Essential Territories ♦ Basic lands from five local artists

Hi there! We are a group of artists and tabletop nerds from Lithuania, and we are making our own full-art, standard-size, black core basic land cards for our favorite TCG.

This project features 20 exclusive illustrations from 4 authors, plus a selection of best work from classic Lithuanian painter M. K. Čiurlionis, made into basic and non-basic land cards. Everything you see is 100% human-made, no AI.

We value your time, thus lets introduce ourselves now, one at a time!

Artist: Margarita

My name is Margarita, I live in the countryside of Lithuania and spend my days drawing, playing video games, and taking lots of photos of the nature that surrounds me. I love D&D, Magic, reading fantasy books, and playing RPGs, but I’m also really passionate about our natural world. I’m really happy this project combines these two sides.

I mainly work with digital media, however, have also taken upon traditional landscape painting with soft pastels and had my first solo-exhibition in 2026.

I love creating mystical and atmospheric illustrations of imagined worlds and characters. A true Golgari at heart with a big love for Saprolings! 🍄

Artist: Žilvinas

I'm Žilvinas Jagėla, an illustrator and musician from Vilnius. I’ve loved drawing since I was a kid, but I didn't make the actual jump into digital illustration professionally until I hit 30 and finally quit my draining office job.

Over the last few years, I've shifted away from solo freelance gigs into doing backgrounds for animation, contributed to several TV series and films. Aside from that, a massive chunk of my work over the past decade has been wrapped up in rock concert posters, album covers, and band merch.

When it comes to board games, I'm mostly into casual stuff you can play over a beer. Since I'm not a hardcore hobbyist, the art and visuals matter way more to me than the actual mechanics.

This project was a blast to work on because it gave us total freedom to lean into our own distinct styles instead of chasing some generic standard. I'm really proud of the five illustrations I did!

Artist: Marija

Hey players, my name is Marija Velykytė, I’m an illustrator and tattoo artist based in Kaunas, Lithuania! I’ve been drawing anime girls since I was a kid, and I’ve always known I’d be doing it for the rest of my life. That passion led me to art school, a bachelor’s degree in art, a career as a game artist, and eventually, to putting my art on skin.

I've collected a ridiculous number of board games, and recently become an MTG player (overall, a mega nerd), so I instantly knew what I wanted to create for this project. 

I wanted to bring characters from Lithuanian folklore: Laumė, a magical nature spirit, and Vaidulutė, a pagan priestess, traveling through nature in different forms, intertwined by magic. Throughout the artwork, I tried to weave both the witch and the priestess into the landscapes.

Forest: A witch’s hut tucked into a magical birch forest, where the trees’ stripes always reminded me of eyes watching over the woods.

Plains: The priestess’s home, surrounded by storks and haystacks. A little slice of a perfect Lithuanian summer.

Island: A reflection into the spiritual world, filled with tales of mermaids and serpents, inspired by Lithuania’s dunes.

Mountain: An altar where the priestess and the witch perform their rituals around a sacred fire, decorated with verba, traditional Lithuanian Easter palms made from dried flowers and grasses.

Swamp: One of my favorite places to explore. There’s something about their mix of magic and danger that draws me in, so I wanted to capture the priestess after a ritual, suspended somewhere between vivid life and death.

I hope my love for Lithuania shines through in these illustrations. It was a joy to weave bits of our folklore, nature, and traditions into the artwork, and I hope to keep exploring and sharing the beauty of my home through my art!

Artist: Pidžinas

I’m Pijus, I’m a street artist, animator and digital illustrator, and I also organize street art workshops for kids. Painting walls is my favorite, but I still dream of my own animated movie deep inside.

I was born in a family of artists, and my mom and dad have always been encouraging me to try different artistic fields and techniques, to find my own style. That's how I got myself into this.

When I was young I was very into Yugioh cards, and even painted my own collection of cards, because I couldn't afford originals 😀 This project feels like a tribute to my younger days. I love to think that someone will play with our cards, it’s something special!

Artist: Čiurlionis

The fifth "collaborator" of our little art affair is classical Lithuanian painter and music composer Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875-1911). Born in a small town in Eastern Europe, he painted the most whimsical, unusual, vast fantasy worlds. We all love his work, so we thought it's a great opportunity to share his legacy with people abroad.

Čiurlionis contributed to symbolism and Art Nouveau, and was representative of the fin de siècle epoch. He has been considered one of the pioneers of abstract art in Europe. During his short life, he composed about 400 pieces of music and created about 300 paintings, as well as many literary works and poems. (Čiurlionis on Wiki)

It was a tough pick, but for the basic lands we chose the Creation of the World cycle of 13 paintings. “I have a mind to continue painting it till the end of my days, of course, while I still have new ideas. This is the creation of a world, just not ours and not according to the Bible. Some other world - a fantastical world,” (Letter to Povilas Čiurlionis, 28(?).04.1905, Druskininkai).

Čiurlionis is also the originator of Lithuanian professional music. The precise number of Čiurlionis' musical compositions is not known - a substantial part of his manuscripts did not survive, including those that perished in the fire during the war. The ones available for us today include sketches, rough drafts, and fragments of his musical ideas.

Non-basics

Because of printing technicalities, printing 36 cards costs the same as printing 25. (The printing company operates in batches of 18 cards.) That gives us 11 extra card slots, which we're using to turn more Čiurlionis' art into fitting non-basic proxies.

Rewards & add-ons

The costs of printing drop with larger quantities, thus we are keeping rewards very simple. The “Complete collection” set includes 1 copy of each card set, and there are five artist packs in case you fell in love with a specific style.

The artist packs each contain 7 copies of each basic land type from your chosen artist, plus a little surprise - an exclusive token/card from the same author. We will be asking what particular artist you’d like on Pledge Manager, after the campaign ends, and you can mix and match freely.

For reward levels, we put together bundles with discounts so you could save a little while grabbing some unexpected presents for your buddies. Of course, any set can be added as an add-on. Foil versions are available too.

Printing & fulfillment

We trust both printing and fulfillment to the major printing professionals at MakePlayingCards in Hong Kong. They are well known among TCG players, and we are extremely happy with the test print we got from them, both regular and foil.

Printed on S33 Superior Smooth Black Core card stock, they have exactly the same thickness and flex as the official cards, while the finish feels even more premium. We couldn’t ask more from a printer, the cards came out just awesome!

MakePlayingCards will also handle international shipping. We had no issues receiving cards here in EU (took two weeks), and review copies smoothly reached reviewers in US and UK as well. 

Shipping to English speaking countries and the European Union costs around 10£ and takes 5-15 days (you can check precise estimates with MPC’s Delivery calculator). Shipping will be collected later in the Pledge manager.

Each set to be shrink-wrapped individually. Most likely, you will be able to add optional gift packaging in Pledge manager too.

Tax & Duty

From MPC website: There will be no import tax and customs duty issues for shipments to US addresses. There will also be no import tax and customs duty issues for shipments to Canada, UK and to EU countries shipped via standard shipping method. There will be no import tax and customs duty issues for shipments to Australia on orders of up to $2500.00 excluding shipping costs. For all other international shipments and conditions, recipients are responsible for any custom duty or taxes imposed by that country, which are collected by the carrier upon delivery, if any.

Expect to receive you rewards by March 2027. However, we have all the art and designs ready, so there is a chance the rewards will reach you this year before Christmas.

Acknowledgements

Graphic design and KS management is handled by Ilya Yakovlev of 9d10 Games. He’s also responsible for spamming social media and answering comments, and wrote this very copy with his crappy English. Feel free to email him with any questions or feedback: ilya@9d10games.com

Ilya: "Not playing often these days, but Magic was my life back in 2014-2017, when I started the first ever game store in Klaipėda. It was a 21 sq. m. booth in a half-empty mall, yet we had the friendliest community, official FNMs, and loudest D&D on Sundays."

We also want to say a special thank you to our former manager Laurita Vindžigalskytė, without whom this project wouldn't start at all ❤️

For this project we used beautiful font families Allegreya and Allegreya Sans by Juan Pablo del Peral.