The Project:
They're going to keep making Universes Beyond cards, and I'm going to keep disliking it. This thread is where I propose my solution: Universes Restored, an ongoing series of "custom proxy versions" of UnB cards that fit with the overall fictional flavor of MtG, a card game which is primarily about powerful wizards battling it out with a library of magical spells, NOT a sequence of advertising opportunities for other "intellectual properties." Please imagine a "barf face emoji" here:
WotC has already laid the groundwork with their Universes Within versions of the Stranger Things, Street Fighter, and Walking Dead cards, which reimagined a bunch of "regular folks in jeans" as cool alchemists, ghost hunters, and my favorite: a woman with a dieseltek mechanical arm. These aren't just random "fantasy art" versions. The Stranger Things and Walking Dead cards were all brought into the plane of Innistrad, which fit their "horror" roots and allowed for their creature types to make sense. The Street Fighter characters all got reimagined as wandering heroes on Dominaria, which is the only plane with enough geography to contain an international fighting tournament. We can use these translations as a blueprint for our own.
The biggest challenge comes from the type line for creatures. This is a load-bearing point in card design where flavor and mechanics meet, and we can't just replace "Tyranid" with "Beast," or we've created a mechanically unique card that now interacts with Contested Cliffs. This gives us an opportunity to make up new mythology within familiar planes, or imagine new planes! Planes where a robot might turn into a vehicle for the purposes of subterfuge, but can just use the word "transform" in its text box!
For Example:
Here are a couple Universes Restored cards from the 40k set:
These are super low-res versions suitable for posting on this forum. Big-kid versions can be found here: Belafar Cassus - Charnel Drone
As you can see, these cards needed very few changes, and I simply removed the "Astartes" type from the tokens made by Belisarius Cawl. Voila! These cards (which are mechanically very cool and fun in my cube) can now join my other precious rectangles without bumming me out.
The Ranting, the Raving, the Gnashing of Teeth
I may also use up some space in this thread to type out long, unhinged screeds about the Universes Beyond situation as it relates to popular culture, art, profit, creativity, and enshittification. But let's not linger on that for too long! We've got universes to restore here!
They're going to keep making Universes Beyond cards, and I'm going to keep disliking it. This thread is where I propose my solution: Universes Restored, an ongoing series of "custom proxy versions" of UnB cards that fit with the overall fictional flavor of MtG, a card game which is primarily about powerful wizards battling it out with a library of magical spells, NOT a sequence of advertising opportunities for other "intellectual properties." Please imagine a "barf face emoji" here:
WotC has already laid the groundwork with their Universes Within versions of the Stranger Things, Street Fighter, and Walking Dead cards, which reimagined a bunch of "regular folks in jeans" as cool alchemists, ghost hunters, and my favorite: a woman with a dieseltek mechanical arm. These aren't just random "fantasy art" versions. The Stranger Things and Walking Dead cards were all brought into the plane of Innistrad, which fit their "horror" roots and allowed for their creature types to make sense. The Street Fighter characters all got reimagined as wandering heroes on Dominaria, which is the only plane with enough geography to contain an international fighting tournament. We can use these translations as a blueprint for our own.
The biggest challenge comes from the type line for creatures. This is a load-bearing point in card design where flavor and mechanics meet, and we can't just replace "Tyranid" with "Beast," or we've created a mechanically unique card that now interacts with Contested Cliffs. This gives us an opportunity to make up new mythology within familiar planes, or imagine new planes! Planes where a robot might turn into a vehicle for the purposes of subterfuge, but can just use the word "transform" in its text box!
For Example:
Here are a couple Universes Restored cards from the 40k set:
These are super low-res versions suitable for posting on this forum. Big-kid versions can be found here: Belafar Cassus - Charnel Drone
As you can see, these cards needed very few changes, and I simply removed the "Astartes" type from the tokens made by Belisarius Cawl. Voila! These cards (which are mechanically very cool and fun in my cube) can now join my other precious rectangles without bumming me out.
The Ranting, the Raving, the Gnashing of Teeth
I may also use up some space in this thread to type out long, unhinged screeds about the Universes Beyond situation as it relates to popular culture, art, profit, creativity, and enshittification. But let's not linger on that for too long! We've got universes to restore here!
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