Designed-for-digital
Designed-for-digital cards and mechanics are sometimes created for digital products. They often feature designs that cannot be replicated in paper Magic. These incorporate randomness, adding new cards outside of each player's starting deck and sideboard, hidden-zone tracking and manipulation, and effects that nominally are simple but are technically obtuse.
Card sets
The tradition of computer game versions of Magic including exclusive digital-only cards began with two early games:
- The 12 "Astral" cards from the 1997 Magic MicroProse game
- 10 cards in the 2001 Magic Dreamcast game
Magic: the Gathering Arena
Two years after its official launch, Magic: The Gathering Arena began making sets available which included designed-for-digital cards:
- Jumpstart: Historic Horizons included 31 new Arena-exclusive cards, all of which used digital-only mechanics.[1]
This was followed by the Alchemy series of sets:
Mechanics
- Boon
- Conjure
- Double team
- Draft
- Heist
- Incorporate
- Intensity / Intensify
- Not the starting player
- Perpetually
- Seek
- Specialize
- Spellbook
Card subtypes
References
- ↑ The Point Of No Return? A Deep Dive Into Magic Arena's Digital Only Cards (Video). Tolarian Community College. YouTube (August 25, 2021).