The 5 (and a bit) Colors of Magic – Green (1994)

The story so far: In 1994 I created a series of promo images for Magic: The Gathering. These pieces were meant for flyers timed for the ’94 con season, and the game’s first anniversary.

Unless you’re one of about a dozen people, you’ve never seen them before. To find out why, check out the prologue to this series.

The project was to be six images, one for artifacts, and one for each color of mana.

Today it’s Green.

5Color-Green

Green, being nature, doesn’t struggle with right and wrong. Much like its opposite number – Blue – its essentially amoral. And while Green is life and its other opposite on the color wheel – Black – is death, Green recognizes that death is part of the cycle of life and Black has a little life in it due to various unpleasant biological systems involved in putrefaction. Yum.

Anyway, the planeswalker here shows a little of Green’s Tranquility while the main image focuses on the amoral side.

Have fun locating all of the cards in the image. The answers are posted below.

Next time, we’re onto White.

Green Answers – What Cards Hidden Where?

There was at least one especially tricky one tucked away in this set of cards –

5Color-Green2

  1. Ironroot Treefolk, though the foreground one could just as easily be a Wood Elemental.
  2. Scryb Sprites
  3. This is more of a play on the name Regrowth, than the card’s power.
  4. Forest
  5. Cyclone
  6. Gaea’s Liege
  7. Lifeforce. I almost missed this one myself! I had a list when I first produced these pieces but that’s long since vanished.
  8. Powerleech
  9. Living Lands
  10. Pixie Queen
  11. Shanodin Dryad
  12. Gaea’s Avenger
  13. Wyluli Wolf. Though it’s not a stretch to call it Timber Wolf either.
  14. Kudzu

Yeah, that Lifeforce was incredibly tricky to spot but once you know it’s there it’s impossible to miss.

~ by Pete Venters on September 20, 2013.