None of these will feature a new card frame. For all the crap I can put on LTR’s showcases set, at least it got the effort to make a new frame. This set just doesn’t, and I have bad feelings about how this boring generic borderless frame will clash with all of these artstyles. Let’s be real through, who cares about the frames, most people care about the arts, especially the waifus. No matter how much of an eyesore the card frame is between their eyes and the arts they supposedly like.

6.1 Extended frame cards

Last two times we got extended frame cards below rare was in Commander Legends and in Aetherdrift promos. I don’t know what compels them to do this now and not some other times, but probably because they like to treat different characters unfairly so it extends to these showcase versions too. Yes, this frame is limited to the characters, even the back to a sidequest (which isn’t a Saga, so the front is extended too).

Here's the thing through, if you aren’t a commander in either side, you’re just screwed. Plain and simply. Granted I kinda smell this from Tarkir that they seems to not want to make much more cards in what’s this pretty lame frame. But well, let’s see if all of them find a home among of these following frames.

6.2 Adventure lands

The text box is still opaque, and it’s the only time this frame will be used, so ehhhhh. The art isn’t all that much more interesting, through I do give credit for the red land’s most fun artstyle, the green and white lands looking less depressing, and the blue and black land for some reasons aims for a closer up view of the places. Which clashes horrificially with the opaque text boxes. And the only change to the text box is that the reminder texts are gone, the flavor text is exactly the same.

Also let me remind you that none of the other towns get this frame. Especially the common ones, even though their names might signify much more importance than the cards usually are.

6.3 Number backgrounds

I really detest this trend of backgroundless cards proclaiming to put the focus on the characters. Well, because a simple background, even just a pattern like a guild symbol, goes out a long way to put the character in a context. And also all of those happen to use the generic borderless frame which this one continues on. And it doesn’t just use a soild color, it uses a really tall roman number you might barely see because the character obviously covers it all.

The artstyles on these card are all anime with very thin black lines and generally are on the glossier side of things. And did you know the fact that the back sides will use a different background color compared to the front side, even though knowing both colors are just completely unrelated to the card’s actual colors. Speaking about back sides, the meld pair of this set actually got this frame, knowing all well the back side still has the black border (it’s very sacred, I like it that way). So it really proved that if we go back to Brothers’ War or Innistrad Remastered, we could totally have done it.

To show the cherry picking in action, here’s a chart of the cards getting this frame. To zero surprise, it is a total mess with black and red somehow crawling to the top by mono white getting surprisingly few, feels like they’ll be cherry picked for other things.

And the most harshest thing to note is that the rares in the precons are completely missing, don’t even use the duplicated characters argument, I’ll see you with that later. By which mutlticolor combinations are represented, Boros got three, Dimir got two, Golgari has the meld pair and Izzet is completely missing. The color trio see Grixis selected from the draft set among with… Esper, which already got its two precon commanders there.

Counting aspects of the card, women take up 13, so almost a third. Flavor texts, that’s a firm zero outside of the Summon backs. DFCs, there are 13 of them, and each side has a different background color.

The important aspect being the number in their background? Let’s make another chart. Something to know, it’s pretty funny how two of the precon games went for all mythics here, granted it’s pretty easy with the two from the precons. And the missing games are 1, 4, 5 and 11, so you can’t quite build a full set of all the roman numerals from these cards. Now that’s the worst part of prominently showing these numbers.

Here’s the artist distribution of this frame. For this time, I will count the number of card faces in total because one card actually have 2 different artists working on the two sides of the card. And yes, that would mean if you take on the whole meld it would just simply shows as 3 faces.

6.4 Woodblock cards

On one hand, the Saga reminder text box is now gone, which gives the Saga chapters more room to breathe. The creature text box is exactly the same, down to even the flavor texts which is a good thing. Also the card selection extends to the ones whose front sides aren’t summons but the back sides are, and that includes some commanders. And hey, the most important thing is that all the SFC Sagas get this frame, hooray for some balance, especially for the precon cards.

On the other hand, did you look at those Summons and realize “oh right they’re this Japanese woodblock artstyle they have already done on the Neon Dynasty basics”? Personally I don’t think so, the range this time is way wider now and the fact that the generic borderless frame gets in the way doesn’t help. So now how about putting this artstyle and lack of interesting frame on a bunch of random cards. Commanders and not, mythics or uncommons, that’s the best part obviously. The only stipulation is that the card can’t be a non-Summon from the precons, which I always feel is a dumb mistake.

To show this more chaotic cherry picking mess in action, here’s a chart of the cards getting them. You can definitely see white got its haul here, meanwhile multicolored very much do not, even though it got Simic cards and the other dual colored cards use either of those colors, and the tri color commander used Simic too. White isn’t here. But well, a semblance of balance is in the Crystals cycle all being here, you still can’t tell the fact that they are artifacts admittedly.

Random facts remaining, there are 12 commanders among these, just 25 out of the 30 Summons here, do you wonder where the rest are? Just five of these are DFCs. Just eight of them have women in the art. And the most important question, which game has the most cards there? Once again, three of the precon games got an advantage, and the missing games are 1, 2 and 12.

And now, lastly, here’s the combined artist charts for this woodblock artstyle, all the Summons and the randoms are here, we’ll count by faces again. And the results are about as interesting at that number backgrounds chart, except I guess it’s longer now. So be it I guess.