Well, MTG‘s new Foundations set promised a back-to-basics approach, with lots of beloved classics returning – and it seems to be making good: Wizards has unveiled three beautiful, full-art reprints of fan favorite Planeswalker cards Ajani, Caller of the Pride; Vivien Reid; and Liliana, Dreadhorde General.
Revealed via Wizards’ official Twitter account on Monday, these reprinted MTG Planeswalkers fired the starting gun on what we expect to be a bumper spoiler season for the upcoming MTG set. Pre-orders for bundle packs, booster boxes, and more are also live as of Tuesday, with just under a month to go until the MTG Foundations release date (mark your calendars, Magic fans!)
Now, let’s look at these nostalgia-stoking previews – starting with my favorite, and legitimately the first Planeswalker I ever pulled: Ajani, Caller of the Pride.
First printed in the Magic 13 Core Set (I remember it well), this version of Ajani Goldmane covers all the White bases, supporting cheap creature aggression with counters, a Flying plus Doublestrike buff, and the pièce de résistance: a -8 ability that summons a huge army of 2/2 Cat tokens – devastating when paired with some robust life gain.
The fancy new full-art treatment adds so much presence to everyone’s favorite himbo Leonin, showing him topless in a verdant jungle. Yum.
Sexy forest druid archer Vivien Reid (first seen in Core Set 2019) likewise embodies mono-Green with her -8 ultimate ability, turning your creatures into an indestructible, overwhelming force – while her earlier loyalty abilities provide handy gap-fillers for card draw and anti-Flying removal.
Art-wise, though not as eye-catching as Ajani, I find the new Foundations version a solid upgrade, for one main reason: her giant, luminous spirit pig is adorable and I want them to give me a great big ectoplasmic hug. The contrasting colors of the snowy forest background are good too – but mainly it’s the ghost pig.
Finally, we have Magic’s premier ‘I can fix her’ goth girl and all-round terrifying necromancer par excellence: Liliana, Dreadhorde General. While there will always be a place in my heart for Strixhaven‘s Professor Onyx, this Dreadhorde General version of Liliana – from 2019’s War of the Spark – has an imposing, martial charm, placing the dark lady at the head of her vast army of the dead.
In true Black style, she’s simply about summoning zombies and indiscriminate creature-removing violence; make sure you’ve enough shambling nasties on your board, and you can merrily slaughter your opponents’ best creatures for minimal cost.
Foundations’ new full-art for Liliana is a Halloween stunner, showing her veiled in gold, wreathed in an arcane mist that’s empowering the ranks of revenants marching at her back. I love that we can see her dread horde in more detail than the 2019 predecessor, and the gothic citadel in the background beefs up the spooky Bloodborne vibes even further.
I’ll make a confession: I haven’t bought any physical Magic packs in a while – these days I mostly play MTG Arena – but, as someone who first came to Magic in the early 2010s, these are really drawing me in. The MTG release schedule has got way out of hand since I was playing paper Magic, but if this is what we can expect from the 100-ish reprints in Foundations, then this might be the set that finally gets me cracking packs again.
For more details on Foundations, make sure to bookmark our MTG news page and follow Wargamer on Google News – and you should definitely read Matt Bassil’s piece on the blue-sky idea of banning every card except Foundations. We can also help you out with the latest working MTG Arena codes, to scoop a few freebies!
Source: Wargamer
