Magic the Gathering

Today after I went snowboarding at Mount Wachusett, I went to the store That's Entertainment to play Magic the Gathering. Magic the Gathering is a collectable card game that was first introduced by Wizards of the Coast, the same company that introduced the game Dungeons and Dragons, in 1993 by the mathematician Richard Garfield. There have been plenty of other trading card games that have been similar to Magic, but few of them have had as much of a success as this one game. Yu-Gi-Oh! by Konami is the strongest competitor.

 This is the back of all Magic cards. They have not changed the design ever. You can see the five basic colors you play with in the game: green, white, blue, black, and red. You usually build a deck around one or two of the colors. Few can use all five...

One of the best feature of Magic the Gathering is the ever changing styles of artwork introduced to the series. Numerous illustrators have been employed by Wizards to create images for these cards.

You can see here an odd picture on this creature card done by Dan Frazier. This began as a card from an old edition, but it was brought back for a later edition. Some of the pictures used on these cards are fan favorites.

Here is a creature card of a terrifying horse creature called a Nightmare, which was illustrated by Carl Critchlow. I like how the horse looks deathly. You can tell this is an older card by the surrounding border being white. They later changed it to black. They have come up with different designs for this side of the card since the opponent can't see it.

This is one of my favorite illustrations on one of my cards. It was done by RK Post.

This is another of my favorites, and it is shiny. They make some cards shiny sometimes which increases their value. This was done by Ron Spencer, and the shininess just helps magnify it's awesomeness.

White cards used to be mostly just pictures of men at arms, beautiful creatures like unicorns, serine, and honorable images. Black was always morbid, green was always of beasts, red was always of fire and goblins, and blue was always about wizards and their academic studies. As time went on, all of the images used for Magic grew darker and darker for all colors. Here RK Post made a white creature terrifying.

Here's an illustration by Scott M. Fisher. Even when women are depicted on these cards, they are not portrayed as beautiful. Perhaps they want women portrayed with more of strength and fierceness instead.

Here is an enchantment card with an illustration by Mitch Cotle. I have used a few of these cards, so they are no longer in pristine condition. I apologize.

Here is a shiny spider card done by Greg Staples. I find it interesting to see only one spider that is of a light color. As you can see, this creature belongs to two different colors. That is seen often now in Magic.

Here is an artifact card done by Tomas Giorello. Artifacts generally have no color. I find it odd that this edition came up with some interesting images with mice, foxes, and snakes combined with people.

In more recent editions, they have began to have artifact with a color in it. Sometimes it is difficult to figure out what you are looking at in these images. This was done by Anthony Francisco.


Magic the Gathering has had an influence on my artwork. I suggest to all to try to play it at least once. It is harder than Yu-Gi-Oh, but it appeals to an older crowd.