BEHOLD! The latest card I drew for Magic the Gathering: "Shadowborn Apostle" is out in the wild! 💫🔮💀 I had so much fun doing this one! Would you add it to your deck? 👀

Shadowborn Apostle

Artist: Lucas Graciano TCG Player Link Scryfall Link EDHREC Link

its my birthday! which means i get to ask for trivia on one of my favorite cards, shadowborn apostle?

Shadowborn Apostle started as a top-down design about a creature that summons a Demon. The idea to let you have as many in your deck as you wanted evolved out of the design.

Happy Birthday!

“Shadowborn Apostle” By Diego Andrade In colab. with @wizards_magic 🔥✨🖤 I am SOOO happy to finally share this with you. I worked with @wizards_magic for this Special card almost a year ago, and it’s finally out there, it was part of the Junji Ito’s Secret Liar Drop (I still can’t believe this). I’m more than honored to be part of this release (Junji Ito is one of my Favorite Artist) and I’m beyond honored of be part of the long list of super talented artist who have worked for @wizards_magic , thank you @wizofatx for make it possible ✨🖤 Stay tuned in January for P/A’s and more surprises. 👁️ This is my final post of 2022, so… HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE!!! and as always thank you so so much for your support to my work. 🙏🏽🎉✨🥺 /// “Shadowborn Apostle” por Diego Andrade En colaboración. con @wizards_magic 🔥✨🖤 Estoy TAN feliz de finalmente compartir esto con ustedes. Trabajé con @wizards_magic para esta tarjeta especial hace casi un año, y finalmente está disponible, fue parte de Secret Liar Drop de Junji Ito (todavía no puedo creerlo). Estoy más que honrado de ser parte de este lanzamiento (Junji Ito es uno de mis artistas favoritos) y estoy más que honrado de ser parte de la larga lista de artistas súper talentosos que han trabajado para @wizards_magic , gracias @wizofatx por hacerlo posible ✨🖤 Estén atentos en enero para P/A's y más sorpresas. 👁️ Este es mi último post de 2022, así que… ¡¡¡FELIZ AÑO A TODOS!!! y como siempre muchas gracias por su apoyo a mi trabajo. 🙏🏽🎉✨🥺 /// #wizardsofthecoast #magicthegathering #magic #diegoandradeart #newcontemporary #newpsychodelia #psychodelicart #popsurrealism #lowbrow #neopsychodelia #darksurrealism https://www.instagram.com/p/CmzV1GtuC7Z/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Breaking the Mold: How do I design a card that stands out?

Good afternoon, folks. I wanted to write about something that happens with contests from time to time, and it's a curious aspect.

When people consider cards with specific goals and mechanics, it can be hard to think of what's new and unusual. The last contest I ran, with the cares-about-commons restriction, had multiple submissions that cared about Dragon's Approach, Shadowborn Apostle, and Squadron Hawk. Well, at least two per the aforementioned cards. Amusing as that was, I had to ask: was this done with the knowledge that the cards were popular, or did people think they were designing cards that nobody else was?

It's hard with the massive amount of new keywords available and the ways in which card progression has changed with the color pie, but multiple angles need to be considered. Unless you're doing one expectation exactly right, your popular idea isn't going to stand out.

What comes to mind first? With this current contest, what worlds come to mind? What characters, goals, etc.? Write down a couple ideas, perhaps, a couple places where you've seen desire expressed—and then following that, how to change that.

>> We're all playing the same game. Chances are, we all have some degree of overlapping cultural identity that's drawn us here. Chances are from THAT, that your first impactful idea is going to be similar to someone else's. And it's from there that you need to make the shift.

Here are some more questions to consider:

For CHARACTERS—

Is your character the sole one acting on desire?

Are they the object of desire?

How long ago has this wanting come about for them?

At what part of their journey do we see them acting on their wants/goals/motivations?

How does changing their journey impact the way that journey is conveyed on the card's mechanics?

For OBJECTS/PLACES/GOALS—

Is this a tangible achievement for the characters associated with said objects?

What do the seekers hope to get? Are the players your seekers?

In-story, is this a known goal/location with history, or more gametic in scope?

When the players interact on-board, does this interaction reflect the finding of the object, the using of the object, or a complete story to the end?

For EVENTS—

I'm imagining this to be more instant/sorcery based... Is it? How is that being depicted?

Do you want to highlight a specific aspect of wanting, captured in a moment?

How big/small do you want this moment to be? What's the difference between grand manifestations and little, important pieces of a life?

Before, during, or after—which part of the wanting do you want to show, and how?

This is all a lot to think about, but I trust that you all have some story chops. We desire for poetry, in a big abstract sense; we long for complex completion and a sense of wanting ourselves.

As a last word of warning, don't go TOO esoteric. I'm happy reading into cards. Meeting them halfway ensures that reading into them is possible at all. If you go too weird with the concept, then that connection becomes lost before it can be made. But I have faith that we understand the notion of desire, in some form. We're all human. Right? ... Right?

@abelzumi

🕷️Vallez Gax🕷️

Masterlist of our Decks

Hi! We're @the-many-children-of-the-void and this is a masterlist post of our Magic the Gathering decks. We play most of these online, with our partner system on untap.in. This list will get updated when we remember to do so.

EDH Decks

Allie's Decks

APV-B (Atraxa, Praetor's Voice): Our budget Atraxa deck, runs infect, +1/+1 counters, stun counters and so on. This is the only deck we own a physical copy of (we don't play in-person very often) and it was built by buying Corrupting Influence and taking it apart.

Let It Go (Hylda of the Icy Crown): It's a deck that's all about tapping your opponent's creatures. It isn't very optimized yet but Allie is slowly getting there.

Broken Human (Surrak Dragonclaw): Our "fuck you" to when our partner system plays control. It was also the deck where we had a major breakthrough in deckbuilding philosophy.

Atraxa, Uncorrupted (Atraxa, Praetor's Voice): A return to our roots, re-building the oldest deck concept we ever had, an Atraxa deck without any fancy poison or stun counter shenanigans.

Annie's Decks

Annie's Project (Lathril, Blade of the Elves): It's an elf token deck. That's kinda all there is to say.

Erica's Decks

Echo (Aesi, Tyrant of the Gyre Strait): Landfall deck with lots of ramp and card draw. Usually able to get just an obscene number of lands on the battlefield.

Harbinger (Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker): Shadowborne Apostles deck with big fancy demons. We haven't had a chance to test this one yet.

Kate's Decks

Cantre'r Gwaelod (Niv-Mizzet, Parun): Card draw burn deck, pretty much. The goal is to draw as many cards as possible and slowly burn away your opponent's life.

Neiko di Angelo's Decks

Holiday // Boulevard of Broken Dreams (Marrow-Gnawer): Rat colony deck, very heavily based on Violet's deck from Game Knights #63

Lazarus (Phenax, God of Deception): Mill deck in Neiko's two favorite colors. Not much else to report back about this one.

Calvin (Gishath, Sun's Avatar): Dinosaur tribal deck. Our partner system doesn't really have a concept of "low power play" so this deck doesn't really get played but it is one Neiko is happy with.

Antithesis (Zhulodok, Void Gorger) Eldrazi, baby. I have no idea how well it works.

That's all for now.

Happy birthday to Shadowborn Apostle (SLD), who's turning 1 years old today! Oh, this is cool art. Hadn't seen this one before.

Friday and finally at home. So much time testing and still doesn't feel like enough.bstage change api calls it's stupid. Fuck. Noodle soip lunch blended siup dinner. Afyer work wandering around town. Both academic and secret lairs came today. Got a shadowborn apostle finally! ! Played dominoes anc watched Elvis.

2023-03-16 Game 1

Travis - Duke Ulder, Ravengard

Landon - Athreos, God of Passage

Dakota - Necron Dynasties (precon)

Dan - Exit from Exile (precon)

Duke did some cool myriad stuff, Szarekh had a lot of artifacts, Faldorn was a little mana screwed, But no one could keep up with Athreos those damn Shadowborn Apostles.

Hello! I'm coming to Thought Bubble next week and I'm currently making a Shadowborn Apostle Commander deck but i'm using hand drawn proxies for the Shadowborn apostles (because there's like 30 in the deck). I'd absolutely love to have a little illustration on a blank card done by you to use in the deck, would that be ok to come and see you to do? Obviously will pay any costs. Thanks!

Ye sure thing mate, pop over to my table.

The sooner the better due to my schedule over the weekend xxx

So we were going through some of our cards today...

Shadowborn Demon

What was the general reception of “limitless” creatures like Shadowborn Apostle and Relentless Rats?

Where would you rank them on the Storm Scale?

I’d call them a 4. I’m pretty sure we’ll do more.

Relentless Optimism

You know that feeling you get when you just can’t seem to shut an opponent down? You counterspell the first copy of their bomb, then destroy the second, exile the third and fourth, and then they drop... a fifth? Hold on now. If this were any other card, I would say this was cheating, but I guess if the game says you’re allowed to...

This week’s contest: Design a card that can have more than four copies of itself in a deck.

M.E.O.W.

Mandatory: Pretty straightforward, yeah? Make a Relentless Rats, Shadowborn Apostle, Persistent Petitioners, Seven Dwarves, etc. Anything that breaks the 4-of rule and allows you to slam a bunch of them into your deck.

Encouraged: Consider that all of the existing cards with this ability are common. That’s not a requirement for your card, but if you choose to diverge from that, it should be for a good reason. Likewise, if your submission is at common, consider the impact it will have on Limited when lots of copies show up.

Optional: There’s lots of unexplored design space left here, so feel free to go nuts! Your main consideration should be how the multiple copies interact with each other, and what a game looks like for both player and opponent when they see 5+ of these in one game.

Warning: Make it fun, but watch the power level. If your design can be put in a deck that contains just itself and a handful of lands, and win easily, it’s too strong. Consider what layers of support the existing cards need in order to have a cohesive deck. 

Not much more to say here since I hope this week is fairly straightforward, but as always, feel free to poke me or the other judges with questions, comments, concerns, and all that good stuff. See you on the other side!

~judge @naban-dean-of-irritation​

You can relentlessly submit your designs here!

A Discord server can have any number of people named you!

A Thought Exercise with Test Cards

So, this playtest card out of all of them caught my eye. So much so I ended up getting one for the novelty. Now, this is not a real card, the Mystery Booster “Test Cards” are inserts meant to add to the chaos draft enviornment. They mean absolutely nothing outside of one. These things do not even have a separate format for them like Silver Border cards do, and are not meant to be put into even casual decks. You could almost call them a throw away filler in the packs. None the less, I want to theorize exactly how much fun you could have if this card was real.

So, the main thing Mark Rosewater has been tryng to explain about these cards is that unlike every other magic card that is produced these received no testing or balancing. They are basically quirky ideas they slapped onto cards. As broken as Alpha was with the Power 9 they did actually test those cards. You can even find REAL playtest cards that oddity collectors pay a high price to collect. What that means is that there were no safety valves, no concern of the consequences, and basically zero fucks given as to how far they could go with these cards.

Yawgmoth’s Testament is a play off of one of the most powerful cards ever printed; Yawgmoth’s Will. Yawgmoth’s Will is sometimes called part of the Power 10-12 or it should in all honesty replace Timetwister ect. It is no Black Lotus, but it is able to fuel some of the most degenerate things possible in MtG. This card basically replaces playing with the Grave with playign with Exile. On first thought it seems a bit weaker than Yawgmoth’s Will in that regard. It is easier to dump cards in your grave than it is to exile them. However, exiling is a major downside used to add risk to certain cards. You can for example, “accidently” exile your entire deck for 1 mana.

Demonic Consultation and Yawgmoth’s Testament forms a 2 card combo that allows you to play the entirety of your deck for 2BB. Not only does this allow for some crazy Storm engines, it enables a lot of infinite loops. For example, if you have a card like Lion’s Eye Diamond in your deck then you can cast it from exile, gain 3 mana, then it goes on the bottom of your deck to be fetched with a tutor like a Demonic or Infernal Tutor (since your hand is now empty). By cycling 2 2 cost tutors and the Lion’s Eye diamon you now have infinit mana and storm to then tutor the Tendrils of Agony or whatever you desire. Of course, if you exiled your entire deck, then you can easily use Jace, Weilder of Mysteries or Laboratory Maniac to just win with the alternate win condition.

This can be done easily in either a 60 card deck or even Commander. In a format like Vintage you would have 4 Demonic Consultations and multiple Testaments. it would find your LED and Black lotus as well as any other mana you could put into it and a storm win con would be so easy it is laughable. In Commander you have redundancy in Consultation adn Tainted Pact as long as your deck has no multiples in basics or something like a Shadowborn Apostle. You will stil have Legal Moxen and plenty of other ways to generate mana into the Lab Man Win. The other thign about this card is that it recycles itself, it isn’t a one shot thing like Yawgmoth’s Will. Its effect comes into play before it resolves the same as Will, but it puts itself onto the bottom of your deck. It can be an answer to any important card of your’s that was exiled, and if you are looping tutors then you almost always have access to it. It changes the dynamic of a traditional flashback storm deck if a RiP or Leyline has exiled everything so Will or the lesser Past in Flames cannot function. It makes a whole new breed of very fast and resilient Storm style deck.

There are many other Test Cards that can get wacky. Sadly, these are jsut thought exercises. They are not meant to be played with, and while you may think “I’ll just ignore the rules and have some casual fun,” well, bad news, these are not fun. There are some mild ones that you could just add to a deck, or even play some fairly with nothing that really breaks the card. However, using any of these playtest cards to their full potential they will often be outright broken and not great to play against. I was describing a deck that I might play in Vintage, and with the right tuning could very well be comprable to Paradoxical Storm. People are not going to enjoy you doing that to them in a casual game. So, these kinds of ideas will most likely just come as thought experiments and not ever be put to use. That being said, I’m holding onto this Yawgmoth’s Testament. One day I might find the right reason to have for more than a silly thing to look at.