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| Alpha |
First Printing : Alpha (August 1993)
Last Printing: Core Set 2019 (July 2018)
Arguably one of the most iconic cards in the history of the game, Llanowar Elves has been a staple card since the beginning. Graced by the unsettling illustration of Anson Maddocks, which typifies the unusual bizarro-fantasy stylings of early Magic the Gathering artwork, this simple creature card has managed to stay relevant across nearly thirty years of development.
The elves of Llanowar reside on the plane of Dominaria. For all intents and purposes, this makes them a sort of vanilla interpretation of the typical fantasy race, which later planes would iterate upon and subvert.¹ They are noted for being fierce warriors and intensely xenophobic, attributes which are perhaps not adequately displayed in this card, but which would come to inform future cards depicting the elves of Llanowar.
For one green mana you get a 1/1 Elf, the characteristic creature type of green.² More importantly, this creature can be tapped to produce one green mana. If the creature is not answered, it's owner can thus play a 3-CMC card on turn two, a 4-CMC card on turn three, and on and on. It's impossible to oversell the importance of this acceleration, or "ramp" as it's typically called, to many playing styles. Indeed, ramp is one of the strategic attributes that players often look for when incorporating green cards into their deck.
Incidentally, when I first picked up Magic the Gathering I had a copy of Llanowar Elves. It was included in a green precon deck called "Custom Creatures," which was released during Ninth Edition.³ I recall very intentionally choosing green as my color of choice at the time, and in retrospect it's easy to see why. Green contains many powerful, if costly, creatures, and I would have absolutely been drawn to the artwork of gargantuan monsters and behemoths.
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| The copy I owned when I was 10. |
I was an entirely unexperienced player at the time, only ever able to play games against older kids at the local library. It's entirely plausible that I would have looked at this card and removed it, preferring to fill my deck with only the biggest baddies available to me. This, of course, would have been a significant error. You have to start off by playing Llanowar Elves if you want to be able to play those big beaters in the long-run.
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