Many players may not be aware of it, but Magic actually has a Manga. Considering that other leading TCG’s like Yu-Gi-Oh! basically began as Manga, this may be a welcome surprise for some. Considering how popular Yu-Gi-Oh!’s Manga is, it makes sense that MTG players may have an interest in a story that completely revolves around the MTG TCG.
‘Destroy All Humanity. They Cannot be Regerated’ is the full name of this Manga, but many who do know of it simply refer to it as Destroy All Humanity.
Like the Magic books of old that gave birth to the first copy of Mana Crypt, new paper editions of Destroy All Humanity come with Book Promos. There haven’t been any mechanically unique promotional cards printed this way, but they all hold their own charms.
They also seem to have a theme. Ritual-esque effects appear quite popular for these promotional cards, as an almost strictly inferior version of a previous promo has been revealed for the Manga’s latest volume.
Culling the Weak
Culling the Weak has been officially announced as the next promotional card for the Destroy All Humans series. The fourteenth volume has been officially announced by the Japanese Magic: the Gathering Twitter page to be released on December 26th of this year.
Culling the Weak is generally regarded as a weaker version of another past Destroy All Humanity promo card: Dark Ritual. Now legal in Timeless, Dark Ritual grants its user a burst of three black mana for just one. This card has been rather popular alongside the infamous card engine Necropotence The Ritual is otherwise banned in Historic but is legal in Pauper, Legacy, and more.
Culling the Weak offers more mana than Dark Ritual does for the same mana value. The downside is that one must sacrifice a creature as an additional cost to cast the spell. While there is more potential upside to Culling the Weak, it is much more difficult to use in practice. As a result, almost all of Culling the Weak’s current play comes from singleton formats like Commander, cEDH, and Dual Commander.
According to this Twitter post, the current value of the Destroy All Humankind promotional version of Culling the Weak is about $16. interestingly, this may be the only foil version of the card that currently exists. This was originally printed in Exodus and has not seen a reprint. The Exodus variant of the card is worth about $8.50.
Other Destroy All Humanity Promo Cards
Since this is the fourteenth installment of Destroy All Humanity, plenty of other promotional cards already exist for the series. While it is rather difficult to track all of these down, especially since they are all Japanese promotional cards, here is what we know in regard to the Destroy All Humanity promotional cards.
Thanks to Google Translate and a handy blog post over at cuberoomblog.com, we have a list of all 14 promotional cards released as inserts in the Destroy All Humanity series. Here are the cards in order of release:
- Diabolic Edict – $5.64 (Volume 1)
- Shock – $8.84 (Volume 2)
- Duress – $4.53 (Volume 3)
- Voltaic Key – $13.76 (Volume 4)
- Dark Ritual – $13 (Volume 5)
- Crop Rotation – $12.62 (Volume 6)
- Counterspell – $10.22 (Volume 7)
- Bone Shredder – $7.40 (Volume 8)
- Disenchant – $8.51 (Volume 9)
- Wild Growth – $11.68 (Volume 10)
- Frantic Search – $13.22 (Volume 11)
- Worn Powerstone – $19.60 (Volume 12)
- Avalanche Riders – $14 (Volume 13)
- Culling the Weak – $15 (Volume 14)
Now, the secondary market value on these cards may look a bit strange at first glance. Most copies of Avalanche Riders aren’t even worth a dollar, for example. The promotional cards for Destroy All Humanity, however, definitely have additional appeal, as they all hold some premium secondary market values.
Some of these promotional cards have completely unique paper artwork. The Voltaic Key, pictured above, is an example of this, driving the price up to $13.76. Counterspell, Wild Growth, Frantic Search (Vintage Masters artwork), and more also have totally unique artwork attached. If you want to check those out, we recommend clicking on the links above in the list.
Some of these cards, however, have very little unique about them. Worn Powerstone, the most expensive of the bunch, for example, has nothing unique about it. The rarity of these promotional cards appears to also be a factor in their secondary market pricing.
Angel Token
This card was not exclusively offered as a promotional one in the Destroy All Humankind books, but it does have a distinct connection. This Angel token was drawn by the author of Destroy All Humankind, and depicts the female lead of the story: Sawatari.
This card was offered as a Box Topper in Japan for Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty Draft and Set Booster boxes, and three slightly different variants of the token exist, as pictured above. All of these cards are very expensive.
According to TCGplayer, the average market value of the WonderGOO edition of the Sawatari Angel token is $149! The Amazon exclusive retails for $59 and the Hareruya exclusive (the image on the far left), goes for about $30.
Dire for English Readers
At the time of writing, there does not appear to be any officially printed English copies of Destroy All Humanity, which is a shame. Many MTG players may love to dive into this story themselves, and otherwise gain access to these promotional cards in more accessible ways.
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