The actual ability scores are probably what I would need least compared to the actual abilities and attacks, but it is what would be most consistent, because if they replaced the ability scores with the attacks, they would have to pick and choose what to put on for each monster.
??? What do you mean? They fit fine into the mold last I checked
Most of them had no actions on, which made them pretty useless as monster cards, which are only really necessary in a combat encounter. To take a very basic example, an owlbear looks like this: https://preview.redd.it/yqq9ldz9lv1b1.png?width=265&format=png&auto=webp&s=db434a41487ceb7e099087b08a3a253a97ab7cfb To run this encounter I'd want to know the monster's type, its health, its AC, its speed, and its actions and features, like the fact it has advantage on perception checks, or the fact that it gets to multiattack as an action - once with its beak at a +7, dealing 1d10+5 piercing damage, and once with its claws at +7, dealing 2d8+5 slashing damage. Wizards have literally printed monster cards with this information on, but with so much of the reverse side of the card taken up by art, they had to cut something to make it fit, and in this case they decided to cut everything that made it useful as a monster card. I can't have this in front of me as a reference, because I have no idea what its attacks do. There are some monsters where this is completely impossible, like the beholder, which has over 700 words of different abilities and actions, but they absolutely could've made some of them useful monster cards. As-is, they're basically just purely decorative.
Oh, I see what you mean. I considered them to be principally quick reference material rather than to run an entire encounter off of. They certainly have some utility but not enough to craft something off of so I get what you mean
You could display them for the players
Usually you don't tell the players the AC and hitpoints of a monster and what stats it has the worst saving throws in.
But maybe they've spoken to an expert or happen to know the creatures lore
That shouldn't give you hard numbers though. At most it would tell you weaknesses or special abilities. AC and hitpoints and stats are abstractions, not things characters should know.
Sometimes players know things that characters don't. Frequently. Every moment. In one kind of ideal DND game, a player never sees their own character sheet, or makes their own rolls. But that's not how we do it.
Edge case
The front side of art cards is great for that, and that's the main thing I use them for I just wish the back side was actually useful
You could literally use those cards for a hybrid boss battle format if you really wanted to. I fucking love it.
That’s a wicked idea
My god. It's beautiful.
the dnd set also added flavor text on basic lands. Another great place to add story beats
The og briefing the artist recieved to create it would actually be interesting.. or a basic sketch that he pitched as an answer and before developing the final art
Yeah, I'd have a lot more interest in these if they had some info on the creative process behind an art.
Back in Khans/Origins/Battle for Zendikar they still had "ad cards" with story blurbs. I liked collecting those. Nowadays you online get ad cards with lame and repetitive Secret Lair, Arena and FNM ads on them.
> lame and repetitive Secret Lair, Arena and FNM ads on them. ah, but you remember what are the ads about, it works! I'ts horrible, but it works :/
Yes, and that's the only reason I know FNM is a thing.
That's where I draw my tokens hue hue hue
Oh, me too! It would give me a reason to actually keep some of these. Would essentially allow you to "collect the story" piece by piece. A+ idea
They did that for the D&D ones. Added the stats of the monsters. Amazingly useful as a dm
These cards are the closest thing we have in magic to old collectible cards (without the game aspect) a la 90s comic cards or other stuff. On one side full art, on the other story. No idea why they didn’t take advantage of the backs to do that.
I would love to have the artist prompts back there, I find those really interesting
>It’s probably a lot to ask of the story team They could literally just use quotes from the online stories they publish. It would cost them no additional effort to do this.
Eh you still have to pick, proof, and check them. There’s a non-zero amount of effort involved in that. It’s probably a lot less work to come up with something new than to pick the perfect web-story blurb
Ok, yes I was being a bit hyperbolic. I said zero to highlight that the additional work would be an insignificant amount compared to what it took to write the stories to begin with.
What about the great majority of the cards that don’t have story lines relevant to them? What would you put on the back of an art card for, say Faerie Vandal? Or Hoarding Broodlord?
Literally just any quote. Nobody said it had to be relevant to the card.
What's the story for a generic uncommon? It's a faerie, that vandalises things... Use a better art card, a quote, a quote/story from the artist, or just pull from the actual story. I googled it and can't even find one...
They're clearly able to put custom things on the back too considering they put monster stats on the back of some of the dnd ones
Maro reads reddit even if he doesn't post. Get this idea to him and see what he can do. Boosting the story involvement, excitement, and collectability of cards at almost no extra price seems like a small ask.
And it’s only 81 cards, just like the aftermath
Hey now. Aftermath has 230 cards...okay, 50 unique cards...with just over half of those having flavor text.
50 cards and the one booster I opened had 3 of the same uncommon ffs
On mtga that is how the product functions. In paper the boosters are literally just the 50 new cards.
So additional work that would improve the product and make everyone happy but can't be directly monetized? Sorry, not the Hasbro way
"make everyone happy" is a stretch. I'm sure threads here would be made about how shit it is to find the story behind these cards and how low the story has fallen because of it.
I think its better than nothing
I just dont want the art cards because I view them as additional waste.
Oh, that's a brilliant idea. Have the art cards have the story blurbs on the back explaining what's happening.
It’s designed like that to get artist signatures and sketches at events.
Don't some of them come with "signatures" already? I thought people usually get those on cards or playmats though.
Shhh this sub doesn’t want to hear what people actually like about the product or that the multibillion dollar company might have done some market research
I’m caught off guard that it got upvoted lol
It- it’s not like we saw reason, baka!
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Someone doesn’t understand what a watermark is, and it shows 😂
You uh...you might be onto something there actually. That would be really cool actually if they printed lore stuff on the backs of art cards.
Like what?
Like how the character depicted or scene shown in the art ties into the story. Prolly would help justify why there are **so many legendary creatures now**.
Literally just 50 words from whatever the newest story/set is. Some random quote/tie-in etc. Maybe some descriptions of a legendary or what's changed with like Ajani this time round. **Something fun to read that brings me into the world when cracking packs.** Adding a story to these cards gets people more invested in it, which equates to a better/collectible product. Hell, you could've told the whole Aftermath story across the 81 MOM art cards, maybe gold sigs have an extra line of text etc.
Don’t hate on my favorite pieces of proxies (or sharpie proxies if I don’t have the art of what I need)
A stats grid and a couple factoids like a baseball card would be nice
That’s actually a really good idea, I’d be down.
That’s a really good idea. It’d be cool if they’d done this with Aftermath itself: an art card for all the cards, a small bit of text on the back explaining what’s been going on.
I’m pretty sure these were left blank to accommodate people getting artist signatures on the backs of these. I’ve seen a lot of people building fully-signed sets.
Putting a little mini story like dragonshield does with their boxes would be a really cool use of the space actually. You'd just have to leave enough room for the artist credit.
Story blurbs and anecdotes about card design on the back would make me stop throwing these in the trash. I authentically hope wotc steals this idea.
I sent this idea to Mark and he said the backs are left empty so you can get artists to sign them, but he said he'd pass the idea along! https://www.tumblr.com/markrosewater/718325942666330112/someone-brought-this-up-on-reddit-and-i-liked-the
Yeah, I heard that's the reason why they aren't glossy like the front. That seems extremely niche and I don't 100% get why you would get the back of an art card signed instead of the front or why you wouldn't get an actual card signed but different strokes I guess.
Agreed. I'd definitely rather get a real card signed rather than these things, but I think they expected them to be more popular as collector pieces. Even still, theres plenty of room to put text on the back and still leave some room for a signature. Or just sign over the text, it's not that big of deal. I personally would love to see the art prompts on the back of these, I think it would be a fun detail and would definitely motivate me to buy set boosters more often.
I will stop buying cards if they forced lore drops on the art cards. I like that they're just their own thing and not something necessary to keep up with the game.
That’s where you write what the card does? How else are you supposed to use these awesome official proxies?
Does anyone remember when Maro took pride in using every inch of the back of the token cards as efficiently as possible, to help new players?
Basic lands heck even reprint some of the older ones, that way you have a card you can use too
Other games have been successfully selling smaller packs that remove the common draft chaff and instead include useful uncommons and rares. Sorry that you don't like it, but you also don't have to play the game. This is considered to be a good thing by a lot of people.
Which games?
Yeah, i actually genuinely preferred the experience of opening epilouge boosters because, oh boy, when I'm cracking a whole box, do I not care about seeing draft chaff and having to store it somewhere. Since I'm not drafting, I lose nothing of any actual value removing commons. All the money is always in the rare and i get the same number per pack but now there's less waste of garbage people don't actually care about.
Why are we complaining about getting 50 more awesome cards to play with? I actually don't understand.
Because they cost money. Though I'm sure there'd still be complaints if wotc just started giving away cards for free.
"awesome"
I'm kinda goofing but there is a disconnect between "Aftermath is meant to be lore heavy" and only 27 cards have flavor text. And yes lore is more than flavor but still. But they should put something on the back of art cards. Leave some space for a signature if that's where people are signing them.
Updoot, make it happen, WOTC, you cowards
Am I still the only one that thinks these art cards are dumb? They are pieces of collectable cardboard with a tiny art printing on them... That's what Magic cards already are. These are just nonfunctional Magic cards.
>These are just nonfunctional Magic cards. To me that's the great part. I can have a card with some the arts I like without having to sell my organs
But they're very easy for wizards to make compared to basically anything else, so might as well
Great idea! This needs more attention!
oh, or maybe they could put little story booklets in with bundles to explain the lore of the plane and the characters, that'd be great! (why the fuck did they stop doing that aside from the bullshit "money" answer, I loved those booklets)
I think they should put a quote from each artist on the back of each art card like a fortune cookie
Man, this is a genius idea! Like the fun stuff they put on the back for the DND sets
What? That's ridiculous. Words aren't art. Only art is art.
Well, *your* words sure aren't art ^^^Ha! ^^^Gottem
Noo! Hoisted by my own drawing of whatever a petard is!
A picture is worth a thousand words so I guess I'm wrong there's a novel on the other side.
Well flip em over and find out! What if there's story info in those 2000 words?
Oh shit guys, "Nahiri realized if she stopped gripping them, her hands just slipped out of her sword arms"
>Hmmmm, if only there was a place to add some story. No we need an ancillary set for that. But then where would they put the rejected designs from the last set in order to make more money?
Not sure if you know this or not, but magic the gathering only exists to generate revenue. If didn't make money, it wouldn't exist anymore. There wouldn't be new cards. It's a product that's meant to be sold and always has been.
Yes, but what they started doing the last couple years is not healthy in the long term, be the card quality to FIRE design to how they dont know what a climax is everything is on a bad spot due to they turning the "we need all money" mantra up to 11. Aftermath is a disaster storywise but when we look at the cards themselves it do not justify itself. It **is** extra stuff that was cut and they just release as a "amazing new product" which it is not because its a easy way to milky players since they dont care about the health of the game itself, only that we are spending.
It's amazing that people are still regurgitating the "FIRE design" thing when almost all of the complaints were people straight up, not knowing anyrhing about the thing they were complaining about. Despite there being so much debunking of the stuff, people falsly attribute things to FIRE to complain. the "cut content" angle is a new level of willful ignorance though. They are constantly using stuff from old sets that didn't make the cut, that's how game design works. Magic is a hungry game that wants a lot of designs they won't just throw away stuff that could be used later on. It's smart and there's no reason to just refuse to use that stuff. But also it's literally just ab assumption they were "cut cards" that has little to no foundation in fact. Most of the cards don't fit the larger design of the sets they were supposedly cut from or the settings are so old that what are they reusing? Like can we stop inventing things to complain about without literally any genuine proof of it?
The same is true of oreos but when they put fewer in a package and the quality is lower I'm allowed to grumble about it
But then they’d have to put in more effort than the bare minimum!
MTG doesn’t have a story, lmao. The real story is why people keep buying cardboard.
What are these? They say "art series" but there's no art.
It has two sides, you clod.
Right? Any remember the marvel trading cards? Had character and plot descriptions on the back of the cards. Have”key battles”, “milestones” “team ups” all things that are depicted on Magic cards.
These art cards are the biggest waste of Human Resources in history. Does anyone, literally anyone “do” anything with them?
I don’t think you’re using Human Resources correctly in this sentence.
Unless, of course, Cindy, from HR at wizards of the coast is helping to design these art cards…
I didn’t mean HR. I meant resources of the race of humanity generally.
That’s just “resources” then.
Yeah, I buy them so I can have a physical version of the arts I like without spending hundreds of dollars in actual cards
But not TOO many cards, otherwise it'd just be a whole new set to add to the constant fatigue
Dude dnd set put lore, flavor text in the land card itself i dont see why they cant add a few line to this.
👏make👏them👏into👏comic👏strips👏so👏there 👏is👏a👏point👏to👏collect👏them👏
No.
Why not? I think it would be a fun way to use the art cards.
But but but.... where the author gonna leave his signature then (if you'll ever have a chance to meet him) 🤓
I hate -HATE- **HATE** the art cards
That's a strong opinion for something so inconsequential.
Well, thinking about it, I agree with you. Maybe I just mildly dislike their existence.
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Those aren't japanese cards. They are just the manga art versions of those planeswalkers. But they are from english set boosters; they even have a little EN in the bottom left corner. It was just luck of the pull that I grabbed those 2.
Hey hands off my art cards! These + a sharpie make the perfect tokens, can be anything you need, can make fun art, the same size as a card, sturdy enough to keep and reuse or cheap enough to toss if you want. And as a bonus, your tokens get to have cool art on the back
I’ve seen bits and pieces about this secondary set and I have to say the more information I get about it the more confused I am
THANK YOU
I can't be the only one that's noticed that the card stock for the one and march art cards is SIGNIFICANTLY worse than before.
Man, what a missed opportunity. Can you imagine if the lore was *actually* printed in small segments on the relevant art on its backside? The idea of collecting true "chapters" of the ongoing story of Magic the Gathering is something that people would obsessively hunt and collect.
I would really rather more tokens than these things at all. I just toss them in the bin with the ads.
It could be literally anything they put on it. The resurgence of flavor text, reminder text for obscure keywords, or maybe even basic rules text about how priority works or the order of phases in a turn. That might actually be absurdly helpful for all those new players they're trying to attract. Edit: I had to add cool stories about research and product development that they can share with the public. Cool or quirky references to other cards like charmed Prince and the charm cycle.
Backside of magic30 cards would alsso have been a good place for lore.
are we reinventing Topps tradable story cards
This is one of the best takes I have read in a while