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

[Art] Maiden of Summer 2026

 

A Summer Day

I:
The dawn laughs out on orient hills
And dances with the diamond rills;
The ambrosial wind but faintly stirs
The silken, beaded gossamers;
In the wide valleys, lone and fair,
Lyrics are piped from limpid air,
And, far above, the pine trees free
Voice ancient lore of sky and sea.
Come, let us fill our hearts straightway
With hope and courage of the day.

II:
Noon, hiving sweets of sun and flower,
Has fallen on dreams in wayside bower,
Where bees hold honeyed fellowship
With the ripe blossom of her lip;
All silent are her poppied vales
And all her long Arcadian dales,
Where idleness is gathered up
A magic draught in summer’s cup.
Come, let us give ourselves to dreams
By lisping margins of her streams.

III:
Adown the golden sunset way
The evening comes in wimple gray;
By burnished shore and silver lake
Cool winds of ministration wake;
O’er occidental meadows far
There shines the light of moon and star,
And sweet, low-tinkling music rings
About the lips of haunted springs.
In quietude of earth and air
‘Tis meet we yield our souls to prayer.
~by Lucy Maude Montgomery

Trying to find a poem about Summer that fit my expectations of this drawing was pretty hard. I think Stanza II of this fits best, but I liked the symmetry of Dawn to Dusk and so included the whole thing. 

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...

Lost Soul - MTG 4E

 

Now that is just creepy! Like something you'd see in The Sixth Sense: The Medieval'ing.

Bang! I think I just invented a new movie style, ie, The Pointless Sequel. Oh wait, Hollywood already has their ugly mitts all over that :-(

Lord of the Pit - MTG 4E

 

I've talked about why I didn't play the color black in the day, but once again, cards like this are Candidate 1 of why. Playing demons, that looked like demons and using Biblical language, that's a big no-no. It wasn't long after this time that Wizards of the Coast (the company that makes Magic) began moving away from the almost straight up Dungeons and Dragons versions of various creatures. But by that time, parents across the nation associated Magic the Gathering with satan worshipping, baby eating Dungeons and Dragons players. It was too late.

Lord of Atlantis - MTG 4E

 

I distinctly remember this card because I bought four of them to build my first real themed deck, one built around merfolk. It cost $2 a card and I was making minimum wage of $4.25 helping my neighbor who was a painter. Once I took taxes and tithes out, it cost me an entire half day to buy the four cards. Four Cards, that I could only use in ONE deck. It was a big commitment but at the time, it felt worth it. I made that merfold deck and then was promptly beaten every time I used it. I didn't win a single game against my friend, hahaahahaa. He was a better player than me and he was a better deck builder than me.

I had a lot of fun playing that deck however. Not "quite" enough to overcome losing every time, but I didn't hate playing it. I guess I couldn't have asked for much more as a teen.

Llanowar Elves - MTG 4E

 

Not your friendly neighborhood elves, that's for sure.

When elves go bad, they don't start out looking like this guy. It's a slow process, that starts with them going Steampunk, then full on punk. It takes a couple of generations to go from Steampunk Elf to Llanowar Elf. Let that be a lesson to us all.
*bows head in show of piety while wagging a finger at you all

Living Lands - MTG 4E

 

This is the same exact kind of card as Kormus Bell, except it is a green spell instead of an artifact and it affects forests instead of swamps. The fact that it is a green spell affecting forests leads me to believe it was meant to turn your own forests into creatures at the end of the game and overwhelm your opponent in one last wild, mad rush.

It would have made a great cover for Kenneth McKenney's "The Plants" too. I read that at about the same time I was getting into Magic. It was an obvious ripoff of du Maurier's The Birds, but I hadn't read that yet, so it was all good to my teenage self. I've never been tempted to re-read The Plants though ;-)

Living Artifact - MTG 4E

 

Another disgusting organic looking "thing". I never understood why artists would do that. Eh, whatever.

Life gain is definitely a "green" thing, but it is like a slow drip coffee maker. You only get 1 extra life each turn, which is fine if your opponent is playing a slow deck, but if they are playing a more aggressive deck, you'd want some other cards in your deck to deal with that instead of this. Once again, it would take a very creative mind to find a good use for this card. I probably wouldn't play it anyway, just because it looks gross :-)

Lightning Bolt - MTG 4E

 

While Sol Ring might be the face card of Magic the Gathering to me, to the community at large, Lightning Bolt IS the card that embodies every aspect of Magic the Gathering in one distinct picture. Part of that is the card itself. Doing three damage for one red pip is about the best you can hope for. But the image as well just sits in your mind. Everyone has seen lightning at one point or another in their lifetime and they can relate to this image in some way. Some of us love lightning, some of us hate lightning, but none of us simply shrug lightning aside. That is why I think this became the face card of Magic for the general community.

If you disagree with me, well, I play Lightning Bolt and kill your argument, which is only a 2/2 creature, ha! ;-)

[Art] Seasonal Trees

 

Pooja, over at Life's Fine Whine, recently did an Art Therapy post. One of the pictures was this picture of seasonal trees. I'm a huge sucker for Seasonal Anythings, (hence my Maidens of the Year series) so I immediately asked her if I could get a scanned copy for my blog. She was gracious enough to send over a nice version and here we are :-) After the winter we have had, I am SO happy to see pictures of bare ground.

So thank you Pooja. I'm always happy to get new pieces of art for the blog! And the rest of you, have a great day too.

Lifetap - MTG 4E

 

Oh noez! An evil vampire leprechaun is hurting da treez! Won't somebody doooooo something?

*announcer voice*

As Adventurer [insert your name], it will be your job to stop Lucky, the Evil Wizard Leprechaun, from stealing all the Lucky Charms from the Tree People. And remember kids, knowing is 713/1425th's of the battle!

This Magic Card brought to you by Hasbro, the money whore of the world.

Lifelace - MTG 4E

 

This is the Green lace card. Black had "Deathlace" and Red had "Chaoslace". While I like the idea of the "Lace" cards, as a beginning player I never found a good use for them. Even now, I suspect I wouldn't be able to find a good use for them. Cards like these are the chaff of the set and you would have to try really hard to make something good work out of them. But for some people, that is half the fun, ie, trying to make "jank" (the magic term for garbage cards, I have no idea where it came from) cards work. I am not one of those people though. So I will just look at the card and admire the art and call it a day. 

Lifeforce - MTG 4E

 

Why anybody would choose this name (Lifeforce) for a card is beyond me. I am certain somebody knew that horrible movie (Brian's Review), which was based on an even worse book (Bookstooge Survived "Space Vampires", but barely). But they sure would have had to have a sick mind to think it would be funny to put that name on a Magic card. Shame on them!

Library of Leng - MTG 4E

 

Daniel Gelon, the artist, certainly "gets" the fantasy library vibe. This is exactly how I imagine a mystical library looking. And the old galoot looks like the kind of guy who I imagine inhabits such a library :-)

And AI generated art could learn a lot just by looking at the guy's hand. It has 5, count'em, 5 fingers! It's really not that hard AI, you stupid dunce. 

[Art] Maiden of Spring 2026

 

While the trees aren't leafed out like in the drawing, the sun is stronger, the grass is growing and the temperatures are warm enough that I don't need multiple layers. Spring is a magical word here in New England. It means you survived Winter and now can be warm again. I really like this picture because it shows a mature Spring at the height of it's power, just before Summer moves in.  

Ley Druid - MTG 4E

 

This card worked very well in conjunction with utility lands (a land that had an extra ability that you had to tap to use) because it allowed you to use that utility twice. Sadly, there were no utility lands in 4th Edition and it required having cards from other sets to make full use of. Since I talked about my budgetary constrains with Land Tax, I don't think I need to rehash that all over again. But the artwork really conveys a druid so at one with the land and nature that he can affect it. I like this. Except the fingernails. Dude should chew them off if nothing else!