Late in 2004, so, like, 14 years ago, an Aaron
Forsythe article went up on the mothership. First, it explained that, going forward, Legacy
would be called Legacy, which is kinda funny to think about. But that’s not the point. The real meat of the column centered around
the idea of textless cards, their origin story, and the philosophies behind which cards should
get the textless treatment and why. Two months earlier, a textless Terror, featuring
art evoking the original Terror from Alpha, was spoiled in Magic Arcana. It was sweet; I don’t really know what else
to say, y’know? I loved it then and I love it now. As the story goes, Aaron’s original pitch
was for textless cards—with designs based on how he formatted his own colorful playtest
proxies—to be included in Unhinged packs. The idea was well-received, but it was ultimately
not used in Unhinged, which I think we can all agree is for the best because those John
Avon lands are gorgeous. Eventually, they were used as part of the
Player Rewards program, which is a thing that doesn’t exist anymore. Basically, WotC used to send you cards as
an incentive to play in sanctioned tournaments. Your DCI number had an address associated
with it so they knew where to send the cards. It was pretty sweet! Jazon, our intrepid young animator, has only
been playing Magic for a couple of years. When I explained to him what Player Rewards
was in the prep for this video, he was floored. I can’t blame him; it was a cool promotion. That said, at the time, I didn’t have a
good answer for why it doesn’t exist anymore. I think I do now, though. The first wave of textless cards went out
in winter 2007, and by “went out,” I mean that Wizards of the Coast literally mailed
you cards. It was awesome. The Standard sets back then were all of Mirrodin
block, 8th Edition, and Champions of Kamigawa. So all of these cards were Standard-legal,
which was nice, and you got two random ones in the mail at a time. I speak from experience. I’m old. The only awkward thing about the cycle is
that it’s kind of uneven. Oxidize was a $5 uncommon during its time
in Standard because the original Mirrodin block was obnoxiously good. So getting an Oxidize in the mail was pretty
sweet. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you had
Reciprocate, a card from the then-brand new Champions of Kamigawa expansion. Reciprocate is bad. The other three cards you could get were Mana
Leak, Terror, and Fireball. It’s cool to have one of the five cards
be from the latest set, but Reciprocate sucks. At the end of the day, though, it was free
promos. Whether you got mailed five bucks or no bucks,
it cost you nothing—it was just a little added bonus for playing in lots of tournaments. Sure, the exact wording on Fireball is a little
complicated, but nine times out of ten, it’s just Blaze anyway, so, sure, why not? The first batch of textless promos went over
pretty well, so they made more the following year. This time, they didn’t even bother trying
to make a mono-white spell. By the way, you might’ve noticed that all
of these cards are instants or sorceries. That’s by design. In Aaron Forsythe’s original announcement,
he mentioned that since the cards didn’t have any information on them, they shouldn’t
hang out on the battlefield. I’m torn on this logic. It’s sound, but these cards are gorgeous. They probably could’ve gotten away with
a textless Tarmogoyf or a textless Dark Confidant—maybe they should’ve given all the invitational
cards the textless treatment! I don’t know. Newcomers Lightning Helix and Putrefy got
the textless treatment, which was brilliant. I mean, guh, original Ravnica was so sweet. I know this is gonna sound weird, but back
in the day, Putrefy was like, the absolute nutter butters. I can’t really explain it, you just had
to be there. And Lightning Helix still resonates. They’re both simple, straightforward spells
that work in textless form. Perfect execution of the idea. Joining them were Hinder, Giant Growth, Pyroclasm,
and Zombify—four classic effects that ensured that these pieces of cardboard would stay
relevant after their life in Standard. Did I mention that these player reward bundles
each came with a premium card? This batch came with a Hypnotic Specter that
got the new card frame and a DCI watermark in the text box but retained the old-school
Douglas Shuler art and the fourth wall-shattering Samuel Taylor Coleridge flavor text. As a teenager who came up through the game
casting plenty of hippies, this batch of player rewards cards was perfect. For the next batch, they even made the foil
card textless. Nothing says “you hath displeased the almighty”
like a big ol’ crater in the ground, am I right? This batch also got to cheat a little bit
on rarities. Before this batch, it was only commons and
uncommons that got the textless treatment, but this time around, they featured Psionic
Blast, from Time Spiral. Psionic Blast was “timeshifted,” which
was its own purple rarity that was only used in Time Spiral. Timeshifted cards popped up once in a pack,
so Time Spiral packs were ten commons, three uncommons, a rare, and a timeshifted card. Timeshifted cards were straight-up reprints
from any old-frame set, so Scourge and back, from Magic’s history, and the rarities they
pulled from were all over the place. Sometimes your timeshifted card was Akroma! Sometimes it was Squire. Psionic Blast was uncommon in Alpha/Beta/Unlimited,
which justifies the rarity cheat for these cards I guess. In all seriousness, it was cool to see so
many Psionic Blasts in circulation after a decade-plus absence of the card. The rest of the cards in this batch were okay,
but a little underwhelming. Disenchant and Mortify were cool, Condemn
and Cruel Edict were eh, and Recollect… yeah, Recollect went a long way towards showing
players just how not-good Regrowth actually was. It was unbanned in Legacy when the format
became independent of Vintage, but Regrowth wasn’t unrestricted in Vintage until 2013,
which is a whole other can of we’re not getting into right now. Following the precedent that Wrath of God
set the year before, the 2008 player rewards bundle featured Damnation as the textless
foil. This is the year the rest of the textless
cards got a little more complex. Harmonize and Tidings are pretty straightforward,
but Corrupt, Incinerate, and Ponder have a ton of text. And then there’s Mana Tithe, which… why? I mean, I love Mana Tithe as a card, don’t
get me wrong, but Mana Tithe is a complete blowout. This is important because these cards are
not very beginner-friendly. For example, none of them say what the card
actually does on them. Aaron Forsythe acknowledged this concern in
his 2004 column, citing that unreadable cards aren’t new, and that players play with foreign
cards too. There are a couple of problems with this specific
dismissal of the issue. Foreign cards have text. This is an important distinction! Foreign cards want to tell you what the card
does. These cards only want to tell you what the
card is. A less charitable read on the textless cards
is that they are a form of gatekeeping. A deliberate obfuscation of Magic, if you
will. If you’re a enfranchised player, these cards
are no problem. If you’re making the jump from kitchen table
to Friday Night Magic for the first time, they are forbidding and exclusionary. Just imagine your opponent taps out for a
Morselhoarder and you Mana Tithe it. They reflexively pick up the Mana Tithe to
read it, because they’ve been seeing new cards all night and realize by now that they
have to read everything. There’s no text on it. They ask you what it does, and you tell them:
it counters your spell unless you pay one mana. Assuming they know how the stack works and
what countering a spell even is, their next decision is whether or not to take you at
your word. That is the kind of environment textless cards
create. Also, players typically have to go out of
their way to get foreign cards. The textless cards are mailed to your door. The thing that really exposes the false equivalency
is that players enfranchised enough to seek out foreign cards aren’t playing them in
tournaments where they’re rubbing elbows with newbies, they’re playing PTQs. Since there was such a low barrier to get
player rewards cards, they were everywhere. The logic behind the equivalency is sound,
but once you start thinking about the differences in where the cards ultimately end up and why,
the comparison makes less and less sense. This is a Cryptic Command. It is one of the coolest Magic cards of the
past 15 years, and certainly ranks among the most powerful. To this day, Cryptic Command is the sparkplug
for spirited “debates” on the viability of control in Modern, because the archetype
leans so heavily on Cryptic Command. It has four modes, and you can use any two
you like. This means there are six different ways to
cast a Cryptic Command. This is the foil for the 2009 crop of player
rewards cards. Okay. So. Here’s the thing about textless cards. They look really nice. You’re sacrificing the words on the card
because the payoff is that the picture that occupies the entire card is beautiful. This, to me, is the logic behind the Unhinged
basics. The Unglued basics were novel, but the Unhinged
ones are, without hyperbole, true works of art. The art itself takes up all the space on the
cards, but it doesn’t even register, because the payoff is just there. Now let’s look at the textless Cryptic Command
art. It is… some sort of amphibian creature conjuring
a doodle from a middle-schooler’s textbook. We threw out four bullet points’ worth of
text for this? Why, exactly, did this happen? I mean, imagine the Mana Tithe scenario, but
swap out your Mana Tithe for a Cryptic Command. Then, imagine what happens when you cast another
textless Cryptic Command in that same game, but with two different modes. Textless Cryptic Command marks the point where
the textless player rewards cards went from being indifferent towards new players to being
downright hostile. If you disagree with this assessment, please,
find a new player, cast a textless Cryptic Command against them, and sit back and just
let them work through their thoughts aloud. It’ll be funny right until that you remember
that this is a thing that happened a lot at Friday Night Magics in 2008 and beyond. There were some bizarre choices among the
non-foil promos too. Blightning, Terminate, and Rampant Growth
all make sense to me because they’re simple cards and they’re good. Nameless Inversion, on the other hand, has
a lot more relevant text than you remember. I’m genuinely curious how often a textless
Nameless Inversion was able to successfully kill a Baneslayer Angel even though Nameless
Inversion is an instant that’s also every creature type and Baneslayer Angel has protection
from demons and dragons. Flame Javelin and Unmake have simple enough
effects, but hoo boy is that hybrid mana symbol clunky. These cards really benefited from the reminder
text on the original versions. The player rewards batches continued like
this for two more years. Half the cards were simple and could easily
be expressed to an opponent in their entirety. The other half were cards of moderate complexity,
usually containing a one-off mechanic from the set it was from and therefore benefitting
from reminder text. The last two foil player rewards cards were
Lightning Bolt and Day of Judgment, cards that made sense as textless cards. But ultimately, these cards, while mostly
gorgeous, have the potential to be really harmful to a game trying to acquire new players. That’s why they were discontinued. My honest stance on these is that while it’s
fun to clown on Cryptic Command and dissect why on earth you would ever make THAT a textless
card, the truth is that it’s really nice that WotC took some swings in the name of
making their playerbase happy. I view the textless spell initiate as a failure,
but that doesn’t mean that I can’t appreciate what Organized Play tried to accomplish with
them. But maybe you feel differently. Maybe you still play with textless cards to
this day. If you do, let us know in the comments, and
if not, let us know which one looked coolest to you, and don’t forget to like and subscribe,
because this is all I have left. Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next
time.
