A History of The Lotus

[Music] [Applause] welcome to magic arcanum i'm ryan gomez behind the scenes is nicole burdick and we're so glad you're here because it's story time the black lotus is one of the most iconic cards in all of magic for almost 30 years now the game has tried to mimic its power and beauty with varying degrees of success but for most players this classic card of yesterday seems to always be just out of reach that's about to change thanks to the newest edition of cubamajigs which feature over 30 pieces of all new art created by some of your favorite magic artists but let me back up what is a cube exactly and how do you use a cuba majig well a cube is kind of like a magic set that you design by using existing magic cards you put a few hundred of your chosen cards together shuffle them up and deal them out as packs to be drafted exactly as you might at your local game store with real boosters it's a really fun way to play magic and offers a ton of room for customization and that's where the cuba jigs come in they are effectively slim deck boxes perfectly sized for holding a boosters pack worth of sleeved cards which lets you replicate the experience of opening a new pack at the start of a draft this just elevates the whole cube experience and makes it a really polished event i mean if you're going to take the time to hand select a few hundred cards you want to make sure that they're well protected and given a gorgeous presentation right for just 15 you get 10 packs already pre-made no assembly required or anything like that and they come inside a 400 count box with matching artwork like this one it gets even better because you can put all your cuba majigs into this larger box called a potama jig which holds an entire cube worth of cards or up to nine commander decks or maybe your jump start collection you can learn a lot more about the cuba majiggs and the padma jia by following the link to their kickstarter in the description of this video now as i was saying the black lotus is one of the most recognizable cards in all of magic and that's why they commissioned donato giancola to recreate it for cuba majiggs you can also get that art on a play mat and as a token which makes it perfect for use along with garth one eye but we'll talk about him in a bit after seeing the new art i thought this would be a perfect opportunity to talk about the history of the lotus and look back at all the ways the game has tried to recreate the thrill of the original artifact so that is where we'll begin in august of 1993 magic the gathering took its first steps into the gaming world with an initial set that contained 295 black bordered cards among them was the black lotus an artifact that was free to cast and could be sacrificed to make three mana of any one color in a game where your mana is your principal resource and it dictates the speed at which a player can develop their strategy being able to leap ahead by three steps even temporarily can offer a huge advantage and in the game's earliest days there was no four card limit to deck building like we have now so you could put together 20 copies of black lotus 20 copies of fireball and 20 copies of channel and win the game before your opponent got to take their first turn the raw power of the lotus quickly placed it among the game's most impactful cards appropriately called the power 9 which included other fast mana sources incredibly cheap extra turns and incredibly cheap card draw but the lotus still stands above those eight cousins as something truly magical the concept of a supernatural flower can be found in ancient greek and roman mythology and other stories from even earlier have probably been lost to the sands of time the original black lotus is presently part of the reserved list and as such cannot ever be printed again nor reproduced through a mechanically identical analog this restriction has forced the game's designers to get creative in how they keep the memory of the lotus and its power alive their first attempt came in 1997 with lotus veil from weatherlight instead of depicting a singular flower with a singular use this rare land offered you the bounty of a whole field and a chance to tap into that power every subsequent turn provided you could afford the upfront cost of course the idea that the lotus is some sort of invasive species or requires tremendous effort to sustain at least somewhat explains why not every wizard or warlock has a garden of them to draw upon at their convenience anyway the pendulum swung the other way for tempest instead of a field full of flowers you could now hold a single lotus petal it provided just one mana of any color but it was still free to cast and so today it stands as one of the top 20 most expensive commons to acquire in all of magic now i don't usually include silver bordered cards in my history videos but for the lotus i'm willing to make an exception because it's fun to see how this iconic card has been represented in sets that are more tongue-in-cheek so check out blacker lotus from unglued released in 1998 artist christopher rush returned to create something that towered over his original lotus not just visually but also in its ability to create mana this time though the cost was also super-sized you had to physically destroy the card after using it which in my opinion took the joke a little too far but you could also see it as a wink at the increasing scarcity of the original lotus which had been out of print for five years by this point already the next black bordered interpretation came from urza's saga with lotus blossom this was the first adaptation of the original that had a non-zero mana cost though it would not be the last in an attempt to balance out the sizeable advantage of free mana lotus blossom made you pay 2 up front and then would accrue pedal counters on each of your upkeeps you could then sacrifice the card to create an amount of mana equal to the number of petals saved up making you carefully weigh the right time to harvest your precious flower i should also point out this was from a time when mana burn was a thing and if you just kept tossing petal counters on your blossom without thinking about how you were going to spend them all in one turn when you cashed it in you could end up doing some real damage to yourself next came lotus guardian from invasion who became the first bulk rare to bear the word lotus in the title ouch seven mana for a flying 4-4 is not a great rate even if it does have the birds of paradise ability i think the idea here is that by guarding a field of lotuses this guy who is technically a dragon by the way has gained some of their mana producing power overall this card is pretty weak and barely deserves to carry the word lotus unfortunately it is the harbinger of an era of underpowered lotus cards gilded lotus from meridin continues the trend it does create three mana like the original and it can do it repeatedly without sacrificing itself like the veil but it costs five mana to play that steep investment cost along with numerous reprints being available have made this another lotus you can add to your personal collection for fairly cheap which actually makes it an interesting inclusion in a not quite power cube which of course you then want to store in a beautiful and thematic cuba majig right anyway max lotus is the other silver-bordered lotus card this time combining the classic flower with the classic power 9 jewelry for just 15 mana you can create infinite mana while being immune to mana burn which is less important now since that rule doesn't exist anymore but i think this card better captures the over-the-top power levels that both the black lotus and the moxen are known for especially when compared to its predecessor from unglued lotus bloom from time spiral gave you the true power of the original black lotus but it made you wait three turns to access it which actually made it play more like its sister lotus blossom still in my opinion this is the closest the game comes to repeating the og card it is free to cast and it creates three mana of any color upon sacrifice with the only restriction being time but that's no obstacle for a clever mage that said players would have to wait three real years before seeing another new card bearing the lotus family name and that's lotus cobra from zendikar in 2009. this little snake loves to exaggerate based on its flavor text which boldly claims its scales contain the essence of thousands of lotus blossoms i mean sure that landfall trigger is great but it feels like you're closer to a lotus petal with legs than anything else anyway the cobra joins the guardian in the club of lotus creatures who do not actually possess the power of a lotus that club also has a very depressing yearbook photo and that's because their membership grows in the cons of tarkir block thanks to some additions from the jeske way lotus path gin is a pretty forgettable common with flying and prowess and some flavor text about lotus flowers blooming when mind and body become one which is cute and all but kind of a waste of a great name if you ask me the one i'm really frustrated with though is lotus eye mystics because when they enter the battlefield you can return an enchantment from your graveyard to your hand do me a favor restart this video and count how many of the lotus cards up to this point have been enchantments wait no i'll do you a favor i'll just tell you it's zero zero they're all artifacts lands or creatures i understand that the needs of the set probably dictated that this card could get back enchantments and only enchantments even though white seems to have other similar cards that can also get back artifacts and in doing so they would have at least made lotus eye mystics relate to one of the most iconic cards in all of magic in a six degrees of kevin bacon sort of way sorry sorry i i had really high hopes for the giskai and all i got from them was a bug that threatened to eat its own rider lotus field from m20 once again put a lotus in a core set though we were back to it being a rare land rather than an artifact you can tell that the field was inspired by the veil but it is different in a few key ways first the addition of hex proof makes it much less likely that your opponent will punish you with a field of ruin after sacrificing two other lands to get this one out to offset this though it does enter the battlefield tapped making you wait another turn to draw from its power unless of course you happen to use it in a deck along with blood sun or strict proctor each of which offer a way to get around one of the fields drawbacks mystery boosters gave us yet another way to experience the power of the lotus so long as we were willing to share it and that's mirrored lotus now if you have not seen one of these yet they are a little confusing these are mock playtest cards and they're not legal for any sort of constructed format they don't even count as being silver bordered or anything even so mirrored lotus provided a fun twist on the original design by giving each opponent their own copy through the reflect mechanic which again i want to stress is not a real thing and might never actually come to the game in an actual set we'll just have to wait and see while we're waiting perhaps we can play with a knicks lotus from theros beyond death which makes use of the devotion mechanic to determine how much mana it produces this seems harmless enough but with the right support you could win the game on the spot thanks to the abundance of mana this flower can provide and now we come to perhaps the most interesting single card on the list which is the jeweled lotus from commander legends earlier i said lotus bloom was my pick for being the closest to a true black lotus but i'm sure many will argue it is in fact this card that deserves the title it does cost zero mana and it can be sacrificed to create three mana of any one color but the restriction here for me is the deciding factor you can only use that mana to cast your commander now if this had created three mana of any color within your commander's color identity like arcane signet then it would have been useless still in non-commander formats but it would have been closer to a true black lotus for 100 card singleton as it stands it is still one of the most desirable cards from all of commander legends and it certainly feels like a black lotus in both form and function there's one other honorable mention i wanted to toss in here and that's garth one eye from modern horizons 2. this legendary wizard can literally create a copy of the original black lotus which neatly skirts around the reserve list while giving players a taste of the game's most famous flower but how do you represent such an iconic card well the donato giancola art for the lotus is available as a token in the cuba magix kickstarter which would be a perfect compliment for a garth commander deck or for anyone who appreciates the beauty and power of such an iconic blossom so what do you think has any card over the past 30 years come close to capturing the majesty of the original black lotus let me know down in the comments and then make sure you check out the cuba majig's kickstarter then like this video and subscribe to the channel so you don't miss the great stories you'll only find here on magic arcanum we'll see [Music] so you

Channel: Magic Arcanum

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Length: 15min 14sec (914 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 13 2021