What even is this card?

General forum

Posted on Aug. 24, 2022, 7:10 p.m. by DeinoStinkus

This card is bizarre, not in terms of gameplay, because it's a decently well-known mill and acceleration card for a lot of more mid-casual decks, but in terms of flavor.

It may be one of the cards with the strangest overall flavor in the game.

Can you guess it?

The Card and Why it's Strange Show

It's Grapple with the Past.

I was just digging through my Double Masters 2022 pack that I bought and stumbled upon a foil one of these suckers. And then I actually sat down and looked at it, analyzing the flavor because, hey, cool Eldrazi card.

But the more I looked at it, the more confused I got.

Because, you see, the name of the card is Grapple with the Past. Obviously a play-on-words about the fact that, in the art, an Eldrazi horror is grabbing... a chipmunk??

It gets worse than this, I promise. The effect kinda lines up with the name, but the flavor text doesn't at all.

Emrakul does not grant wishes. Desires simply align to her will.

Whose desires are we talking about? The chipmunks? What does a wish (something that is pointed towards the future) have to do with the past? Why is a wish connected with the mill card advantage?

Why is it an instant? I get that the original Emrakul could mess with time, but why can one of her horrors just suddenly, in the middle of combat, grab a gopher who somehow has the capacity to have wishes?

I don't know.

Again, this thread is an odd one, but it just comes to show how strange some of Magic: the Gathering's cards are.

What are some cards you've had a similar experience with?

shadow63 says... #2

It's a play on Make a Wish from a first trip to innistard. And its grabbing a stuffed doll

August 24, 2022 7:15 p.m.

legendofa says... #3

Not just any stuffed doll, it's the doll that the Make a Wish girl is holding.

August 24, 2022 7:44 p.m.

Gidgetimer says... #4

Specifically it is the little girl retrieving her teddy bear. Card flavor is dark as hell.

August 24, 2022 7:47 p.m.

Niko9 says... #5

Okay, tons of speculation here, and I missed a lot of the storyline in this era of magic so bear that in mind, but here's the only explanation I can think of:

The child in the artwork for Make a Wish wished for a teddy bear and when that never came it was the moment that she realized that fantasy magic wasn't real. Slowly, and over time, she became more and more of a realist, chalking stories of mystical events to folklore and superstition, or that was the case, until the eldrazi. As a tangible power creeped into her world it reignited that awe she had as a child, the one of magic, the one where anything could happen. And just as sure as she had been that wishes never come true, she now believed that she had simply not yet paid the price for her wishes. Emarkul gave her real magic and she gave the eldrazi her future, all with one little teddy bear.

Weeeell, that or I am thinking way too far into this : )

August 24, 2022 7:51 p.m.

Gidgetimer says... #6

She is holding the bear on Make a Wish, but good attempt to wrap everything up nicely in a story instead of me just going "creative is going for the cheap shots".

August 24, 2022 8:27 p.m.

Niko9 says... #7

Ha! Missed that, so yeah, fiction bubble burst.

Now I'm thinking that maybe WoTC wanted to make a fun nostalgic tie-in card but it was like 7 minutes until lunch time, and they knew they had to spend all afternoon on the dilemma of giving Oko shoulder clothing while still being shirtless...so...this is what they came up with. Maybe?

August 24, 2022 9:39 p.m.

legendofa says... #8

Less related to art and flavor, but the cards that took me too long to figure out were Pardic Firecat and Diligent Farmhand. I didn't know what a burst was. Nobody I talked to knew what a burst was. For a while, we decided it was something like an advanced part of the combat step that didn't get covered in the basic rules. Somehow, it took several years for us to find a Flame Burst, and then it all made sense.

Ah, the joys of being young and kinda dumb...

August 24, 2022 11:32 p.m.

DeinoStinkus says... #9

Oh! That makes a lot more sense now. Lol.

Without any context, it seems entirely bizarre. But that's actually creative genius. Well played, Wizards of the Coast. Well played.

August 25, 2022 8:17 a.m.

DeinoStinkus says... #10

Niko9 I don't know. Having the lore behind the card available to me now, it seems like a really creative, grotesque, and dark take on an existing card. But it definitely could have been a quick, cheap-shot design.

August 25, 2022 8:20 a.m.