Hi all,
Hope you enjoyed your prereleases. You may have noticed a couple of changes to our store. We are trying to put our best foot forward and, as such, have changed up some of the collections on the front page. We have also added a new Daily Deal page. https://magicatwillis.co.nz/collections/card-of-the-day
This is a single card on sale that changes every 24 hours. At the moment, it's a card chosen at random from all cards in our store with a minimum price of $2.50. Each day, the chosen card will be available for 10% off, automatically added at the cart screen if you have the product in your cart. No code needed :).
There are those of you who might wonder why we use codes instead of doing this for our regular sales. Well, we have a few amazing customers who, when we have a sale, choose to participate but not use the code in order to give us more money. We appreciate these customers a lot, and as a result, when we do our normal sales, there will always be codes involved.
Anyways, I promised you all more cool cards we've picked up recently, so let's get to that. If you missed part 1 you can find it here. https://magicatwillis.co.nz/blogs/your-bi-weekly-update-with-willis/your-bi-weekly-update-with-willis-08-06-2026
We start off with the 1999 World Championship promo. https://magicatwillis.co.nz/products/mtg-balduvian-hordeworlds?_pos=3&_sid=e220c4631&_ss=r
This was a card given away to side event participants at the 1999 World Championship in Yokohama, Japan. It may look awful by today's standards, but when it was printed, it was an undercosted creature for its stats, and its drawback was justified for how efficient it is.
An Iconic card from Magic's history, this one, and one it makes me happy to have a copy of :)
Next up, we have an arena foil. https://magicatwillis.co.nz/products/mtg-stuporarena-league-2000?_pos=2&_sid=e1c251ceb&_ss=r
Arena League was a local game store league run between 1996 and 2007. It was designed to close the gap between casual and competitive players. You could get a competitive fix locally, without worrying about ranking and losing your spot on the DCI rankings.
DCI Rankings used to work on the ELO system, where you would gain more points beating someone higher up than you, but you would also lose more points losing to someone lower than you. Your DCI ranking could qualify you for events as well as earn you byes at events like Grand Prix's (Similar-ish to modern-day Magic Cons). It was eventually dropped because it encouraged players with higher rankings to not play at more casual events for the risk of losing too many points. It is really not ideal to have incentives in place to have players play less of your game.
Anyway, Arena Leagues could offer some of that competitive aspect, without being tied to your DCI ranking. Stores could also run these leagues with whatever format they wished, including unsanctioned casual formats, depending on their player base.
The foil promos, like the Stupor above, were given to the top 2 players (and sometimes a random third) for your local league. What I love about early Arena League Promo foils like the one above is getting a foil with a set symbol from a set that contained zero foils. In this case, foils were not introduced until after 6th Edition.
Next up, this Incinerate https://magicatwillis.co.nz/products/mtg-incineratedci-legend-membership?_pos=2&_sid=87048c5a5&_ss=r
Prior to the Player Rewards Program (which we discussed in part 1), DCI offered Free Memberships and Legend Memberships. Legends Memberships cost $30USD and came with bonus promos. It didn't last very long and only contained this Incinerate and a Counterspell. It's certainly not a program I was aware of before I researched this card. I feel Player Rewards was a much better program overall, and I'm glad they swapped to it.
Lastly, we have a Book Promo. https://magicatwillis.co.nz/products/mtg-windseeker-centaurharperprism-book-promos-1?_pos=1&_sid=d5a8f0cf7&_ss=r
There are 5 Harper Prism Book Promos, and if you've heard the term book promo before, it's probably in relation to the most famous of the 5. Mana Crypt. It's also by far the most powerful and most valuable of the 5 cards, even after being banned in Commander. But there were 4 more, and this is one of them. It's not a flashy card by any means, but the age of it makes me happy to find cards like this one in such good condition.
The second most famous book promo is a card called Arena, though if you've only started playing in the last 10 years, it wouldn't surprise me if you don't know it. It's a land that doesn't tap for mana and for 3 mana lets one of your creatures fight a creature an opponent controls of their choice. Anyways, just cards I think are cool.
If you enjoyed this series, seeing weird old cards and learning about them, reach out to me and let me know. I could be interested in doing more of this when I come across cool cards in the future.
- Rose Willis
