Pointed Discussion

One of the lamest decisions they ever made was removing the pentagram from this artwork and still using it.

Look ma, no pentagram. Now it's KID-FRIENDLY strength from Satan!

he's just sort of standing there, lol.
The original art wasn't that good to begin with, though, some people just like their pentagrams.

Queer! :P

He just looks vaguely happy now.

But a Demon-centered ceased to be the most blasphemous/atheistic deck around Onslaught block.
Why? Squirrel deck! WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW

The artwork is more fitting for a card named "Morning Grogginess" or "Streettchhh."

Unholy Hug?

Here is where sanity lost another battle. Magic catered to pressure from the mob of religious nutjobs out there and took down the harmless pentagram. I don't think Satanists and Pagans were really moving many people to violence in the mid-to-late 90's -- at the time, there was a lot of killing in the name of 'god' going on in Kosovo.

In the end, it's probably best that they removed pentagrams from Magic, as it's better that the game creates it's own cultures rather than borrowing from real world ones. It's just frustrating to see any one group claim that their completely insane and untestable beliefs entitle them to make demands of this game I enjoy.

Lacking the flaming pentagram, and with it, lacking the whole symbolic meaning of the painting, it's almost as bad as 5th Edition Unholy Strength art...

Original art: Menacing, dark, sinister.

Revised art: "Ahhh, what a nice nap!"

Well, about that time, the reports of 'Satanic Ritual Abuse" were coming to light. These were fantastic and horrific claims made about how Satanists rule the country, use the friendlier Pagans as recruitment pools, and sacrifice tens of thousands of women and children each year, with the police willfully ignoring such. This was eventually forgotten, fifteen seconds after the millions of dollars and many ruined lives failed to bring up any evidence for anything, and census data made it clear that America would be a giant ghost town if Satanists were really killing people in those numbers, or, as the Church of Satan pointed out, Satanists actually even sacrifice people. (They don't, and neither do Pagans.) But in the early and mid nineties, being attached to anything supernatural wasn't a smart career move, especially as novel and unestablished as MtG was. More so, if, like MtG, you really have nothing to do with actual occultism. (I'm Pagan, so I know this stuff.)

In conclusion: Magic might have suffered without pulling the original art, more even than we are suffering with this absurd fix.

Also: The version of the pentagram used in the alpha art is venerated by LaVeyan Satanists, who, generally speaking, would find no problem associating their symbol with "unholy strength."

I was playing when this choice was made. I was a young teen so religious that I refused to play black at all and did my best not to have any black cards in my collection. (I've grown up by the way. Black, White decks are my fave now) Even I thought this was a stupid choice to make. The art was stupid looking. Glad it was changed altogether,

Funny how Innistrad is a slap on the face for all those bible-zealots. It contains all kinds of goodies like vampires, werewolves, demons, devils, angels, zombies, spirits. Hell, even humans doing sinful stuff.

Hmmm I wonder what's going on behind that text box....