subbak asked: Was the art of Heliod killing Elspeth revealed today originally meant for a card in Journey into Nyx that didn't make it to print?
Actually no, that piece was never meant for card art. Like the piece of Anax dueling the Rageblood, it was specially commissioned to help illustrate the story. We’ve found that having a piece of art helps make the story real for some players (sort of a “pics or it didn’t happen” kind of thing, especially for those folks who prefer not to hunt down the book for plot details). So we’ve commissioned a few special pieces to illustrate important plot events, which you’ll see periodically (we’ve been calling them “story shots”). This piece of the dying moment of Elspeth is one of them.
Art by Tyler Jacobson
Our current philosophy is that the best way to communicate the most important plot moments is on cards, where possible. But in this case the timing was tricky, since we knew the Journey into Nyx card set was going to release before the finale of Godsend, and seeing the death of Elspeth (and her being sent to the Underworld) on cards would have created too much of a spoiler for the book. But while we didn’t want to spoil the novel readers, we also didn’t want to hide huge plot developments in the book. So to help solidify that moment for everyone, we get a lovely illustration by Tyler Jacobson! (EDIT: Originally I said this was Jason Chan. Sorry Jason and Tyler!)
You can read the breakdown of the whole Theros block story here:
https://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/301
