Locations
In June of 2011, we were delighted and amazed with the supported Elder Dragon Highlander format, changed to Commander, as it was priced at about the cost of a solid board game. Over six years later, commander is now staple format where at every Grand Prix scale event, all of your known associates will have a deck with them. We’re lucky to gain 51-61 new cards each year that fill gaps in Eternal formats like Vintage and Legacy, but more importantly, some of the game’s most flavorful and fun mechanical cards can get new artworks in these commander products.
To talk about what it means today, we need to look back, briefly, at what we learned in the past.
Commander 2011:
The format kicks off with three-color combos. This is right before I started writing art reviews. The sets were instantly well-received and the opportunities for what a reprinted deck with a few new additions was exciting like Flusterstorm for Eternal formats with great new art.
Commander 2013:
The second iteration, with an increased production of new artists being pushed to create art like adding a dragonfish to a merfolk, giving us this utter gem:
Commander 2014:
Legendary characters from the past are given cards. Ghoulcaller Gisa, Stitcher Geralf, Feldon of the Third Path, Jazal Goldmane, and Titania, Protector of Argoth are made, showcasing Ethan Fleischer’s vision of bringing old Vorthos names into paper cards. I somehow did not write an art review this year.
Commander 2015:
What is slush art and how it applies to Commander means that art you never have seen, made years ago, finds a home and it is often fantastic. Also, Ezuri and Koth are shown in “present time” on Mirrodin, showing their current status.
Commander 2016:
Ethan Fleischer really cares about making fun, cool stuff. Also, Rebecca Guay, Mark Poole and Kev Walker make basic lands for Commander sets.
This art review covers as many of the fifty-six new card arts that were accessible via artists posting, pestering and my pleading so we art enthusiasts can see the effort the Magic artists made visible beyond recognition at 2x3” at card size. The most exciting to me are the reprinted cards with new art, and the Magic Online token making their first paper printing.
New tokens
One of my favorite articles to refer back to, is The Missing Tokens of Magic I wrote about two years ago. Since then, Tidal Wave with its Wave token, Sengir Autocrat with its Serf token, Tooth and Claw with it Carnivore token and Breeding Pit with its Thrull token which also helps Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder. Since Ethan Fleischer is well aware of the community and the need for new tokens, slowly the list is shortening with each new set.
This set, we no longer need to use Chronicles Cat Warriors cards for Jedit’s tokens anymore. Give a quick thanks to Ethan the next time you see him. You know he played a part in getting this cat legend absolutely printed.
New art reprints
For archival purposes, yes, Edgar Markov is holding a goblet of blood and is the only vampire in this depiction. Sorin Markov and Olivia Voldaren are still both humans here and very much alive. As for a timeline, it doesn’t make a ton of sense to me why a statue of an angel would be their fountain in a church where there aren’t a ton of vampires yet. The process of becoming a vampire on Innistrad involved a demon, Edgar, and exsanguinating the angel Marycz. I always thought he was a mad scientist type and that it occurred in a lab, not in the middle of a church.
This is actually the moment right before Sorin’s spark ignites. The process was his ignition.
Is there a better artist in Magic right now that can paint a church than Volkan?
This is a great art upgrade and inclusion of Vargas, showing that he indeed will stick around Magic for some time. Personally, I love when human faces are under a cloak and the gender isn’t known. The flavor text forces us to see male, and I would be wary of doing that in the future. A mage or necromancer has no gender, and in cases like this card art, folks selecting need to be wary of that. Especially true with reprinted cards that gain flavor text in the new iteration, changing the gender is a fun exercise, such that people can choose art A or art B, with another level of “do I want the male or female?” which also relates to some deck-building. This is a logical reprint and a good one to get back into commander player hands.
And then, we see when seemingly logical reprints don’t make it into the set.
I’m guessing there was a short list and this was bumped. I’m ok with Black Market making it in instead in my mind.
https://twitter.com/EchoMTG/status/896921823463391232
Last year, we got Gruul Signet and Rakdos Signet from Magic Online, where they were already made as promotional cards. A few cards on the list could’ve gotten an art upgrades though, considering the reprinted number of the same art, their ability to be Planeswalker depictions like Phyrexian Arena with Koth. Check the short list I would’ve looked at with reprintings listed:
8 - Cultivate (9, though the FNM promo is different art)
6 - Kodama's Reach
4 - Abundance
2 - Memory Plunder
Oddly, Sunscorch Regent was not printed with the MTGO artwork, thus creating a new artwork on a reprinted card.
Sure, the original by Matt Stewart made the art book Spectrum, the annual best submitted fantasy/sci-fi art of the year. It is puzzling to me how this wasn’t printed when an alternate version already exists online, resulting in zero change to the art budget line, but mysterious things behind that curtain, I suppose, is the best answer.
Onto the new cards
Edgar Markov by Volkan Baga
Oil on board
33 x 44 cm (13 x 17.3”)
Original sold for $xxx on the MTG Art Exchange Facebook group.
https://twitter.com/loudpenitent/status/895307531941171201
Indeed.
Lovely depiction of dulling down the palette of his squires and adding a lighter tint (adding white, comparing to adding black, which is a shade), to Edgar, making him appear to pop out and glow.
The red is obvious for a vampire and has a ton of historical precedent for ceremonial armor for every monarch in the 1500s.
And yes, he does give off a Vigo the Carpathian vibe.
Roman vampires?
I’m putting this thought on hold. I’m marinating an article on Magic and real-world cultures. I’m not sure they’re the best option, though I do think they’re the needed option.
Stay tuned.
Look at this young buck floating with his horse.
If you look at him from the waist down, you’ll see an Eastern influenced design, especially with the scimitar and then the figure creation snaps back into focus. Sometimes, I cover a piece with my hand to see only a face, or only one figure, to deconstruct an image. We humans naturally will fill in space to see logical things, it’s why two dots and a semicircle makes a face. It’s also why turning a painting upside down will often illuminate an issue an artist is having with a painting. You can’t unsee it then.
There isn’t a nod to any past demons of Magic’s history, in case you’re wondering. I asked Bram himself about the back left one, and while it feels like Grinning Demon or Fallen Angel, horns in front are a pretty normal demon look.
The spiky shoulders are a fun addition to signify a demon, and the X that their wings create frames the symmetrical piece in half. I think of Admonition Angel and the Zendikar angels, with their multiple wings, except corrupted, depicted as a demon here.
Also to note is the framing Bram did on the ground, raising the sides of the dead to make a “U” which pushes our gaze upward, toward the middle. Well composed and lit appropriately dark to not confuse a player thinking it’s a group of creatures and not a spell, Bram did phenomenal work here.
And to think that Raymond Swanland was known as Magic's best artist for showing motion. This piece is exquisite. Not something you'd expect from a digital illustration from Magic players, but very much done with ease. The thin and graceful skin on the vampires is clean, without scarring. They’re dancers except with deadly accuracy.
It’s great reference work, especially if you look at the foreground people’s hands.
Oh that’s fun. He was asked to reference Sengir Vampire.
You can see them in sketches 2 and 3 below. I’m not sure what 1 and 4 are from a quick glance, but I love the bone protrusions from his back alluding to wings having been there.
The purple veins are a nice touch.
I couldn’t quite place this creature.
I feel like I have seen it before in some type of anime. The long wet hair and elongated hands don’t feel Western European fantasy. The vampire concept on Tarkir is mega strange. We get to see Kheru Bloodsucker with a cut off face obscuring the vampire’s real face, which we see here.
It’s nightmare inducing, with a great obscuring of the figural form to focus us on the bizarre face and proportions of its hands. Lovely work, despite being terrifying.
Howard has a fun little write up on the Muddy Colors blog on this.
The zoom in crop absolutely is the right choice by Mark Winters, the art director for the piece. The focus changes and it’s the right decision. Of course, having Howard be unstoppable, having great reference of clothing, great reference of lighting and character placement, making sure the hand behind the victim’s next is really the only piece to hone in on.
Must make the job easy when you have someone like Howard painting for you. Watch the gif and, specifically, check out how he handles detail between Olivia’s ear and the victim’s neck. Let it go through a few times. It’s so very effortless for him.
Vampire Token by Volkan Baga
Oil on board.
37 x 33 cm (14.5 x 13 inches)
Talk about realism. Other than the vampire fangs, this could be a soldier in any church for any game dealing with medieval combat. The Edgar Markov bust statue is just sublime. If Donato is to hands in Magic, then Volkan is to realistic marble sculptures. Though, Volkan can paint some pretty great hands himself. I like the slight dirtiness and implied cold hands here. Innistrad is a colder than average plane after all.
The hair alone shows us the movement, without needing any blurring, with his cape in loose brushstrokes to reinforce that thought. His eye color is yellow, which is absolutely on brand with Innistrad too.
I could go on for hours on dating the church by the windows of this same church shown in multiple depictions. The type of pillars inform the same but we have more art to talk about.
Sid knows Bouguereau.
You should know who Bouguereau is too. I’ll leave the Google search to you, though how he handled myth is rather interesting.
Find the vampire on the right side to echo the image below. Magic can be more than simply needing a 2x3” depiction to inform a card. Art can show growth, and homages show respect, a continuity of fantastic art being more than the commission. This is where illustration gains its soul. The greater the meaning, you just have to find that special artist with time to spare and someone who has a good eye and also notices.
Dante and Virgil in Hell by William-Adolphe Bouguereau
1850. Oil on Canvas.
281 x 225 cm (9’ 2.75” x 7’ 4.5”)
Musée d'Orsay
As for Sid’s art itself. Check out the framing elements he outlined using the candelabras torches. He had a clever idea to use quadrants instead of foreground, midground, and background. Smart move Sid.
The prompt asked: He is roaring and surrounded by snow leopards in a snow canyon.
Asking Jesper to make something epic sounds easy enough. The scarf looking wrap around his neck is just that, epic.
With snow leopards as background, you can see the bar being raised for a marquee commander. Jesper understood that importance.
When I saw his private auction sit under $3000, I was really worried. It got up to a healthy $6900 and the quality spoke for itself.
Notice the horns that Jesper removed at final stage.
I gave him horns, one broken to show how old he was. I even sketched in an ethereal glowing crown hovering above his head, but abandoned the idea because it would collide with my plans for the lightsource.
The green/white choice palette is absolutely correct, as it keeps the background snow leopards cool and snowy. The color alignment to card color hasn’t been required since the mid 1990s, though when it shows up seamlessly, it’s a fun touch.
Fun to know that he was Norabu, Roar of the World as its play-test name. Either way I think it works.
That is a really lovely new outfit for Mirri. Magali did a good job.
A shame that we don’t have a strong encyclopedia on characters. One wiki states that Mirri has two different colored eyes, though if you have the reference material for the citations, you’d know that MIrri’s eyes are green, according to Rath and Storm, page 58, 76, 124 and 132.
Good to know that if I ever see a house cat/lynx hybrid, this is what it’ll look like.
The casual paw to hold the rat is a fun art description.
https://twitter.com/shreyashettyart/status/895731744556466176
Qasali Slingers is digital, and I wish we could see it closer, but with the timing, that’s how it sometimes goes.
I’ve talked about the art rules of size, as a human soldier is often a 1/1, though groups of them or cats, can change from merely a 3/3 into something greater as a team. This is an example of what that means. The original Cat Warriors? Two of them turned into a 2/3, so logically three of them would be at least a 3/x.
The purple shade and red tint make for a lovely color palette.
Realism, meet fantasy.
We get to see an image that, were it Warcraft, would have a gigantic sword, with an oversized hammer. This here is Magic, we see a cat person with magic that wraps around him for fanciful effect and yet get the solidness of stones, mantle and red to gray glow of the hot iron.
After having worked on Warhammer and Warhammer 40k, I’m acutely aware of any medals, medallions and insignia worn. Nazahn here is placed on Bant from the medals exactly, and the red ones are a nice touch in the piece, tying his medal to his metalcrafting. It’s subtle yet clever.
This is a great legendary creature depiction, not in battle but rather, showing what he actually does, tying mechanic to art description. It’s ideal to have cards built this way, though with the long tail of design to development, changes can happen that makes card art make little sense. Here, it’s harmonious.
The hammer continues the narrative, showing us the hearth fully, and some great patina on the metal hammer.
That’s some nice dragon looking armor. (Notice the ridge in the middle of the individual scale pieces.) Being unable to see the rest of the image is tough. It’s great looking armor and the orange/blue sure makes his fur pop?
Yes, the card art image is lighter than the card, which is dark. That’s pretty common from printing. When people see original art up close, they notice a ton of detail that may be missed from printing onto cardboard. The castle in the background pops into focus, as does the slight fencing on the path. The little details separate Magic from a ton of other brands.
The more I look at this image, the more I want to go onto another dragon.
It just is what it is. It’s the cat dragon queen. She is paid to defend the city of Sekana by being paid in tributes of fish. It’s hilarious. If you read the novel Monsters of Magic, you’ll learn all about her in the story Who Is Queen?
Cynthia also paints for focus, which you can see mega clearly in the face vs. the right hand. (Her left paw.) Notice the thick vs small brushstrokes? To “tighten” them, you use a smaller brushstroke so it doesn’t evoke what it is, it just comes into focus. Look at the bottom right part of the image where a fog/mist obscures the background? When you add white, it’s called a tint and she does it masterfully there.
Cat dragon token by Cynthia Sheppard
Digital
It’s just all around adorable.
Check out the brace on the tail. Look at how she makes you see motion by painting the gold lightly in an area where the tail isn’t. Traditional painters do that and not many digital ones do, they just use Photoshop motion blur. Cynthia blends them and creates that perfect effect.
This has to be Theros, no? With Outland Colossus feeling in the same vein, greek statue looking skin and the lushness of the greenery, I’m solidly in Theros. That and Steve Belledin’s forests are hard to miss.
Sometimes scale birds aren’t needed. Were the giant in the foreground, we would need reference material for size. We would also assume it a creature if it were in the foreground, which this card cannot do. Daarken understands that and understands it well.
Slow things down here.
Take your time looking at the armored leggings of the middle elf. We haven’t really seen that before. Oh we have had armor that is thin, but not literally leggings. The green elf to the right looks similarly, like athletic wear on tight during a track meet. Good reference? It’s Ryan Pancoast, of course it is.
Lovely work.
What a dichotomy of fantasy and realism here. Meehan doesn’t try to waver between the two sides, he clearly separates each and lets you compare and contrast yourself.
I love this nugget. Like a little boy trying on his father’s jersey or a baby lion trying to roar. He even has two bug friends with him.
Burdett works the final digitally though he always has a tonal sketch, shown below.
To deconstruct O-Kagachi fully, you need to understand the creature’s role in the Kamigawa storyline. We haven’t the time for that.
What we do have time for is to compare and contrast, Heinrich Woelfflin style, with Final Judgment, the other depiction of the physical manifestation of the greatest spirit, or kami, named O-Kagachi. They aren’t gods, rather, they’re more closely aligned to avatars like Progenitus, yet not. I should probably talk about gods vs. avatars vs. spirits vs. how each plane interacts with the concept of divinity.
Back to Daarken’s art. I can’t unsee how hydra-like and fitting the silver snake-inspired heads look around the kami’s “main” head. It plays upon the Kev Walker ones, yet pushes the main kami head to feel more primary, more impressive in comparison. It’s an artist’s take on it and I’m all for having iconic legendary creatures get different people reworking the style.
Final Judgment by Kev Walker
And yes, O-Kagachi is kind of like the dragon in Dragonball.
https://twitter.com/SteveRaffle/status/895359474868903944
How about a scale dragon for the largest dragon?
Contrasting a black dragon against the multicolored wings of the Ur-Dragon? That’s some good planning, adding a multicolored top right sky to bottom right red dragons is just going above and beyond on the concept.
Notice that the dragon is standing and will soon take off. His arms are almost as long as a black dragon itself. 10/10 is enormous in Magic, fully double the size of a Shivan Dragon. (Though, at that size, it could be exponentially larger with each point of power and toughness.
Yes, this is one of the best images in the set.
I only want to touch on a few things.
Check out that the green patches were added digitally. The painting is shown below:
The pop of green works, though I do like the feeling of wheat as well.
What a world we live in where fans can inquire with artists openly and we all benefit:
Looking at card art at size makes for interesting observations:
https://twitter.com/SliesandLander/status/895319522881687552
Looks like Chase got the art description perfectly. Check it out:
https://twitter.com/kellydigges/status/895332251981946881
Remove the card frame itself and this is still a very strong depiction of a lich. It could be plugged into nearly any Dungeons and Dragons or Pathfinder product and it would fit perfectly.
He’s in his wizard study and his three abilities are shown by the purple gems, representing the heart, mind and soul. The thing in his hand is his soul, the phylactery is basically the same as a Harry Potter Horcrux, only by destroying it does a lich actually perish. It is represented by an item and all, likely in the art description. All put together, it’s an iconic looking lich, and more closely aligning to what gamers understand a lich to be.
Personally, I like the weathering on the chest and face. Quick Swanland-like brushstrokes that feel like a lich and enhance the concept.
This is from when I started using color dynamics in brushes.
It certainly is.
I love the face, it’s so evil looking. The androgynous face, with greasy hair gives me emotions without even looking at the subtle gold buttons and stripes. It’s quiet, yet you know exactly who this character is even without knowing Mairsil’s backstory in Magic canon.
The vampire bounty hunter concept works great in a set about vampires. Of course there will be a Blade character who hunts his own kind, right? Some sort of flip on the trope?
Joe must’ve had a ton of time to paint that red leather jacket. That takes a ton of work to get that reference just right. It’s really well done, especially at the mini folders where the buttonholes are next to the vertical blue runes. The blue runic symbols don’t mean anything, and neither does the brand, though Joe did explain what he tried to do with the brand:
So the AD, Mark Winters, let me make up the symbol so my idea on the brand was not run by the writers and was not informed by any mechanics
But what I was thinking was that the horizontal line was the horizon and the part of the circle was representing the sun going down and . . .
the two marks represented undead coming out. Again at the time I didn't know any lore so I just wanted it to look neat and not too complex
What a lovely usage of purple. Without it, this is such a brighter character in a dull swamp. Swamp scenes, by nature, are hard to see clearly in. With the larger jpg image, we get to see the Sultai pillars, some more notes of architecture and finally, Taigam. The red/purple robe will be a fun cosplay item for a group of twins. Obviously they will cosplay at Taigam, with each choosing the different version.
I didn’t get ahold of Simon to see the other Taigam, but we’ll see him soon too.
Alayna sure has come in strong into Magic. Not everyone can break in like Zack Stella with True-Name Nemesis or Show and Tell, though she has one Commander staple, one cube counterspell and one equipment that will be used often. That’s great to see.
The pool as representation as any colored mana isn’t new, though adding monoliths to show ancestry is a fun conceptual piece. We saw a similar concept with the Magic Online promo of Reflecting Pool.
You see the axe in the negative space on the ground of course. That’s the token.
Ant and I discussed this on Snacktime, showing how an art description of a person holding two axes creates an odd composition because it just looks like a creature character card. You can to crop out the head, and it will become radically stiff if you show both.
I love the drapery here. It feels like stone, evoking the mood of the passed warrior.
Yes, yes, the sword base does feel a little Warcraft, though, it’s more Warhammer Fantasy, which Warcraft borrowed from heavily. All art relies on remixing in western fantasy art though.
Back to art itself, notice the slight scruff on the man’s face? He was likely on campaign or in a longer term battle, or he would’ve shaved his face. You either want a beard or no facial hair for a helmet. It’s fit and comfort, and between isn’t going to work. That gives us visual information that they either dragged him back to the city/village and gave him a warrior’s send off to sea. We can see the water in the top right.
We are in the moment right before a nephew or daughter or heir, will pick up the sword and be back into battle. That’s fun. Mourning is today, we battle again next turn. Showing the person picking up the sword would likely be too much for an art description or rather Sword in the Stone forced. I like the contemplative feel, where we can continue the narrative in our own minds.
Kind of nice to have people flock around you because gold just appears around you. To note, check his jacket pockets, they’re slightly open and presumably, they’re to be his coins.
This image allows you to see the crest on his jacket, a dragon-like swirl still unable to be placed on an individual plane thus far. The forearm guards do feel more Italian, or Paliano of Conspiracy’s location.
Oh yes. This here, this is a good card art illustration.
He is forcing you to look at one place, the shifted mouth while he eats. It’s the emotion showing through, also the area of the most detail. He uses tighter brushstrokes to “tighten up” that area, forcing you to see it first. Once you backup, you can see the thick digital brushstrokes on the fire, which are massive, and the quick lines of color on the rock ridge behind him. The wolves themselves are not highly detailed, they are depicted using nearly the minimum amount of visual information for us to read them as a wolf. Each is about the same in terms of background, allowing you to acknowledge them but not stare at them. Even the moon and trees behind the figure are like what an oil painter would do. We see a foreground character and a midground group of wolves behind him. There is no distance where he has time to react. They snuck up on him while he was making dinner.
This is a phenomenal example of understanding the 2x3” card illustration box and what can be seen and what is secondary.
How this works if that anytime a player is attacked, you get a zombie and each player attacking them also gets a zombie. How comical would this be in Fiora, where the High City of Paliano is literally hundreds of feet off the ground? Do they climb the pillars? Amazing.
Check out Kieran adding more figures to a scene but they don’t fight the central character. How did he do it? He used the same color scheme for the pillars and shadows as the zombies. Check it out below. It’s all the same! Very clever use to allude to all the other commander players hating this player/Planeswalker/character with the weird hair.
The gardening hoe is too perfect.
Adding a little chest hair gives us again, some fun realism. The V-neck shirt allows us to step into the role as a Planeswalker, yet the idea behind it is that it’s a player as well. This entire cycle is a stellar fourth wall break.
I love the background all white character, potentially placing us on Innistrad with a vampire. Though, without being able to see his eyes well, it’s impossible to tell. (Innistrad vampires have black sclera, which Ant Tessitore wrote about.)
If you look again, you see a turqoise coat on one of the humans. There is a plane with humans who wear cloaks like that, and it isn’t Innistrad. Context clues are fantastic to place a Planeswalker on different planes with minimal effort and maximum immersion for us Vorthos community members trying to decode what Kieran intended. More instances like that are always fantastic in sets that aren’t anchored to one plane.
Ant and I discussed on Snacktime what makes this card Dissident. It relates to the card Infectious Horror. Upon seeing this card artwork, I immediately asked Izzy for a larger image to see more. Of course, he’s out being awesome on his boat with his dog, so this is the largest image I could acquire. More on Izzy soon.
Looking at Kess, and knowing Grixis, she’s an older woman. Magic doesn’t often add older women randomly to the game and certainly they have an intentionality with legendary creatures. From there, I searched “grixis” on Scryfall to see if there was clue. I knew that the Grixis shard of the plane of Alara had no green mana, meaning there is no life. Everything is recycled. Zombies is the perfect example. Kess here, is old. That should not happen. We see the flavor text and . . .
Yet we see the dissident who has grown old. She defies the plane’s nature and through the artwork of floating life energy, presumably vis though that’s more gaslike, to maintain youth. She’s probably Liliana old, yet stays young by her mechanic, which allows her to recast a spell, like youthfulness.
This is an incredibly difficult concept from a top-down perspective in a supplemental set.
She has some scarring on her face, and like royalty prior to contemporary life, being large meant you had enough food. To be large was to be wealthy. She does not care for your beauty standards, your concept of what a powerful mage should look like or be, or frankly what your plane’s very nature is.
I was blown away by this concept.
And then, I talked to Izzy.
I asked him an innocuous question:
Izzy, is your Kess character from Magic missing a leg?
No. Just chubby.
I painted a type of person I had not seen in Magic before.
Just like my grandma sorceress from a while back.
Wait
I like different perspectives and to see new things that challenge preconceptions.
All chubbier folks in Magic tend to be hideous or comic relief. Figured a cool one's due.
I will do amputees and other varieties of folds when i can get them in.
Basically if race, gender, sexuality, etc, is open, I'm putting in something different.
What
I'm just interested in seeing a variety of people with powers.
I always try to put different races and ages when I can get away with it.
Izzy made this woman older and heavier because he wanted to challenge what being an older and “chubby” wizard means. He didn’t do it out of malice or humor, he just thought of something that had not been shown before.
Upon seeing this I found a way to show how she absolutely works on Grixis, and does so in a brilliant concept. Diversity deepens the worlds and allows for players to see themselves in the game. In this instance, an artist just felt like this chance was not a risk. It just made sense to him. And me, as an art critic and Vorthos, I can easily slot this into a plane and see a side of it we have not seen before.
I end my art review with the best artwork, on one of the strongest cards. We get to see good artworks in Magic all the time. The level of skill has never been higher and those who stick around are still innovating, pushing the game into contemporary culture, diversifying what it means to be a game in 2017 and we should take note of the brilliance that occasionally rises to the top.
—Mike
