Tavis King Global Sets

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cataclysm80
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Tavis King Global Sets

Post by cataclysm80 » Fri Apr 15, 2016 7:52 am

Organization: List here at the top, Pictures down below

Heroes
. Benalish Hero
. Kjeldoran Warrior
. Infantry Veteran
. Devoted Hero
Samite Healer
Alabaster Kirin
False Prophet
Faeries
. Scryb Sprites
. Uktabi Faerie
Winter Blast
Scavenger Folk
Scaled Wurm
Fireball
Ironclaw Orcs
Mons's Goblin Raiders
Wall of Heat
Nalathni Dragon
Lightning Hounds
Lu Bu, Master-at-Arms
Xenic Poltergeist
Breeding Pit
Initiates of the Ebon Hand
Ashen Ghoul
Aku Djinn
Severed Legion
Blue Blasts
. Blue Elemental Blast
. Hydroblast
Twiddle
Reconstruction
Any Island with the same artwork as Urza's Saga card # 338
Crystal Rod
Cyclopean Tomb
Glasses of Urza
Library of Leng
Beast of Burden
Daredevil Dragster
Faerie Conclave
Forbidding Watchtower
Ghitu Encampment
Spawning Pool
Treetop Village


Heroes
(I've tried to organize these chronologically by release date.)

Magic Alpha Playtesting included Dragon, Forest, Glasses of Urza, Islands, Mountain, Plains, Skeletons, Swamp, and about 80 other card names. I don't know whether Hero existed in Magic Alpha Playtesting. It may or may not have been one of the many new cards introduced in Magic Beta Playtesting.

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A print of the original art.
Doug did the artwork for "Hero" & "Superhero". He created one female & one male, but refused to identify which one was "Super".
Someone at WotC assigned this art the "Hero" title. The male art was assigned the "Superhero" title, and became the card Veteran Bodyguard.

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More info can be found at this link. http://forum.magiclibrarities.net/forum ... f=6&t=9907

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This card was gifted to me by one of Rudy's Alpha Investments subscribers after they saw me show this collection on his YouTube channel.
https://youtu.be/7UkcsVvOrfI
The card stock has a front and back layer with a thin blue layer in the middle, but those layers are not assembled after printing, or even at Carta Mundi. Carta Mundi prints the cards, but they don't make the card stock, they buy it, just like they buy their ink, solvent, & varnish. The cardstock halves are bonded with the blue layer core by the paper manufacturer before Carta Mundi prints anything for Wizards.
The card backs are printed first, and then used as needed for printing the different rarities of fronts.
Because the card is printed clearly and not blurry, we know that the sheet fed through each of the 4 color stages identically, so this is not a simple registration error where the sheet was grabbed wrong by the machine once.
Either the sheet feeders were all identically misaligned (maybe left that way from the previous print job?) Or after the back was printed the sheet changed size (torn or cut) causing it to align improperly with the paper guides.

Here's the crazy part... The card back is usually printed first, so the order of operations here is...
Card backs printed correctly
Sheet edge damaged
Card fronts printed offset
Card cut face up, using the alignment marks on the front.

Yeah, that means the front side which looks normal was printed wrong and cut wrong to match, while the weird looking backside was printed correctly.
Here's another one.
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This is a second print run of Revised, which was intended to fix the problems that Revised had. A small amount of it was released in normal Revised booster packaging. This print run did not meet Wizards standards, and was immediately recalled for destruction, making these cards rare and valuable. They can be recognized by their copyright line and dark coloration.

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This is a Scolding Benalish Hero from Revised. It was created by Richard Garfield during Cruise Con in 1995, and given to a semi-finalist Daryl Tose at the event. Cruise Con was a convention that took place on a cruise ship which sailed from Miami Florida to Jamaica.
You can tap this card to cancel 1 creatures attack. In todays wording, I think it would work as follows...
Tap: Remove target attacking creature from combat. Prevent all combat damage that would be dealt to and dealt by that creature this turn.

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The card stock has a front and back layer with a thin blue layer in the middle, but those layers are not assembled after printing, or even at Carta Mundi. Carta Mundi prints the cards, but they don't make the card stock, they buy it, just like they buy their ink, solvent, & varnish. The cardstock halves are bonded with the blue layer core by the paper manufacturer before Carta Mundi prints anything for Wizards.
The card backs are printed first, and then used as needed for printing the different rarities of fronts.
What you see on this card is a printing error. When the front of the card was printed, it didn't properly align with the printing which had already occurred on the back side.

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This card was opened at the first Misprint Con, Buffalo New York, 2018.

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Some common & uncommon 4th Edition cards were accidentally cut using the same corner rounding die that had been used to make Alpha cards.

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Italian 4th Edition looks a lot like Italian 2nd Edition. The most noticeable difference is the marks above the lowercase i in the card name.

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Italian 4th Edition looks a lot like Italian 2nd Edition. The most noticeable difference is the marks above the lowercase i in the card name.

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Except for the change to white borders, most cards in this set are identical to the French Limited Edition printing, even including the 1994 copyright date. However, 11 cards in this set were updated and do have a 1995 copyright date. More info can be found at this link. http://forum.magiclibrarities.net/forum ... f=6&t=9063

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German 4th Edition looks a lot like German Unlimited Edition. The most noticeable difference is the marks above the lowercase i in the card name.

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Italian 4th Edition looks a lot like Italian 2nd Edition. The most noticeable difference is the marks above the lowercase i in the card name.

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Italian 4th Edition looks a lot like Italian 2nd Edition. The most noticeable difference is the marks above the lowercase i in the card name.

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9 cards in this set look a lot like French Unlimited Edition. Info on how to tell them apart can be found at this link. http://forum.magiclibrarities.net/forum ... f=6&t=9063

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German 4th Edition looks a lot like German Unlimited Edition. The most noticeable difference is the marks above the lowercase i in the card name.

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This card belonged to the mother of my friend Geoff. She played back in the 1990's, and eventually gave her old cards to her son. Geoff was the judge at my Local Game Store. He identified the card as Alternate 4th Edition, and I acquired it from him in 2013. This ignited my interest in rarities and oddities, as I'd previously only collected normal cards. It also began this Benalish Hero global set project, which was my second global set. My first global set was Wall of Heat, which I assembled in 1996.
Alternate 4th Edition was made by the United States Playing Card Corporation in the USA. It was printed with a stochastic process instead of halftone like normal cards. The cards were considered to be marked cards, and Wizards ordered them to be destroyed. Many of them escaped destruction. The easiest ways to recognize them are by the different shading on the upper right corner of the "A" in "MAGIC" on the card back, or by using a black light. Alternate 4th Edition has a UV resistant coating, so it doesn't glow under a black light like regular cards do.

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The card stock has a front and back layer with a thin blue layer in the middle, but those layers are not assembled after printing, or even at Carta Mundi. Carta Mundi prints the cards, but they don't make the card stock, they buy it, just like they buy their ink, solvent, & varnish. The cardstock halves are bonded with the blue layer core by the paper manufacturer before Carta Mundi prints anything for Wizards.
The card backs are printed first, and then used as needed for printing the different rarities of fronts.
What you see on this card is a printing error. When the front of the card was printed, it didn't properly align with the printing which had already occurred on the back side.

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Traditional Chinese 4th Edition was made by Shepard Poorman in the USA, using black core cardstock.

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Traditional Chinese 4th Edition was made by Shepard Poorman in the USA, using black core cardstock.

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Korean 4th Edition was made by Shepard Poorman in the USA, using black core cardstock.

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You may be wondering why Infantry Veteran is in my Hero global set. As I was searching for Hero playtest cards, I discovered that some of the Hero playtest cards I'd acquired, were for a set named Menagerie. Menagerie grew to be such a large playtest set, that it was eventually split into two sets named Mirage and Visions. The Banding ability that Benalish Hero has, was originally called Stacking. Originally, the way Stacking worked was that you'd simply add the power / toughness of the creature with Stacking, to the creature it was Stacking with. Since Hero was a 1/1 creature, this effectively gave another creature +1/+1. Infantry Veteran's ability is closer to the original Stacking ability than the Banding ability it became, but Infantry Veteran is descended from the Hero playtest card. Since I had the playtest card, I decided to go ahead and collect Infantry Veterans.

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Italian Visions Infantry Veteran
French Visions Infantry Veteran
German Visions Infantry Veteran
Spanish Visions Infantry Veteran
Portuguese Visions Infantry Veteran
Japanese Visions Infantry Veteran
Traditional Chinese Visions Infantry Veteran
Korean Visions Infantry Veteran

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Note: Benalish Hero was not included in Simplified Chinese 5th Edition. Simplified Chinese 5th only has 350 cards instead of 449 like the other languages.

Anthologies Infantry Veteran

6th Edition Infantry Veteran
Italian
French
German
Spanish
Portuguese
Japanese
Traditional Chinese
Simplified Chinese

Battle Royal Infantry Veteran

9th Edition Infantry Veteran
English Foil
Italian
Italian Foil
French
French Foil
German
German Foil
Spanish
Spanish Foil
Portuguese
Portuguese Foil
Japanese
Japanese Foil
Simplified Chinese
Simplified Chinese Foil
Russian
Russian Foil

M11 Infantry Veteran
M11 Foil
Italian
Italian Foil
French
French Foil
German
German Foil
Spanish
Spanish Foil
Portuguese
Portuguese Foil
Japanese
Japanese Foil
Traditional Chinese
Traditional Chinese Foil
Simplified Chinese
Simplified Chinese Foil
Russian
Russian Foil

Duel Decks Elspeth vs Tezzeret Infantry Veteran
Italian
French
German
Spanish
Japanese

Duel Decks Speed vs Cunning Infantry Veteran
Japanese

Iconic Masters Infantry Veteran
Iconic Masters Foil
Japanese
Japanese Foil
Simplified Chinese
Simplified Chinese Foil

Mystery Booster Infantry Veteran



Here is a list of rare items that probably existed, but I've never seen any of them.
Menagerie pink with Menagerie back playtest card
Large white playtest card with Menagerie name
Possibly later styles of Mirage or Visions playtest cards

small grey Ice Age playtest card
large white Ice Age playtest card
Kjeldoran Warrior Italian Ice Age Artist Proof
Kjeldoran Warrior French Ice Age Artist Proof
Kjeldoran Warrior Spanish Ice Age Artist Proof
Kjeldoran Warrior Portuguese Ice Age Artist Proof

Portal Playtest Card 2nd Generation card number HA cw01 (unknown card name, but it became Devoted Hero)
Portal Playtest Card 3rd Generation card number V2.0 HA cw01 (unknown card name, but it became Devoted Hero)
Devoted Hero English Portal Artist Proof
Last edited by cataclysm80 on Tue Sep 27, 2016 7:38 am, edited 34 times in total.

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dragsamou
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Re: My Global Sets

Post by dragsamou » Fri Apr 15, 2016 8:39 am

Hi,

Great collection, is it complete ?
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cataclysm80
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Re: My Global Sets

Post by cataclysm80 » Fri Apr 15, 2016 9:26 am

Thank You Alexis!

It was complete when I (easily) gathered all of the regular English versions.

Then it was complete again when I gathered all of the foreign versions.

Then it was complete again when I gathered the Edgar, Alpha Cut 4th, Alternate 4th, & misprint.

Then it was complete again when I gathered all the Artist Proof versions & art print.

Now I'm working on deals to acquire Alpha Playtest, Ice Age Playtest, Portal Playtest, & a Richard Garfield signed with modified abilities.
I have pictures of those, but will refrain from posting them until they have been added to my collection. :-D


I'll post my other global sets later.

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Re: My Global Sets

Post by dragsamou » Fri Apr 15, 2016 9:36 am

cataclysm80 wrote:Thank You Alexis!

It was complete when I (easily) gathered all of the regular English versions.

Then it was complete again when I gathered all of the foreign versions.

Then it was complete again when I gathered the Edgar, Alpha Cut 4th, Alternate 4th, & misprint.

Then it was complete again when I gathered all the Artist Proof versions & art print.

Now I'm working on deals to acquire Alpha Playtest, Ice Age Playtest, Portal Playtest, & a Richard Garfield signed with modified abilities.
I have pictures of those, but will refrain from posting them until they have been added to my collection. :-D


I'll post my other global sets later.
cataclysm80 wrote:Benalish Hero

Doug did the artwork for "Hero" & "Superhero". He created one female & one male, but refused to identify which one was "Super".
Someone at WotC assigned this art the "Hero" title. The male art was assigned the "Superhero" title, and became the card Veteran Bodyguard.
I'm confused with that part, Hero was the playtest card for Benalish Hero, but Superhero playtest card according to Wizard and different sources was not printed. A Veteran Bodyguard playtest card might exist.
http://www.magiclibrarities.net/957-rar ... white.html
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/ar ... 2009-06-24

They wanted to have also Benalish Hero for Ice Age and Portal ?
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cataclysm80
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Re: My Global Sets

Post by cataclysm80 » Fri Apr 15, 2016 10:11 am

dragsamou wrote:
cataclysm80 wrote:Benalish Hero
Doug did the artwork for "Hero" & "Superhero". He created one female & one male, but refused to identify which one was "Super".
Someone at WotC assigned this art the "Hero" title. The male art was assigned the "Superhero" title, and became the card Veteran Bodyguard.
I'm confused with that part, Hero was the playtest card for Benalish Hero, but Superhero playtest card according to Wizard and different sources was not printed. A Veteran Bodyguard playtest card might exist.
http://www.magiclibrarities.net/957-rar ... white.html
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/ar ... 2009-06-24

They wanted to have also Benalish Hero for Ice Age and Portal ?
The story comes from Doug.
In Alpha, the playtest card names were the names given to the artists to inspire the artwork. Doug did "Hero" & "Superhero" among others.
I agree that the playtest card doesn't much resemble the Veteran Bodyguard abilities. It seems they decided that a Superhero should save you instead of killing another creature?
When Doug received the original artwork back from WotC, they had written Hero on the back of the female art, and Superhero on the back of the male art.
Doug recently sold the original Veteran Bodyguard art. Here are pictures from the sale...

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The 1993 playtest version of Ice Age (small cards like Alpha Playtest) had a LOT of reprints. I've heard that it only had about 100 new cards, with the rest all reprints. The 1993 Ice Age project was put on hold because players wanted to see New cards. The Ice Age team switched to creating Antiquities. About a year later, they started work on the Ice Age project again (bigger playtest cards this time). The "Hero" playtest card became Kjeldoran Warrior, a functional reprint.

Portal playtest cards seem to be the first playtest cards that were printed stickers on real cards. There were at least 3 generations of Portal playtesting. On the first generation, the stickers only covered the bottom half of the real card. In this way, the real card name, casting cost, & art was maintained, but the rule box & power / toughness could be changed.
Benalish Hero was one of these first generation Portal playtest cards. The sticker made it a 1/2 creature and changed the flavor text. I believe it eventually became the card Devoted Hero.

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Re: My Global Sets

Post by dragsamou » Fri Apr 15, 2016 10:32 am

ImageImage

This is the Original pic, that inspired Veteran Bodyguard.

Thanks for the explanations for the other Playtest cards.
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Re: My Global Sets

Post by cataclysm80 » Fri Apr 15, 2016 10:35 am

dragsamou wrote:This is the Original pic, that inspired Veteran Bodyguard.
I wonder if the female in that photograph was any inspiration towards the face of Benalish Hero.

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Re: My Global Sets

Post by dragsamou » Fri Apr 15, 2016 1:26 pm

cataclysm80 wrote:
dragsamou wrote:This is the Original pic, that inspired Veteran Bodyguard.
I wonder if the female in that photograph was any inspiration towards the face of Benalish Hero.
I have no idea, Doug is the one knowing the answer...
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Re: My Global Sets

Post by cataclysm80 » Thu May 28, 2020 5:27 pm

dragsamou wrote:
Fri Apr 15, 2016 1:26 pm
cataclysm80 wrote:
dragsamou wrote:This is the Original pic, that inspired Veteran Bodyguard.
I wonder if the female in that photograph was any inspiration towards the face of Benalish Hero.
I have no idea, Doug is the one knowing the answer...
I visited with Doug at GP Vegas 2018, and asked him about this.
He didn't think the female in that photograph had inspired the Benalish Hero artwork, but he couldn't recall for sure if he'd used any photographs for reference.
At the time he created these, he was influenced by the art style of Boris Vallejo, and was using body building magazines as reference material.

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Re: My Global Sets

Post by dragsamou » Thu May 28, 2020 5:34 pm

cataclysm80 wrote:
Thu May 28, 2020 5:27 pm
dragsamou wrote:
Fri Apr 15, 2016 1:26 pm
cataclysm80 wrote:
dragsamou wrote:This is the Original pic, that inspired Veteran Bodyguard.
I wonder if the female in that photograph was any inspiration towards the face of Benalish Hero.
I have no idea, Doug is the one knowing the answer...
I visited with Doug at GP Vegas 2018, and asked him about this.
He didn't think the female in that photograph had inspired the Benalish Hero artwork, but he couldn't recall for sure if he'd used any photographs for reference.
At the time he created these, he was influenced by the art style of Boris Vallejo, and was using body building magazines as reference material.
Always interesting to find out the artist's version. Btw looking at your Hero Playtest card, I have found the original art that it came from as well as over 50 original sources for Gamma Playtest cards, this was part of an update not so long ago.

Image
Black Dragon advertisement from page 8 of Epic Illustrated Issue 31. August 1985. Illustration by John Bolton.
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cataclysm80
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Re: My Global Sets

Post by cataclysm80 » Thu May 28, 2020 5:59 pm

cataclysm80 wrote:Benalish Hero
Doug did the artwork for "Hero" & "Superhero". He created one female & one male, but refused to identify which one was "Super".
Someone at WotC assigned this art the "Hero" title. The male art was assigned the "Superhero" title, and became the card Veteran Bodyguard.
dragsamou wrote:
Fri Apr 15, 2016 9:36 am
I'm confused with that part, Hero was the playtest card for Benalish Hero, but Superhero playtest card according to Wizard and different sources was not printed. A Veteran Bodyguard playtest card might exist.
http://www.magiclibrarities.net/957-rar ... white.html
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/ar ... 2009-06-24
cataclysm80 wrote:
Fri Apr 15, 2016 10:11 am
The story comes from Doug.
In Alpha, the playtest card names were the names given to the artists to inspire the artwork. Doug did "Hero" & "Superhero" among others.
I agree that the Superhero playtest card doesn't much resemble the Veteran Bodyguard abilities. It seems they decided that a Superhero should save you instead of killing another creature?
When Doug received the original artwork back from WotC, they had written Hero on the back of the female art, and Superhero on the back of the male art.

Here's a little more information that might help to understand why the Gamma Superhero abilities are different from the Veteran Bodyguard abilities.

Gamma playtesting isn't a set of cards, it's a phase of playtesting.
This is like saying that lunchtime is not the food you eat, it's the time you spend eating.
Gamma playtesting started with Richard Garfield creating the cards that everyone calls Gamma playtest cards.
After playing with those cards a while, Richard asked the math department playtesters and the bridge club playtesters to each come up with their own version of what they'd want to see the final game be like. Each team created a set of playtest cards, and these were also part of Gamma playtesting. Richard asked them to do this because he wanted to see their ideas, and he did use some of these ideas in the final versions that he turned in to WotC.

In summary, there are additional playtest cards between the Gamma Superhero you're looking at, and the Veteran Bodyguard card. The card ability evolved during this time frame.
If you scroll up and look at the Hero playtest cards, you'll see an orange one and a white one that still have the Stacking ability from before it was changed to Banding.

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Re: My Global Sets

Post by cataclysm80 » Thu May 28, 2020 6:03 pm

dragsamou wrote:
Thu May 28, 2020 5:34 pm
Always interesting to find out the artist's version. Btw looking at your Hero Playtest card, I have found the original art that it came from as well as over 50 original sources for Gamma Playtest cards, this was part of an update not so long ago.
Black Dragon advertisement from page 8 of Epic Illustrated Issue 31. August 1985. Illustration by John Bolton.
Thanks, it's neat to see the original art for the playtest cards.
This one always reminded me of Monty Python for some reason. :-D

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Re: Tavis King Global Sets

Post by cataclysm80 » Thu May 28, 2020 6:05 pm

Happy to announce that this thread has been updated, and all the broken image links have been fixed.

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Re: Tavis King Global Sets

Post by dragsamou » Fri May 29, 2020 2:08 am

One thing that I have noticed and that need to be fixed in your list:

Iconic Masters Infantry Veteran
Iconic Masters Foil
Japanese
Japanese Foil
Traditional Chinese
Traditional Chinese Foil

Only exist in English, Japanese, Simplified Chinese.
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Re: Tavis King Global Sets

Post by cataclysm80 » Fri May 29, 2020 4:52 am

Thank You, I agree.

I quickly copied that from the Apathy House Checklist Generator, which was updated a few months ago.
https://apathyhouse.com/checklist

I've now let him know of the error in the Checklist Generator.

I've fixed my list now.

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