Fans have spotted Tarot’s trump cards or ‘Major Arcana’, sneaking into Magic: The Gathering, with several legendary creature cards that are clear and definite references to these fortune-telling devices.
The first of these came a couple of years ago with the Bloomburrow card, Flubs, the Fool, and we all spotted it at the time because the art was a dead ringer for the well-known Rider-Waite Tarot art. Now Mystery Booster: Commander edition has brought us two more, and there’s enough now to see the pattern emerging.
The new Mystery Booster set contains Homer, The Hermit and Massimo, the Magician, the former a crab that mills everyone based on the number of obscure sea creatures you control and the latter a lynx man who attaches one mana spells to creatures, giving them all little repeatable cantrips to cast.
When it comes to the artwork, Flubs is the most direct match. The artist directly ported the scene to the world of Bloomburrow, and was able to use the new setting to play with scale – giving Flubs a flower the size of his entire body and a bug at his heels in place of a dog. With the other two, the link is slightly subtler, but the poses and some of props still match – Homer has a lantern, Massimo an altar and goblet.
The Magic cards also reference the arcana’s number. The Magician cares about one-mana cost spells, The Hermit has nine toughness, and the Fool has zero power.
The question is – how far will Wizards of the Coast go with this cycle? Will they hit all 22 of the major arcana? What will the effects look like for The Tower, Death, or The Hierophant?
Of all the ways to surrender yourselves to the mystical arts and let superstition take over your life, Tarot is probably the most stylish. It’s more portable and takes up less space than crystals, and it is infinitely cooler than buying a spell from Etsy for $1,000.
So I’m excited to see what Magic’s take on this tradition looks like in the future. Perhaps one day, there’ll be a full Magic: The Gathering Tarot deck available?
Source: Wargamer
