Interesting Facts About MTG
General forum
Posted on Nov. 20, 2021, 10:11 a.m. by TypicalTimmy
This thread is specifically made for interesting facts about MTG. If you know of anything you'd like to share, leave it here. :)
I just found out that Joraga Bard is apparently the only creature that currently has FOUR subtypes. Since the introduction of Bard as a subtype in The Forgotten Realms, a few cards have been updated to include Bard with them. Joraga Bard is one of them, as you can see here, on it's Gatherer page
Which means it now has 4 subtypes. :D To the best of my knowledge, without Changling, this is the first creature card to do so.
A few more interesting things I know:
- Angrath's name is a portmanteau of the words Anger and Wrath.
- Ghired is the same, but instead of emotional states of being his name is the combination of his colors - Green, White and Red.
- Elspeth, Knight-Errant was the first Planeswalker to introduce the idea of an Emblem, because her original printing gave a lot of confusion with the Judges. The confusion came from whether or not her last loyalty ability "remained" if she left the field. The argument was that on-field, she could act as an enchantment of sorts to modify the game, such as a permanent like Finest Hour. Once Finest Hour leaves play, so to does it's ability. But the argument was that it was supposed to be permanent, regardless of Elspeth being on field or not? So, emblems were created as a "token placeholder to modify the game".
FormOverFunction says... #3
Sort of surprised that we haven’t mentioned “Larry Niven” yet, and his reversed-appearance on a certain disk (it’s a puzzle!)
November 20, 2021 10:46 a.m.
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Nameless Race is the creature with the fewest creature subtypes - it has none.
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Every Magic card has the word “deckmaster” on the back. This is because they were going to have other games in the “deckmaster” series, such as a cyberpunk game. However, none of these games came to fruition, so Magic is the only card game bearing the logo.
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The Deckmaster logo has a few errant marks on it - these are not amti-counterfeit measures, as some might assume, but rather errant pen marks that they forgot to remove before sending it to the printer.
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Time Walk’s original text did not provide you an extra turn, it caused an opponent to skip a turn. However, they ambiguously wrote that target player “loses their next turn.” It wasn’t until late in the development, when they introduced the game to a play tester outside their core group, that someone pointed out that it read like the person loses the game when their next turn comes around.
November 20, 2021 11:34 a.m.
seshiro_of_the_orochi says... #5
The back of cards from Arabian Nights onwards were originally supposed to have different colours, but it was decided that all cards should be allowed to be played together.
As promotion for the Nicholas Cage movie "The sorcerer's Apprentice", WotC published an article and pictures of some alternate art versions of pre-existing MtG cards, stating that these would be of importance in the movie. Well, guess what.
November 20, 2021 1:47 p.m.
GoblinsBeatElves says... #6
Joraga Bard isn’t the only creature that has 4 subtypes. Seton's Scout also does (been errata-ed to a Centaur Druid Scout Archer)
November 20, 2021 2:05 p.m.
If a big oof happens know that the biggest ouphe (not counting Changelings) only has 4/3 base stats so the big ouphe is more like a medium oof all things considered.
November 20, 2021 4:26 p.m.
November 21, 2021 4:52 a.m.
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Sticking with the Arabian Nights facts, originally Arabian nights was going to be a stand-alone product, where you only had to buy Arabian Nights packs to play. When they changed it to a booster set, they decided to remove all basic lands from the set. But they forgot to remove Mountain, which means Mountain is the only basic to appear in one more set than all the others.
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Originally Magic was called Mana Clash, but during development, they called it “Magic” for short. They decided they liked that name better, so renamed the game to simply Magic. “Magic: The Gathering” was the name of the first set, since it was gathering players together. Subsequent sets would be known as “Magic: The Arabian Nights” or “Magic: Ice Age”.
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This idea died on the first trip to their lawyer’s office. The lawyer said “Magic” was a weak trademark and encouraged them to name the game “Magic: The Gathering” instead.
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The back of the Magic card is the only place the original trademark, with blue lettering, is still used. At the time of initial publication, they had not registered their trademark, which is why the backs of Magic cards say “TM” instead of “®” as all other instances of the logo display.
November 21, 2021 9:34 a.m.
Magic was originally thought up as something simple to do while waiting for table top games to finish up so you could join in the next game.
November 21, 2021 9:43 p.m.
jethstriker says... #11
Somethings that I can share:
The "Foriys" in Two-Headed Giant of Foriys is supposed to be pronounced as "four eyes", because the giant has 2 pairs of eyes.
Alchor's Tomb is supposed to be Alchor's Tome. The artist misread / misunderstood the art description and drawn a tomb. Somehow they just go with the art and instead change the card name from Tome to Tomb.
Orcish Oriflamme was included in the first batch of banned cards because the Alpha Orcish Oriflamme misprinted its mana cost from CMC 4 to CMC 2, and it was thought to be overpowered at that cost.
Legions is an all creature set, while Alara Reborn is an all multi-color set.
Torment has the most number of black cards by percentage with respect to the total number of cards in the set. While its enemy colors (white & green) has the least. This is reversed in the following set, Judgment, where black has the least and white & green hast the most.
The first Enchantment themed block is not Theros, it's Urza's block.
November 22, 2021 8:46 a.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #12
Steward of Valeron is the only mana-generating creature (sometimes know as a "mana dork") that has vigilance, so it can attack, block, and be used for mana, without its controller needing to choose between those options.
jethstriker, I thought that the Urza block had a focus on artifacts?
November 27, 2021 5:30 p.m.
jethstriker says... #13
It was a common misconception that Urza block was an artifact block because it indeed contained powerful artifacts that overshadowed the enchantments of that block. MaRo himself stated this in one of his Making Magic articles during the first run of Theros.
Another thing I like to add:
The original color for the logo of MtG, dark blue (the one you see at the back of the card), was changed to yellowish-orange / reddish-orange. This was because their research shows that "dark color" is a poor choice of color logo for marketing purposes. I think recently they are now using white to spell out the the logo of Magic.
Omniscience_is_life says... #2
Huh. The more you know!
There is only one black-bordered wombat card, with the only other being silver-bordered.
November 20, 2021 10:16 a.m.