List of card art descriptions/Ravnica

List of card art descriptions

 

Dominaria

 

Mirrodin and New Phyrexia

 

Kamigawa

 

Ravnica

 

Lorwyn and Shadowmoor

 

Amonkhet

 

Zendikar

 

Innistrad

 

Alara

 

Card	Description
Perilous Forays (Ravnica: City of Guilds)	Color: Green Spell (no guild affiliation) Location: labyrinthine city alleys Action: Show the moment when a flustered urban ranger, map in hand, in a complex maze of dark, ominous alleyways. The look on his/her face should be "THIS is the place? This map has got to be wrong..." Glowing eyes and long shadows closing in indicate that he may soon be a late night snack for something wicked. Focus: the doomed ranger Mood: ominous
Cleansing Beam (Ravnica: City of Guilds)	This is RW-guild 'purging' magic -- a way to clear out an area real fast. Show a number of creepy critters like the ones on styleguide pg. 23. They were skulking off to do someone's dirty work, but now each one of them is being incinerated by a white-hot column of flame from the sky.
Scab-Clan Mauler (Guildpact)	[Gruul Berserker] Color: Red/green (R/G guild) Location: A once-decent neighborhood, soon to be a smoldering wreck Action: Show a charging "Morlock" rider team (one large guy blind and a smaller guy on top with no legs). Focus: the "Morlock" berserkers Mood: What's yours is mine. As of now. This card represents what the Gruul do best: raid and pillage areas of the city for food and resources. And this team is one of the frontline raiders. They should look frenzied and brutal.
Hunted Troll (Ravnica: City of Guilds)	Color: Green, but associated with the red/green guild Location: Amid tall buildings Action: Show an enormous overgrown troll stomping through city streets like King Kong. Use the sketch of the BG-guild troll, but apply the RG-guild look/feel. In the air around the troll, four blue-aligned, urbanized Pixie 'hunters' (tiny humanoids with dragonfly wings, but these have city clothing) try to stop the troll with tripwires, arrows, whatever you like. Focus: the gigantic troll Mood: Like a monster movie, but replace Kong with a troll and the helicopters with pixies
Skeletal Vampire (Guildpact)	Color: Black Location: The sky at night Action: Show a vampire drifting through the sky (wingless). This isn't just any vampire, though -- this vampire has been reduced to a skeleton. He's all bones except for some kind of metal that encases and protects his undead heart. To show that he's a vampire and not just a floating skeleton, give him long, creepy fingers and be sure the fangs are showing. Also, two bats flutter behind him in the air like escorts. Focus: the skeletal vampire Mood: You can strip him of flesh and sinew, but you can't kill him.
Goblin Spelunkers (Ravnica: City of Guilds)	Location: The complex, stony rafters of a dark towering spire. Action: Show 2 or more goblins clambering about in the rafters using ropes, straps, and grapples. One of them should have a torch or lantern. Focus: The climbing goblins Mood: check us out with all our cool equipment
Souls of the Faultless (Guildpact)	This card represents a last-ditch battle tactic of the Orzhov: a cluster of undead young women and men, well preserved in their zombiehood. These are the reanimated bodies of heroic martyrs. They stand tightly grouped with looks of innocence and even hope on their pale grey faces. Focus: The undead phalanx of martyrs Mood: We would give our lives again to protect what lies behind us.
Thunderheads (Guildpact)	Color: Blue-Red (U/R guild) Location: Outside an U/R Izzet foundry Action: This spell has the 'repeat' property -- the wizard can repeat the spell by feeding more mana into it. This particular spell creates floating guardian faces made of cloud and lightning to stop trespassers. Show at least two such faces floating 10' off the ground in a line (one more prominent in the foreground), stoically guarding the entrance to an Izzet foundry. Perhaps you can see a small indication of the would-be trespassers cowering from the cloud-faces that have appeared suddenly before them. Focus: the cloud-faced guardians crackling with lightning Mood: "You are not authorized." Notes: This spell goes on again, again and again
Blind Hunter (Guildpact)	Color: Black/white (B/W guild) Location: sky over Orzhov area Action: Show a very large albino bat, perhaps with some gold armor plating to show that it's a trained animal of the Orzhov guild Focus: the large bat out for the hunt Mood: It would suck enough blood to drain a man dry.
Experiment Kraj (Dissension)	[Eksperiment Kraj] This is a legendary Simic aberration, a huge shapeshifting mass of stuff that takes on the attributes of whatever other creatures are nearby. It's up to you to decide what this monstrosity looks like, but it's at least 20 feet tall. Think of jellyfish, dermoid cysts, bioluminescence, giant microorganisms, slimy marine plants ... this should be one giant, bizarre, amorphous ooze-shifter thing.
Goblin Flectomancer (Guildpact)	[Goblin Furcomancer] Show a goblin wizard poseur in over-the-top wizard garb. He's wearing a strange helmet that looks like it has a large tuning fork atop it. This little wizard wannabe is the apprentice to a real Izzet mage, but the mage will eventually just channel a powerful spell through the goblin, likely killing him in the process.
Omnibian (Dissension)	Color: Green-Blue (G/U guild) Location: Your choice Action: Show a huge slick-skinned frog creature, about the size of a cow, with three bulging eyes instead of the usual two. This strange Simic mutant has the ability to transfer its own genetic pattern through its long elastic tongue. Creatures that it hits with its tongue temporarily assume the frog's general size and shape. Focus: The three-eyed frog mutant Notes: You may also choose to show the frog transforming another creature. If you do, it would be best to choose a creature that is in definite contrast to the size and shape of the frog.
Stalking Vengeance (Dissension)	This is basically a "revenge elemental" -- a large creature that delivers the rage of the fallen to those who cut them down. Design this creature how you see fit. Perhaps it's a giant cat-like creature whose fiery hide consists of faces of all kinds twisted in anger, for example. Let your imagination drive this one.
Celestial Ancient (Dissension)	Location: Ravnica "skyline" at night Action: Show a strange winged creature of your design, maybe 12' tall, that looks like it's “made of night.” Show it perched on the top of a spire, wings spread. It's darker than the night (or dusk) sky behind it, and its body contains many stars of varying brightness. Focus: the winged "starry night" elemental
Necromantic Thirst (Ravnica: City of Guilds)	Action: Show a White Black-guild 'penitent' -- a crazy cleric who has had the corners of his/her mouth cut back to his/her ears, then neatly sewn shut again (not in styleguide, but use WB-guild look/feek). The cleric is in some dark evil palace, and is catching a thin stream of blood from an unknown source between his/her cupped hands. Focus: The spooky blood-collection spell
Macabre Waltz (Dissension)	Action: This spell uses a big pool of blood as a magical locus for raising the dead. See art ID 88973 -- we'd like to see what else is in whatever place this piece is set in. Show two human figures with their arms entwined around each other, slowly levitating out of a big pool of blood. Focus: the vile spell that raises the dead (two of them, to be precise) Mood: An unholy, after-death baptism
Protean Hulk (Dissension)	Color: Green Location: Emerging from an algae-covered canal or reservoir in the city, lumbering into a street Action: This is one bizarre creature -- it's a colony of giant frog-egg-like objects in the shape of a six-legged behemoth of your design. To picture it, first imagine what frog eggs look like while greenish tadpoles are wriggling inside them. Now imagine that frog egg 2 or 3 feet across. And finally imagine a huge monstrosity of a creature composed of these things. Focus: the bizarre "spawn elemental" Mood: Like a cross between a dinosaur and a huge microorganism Notes: Here's the reason this card is so bizarre: Mechanically, it's just a large green creature (6/6). But when it dies, you get to pull a bunch of creatures out of your deck and put them into play, as though destroying the creature "birthed" them
Sins of the Past (Ravnica: City of Guilds)	Color: Black Action: This is a sorcery that allows you to remove a spell from your graveyard (the netherworld) and bring it back to "reality" to be use it one last time -but- when you do this you’ll have to remove the CARDNAME from the game and you’ll never have a chance to use it again. That spell will be gone forever and never to be used again. Notes: probably wants to be a symbolic or abstract piece.
Life From the Loam (Ultimate Masters)	Setting: Ravnica Color: Green spell Location: An underground/undercity space Action: This spell represents nature rapidly reclaiming an urban area. Show brash new plant life that has burst forth from the husks of abandoned undercity buildings. Oversized woody trunks bend out of broken windows. Cascades of bright ferns tumble down staircases. Pillars have been broken by climbing vines and carried up with their reckless growth. Whatever you can think of! Focus: The scene Mood: Exhilarating. A dead, forgotten place has transformed into a new living realm.
Erratic Cyclops (Guilds of Ravnica)	An angry brute with access to even angrier fire magic. Originally the Izzet cyclops was wearing huge gauntlets, but he has torn off the gauntlets and is casting white-hot fire magic with his big hands.
Circuitous Route (Guilds of Ravnica)	This is an overhead view of a complicated hedge maze in autumnal colors, with lots of twisty paths, arched gateways, and dead ends. In one of the paths of the maze is a figure in an overcoat or hooded cloak navigating his way through, maybe checking over his shoulder as he walks the path.
Generous Stray (Guilds of Ravnica)	A street cat sits proudly, looking up at us, as if waiting for praise. In front of her is her offering -- a dead lizard.
Archway Angel (Ravnica Allegiance)	Show a descending angel, holding a sword and shield, with her wings spread. The weather is overcast, but there is one beam of sunlight shining through, serving as “god lighting” for the angel.
Bankrupt in Blood (Ravnica Allegiance)	Setting: Ravnica Guild: Orzhov Color: Black spell Location: Unimportant/abstract Intention: This spell sacrifices two creatures so its caster can gain knowledge. We'd like to show this as an abstract take on a lethal Orzhov religious ritual. Action: Two humans, one male and one female, sit back to back. Their mouths are open, screaming. (They're tied up, if we can see that far down). The tops of their heads are dissolving into a mixture of coins and blood mist that drifts upward and out of frame from the dissolving heads. The coins and blood mist coming from the two heads should mix. Focus: The magical transformation of their bodies into coins Mood: Unsettling, powerless Notes: Although this calls for blood and for bodies coming apart, we don't want gore or body horror here—we're looking for a sense of being literally transformed.
Captive Audience (Ravnica Allegiance)	Setting: Ravnica Guild: Rakdos Color: Black-red spell Location: The audience at a Rakdos performance Action: This is a crowd shot of the audience of a Rakdos show reacting to something particularly gruesome on stage. Show us a variety of guilded and unguilded audience members with a variety of genders, ethnicities, creature races, and ages. Have fun with what each person thinks of the show—most are disgusted, some are terrified, maybe one is retching, maybe only one person is having a good time. Rakdos performances are horrifying, violent, and disturbing. How can we get that across by just showing the audience reaction? We do want to get an important gag in here: make sure one of the audiences is Fblthp. Fblthp is a small homunculus with a bad habit of getting lost, and we want to imply that he accidentally wandered into this performance. Fblthp is definitely shocked by what he's seeing—maybe he's covering his mouth in surprise. Focus: The disgust/shock/terror of the audience Mood: An amusing glimpse at what a Rakdos performer sees during their shows
Clear the Mind (Ravnica Allegiance)	Setting: Ravnica Guild: None Color: Blue spell Location: Abstract; perhaps set in a street scene Intention: This is an abstract representation of a spell that erases your past but gives you insight into the future. The description below gives some ideas for how to do that, but none of the details in it are as important as getting across that big idea. Action: Show an unguilded human mage walking through a street scene. Behind them, the scene is fading out or disappearing—perhaps looking like a DaVinci sketch, or an unfinished watercolor, or like it's being literally erased. The scene in front of them, if we can see it, might look supernaturally vibrant, or outlined in shimmering blue, like a vision. Focus: The abstract magical effect Mood: Leave the past behind, and look to a beautiful future.
Cult Guildmage (Ravnica Allegiance)	Setting: Ravnica Guild: Rakdos Color: Black-red creature Location: Performing in any Ravnica street scene or at a Rakdos environment of your choice Action: Each guild has its own specialized spellcasters to practice their style of guild magic. This is a guildmage of the Rakdos: a male human who looks like a mad jester and puppeteer. Give him a marionette that's a mocking caricature of the Planeswalker Jace Beleren. Maybe the puppeteer-mage grins unsettlingly as he makes the wooden Jace puppet dance a ridiculous dance. Focus: The jester Mood: "Jace the wooden, Jace the blind, Jace got termites and lost his mind! Doot-dooty-dooo, HA-haha-HA!"
Gruul Guildgate (Ravnica Allegiance, #250)	Setting: Ravnica Guild: Gruul Color: Land associated with red and green Intent: In the city-world of Ravnica, every guild has two "guildgates"—entrances to that guild's territory. One of them is big and spectacular, and the other that is small and secretive. This one is the small and secretive version. Action: Imagine a part of the city that has been reduced to rubble, and the only thing left standing is a modest archway with a wooden door that remains intact. For this shot, focus on the door, which has the Gruul symbol painted on it in red paint. The gag here is that you can just walk around the door because everything around it is wrecked. Focus: The small door Mood: A savage place; also a bit absurd
Kaya's Wrath (Ravnica Allegiance)	Setting: Ravnica Guild: Orzhov Color: White-black spell Location: Inside a luxurious Orzhov treasure room Intent: This spell shows a key story moment when the Planeswalker Kaya murders the Ghost Council, a group of old dead dudes who run the Orzhov guild. In the game, the card destroys all creatures, so we're going to see some mayhem. Kaya uses a signature purple-white magic to physically interact with ghosts, so anywhere we see her touching one, her body or weapons should turn into that glowing purple-white energy. Action: This is a cinematic, slow-motion shot during an epic, many-against-one fight scene. Kaya is in the middle of the shot dealing out death to the ghosts who surround her. She might have her knife in one's chest, while another flails backward, his throat slit, spilling smoky "ghost blood" as he falls. Kaya throws small knives of purple-white magic that impale more ghosts, all of them spilling smoky "ghost blood" as their undead life slips away. Really emphasize the action here—every single ghost in this room is dead, dying, or about to die. And through it all, Kaya smiles wide, loving every minute. Focus: The epic multiple murder Mood: They had her outnumbered and surrounded. They never stood a chance.
Gideon's Company (War of the Spark)	A group of Boros soldiers who support the heroic planeswalker Gideon before he heads off into battle. They are ready to fight, raising their swords in a gesture of honor and loyalty. Gideon stands proud, head bowed, clearly honored by their devotion to the cause, with Blackblade sword in his hand. Mood: We live for our city. But we fight for you.
Rakdos Headliner (Modern Horizons 2)	Mood: Unrestrained violence in a festival atmosphere.
Combine Chrysalis (Modern Horizons 2)	Action: Please design a Simic device that turns smaller creatures into big flying beasts.
General Ferrous Rokiric (Modern Horizons 2)	Appearance: A skilled military commander, Ferrous is a new character for you to design.
Lazotep Chancellor (Modern Horizons 2)	Mood: We will conquer you.
Prime Speaker Zegana (Gatecrash)	Zegana's teal skin is patterned with one long, continuous organic pattern that spirals and repeats across her body, glowing with green-blue magic across her arms, legs, and the edges of her face. She spends most of her time in this mossy, underground chamber. Perhaps her face is lit by reflections cast from ripples of lit water.
Vannifar, Evolved Enigma (Murders at Karlov Manor)	Vannifar is an elf that's bio-experimented on herself and is now a strange, partially-gelatinous mutant. Beneath her long, flowing lab coat-like garment, she has tendrils reminiscent of a Portuguese man o' war instead of legs.
Archdruid's Charm (Murders at Karlov Manor)	*** EXTENDED-ART ASPECT RATIO *** Setting: "Polo" Color: Spell associated with green mana Location: Unimportant/abstract Intent: This is part of a cycle of "charm" cards associated with powerful mages. They all depict a magical amulet shown in front of a magical effect rather than a literal background. See attached reference for an example of how this was depicted for a blue-aligned spellcaster's amulet. Action: We'd like you to design a magical amulet used by an archdruid, a powerful caster of green magic. In Magic, green is all about nature, interdependence, and instinct. The amulet pulses with intense green magic that pushes back a surrounding aura of malevolent purple magic, completely rejecting this other color of magic that is its enemy. Focus: The charm Mood: All of nature's power and wisdom in this amulet
Magnetic Snuffler (Murders at Karlov Manor)	Setting: "Polo" Color: Artifact creature not associated with any color of mana Location: An exterior city park (See pages 8–11 and 150–151 for general Ravnican environments.) Action: Design a fantastical metal anteater who's basically a sentient metal detector. Its snout ends in a flat, wide dish that lets it magically sense metal. It digs in the ground where it just sensed something, unearthing a hastily disposed-of dagger. Focus: The anteater Mood: Cute and mindless
Massacre Girl, Known Killer (Murders at Karlov Manor)	*** EXTENDED-ART ASPECT RATIO *** Setting: "Polo" Color: LEGENDARY creature associated with black mana Location: Seedy, shadowed environment in Bane Alley (pages 144–147) Intent: Massacre Girl is one of the most obviously suspicious figures on Ravnica. We want to emphasize her suspiciousness with hard, layered shadows (see page 16 for examples). Action: Show us MASSACRE GIRL, a notorious, gleeful killer (see attached references) jauntily twirling her signature dagger. Her face paint depicts a menacing snarl, but beneath it, her mouth is stretched in a huge grin. Maybe she's streaked with more red color as well, which could be either smears of paint or blood. Layered shadows stretch long behind her, giving a sinister appearance that contrasts sharply with the cheery confetti sprinkling down in the air. Focus: Massacre Girl Mood: Gleefully murderous. "Of course, I did it. What were you expecting?" Notes: This art will print with TWO DIFFERENT ASPECT RATIOS: (1) the standard aspect ratio, and (2) with extended margins (please see attached template). Please compose the illustration to fit cropping for the standard aspect ratio and fill the extended margins with additional fun details as Easter eggs for cards printed with the extended aspect ratio.
Red Herring (Murders at Karlov Manor)	Setting: "Polo" Ravnica Color: A red-aligned artifact creature Location: A waterfall in Izzet turf (see pages 174–182) Action: Show an Izzet-made CLOCKWORK FISH constructed of REDDISH-HUED METAL. It LEAPS out of the water, against the strong current of a waterfall. Maybe parts of this fish are exposed so we see the clockwork innards. Focus: The clockwork fish Mood: A fish crafted by skilled Izzet inventors
Crime Novelist (Murders at Karlov Manor)	*** EXTENDED-ART ASPECT RATIO *** Setting: "Polo" Ravnica Color: Creature associated with red mana Location: A study—see pages 17–20 and 150–151 for general Ravnican environments, but this place is pretty open to be yours to design. Ravnica is inspired by the architecture of medieval Prague. In the background decorating the room, we see the trappings of a person fascinated by crime: a skull in a glass case, a knife that was a murder weapon, newspaper clippings on the walls. Action: Using page 56 as inspiration, show a female GOBLIN who's a BESTSELLING CRIME NOVELIST. Show her excitedly WRITING her next devious plot twist, using a pen that leaves glowing red trails of text in its wake. Focus: The goblin crime novelist Mood: "Ooh, the readers will never see this coming!" Notes: See pages 77–78 for goblins and pages 74–76 for additional costuming inspiration.
Persuasive Interrogators (Murders at Karlov Manor)	*** EXTENDED-ART ASPECT RATIO *** Setting: "Polo" Ravnica Color: Creature associated with black mana Location: Bane Alley (see pages 145–148) Action: Show a pair of burly GORGONS who are unethical, ruthless black-aligned DETECTIVES. (See attached references for gorgons and page 30 for costuming but adjust to not be these exact costumes.) They're slyly cracking open their Agency BADGES, revealing secret compartments where they store some deadly green POISON. Maybe in the background, we see a worried-looking human thief. The gorgon detective will do anything it takes to get the truth out of him. Focus: The gorgon detectives Mood: There are no lines they won't cross to get to the truth.
Totally Lost	Color: Blue spell (unguilded) Location: Streets of Ravnica Action: A little Homonculus is lost amidst a sea of feet on a busy Ravnican street. Focus: The lost homunculus. Mood: Poor little guy