Plains

The 1997 World Championship Decks were released by Wizards of the Coast to replicate the specific 60-card decks used by the top players at the 1997 Magic: The Gathering World Championship. These decks were intended to give players a chance to play with cards that mirrored the professional meta, featuring unique gold-bordered backs and signatures on the front of the cards to distinguish them from standard tournament-legal cards. They represent a significant snapshot of competitive play in the mid-1990s, capturing the strategies that dominated the highest level of organized play at the time.

The Plains card included in these decks utilized classic artwork that had been a staple of the base sets, originally created to evoke the sweeping, open landscapes of the game's high-fantasy setting. The aesthetic approach for early Magic lands was centered on creating immersive, atmospheric art that could function as a backdrop for the game's mechanics. While the original illustrations were produced by various artists such as Rob Alexander or Christopher Rush, the versions selected for these championship decks were curated for their iconic status and were received by the community as authentic recreations of the legendary decks that defined that year's world title.