M any years ago, there was a MicroProse game for Magic: The Gathering. That game involved wandering around the plane of Shandalar and playing Magic against a variety of NPCs.

The interesting thing about this game (well, one of the interesting things, and the specific interesting thing we're talking about today) is that it had its own set of cards created that only existed inside the game. They're not "real" Magic cards, but they have sort of a shadowy half-existence. To reflect this, their semi-expansion is named "Astral". Wanna see them?

Keep in mind, these were cards designed a long time ago to take advantage of the fact that they didn't need to physically exist and to throw some random effects at the player. They're being presented here strictly as an interesting artifact from the past.

Some of these cards have a bit more text than will fit in the card windows. The most egregious example is Necropolis of Azar, which has this huge paragraph almost completely after the text box cuts it off:

Put a Spawn of Azar token into play. Treat this token as a black creature with a random power and toughness, each no less than 1 and no greater than 3, that has swampwalk. (If defending player controls any swamps this creature is unblockable.)

Most of the other cards with rules text you can't read is pretty much what you'd expect, except for Rainbow Knights, which has the clause : +0/+0, +1/+0, or +2/+0 until end of turn, chosen at random.

Now, we said that these cards were created strictly for use in the MicroProse game, but that isn't entirely true. Aswan Jaguar was made as an oversized 6"x9" card, which means that if you're putting together an oversized deck, you can feel free to play it.