Xena, Warrior Princess - Xena TCG

I am tired of talking about Theros. I've been talking about it for two weeks, going off what scraps Wizards gave us. Now that it's spoiler week though, we are being flooded with new cards. I'm going to wait awhile before tackling some of them, maybe till I actually play with them, then I will go over my predictions and see how wrong I was. Still, with Theros going on, my mind is on Greek mythology. Fortunately, Magic isn't the only game that borrows from it. Let's look at some of these cards.

How do you spell Xena's battle cry?

I absolutely loved Xena as a kid, and not just for the usual male hormonal reasons. Xena was the show that came on after my Saturday morning cartoons, and it was glorious. Xena totally kicked butt. Yes it got extremely silly now and then, but that was part of the charm, and even in those episodes Xena came out looking awesome. I mostly ignored the Hercules series, but I had to watch Xena. I am not ashamed for having watched and liked the show.


So, Wizards of the Coast (seriously) got their hands on this popular license and decided to make a trading card game around it. The game rules were part of something called the ARC system. Two other card games, the sci-fi C23 and, naturally, Hercules also ran on this system. I have no idea whether the ARC system was actually good or fun to play with. What I do know though is that the system was practically cursed, all three games living short and miserable lives. Only the Xena game lived long enough to get an expansion, and then it died after that.

So, here is what had to be a marquee card for the game, Xena herself. What's my opinion on this action heroine card. It kind of looks awful. There is nothing aesthetically pleasing about this template. The art is just a still shot from the show. While these can sometimes work, like Decipher's Lord of the Rings, here it really doesn't.

Yes, she has big numbers, but that's it. One of the wonderful things about Magic is how even the numbering, be it the card cost or power and toughness, can make a card look and feel a certain way. Cards with higher numbers felt like bigger cards, not just in terms of physical size but also the size of the effect. I get none of that from this card, possibly due to the size of the numbers. Bigger numbers (in terms of font size) make the card feel like it was meant for a younger audience. Instead of making the card feel huge, it makes it seem like they weren't certain if the target demographic would be able to read or comprehend it. It feels like they're dumbing it down. Even at Xena's silliest, the show never felt like something for preschoolers. This card on the other hand does.