MTG employee gifted unique unicorn planeswalker card

Select Wizards of the Coast staff receive a limited Magic: The Gathering card each year, and a recent recipient shows off a unique unicorn MTG planeswalker

A Wizards of the Coast employee has shared photos of a new Magic: The Gathering celebration card, and it features a unicorn planeswalker that really likes getting wizards onto the battlefield. Jontelle Leyson-Smith showed off Ersta, Friend to All on Twitter on December 7.

“After over a year in the making, I’m in love with our team’s Heroes of the Realm Magic: The Gathering card: Ersta, Friend to All”, Leyson-Smith told Twitter on Wednesday. Heroes of the Realm is a series of limited edition, custom, (mostly) non-legal MTG cards. They’re typically given to Wizards of the Coast employees to show appreciation for their work, and each staff member that receives one gets their name printed on the bottom of the card.

“I’m stoked to build a deck around it”, Leyson-Smith adds. “Congratulations to all other 2021 recipients – can’t wait to see your cards!”

MTG unicorn planeswalker - tweet from @_jontelle

Ersta, Friend to All is a legendary planeswalker that can be used as an MTG Commander. Its +1 loyalty ability creatures a 1/1 human wizard creature token that has all the MTG colors, while the -3 ability lets you make a copy of certain cards and cast them without paying their mana cost. The copy-able cards are Enlightened Tutor, Mystical Tutor, Booster Tutor, Imperial Recruiter, and Worldly Tutor.

Finally, the -8 loyalty ability lets you win the game if you control twenty or more wizards during your upkeep. With so many MTG tutors to copy, Ersta Friend to All is ready to set up your very own wizard convention.

Heroes of the Realms cards are already exceptionally rare due to their limited print runs. Similarly, non-human MTG planeswalkers are also seldom sighted. MTG head designer once commented on the lack of stranger planeswalkers, saying in a 2019 blog post “we lean towards humanoids because that’s what best fills the function of what we need planeswalkers to do”.

MTG unicorn planeswalker card from Wizards of the Coast (photo by Jontelle Leyson-Smith)

Unlike a real-life unicorn, you can occasionally come across a non-humanoid planeswalker in the wild. One of the last examples was Comet, Stellar Pup, the dog planeswalker found in the Unfinity set.

For more in the Commander format, check out our recommendations for the best MTG Commanders. We can also point you to the best way to play Magic digitally – using our MTG Arena codes and MTG Arena decks guides.