One of the Assassin's Creed cards coming to Magic: The Gathering is just a haystack

1 month ago 95

(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)

Magic: The Gathering is heading into videogame territory for some of its sets this year, with a Fallout crossover first on deck, and both Final Fantasy and Assassin's Creed on the way. We got a look at some of the Fallout cards already, which show an understanding of the fact the Fallout games are about reading lore on terminals and hoarding junk until you're encumbered. The small number of Assassin's Creed cards shown so far suggest a similar understanding of the assignment.

While the Fallout decks are specifically for use in Commander format, the Assassin's Creed cards will be available in a starter kit aimed at beginners that comes with two premade decks, and special booster packs called "beyond boosters". And yes, one of the cards in those boosters is Haystack.

For a cost of two mana, Haystack lets you phase out a card, making it untargetable until the next time you untap. Just like in the videogames, an ordinary wooden cart full of hay can render you completely invisible and safe. Other thematically apt cards drawn direct from the games include Ezio, Blade of Vengeance, a 5/5 legendary creature with Deathtouch, and a version of Leonardo da Vinci who powers up your Thopters as well as turning random artifacts into even more Thopters.

Some of the cards in this set receive a showcase "memory corridor" treatment with the characters presented against the pale backdrops of a loading screen in the Animus (also a card, of course, which lets you turn a creature you control into a copy of a creature that has died). Others have a chance of randomly showing up with text written in appropriate languages like Greek or, for Leonardo da Vinci, Italian. Which is cute.

Magic: The Gathering—Assassin's Creed will be out on July 5.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.