Hasbro / Wizards of the Coast’s original crossovers between Dungeons & Dragons with Magic The Gathering consisted of six planar e-books. These e-books were released for free and intended as companions for the Magic the Gathering Art Books written by James Wyatt and published by Viz Media. Locating the e-books now can be a bit tricky, as the original web pages have ceased to exist.
In 2016 Viz Media and Hasbro joined resources to produce some lovely hard cover art books for the Magic the Gathering line. These books included lavish illustrations and story lore. Author / Game Designer James Wyatt headed the teams on these books. There were eight books in total released between January 5, 2016 through October 2020.
The Art of Magic: The Gathering – Zendikar – January 5, 2016
The Art of Magic: The Gathering – Innistrad – July 5, 2016
The Art of Magic: The Gathering – Kaladesh – January 3, 2017
The Art of Magic: The Gathering – Amonkhet – July 4, 2017
The Art of Magic: The Gathering – Ixalan – January 2, 2018
The Art of Magic: The Gathering – Dominaria – July 3, 2018
The Art of Magic: The Gathering – Ravnica – January 1, 2019
The Art of Magic: The Gathering – War of the Spark – October 13, 2020
Most of these books are still available and well worth the minimal effort required to acquire them. As expected the art is lovely and the lore is engaging without being overly dry. The only negative I have for these publications has to do with the layout of the splash art across pages. The image suffers when there is a huge crease from the spine of the book in the middle of the picture. Still I enjoy the rest of the book immensely.
Sadly only six of these art books received the Plane Shift e-book treatment. Here they are, each image is a link to allow for direct download or to read at your leisure.
Plane Shift : Zendikar
38 pages
Plane Shift : Innistrad
40 pages
Plane Shift : Kaladesh
33 Pages
The plane was renamed later to Avishkar, though that is not in the Plane Shift e-book.
Plane Shift : Amonkhet
40 pages
Plane Shift : Dominaria
24 Pages
Considering that Dominaria has more expansions than any other plane, this one is seriously lacking in content. The Slivers alone should have had a dedicated section.
The Ravnica e-book was eventually reworked and released as the hard cover Dungeons & Dragons Guildmasters’ Guide to Ravnica. That setting also received a miniatures set distributed in the random collectable miniatures format. Unfortunately this hardcover format was the method for the next few releases, though none of the others would get a miniatures release.
As a player of both Magic the Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons, it was nice to see the lore from one be interpreted into the rules set of the other. It was, I believe, the best choice to make the rules conversions free access to gain the widest possible group of players and cross pollinate for both games. However, I am not Hasbro, and I will allow their dearth of quality decision making speak for itself.
– Dru
Dru's Den of Ill Repute 