In my entire life I've played exactly one game of Magic, and that was in '96 or '97. I am entirely out of the loop and only hear things when they intrude into other interests, like the Middle-earth set I mentioned or that "Intolerance" card with the Klansmen on it. I know there was a lot more race-bending than just black Aragorn ... though for my money the funniest thing was "healthy at any size" Goldberry. Slender as a willow-wand!
Oh there are the Rhohirrim who are a bit tanned for being straw-heads.
It's apparently a consequence of joining them.
And some elves...
This one still amuses me
They also did these alternate prints of the cards...
Don't you love the lost king, Aragork?
Funny how none of the bad guys seem to be race bent...
What made it worse is that the set had some of the best land art of all time.
But wait! They did a whole run of some classic art...
(more than those
They ALSO did a whole secret lair... of the animated LOTR movie:
Word came down they will be doing The Hobbit as a set in 2026.
I've never seen the Bearscape card and found it so appalling I had to double check to make sure it wasn't a joke.
So by all means enlighten me.
I think my brain keeps stalling out at the realization that this was an official card because God almighty why would you ever produce something like this?
I may not be a Magic player, but given my interests I easily could have been, and if this sort of shit had hit my hobby I would have dropped it like a hot rock even if I'd been playing 20 years. Awful.
So MTG has done this "secret lair" thing. This is basically a "buy direct from them" ordeal where for a limited time, you log into their site and buy exclusive cards. Most are usually alternate prints of regular MTG cards, but sometimes they have completely new and unique ones. They've done Princess Bride, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the Walking Dead, the Evil Dead, Hatsune Miku, Doctor Who (including the new gay one and the trans companion), My Little Pony (sort of) and every June they do...
Ironically the extremely gay set is the least controversial part of Secret Lair. If you want to really dive into the fun, you can look up all the other controversies surrounding it. Like apparently the purchase window for these things on the website aren't even a full 24 hours. Scalpers often seem to be buying up the stock and then flipping them for high prices. Oh yeah and like the above? You get essentially 1 copy of each card displayed for anywhere from $35-50 American dollars.
Why in the world the whole thing isn't just open for 24 hrs and then print to the demand of people that ordered the product is a complete mystery to everyone.
