Contemporary Magic: the Gathering sets feature all manner of colorful alternative art treatments. For the upcoming Marvel Super Heroes expansion, you’ll be able to grab a selection of legendary creatures with the ‘Classic Comic Cards’ treatment. Aesthetically, these heroes look great, as their artwork lovingly recreates the front covers of some of their most famous stories. As playable MTG game pieces, though, these cards leave a lot to be desired.
Since Classic Comic cards will only be available in foil in Collector Boosters, they may end up as some of the most expensive MTG cards in Marvel Super Heroes. But these deluxe designs come at the cost of clarity.
Above you can see the art for three different Classic Comic Cards: Nick Fury, Agent of Shield, Daredevil, Man Without Fear, and The Invincible Iron Man. Each of them demonstrates a different fault with this art treatment.
Shared between all of them is the flaw that their text is scattered across their surfaces, making them difficult to parse. You’ll need to read all of this information to be able to use them, but it isn’t always clear what’s just there for flavor and what matters mechanically. Nick Fury, Agent of Shield is particularly tricky, since there are speech bubbles in its art, containing dialogue that’s not necessary to use it, right next to its type line, which contains essential information.
Daredevil, Man Without Fear has had its text box split into three discreet sections, one of which is overlapped by his hand. His power and toughness is also in a little blue circle that’s floating away from the bottom right hand corner, where this information is usually stored.
Finally, The Invincible Iron Man plays around with templating just a bit too much for its own good. Iron Man’s mana cost has been shifted to the top left hand corner, its two key words (flying and haste) are written outside of the text box containing the rest of its abilities and there are no borders around its type line or its power and toughness.
Maybe I’m being a curmudgeon here, and I’m grousing about some very dry design issues with cards that do, admittedly, look pretty good. Still, I get the wary feeling that having these out in Commander games will make the job of analyzing the board state a lot harder than it needs to be.
But what do you think about these Classic Comic Cards? Let us know on the Wargamer Discord.
Check out Wargamer’s MTG Release schedule for more information on Marvel Super Heroes and other upcoming sets.
Source: Wargamer
