Post by aviijp on Aug 26, 2019 14:57:58 GMT
I love pauper.
Recently I have started playing various builds of the jeskai and bant snow decks. I'm also something of a fan of the old style look of older magic cards, so I wondered what it would be like if some of the cards featured in these pauper decks had been printed in Ice Age itself.
In the cards below, I used the cards' original artwork where it looked appopriate, and used other arts from the Ice Age set or from outside of magic instead.
Some of the flavour text is the original, though most cards have my own flavour text, taking inspiration from other flavour text in the Ice Age set.
In terms of abilities, I tried to word them in the same way that other cards that do similar things in Ice Age worded them. In the case of keywords that did not exist at the time, I also reworded them to be more fitting the set.
Archeomancer's art does not look out of place for Ice Age so I opted to keep the same art here. The flavour text on wizards in Ice Age either quote Arcum Dagsson or Zur the Enchanter. In this case I thought that Zur was the more fitting reference, since Arcum is more of an artifact-focused wizard.
I'm not quite sure what is up with the heavy purple boarders on the artifacts for this style, and I tried the cards with other old frame styles, however given that they have different sizes and illustrator name location, I felt it was just best to stick with the same style.
Obviously Arcum's Astrolabe is the most appropriate of all these cards as an Ice Age card. As all of Arcum's other artifacts in Ice Age have quotes from him, it made sense to come up with something for this one.
For Ash Barrens, I took the art from a white enchantment - Drought. It was the closest looking artwork in Ice Age to an 'ash barrens' that I could find. In the case of Ash Barrens, landcycling was not a keyword that existed, although cycling itself did. I did not think that it made much sense to de-keyword it so I've had to take a little license here. Reminder text also did not exist in Ice Age, but came a few years after with visions.
For Electrickery I used the card art from a blue instant called Enervate. This was the only art in the set that really felt close to what electrickery does and what is depicted in its art. As you can see, I also de-keyworded overload here.
There's an honourable mention for a card that I considered for the artwork for Ephemerate: Essence Vortex.
Once again I needed to de-keyword, rebound in this case, in addition to using the older form of 'exile'.
I struggled to find an artwork that really suited Evolving Wilds from Ice Age arts; I even extended my search to Coldsnap, but I still failed to fund any thing that really captured the card. In the end I felt like Ice Floe gave a good panorama that would fit well with the flavour text I went for here.
The Kor do not exist on Dominaria and the original artwork did not fit either the era nor the setting for Ice Age. This was actually the first card I changed the art for when making the set, and I looked throughout Ice Age, Coldsnap, and outside of MTG for an appropriate artwork. I suppose we have to imagine that Kjeldoran Skyknight is spearfishing Mulldrifters or something...
The flavour text I went for with Kor Skyfisher draws on something which Wizards often did with text back in the day 0 which is to quote from classic poetry or literature. Wordsworth has a few poems that capture the spirit of flying and this one I thought worked quite nicely.
For Mulldrifter, I initially looked at using the art from Mystic Remora for obvious reasons, however that would have borken my self-imposed rule of not using iconic card arts, particularly given as from a distance this would have just looked like that same card. In the end I decided that Mulldrifter's artwork was fine here. One thing that is notable about older sets like Ice Age is that there is a far less of a focused art direction, and looking over the art from the set, Mulldrifter looks more fitting for the set than even some of the actual cards in Ice Age do.
I felt like de-keywording Evoke here did not require too much rewording. Mulldrifter is an Elemental, not a Spirit, however there are summon spirits in Ice Age which have been erratad to be Elementals, like Wind Spirit.
For Preordain, I initially considered a number of arts from Ice Age such as Infuse, Sleight of Mind, and Portent (Portent's character looks like a Sun-Empire Shaman who has inexplicably taken a wrong turn at Itlimoc and somehow ended up in Dominaria). In the end I felt like Preordain has generic enough looking art to keep it the same here. You could even imagine that the caster might be Zur himself, or one of his acolytes.
I was amazed to discover that not only did scry not exist back then, but there were no non-keyword abilities that did the same or similar things. The closest really is looking at the top of a library, such as with the previously mentioned Portent. I may not have worded this quite as they would have done at the time, but as I said, I had no precedent to follow here.
For Prophetic Prism I considered a few different arts, notably Zuran Enchanter and Pentagram of the Ages. In the end I turned to Circle of Protection: White whose snowy vista made a good visual to match with the flavour text I wrote.
With the flavour text here, I am drawing on the text used on Prophetic Prism's Gatecrash and Kaladesh, both of which take the form of "To understand X, one must first understand Y". I think I did a neat job with this one, referencing Urza's Ruinous Blast.
Like Kor Skyfisher, Pulse of Murasa would never appear in a set on Dominaria as both are pretty specific to Zendikar. I found it pretty hard to find an appropriate card atwork for this one, but went with Foxfire in the end.
Seeker of the Way is a card originally from Khans of Tarkir. The name is certainly generic enough that I could have used an artwork from Ice Age itself, such as Winter's Chill, and thereby kept the art theme European-centric. However, as with Portent, there are a number of cards in Ice Age which are non-European-centric, and some of which are also Asian like Cloak of Confusion and Force Void. When looking at art outside of MTG I came across this wonderful Japanese art which has apparently no known artist, and it seemed to fit the card name, the Ice Age setting, as well as calling back to the original card by being Asian-themed.
The flavour tect did not need to be modified in this case, however de-kewording both prowess and lifelink took me a couple of attempts, and I'm still not confident I got it right.
I could have used the Coldsnap art for Skred here, but that seemed like a bit of a copout. In this case I used a red sorcery from Ice Age called Avalanche.
For the ability, I used precedents for both changing the wording to refer to numerical damage, as well as sounting snow-permanents from other Ice Age cards.
It seemed appropriate to keep the same flavour text in this case.
Spellstutter Sprite's art is far too Lorwyn and not Icey enough. For this one I didn't find art that felt right within the Ice Age set. I looked outside and came accross this wonderful piece by Jim Fitzpatrick (the guy who did the Che Guevarra portrait you see on so many t-shirts). The art is called The Snow Faerie and seemed to suit the needs of the card and setting.
Flash did not exist for Ice Age, but there are errata for cards that do the same thing from early expansions, and as such, I used the same wording here. For the ability, I probably should have used X as X is used in other cards in Ice Age.
Trinket mage felt like it fit right in to the Acolytes of Arcum Dagsson faction of Wizards from Ice Age. I only wish I had the space for flavour text with this one.
Anyway, that's it for this set. I hope you all enjoy the redesigns, and don't rip into me too harshly for the wording on the cards.
Recently I have started playing various builds of the jeskai and bant snow decks. I'm also something of a fan of the old style look of older magic cards, so I wondered what it would be like if some of the cards featured in these pauper decks had been printed in Ice Age itself.
In the cards below, I used the cards' original artwork where it looked appopriate, and used other arts from the Ice Age set or from outside of magic instead.
Some of the flavour text is the original, though most cards have my own flavour text, taking inspiration from other flavour text in the Ice Age set.
In terms of abilities, I tried to word them in the same way that other cards that do similar things in Ice Age worded them. In the case of keywords that did not exist at the time, I also reworded them to be more fitting the set.
Archeomancer's art does not look out of place for Ice Age so I opted to keep the same art here. The flavour text on wizards in Ice Age either quote Arcum Dagsson or Zur the Enchanter. In this case I thought that Zur was the more fitting reference, since Arcum is more of an artifact-focused wizard.
I'm not quite sure what is up with the heavy purple boarders on the artifacts for this style, and I tried the cards with other old frame styles, however given that they have different sizes and illustrator name location, I felt it was just best to stick with the same style.
Obviously Arcum's Astrolabe is the most appropriate of all these cards as an Ice Age card. As all of Arcum's other artifacts in Ice Age have quotes from him, it made sense to come up with something for this one.
For Ash Barrens, I took the art from a white enchantment - Drought. It was the closest looking artwork in Ice Age to an 'ash barrens' that I could find. In the case of Ash Barrens, landcycling was not a keyword that existed, although cycling itself did. I did not think that it made much sense to de-keyword it so I've had to take a little license here. Reminder text also did not exist in Ice Age, but came a few years after with visions.
For Electrickery I used the card art from a blue instant called Enervate. This was the only art in the set that really felt close to what electrickery does and what is depicted in its art. As you can see, I also de-keyworded overload here.
There's an honourable mention for a card that I considered for the artwork for Ephemerate: Essence Vortex.
Once again I needed to de-keyword, rebound in this case, in addition to using the older form of 'exile'.
I struggled to find an artwork that really suited Evolving Wilds from Ice Age arts; I even extended my search to Coldsnap, but I still failed to fund any thing that really captured the card. In the end I felt like Ice Floe gave a good panorama that would fit well with the flavour text I went for here.
The Kor do not exist on Dominaria and the original artwork did not fit either the era nor the setting for Ice Age. This was actually the first card I changed the art for when making the set, and I looked throughout Ice Age, Coldsnap, and outside of MTG for an appropriate artwork. I suppose we have to imagine that Kjeldoran Skyknight is spearfishing Mulldrifters or something...
The flavour text I went for with Kor Skyfisher draws on something which Wizards often did with text back in the day 0 which is to quote from classic poetry or literature. Wordsworth has a few poems that capture the spirit of flying and this one I thought worked quite nicely.
For Mulldrifter, I initially looked at using the art from Mystic Remora for obvious reasons, however that would have borken my self-imposed rule of not using iconic card arts, particularly given as from a distance this would have just looked like that same card. In the end I decided that Mulldrifter's artwork was fine here. One thing that is notable about older sets like Ice Age is that there is a far less of a focused art direction, and looking over the art from the set, Mulldrifter looks more fitting for the set than even some of the actual cards in Ice Age do.
I felt like de-keywording Evoke here did not require too much rewording. Mulldrifter is an Elemental, not a Spirit, however there are summon spirits in Ice Age which have been erratad to be Elementals, like Wind Spirit.
For Preordain, I initially considered a number of arts from Ice Age such as Infuse, Sleight of Mind, and Portent (Portent's character looks like a Sun-Empire Shaman who has inexplicably taken a wrong turn at Itlimoc and somehow ended up in Dominaria). In the end I felt like Preordain has generic enough looking art to keep it the same here. You could even imagine that the caster might be Zur himself, or one of his acolytes.
I was amazed to discover that not only did scry not exist back then, but there were no non-keyword abilities that did the same or similar things. The closest really is looking at the top of a library, such as with the previously mentioned Portent. I may not have worded this quite as they would have done at the time, but as I said, I had no precedent to follow here.
For Prophetic Prism I considered a few different arts, notably Zuran Enchanter and Pentagram of the Ages. In the end I turned to Circle of Protection: White whose snowy vista made a good visual to match with the flavour text I wrote.
With the flavour text here, I am drawing on the text used on Prophetic Prism's Gatecrash and Kaladesh, both of which take the form of "To understand X, one must first understand Y". I think I did a neat job with this one, referencing Urza's Ruinous Blast.
Like Kor Skyfisher, Pulse of Murasa would never appear in a set on Dominaria as both are pretty specific to Zendikar. I found it pretty hard to find an appropriate card atwork for this one, but went with Foxfire in the end.
Seeker of the Way is a card originally from Khans of Tarkir. The name is certainly generic enough that I could have used an artwork from Ice Age itself, such as Winter's Chill, and thereby kept the art theme European-centric. However, as with Portent, there are a number of cards in Ice Age which are non-European-centric, and some of which are also Asian like Cloak of Confusion and Force Void. When looking at art outside of MTG I came across this wonderful Japanese art which has apparently no known artist, and it seemed to fit the card name, the Ice Age setting, as well as calling back to the original card by being Asian-themed.
The flavour tect did not need to be modified in this case, however de-kewording both prowess and lifelink took me a couple of attempts, and I'm still not confident I got it right.
I could have used the Coldsnap art for Skred here, but that seemed like a bit of a copout. In this case I used a red sorcery from Ice Age called Avalanche.
For the ability, I used precedents for both changing the wording to refer to numerical damage, as well as sounting snow-permanents from other Ice Age cards.
It seemed appropriate to keep the same flavour text in this case.
Spellstutter Sprite's art is far too Lorwyn and not Icey enough. For this one I didn't find art that felt right within the Ice Age set. I looked outside and came accross this wonderful piece by Jim Fitzpatrick (the guy who did the Che Guevarra portrait you see on so many t-shirts). The art is called The Snow Faerie and seemed to suit the needs of the card and setting.
Flash did not exist for Ice Age, but there are errata for cards that do the same thing from early expansions, and as such, I used the same wording here. For the ability, I probably should have used X as X is used in other cards in Ice Age.
Trinket mage felt like it fit right in to the Acolytes of Arcum Dagsson faction of Wizards from Ice Age. I only wish I had the space for flavour text with this one.
Anyway, that's it for this set. I hope you all enjoy the redesigns, and don't rip into me too harshly for the wording on the cards.