Magic: The Gathering players often treat their cards with reverence, sleeving, double-sleeving, or encasing them in protective hard cases. Yet, some of Magic’s most legendary stories involve cards being destroyed in ways both absurd and creative. If the recent spate of Commander card bans taught us anything, it’s that many people take the value of their cards very seriously. Without wading too deeply into that controversy, it is undeniable that the game pieces we use have taken on characteristics of a speculative currency. But I often think of a time earlier in the history of our hobby when cards were just cards – cardboard made to help us play a game. I may be biased – my father was an early adopter and I keenly remember spilling milk on his Mox Jet when I was a child. Oops. We lost value there, but he never saw that card as anything but a card. He’s got it framed in his den now, milk stains and all. Now, that’s a strong example, but while designing our new way to play, mtgStoryline, we leaned into thinking of cards (low value bulk, I should add,) as game pieces again. And ho-boy did we find some interesting design space. Our format leans heavily into card alteration and destruction, just as you would expect in a legacy style board game. That said, many current and newer players have an automatic and sudden revulsion to the idea of altering a card, much less playing unsleeved! So I wanted to take a moment to reflect on a time when cards weren’t so sacred. In this four part series, I will be sharing some of these stories, and hopefully inspiring some to create stories of their own with our new way to play Magic, mtgStoryline.
Have you heard of Chaos Orb? It’s an artifact that requires a player to physically flip it onto the battlefield. Any cards it touches are destroyed. One of the earliest Magic urban legends involved Chaos Orb at a tournament, where a player allegedly tore their copy of the card into dozens of pieces, scattering them across the opponent’s battlefield. Every card touched was destroyed. This act, while likely exaggerated over the years, was memorialized by the Unglued set card, Chaos Confetti, which explicitly instructed players to tear it up and throw the pieces. Blacker Lotus, another Unglued card, also followed this idea of self-destruction, requiring a player to rip the card in half. While this sounds kind of zany, it’s really indicative of the chaotic nature of early-era Magic.
In the late ‘90s, I played in an impromptu tournament using a format known as Ironman. Hosted late at night at a convention, a Wizards of the Coast employee, one of the Donais brothers if I remember correctly, came up with a twist. For $5, players would receive a starter deck of 4th edition and two Italian Legends boosters. The catch? Any cards destroyed or exiled in-game would be physically destroyed. It was single elimination, and only a single game each round. A player’s win didn’t just mean moving on to the next round – it meant winning whatever intact cards were left in their opponent’s deck and sideboard. The twist warped deck construction and gameplay. Removal spells were used sparingly. Few wanted to risk high-value cards, knowing they’d be permanently lost. Control Magic was found to be a bomb of the format, as stealing cards was preferable to destroying them. One player, frustrated with his opponent, deliberately held cards in hand until he reached 8. He then discarded The Abyss, tearing it to pieces in retaliation. Others resorted to taping creatures back together after casting Animate Dead. Ironman tournaments didn’t become a widespread format, but the stories from that night still resonate. The low entry fee kept the destruction from feeling like a huge loss, and the experience left players with unique memories of torn, taped, and crumpled cards. A spectacle worth far more than the $5 they spent to enter.
Magic’s early days were less about the secondary market and more about the play experience. Cards were tools, and losing or destroying them didn’t carry the same weight it would today, where high-value cards can sell for thousands. Destruction was part of the game’s experimentation, reflecting the improvisational creativity of its players. The way players bent rules and found new ways to stretch the mechanics led to stories that feel impossible today. These early stories of destruction remind us of a time when the game was more experimental, more chaotic, and ultimately more about the fun of playing than the value of the cards themselves. We hope to rekindle that feeling of chaos and spectacle with mtgStoryline. Taking a lesson from the Ironman tournament, we are keeping the cost of the cards low, and expect the stories created will be well worth the possible destruction of a few cards.
Check us out at www.mtgStoryline.com where we will be releasing Chapter 3 next week.
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