New Magic: The Gathering Land Cycle Hides Easter Eggs

Wizards of the Coast recently revealed the upcoming silver-bordered Magic: The Gathering product called Unsanctioned, which features non-competitive silly and wacky cards with hilariously fun mechanics you won't typically see in competitive Magic sets. Now, MTG fans have found an easter egg in Unsanctioned: each of the five basic lands in the new product features art with a squirrel hidden.

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Credit: Wizards of the Coast

Some observant Redditors discovered the easter egg on the Magic: The Gathering subreddit. While the initial Reddit post only pointed out the easter egg in the plains art, users in the comments section shared their discovery of squirrels in the other Unsanctioned basic lands.

Here's where each squirrel is found in each card:

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The squirrel in the art in the Plains card can be seen in the central clouds.

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The art for the Island card features a whole island made up of a squirrel.

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The Swamp card shows leaves in the lower left hand side form the shape of a squirrel.

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The Mountain card features a squirrel head that can be seen in the furthest right mountain.

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On the Forest card, the sunlight coming through the leaves on the upper left area shows the outline of a squirrel.

Magic head designer Mark Rosewater has long expressed his love for squirrels. He said that his affinity for them developed after a miscommunication with MTG's art department led to a card that was intended to feature a squirrel on it getting a cat instead. Because of this, squirrel cards have since become a staple of Un-sets, non-tournament legal expansions featuring silver-bordered cards. Squirrels have appeared in all of the Un-sets, including 1998's Unglued, 2004's Unhinged, and 2017's Unstable. Although squirrels have been featured in black-bordered, tournament-legal cards before, it's been a long time since they've been featured in Standard sets, but last October, Rosewater expressed his interest in bringing squirrels back to black-bordered cards.

Unsanctioned will be released on February 29, 2020 in English.

Related: Watch The Unboxing of Silly New Unsanctioned

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