If you’ve ever looked at a proxy deck and thought “why does this feel like 97 different art directions fighting in a parking lot,” you’re not alone. The fix is pretty simple: Midjourney MTG proxy cards work best when you treat the art like a set, not a random image dump. Then you bring it all home inside PrintMTG’s Custom Card Maker, where the card layout stays clean and readable.
This article is the workflow I’d actually use: pick a vibe, generate consistent art in Midjourney, prep it so it prints sharp, then build the finished cards in PrintMTG without becoming a part-time graphic designer.
What you need before you start
You don’t need much. But having the basics locked in saves a lot of “why is this not working” time.
- A Midjourney account (web or Discord)
- A list of cards you want to proxy (even a rough one is fine)
- A simple theme for the deck art (one sentence)
- PrintMTG Custom Card Maker open in a tab
- A folder on your computer for final art exports
Pick a theme that is easy to repeat. “Gothic ink illustration,” “90s fantasy oil painting,” “bright cel-shaded anime,” “stained glass,” “mystical archive engraving vibes.” It doesn’t have to be deep. It just has to be consistent.
Make your deck look like a real set with style reference
The biggest difference between “cool single card” and “this whole deck looks intentional” is consistency.
Midjourney’s style tools help a lot here, especially Style Reference. The idea is to build a tiny “look bible” and reuse it across prompts.
Here’s what works in practice:
- Pick 4 to 10 images that match the vibe you want
These can be your own images, earlier Midjourney hits, or a small moodboard you made. - Reuse them as your style reference for every new card art prompt
- Keep your palette and lighting consistent
Example: dark backgrounds, bright rim light, lots of texture, limited colors.
If you do this, you can generate 30 cards across a weekend and they still feel like they belong together. That’s the dream.
Midjourney “consistency” cheat sheet
| Goal | What to use | Why it helps |
|---|---|---|
| Same visual vibe across cards | Style Reference (--sref) | Keeps texture, lighting, and “rendering style” aligned |
| Same character across multiple cards | Character Reference (--cref) or Omni Reference | Stops your commander from turning into 12 different people |
| Repeatable testing | Seed (--seed) | Lets you make controlled changes instead of guessing |
| Better composition for cards | Aspect ratio (--ar 2:3) | Gets you vertical card-ready framing |
The prompt template that works for MTG card art
Midjourney rewards clear prompts. But “clear” does not mean “write a novel.” It means: subject, setting, mood, medium, composition. Then add parameters at the end.
A good baseline prompt structure:
- Subject: who or what is the focus
- Action: what it’s doing
- Setting: where it is
- Mood + lighting: ominous, radiant, stormlit, candlelight, etc.
- Medium: oil painting, ink engraving, stained glass, watercolor
- Composition notes: centered, dramatic angle, negative space
Then finish with parameters. Midjourney is picky about parameter formatting, so keep them clean and stuck on the end.
A reusable prompt template
Use this as a starting point and swap the bracketed parts:
[subject] [action] in [setting], [mood], [lighting], [medium], detailed, high contrast, clean silhouette, no text –ar 2:3 –no text –no watermark –no logo
If you’re using a style reference, add it too.
Three example prompts you can steal
Creature style:
- ancient phoenix made of ash and molten gold rising from a broken altar, stormy sky, dramatic rim light, painterly fantasy illustration, clean silhouette, no text –ar 2:3 –no text –no watermark –no logo
Artifact style:
- arcane compass floating above a stone pedestal, glowing runes circling it, dusty library, warm candlelight, detailed ink illustration, tight composition, no text –ar 2:3 –no text –no watermark –no logo
Land style:
- misty cliffside temple overlooking a black ocean, moonlit fog, atmospheric perspective, matte painting look, strong horizon line, no text –ar 2:3 –no text –no watermark –no logo
And yeah, you’ll still get a few images where Midjourney tries to sneak in fake lettering. That’s normal. Just regenerate or crank up the “no text” vibes.
Keep commanders and signature characters consistent
If your deck has a commander, a planeswalker, a “main villain,” or even a token theme, you’ll want character consistency. Otherwise your “same” character will show up with different face shapes, different armor, and a completely different vibe every time.
Midjourney supports character-based references. Depending on what version you’re using, you’ll use:
--cref(Character Reference) for compatible versions- Omni Reference for newer version flows
The best workflow is simple:
- Generate the character once until you get the “default look” you like
- Use that image as your reference for future scenes
- Add text prompts that describe the scene and outfit changes you actually want
If the reference is too strict, adjust the character weight so it doesn’t copy every tiny detail. You want “same character,” not “same screenshot.”
Get the image ready for printing so it doesn’t look crunchy
This is the part people skip, then blame the printer later.
Use the right aspect ratio early
For Midjourney MTG proxy cards, you almost always want vertical art, so --ar 2:3 is the clean default. It frames like card art, and it reduces the amount of cropping you’ll do later.
If you start with a square image and crop a lot, you’re basically throwing away pixels. And pixels are the whole game when you print.
Make sure you have enough pixels
A quick baseline for MTG-sized prints is that you need enough resolution to hold detail at card size. If your image is tiny, it will print soft. If you enlarge a tiny image, it will print like sadness.
If you need to upscale, do it carefully:
- Upscale first
- Sharpen last
- Avoid repeatedly saving as JPEG
If you want a practical guide for this (with actual numbers and sanity checks), PrintMTG has a solid one: MTG Proxy Image Prep: Upscaling, Sharpening, and Fixing “Crunchy” Art.
Don’t ignore bleed and safe zone
If you’re going borderless or full art, you want bleed. If you don’t use bleed, you’re asking for white edges to show up the moment cutting is even slightly off. That’s just how physical reality works.
Build the final card in PrintMTG Custom Card Maker
Here’s where things get easy.
Instead of trying to force Midjourney to generate readable rules text (it won’t), you use Midjourney for art only, then do the card layout in PrintMTG.
Basic flow:
- Open PrintMTG Custom Card Maker
- Pick a template that matches your vibe
Modern, Vintage, Mystical Archives, Full Art, and more - If you’re reskinning an existing card, start by searching that card
It can auto-fill the boring fields, then you edit what you want - Upload your Midjourney art
- Adjust placement
Drag to move, scroll to zoom, and use the W/H fields if you want precise scaling - Edit text like a normal human
Name, mana cost, type line, rules, flavor text, artist credit - Preview carefully
Look for cramped text, awkward crops, and anything too close to the edge - Add to cart when it looks right
A small but important tip: keep the card readable
It’s tempting to go full-art-everything, tiny text, dramatic textures behind the rules box… and then you try to play the deck and realize you made a gorgeous headache.
Quick checks:
- Is rules text high contrast?
- Are mana symbols clear?
- Does anything important touch the edge?
- Can you read it from across the table?
Good proxies play better. That’s not poetic. It’s just true.
A repeatable workflow for a whole deck
Once you’ve done 3 to 5 cards, you should stop “winging it” and switch to a repeatable loop. This is how you finish a deck instead of getting stuck perfecting one Sol Ring for three hours.
- Make a list of 20 priority cards (commander, staples, signature pieces)
- Generate art in batches of 5 to 10 using the same style reference
- Export and name files clearly (cardname-color-theme.png)
- Drop them into PrintMTG Card Maker and build cards in the same order
- Do one “readability pass” at the end before you order
Somewhere around card #12, you’ll get faster. And somewhere around card #40, you’ll wonder why you ever did this any other way.
Conclusion
Using Midjourney for proxy art is fun, but the real win is control. When you keep a consistent style, pick the right aspect ratio, and prep your images with printing in mind, your Midjourney MTG proxy cards stop looking like random AI experiments and start looking like a cohesive custom set.
Then PrintMTG Custom Card Maker handles the layout, symbols, and print-ready finish so you can focus on the creative part: making a deck you actually want to shuffle up.