Talk:Special Guests

Are Special Guests canon?

I'm in a debate with the Scryfall tagger crew over whether Special Guest cards are canon or not. We've said they are not based on the statements made by Blake Rasmussen and Miguel Lopez at The Preview Panel at MagicCon: Las Vegas 2023. However they countered with "It doesn't mean that they're canon" and "they are not canon" are pretty different", which is a fair point. So I'm putting it back to the Wiki consensus. Do the Special Guests count as canon to the Magic story? -- RivalRowan (talk) 01:01, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

It's a bit confusing, but I'd say I agree with that. The cards aren't necessarily canon and shouldn't be assumed to be, but that doesn't mean that they can't depict canon either. RudleyDudley (talk) 01:10, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

Transcription of the relevant conversation:

"Now, a couple of details about the Special Guest treatment. It does not change the legality of the card in terms of the formats it can be played in... but what you will see is cards... represented or shown through the lens of the set that we're visiting, although it doesn't mean that Lord of Atlantis is—"

"—canon—"

"—literally on Ixalan."

"With the Special Guest series of cards, we'll have a handful of cards in each set going forward that are are drawn from Magic's history and that have new art that is evocative of the plane, that the set that they're appearing in is associated with, but yeah again, important as a lore guy, it does not mean that they're canon on that plane."

"We're not quite breaking down the Multiverse to that extent."

Literally, they say "these cards might not be canon". The connotation is "probably not". More broadly, I would add this to the evidence that cards are a poor source for lore. Corveroth (talk) 01:24, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

My argument against is that we have evidence from WotC of Special Guest cards not being considered canon (with the caveats per the presentation) in Lord of Atlantis. We have no official evidence from WotC of a canon Special Guest. Without that, aren't we just speculating on which is which? Sure, I can say Scalding Tarn is a canon depiction of Tarkir but what about Galvanic Blast? What about Sliver Overlord? And what if someone disagrees with my assessments? -- RivalRowan (talk) 02:55, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

Meant to add, I'm arguing for a canon-by-evidence approach. Each Special Guest is not canon unless a source says otherwise. -- RivalRowan (talk) 02:58, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

I think that "no default" is a good stance for SPG. Don't assume either way. Also, there's a Maro post re:DFT SPG. Corveroth (talk) 03:45, 20 July 2025 (UTC)