Background

In 1994, Wizards of the Coast partnered with Heartbreaker Miniatures to produce a line of pewter miniatures based off Magic card art. The first 36 were drawn from Alpha, while the second 12 came from The Dark. Shortly after, the line faded into obscurity without making much impact on the collective consciousness of Magic players.

Four years later I was in 5th grade. That year I not only bought my very first Magic cards, but also my first Warhammer miniatures. Both of these hobbies have stuck with me these 25 years since, albeit waxing and waning: while in college and my early twenties I took a break from Magic and painted hundreds of miniatures, since 2014 I’ve been playing lots of Magic and painting less.

Recently, though, these two hobbies have come to intersect in a funny way. A few years ago I stumbled across the Heartbreaker Miniatures line. Amused and intrigued, I bought a Prodigal Sorceror to paint as a prize donation for The Battle Of San Antonio Old School tournament. It was a fun project, and since then I’ve painted a handful more as gifts and prizes.

Painting The Minis

Much as Magic card art has changed enormously since 1994, miniatures have also gotten much more sophisticated. Contemporary miniatures are an engineering marvel: hand-sculpting has largely given way to computer-generated designs that can make for incredibly crisp, detailed, dynamic miniatures.

Personally, that doesn’t do anything for me, and I don’t really buy new miniatures. Miniatures from the 80s and 90s, on the other hand, are very much human artisanal pieces. There’s a soul to them, and you can sense that they were made by a person. That is certainly true of the Heartbreaker MtG line. As you’ll see, these sculpts range from simple to downright primitive, often comically so.

An interesting component to the miniatures is the extension and extrapolation of art. For many of these, the original card art is limited to a profile or portrait from the neck up (e.g. Lord of the Pit, Prodigal Sorceror, Natural Selection). The sculptors had to extend that to create entire bodies, equipment, and poses. In some instances this is pretty seamless and artfully done; in others, you get some strange choices and questionable overall composition.

Miniature Gallery

I’ve shared some of these before, but as there’s so little out there about this corner of MTG collecting, I thought I’d put them all in one place.

Prodigal Sorceror

I think Tim’s one of the better sculpts in the range. Unlike some other minis, his face is pretty close to the art and isn’t too simian. Likewise, they did a good job extending him from a portrait into a full body, and he’s got lots of cool details: a belt full of magic vials and books (you may notice I painted the spellbook with a Magic card back!), the glass orb, and fun pointed shoes.

I’m largely happy with the paintjob. I regret only giving his robe a single stripe of gold, rather than the two he has on the card art, but otherwise he’s solid. The base was inspired by a great mini by my favorite painter, Jakob Rune Nielsen.

Natural Selection

My good friend Patrick bought this and asked me to paint it for him. This was a fun, colorful mini to work on with some amusing components. I like the sculptor’s decision to put him in a kilt; it worked out well re. composition, as the red offsets the yellow and black pretty well. Less endearingly, the sculptor made the curious decision to sculpt physically-raised tiger stripes, which would have otherwise been very easily to just paint on there myself.

Lord of the Pit

As part of the Festival of Friendship 2021, we ran a charity auction to raise money for the Central Texas Food Bank. Brian Tweedy generously donated a Beta Lord of the Pit, I painted this guy to go with it, and RTS-staple Kai Schafroth bought the pair.

Unlike the others I’ve painted, I departed pretty far from Tedin’s art on this one: while I love Lord of the Pit, painting him as just a big fleshy guy seemed pretty boring. Instead, I wanted him to look like he was somewhere very dark, and the only light was coming from lava below him and his eyes. It’s not perfect, but it’s an interesting take, anyway.

This is another great example of the sculptor having to invent a full body for the card art. Interestingly, they chose to give him a big, demonic sword. It makes sense, though I never really imagined Lord of the Pit needing weapons other than his claws.

Holy Armor

Holy Armor’s one of the more amusing inclusions in the Heartbreaker line. Who likes this card, and who wants a mini of it? Apparently me.

I painted this up as a donation to last year’s Hurricane Weekend charity raffle. Pretty quick paintjob, as it’s mostly just metal. I don’t remember who won this in the raffle, but I hope whoever it is is enjoying a large boost to their toughness.

Mahamoti Djinn

I’d been excited to paint a Mahamoti ever since I saw he was part of the line. In a lot of ways, he’s exactly what I’m drawn to in a miniature: he’s very simple, with only a handful of colors to focus on (flesh, green, smoke, gold, and the base). Unfortunately, I think the sculpt suffers from a pretty amateurish face: Mahamoti’s art has this wonderful bemused expression, but this guy looks like a less-mutated Toxic Avenger.

I painted him up as my contribution to the potlach prize pool at the Team Serious Invitational: The Land 4. I included with him a 9.5 graded 4th Edition Mahamoti, because I find it funny that anyone got one graded in the first place.

Uncle Istvan

If “Summon Uncle Istvan” isn’t wonderful to you, I don’t know what to say. I painted up this mini for our upcoming Hurricane Weekend, where he’ll be raffled off along with a graded Uncle Istvan.

As much as I love the card, the mini was probably the least fun to work on of these 6. He’s a lot of brown, but more importantly, the face is truly poorly done: whereas the art is fairly menacing, this guy looks like a goofus. That said, I had some fun with the blood effects on the axe, and I thought the dead grass & slushy snow motif on the base fit well with the dark, Eastern European horror vibes the card gives off.

My Thoughts

Old School isn’t exactly nostalgic for me: I got into Magic in 1998, so the cards I’m actually attached to come from later sets. That said, I find the oldest Magic cards amusing and charming. They’re goofy, and they’re evocative of an era just before my time. The 80s and early 90s were the precursors of the nerd- and pop-culture I was into; I appreciated that then, just as I appreciate it now.

I feel similarly about these miniatures: they’re a cool curiosity that’s evocative of a period when nerd culture was still nascent and largely underground. The minis themselves aren’t refined, nor is the concept behind them.

The cards they chose to make into miniatures is pretty arbitrary. You get enduring pieces like Dark Ritual, Hurloon Minotaur, and Lord of Atlantis – cards that resonate with lots of players or have special significance in the history of Magic marketing. But then there’s also choices like Wormwood Treefolk, Thicket Basilisk, Scavenging Ghoul, and Nettling Imp. Why do we get Guardian Angel, but not Serra Angel? Ley Druid, but not Llanowar Elves?

Well, this was new territory for Wizards. While by 1994 Magic was certainly a success, the game was still young enough that perhaps they didn’t know what exactly was iconic and beloved. And for that matter, I’m not privy to how the arrangement between Wizards and Heartbreaker played out: did Wizards choose which cards should get the 3D treatment, or did Heartbreaker and its sculptors pick whichever they thought would make the coolest miniatures?

In 2023, Wizards and its playerbase are much, much more familiar with licensing. In the past few years we’ve seen a planned Netflix show, a clothing collaboration with Brain Dead, branded Cheez Its, celebrity endorsements via Post Malone, and of course the runaway success of their Universes Beyond cards. Wizards is now part of a Fortune 500 company, and as with so much other media and entertainment, everything nowadays is about activating IP as fully as possible.

Personally, as the quantity of printings has gone up and the internet’s made access to cards instantaneous and universal, my relationship with collecting side of this hobby has changed. What is the point of collectibles when anyone can have any card they want, any time? How do we judge aesthetic value and desirability when there are often a half-dozen or more variant frames and arts more any given new card? For me, one option to combat that is diving further into the obscure corners of our hobby. The Heartbreaker Miniatures are that: they’re the esoterica of any already esoteric game, and tracking them down and painting them is a fun, absurdist exercise.

And so I’ll be out there, painting these strange little pewter pieces and keeping my eye out for more of them! Dark Ritual, Black Knight, and Lord of Atlantis, I’ve got you in my sights.