Magic: the Gathering Tarot

[queenlua]

So I can read tarot, sort of. I mostly do it as an amusing party trick, but years of playing Magic: the Gathering has made me super-fond of anything involving cards, pretty art, collecting, and shuffling things, so I inevitably got the idea: why not use Magic: the Gathering cards for a tarot deck?

So that just happened, because clearly I have nothing better to do with my Sunday.

More info, for anyone who's interested (warning: giant walls of text ahead):

How tarot works.

So tarot consists of the major arcana (22 cards that you're probably familiar with—they're the ones with names like Death, Judgment, etc), and four sets of minor arcana. The minor arcana resemble a traditional card deck, except instead of jack/queen/king, it's there's page/knight/queen/king. Also, instead of diamonds/hearts/clubs/spades it's swords/cups/pentacles/wands.

In general, each of the numbered cards represent the following (though there's like a billion exceptions):

Aces: new beginnings, potential
Twos: duality, relationships, bonding
Threes: creativity, birth, growth
Fours: stability, structure, stagnation
Fives: conflict, uncertainty
Sixes: communication, problem solving, equilibrium
Sevens: reflection, assessment, evaluation
Eights: movement, power, progress
Nines: compromises, compassion, spirituality
Tens: completion, perfection, end of a cycle
Pages: youthful enthusiasm, a message
Knights: extreme, fast, quest, rescue
Queens: mature, caring, exerienced
Kings: leaders, authority

And the suits, in general, represent the following:

Swords: intellect, conflict
Pentacles: money, security, tradition, material concerns
Cups: love, passion, relationships, emotions
Wands: creative projects, inspiration

Major arcana are super-straightforward so long as you remember not to read them too literally. E.g., Death does not generally mean "someone's gonna die soon!" It usually means an ending, a conclusion, a parting, and so on.

(Also, protip if you're actually interested in doing tarot readings—you would not believe how easy people will make your job if you're even halfway decent at cold reading. I can't tell you the number of times I've laid down the cards, said something like, "I think this represents some uncertainty in your future," and the person I'm doing the reading for proceeds to blurt out everything they're feeling uncertain about in their future. "Oh man that's like how I'm so worried about me and my boyfriend because we're arguing about finances lately." Gee, I definitely would've never guessed any of that, but now that you've told me, this reading is going to sound so mad legit...)

Design choices for this deck.

There's five colors in Magic, but only four suits in tarot. While I could've probably figured out some way to give all five colors equal representation, I decided it'd be easiest to just cut black and have the other four colors align with different suits. So swords = white, wands = red, cups = blue, and pentacles = green. Thus...

• Minor arcana 1-10 are represented by color and converted mana cost. (Converted mana cost, or CMC, refers to the card's total casting cost. So, the ace of swords has a CMC of one, two of swords has a CMC of two...)


• Minor arcana 11-14 are represented by color but have no restrictions on CMC.(This was done partially because there's just not very many cards with a CMC above 10.)


• Major arcana have no color or CMC restrictions. (I considered making the major arcana "distinctive" in some way—only rares, only foils, only multicolored cards, etc—but any rule I could think of ended up excluding a card I really wanted, like Wheel of Fortune. So, I decided to just do "whatever" for the majors.)


• Cards are selected based primarily how well the card's mechanics/art/flavor text/etc fit the meaning of that card, and secondarily, based on the card's historical significance to the game.

Major Arcana.
The Fool: Squee, Goblin Nabob
The Magician: Mishra, Artificer Prodigy
The High Priestess: Orim, Samite Healer
The Empress: Planeswalker's Favor
The Emperor: Mind Over Matter
The Hierophant: Cho-Manno, Revolutionary
The Lovers: Regenerate
The Chariot: Chariot of the Sun
Strength: Mirri, Cat Warrior
The Hermit: Thrun, the Last Troll
Wheel of Fortune: Wheel of Fortune
Justice: Archon of Justice
The Hanged Man: Icy Manipulator
Death: Terror
Temperance: Balance
The Devil: Yawgmoth's Bargain
The Tower: Urza's Tower
The Star: Yosei, the Morning Star
The Moon: Moonveil Dragon
The Sun: Cylian Sunsinger
Judgment: Hammer of Bogardan
The World: Concordant Crossroads

Notes: I really, really wanted The Lovers to be a card that had an excerpt from "The Love Song of Night and Day" in its flavor text, but uh, stuff like Mortal Wound and Panther Warriors didn't strike me as particularly lover-ly. (Also, do you know how few love stories there are in Magic: the Gathering canon. There are basically zero. It's hugely frustrating.)

Also, The Moon was sort of tricky—I liked the art and color for Moon Heron more than the dragon, but the dragon felt more appropriately epic/major arcana-y in scope.

There is an actual card named Justice... but seriously, look at that art. It looks like a cheap DBZ knockoff or something. The Archon is much cooler.

I wish Urza's Tower looked a bit more on fire / destroyed, so it could match the usual tarot portrayal, but oh well.

Minor Arcana: Swords (White).
One: Swords to Plowshares
Two: Abeyance
Three: Mangara of Corondor
Four: Worship
Five: Dragonstalker (runner-up: Castle Raptors)
Six: Aysen Highway
Seven: Vengeful Archon
Eight: Chant of the Vitu-Ghazi
Nine: Blazing Archon
Ten: Soulscour
Page: Kentaro, the Smiling Cat
Knight: Order of the White Shield
Queen: Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero
King: Darien, King of Kjeldor

Notes: I was super-sad that I couldn't make Day of Destiny work. Also, Celestial Force. Also why in god's name is the ten of swords so damn depressing—I would've much preferred Storm Herd in that slot, but it just didn't fit.

Minor Arcana: Cups (Blue).
Ace: Veil of Birds (runner-up: Whispers of the Muse)
Two: Mystic Veil
Three: Windfall
Four: Gifts Ungiven
Five: Honden of Seeing Winds
Six: Cultural Exchange
Seven: Cast Through Time
Eight: Beacon of Tomorrows
Nine: Denying Wind
Ten: Sway of the Stars
Page: Hakim, Loreweaver
Knight: Gryff Vanguard
Queen: Linessa, Zephyr Mage
King: Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir

Notes: There weren't any great fits for a blue queen, alas :(

Minor Arcana: Pentacles (Green).
One: Giant Growth
Two: Channel (runner-up: Wild Mongrel)
Three: Foxfire
Four: Creeping Mold
Five: Yavimaya Ancients (runners-up: Stunted Growth or Boa Constrictor)
Six: Vigor
Seven: Tooth and Nail
Eight: Walker of the Grove (runner-up: Biorhythm)
Nine: Bringer of the Green Dawn
Ten: Primal Surge
Page: Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
Knight: Eladamri, Lord of Leaves
Queen: Jolrael, Empress of Beasts
King: Multani, Maro-Sorcerer

Minor Arcana: Wands (Red).
Ace: Lightning Bolt
Two: Firecat Blitz
Three: Seething Song
Four: Roar of the Crowd
Five: Chandra Nalaar
Six: Worldgorger Dragon
Seven: Stalking Vengeance
Eight: Insurrection
Nine: Dragonstorm
Ten: Dragon Tyrant
Page: Ashling the Pilgrim
Knight: Eron the Relentless
Queen: Jaya Ballard, Task Mage
King: Telim'Tor

Notes: Seven and four were really hard for no good reason.


Pictures of the major arcana.

0. The Fool	1. The Magician
2. The High Priestess	3. The Empress
4. The Emperor	5. The Hierophant
6. The Lovers	7. The Chariot
8. Strength	9. The Hermit
10. Wheel of Fortune	11. Justice
12. The Hanged Man	13. Death
14. Temperance	15. The Devil
16. The Tower	17. The Star
18. The Moon	19. The Sun
20. Judgment	21. The World

Halfway through making this deck I started wondering what a Fire Emblem tarot would look like (mostly because Sanaki would be a rockin' tarot Empress), but that's for someone else to tackle :P

Also, turns out the artist for my favorite tarot deck actually did some art for Magic: the Gathering. Small world.

Comments

[raphiael]

Tarot's something I only know a little about, but I've always wanted to know more. There's this lingering "D:" feel from foster mom's church going on, but really, I need to shake that. It makes about as much sense as "learning Norse mythology is the path to damnation!!" and "Final Fantasy is the devil's candy!!"
:|

I don't really know anything about Magic, but the art of the cards is really pretty.

[queenlua]

ahhh I love the art of Magic cards. When I was little I remember my older brother yelled at me for making trades based on "pretty art" rather than "competitive merit of the card" :P

[amielleon]

So after coming up with the minor arcana rules, did you pick out the cards specifically to compose the tarot deck? Because I was gonna say, cards with a CMC of over 8 are pretty rare anyhow and there are cards with ambiguous CMC. (X's and stuff. Bloodhusk Ritualist, off the top of my head.) And blah blah blah distribution probability. But this way makes more sense, even if it's harder to make a general deck with a small collection.

So how did setting up the webserver go?

[queenlua]

With higher CMC, I couldn't be very choosy—like you said, high CMC cards are pretty rare (in particular, white only had two cards with CMC=10, and ditto with green). In the "official rules" and such, X's count as a 0 when you're calculating CMC, and multikicker/kicker effects don't factor into CMC, so I went by that when looking at candidates. This search engine conveniently lets you search by CMC :D

With lower CMCs, I had like, hundreds of options... so I spent a great deal of time digging through old cards and nerdily fretting over what the perfect card would be. (Though a few of them were surprisingly obvious/easy—like, Giant Growth is the classic green card, and it represents the meaning of Ace of Pentacles pretty well, so I just couldn't imagine anything else in that spot.)

And, web server is go! ...mostly! (I'm sort of doing an obnoxiously unconventional setup, so like, parts X and Y are both set up properly, but they aren't getting along nicely. But whatever, it can serve static web pages right now, it's got a domain configured, and it's like, a couple of config files away from doing fancy shiny python webappiness, so that's basically a victory :p)