You heard it right, there isn’t a single new unique frame design in this set. On one hand, maybe the artstyles this time will fit the generic borderless frame better than most artstyles, on the other hand, the actual racers came from many different planes, way more than just 3 so giving each one a different frame would be an insane effort.
You don’t get a Loot anymore, not in art and not in flavor text, the portal is triangle but somehow doesn’t spill down the landscape as much. The artist selection seems to be the early 2000s MTG artist and honestly, they just don’t play well this overly glossy generic borderless frame. Or do they understand what these Verges really do. Point is these arts would make sense if once you got the checkland check done, you can’t produce the first color anymore and you’re stuck with the second one, which is allegedly one of the dangers of the omenpaths. Getting both colors should mean that one of the landscape should be an amalgamation of the two colors.
I was predicting some arts in the story articles and the PW Guide to be the art for these Verges but frankly I did forget that Verges needs their portals to be and the fact that they never shown any of these arts beforehand. Which felt in retrospect like foreshadowing how mediocre these arts would be. Honestly hoping for a new SL Ultimate Edition containing these things in Duskmourn art, not sure if I want the Duskmourn one in any of these 3 planes.
The most artistically diverse set of the bunch, this is probably what you expect in most sets nowadays, especially one too tired after having done everything else only to remember yeah the commanders. Diverse as in each artist gets precisely one card and almost balanced because the rare slots calculated it all, 5 monocolored + 10 dual colored + 1 Naya. Even adding the 4 precons commanders, that artist singleton rule still stays true, I’ve checked.
Out of cowardly however, the uncommon commanders (a monocolored vanilla cycle and one Mount) don’t get this frame. And also the mythic commanders, now that’s weird.
Why were some of the mythics missing in the diverse commander frame? Because they’re here instead.
You know how original Kaladesh and Amonkhet had these things called “Masterpieces”. In addition to putting cherry picked staples in those frames that insanely low pull rates, they also put the Gearhulks and the Gods in this frame too, maybe those won’t hold the same value unfortunately, yet they decided that’s the way to go with Booster Fun. Personally I totally think that’s the right move, MTG back in that age was not proud of its Standard self one bit, no wonder it needed two Masters sets a year back then. Obviously those frames did return in MOM, through that set only had Hazoret in a team up and no Gearhulks at all.
So what to do now? Let’s do something else, knowing all well how annoying these new things would look along their original sets. Just to proof that our art directions got so much more interesting now, am I right? Like just look at how much detail these artworks have, would be so stunning had there not be such an ill fitting generic borderless frame in the way, but I guess it could be worse. And to hammer home to the point these graffitis, there are literal brick lines on 4 of the 8 artworks, Ozrhov has it subtle next to Rakdos Gearhulk maybe going too far. Not like these cards are actually textured for you to feel the bricks somehow, why would you want that through?
I’ve talked about how baffling this innovate looking design is above. And honestly the artwork and the fact that your 1 in 500 card has the same stupid frame as all the other borderless planeswalkers just adds to it, it doesn’t feel all that cool, it doesn’t actively disgust anyone, it’s just there. Anyhow, when I say I wish for the planeswalker spark to only belong to actually interesting characters, it’s certainly not this one. And honestly this ain’t replacing the normal generic borderless version planeswalkers used to have.
One of the reasons I advocate for a unique frame design is that this one, the generic borderless frame, cannot distinguish between colored artifacts and not, and especially not between Vehicles and anything else. You really telling me to look at the brown P/T box at the bottom right? No, especially in the face of the ultra colorful artstyle for this frame. Which you may compare to Ikoria, but well this time artstyles are a lot more diverse. And also the commons and uncommons get to be borderless this time, unlike the last 2 times where they had a black border (which I actually like more, I hate to see huge rounded corners I have to admit) And also the frame is actually the literal generic borderless frame, unlike the more transparent variant those two sets employed (the other one is Phyrexia, did you remember it?)
One thing I can actually commend is how all the Vehicles in this set really got this frame. These frames tied to mechanics has felt oddly rare to actually happen lately (honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if last time was in fact tied to all the commanders of a certain set). Another to commend is how with crew’s reminder text now gone, these cards suddenly have room and use the room for flavor text. Admittedly it’s just a short funny description, but many other frames just omit flavor texts entirely so anything is better. Except for one green common, one black uncommon, the almighty Vehicle Equipment, they certainly had the room and then chose not to have flavor texts for whatever reasons.
And the precons dodged the bullet this time by just not having any Vehicles. Well there’s like 2 reprints, do those deserve showcase versions now?
Obviously just doing the Vehicles would leave out a lot of things, creatures, Mounts, things that ride these Vehicles. And that’s where this frame comes in. It surely feels like the second set in a row to do soild color background artstyles. Well maybe it’s to compensate for the high detail cartoon art showing both the creature and the Vehicle it may ride, or in case of Mounts just itself really. With such a chaotic artstyle through, how would the generic borderless frame fit in? NotC decided to just leave the bottom as is, new flavor text and all, but then on the top it’s just weird. The name of the cards are in this funny ALL CAPS font that’s white against a bright background and sometimes pushed downward, whether the creature actually reaches up to the name or not. So it just turns out to be horribly impractical and not feeling all that much fun. The mana symbols are more tolerable, while they might be slightly tilted downwards, the symbols are still big and in case of colored mana, clearly recognizable. The generic mana symbols through are in this weird font and due to the nature of the card selections, we only ever saw the numbers 1, 2 and 3 (this one is the worst looking).