Top 8 Magic Cards to Woo Your Valentine

It’s a common misconception that Wizards of the Coast doesn’t actually want its players to find significant others. The evidence is convincing: have you ever noticed that Friday Night Magic is always on Friday nights, the most common date night? Or that Game Day (RIP) for pretty much every winter release fell on the weekend of Valentine’s Day? Or even just that Wizards keeps printing so many different products that you want to buy, ensuring you’ll never have money for SO’s?

Despite Wizards’ best efforts, I’ve found a way to leverage their own work against them. For that nerdy someone who you’ve got your eye on (How do I know they’re nerdy? Because you’re the type of person who is reading this article), I’ve compiled the Top 8 Magic cards that you can use for inspiration in your quest to show them your Undying affection.

1. Kiss of the Amesha

Remember how in college you could pay the a capella group a small fee to serenade your love interest on Valentine’s Day? How they would burst into the lecture hall, declaring, “PROFESSOR! We come bearing a message of love!” And most professors would be cool about it, but there was always one who was like, “Nah. GTFO.”

Well, this is like that.

Every Valentine’s Day, the Amesha (angels on Bant), take a small fee (actually, pretty enormous… and the price Weatherlight tickets to get to Bant in the first place have skyrocketed)  to first serenade your love interest, then kiss them on the forehead. How can they turn down a person who would pay a actual legion of angels to sing to and kiss them? I mean, if you really want the answer to that question, ask my friend Marissa; turns out the guy she liked had a long-held fear of anything with feathers. That ruined both the whole angel thing and the doves that she released through his window later that afternoon…

2. Heart-Piercer Bow

Come on, Ryan, you’re seriously suggesting that I shoot the person who I want to seduce?

No, you idiot; you need to shoot both the person you’re interested in and yourself. Haven’t you ever seen Cupid work their magic? What you need to understand is that the Heart-Piercer Bow X7000 is the model that Cupid used for years to make matches. Sure, Cupid moved onto the Heart-Piercer Z976 when it was released (and the fatality rate of the X7000 was a tad too high for Cupid’s liking), but the X7000 is still a great tool. I highly recommend it, and you can find it on Amazon for only $799 (though Prime Membership knocks that down to only $749!)

3. Heart of Kiran

You know how there are always those car ads near Valentine’s Day being like, “Yo, if you really want to show your SO how much you love them, the only way to really do it is to drop a cool $30K on a new car!” Well, Pia Nalaar is far too susceptible to car ads. She spent far more than $30K-equivalent (in Kaladeshi gold coins) all to show her love for her dead hubby. Yeah, also to overthrow the government, but you know how pesky governments can be! And she didn’t just buy a car; she built a skyship! Can you imagine rolling up to your love interest’s crib in a skyship that you built from spare parts in your garage and painted their name on the side of? Again – who could possibly turn that down?

4. Urza’s Hot Tub

Nothing is more romantic than hanging out in a warm cesspool of bacterial infections waiting to happen! I guess taking a date to a breeding ground for microbes is… kinda suggestive? Maybe? Anyways, Urza took it to the next level by asking himself what was missing and coming to the brilliant realization that the ideal hot tub requires three things:

An elf from a metal plane who will soon be perfected by the glorious nation of Phyrexia

A woman who is confused as to who she is as during her life she progress from regular ol’ human to Phage the Untouchable toKarona to planeswalker, then to dead as she starts the Great Mending

A creature from the absolutely-removed-from-the-freaking-game zone

 The most important ingredient of all… a decapitated head.

Once again, it’s easy to see why a prospective partner would be impressed by an elf, a weirdo, a bigfoot, and a decapitated head… all floating in a petri dish of disease.

5. Jace, the Mind Sculptor

Okay, so before I get to the clever excuse I rationalized to include Jace on this list, how sweet is it that Jace is back in Modern?! A real Jace… not Jace, the Ab Sculptor, not Jace, the Sculpt-One-Power-Off-Attacking-Creatures Sculptor, and not Jace, the Clue Sculptor. Pretty excited about that. So why is Jace on this list? Well, I was Brainstorming ideas for a while when I stumbled upon this picture, which says it all:

(art credit: the Deviantart of PolishTamales)

What? I’m not blushing. You’re blushing. My skin always has goosebumps like that. I’m not getting chills, it’s just cold in here. Psh.

6. Beseech the Queen

In the old days, people married for money, political convenience, and because their parents told them to. Today, people marry for all of these reasons, but also sometimes because they feel warm and fuzzy around a person. Well, for when warm and fuzzy isn’t enough, and all the above methods have failed, it’s time to see if you can convince someone to get with you for other reasons. Since you’re a Magic player, you’re either really wealthy or really poor, so that’s kind of hit-or-miss. Political convenience is the big winner though; if you can convince someone that the good of nations depends on your union, it would be pretty selfish of them to turn you down. The real trick is navigating yourself into a position with sufficient power to cause international conflict, and then leveraging that into finding a boo. If the years of intense work this would require sound like too much, either try the Heart-Piercer Z976, or read on!

7. (Dark)Heart Sliver

Maybe you’re from a commune. Maybe you’re post-monogamy. Or maybe you’re just really, really desperate to get with someone, no matter the cost or relationship type. Well, friend, have you ever considered joining a Sliver Hive? Meet up with a Heart Sliver at your local chapter of the Hive, and you can learn all about the benefits that come along with existence in a hive mind! You’ll never be alone again! Nor will you be you anymore, but is that really such a bad thing? You get to have 96 different sets of abilities, and rumor has it, the Hive will be aggressively expanding its membership on April 27^th, 2018. Stop by Dominaria if you want to see the great work the Hive does firsthand!

Addendum: I don’t get why Heart Slivers give haste; was it supposed to be Hearth Sliver and someone made a typo? And what about Darkheart Sliver? It has nothing to do with Heart Sliver OR evil love. Very confusing.

8. Emrakul, the Promised End

You know what they say: every end is a new beginning! And nobody knows that better than Emrakul! If you’ve really just given up on finding a Valentine, even with all the advice here, it might be time to just summon Emrakul onto your world so that you’mrakul can join everyone else’mrakul in being one’mrakul together. It really is a beautiful thing… if you can look past the tentacles, extra mouths, and weird growths. But beauty is on the inside anyways, amirite?

Happy Valentines’mrakul!

Ryan is a grinder from Boston with SCG & GP Top 8’s and a PT Day 2. His fragile self-esteem is built on approval from others, so be sure to tell him what you think of his articles on Twitter @RyanNormandin and in his Twitch chat at twitch.tv/norm_the_ryno.