Many things make Magic: the Gathering a special game. The things that keep me coming back to Magic are the characters and the stories. Each new Magic: the Gathering set that comes out usually tells a story. Each set travels to different Magic: the Gathering settings, called planes, and tells a narrative while advancing a larger, overarching plot. However, these stories aren’t exactly what I mean when I talk about the stories that make Magic special.
The Magic: the Gathering cards themselves often tell smaller, more constrained stories. Sometimes this story is told through art, and other times it is told through mechanics. Stories can be told through single cards, cards with two sides, or over multiple cards.
Some stories in Magic: the Gathering are told through the cards that I’ll likely remember for a long time. These stories have kept me following the game, and in some cases inspired me to craft decks to immortalize these stories.
Number 5: The Grim Fate of the Sun Titan
“Sun Titan,” “Terminate,” and “Animate Dead” are pretty iconic cards. “Sun Titan” is an excellent card in certain deck archetypes, such as flicker decks or reanimator decks. “Terminate” has been a staple removal card throughout Magic’s history. Finally, “Animate Dead” remains a powerful and exploitable piece of reanimation for your creatures.
Through their art, these creatures have become connected. “Sun Titan” starts strong before being terminated, and finally reanimated through “Animate Dead.” These cards also appear to be telling a meta story as one of the best ways to use Sun Titan in a deck is with a reanimator strategy. This strategy involves repeatedly killing your own creatures and bringing them back for value, which you could do through “Terminate” and “Animate Dead.”
The story of Sun Titan is just one example of what Magic can do with it’s art and it’s cards. It only takes three cards to tell the story of the tragic downfall of “Sun Titan” while making a nod to the community’s use of the card. Sometimes Magic: the Gathering uses cards to tell stories about its players as well as its cards, and this is just one moving example.
Number 4: The Plight of the Aetherborn
The Kaladesh set took Magic: the Gathering players to a new plane, and gave us our first look at a race unique to the setting: Aetherborn. Aetherborn are magical creatures born as a byproduct of the magic on Kaladesh. However, Aetherborn are made from a finite amount of magical energy, and that energy burns out.
The cards “Live Fast” and “Die Young” perfectly capture the life of an Aetherborn on Kaladesh. Many live for only a few weeks. When that time is over, they wither like a flower, and die. Even the card’s mechanics play a part in communicating this tragic tale. The energy counters gained from “Live Fast” allows you to kill stronger creatures when casting “Die Young.”
The story of this nameless Aetherborn is essential as it contextualizes the rest of the Aetherborn in the set. This includes Aetherborn characters like Gonti, and a few Aetherborn vampires who steal the energy from others. While Gonti is a crime lord and a minor villain in the setting, “Live Fast” and “Die Young” contextualizes their actions. What wouldn’t you do to live just one more day?
Number 3: Delved Too Deep
“Delver of Secrets” is a powerful magic card that has dominated several competitive formats. It is also a part of one of the more iconic stories of a nonlegendary creature in Magic: the Gathering, showing a wizard’s descent into madness. This group of cards uses double-sided cards to show steady changes in a character who slowly becomes more and more horrifying.
The Delver of Secrets starts as an obsessed wizard, whose experiments turn him into “Insectile Aberration.” However, the story doesn’t end there. In one of the next cards in his home plane of Innistrad, the Delver returns as an “Aberrant Researcher.” He’s up to his old tricks, and concludes his transformation process to achieve his vision of a “Perfected Form.”
The story of the Delver culminates in a third act as an eldritch abomination corrupts the plane of Innistrad, and the corruption reaches the Delver. Still obsessed with his transformation process, the “Docent of Perfection” starts gathering others to test his creations on the front side of the card. Finally, when the eldritch corruption spreads to the Docent, he achieves his “Final Iteration,” a card that mechanically turns other “Delver of Secrets” into “Insectile Aberrations.”
Number 2: Mileva’s Path to Glory
Started From the Bottom
Mileva is a character in Magic: the Gathering whose story is about her slow ascent through the ranks of her guild. While she has been referenced or quoted on other cards, Mileva did not receive a proper legendary creature card. Legendary creature cards are typically reserved for important characters in a story or setting. While Mileva has never quite gotten her credit in a legendary card, the cards where she is depicted show her journey to prominence in her guild and in her setting.
Starting in Ravnica Guilds, we get to see what is, at first, an unnamed guard. She is distinctive due to her red hair, features, and her consistent affiliation with the tenth district. We see her first as an earnest guard of a district, and then again in the next set promoted to a veteran. These cards show her progression, even in mechanics, as her second card is slightly stronger.
In the next set, we see the same character again as war comes for the plane of Ravnica in the War of the Spark. She undergoes a battlefield promotion and becomes a part of the Boros Legion, the warrior guild in Ravnica.
Ascendant Champion
Finally, the card “Tenth District Legionnaire” tells us this soldier’s name and is the first card to depict her that is uncommon. This card perfectly shows the character’s progression as she stands down the forces of Nicol Bolas, one of the big bads of Magic as a whole. She is no longer a nameless common guard. She is Mileva, a legionnaire of uncommon strength.
In one of the next sets to return to Ravnica, we got our most recent look at Mileva as a mystery swept the plane. Here, she appears as “Tenth District Hero,” a card that steadily increases its power until it becomes a powerful legendary creature. She is even dubbed “the stalwart” as a representation of her journey so far. “Tenth District Hero” is a perfect encapsulation of Mileva’s story and was so inspiring that I built a deck around this concept. I love Mileva as a character, and I can’t wait to see her get her own full legendary creature card in a future set.
Number 1: Ajani Almost Solos the Big Bad… Again
Road to Devastation
Ajani Goldmane has a starring role in many stories told in Magic: the Gathering. As a planeswalker, he can shift through MtG’s multitude of settings as the plot requires. His first appearance in a major Magic the Gathering story was his debut, where he channeled the magic of his home plane Alara to beat Nicol Bolas. This victory against one of the biggest evils in MtG would later be depicted in Ajani’s Final Stand.
After Ajani’s introduction, he wove in and out of Magic stories until he got pulled into the looming War of the Spark storyline. War of the Spark was a huge battle between a staggering number of planeswalkers in an attempt for Nicol Bolas to attain ultimate power. Its lead up featured the Gatewatch, MtG’s version of the Avengers, journeying across planes to stop Bolas. As they went, they gathered allies to sign on as part of the Gatewatch, including Ajani.
The Greatest Victory Never Told
After recruiting Ajani, the next destination for the Gatewatch was the plane of Amonkhet. The heroes knew Bolas had turned this plane into a vessel for his own power. Ajani stayed behind and pleaded with the Gatewatch to avoid going and gather more allies with him. The Gatewatch felt they were up against the clock, and refused to listen. The heroes headed to Amonkhet, and to their doom.
So it was, during a climactic ritual on Amonkhet, Nicol Bolas defeated the Gatewatch, sending them running. Bolas’s plan involved 5 successive hours of powerful magical assault, ending with the set’s titular card, “Hour of Devastation.” However, it didn’t have to end this way.
Ajani’s most recent card before the Hour of Devastation has an ability that directly counters the effect of the Hour of Devastation. The implication here is clear: if the heroes had convinced Ajani to come, he may have single handedly stopped the Hour of Devastation. Who better to stop Bolas than the planeswalker who already did it before?
This card interaction is a detail I love about Magic: the Gathering. MtG frequently creates cards that weave story and mechanics together. This results in cards that have fun interactions with each other because the lore team considered these details in design.
Never Ending Story
Magic: the Gathering continues to make new sets and new stories. While the stories of the sets are not always the most interesting, I continue to be enthralled by the stories of the cards. Magic: the Gathering has a lot more stories to tell and many more wonderful moments to portray. I can’t wait to make new favorites.
