Mons's Goblin Raiders - MTG 4E

 

Most goblin cards are funny or amusing and make light of the goblins as a race. Cards like this try to show that they are a real threat in Dominaria (the land where Magic takes place) and shouldn't be taken lightly. A finely tuned goblin deck will over run its opponents with a ton of cheap goblins and you'll be dead before you know what is going on. Bits of story lore like on this card help shape Magic into a cohesive whole instead of just being random cards. While that isn't important to competitive players, for casual players who want a story as much as a game, it is extremely important. 

Mishra's War Machine - MTG 4E

 

Old school Magic was tough. You wanted a big creature, you had to PAY for it, and not just in terms of paying mana either (tapping a land to generate a mana thus making the land unusable for anything else until your next turn). And the color chart meant something back then too. So a 5/5 creature than any color could use needed to some serious drawbacks to make up for its strengths. And Discarding a card every turn is a big drawback. So you, as a player, had to determine if you could get enough advantage out of this one card to make it worth including in your deck.

Nowadays cards pretty much just have advantages and players choose the best advantageous card. Bunch of modern day pansies clutching their pearls....

Mishra's Factory - MTG 4E

 

This is a good example of what is called a "Utility Land". It can give you mana to power your other spells but it also has "utility", ie, other ways to use it. Personally, I could never make utility lands work that well for me. Most of that was by design by Wizards of the Coast. They didn't want land cards to become too powerful. They were unique and kept the game interesting, they just weren't necessarily a game winner. Which I think is more important to the longevity of Magic. 

Mind Twist - MTG 4E

 

Having a handful of cards is what gives you options in Magic the Gathering. If you don't have any cards in your hand, you can't do anything and your opponent can just wale on you while you sit there and take it.

This card removes those cards from your opponent's hand. Remove his ability to play or fight back and you've got the game all sewn up. Unless he's a blue player, in which case he'll probably screw you over instead :-/

Mind Bomb - MTG 4E

 

Who says artists don't have a sense of humor? I mean, a literal mind bomb here? That just makes me laugh, while it also grosses me out completely.

Millstone - MTG 4E

 

One of the rules in Magic is that if you can't draw a card from your deck, because there are no more cards, you lose the game. So there is a strategy where you force your opponent to discard cards from their deck and so they lose that way. The strategy is called "Milling" and takes its name from this particular card. It is a viable strategy but is hard to make work. You basically leave yourself open to your opponent's attack and pray your milling strategy works faster than them. It's also rather boring, so you have to want to win more than play a fun game.

Of course, if you don't like your opponent and want to make them suffer, this would be a good way to do that. Grind down their soul while you grind down their deck, mwahahaha...

Mesa Pegasus - MTG 4E

 

This was a good card for its time. A flyer for cheap meant you could block some of the bigger flying creatures and while Mesa Pegasus was sure to die, it prevented all the damage to you, which is the point of a creatures' existence in the game. This was a staple in the White Weenie deck archetype. The WW was a deck consisting of a lot of small creatures that would over run your opponent, with an occasional card to help boost them. Your goal was to overwhelm and overrun your opponent before they could respond in time.

Merfolk of the Pearl Trident - MTG 4E

 

This was the only other Merfolk card in 4th Edition. The other was "Lord of Atlantis", which has been showcased already. I built a Merfolk deck, which meant that to get the prerequisite 60 cards, I had to go exploring other Magic the Gathering releases to find Merfolk card. I just looked at the official Magic the Gathering database and in 2026 there are only about 40 Merfolk cards. So you can imagine just how many there were in '95 :-D

But that kind of exploration, that was half the fun of Magic back then. There was no big internet database, so you had to comb through price guide magazines like Scrye OR go to your local game store and literally pick through their boxes of hundreds of unsorted cards. Which is great fun when you are a teenager and everything is new. Now, 30 years later, that kind of thing isn't fun for me. Scrye is now out of business, I don't really play Magic anymore and Doctor Who got his own set of Magic the Gathering cards.

Hmmmm. See, this is the problem with maundering thoughts. You never know where you are going to end up.

Meekstone - MTG 4E

 

Marsh Viper - MTG 4E

 

Marsh Gas - MTG 4E

 

Mana Vault - MTG 4E

 

Mana Short - MTG 4E

 

You are about to make a game winning move, about to cast the card that will win the game in one single turn and then BAAAAAM, that annoying blue player plays this card and just short circuits it all. Boooyahhhh. And that's why everybody hated Blue Players back in the 90's. And most blue players liked that infamy :-)

Mana Flare - MTG 4E

 

I love this card for how it looks. It captures that essence of so much power that it is literally bursting forth!

Sadly, once AGAIN (for about the 100th time) this is another card that I simply could not get to work for me, not even when I returned to Magic in 2013. I'd build a deck around it, have everything all lined up and then when I would play, my opponent would always benefit more from this card than I did and beat me to a pulp. And this time it wasn't a fun beating, but simply frustrating. I could see my path to victory, but so could my opponent and they always got there first. It didn't take very many games before I gave up the deck and using this card at all. But I do like looking at it, which is good :-)

Mana Clash - MTG 4E

 

The only reason you would play this card is if you truly like Chance in your Magic the Gathering games and were willing to lose. I don't like Chance in my MTG games and I don't like losing. So I'll give you one guess how many times I put this card in a deck.

The picture definitely looks like a Clash between Blue and Red. It doesn't have anything to do with how the card actually works, but it sure does fit the title really well. 

Manabarbs - MTG 4E

 

Man, Red just wants to hurt people, even if it involved hurting themselves. I don't think I ever got this card to work for me and I'm not sure I even tried really. Imagine those things jabbing into your thigh? You'd be hooked like a slab of beef!

Mahamoti Djinn - MTG 4E

 

Disney's Genie could totally take this guy! Just saying....

Magnetic Mountain - MTG 4E

 

I get the Bluehate from a red card, but magnetic mountain, affecting creatures? I'd expect this to affect artifacts, not creatures. Red is famous for destroying or negating artifacts. Well, if all Magic cards made sense, we probably wouldn't have the game at all. Go figure!
:-D

Magical Hack - MTG 4E

 

This guy's work would go a lot faster if he used a computer. What a schlub! Of course, maybe I could hire this guy to destroy AI data centers across the world. About time Magic does something useful.

Lure - MTG 4E

 

This looks like the kind of apple that the evil stepmother fed to Snow White. Doesn't say very much for Snow White's observational skills though does it? Tsk, tsk, tsk...