The Misbegotten Mascot | A History of Hurloon Minotaur 

Hurloon Wrangler from Unglued having Denimwalk now makes SO much more sense.

"looks remarkably like kermit the frog" my boy richard caught a stray

"The age of esoteric was over, the time of cute had come" And here we are today, with Bloomburrow and Duskmourn battling out for the hearts of the players

Hurloom Minotaur was one of the earliest ads I remember for MtG. The other being "Someone in Nebraska just summoned Lord of the Pit. And he's sending him your way."

Oh, _that's_ why Hurloon Wrangler has denimwalk... Excellent showcase of what can be a hard-to-swallow lesson for developers: The game's community, not its creators, defines its beloved icons. (See also Fblthp.)

Built a minotaurs-only commander deck and absolutely had to include Hurley. Always brings smiles to the table whenever he drops.

10:40 Jesse as a Serra Angel is an adorable little bit of art.

I think there was a missed opportunity with not reprinting this guy in Dominaria Remastered. It was the perfect chance to pay one last homage to the OG Magic mascot.

Seeing Sam in a picture witha bunch of Starcraft Pros for Basilisk feels like a crossover episode to me.

God, that image is so iconic. Really takes me back. I really do remember loving the visual and being confused by how bad this card was.

Hi Sam, I hope this comment finds you well. You may not remember me, but we met in Lucca last year at the 30th anniversary exhibition, on a rainy Saturday. We chatted a bit and I asked you to sign my copy of Llanowar Elves. Hearing you talk, even if only for a minute, about Kev Walker's creative process is still my highlight of that day. Something funny happened afterwards. As I was leaving the building, practically racing downstairs, I almost bump into Peter Adkison. I had no clue who he was, but intuited he was someone important as two convention stewards with bright yellow vests caught up and accompanied him upstairs. I remember standing there, on the landing, transfixed by the minotaur Mr Adkison sported on his back. Seeing it here, even just in pictures, is emotional. Thank you, Sam, not only for sharing your knowledge and boundless enthusiasm, but for indirectly making this moment happen. That year, Lucca felt like a momentous gathering.

Jessie as Serra angel goes unexpectedly hard

I get the love for Hurloon Minotaur because it was one of the earliest displays of MTG's identity. It was not simply a random creature, it was a entire character transmitted to the player with a image and some text. This makes me wonder why doesn't have more nods to it, especially on the Modern sets.

That denim jacket is so legendary, the ultimate grail

Babe wake up, new rhystic studies just dropped

One of the things that made early Magic so incredible was how unpolished it was. There was mystery in the flavor text and what it meant, or who or what the characters, worlds, and factions were. The art being pulled from a lot of places, and in a lot of styles contributed to that as well. Even the card interactions were far less planned. Today Magic is a deliberate machine in every way, leading you down the path the company sets for you. Before there were things to wonder about, and to discover.

Ive got a whole minotaur tribal edh deck and 90% of the creatures are really bad vanillias but the art is so gorgeous I run them over busted cards. Hurloon minotaur is certainly one of them :)

Breadsword, Folding Ideas, and Rhystic Studies are really my only “drop everything and watch” channels. Thanks for this Sam!

Adkinson being there in his jacket is so sick man. Fun video, thanks Sam :)

Magic is such a strange hobby, because I feel like I'm fairly enfranchised, and I spend quite a bit of time and money on it, and I'm familiar with a lot of history and esoterica associated with the game, and somehow I never knew that some random 3 drop from Alpha was the face of the game in its early days.

There was a jacket in a glass case at GenCon a few years ago and I was tempted to do a Mission Impossible rappel from the rafters at 3 AM to grab it.

Can't wait for the inevitable video on Nadu

I know it doesn’t show up all the time, and I certainly would devour more if more were put out, but damn, Rhystic Studies content just hits different. Just absolute quality and absorbing storytelling. Masterful quality and presentation as always.

Contemporary Magic has some of the best fantasy art available, and I'm glad for it... but these 90s images (Hurloon Minotaur, Benalish Hero, Prodigal Sorcerer) just HIT different.

I love the art of Hurloon Minotaur, probably due to it being so ingrained in those early promotions. The card may suck, but since it defined Minotaurs in Magic I'm able to use the 2 Revised ones I have for Sethron tokens.

This is the first time one of your videos has been recommended to me in months. You should see what RU-vid is doing with your channel because I’m not seeing your posts, and I’m subscribed.

As a former magic player i love your content so so so much, your storytelling skills are insane and your choice of subjects are just next level, i would never have thought about this card again if it wasent for this video.. now i sit after a 13min video and think back to when i was a kid in school playing magic with my friends.. it warms my heart.. i miss those days..

Maybe I'm the wrong one here, but I wish Hurloon had stuck around more and stayed more relevant. It promotes this rich, thoughtful and gorgeous depiction of red creatures. Not a rampaging brute, but a person who found their peace in the passion of red.

God, me in my corporate grime; I am but blessed, goodness to see an upload from exactly what I want; a mascot here perhaps, but here for me is an escape

To be fair, the Minotaur tattoo designs I always thought were amazing, and a significant identifier for Magic, and I still enjoy them. I wouldn't mind if we had more of them in the future, and while the cards did just bite for the most part, that design aesthetic was on point.

I was at Magic 1 Homelands release with my dad and brother. I remember the Hurloon Minotaur!!

Your work always reminds me that Magic has always been bigger than Wizards.

This video harkens back to simpler times, when I remember binging your first 20, or so, videos. Videos about simpler concepts, mostly just a card, or an artist. I love these times too, but nostalgia is powerful. Thanks Sam.

Let's goooo. Good seeing you in Amsterdam bud!

I haven’t played mtg or followed any content creator in about 5 years… but I always watch a Rhystic Studies video because his videos transcends the card game itself

So unreal to realise you were in Lucca last year, when I still didn’t know anything about Magic. Now, one year later, I would have really loved to come see you when you were here in Italy! Alla prossima volta, Sam!

The LAST thing I expected to see was one of my fave esport teams in this random video from a channel I’ve never watched before. Thats fantastic! Basilisk has great taste in SC2 pros so I don’t doubt you are a worthy addition

Dan Sheehan and Rachel Weeks?! Star studded episode!

I really cannot be happier to have a minotaur episode on your channel! They are my favorite tribe and my copy of Hurloon minotaur is a gift from a friend that I really treasure! Thanks for a great video again!! A nice rest from writing my master thesis 😂

Music was so good. The tone it gave off was like unraveling a mystery that didn’t need solving yet as you dug deeper into the threads of everything the more entangled in the details you become.

The various original arts for Anaba Shaman are some of my favorite Magic pieces visually, to this day.

Sethron has been on the build pile for a while and I think this was my green light to finally put it together with Hurloon and all his friends.

Hurloon minotaur is one of my favourite cards. The art is simply one of the best paintings ever done for Magic, period. I own only two Alpha cards, and the minotaur is one of them.

as a kid in nineties europe I had not even seen these adds, seeing it on the booster pack was the closest, but I still thought it looked rad and outrageous

As a fan of both SC2 and MtG, its amazing seeing a pic of you with the rest of the Basilisk team Rotterdam, Reynor, Serral, and trigger

Thank you for eluminating the pricing of this card. I stumbled over it on a scryfall search some years ago for a minotaur deck. It was one of those cards i was going to buy bcs of the art not the playability. You did use better words then i have to describe the effect the art had on me. Cards like this are what mtgs soul is for me. Thanks a lot for the video

Wow, the young artist Gallegos picture is a good pull! And since was introduced to the game during 4th edition, the power of Hurloon Minotaur's visgae is imprinted deep in my mind.

I had a German Fourth Edition copy that I absolutely loved as a kid. I treasured that card.

Love your work, man, keep it up! 🧡

Dude makes free documentaries for us, what a guy 🥰

Yo hold up Jesse dressed up as Serra Angel at 10:43 kinda slaps tho

Bro, I love you're videos. So well crafted.

That's how you enjoy a video. Love the content. Keep up the great work.

Thank you for making this high quality historic content. I am now a happy subscriber 👍!

Hurloon Minotaur's statline may be scoffed at, but I drafted Beta with my friend, and let me tell you, when he lands he's a beast. Almost, "How will I come back from this?" Level of power. Thanks for fleshing out the fond feelings I already had for this vanilla.

I was just a teenager living in a smal city in Brazil and start playing during Mercadian Masques. I knew it wasn't a strong card. But my God I loved the minotaurs. I already had a thing for "old" cards at the time...... true mages know that the real power of a card comes from things that can be put into words............

I've been playing for over a decade but have never heard a peep about this minotaur. Very cool

You, Sir, are a National Treasure. Love your videos. I always end learning new lore and trivia about the game and it's Art. Thanks!

Part of me likes to thing that Hurley can represent the every-person who comes to play the games their way rather than for the competitive flash.

I don't think I've ever been this early to one of your videos... Great job! As a player that started during Battle for Zendikar, I was always confused about the minotaur memes parroted by the regulars there. Fascinating subject!

love your videos Sam thanks for another great piece of work!

The end of this video is inspired. Beginning like you're going to go on another tangent, and then just breaking it off after a brief callback.

I have a signed set of all Anson's minotaurs, and it's the only page in my binder that's not for trade.

Nostalgia certainly isn't logical...a few years ago I bought a graded Alpha Hurloon Minotaur just to have it 🤷‍♂

Saw you at MagicCon chicago and I’m hoping to see you again in Las Vegas. I absolutely love your videos and youve helped me truly fall in love with the game

Fantastic video as always, made my morning!!

Excellent video as always! Loved the music too :)

Hurloon Minotaur was my first MTG card. A friend of mine gave me one at school back on 1997.

You could have talked about the mtg novel, "ashes of the sun" which explored the minotaur culture in great length.

I think Wizards should redeem the Hurloon Minotaurs. I'd like to see them come back as a good tribe at some point.

Magic has such a rich history. Its beautiful. Thanks for another amazing vid

These videos are so consistently well made

Red as a color represents Winning. Perhaps ol' Hurloon was a Herald of things to yet to take shape - being a Shaman and all.

THE perfect video length. Watched this only best of the run time. Also minotaurs.

Dude, this card WAS Magic the Gathering to me when I was a kid. I absolutely love the simple mystery of the art. Anson Maddocks, Mark Tedin, and Quinton Hoover remain some of my favourite MtG artists of all time.

Sam, your videos are like nothing else. Great work, man

“Hurloon til noon, Serra for another era.”

This is a very moving video essay. We are very, very lucky to have you in the community, Sam. 🐮

Dan and Rachel voiceovers is the crossover I’ve been waiting for!! I love these shorter videos, feels like classic magicmansam. Thanks for this video.

Amazingly well done video!

I had no idea Hurloon Minotaur was such an icon, now I need to get one framed

Hurloon Minotaur is the first card that left a strong impression within me ; one of the first card i ever saw and the seed of my interest for this game. pretty solid job for a 3ccm red vanilla 2/3

Getting Command Sphere nestalgia with these voice overs! Love it!!

I remember this card vividly. Wow. Great video.

Another beautiful video as always

Such a satisfying running time for what will no doubt be such a satisfying video.

Hurloon Minotaur is right up there with Dandan as far as the cards that are iconic because of the artwork, but that no one ever played.

Great video As a piece of further anecdotal evidence to support the hypnotic nature of the card, i just got back into Magic this year after a very long hiatus, and i decided a minotaur deck would be awesome. Inevitably i discovered Hurloon online and instantly knew i must include it, even seeing that it's not the greatest card mechanically. I just loved the art so much. I had no idea about any of its history until right now 😅.

Another banger of a vid keep them coming

This is so well down. I love your videos. Keep up the great work. I have been playing since 1994 and I remember in revised the minotaur being the face of magic, and I remember myself and other 12 year friends wondering why this terrible card was the face of magic. Serra Angel always seemed more appropriate.

I worked a booth at MagicCon Minneapolis and we sold one of those Denim Jackets, just gorgeous. Thousands of dollars for a denim jacket, Magic is amazing.

Great video as always

Funnily enough this art could be used today as the weird alternative art with the face profile we have now from sets like mh3.

I think it's worth mentioning that Hurly had a lot of fans among casual players, even if the tournament dudes knew it was bad. The staying power of the 2/3 minotaur continues with that being the default size of minotaurs in Theros and elsewhere

This video made me realize a lot. "Players don't like Hurloon Minoutaur", "Homelands was made for the company" and "players like good cards" revelead to me that I'm disconnected from most of the playerbase for way longer than I thought - because I like some bad cards (like Craw wurm, Hurloon Minotaur and other junk), I like Homelands nonsense from a Vorthos perspective and I like those things more than I like Magic, the game. I should have realized this 25 years ago: I like Magic/the Old Lore, but I'm not the target market for the cards. I was in an ok place when some things pleased everyone (good cards, 80-90s art, cool lore), but now that they are focused on what "players like": powerful cards, flashy things, Universes Beyond... Maybe I'm a very small part of the target market, not the user they have in mind when they design current magic. I think they are wrong because they are losing identity fast, but that's not the point. Maybe I was a way smaller section of the playerbase than I thought. I should have stick to art books and stuff like that instead of reading huge text boxes in commander cards that feel like playing with tax forms. Realizing that Magic wasn't really made for me when I started playing, that I'm merely tolerated as customer, could have saved me a lot of time and money. My point is... Some of us actually liked the minotaur. More than the lonely boring Angel in the control deck. Maybe at some point people will realize Peter was right all along, or maybe he was not... I wasn't really expecting to "kinda quit" today, but, since this video has boomer stuff and pokemon references, let's not forget the cycling rule: "there is a time and place for everything". At least for me, the magic feels long gone.

Loved this, love minotaurs in myths and lore, MtG, D&D, Warhammer... anything!

The way you say Myrfors is the same exact way we pronounced the YuGiOh card “Mirror Force” when me and my friends were kids 😂😂

What a perfect video. Thankyou

And so my binge from the first video of Rhystic Studies ends.

I said this last vid. But I think another vid idea could be the 3 card blind format. Seems like his type of vid to make. Also great vid as always.