AI is cringe and I feel like I've been seeing way to much of it in here. I speak for myself and many others when I say we'd rather see 30 second MS paint doodles then AI for card art.

Every upvote is 1 signature for the petition to ban AI.

Edit: wow can't believe it's only been up a day and is top 3 of week.

There’s no need to use terrible looking AI art when 99% of the time you can find what you’re looking for on Scryfall. We don’t often think about it, but MtG is one of the biggest sources of high quality fantasy art out there. Scryfall has high quality scans of basically every single card with art that both fits the game and is already formatted to fit MtG cards.

In scryfall’s search bar you just enter “unique:art” to find all the unique art printings followed by whatever thing you’re looking for. For example, you can find all art that has kithkin in it with “unique:art atag:kithkin.” Or you could even go with a concept like atag:battle.

After you find a card art you like, just click on the card and there you can either download the image in full or just the art crop. It’s super easy and the images look way better than AI art (honestly I’m not sure why a subreddit about a game with so much real art allows AI art, but whatever).

Title. WoTC ["allegedly"] using AI in their card art is already a problem, we don't need that shit here as well. Encourage people to take 5 minutes to search Artstation or Pinterest for a fitting piece made by an actual human who actually cares.

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Or what other benefit would you add to a "lonely" basic instead of the (probably busted) double mana? It would have to be something permanent, not an entry effect.

As I see it, they're broken in any 4-5 color deck, where you'll have practically no basics for the drawback to matter, but besides those?

Admittedly them being Legendary is redundant, they could do without.

I saw a card recently that was one blue mana and pay 3 life for a counterspell which is wildly broken. So that got me thinking. Is half your life worth it? Idk? What if we make it modular. So I bring you this thing. Is it still too powerfull? I think certainly for EDH. But then again paying UBB and 6 life for a counterspell is really bad. Then again, pact of negation exist and is a popular counterspell.

I love this subreddit, this niche corner of the incredible hobby we are all obsessed with, so much. I rarely if ever post here anymore, but I still check the sub every day. It’s important to me. I love recognizing the flair of certain users, I love the trends and memes…even the Dreadmaw ones.

But as soon as I see AI art on your card, my eyes glaze over. I will scroll past. I will not read the text on your card, or if I do, I will not take it seriously. Magic the Gathering is one of the most in depth, intricate, creative games of all time. Deckbuilding and card design offers endless opportunities for expression.

“But I am not an artist! It’s not hurting anyone! Is it any different from just taking an artist’s work without their permission?” First of all, I assure you that 99% of artists don’t give a flying fuck if you use their art for a make believe Magic card on a small subreddit that costs them nothing. They might even be thrilled their art is being reused. Make even seen for the first time. As long as they’re being credited.

Second of all…Draw a stick figure. Write down the description of what you think it should look like. Use the prompt you WERE going to put into a soulless machine to write a poem for your card. Take a picture with your phone of your pet, a sunset, a tree on your street you like. Ask your artist friend to do a sketch. See if your mom or your dad or your sister will make a funny face for you. Upload an old meme. I genuinely don’t care.

But every time you use AI for your card’s “art”, you are granting power to a mindless, useless, regurgitating mass of drivel, theft, and consumption. You are surrendering an aspect of your own creativity, or denying us the opportunity to see a real human made piece of art on something you care about. You gave up the opportunity for collaboration and soul and care.

I don’t know, maybe I’m being dramatic. And I know the mods have been firm about not banning it, despite it being such a contentious subject. But not only do I believe it adds nothing to our community, I believe AI “art” rips out a little bit of its heart and soul every time it is used.

reworked, better now

It has been too long that we have gone without having this cycle completed, and I have no idea how to finish it. I can’t think how to generate an absurd amount of red mana.

“Each goblin” seems too narrow. “Attacking creature” restricts the use to a single step in the combat phase. “Damage dealt this turn” makes it slightly less useful to a red player, as a lot of the (X) spells a red player wants to use the mana for are going to be big damage finishers.

So what do we base a red, legendary land that taps for an absurd amount of red mana?

(Also, yes, I know it isn’t a perfect cycle. The black one not only isn’t legendary, it also costs mana to activate the ability that generates absurd mana. I’m still counting it as part of the cycle because we have yet to get a red land, legendary or not, that has “T: add R for each…” as the only ability. Technically, we also do not have a “T: add C for each…,” but I don’t think that would be a good idea because every color identity could use it.)

I was watching this video about Ward from one of the designers, and they talk about how Ward 3+ should only be used very sparingly and only on high-cost creatures, but they also talk about how non-mana Ward costs are great. This got me thinking about Phyrexian Ward costs, and I was surprised there don’t seem to be any existing cards that do it.

The video in question: https://youtu.be/XNhYyaR-nHA?si=LZsTbYms_KzEQOVy

I started it at GGG so it could be online T2 with a T1 mana-dork, but that still seemed too strong. Is there any mana cost that could justify a convoke counterspell in green?

I've always loved the idea of dual-colored counterspells. I know at least one exists for every color pair with blue, but I wanted to make some more. I love the idea of "[[Counterspell]] + something the other color does." I tried to make the splashed color balanced.

Authoritate I feel might be the strongest since it's doing something [[Raise the Alarm]] does for two mana (I was thinking of just a single 1/1, but I wanted the art to be on flavor). Enliven is basically any green 1-mana ramp spell (I was flirting with the idea of having it go onto the battlefield tapped, but that feels way too powerful?). Vaporize is essentially [[Flame-Blessed Bolt]] (I was considered making it a [[Lightning Bolt]], but I went with 2 damage and an exile effect instead). Siphon is just [[Stab]] with a typical life-drain effect (it was originally just a Stab effect, but that felt underwhelming).

What do you think?

ARTIST CREDITS:
MorkarDFC https://www.deviantart.com/morkardfc/gallery/all?page=7
MarkBulahao https://www.deviantart.com/markbulahao/gallery/all?page=6
Wojtek Depczyński https://www.artstation.com/wojtek-depczynski/albums/124472
Philipp Grote https://www.artstation.com/artwork/X1zP8l

The small icons shows how it looks on the card, which is probably more important to judge them on.

For clarity, the moon/eclipse icon is a replacement for colorless, just a personal preference of giving colorless more of an identity.

So I was thinking it would be cool if there was a sort of group slug card for commander that you could give people copies of and it would hurt them, but then since they have copies they can then give it to other people, so they can hurt you back. I thought it would be boring if you couldn't really get rid of them though, since they would just stack up and games would turn into an unfun mess of everyone just racing to remove as many of theirs and make as many for the opponents as possible. I settled on this, if you have too many, the life loss adds up, but at smaller amounts, it can be ignored. If there start to be too many, you can eat them to gain some life to counteract the life loss, but then you get a poison counter, so you can't just eat every single one you get, and the poison counters work independently of life total. Also tried to incorporate as much flavor as possible, like letting you spread the disease to other players' fields and how eating it poisons you slowly over time, etc. Also thought I would have it enter tapped to prevent everyone from just using the copy ability of one they just received immediately and then it just keeps going for however much mana everyone has and the game turns unfun really fast. I do think the mana cost might be a bit too cheap, but lower is the going rate for the food ones, so idk. Let me know what you guys think!

Image Credit: ChatGPT / DALL-E : (