Captain Eberhart is one of the illustrations I made for Magic the Gathering back in 2021 (or was it 2020?)

On top of the fact that I keep being pretty busy, the COVID lockdowns have added another layer of confusion to my already troubled head.
I keep thinking of events and placing them in my mind time-line in the wrong place. Like “that thing happened three years ago, right?”.
Nope, it was five man.

It’s as if my brain stopped recording stuff for a couple of years, I should have kept a diary.
Or maybe not, most of the pages would have been something along the lines of “still locked down. Looking outside through the window”.

Anyway. the only good thing of that period is that I made a bunch of cards for Magic the Gathering, which is about one of the coolest things I could thing of as an artist.

Captain Eberhart is part of Magic the Gathering Alchemy, which is the digital format of the game.
For those unfamiliar with it:

“Alchemy is our MTG Arena format based on the Standard format that incorporates new-to-digital Magic cards alongside rebalanced Standard cards to create a fast, ever-evolving experience for our players.”

Working for Alchemy is obviously just as good as working for the standard game. The only downside is that the work that goes straight to Alchemy isn’t printed, so we don’t receive any artist proofs.

Also – and this is my entirely personal feeling – I suspect some artists are asked to do some work for Alchemy before they level up to the standard Magic the Gathering format. Not that Alchemy is something less, but still.

Here’s Captain Eberhart, one of the most kickass Cathars.

I have to admit, looking at it after all this time I’m not 100% happy about how it came out.

I can assure you the anatomy is correct, but the super bulky plate armour makes his head look to small, and possibly angled at an odd position.
Still, I’m sure about the anatomy, but in hindsight I could have picked another angle to avoid that effect.

Oh well. The card does look pretty good though.

Just to provide some context, Captain Eberhart is one of the Cathars, a sect of soldiers of the Church of Avacyn.
The Church had been founded by vampire Planeswalker Sorin Markov with the purpose, among others, of protecting humans from the predation of the plane’s monsters.

Within its ranks, Cathars are involved in a broad variety of activities related to countering monsters: investigating crimes, helping the population and so on.
Captain Eberhart is one of those who go face to face with the most dangerous creatures, and this illustrations depicts him in the quite moments after a battle, cleaning his sword from gore and blood.

I think the context is quite unusual, I loved the idea of drawing a character not in the middle of the action but after it.
So, my thanks to Art Director Andrew Vallas for it.

After Electrostatic Blast and this one, in 2021 (or 2020?) I made another couple of illustrations for Alchemy and then “graduated” to the standard game.
I’m waiting for some proofs to be delivered probably this week, and then I will share at least one of those.

by Paolo Puggioni