Homage and Refences.

"Homage: Special honor or respect publically shown."

Recently, in the ever increasing bastardization of the game, WotC announced that we would be getting official alters in the form of Godzilla cards. Now, there's a big difference between putting the image of another existing IP, and making a homage to it. If these were simple homage's to the Kaiju of lore, I wouldn't mind, in fact, I wouldn't be paying attention to any of this, for the most part. However, I don't like the bastardization of elements I enjoy, and have enjoyed for the majority of my life. The sanctity of the IP should be respected, even loved.

While I love alters, I was never a big fan of crossover IP alters. Legends being Marvel Superheroes and anime characters for whatever reason never sat well with me, but since those aren't my cards, and because I love an artistic endeavor, I always tolerated them.

Now, homages aren't anything new. Ask Larry Niven about his disk. Library of Leng, Elven Riders, Dwarven Song, the list goes on so much. Homages are just as much apart of Magic as anything else. In fact, Magic was always a game of homages and tropes.

Now, in recent years, the proverbial envelope has slowly been pushed towards this in the last five years? Maybe it's been more, I honestly have a hard time remembering. It was certainly slow though. Now excluding the Jumbo Robot Chicken card, the first set of cards that came from a different intellectual property were from Hascon. These were three silver bordered cards that included NERF, D&D, and Transformers. All Hasbro properties. I actually had planned to go to Hascon, partially to get these, because it was just so unusual. Me and my brother figured it would be a one time thing. Oh were we wrong.

Since then, there has been several D&D Next products featuring Magic: the Gathering settings and characters, a special My Little Pony product, that got a terrible reception from the fan base, and finally, two Silver bordered sets, which are more akin to homages and references to other Magic products then straight up a different IP.

                                                                                                                                      

This has become blurred as well

 

Now, a decade ago, Magic crossing IP's were unheard of. Magic's world building was at an all time high. Alara, Zendikar, New Phyrexia, and Innistrad. All memorable settings, with good design. Then we Returned to Ravnica, and that became a trend, sure Mirrodin happened first, but RTR was much more popular, and had so much fan fare. I feel RTR's success would lead to WotC failure, because after Theros, there was several blocks of revisiting planes, before Magik-punk India and Ixalan. 

Somewhere in this, whether it be due to trying an ever increasing presence in popular culture, trying to bank on the "Geek Chic" cheese and win, or decreasing sales I'm not sure, Magic started to get, strange. It's hard to pinpoint exactly when the market started to be flooded with premium products, but I'm certain it wasn't "From the vault...", and the Premium Deck Series was a flop. In an earlier article, I talked about the nature of premium products and what it meant. However tie ins never existed. 

One of my favorite arguments against supporters of the Reserve List Policy is reminding them the other major policy WotC use to have was that they would never cross I.P.'s, largely, Dungeons and Dragons (D&D), and Magic: the Gathering (MtG). Ironically, in the late 90's, when they bought out TSR, they could have made an entire D&D expansion, and the masses would love it (at least the MtG masses). Instead, they decided to keep both brands pure, and wouldn't cross them for the sake of integrity. This however, wasn't to last it seems. D&D has been releasing official cross-over modular's and books since it's run away success with 5th edition. 

I do enjoy the vintage look on this.

Now I won't claim to be an expert on D&D Next/5th edition. I don't play RPG's much, and like the greybeards before me being stuck with AD&D, I'm sort of stuck on 3.5. Not that I have anything against 5th, just I never had the opportunity to play it, nor at this point in my life, am I that interested. I know little about the system, and whatever criticism I do have isn't about the system itself.

However, there have cross overs with MtG and D&D, as well as crossovers with M:tG and other Magic products, mainly Hasbro content. 

Now, with the most recent expansion, Ikoria: Lair of the Behemoth's you have a chance to pull one of these, completely tournament legal reskins (or official alters) from the legendary Godzilla franchise. Most of these appear as other cards in regular booster packs, and all of them have a name underneath them, which is their offical name. With the exception of this:

Now calling a card by a pop-culture nickname isn't unheard of. Superman, Tim, even calling Gargantuan Gorilla I affectionately call "King Kong" when I occasionally cast him. However these were just that, nicknames. There is a big difference between "I cast 'godzilla'" and "I cast Godzilla." Now speaking of Kaiju and Godzilla, there is an actual good homage, if not a bit in your face, in this set to someone I just mentioned. 

This is an honest homage. Anyone looking at it will tell you it's obviously King Kong, but for legal reasons it's not. It's designed, referencing but not ripping off a iconic scene from a movie literally everyone has seen. Now I expect less of these homages in the future, and more of cards like the Godzilla promo's, probably soon not skins so much as actual character cards. Get ready to throw Batman, Neptunia, and Jack Sparrow into your EDH deck, because it's coming. Now before you say anything else, I'll leave you with this.