The Gathering’ card reveal politician’s dark ambitions?
JD Vance may have revealed his cards too early in the race.
Fans of the fantasy card game “Magic: The Gathering” have discovered Vance’s favorite card, which they believe reveals everything voters need to know about the vice presidential candidate’s values.
In a recent interview with Semafor, the Ohio revealed his adolescent obsession with the game.
“The big problem with transitioning from being a 13-year-old who likes ‘Magic: The Gathering’ to being a 15-year-old who likes ‘Magic: The Gathering’ is that 15-year-old girls do not like ‘Magic: The Gathering’,” he confessed. “So I dropped it like a bad habit.”
Donald Trump’s 2024 running mate then named his “embarrassing” favorite card to play, called Yawgmoth’s Bargain.
The illustrious card depicts a monstrous, clawed machine’s interaction with a robed skeletal entity whose, bearing a warning in the caption: “He craves only one commodity.”
The card was introduced in 1999 but has since been banned in most competitive “Magic” tournaments due to its reputation as the ultimate trump card — which simply wasn’t as much fun.
The Independent spoke to avid players.
“At the time, it was probably the most powerful deck you could play,” one player from San Francisco told the outlet. “I infer from that that he’s ruthless and wants to win at all costs.”
Pitting wizard against wizard, the game is played in a series of spells, where Yawgmoth’s Bargain renders one player defenseless to the other’s onslaught of magic defenses.
“Essentially, you’re not playing an interactive game anymore. You’re just sort of playing Solitaire… while the other person sits there and waits for the game to end,” said lifelong Missour-based player Lucas Kunce, 42 — a Democratic politician running to unseat Republican senator Josh Hawley.
“If JD Vance was playing that at the kitchen table against his buddies, then people probably thought he was kind of a jerk,” Kunce continued, describing its “reputation for being a ‘broken’ card.”
“Magic” fans online are known for comparing their favorite decks, which are said to reveal key characteristics about a player’s personality, according to the Independent’s report.
On Reddit, a subgroup for “Magic” players concluded that any deck built around Yawgmoth’s Bargain would be associated with “greed, ambition, dominance, wickedness, the dead and undead, vampires, demons, blood magic.”
“The idea of it is a deal with the devil, right? You’re selling your soul for power… It’s power at any cost, and that seems to be what he’s into,” Kunce added.
