Conjure is one of a few mechanics available exclusively on Magic The Gathering: Arena , it allows you to simply create cards out of thin air. Unlike tokens, conjured cards can change zones which opens the door to a wide variety of unique effects, but since magically conjuring cardboard is still outside the realm of possibility for physical play, it’s exclusive to the digital client.

In Mystery Booster 2 , a couple of cards with conjure made their way to paper magic. Those include Sigardian Evangel, Oracle of the Alpha, Sanguine Brushstroke, Toralf's Disciple and Rusko, Clockmaker. These cards are marked with the “acorn” symbol indicating that they are not meant for organized play and Wizards themselves say “You might need to get creative” to represent conjured cards.

I decided to take that challenge and go even further, I want to try to redesign interesting cards which include “conjure” such that they work in paper magic without going for the obvious and very boring “take a card you own from outside the game, reveal it then put it in a zone” solution. Many cards with conjure aren’t particularly exciting and have similar effects to other cards, so I won’t include cards which I deemed too “boring” or which have obvious solutions in this list. Still, feel free to give them a try if you want.

Ace Flockbringer

Starting off strong, Ace Flockbringer conjures a duplicate of a creature spell you cast and gives it flying. This isn’t particularly complex but it is interesting, so here is my attempt:

Ace Flockbringer
Creature - Bird Scout
Flying
Whenever you cast a creature spell without flying from your hand for the first time each turn, copy it then exile it. You may cast it from exile, if you do, it enters with a flying counter.
3 / 3

I think this works well. Copying and then exiling a spell is a pretty cool thing you can do to resolve a spell and do something else with the card but the wording on the trigger is a bit long-winded. It’s the easiest way to avoid entering an infinite loop where cards exiled with Ace Flockbringer trigger it again. By exiling cards under Ace Flockbringer we can easily track the change it applies to the card and because we keep the card and only create a token on the battlefield we don’t have any issues casting it later.

Agent of Raffine

This is one of many cards that really don’t benefit all too much from conjure in my opinion, even though it can lead to interesting interactions. Here is my attempt at it:

Agent of Raffine
Creature - Human Rogue
, : Exile the top card of target opponent’s library face down, you may look at it at any time (not your opponents). You may cast it by paying mana of any color to pay its mana cost.
1 / 2

Exiling and casting your opponents’ cards is an established mechanic already, the only quirk of this card is that it exiles the card face down which adds a cute dramatic twist. Usually in paper magic, casting a spell by paying its cost with mana of any color isn’t really used, cards which want you to cast your opponents’ cards tend to give you treasures instead, but this isn’t a big break. If you really wanted to, you could make the ability cost and have it create a Treasure token.

Argothian Uprooting

This is another card that has a technically unique effect that could have been done without conjuring at all. After all, bar relatively niche scenarios, conjuring cards on the battlefield is just creating tokens. Here is my take:

Argothian Uprooting
Sorcery
Put two +1/+1 counters on each of X target lands you control. They each become 0/0 Elemental creatures with reach, haste, and “When this creature leaves the battlefield, create a tapped Forest basic land token.” They’re still lands

Land tokens are a very recent addition to Magic with the Everywhere token (which, by the way, is an extremely cool token and I love Duskmourn). Setting situations where you would move your lands to other zones aside, which are already super rare, this is effectively equivalent to the Arena version.

Boneyard Aberration

Now this is a cool card, a very flavorful effect that really takes proper advantage of the conjure mechanic in my opinion. A creature “splitting” into multiple creatures in your graveyard is really evocative and fun in my opinion. Here is my adaptation of it:

Boneyard Aberration
Creature - Skeleton Dog
When Boneyard Aberration dies, exile it with 3 parts counters on it.
, remove a parts counter from Boneyard Aberration: Create a tapped 1/1 Skeleton token named “Reassembling Skeleton” with “When this creature dies, add a parts counter on target card named Boneyard Aberration in exile.” Activate this ability only as a sorcery and only while Boneyard Aberration is in exile.
3 / 3

I don’t think we’ve ever seen cards with activated abilities while in exile and that’s a lot of text to put on a token but this is a really unique effect and I wanted to do its justice. Obviously, since I can’t track the skeletons in the graveyard I have to use counters on an exiled card which has already been done before with mechanics like Suspend and works pretty comfortably. I think this would be a really cool design to see in paper.

Chitinous Crawler

This is a neat effect, growing your graveyard more and more like this is really powerful and unique and it enables graveyard synergies in a fun way. It’s also a very difficult effect to convey without conjuring up cards, so here is my best effort:

Chitinous Crawler
Creature - Insect Horror
At the beginning of combat on your turn, choose one —
- Exile target creature card from your graveyard that is not in exile with two charge counters on it.
- Add a charge counter on target card exiled by Chitinous Crawler with a charge counter on it.
Cards exiled by Chitinous Crawler with charge counters on them count as though they are in your graveyard. They count as X cards where X is the amount of charge counters on them. If a card exiled by Chitinous Crawler with two or more charge counters would enter the battlefield, remove a charge counter from it then create a copy token of it instead. If a card exiled by Chitinous Crawler with two or more charge counters would enter your hand, remove a charge counter from it then copy it instead, you may cast the copy. If a card exiled by Chitinous Crawler would enter your library, remove a charge counter from it instead.
4 / 4

This is an extremely complex effect with a ton of rules just to try to account for all the ways in which you can interact with your graveyard. Chitinous Crawler is in my opinion the single best use of conjure because of this, as it uses it for an effect that would be impossible to do without it and can lead to very interesting and unique interactions. I don’t think my paper version is particularly elegant or ready for play, but I also don’t want to make it completely useless.

Holographic Double

This card is a bit strange to me, it’s a pretty niche effect that feels a bit like a flavor fail. Here is my interpretation of this card:

Holographic Double
Creature - Illusion
As Holographic Double enters, you may reveal a creature card from your hand and pay its casting cost. If you do, Holographic Double enters as a copy of that creature except it’s an Illusion.
1 / 1

Of course, this reveals additional information that the Arena version doesn’t, but I think it’s a fair trade-off for a more flavorful effect. While it might be a bit difficult to track, it’s not a big deal for the player casting it to keep the revealed creature revealed as long as it’s needed. Imperfect but I don’t think it’s that much worse than the Arena version.

Nashi, Illusion Gadgeteer

This card is fun because it involves a secret choice and it’s a bit difficult to interact with a public zone like the graveyard in a secret way. I’ve tried coming up with a solution.

Nashi, Illusion Gadgeteer
Legendary Creature - Rat Rogue
When Nashi enters, secretly note the name of a nonland card in your graveyard. Once this game you may play a card with that name from your graveyard anytime you could cast an instant.
4 / 4

Secret choices are always fun in my opinion, and while I’m not the biggest fan of restricting this to once per game I think it’s not too detrimental. Due to how this ability is written, playing a second Nashi works as expected but if your Nashi dies you can’t cast the spell you chose with it anymore (at which point you could reveal your secret choice to your opponents and cross it off or mark it in some other way to show it’s no longer valid). I also removed its ability to select lands because it would add a lot of extra text for little benefit.

Oracle of the Alpha

Aha, here is the card that made me start this. Referencing the Power Nine explicitly is pretty cool and while I would typically choose to ignore a card like this on the basis that it’s an overly complex effect, there is a certain beauty to this card.

Oracle of the Alpha
Planeswalker
Whenever you draw a card, put a loyalty counter on Oracle of the Alpha. You may only activate each loyalty ability of Oracle of the Alpha once.
-2: Mox — Create an artifact token of any one color with ” : Add one mana of one of this artifact’s colors”
-4: Black Lotus — Add 3 mana of any color.
-4: Ancestral Recall — Pay , if you do target player draws three cards
-4: Time Walk — Pay , if you do take an extra turn after this one
-4: Timetwister — Pay , if you do each player shuffles their hand and graveyard into their library, then draws seven cards
Starting loyalty 1

Yuup, I’m making it a Planeswalker. Now, hear me out, the thing that planeswalkers have that’s really difficult to do with other cards is a ton of separate activated abilities with a common cost. Spending a resource that you only get when drawing cards somewhat approximates the fact that you are going to have to dig in your deck to find these cards and you can only use each ability once since the Arena version only conjures one copy of each card into your library. Ability names help contextualize each ability and make the reference a bit more explicit. This is definitely a bold choice, the only 5-ability Planeswalker is Urza, Planeswalker and it would take a really special occasion for something like that to happen again, not just some bird breaking the fourth wall, not to mention the fact that this is a truly absurd amount of text to go on a single card.

Conclusion

Some kind of conclusion… well, something I realized while doing this is that a lot of cards with conjure just kind of use it to squeeze extra complexity in cards. Magic already has a complexity creep problem in my opinion and cards like Caldera Breaker already have a ridiculous amount of text even without considering the fact that Volcanic Geyser has even more text on it. Cards like Case of the Lost Witness conjure stuff just kind of for the sake of conjuring stuff and other cards would do just as well creating tokens. For the few cards with a genuinely unique effect so many more could be replaced with slightly clever use of searching your library, exiling cards and just not trying to shove so much text on a single card. Perhaps one day Wizards will start using it for genuinely clever effects but for now it’s definitely a disappointing mechanic, especially seeing what digital-only games like Hearthstone are able to do.

It’s also worth saying that I’m not a perfect designer, many of my designs here could probably use a lot of work before being printed and some are completely unfeasible. Still, if you have any ideas or want to discuss Magic design, you can reach me out at comments@kdcf.me. In the meantime, have fun playing!