For me, a card is resonant with fantasy flavor if everything lines up. Take Crystal Ball as a perfect example. It’s an artifact, which is precisely what you would expect from a Crystal Ball card, not an instant or an enchantment. But there’s more than just that. You invest a little mana in a tap ability, and that lets you scry a bit, see into the future. That’s a pretty simple card, with a set of abilities that line up with my personal expectations of what a Crystal Ball would be.

So that’s what I’m looking for.

Our color wheel does not always line up with the flavor of the colors. The first is just mere mechanics. When mechanics and color can marry each other, that ideal. But there are times where the flavor of a color really isn’t strongly in the mechanics of a card. Example? Water with Blue. Blue used to have an incredibly strong tie to the elements of air and water. Air certainly still exists. Good job! But when is the last time you saw Blue really evoking the element of water in its stuff? I mean, creatures that live in the water, sure, we get that all of the time, much like Red gets creatures that live in the hills and peaks. But Blue should be getting elemental stuff that’s made of water.

You used to. Wall of Water and Wall of Fire are identical cards, and who cares if you gave Blue the Red-inflatable mechanic? Some cards use water in a general sense to tick a box, but hardly evoke water, like Brackwater Elemental, which is just an unearth version of non-flying Fog Elemental. There’s nothing “water” about it. Water is really a token of what it really could be (see Red’s adoration for all things fire as a good example of examples and details).

So I love a resonant concept that heads off the well-hewn path for mechanics into new, and oftentimes off-color, territory. This happened a ton in the early days when flavor trumped color every time (Darkness for Black stopped combat, or check out Demonic Torment, or Ghost Hounds and Windseeker Centaur with vigilance, or shoot, Nalathni Dragon with banding).

I also like it when a mechanic is stretched out to make it fit what’s going on. Take Zombify. It’s a card that was obvious, take one of your creatures from your graveyard, and put it into play. But you aren’t making it a Zombie, which is what the word means. So they printed Rise from the Grave, which puts a creature from any graveyard onto the battlefield and, makes the creature both a Zombie and Black. That’s worth it to me. That’s good flavor.

I also like flavor that has disadvantages. Take Island Sanctuary, a White enchantment. When it’s activated, obviously only certain folks can get to you; you are on an Island after all. Flyers are one, since they can just fly over and smash away at you. You know who else? Creatures that swim. So, how about Islandwalking stuff! That makes sense too! It doesn’t matter that stopping everything but Islandwalking from hitting you makes no sense in White mechanically, it’s a flavor homerun.

So, knowing my love of all things fantasy-themed to my enjoyment of mechanics and stuff that push that, what are my favorite resonant cards in the history of Magic?

10. Shade's Breath

I love Shade's Breath. It’s very simple. All of your creatures have turned into Shades for the turn. So what happens? Well they all get the Shade ability of : +1/+1 until the end of turn. Great! And you’ll usually play it for that, obviously. Oh, and let’s give them Black and Shades too, to really represent the ability. As a card, it’s actually a fun trick, and fun to spring on someone. And the card works. Its art and concept are like Nantuko Shade.

9. Personal Incarnation

The Avatar concept is one you constantly see in fantasy. From gods appearing as a personal Avatar to others, it’s a common mechanic. In fact, it’s a common way to kill a powerful bad guy. Get them to appear in a lesser form, kill that form, weaken them, and now you can take out the big bad. So having a Magic card that perfectly emblemizes that trope is great. You get a powerful 6/6 creature for the table. Anytime you want, you can redirect damage from the Incarnation to yourself so it stays alive (which weakens you). And then when it dies, you lose half of your life. It perfectly suits the trope it evokes.

8. Turn to Frog

I mean seriously, this is just awesome. It’s basically a weakened version of Ovinize from Planar Chaos. But again, Ovinize has the same decided lack of Zombification. Ovinize is turning something into a Sheep. So, is the card forcing the Sheep creature type? Playing with color? Nope! But Turn to Frog does! You are now a Blue Frog, 1/1, and you lost all of those dorky abilities for a turn. Sorry about that! (See also: Polymorphist's Jest.) (It also took a while to get a good version of the Turn to an X spell for Blue. It’s an obvious ability that we either a joke, with Fowl Play, or on a randomly concepted card like Polymorph). But Turn to Frog is perfectly in tune. (I also like Incite. Lots of Red cards force a creature to attack. But this one also makes it Red.)

7. Capricious Efreet / Djinn of Wishes

Ah yes, the Wish Masters, Capricious Efreet and Djinn. In fantasy and legends, one is nicer than the other. We have a nice Djinn and a mean Efreet, always trying to wriggle out of its bonds and ruin its master. Both are very nicely seen here. The Djinn comes into play with three Wish counters, and then you pull one off to reveal the top card of your library, and perhaps even play it. You never know what you’ll get, but as you were the one who built your deck, it’s not like it’d be something unwelcome. Meanwhile, the Capricious Efreet is willing to grant you a wish as well, to destroy something! But depending on how carefully you worded it, or not, it’ll backfire and you’ll wind up losing something of your own. Again, this twinned pair are a lot better match for the Djinn / Efreet concept than the stuff from Arabian Nights or the French vanilla ways of Mahamoti Djinn or Djinn of the Lamp.

6. Invisibility

Love it! So you get enchanted by invisibility. That means, no one can see you, right? So if they don’t see you, then they don’t know you are there, and you can skate past any defenses. Lots of cards from the history of Magic will grant unblockability. Invisibility certainly works too. But this card is called Invisibility, not Insubstantialbility. Therefore, it plays into that archetype. Know what? No matter how invisible you get, you still can sneak through a freakin’ Wall. So there you all, Walls can stop you, but nothing else. (See Juggernaut for a similar concept flipped, because how can a simple Wall stop the unstoppable Juggernaut?)

5. Dragon Whelp

I love the concept of Dragon Whelp. Here’s a little baby newly hatched Dragon. It can breathe fire, just like mommy Shivan Dragon. Obviously, it’s not as big as the Shivan, and that’s fine. But it also is cheaper to drop, so that plays nicely. But what really works for me, is that if you ask the baby lizard to breathe too much fire, then it will do its best to follow your orders, but after it does, it dies. That’s a resonant disadvantage. It’s a card that works for me.

4. Relentless Rats

Rats exist in droves. They attack in droves. They grow bigger in droves. And the Relentless Rats fits that perfectly. The mechanic that they get better as more of them are in play is a very suitable mechanic for Rats. Then layer in the fact that you can break one of the essential rules of the game to put as many of them in your deck as you desire. That is a very resonant game-breaking decision. I love it. This card works.

3. Elbrus, the Binding Blade

Perfect. Demons in Swords is a common trope, heading back at least to Stormbringer, the blade of Elric in Michael Moorcock’s world (if not earlier). These blades-with-disadvantages tend to be mega powerful, but they come with serious costs and side effects. Elbrus is a bit different. Heavy to play, but Elbrus clearly wants to rock and pop out. Equip it, smash someone, and get your own transformed 13/13 Demon beater of death and destruction. Demon out!

2. Xathrid Slyblade

Assassins have always been typed in Magic as creatures that tap to kill something when there is a certain set of criteria in play. It’s engrained in our collective conscious ever since Royal Assassin. But as other cards have since demonstrated, I’m not sure that really represents an Assassin. Waiting around until someone taps or you put counters on them or whatnot? I feel like Assassins, particularly in fantasy, have a more active, antagonistic role to play. And they are hard to find and take down. Hunting down an Assassin is one of the classic stables of stories in the genre. It’s even a common quest in computer RPGs. So that’s why the Slyblade is much more suited to the concept to my mind. As it has hexproof, finding it is tough. But, when it wants to, it can leap out from the shadows for a moment exposing itself, and then block or swing with first strike and deathtouch to kill something naturally, and then swing back. That’s such a more flavorful take on the card (in real life, the Royal Assassin is probably using poison or something right? So here the cards that are immune to the deathtouch, like regenerators or immune to damage are also immune to your Slyblade). The card uses the mechanics of the game to spell out the trope and to fight for you, rather than using a shortcut. It’s perfectly flavorful.

1. Abu Ja'far

Abu Ja'far is one of the greatest flavor hits for a while, until he was changed in the great creature type update that modified a lot of creature’s types and got rid of many. As printed, Abu Ja'far is this dopey 0/1 creature for just 1 mana. And if it dies in combat, then anything that it engaged with also dies. Now that’s a useful ability all right, but why is it here? Why is this man just a simple 0/1, and why would you want it? And there’s no flavor text to tie it all together either, the mechanical text is too long. So that’s an odd card, right? Until you read the type line. Summon Leper. Ah, it all makes sense. Now today you’d call this card Leprous Beggar or something vaguer like Leprous Swinestamp. But everyone would know with the title. But still, you have to admire this card. Summon Leper indeed. (Man, I want to build a Leper deck!).

And there we are! From Demon Blades to Lepers to Assassins to Invisibility magic, we’ve got it all! Flavor is all over stuff, and while it still tends to be more beholden to the color wheel these days, it’s still there, and growing in a lot of ways. So are you ready to equip Elbrus onto your Dragon Whelp, toss Invisibility on it, swing in the sky, and then pump it three times to keep it from dying? Yup!

Flavor on!

P. S. -

In my opinion, there has never been a Dragon that was printed that really, really resonates the actual aspects of fantasy dragons from Smaug to the Dragonriders of Pern to Dungeons and Dragons. Never.

Here, I’ll give my take:

Almost all legendary and fantasy dragons evoke a massive, and often magical, form of fear. Where is fear in our Dragons in Magic? Mostly missing. You really have to work hard to find someone with it. So some sort of fear-based ability to get through would make sense.

Also, I’d consider adding some form of Dragon magic to the creature I just sampled. Virtually all dragons in fantasy know some form of magic. Shivan Dragon is just a flying lizard that breathes fire. Where are its magical abilities? So I’d add different types of Dragon magic to my top end Dragons, as well as some fear-based mechanics.

Anyway, that’s neither here nor there! Flavor invoked!