For years, I have had a fairly complex Magic filing system; two of each card in a color-coded binder and the rest in a regular card box. For slightly less years, I haven't even played the game. I sidelined into Middle Earth and OverPower, evolved into Doomtown and Pokemon, and briefly toyed with 7th Sea and Dragon Ball Z. Magic was left in the dust. I was never very good at it anyway.
But those Magic binders (six of them, one for each color plus one for artifacts/multicolor cards) have been eating up a lot of shelf space that I'd rather use for genuine books. So this week I disassembled all the binders, and I've been alphabetizing all the cards into the boxes.
This reunion with my Magic collection reminded me how much I dispised the flavor text on many cards, which generally reads like a random line from a sixth grader's custom Dungeons & Dragons scenario. Why does every single character in Dominaria have to talk like they're doing a One Man Show down at the VA? All this filing has also reminded me of the Llanowar Elves, who have been the victims of a WOTC flavor text upheaval.
Original flavor text: Whenever the Llanowar Elves gather the fruits of the forest, they leave one plant of each type untouched, considering that nature's portion. Sounds pretty sissy for such an angry-looking group (see pic) with "war" in their name. And isn't leaving fruits for nature a lot like leaving bacon for pigs?
4th Edition: Hardened by their life in the haunted Llanowar Forest, these fierce beings are outcasts among elvenkind. Hardened? Haunted? Somebody's backstory just received a rewrite. Maybe they were outcast for leaving piles of rotten fruit for the trees.
6th Edition: One bone broken for every twig snapped underfoot. - Llanowar penalty for trespassing. Jesus. This sounds pretty badass until you realize that EVERY culture in Magic talks this way. The whole universe is filled with bitchy xenophobes who filter all their foreign policy through Schwartzenegger movies.
7th Edition: Llanowar covers a million square miles, yet nobody enters the forest without the elves knowing it. Whoo, the drama. As if there's any elf band anywhere that wouldn't claim this. Ironically, this edition changes the artwork to a couple of fantasy-cliche Elven Rejects who look like they're scouting for fruits to leave behind.
