At first I thought it was a printing error, but I see the same thing in scryfall images of the card. They’ve done a lot of variations with the card art over the years but I’ve never seen an art variation that obscures the card text itself (excluding cards that omit the text entirely because the card is well known, like Islands).
I’m just surprised that I can’t even find anyone talking about it because it seems like an odd design choice to me.
Yeah, don’t worry, we are agreeing with each other. Though I wasn’t aware of that card. Though now that I think of it, they are basically vanity cards in the first place, so I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that some of them really embrace the elitism that can go along with that.
That Urza’s Saga was a Store Championship 1st place award, not something a total newbie would get under normal circumstances. I forget that the Elesh Norn was a prize for, again not a normal pack pull. The “normal” swamp with Phyrexian script is from Jumpstart, so a possible newbie pull. But I think that one is easy enough to understand. The other two were in regular packs.
ETA: Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite in Phyrexian script was a Judge promo. https://scryfall.com/card/j14/8/elesh-norn-grand-cenobite