Just a few weeks ago,Magic: The Gatheringfans began receiving theirSecret Lair Cute to Brute Commander decks, complete with five double-faced cards featuring all-new adorable artwork by Nana Qi and horrific images by Godmachine. The five-color deck is all about transforming cards, showing the origins of some of Magic’s biggest names as they become all-powerful planeswalkers.
One of those planeswalkers is of course Nicol Bolas, the now-dethroned and de-sparked Elder Dragon following the War of the Spark. Nicol is perhaps the most adorable of the Cute to Brute cards, showing a little baby dragon with his cute little flame before he becomes a genocidal villain.
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While the card Nicol Bolas, the Ravager makes it seem like he went straight from being a cute baby to a terrifying planeswalker, an included poster proves that wasn’t the case. Nicol Bolas had a lot of growing up to do before he could become one of Magic’s greatest villains, with stages that include card-playing kid, emo teen, and cool and confident young adult.
You can see the posteron the Magic subredditthanks to a kind player who wanted to share Nicol’s growth with the community, naturally, emo Nicol grabbed the attention of more than a few Elder Dragon fans.
“Honestly it’s a bit disappointing it’s just the same graphic but flipped with a different color,” one Redditor wrote. “The kid Nicol Bolas is super cute tho and the emo teen Nicol Bolas is just a funny idea before he outgrows it.”
As much as we can appreciate the poorly veiled vulnerability of emo Nicol (and wish that somebody had just given this emotional teen a hug–probably would have saved a lot of lives) we shouldn’t discount the appeal of college grad Nicol either.
“Can we talk about ‘mid-twenties’ Bolas with the ‘goatee’? He probably listened to Godsmack and MegaDeth,“another Redditorpointed out.
It’s too bad we’ve probably seen the last of Nicol. After the War of the Spark, he’s been imprisoned by his brother Ugin in the meditation plane where he’ll live out the rest of his days. Unfortunately, dragons can live for thousands of years even without the immortality provided by a planeswalker’s spark–not that there are too many of those around these days anymore.
Wizards of the Coast still hasn’t commented on the Prismatic Bridge controversy surrounding the Cute to Brute Secret Lair. The flip side of Esika, God of the Tree features an image of Nicol Bolas by Godmachine, but it looks like the artisttraced Bolas' head from another Magic card; Nicol Bolas, the Arisen.
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