Lunar Insight for MTG.
Art Director: Forrest Schehl
I approached this one kind of like another take on my original Ponder art. A zoomed out view. I even included subtle facial features in the background if you look closely.
#mtg #mtgart

If you're curious about what those archetypes are, you can find them all here alongside some key cards to look out for.

White-Blue Flying
Falcons, faeries, and feathered folk of all forms are the faces of the flying deck. Fliers are an easy way to get damage past your opponent's creatures, so focus on aggressive creatures that can close out the game. A card like Healer's Hawk may look innocuous, but a one-mana flier that gains life is just what this deck needs.

Blue-Black Graveyard
Just because something has gone to the graveyard doesn't mean it's gone for good. Sometimes, dead is better when you're playing blue-black. Churn through your deck as you draw and discard cards. Then, utilize those cards you discarded with creatures like Dreadwing Scavenger or Soul-Shackled Zombie.

Black-Red Raid
Charge! Barrel down on your foes with an unstoppable horde of red and black creatures. Several cards in this color pair have the raid ability word, which cares about if you've attacked this turn. This is one of the most aggressive decks in Foundations, so keep an eye out for cards that can clear a path forward like Gorehorn Raider.

Red-Green Power
Harness unlimited power with this aggressive color pair. This archetype wants you to control creatures with a power of 4 or greater. While some cards might not have that much power, they may be able to buff another creature or make you a large token, such as Dragon Trainer.

Green-White +1/+1 Counters
Just because a creature is small doesn't mean it will stay that way. Anything can become a massive threat as green-white builds up its creatures with counters. Low-power creatures with useful abilities, such as trample on Beast-Kin Ranger, can hit hard with a stack of counters on them.

White-Black Life Gain
Not only does life gain help you outlast your opponents for long enough to cast massive creatures, but it can also be spun into a defensive tool. Several cards care about when you gain life, so a card like Dazzling Angel can trigger Fiendish Panda's ability.

Blue-Red Spells
This deck spells defeat for your opponent. Commonly referred to as a "spellslinger deck," this strategy cares about casting several instant and sorcery spells on a single turn. Some of those spells can even be cast from your graveyard. Inspiration from Beyond can be cast twice, each time returning another card and enabling powerful turns.

Black-Green Morbid
Live, die, and repeat in the black-green morbid deck. Cards with the morbid ability word care if any creature has died, whether it was your creature on an opponent's creature. You can remove an opponent's creature with the concisely named Stab, then use that creature's death to trigger Wardens of the Cycle.

Red-White Aggro
Play fast, do smash, and have a blast at your local Prerelease. Rather than working toward a singular, massive creature, this deck wants you to create a large board of small creature tokens, then buff them up with large anthems. Cat Collector will continue to procure purring pals, then give them a massive boost with Heroic Reinforcements.

Green-Blue Ramp
Mana is the backbone of Magic, and green-blue decks understand this better than anyone else. Playing out more lands allows you to cast massive creatures while also triggering effects that care about lands entering. Tatyova, Benthic Druid will swim through your deck and dive down for powerful cards. Combine her with Grow from the Ashes for a card-drawing, land-ramping, game-winning deck.

I'm the artist for the new Solemn card and just thought I'd share some behind the scenes stuff with everyone here because I think it's interesting!

So, fun fact about my Solemn Simulacrum Image for Magic, I initially pitched it as being a recreation of the original card based on Jens Thoren likeness as an homage. I knew only a little about the Foundations set, but from the little I was told I took it as a new beginning for Magic. I wanted to represent the aftermath of the Phyrexian invasion and the opening of the multiverse and how we got here. Since Solemn was from original Mirrodin, I felt it was fitting to have our now justifiably sad robot emerge from an archway adorned with the story.

I wanted the image to feel like a breath of fresh air after a major catastrophe, like meeting an old friend, but under sad circumstances. I wanted it to be an image that represented magic's changes, but also its origins, since foundations sounded like the set to do that

After my painting was sent, it was requested that I change it as it was too close in likeness to the original. And I couldn't help but chuckle at that. In a very meta way, Wizards asking me to change this homage into something else felt like it fit this story even more. Just a story of an old friend being turned into a robot.

R&D tried numerous times to recapture the feel of Plague Rats, usually choosing to make the creatures bigger based on all your Rats.

Then during Fifth Dawn, we tried a new approach. What if the card just let you include as many copies as you wanted to play? [...] Once we had the "a deck may have any number" technology, we used it, although sparingly, on other cards. In the beginning, it was just used in black, although not always on Rats.

Ravnica Allegiance introduced the ability to blue, and Throne of Eldraine and Strixhaven would give it to red. The Council of Colors have talked about this. We've determined that, as long as the card fits into its color, any color can have access to "a deck may have any number" text.


In Throne of Eldraine, I wanted to capture the flavor of the seven dwarves. My original plan was to have exactly seven Dwarf cards in the set, but it took up too much space and was a little too much of a constraint on card concepting. My solution was to make one card called Seven Dwarves and then make a variant of the Relentless Rats template. Instead of letting you have any number, the card lets you have up to a specific number. In this case, seven.

We used that technology again in The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth. We knew we wanted to have Nazgûl. They're one of the big villains in the story, but like the seven dwarves, we didn't have space to do nine. Luckily, we'd solved the problem already. Nazgûl uses the Seven Dwarves technology and becomes the first card where you can have up to nine copies in your deck.

To appreciate the story of [Hare Apparent]'s design, we'll also begin this tale all the way back during Alpha design in August of 1993.


When Magic first came out, there was only one deck-construction rule: your deck had to be a minimum of 40 cards. Yes, 40 cards. Constructed decks being 60 cards wouldn't happen until Wizards formed the DCI (Duelists' Convocation International), and thus sanctioned play, in early 1994. The 40-card limit was kept for Limited play.

The lack of rules meant there weren't any card restrictions. A deck could have as many copies of a card as it wanted. Plague Rats was clearly designed with this in mind. One of the popular early decks had only three unique cards in it: Swamp , Dark Ritual , and Plague Rats.

Inspired by the popularity of Plague Rats , R&D kept making more Rats, and many of them got more powerful the more Rats you controlled.


During Fifth Dawn design, we decided it was time to redo Plague Rats as originally intended. We made three small changes. First, this card would be a 2/2 instead of a 1/1. Second, it'd cost 1BB instead of 2B. Third, we added "A deck can have any number of cards named CARDNAME." This would allow you to play as many as you wanted regardless of the restriction of the format you were playing.


R&D nicknamed the ability "relentless" after Relentless Rats . We used it sparingly. [...]

Now, squirrels are great but I love this so much.
(Referencing the hilarious art whoopsie on Hyalopterous Lemure from Ice Age)

Okay all done, thanks for playing!
#MTGFoundations