Hello folks! It's cold. It's Winter. It seems like the perfect time to bring out the best, most flavorful cards that evoke Winter. Colors and art! Flavor text! Name! You get the idea.

What cards been evoke a feeling of the disquieting sense that something is wrong when you look out your window and nothing but snow can be seen in every direction. Snow engulfs the landscape and embraces it coldly. There is a primal sense of wrongness in me when that happens.

It's actually a feeling that I enjoy!

Now there are a lot of cards in the game that mention ice, snow, frost, winter itself, and more. There are snow lands, and snow permanents. We have lots of Winter-y cards in name and concept.

Take the original Winter Orb as a good example. It's called Winter Orb, so it has to be here, right? Not really. Does a few polar bears growling at a floating sphere-esque thing feel Wintery to you? Not to me.

Meanwhile, some things might feel suitably North without feeling Winter-y, such as Ice Floe, Winter's Grasp, Glaciers, and Ice Cave. These feel like they are set in the frozen north, rather than just mere Winter.

Consider the Glacial stylings of Glaciers and Ice Cave that feel more like someone dodging or exploring the North Pole rather than chilling at home or work while the snow-pocalypse begins. Similarly, Winter's Grasp, despite having "Winter" in its name has a mammoth skull which implies that's it's set far up north as well.

So what cards best feel like Winter?

Let's look!

Honorable Mention - Winter Blast

This Legends card takes my 11th spot with an honorable mention. Many things in this piece come together. Kaja has a nice, quick flow to her that works well for this piece. The name and mechanics line up well. You get what's happening here. My major issue is the flavor text. I really enjoy the real life flavor texts of ol, I thought they did amazing story-crafting! But they text itself is about winds and not winter, so it's a little off for me.

Put the same flavor text on Hurricane (or Typhoon) and I'm in love. But it drops the card off my top ten list as a result.

10. Cold Snap

What doesn't drop off is Cold Snap! There are probably going to be a few cards here that readers will be able to guess if they played during this era. This is one of them. I'm sure that you could have predicted this card from the title of today's article. It fits. Cold Snap introduces a fun frozen theme to the art, and the flavor text is much, much better than the previous card. Do you know from whence the winter comes? No? well then who does?

It's a fun card and concept, but you will notice that from #10 up to the later cards, that the art and concepts are going to match winter better. So let's look at one such card.

9. Adarkar Wastes

This is Adarkar Wastes. Not only is it good at demonstrating a post-snow fall landscape with gorgeous art and ruined plants, but it also helps to show just how impactful this is for the locals, as this solitary figure marshes towards us. The great thing about AdarkarWastes is just how quick and powerful it shows the Winter to be without pushing the dial to 10. You aren't in 4 feet of snow, not are you dealing with a nasty glacier or frozen river or anything threatening. But he sheer desolation of the scene is perfect. This is not an easy place to survive. I really enjoy the art by Mike Raabe here.

And least the character isn't trying to survive in the midst of the snowstorm though!

Unlike, say.....

8. Snowblind

...This idiot.

"Hi! I'm a ranger! Look at my majestic green cloak in envy and wonder. I'm so big and burly and ranger-y that I can head outside when the snow is about to fall. I can tough it out! I'm a ranger! I survived the floods of '23. I killed the vulture flock from '25. I saved that bear cub last year, and I even fought off an alpha wolf from a pack that was about to eat it. Do you think a little cold water from the sky is going to stop me?"

Arkon, 7th Level Ranger, Final Words

7. Folk of the Pines (with a shout out to Wall of Pine Needles)

Folk of the Pines evokes a sort of "snow-dusted" landscape without the super-North feel of many of the cards from Ice Age Block that you will find in today's list. I enjoy that you are getting more of a landscape feel here and that you can see the Pines close up, along with a fellow Dryad. Despite the fact that she is named a Dryad as a creature type, the artwork feels like any female character, which I enjoy. It works well to evoke a winter-y scene that feels authentic to me.

Although the Wall of Pine Needles doesn't have the same feel with eh lack of snow, the feel of these old bones dead while the pines are still round does help to show that folks are getting hurt. Maybe these are the bones of that idiot Arkon after he went blind from the snow.

6. Winter Orb - Eternal Masters

I totally set you up for this by looking at the above art and lack of flavor text that didn't feel truly Winter-y. Unlike this card! Here the art is good as it demonstrates a solid feel that you cannot really explore. I would argue that this flavor text works well for describing the sleepy aspects of the insidious nature of the frozen will to remove your existence. It's doesn't need a magical shiny ball. Left by its non-magic self, winter "is some fork at work that strikes even the will to go on." I think this art may have been better without the shiny ball. Imagine if the Winter Orb was just the sun, cooled and smaller with its distance in Winter.

Anyways, this is a big improvement on the "Winter" part of this card from its first printing!

But it ain't my top five....

So what would be?

5. Goblin Snowman

Let's begin the top five with the obvious. This is a Snowman. Duh. Next?

Okay let's discuss it. By creating an apparent Snow-Man, these Goblins have given you a distraction. If you attack the big snowman, then you aren't hitting the Goblins and no damage is dealt. And you take some cold damage from it too. You need to ensure that you aren't coming it's way. And the best way to do that is to not be distracted by it.

Much like a beautiful scene, this card shows that the typical winter-scape can feel calming and fun. But there is a dark edge to it. Just like the pretty snow with it's slaying of you, this crisp and fun Snowman runs goblins ready to attack right now. They distract you. They disorient you. Winter attacks your bones and your mind with equal force.

4. Tundra(with a Shout-Out to Taiga)

Tundra is great. It's oppressive. To be fair, it may be here on name-value, but the card just evokes this panned out scene that illustrates everything perfectly. Here you are, alone in the world against some dorks far in the distance. There is no home for you. Just a sense of being in over your head. This challenge is too big for you.

See also, Taiga! Although Taiga feels a little more North and less snow-bidden than Tundra, despite the fact that the names should provoke the opposite feeling.

Top three time!

3.Snowfall

Like Cold Snap at #10 above this is something you could have name dropped. I like this card better than Snowblind at evoking winter because it's grounded. I know where this is. The tree shows the height and location of the person, and the snow fall feels like the deep snows I've had with countless big flakes. This probably took Phil longer to make than Doug's piece above. But the grounding and realistic nature of this art help to really push it up my Chilling Spine. (From horror or from the cold? Both!) The image is perfect!

But let's look at what happens next.

2. Blizzard

Unlike Snowfall or Snowblind, Blizzard is very much about the horror. And that's not uncommon for an Anson Maddocks piece of art either. As you can see, Blizzard illustrates the impact of the storm on a person, not stumbling about or looking wistfully away, but dead. You can see that the Blizzard has struck and made an immediate impact. Like the piece before it, the ground with the wooden stuff on the sides helps, although the hands in front of the wooden create or building feels weird to me. I'd have a better sense of what that wooden thing on the left is without the misshapen hand in front of it. Anyways, the impact of this is horror able. Nicely done!

But it's not #1. What is?

1. Winter's Night

Winter's Night is! The art is much more snow-oppressive. You can feel the earth after the snow has laid it quiet. Unlike Tundra or Adarkar Wastes, nothing is moving. Nothing is out here. It's the stillness of death. There is a dark lethargy to this scene. It's like a Jack London character who is about to die in the face of Winter and really doesn't care at the end. Any animals here are dead if they were exposed and any plants are probably in the same boat save for a few stubborn conifers refusing to die outright but instead futilely fling their needles out in defiance to the end.

This is the fall of Winter after the snow and storms have pushed through. This is what is left. It's the perfect Winter card. It has to be my #1!

And there we go! Did you enjoy my list? Anything you want to add? Just let me know, and see you in 2019!!!