Hey I'm out of the loop, could you fill me in?

It is pretty telling when one of Magic's original artists says he does not trust wotc.

I agree with Jesper here, I think this is just insane that the art directors let this through. Say, for argument's sake, that Dan is not all mentally with it and just messed up because he is old or whatever. I don't buy it, but just say that is the case. How does no one at WoTC stop this from going through to PRINT? I can see immediately something is very wrong with this, and I can immediately see that it looks very close to the original The One Ring.

And TOR is not "some card" it's the most sought after card in the last few years, fetching the highest sale price of any card ever. It's literally the most expensive and sought after card in the entire game. And they're not putting this art side-by-side with the original ONCE? There's not one person who has seen the other card?

Just look at the edges of the ring, it's clearly very poorly cut out of the image and pasted digitally. It's super clear to anyone with any digital editing experience that this is a hack job. How does this go to print!!!

This whole thing is just so bizarre to me. I posted Jesper Myfors' latest response and I think I'm just as dumbfounded as to how this even happened. These are all the very weird things:

1. Why would Dan do this hack job at all?
2. Why was Dan and his agent at odds with what happened at first?
3. Where were ANY art directors at WoTC, because even I can immediately see this issue.

I just don't get any of it, it's so weird and so poorly done and so oddly handled.

This is definitely an issue on WOTC's part. It seems like it's a misunderstanding between WOTC and Dan over what version was intended to be used.

If WOTC wanted digital art, they should have asked a digital artist to do it.

this seems like letting Dan off way too easy.

From reading comments it sounds like wotc admitted they used the wrong version. There also was a back and forth between Dan's agent and wotc over his original submission. Dan, a classically trained artist, normally submits oil paintings. The art for this set was required to be all digital.

I very well could see Dan having submitted the work he wanted, wotc saying no, they send him Marta's work as reference, he flips it, smudges it, tosses it on a stock background, and resubmits it as a 🖕to wotc, they shrug and print it.

a small gaming collective makes an indie tabletop role playing game with spurious and tangential connection to D&D

Lawyers, threats, press releases and so on.

a WoTC artist rips off another artist’s work and waits for the community to notice

“We’re all human, let’s just be friends.”

Card art is done entirely freelance with the exception of a small set of concept artists/directors/graphic designers they have on staff IIRC

Have to imagine the pace has only gotten worse with how many sets are released each year now.

I have always wondered about how the art relationships work. Assuming that would be on contract outside of any union, and there are so many cards to work on!

@MysticKetchup ah yes. Trot out the tired "we believe a direct relationship is best" line to say "no we don't want to listen to the person you choose to speak for you"

Tl;dr: The MTG Arena team is organizing for better working conditions

Always love this one. The raised sword and the graveyard background sell the effect perfectly.

I have hated it since it came out. Decent card tho

Still can't stand that one :-/

That saga change seems mildly spicy.

This is so gorgeous, thanks for posting! I love the abstract elements.

Yes, all regular boosters contain 1 Instant or Sorcery card from the Mystical Archive, at the above pull rates. If you check the Spoilers community you can see the current revealed cards under [SOA] (whereas the main set is [SOS])

Ohh so these are reprints from some select list?

I also think it's reasonable to assume the decision for lower drop rates had very little to do with concerns about draft.

Honestly I don't remember that well how they were received back then, even though I drafted/watched draft streams quite a bit during Strixhaven.

But it's always a very fine line imo. Sometimes having these extra cards can be good for variety and make you draft interesting deck archetypes the format usually wouldn't support. But the more powerful cards the higher the risk the format is defined by bombs.

Strixhaven did have the advantage that the extra cards were instants/sorceries which both meshed well with the theme and a lot of the cards were just efficient removal, which is much better for draft than big bomby creatures or enchantments.

Mark Rosewater noted it as a positive for Draft in his State of Design article, but that may have been only for less-experienced drafters. Was it disliked among more competitive drafters?

"I am a draft player and I approve this message"

Yeah consistency in a deck/collection is nice indeed

Depends, would prefer a deck to be more consistent, if it has foils it should have lots. Also depends on the card itself, some it suits them well like when they are a flashy illustration, others it just makes them hard to see.

The Pringle problem is real though.

Avoid when possible. In general, I like their special artwork less than the original. Yes they're shiney, but somehow less colorful. Also mildly harder to read. And yes, the curling issue.