Magic The Gathering The Visual Guide

by Jay Annelli

Explore the planes of magic on a spellbinding journey of discovery

The Gathering is a fantastical Multiverse of mystical beings, fabled realms, and mythical creatures. Dominating all are the mighty sorcerers known as planeswalkers. To be a planeswalker is to be powerful beyond measure—a wizard who can bend magic to their will and step through the veil of reality itself. These fearsome mages cross between the planes of existence, battling to save others or to destroy them, to fight darkness or to create it.

The Gathering Visual Dictionary illuminates the wondrous worlds they traverse, reveals their arcane lore, weapons, artifacts, and spells, and recounts their legendary exploits. Produced in close collaboration with Wizards of the Coast and featuring never before published profiles of new planes, such as Strixhaven and Kaldheim, this book is the first time MTG’s key characters and locations are showcased in one sumptuous, indispensable, and up-to-date guide to its vast and expanding Multiverse.

© 2022 Wizards of the Coast LLC

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction

200 pages, Hardcover

Published December 13, 2022

Reviews

[James Mastromarino]

Honestly, I was quite impressed. I loved DK books as a kid, and this take on that format does a great job compressing 30 years of lore and visual splendor into an accessible guide.

[Luiz · Rating 3 out of 5]

The return to a larger format is welcome, but because there’s so much info being put in a single book pages can look cluttered and we basically get just a snippet of each plane.

Overall, it’s an okay book if bought at a lower price, but nowhere near as good as the older “The Art of Magic the Gathering” series of artbooks, published by Viz Media.

[Josef Ploski · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started playing MtG 20+ year ago when it was just fantasy creatures battling each others and players were wizards conjuring them up. No one had heard of a planeswalker.
Picking up this book was an enjoyable journey for an old timer like me to catch up on what has been happening since I last put my cards away. I recommend it to veteran Magic players and those who have just started. The mythology is facinating and I hope if it is ever brought to movies or TV it does honor to its creators.

[Logan Stecher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Helped with clarity on some things, but riddled with typos that make it clear no editors/proofreaders were involved. Like all of WotC nowadays, quality is poor.

[Meredith Katz · Rating 4 out of 5]

The good: As an art book, it's absolutely gorgeous. Also really great reference to things like what creatures are from what planes, and lots of characters and story. As a reference it's just top notch and it's so gorgeous to look at. Loved reading through it.

The bad: It needed more time being edited -- not better proofreadering, mind; the writing is technically sound at all times. But it constantly put a term or something before explaining it, described things like "the plane struggles against the tyranny of (ruler)" when then establishing that guy also just got killed, etc. It just feels like it got bits moved around a lot and not smoothed out again after, which are things a solid copy edit would catch.

The ???: Being more familiar with drow lore, and knowing the matching Legend of Drizzt Visual Guide introduced things that existed nowhere in any material before that (like the markings of lolth stuff) and acted like it had always been there, I worry that that also happened here and I'd have no way to know what's inaccurate or added just for this book. I also laughed a bit at Chandra "loving Gideon like a brother"; I guess we're sweeping that WHOLE mess under the carpet, huh. (Seriously, could have just said "who she also had a crush on" without invalidating her relationship with Nissa, but I get why they didn't want to touch that again).

[LDVN · Rating 3 out of 5]

I borrowed the book from the library because I'm a fan of the game. The book had several gorgeous drawings and its organization made it easy to follow the 'plot'. It provided in depth lore about the history and culture of each plane. Some of them were obvious cultural rip offs like Kamigawa, Theros, and Tarkir, but it was fun to read about anyways. I looked up the cards from the releases to get the full picture of what was described in the book. It was a fun way to pass time.

[radueriel · Rating 3 out of 5]

a fun primer to MTG lore, with pretty coffee table art

[Sara Sheikhi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really nice and colour-rich pictures, but as a newbie, I would have liked more timelines and overview as the alphabetical layout tends to make the lore messy.