Dominarian Plowshare

@mtgplowshare

Writing about Magic: The Gathering as art, story, and experience: He/him (PFP: Mark Tedin, “Swords to Plowshares”)

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Dominarian Plowshare@mtgplowshare· 8d

Saw this and said “whoa” aloud

Dominarian Plowshare@mtgplowshare· 10d

reading this in this voice

Dominarian Plowshare@mtgplowshare· 11d

Excellent synergy between birthday fairy and USPS @cascadecascade.com

Dominarian Plowshare@mtgplowshare· 23d

Reality Fracture continuing to litigate whether Tinybones is a full skeleton or a skeleton head on some chalky homunculus body

Tinybones in FRA. Notice the chalky homunculus arms

Tinybones in OTJ. Notice that he’s a full skeleton

Tinybones in his first appearance. Notice his buff flesh arms

Dominarian Plowshare@mtgplowshare· 25d

Ya I think so too—the big chin/spiky head/tapered waist feel so close that it’d be bizarre (and heartbreaking) to not be it. Teeechnically the preview one looks more like Dakmor or Shimian Nightstalkers, which are from a diff part of Jamuraa than Zhalfir was, but I assume it’s a retcon

Dominarian Plowshare@mtgplowshare· 26d

most importantly of all: how much equipment does a heroic ornithopter need to defeat god-emperor nicol bolas?

Dominarian Plowshare@mtgplowshare· Jul 9

i was proud of this line

All these micro-histories should interest us because they reveal the strange seams that knit Magic together. Creature typing has, from the beginning, been suspended between a matter of fantasy flavor and a matter of mechanical clarity. Should a creature that plainly is a Goblin be typed as a Goblin? Should a creature type with no mechanical purpose still be printed? Can a seemingly unserious type suddenly provide the infrastructure for hundreds of cards?

Such questions speak to the way that, beneath their veneer of unchangeable, indisputable authority, rules are always mutable—and always involve players’ imaginations more than we might think. Despite the apparent power and obvious necessity of a comprehensive rulebook, there will always be little sparks that flit through the fireplace grate—and that can birth whole new worlds unto themselves.

Dominarian Plowshare@mtgplowshare· Jul 8

To those who played magic before the Grand Creature Type Update: did you actually treat Goblin King as a non-Goblin card? Did you treat Kobold Drill Sergeant as a Kobold, even though its type was Drill Sergeant?

Dominarian Plowshare@mtgplowshare· Jun 22

i mean

Dominarian Plowshare@mtgplowshare· Jun 22

obsessed w the old reminder text for Dredge—“EXACTLY six cards.” heads off the people who feel like milling 5.75 cards

Dominarian Plowshare@mtgplowshare· Jun 17

mirage was pretty neat, I think

Kaervek's Purge, illus. Richard Kane Ferguson

Dominarian Plowshare@mtgplowshare· Jun 11

As I was writing this article, I found over and over that my favorite flavor texts from MSH—the ones I wanted to elevate in order to give the set a fair shake—were actually unattributed quotes from comic book writers. Magic’s always had gross IP ownership issues, to be sure, but I detest this

The flavor text of the promo version of Echo, Perceptive Prodigy reads: “My story happens in the silence between the notes. That is where the magic happens. That is where you will find me."

A page from David Mack’s Daredevil, where the quote from the previous image originally appeared (in this case, it’s in a multimedia collage made up of pencil drawings and musical notes that Echo has herself created).

It's difficult for me to look at the card the same way, knowing that Mack's words are being presented here as though they were pulled from the aether, as though there isn't a real human context from which this derives. The card is attempting to convince me that human labor and production don't matter, that this card is tapping into something so transcendentally mythical that it just appeared in front of me and I should buy it because I should. But there was a real person who wrote these words, and he wrote them in a much, much different context than this.

I'm sure this is all close-enough-to-perfectly legal-as the pernicious little
"[COPYRIGHT SYMBOL]MARVEL" at the bottom-right of each card announces, these images and words are proprietary to the corporation, not to the artists and writers who incarnated them in words and images. This is a media company's aim, after all: to make you see their creative "property" not as a human-made product but as a mysterious phenomenon that falls out of the sky fully formed, impossible to question and invested with automatic authority over your wallet.

Dominarian Plowshare@mtgplowshare· Jun 11

Added bonus is that im back at it with tweaked out charts

Dominarian Plowshare@mtgplowshare· Jun 10

lean into this art more! this is great!

Dominarian Plowshare@mtgplowshare· Jun 9

Marvel cards with unattributed comic book-derived flavor text featuring the non-attributed work of Jonathan Hickman, Jonathan Hickman, Jonathan Hickman, and Jonathan Hickman

Dominarian Plowshare@mtgplowshare· Jun 8

Marvel cards with unattributed comic book-derived flavor text, featuring the non-credited words of Kurt Busiek, Reginald Hudin, Dan Slott, and Bryan Edward Hill

Dominarian Plowshare@mtgplowshare· Jun 7

unsurprisingly--but also a little sadly rarely--Victor Adame Minguez delivers an actual creative visual among the hundreds of Marvel and Spider-Man magic cards