Art Direction, Take Two

Is there a database somewhere that tells you which artists are commissioned for which cards?

This is clearly a rejected, yet recycled painting of Prying Blade, but art direction and gestalts dictate that this image is more focused on other things aside from the subject

This was also true for Rampaging Hippo and Defiant Greatmaw, and many others I've seen throughout the last decade. What's going on here?

On the other hand, I know fully well they aren't going to commission multiple artists to do the same card, as it runs afoul of their long-standing policy of paying as little as they possibly can for art. This hypothesis has a lot of possible evidence, but it's hearsay evidence, and it's ultimately unlikely due to the fact that Wizards are goddamn cheapskates. This may or may not have anything to do with the fact that you may have noticed a lot of Eastern European nobodies creeping into the artist lists in the past several years. And on top of that, Wizards micromanage art descriptions way too much for this to happen in the first place... which is of course its own huge problem.

 

Card in Review - Tamanoa

If you think of a burn deck, you've probably got a very specific picture in your head. Get as many 3-damage-for-1-mana spells as you can in a single deck and round it out with some classics like Fireblast and Ball Lightning: you're trying to go as fast as possible here. Cards like Jackal Pup, Flame Rift and Barbarian Ring damage you while you're at it? Hey, no problem, so long as your opponent's life total hits 0 faster. There might not be much in the way of complexity involved, but the purest burn deck is going to be speed, speed, speed - and to hell with the consequences.

Why only have one way of doing things, though? By gum, if No-mar decks can make do without Dromar and Necro decks can exist without Necropotence, then there must be a way to do Burn without a self-destructive bent.