Magic New Art Reprints: Stone Rain

As you probably know if you follow the collectible trading card game market, this year is the 25th anniversary of Magic: The Gathering. And as you probably know if you follow this blog, I am somewhat of an amateur Magic historian/analyst, as well as an occasional player. So this special milestone is as good a time as any to explore a somewhat trivial topic that's of especial interest to me: cards that were reprinted with new artwork. Because whether a card appears in a new new expert level expansion, a special promotional version, or even an online-only compilation set, who doesn't like to celebrate the different artists who helped bring that card to life?

According to the extremely unscientific database I've been keeping on the subject, the cards of Magic's very first set have been reprinted* the most of any set since, perhaps unsurprisingly so. Of the 302 cards in Limited Edition's Beta print run (when they fixed a couple of errors from Alpha), 185 of them have been reprinted, for a total of 580 unique pieces of art (originals included). The next set with the most cards reprinted is the famously overpowered Urza's Saga (73 cards reprinted, 166 unique arts), followed closely by Ice Age (70 and 169), which was also coincidentally the first set to feature reprinted cards with new art.

* For the purpose of this post, I'm using the term "reprinted" as shorthand for "reprinted with new artwork," since it would be far too tedious (and not nearly as visually rewarding) to chronicle the many thousands of cards whose art carried over from an older set.

Given Limited's status as the set with the most new-art reprints, it makes sense that Magic's card with the most arts associated with it is also from Magic's original set. Anyone want to take a guess at what that card is? Too late, it's in the title of this post: it's the classic red land destruction special Stone Rain! Below are all 11 new-art printings, arranged chronologically, courtesy of proxy-printing website extraordinaire magiccards.info

TOP ROW: Limited, Ice Age, Mirage, 5th Edition, Portal, Tempest
BOTTOM ROW: Portal Second Age, Portal Three Kingdoms, Mercadian Masques, 7th Edition, Champions of Kamigawa

I always thought that Daniel Gelon's Limited Edition art for Stone Rain was a little bit off, thematically. The card mechanics have to do with destroying LAND, but here we see two PEOPLE getting messed up by the falling rocks. I will say this, though: Gelon's art accurately portrays how Magic players FEEL when they get their lands destroyed during a game. Stone Rain was so iconic that it was included in the next four consecutive sets to feature new art reprints: Ice Age, Mirage, Fifth Edition, and Portal. The most striking difference between its Limited and Ice Age printings -- aside from the new art by Kaja Foglio, which now shows an Orc-like creature getting hit by rocks instead of a human, but still not focusing on the land destruction aspect -- is the change in the rules text. As of Fourth Edition (which includes only reprints, but all with their original artwork), the text changes from telling you what the CARD does ("Destroys any one land") to prompting the PLAYER to do something ("Destroy target land").

The fact that Ice Age was a very story-heavy set is reflected in Stone Rain's flavor text, which includes no fewer than three search terms: the island of Argoth, the country of Soldev, and the legendary machinist Arcum Dagsson, who would get his own card in the Coldsnap set a decade later. The Mirage version added another quote from a legendary character -- Asmira from the Jamuraan state Femeref -- but the rather abstract art by Tony Roberts this time focuses on the actual stones that are raining. It wasn't until Fifth Edition when the art matched up with the rules text, as another piece by Roberts depicts a building getting blasted with very similar red-orange pieces of stone. The white-bordered set with no expansion symbol was the first Core Set to feature new art reprints, and they really went crazy, with 197 cards receiving new art. But if you think that's a lot, the Seventh Edition new art explosion made 5e look like child's play, with a whopping 329 cards reprinted with new art, including Tony Szczudlo's very tense new version of Stone Rain.

John Matson's art for the Portal version of Stone Rain sticks with the building-destruction motif, only this time the fiery doom approaches from the right instead of the left. This art would return for Stone Rain's reprints in Classic Sixth Edition, Starter 1999, Eighth Edition, and Ninth Edition. But speaking of Portal, it was Magic's first of three Beginner level expansions (along with its sequel Portal Second Age and Chinese history-themed Portal Three Kingdoms), which can be identified by the bold faced rules text and the line above the flavor text. Fun Fact: Stone Rain is the ONLY card to appear in all three Portal sets, with a unique piece of art each time. (The other two were illustrated by Doug Chaffee and Mitsuaki Sagiri, respectively.)

In between Portal 1 and Portal 2, Stone Rain appeared in Tempest, another story-heavy expert level expansion, this time with art by Magic veteran Christopher Rush and a quote from the Rathi prophet Oracle en-Vec. Then after Portal 3, Ben Thompson created a piece of art for the Mercadian Masques expansion, accompanied by flavor text referencing the dragon engine Ramos. Then the last piece of new art for Stone Rain came from Greg Staples for the Japanese-inspired Champions of Kamigawa set, meaning that Stone Rain is the only card to feature unique art in both of Magic's most Asian-themed expansions.


So there you have an extensive look at the Magic card with the most pieces of unique art associated with it! What I find so interesting about Stone Rain's numerous artworks is that they all came in honest-to-goodness expansion sets, rather than promotional giveaways or player rewards. This is not the case for Magic's second-most new-art-reprinted card, which I will profile in the next entry of this series: Counterspell!