I don't buy it.
Call me a skeptic, call me idiotic, call me whatever you want. I just don't buy it.
'Oona, Queen of the Fae' is, in my opinion, not a real card.
I assume your collective eyebrows were raised by that last sentence, so allow me to defend my incredulousness.
Let me start in the beginning. Okay, maybe not he beginning, but at least a little while ago.
There is a forum on a website that is rather famous for spoiling things related to Magic. In said forum a couple of weeks ago there was a thread that spoiled some Shadowmoor art. Among the art spoiled, the pictures of cards such as Godhead of Awe, Rosheen the Meanderer and Boggart Arsonists were shown in all their glory. There was also a picture of a flying flowery thing that we have now learned is Oona, the queen of the faeries of Lorwyn/Shadowmoor.
This image of Oona was the only piece of artwork in the entire thread that was taller than it was wide.
In the history of Magic, the only cards that have art taller than the normal art box are planeswalkers.
This got everyone all excited that there would be multi-colored planeswalkers in Shadowmoor, and Oona among them as the blue-black representative. It would make sense that Oona would be a planeswalker. She is mysterious, powerful, unique and disconnected from the other beings on the plane, much like the other planeswalkers.
It would make sense that Oona would be a planeswalker. She is mysterious, powerful, unique and disconnected from the other beings on the plane, much like the other planeswalkers. It seemed to me that having Oona be a creature would make little sense flavowise. Very few beings ever see her, let alone engage in battle with her. It would make much more sense to me (flavorwise) that she would remain secluded and hidden, pulling strings from behind the scenes... like a planeswalker.
So imagine my surprise when the mothership previewed her today:
This raises many questions.
What happened to the full art?
There must have been a reason, right? You don't comission a piece of art from a professional artist if you are planning on hiding a good portion of it. I mean, half the art is now missing!
What's going on here?
In addition, you will note that Oona makes blue and black Faerie Rogues tokens. You would expect that in the Magic Arcana preview of the tokens that a blue-black Faerie would be there, right?
But there was no such token included. Kithkin Soldier, check. 5/5 red-black Elemental token, check. Blue-black faerie... conspicuously missing.
Deepening my intrigue is the fact that the text seems raised, unlike those from previous preview cards debuted on Wizards. Perhaps that's just me seeing what I want to see, but you can compare for yourself.
Now it's entirely possible that, at the time the art was comissioned, Oona was going to be a planeswalker. Maybe they decided that they didn't want planeswalkers in Shadowmoor at some point and as a last minute change they decided that Oona was going to be a 5/5 flier instead.
Or...
The Wizards of the Coast are sneaky. They are creative. They enjoy pulling tricks on the Magic community and surprising us. Recently, they teamed up with Dominos to bring Shadowmoor packs to four unsuspecting FNMs*. They put the Pirates vs. Ninjas theme deck idea out there. They love to misdirect us, the players.
Wouldn't it make sense that they planted this 'card' as misinformation, designed to make us think, "man, I hope I open that 5/5 flier for 6 in my sealed pool," and all of the sudden when we show up...
BAM! Planeswalkers!
Conspiracy theories are fun.
Reubs
*heard on MTGcast #99
...of course I'm mostly joking. Mostly.
Tags: Tmp The Great Oona Conspiracy Shadowmoor Planeswalker
Related to:
Magic: the Gathering
