Early today on the Magic: the Gathering Twitch stream, Wizards of the Coast (WotC) announced that they’ve partnered with legendary Japanese film studio, Toho Corporation, to include iconic, big-screen monsters such as Godzilla, Mothra, and King Ghidorah in Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths.
These monsters will appear in the set as alternate-art versions of existing cards and will be known as Godzilla Series Monster cards. “For each Godzilla Series Monster, we went through Ikoria and found the best flavor fit and gave each Godzilla Series Monster card its own card in the set” said Mike Turian, Principal Product Designer at WotC, in his Collecting Ikoria article on Daily MTG. “A total of 19 cards were given this treatment and one card, the Buy-a-Box card, only exists in its Godzilla Series form, but each of the others has both an Ikoria card and a matching Godzilla Series card.”
Here’s how you can get your hands on these Godzilla Series Monster cards:
Speaking of Collector Boosters, each Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths Collector Booster will have the following contents:
- 4 Foil commons or common duals
- 2 Foil uncommons
- 1 Foil basic land
- 1 Ikoria Commander card (any rarity)
- 1 Extended-art rare or mythic rare (43 rares, 7 mythic rares)
- 1 Foil mythic rare or foil extended-art rare or mythic rare
- 2 Showcase mutate commons or uncommons (5 common, 15 uncommon)
- 1 Showcase rare or mythic rare (10 rares, 8 mythic rares)
- 1 Foil showcase card (any rarity)
- 1 Godzilla Series Monster card (could be foil or non-foil; the Buy-a-Box mythic rare is only available in non-foil)
- 1 Foil token
Showcase Treatment
Cards receiving the Showcase Treatment were given the goal of “playing off the emotion and energy conveyed by Ikoria’s monsters” explained Turian. “After many explorations, we settled on a comic book style. Super-huge, in-your-face monsters exploding out of the cards at you, hitting you in the cornea like a comic book onomatopoeia!” and that “These are supposed to be some of the biggest, baddest creatures the game has ever offered up, and we wanted them to have that movie star treatment. Not even the frame would be enough to contain the over-the-top energy and aggressiveness these mutants have to offer. “
“For the showcase cards, in the common and uncommon slot, these will always be mutate cards such as Cloudpiercer. In the showcase rare or mythic rare slot, you could get a showcase mutate rare or mythic rare such as Illuna. Or you could get one of the three new borderless planeswalkers such as either Lukka or Vivien.”
Turian also noted that “There is one additional showcase treatment that you could get in the showcase rare or mythic rare slot featuring amazing new lands, but we can’t show you those just yet!”