Hello all, and welcome to Magic Monday, where Avocados can magically gather and talk about Magic: The Gathering. Each week, I’ll highlight a card that either is on my mind or reflects something else that’s on it, and offer a prompt for commenting. Since this is the first Magic Monday column, the first Magic Monday Card of the Week is the first rare I ever pulled out of a pack.

I had just divested from the Pokémon TCG and wasn’t looking to get into another card game, but my brother and sister were beginning to dabble and wanted me to join, so I bought a Rivals of Ixalan[footnote]Ixalan is Magic’s ersatz “ancient Central America” plane, most recently revisited in 2023’s Lost Caverns of Ixalan.[/footnote] pack while hanging out with them at Walmart one day. Magic had always sort of intimidated me with the scope and breadth of its rules, and a cousin had attempted to get me into it at Christmas a year or two before without much success, but I felt like I was in a headspace to take it on, and the vibe of the pack’s contents resonated with me on at least some level.

At the time, Magic sold what were called deck builder’s toolkits, bundles which came with a smattering of basic lands and bulk cards along with a few packs of recent vintage to crack. I told my brother if he got me a DBT for my birthday, I’d consider learning the game. Guilds of Ravnica came out the exact day of my birthday in 2018, he got me a Core Set 2019 DBT, and I was off to the races.

Not long after that, my siblings’ interest in the game fizzled, and I was stuck with an obsession. But I’ve never forgotten the card that started it all.

Speaking of which, Magic Monday’s Card of the Week is Jadelight Ranger, a rare from 2018’s Rivals of Ixalan expansion. It’s a 2/1 Merfolk Scout creature that costs 1GG to cast, and when it enters,[footnote]Starting with 2024’s Bloomburrow, “enters the battlefield” has been shortened to “enters”, because the battlefield is the only zone a card can “enter”, and thus it is implied that a card entering is going into the battlefield. Where possible, I will try to use the most current nomenclature for game actions.[/footnote] it explores,[footnote]Rules text for the explore mechanic: “Reveal the top card of your library. Put that card into your hand if it’s a land. Otherwise, put a +1/+1 counter on this creature, then put the card back or put it into your graveyard.”[/footnote] then explores again.

Essentially, when you play a Jadelight Ranger, one of three things is going to happen: you’re going to get two lands in your hand, you’ll get one land and JR will become a 3/2, or you’ll explore into two nonland cards (or one nonland card twice) and JR pumps up to a 4/3. The problem is that neither outcome is especially powerful at that point in the average green deck’s trajectory. Most decks running green will already be ramping[footnote]Magic parlance for acquiring mana sources faster than the standard rate of one land play per turn. The name derives from the card Rampant Growth.[/footnote] on turn one and/or two; many of those forms of ramp will be putting lands straight onto the battlefield, not into your hand; and as such, there are bigger, scarier bodies you can be putting down on turn three, and could be even during JR’s time in Standard. JR likely has more utility in a prerelease/limited environment, where mana production trundles along at a more standard rate and any creature with power and/or toughness higher than its mana value and no major disadvantages or additional costs represents a solid body.

One thing I like about the surgical precision of MTG rules language is that although there is a temptation is to mentally process this card’s triggered ability as “explores twice”, it is distinctly not doing that. Well, it is, but it also isn’t. You have to explore once to see if the land appears and goes to your hand, then again to see what happens. You are exploring twice, but in a way that is necessary for the card to work mechanically. I just think it’s a neat technicality, one of countless in MTG.

Card Value: Each week, the Card of the Week is rated on a scale of one to five dollar signs (see footnote for values).[footnote]$ = 0.01 to 4.99
$$ = 5.00 to 9.99
$$$ = 10.00 to 19.99
$$$$ = 20.00 to 49.99
$$$$$ = 50+[/footnote] As of this writing, you can snag a Jadelight Ranger for as low as 18 cents, the price of its first-ever reprint in 2024’s Foundations Jumpstart. $

Prompt: What was the first rare you ever pulled from a pack? (Mythic rares count.) If you don’t remember, then what’s a big MTG first you hold near and dear?