So here we are, with the third expansion for Magic: The Gathering, and the first 'big' expansion, consisting of 310 cards as compared to the 100-set Arabian Nights and Antiquities. The idea was for this to be the sequel to Magic: The Gathering, but plans changed along the way and almost every single new product under the MTG banner would be backwards-compatible, with them changing how they release each batch of cards. As far as this review series is concerned, we'll only be talking about the main expansions, at least until we get to the 'modern' era. At some point I'll probably sit down and talk about base sets or non-Standard-format cards, but that's still a fair long way off.
"Legends", as it were, did not really have any tie-in story, being envisioned as what modern MTG players would call a 'core' or 'base' set. It instead falls under the banner of the generic middle-ages fantasy setting of Dominaria, adding more stuff to the worldbuilding.
The main concept are both the introduction of something that modern MTG players would take for granted -- the first being multi-coloured cards, cards which require multiple different colours to summon. These were gold-bordered (yellow in the modern format) and, at least in later expansions, would allow for more cross-colour identity in both gameplay and flavour.
The second is the titular 'Legend', better known as the supertype 'Legendary'. Remember how in previous expansions I mocked how you can technically have four Ali Babas or Uncle Istvans in a single deck, even though their names implied that they were unique characters as opposed to a type of monster? Like, it makes sense for a magician to summon four, oh, Savannah Lions or four Khabal Ghouls. But four of the same specific person?
'Legend' was originally just a creature type in these older cards, but in the future they would become essentially a supertype -- an extra adjective that tells you that this card falls under 'Legend rules', which means that only one copy of a card with the same name can exist on the board at any time (later changed to only one copy existing under the control of a player).
Mechanically, it's all neat, but I also would like to say that I really don't have a lot to say about many of the cards in this expansion. Compared to its original version in 2019, I trimmed down almost 40% of the length of the legendary humanoids originally was because I was trying so hard to have something interesting to say. And... a good chunk of it is that a lot of them are just cool fantasy people in cool fantasy poses, but there's not much for me to say because even just four sets in and without any particular differentiator or story, there's not much to say about 'another knight', 'another priestess' or 'another archer'. Still, not to be negative because a 300-card expansion is still a 300-card expansion, so strap in for Legends!
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[originally published in August 2019; rewritten in January 2025]
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Also, the official numbering starts off with mono-coloured cards before going to the multi-coloured ones, but since I hyped up the legendary/legend creatures so much in the intro, we'll be getting them out of the way first. Dakkon Blackblade, the closest that this set has to a 'main character' that got any kind of tie-in fiction, is a reasonably cool knight with a pretty elaborate shield and a badass sword, which, I believe, is cursed in some way. MTG has always been pretty tied to Dungeons & Dragons, and if this was a representation of a campaign then the legendary creatures would be the protagonists or enemies of said campaign.
I really like this artwork of the gloriously named Ramses Overdark. What a gloriously hammy main villain name! I really like how detailed his armour and helmet is, and how stern his expression is. Some characters, Ramses included, would later show up in miscellaneous tie-in novels much later on. That's neat, but I'm here to review monsters, not characters. I do think we do need a couple of 'just a dude' guys to be a baseline, and having a traditionally heroic hero and villain works here.
Sivitri Scarzam is a nearly-naked lady with what looks like vines for armour and some fancy almost wing-like capes, and she's riding a sea serpent or a dragon of some sort. Despite the seeming implication that she's like an elf or merfolk or something, later creature-type retcons (which gave new creature types to everyone that's just 'Summon Legend') would establish that Sivitri is a mere human. One big problem about these older cards is that... they're very weak because back in the day, the designers thought that being a 'legend' was enough to give them an extra advantage. But Sivitri is a seven-mana card that's merely a 6/4 with no additional effect. In contrast, that statline is identical to Craw Wurm from the very first set, but Craw Wurm is a whole mana cheaper and doesn't require multiple colours to summon!
Jedit Ojanen is, unless I'm missing someone, the first cat-person we're setting. He's a muscular tiger-man! We'd have a lot of the Leonin race later on, but they all fall under the banner of the creature type 'Cat'. Jedit is a 'Legendary Cat Warrior', and it's a pretty cool novelty to see a badass, muscular tiger gladiator within the many, many humans in this set.
Ramirez DePietro is a pirate captain, and while ridiculously overpriced as a 6-mana 4/3, is very notable for being our very first proper pirate, complete with swashbuckling outfit and eyepatch and everything. A 'most flamboyant' captain who hides his age, apparently!
Rohgahh of Kher Keep is a Legendary Kobold, and we'll talk a bit more about Kobolds in Red. They show up in this expansion, but did not enjoy any of the popularity of goblins and orcs -- mostly because they really didn't feel any different compared to goblins or orcs. Without the explanation in the effects, it's easy to be tempted that Rohgahh here is just either a short orc or a fat goblin.
We've got two kind-of villains here, with Boris Devilboon being a 'Zombie Wizard' -- he's a scar-faced necromancer wizard guy that looks rather stereotypically evil, and his (ridiculously expensive) tap effect summons 1/1 Demon tokens.
I guess this is a neat enough time to talk about creature types -- a lot of what we'd call 'player race' charcaters in D&D tend to have a type that corresponds to their species/race ('Zombie', in this case) and one that corresponds to their class ('Wizard', in this case). There is, understandably, a lot of overlap between classes as the card game continues to expand -- especially in the earlier sets.
Johan, despite looking like Dominaria's best Darth Maul cosplayer, is actually just a regular human wizard. He's not even assigned to Black, instead having a Red/Green/White colour combination. Don't judge a book by its cover, I guess? I really like his horns and face tattoos.
Halfdane is pretty fun. Identified by the retcons as a "Legendary Shapeshifter", Halfdane enters as a 3/3 before shifting into having the statline of another creature on the battlefield, represented here as he transforms to mimic that Viking guy... presumably Halfdane is the helmet-less one glowing with energy. A pretty fun card, flavour-wise!
Joining in the 'not a human' club is this 'Legendary Insect Wizard' Xira Arien, who has the lower body of a woman in a dress, the semi-transparent wings of a dragonfly, and a bizarre head that doesn't seem to have visible mouthparts and a head that expands wide to the side, like a squished cobra hood. I thought that it was part of her anatomy, but it's just actually a really elaborate hat! That's cool! More of these, please! Xira is a member of a humanoid-wasp race called the Eumidians, who has been represented in MTG by just... Xira. Boo!
At some point, as mentioned in Alpha, I'd like to go through and talk about new artwork given to older cards, but someone in Wizards remembered Xira Arien and gave her this very fancy and somewhat haunting art of her in a more simple dress... with four arms, like a proper insect, and a face that is devoid of features, almost like Slenderman! A new card of her, Xira the Golden Sting, was released in 2022, and she has a fancy bee-themed dress and hat, and has facial features other than an eye. Which is it? Is it just eyes, a whole face, or faceless?
Ahem. I got carried away with the bug-person, and we're going to go to the cycle of five Elder Dragons. They are some of the mightiest creatures in Dominaria, survivors of an ancient, primordial war, and... this sounds very Dungeons & Dragons-y to you, because it probably was! At least one of the Elder Dragons would become a major antagonist in future MTG storylines, and the Elder Dragons in general would give rise to the "EDH" (Elder Dragon Highlander) format, better known in the modern day as "Commander".
Vaevictis Asmadi, representing the combination of Black, Red and Green... doesn't have the most impressive art compared to his brethren, just being a screaming, almost fish-like head. You're able to boost his 7/7 stats by paying one of any mana. All the Elder Dragons demand a continuous upkeep of paying a 'tax' every turn to maintain them on the field. Lore would place Vaevictis as being a 'cousin' to the other four, who are siblings.
Palladia-Mors is Red/Green/White, and is noted to be one of the most savage ones among the Elder Dragons. He's a bit more simple, having Flying and Trample... and that's it. The artwork makes him look a bit more demonic than the reptilian or almost intelligently-human faces of his brethren, and later pieces of artwork really highlighted how brutish and animalistic he looks. Pretty cool, though!
Arcades Sabboth looks a lot less like a dragon and more like a dragon man, sitting bipedal on a throne with a sinister grin on his face. He's even got a cape! Arcades Sabboth has a bit of a less impressive effect, buffing toughness instead of power. He's made up of all the 'good' colours, a combination of White/Blue/Green. Later interpretations of him would change his appearance significantly, making him bright blue and exaggerating the two tusks seen on either side of his face. I do like that even though the artwork of these classic designs are updated, they're at least trying to homage the original depiction.
Chromium, full name "Chromium Rhuell", is covered with metal! He represents Blue/Black/White. I have a feeling that the names "Chromium" and "Palladia" are inspired by the metallic dragons of Dungeons & Dragons fame. Just like the metallic dragons of that game, Chromium was able to shapeshift into the size of a human, and he would be able to form emotional bonds with humankind.
Chromium has the keyword "Rampage 2", which means that Chromium gets +2/+2 for every creature after the first that blocks it in combat. Which... isn't the most practical ability since it's very dependent on the enemy choosing whether or not to block with multiple other creatures.
And we close off the multi-coloured cards with Nicol Bolas! Another long-running antagonist for MTG, it's fun to remember that this Red/Blue/Black dragon originally started off as essentially a wizened old grandpa with a dragon's head reading a book. Look at him! He's so cheerful compared to all four of his siblings. But Nicol Bolas's effect is pretty devastating, being able to force your opponent to discard their entire hand when he inflicts combat damage.
You wouldn't know it by this artwork, but Nicol Bolas would get a significant coolness upgrade in subsequent interpretations as he rises to be easily the most significant character out of these five Elder Dragons, and becomes a god-pharaoh planeswalker that would invade the Egyptian-gods-themed plane. Even in this earlier material, Nicol Bolas would be the 'man-behind-the-man' for a series of text stories, which definitely fits the D&D homage! Perhaps it's because he looks so different in the artwork, the fact that he looks so unassuming despite being formed out of the three most 'evil' combination of colours, that he ends up sticking in the minds of the fiction writers and fanbase. Nicol Bolas!
One of the heroes he menaces, Tetsuo Umezawa, ironically has the same "Grixis" colour combination as Nicol Bolas. Tetsuo is the star of a series of comics or novels (all the characters here who got stories would have them be released in 1996, two years after Legends). He's drawn in a classical Japanese samurai artwork. Pretty neat and different from the rest of this expansion. I don't have much to say about Tetsuo himself, but I felt it's nice to put him here with his nemesis.
And now... in with the mono-coloured cards. And we're starting off with real 'reviewing monsters' here! The Abomination, later retconned to be a 'Horror', is a pretty creepy monster. The artwork is pretty nice body horror, with lumpy flesh and eyes that don't seem to be working... and the simple lack of lip-flesh, revealing the gums and teeth. That's pretty subtly nasty compared to some of the more over-the-top gore we would later get into. It's also got a rather flavourful effect, being able to corrupt and destroy any of the 'good' Green and White creatures that comes into contact with it.
The Fallen Angel is one of the few angels to exist outside of White, and it plays to the trope of Lucifer and his fallen angels becoming villains. Fallen Angel here has got a pretty flavourful artwork, with the still-raw, stitched-up scars of where her wings used to be. You can even see a rogue feather falling down behind her!
Takklemaggot is not a creature, but rather an enchantment! Which behaves like a parasite .It's a bit of a mouthful there, but essentially it keeps subtracting the maximum toughness of creatures, and when they die, it moves on to another creature and ultimately to the player.
A pretty great piece of art here, too, with the very nasty, almost bone-like structure on this fat maggot bursting out of a corpse's ribcage. The orange 'head', the long feelers, and even tohse nasty web-goo that is attaching it to the ribcage. Pretty nasty!
Infernal Medusa is our very first Gorgon. We're going to have a bunch of those over the next couple of expansions! Remember, kids, Medusa is the name of a type of creature called a Gorgon! She's got a rather primitive version of the keyword that we'd know as 'Deathtouch', being able to destroy any creature she comes into contact with. I really like the differing sizes of the snakes in her hair, with some slender ones forming braids, and larger cobras seemingly slithering out of an opening in her head. Combined with the creepy glowing black eyes, and we've got ourselves a rather memorable creature!
More Horrors! Cosmic Horror is our very first proper Horror, not counting retcons... and back then I think the idea was just to have 'horror' represent, well, Lovecraftian/Cthulhu monsters -- before M:TG began to use it as a stand-in for Phyrexian-corrupted monsters and a substitute for demon/devil. Cosmic Horror here is a nice tower-shaped mass of eyes, fangs and tentacle-tongues. I especially like how some of the faces look irritated at each other, and there's a single eyeball that sprouts out to the side like a mushroom! I like this -- giant squid-men are neat enough, but I like horrors that are... weirder, y'know?
Horror of Horrors is a pretty cool piece of art! This one is an Enchantment as opposed to a creature, but what a cool design it is. Taken straight out of H.R. Giger's nightmares, we've got a lot of bony-ridged tentacles forming the silhouette of a human had seen from behind... but it's not actually made by anything that's human-like. There are pieces of familiar anatomy, but in all the wrong places -- an eye on the back of the head, and a mouth on the side of the neck. Is this a Horror mimicking a human, or is it a human who was transformed into a Horror?
It is really a shame that this isn't a particularly flavourful card in terms of effect, with nothing in the art or flavour text having any connection to sacrificing a swamp to regenerate a creature.
So which piece of media popularized giant evil floating eyeballs as enemies? Did they exist before D&D made Beholders popular? Evil Eye of Orms-By-Gore is... interesting. Normally these giant eyeball monsters tend to be just a giant floating eyeball with maybe an eyelid covering it, but you can see the rest of the face of, presumably, Orms-By-Gore. I like the idea of an eyeball monster, and the fact that 'Eye' is still a creature type in MTG.
We do have more 'classic' horror monster creatures after the break like a mummy or a headless horseman, but Lesser Werewolf (who's a 'Lycanthrope' before MTG decided to use 'Werewolf' as the creature type) is the very first of MTG's many werewolves. And... it'll take a while, but despite having a great track record at otherwise adapting a lot of different fantasy creatures into playable cards, MTG had a very long and storied history with trying to adapt werewolves. This one doesn't even really have anything to do with the transformation mechanic of a werewolf, but instead acts more like an infectious creature. Not even a good one! I suppose that's why he's 'lesser'.
Shimian Night Stalker is... interesting. It's a guy with very long limbs, a golbin-like face with spiky hair, and surprisingly defined musculature in his torso and abdomen. He's living in a cave, I think? 'Night Stalker', or later 'Nightstalker', would actually be turned into a proper creature type on its own. This creature, surprisingly enough, can redirect damage done to its allies to itself, which is not something I'd expect a Black card to do.
We've got a bunch of other Walls in this expansion, but Wall of Putrid Flesh gets an extra mention just for that artwork. Look at the sheer amount of cartoony viscera and organs! It's juts a pile of nastiness, and the fact that it's rotting means that you can't really see any real specific organs or whatnot here. Very nasty!
Now a pair of Demons! Or, well, they'll become Demons later on in the great creature update. The Wretched initially seems like 'just' a classic wings-and-horns demon, but I really appreciate the amount of work they did here to make him stand out while keeping the classic silhouette. There are holes in his pelvis corresponding to the bones. The skull-face is also pretty neat. But the most interesting feature has to be those metal frameworks attached to his bat-wings, almost like it's supporting it. Did The Wretched here lose his wings and this is like a treatment? Or did he not ever have wings in the first place?
What a fun concept Mold Demon is! I really like the more cartoony (other than the gore, obviously) artwork that they did for him, which makes him stand out a lot more. Retconned into a 'fungus demon', and it's got some really mean-looking white claws. I really like that his body is littered with a lot of horns and spikes that I think are meant to represent hyphae growing off a mass of mould. Mould isn't something you'd normally associate with monsters, but while fungus monsters won't show up all that often in the series, I appreciate this first one!
At the heart of this series of articles we are still a ‘reviewing monsters’ series, and thus I would like to point out some monsters! And here we have a bunch of bugs. Carrion Ants is a pretty nasty looking swarm of ants, and while I’m not sure if it’s a swarm of regular ants or fantasy giant ants, it’s a nice adaptation of the ‘horde of army ants moving through a rainforest’ trope so commonly seen in media. I absolutely love the flavour text, too: “War is no picnic, but the ants seemed to disagree.”
Hell Swarm is an Instant instead of a Creature, and it’s a bit of a shame that the effects really doesn’t seem to have much to do with this extremely nasty hell-wasp creature. I love that while the Hell Swarm bug has the silhouette that we associate with a hornet or a wasp, the details are all wrong. Two pairs of bulbous eyeballs instead of one. Way too many rows of spikes and mandibles for a mouth. A lot of spikes running down the thorax. Antennae that curve backwards like a demon’s horns. And only a single sickle-shaped insect leg jutting out of one side of the bug body instead of six legs. It almost reminds me of Horror of Horrors above, where we have a familiar silhouette that ends up looking so different due to the details.
Giant Slug! He’s a pretty fun one! Sure, the card itself isn’t that good. A 1/1 that sometimes has the ability to landwalk? While a cute reference of slugs climbing up surfaces, it’s not very good for the amount of mana it demands. But the artwork is pretty great! It’s not enough that this is a giant slug, but its sensory feelers have morphed into tentacles long enough to wrap around luckless adventurers and swallow them in that yawning mouth. The most memorable part of this creature is easily the sinuous eyestalks, however, which terminate in disturbingly human eyeballs!
Pit Scorpion has got a pretty generic piece of artwork, but in addition to being our very first scorpion monster, it’s also the debut of the ‘Poison Counter’ mechanic. The Pit Scorpion might be a humble 1/1, but each time it manages to deal damage to the opposing player, they build up almost incurable ‘poison counters’ and at 10 poison counters, irregardless of anything else, a player loses. It’s a very interesting alternate win condition and a rather creative way to circumvent the ‘player health’ mechanic. Having the 1/1 creature survive to attack the opponent over 10 turns is obviously impractical, but it’s the flavour that matters here. Later on, more than 20 years later, they would even revisit this and give it a lot more support with a Phyrexian-themed set… not bad for a mechanic that was initially just meant to represent the slow death of a bug stinging you over and over again!
Both ‘Slug’ and ‘Scorpion’ continue to remain as creature types and they survived the Great Creature Type Update, which I extremely appreciate! While scorpions and spiders being treated as something separate, having ‘slug’ actually be loved enough to continue being represented as a race is pretty fun!
Two spells now. Darkness is a fun one -- the spell effect does have the idea of sudden darkness happening in the midst of combat (hence creatures still being 'tapped') and causing all the attackers to miss their mark (hence no damage is dealt). But what a fucking cool demon-shadow-creature is represented here! "Creature" is about as much as I can get to describing that thing. It's got a bestial head with a lower jaw that kind of melts off into shadowy tentacles, and apparently it bleeds out shadow demons that look like Xenomorph heads? Very cool.
Greed has a Phil Foglio artwork, and I really like Phil Foglio artworks which tend to be fun. Look at this guy with a giant pile of coins and he's biting them... but one more coin just out of reach that's glinting and tempting him so much and he wants that. Greed is, to my memory, the first Black card here that has the 'lose life, draw cards' gimmick that would spiral out of control once we get to some of the Yawgmoth cards... but it also fits very well with the flavour of Black being risk-taking in the name of victory!
We have our first Drake with Azure Drake! Just like various editions of Dungeons and Dragons, MTG really wanted to depict the fantasies of both an intelligent, scheming dragon that's closer to power level to a god... but also the fantasy of a large winged lizard that's just a wild animal. Enter the 'drakes', who looks like a dragon but is functionally just a large winged fire-breathing dinosaur. This Azure Drake is apparently an easily-distracted creature that's... I'm not sure if it's spewing blue flame, or if it's underwater and that trail in its mouth is the bubbles it leaves in its wake?
Insert your own Hearthstone joke here, by the way. Hearthstone's Azure Drake doesn't have much in common with this Azure Drake other than the name and card art, but there are a lot of homages to MTG if you are familiar enough with both franchises.
Brine Hag is a our very first 'Hag' creature, with a pretty fun art of it lurking -- rather uncomfortably, I might add -- on a rocky outcropping while the waves slam onto her. It's a pretty common trope in fantasy media and especially in D&D to have monstrous, witchy hags as villains, and I like that the Brine Hag curses every creature that causes her death into having their statistics reduced to 0/2.
Unless they're very interesting, I am not really going to talk too much about Walls anymore. But Richard Thomas gives us two very wonderful wall artworks here! Wall of Vapor is one of the many cards in this set that has a more painting-like vibe to it, with a nice usage of colours and a silhouette of a person in prayer hidden 'twixt the vapors.
Meanwhile, Wall of Wonder takes the exact opposite, where, to quote the flavour text, 'so confusing is the Wall's appearance that few of its victims even see it move'. You've got a creepy Joker-esque jack-in-the box, a giant butterfly, an eyeball, a tentacle-snake monster, and even the dummy from 'Black Vise' and 'the Rack' an expansion ago all arranged together to form a 'wall' right out of the minds of Alice in Wonderland's authors. And this very strange creature can swap its stats around to attack! I like this one.
Following on the Lovecraft binge that came after 'Cosmic Horror' above, Blue gets Elder Spawn. Being retconned into an 'Elemental' before being more recently re-retconned back into 'Spawn', the Elder Spawn is an amorphous mass of... presumably fleshy goop? It reminds me of like underwater volcanic vents or mutant coral or whatnot, and there seem to be green eyes embedded in this thing's anatomy. The multiple tentacles around a cylinder reminds me of the Elder Thing from the Cthulhu mythos, but the general shape of an amorphous mass reminds me more of the Shoggoth. Now Elder Spawn here is a actually a very bad card since it's one that demands you sacrifice one of your land cards every turn, but it is admittedly rather flavourful.
(Ia! Shub-Niggurath!)
Psionic Entity is another 'Illusion' creature, and this ephemeralness is represented by its effect, where its effect has it deal damage to another target but will itself disappear. A bit more mundane than the scores of horrors and demons we've just gone through in both Black and Blue, but I do like the idea of a giant grinning snake-hallucination with hands tormenting someone and screwing over their head.
We've got a pair of giant sea serpents here. The Devouring Deep has an absolutely mental card art that I love, and a good chunk of how cool it is comes from its very vertically flat mouth with ridiculously large teeth. The rest of the Devouring Deep's body is pretty typical sea serpent fare, but I really like the artwork. It's a shame that... its statline is a very pathetic 1/2 despite having such a badass name, artwork and a Shakespeare quote. That's weaker than a bear! Later retcons would make the Devouring Deep into a 'Fish', meaning this is just a mean-looking eel or something.
The Segovian Leviathan is even more ridiculous. You see this giant green creature that looks like it's a massive caterpillar-serpent thing. Look at how strange it looks, with that mouth and those eyes! Very cool colours, and those tiny things swimming alongside it -- each small enough to be swallowed up in a single gulp -- are whales. It's got a biblical quote, and the creature type of 'Leviathan'. And... it's 3/3, a puny statline that makes it weaker than Ramirez DePietro.
Later MTG lore would have some fun with this, handwaving that, no, the Segovian Leviathan is the largest leviathan in its home plane of Segovia. It's just that Segovia is so small of a plane that it's essentially the MTG version of Ant-Man's micro-verse or something. That is such a silly, tongue-in-cheek geeky solution to this inconsistency, I can't even be mad.
Fuck yeah, Time Elemental! As we'll continue seeing in MTG, the definition for 'Elemental' will vary very widely, and as long as it represents some aspect of nature, anything can be an Elemental. We've gotten past the obligatory classical elementals in Alpha, and now it's time for something completely wacky here with Time Elemental! How do you even describe this? It's a bunch of random clocks arranged together in the vague shape of a dragonfly with a giant set of pincers. Is it meant to be a dobsonfly, then? Two clocks kind of form the 'eyes' of this thing, and what appears to be... a weird clockwork fish acts as its tail? It's got regular insect wings. I love it.
Time Elemental's effect 'reverses' time by bouncing a card back to its owner's hand, but it also is such a strangely unstable creature that it essentially selfdestructs any time it blocks or attacks, and even deals damage to its controller. Very weird!
What is that thing in Mana Drain? It's one of the various counter spells that Blue gets in this expansion, but that weird... underwater jellyfish or copepod or aquatic tick or something doesn't look like it's countering magic at all! I guess it's draining magic from the depths of the world? Also, being able to counter a spell and cheat out a huge chunk of mana on your next turn is such an insanely powerful effect that this is printed in the same set as cards like Elder Spawn really baffles me .
We'll take a brief break from monsters to talk about World Enchantments, something that's new to this expansion. The idea for any of you who's played Yu-Gi-Oh is similar to 'Field Spells', where the entirety of the battlefield is transformed by the World Enchantment. It's very thematic in Green, which has a lot of Land interaction in its flavour. Living Plane, for example, allows both players to turn all their lands into 1/1 creatures, represented by this forest coming alive and strangling a poor man. Look closely to the trunks of the trees behind him, and they have angry cartoonish eyes and mouths!
Arboria is also fun, featuring a giant venus-flytrap-esque plant about to eat a ranger. I like that its jaw is so overly exaggerated with giant fangs, and there are random pitcher plants and mushrooms around it. The effect doesn't feel very flavourful with a world of giant predatory man-eating plants, but they can't all be winners .
Green actually receives a lot of new creatures... but a lot of them are 'just animals', and the original version of this article had me trying -- and failing -- to find something super interesting to talk about them. Most of them have been banished down below, although I'll still talk a bit more about every single creature. But talking about a bunch of 'just a boar' distracts from me talking about KILLER BEES. Look at them! They're not just a bunch of angry bee monsters, but they're holding little spears and shields! The rest of them are still shaped like a regular bee. They're not even an insect-person like Xira Arien above. No, as the flavour text notes, this is a 'vicious crossbreed' that has 'unraveled the secret of steel'. I love this thing.
Hornet Cobra is just a snake with First Strike, but I do like the artwork here. The cobra 'hood' looks so strange, so different from what we'd associate with a regular serpent. It's meant to evoke an insect's veiny wings, but combining the two features together here, particularly with the rather cool detailing on the Hornet Cobra's face, makes this creature look quite interesting.
I will include some of the animals, because I like the flavour of the Giant Turtle. The artwork is fun enough as you see this giant-beaked turtle about to chomp down on the luckless axe-wielding guy, but I love the flavour of it essentially 'retreating into its shell', represented by refusing to attack if it had to block the previous turn. It may be a giant turtle, but it's still a turtle and it'll hide!
I love Wolverine Pack. I love that the MTG crew was presumably looking at a list of beastly animals that show up in fantasy work, and went "fuck yeah, wolverines." A pack of wolverines are apparently as powerful as a giant turtle!
These earlier sets has everything turned into a creature type, but subsequent retcons and synergies would consolidate a lot of them together, like grouping all of the different birds and insects together. They haven't been the most consistent (all large predatory cats like panthers and lions are 'Cat'; while 'Wolf', 'Hound' and 'Jackal' are separate, for example) but many real-world animals tend to keep their own unique creature type even if there's only a handful of representatives. Wolverine is one of them!
Moss Monster is a vanilla creature, and he's not even our first 'plant elemental' visually similar to on Man-Thing/Swamp Thing, but I like this kooky guy. He's made entirely out of leaves, but he's got a pair of deer-horns made out of wooden branches and a mouth filled with sharp, mean-looking teeth. A neat brutish elemental guy!
Probably one of the worst cards in this set -- or ever printed -- is Wood Elemental, which already costs 4 mana to summon but also has a statline that depends on the amount of untapped forests you sacrifice. If you can't tell, sacrificing any kind of mana card permanently is extremely bad in this game, let alone one that gives you a minimal boost! And it's a vanilla monster, too. The artwork is kind of funny, with a rather wretched expression on the Wood Elemental's face while an army of humans with spears walk up to it.
FUCK YEA, the Floral Spuzzem. The Spuzzem would be retconned into an 'elemental', but just look at this thing. Look at how different he is compared to the two more standard 'elemental of the forest' creatures we have above. How do I even describe the Spuzzem? It's a mass of flesh with two large legs sprouting on either side, and its body coils out like a tentacle wrapping around a tombstone or an obelisk of sorts. The result kind of looks like a haunting half-chicken or something. Is it even made entirely of plant matter? Is it flesh? Despite the name 'floral', this thing doesn't have any flowers on it!
The most memorable aspect of Floral Spuzzem, however, is its interestingly-worded card text. "...then Floral Spuzzem may choose to destroy a target artifact". So yes, in a game where the card text normally refers to you, the player, Floral Spuzzem's card text specifies the card itself. Whether it implies that the card is sentient or the creature on the card can undertake actions on its own, it's a fun little mistake that adds to the sheer strangeness of the Spuzzem. WOTC has printed a couple of cards that make fun of this.
The Cat Warriors are two cat-people that come from the same race that Ojanen above comes from. I like that one of them has a tiger coat and the other has a leopard one. Pretty neat artwork, even if the card itself is just a 'French Vanilla' card with Forestwalk.
Two fairies! Fire Sprites are a fun combination of the typical winged fairy with something that's a bit surprising for protectors of the jungle... fire! Although fire, I suppose, is 'natural' enough compared to something like unnatural artifacts. One of the few new faeries added in this expansion. Fire Sprites isn't the only creature that does this, but it's also one of the first few 'cross-colour' aid cards, with the Fire Sprites providing red mana.
Shelkin Brownie is a fairy that oozes a whole lot of personality. You just know from his grin that he's up to no good! I didn't realize it until looking properly at the card art, but there are two more Brownies lurking in the background a bit more menacingly than the main Brownie. I like the flavour text referencing the real-life lore of the brownies. However, poor Shelkin Brownie is also remembered for being an 'anti-Banding' card... when Banding itself is already a mechanic that's not the most popular or useful.
Look at this! Look at Eureka! This wizard is super-duper excited to see this random little green genie-sprite-fairy show up holding the iconic E=MC² formula. That is such a random thing to see here... early MTG references a bunch of real-world people (particularly in flavour text), but one of the most significant science equation showing up as a huge magical revelation? In Green instead of Blue, to that?
Is this the inspiration for 'Cocoon of Evolution' in Yu-Gi-Oh? MTG's Cocoon has a rather grody artwork of a neon-blue cocoon with a stinger at the end, and the background is a very indistinct fleshy thing. The Cocoon enchantment essentially wraps one of your creatures and prevents them from untapping and doing stuff over three turns... and after that, they emerge from the cocoon with +1/+1 and Flying. The end result is weak for the amount of time you spend on it, but points for flavour!
We are going to Red now, and we'll start off with one of the downright weirdest designs in this set. Spinal Villain! Its name or flavour text aren't really indicative of what it is, and the great creature update isn't much helpful by classifying this thing as the very ambiguous 'Beast'. Which makes it a lot weirder than if they had called this thing a Horror or a Demon! This is just a natural beast that lives in Dominaria, apparently.
What a weird thing! Its effect and statline aren't anything to write home about, but the design! It's like some kind of armour-plated worm-thing with skinny gorilla arms that terminates in two long fingers. I didn't realize until now that the fingers terminate in multiple nails, too, which just adds to the weirdness of it all. And that face, what the shit? Two giant tusks, a vertical mouth that vomits out a mass of tentacles, two strange cashew-shaped... eyes? The more I look at it, the weirder it gets!
Also classified as a 'Beast' are the Beasts of Bogardan. Which fits more with what a 'Beast' would be in my head -- the Beasts of Bogardan here aren't quite dogs, aren't quite goats... they look just close enough to real-world animals without actually matching any one perfectly. Fits the idea that these guys would be what evolution would take hounds or goats in a different land (and maybe with some magic tossed in). Actually, is this supposed to be a three-headed creature like a Cerberus? The fact that it wasn't retconned into having the creature type of one probably means not.
A lot of these cards are notable by the simple fact that often times it's our first 'X' creature. In this case, Firestorm Phoenix is our very first phoenix! A pretty impressive artwork, being a bird on fire flyting through the sky. It has Flying, of course, but something more fun is that they actually managed to fit in the flavour of a phoenix by having it be able to regenerate after death -- admittedly, going from the graveyard to the opponent's hand and being forced to stay there for an extra turn is very slow, but the principle of the matter is there.
Crimson Manticore! This is our very first Manticore, and being a slightly-more-obscure mythological creature, I am so happy that Manticores were allowed to keep their race unique instead of being folded into the Sphinxes or something. The Crimson Manticore here does have some goofy proportions, however -- very short legs supporting that lion body with dragon wings and scorpion tail, and an utterly massive old human's head attached to it. As the flavour text notes, they are good allies everywhere except for dinner tables.
I am not sure which fantasy franchise pioneered the idea of gnomes as tech-savvy kooky gadgeteers. But Quarum Trench Gnomes is fun! (I thought he was a Quantum Trench Gnome) Again, another one where the outfit does look a bit anachronistic to the rest of the middle-ages swords-and-spells fantasy genre, but I do like how wacky the drilling equipment of this guy is. He's got a little spinal drill, and a backpack that kind of sucks in the things he is mining through some bendy tubes up. Cute! Also, this is notable for being the only flesh-and-blood gnome that MTG will have... until a long, long while. Basically all the way until the D&D crossovers, I believe! MTG would re-flavour gnomes as being clockwork artifact creatures.
Oh yeah, very cool. The Primordial Ooze is a, paraphrasing its flavour text, 'moving mass from the beginning of evolution' that digests everything in its path, animate or inanimate, to further its existence. This is our very first ooze, and I really like its artwork! For the longest time, I thought the thick black tendrils were the ooze itself, but those are artificial pipes that are attached to that strange ancient ruins. The ooze is the brown liquid leaking out and pouring down the side of the ruins, probably shaken loose by an earthquake or something. That's such a nice little setup to a horror B-movie, isn't it?
I do like the effect too, where the Primordial Ooze mindlessly attacks, mindlessly grows, and you have to keep pumping mana into it (more mana as it grows, too!) otherwise it'll turn around and attack you.
Chain Lightning doesn't exactly have the most informative art that sets it apart from any ol' lightning weather phenomenon, but I really do like its effect and I believe this is one of the many burn cards available to Red at this point in time. I do really like the flavour of each player pumping mana into Chain Lightning to have it jump back to a second target on the opponent's side of the field, and so on and so on. The catch? It needs to be Red Mana pumped into Chain Lightning, meaning that some players just have to shrug and take the brunt of this damage. Fun!
The rest of red will cover the Kobolds, which I mentioned above was a new creature type introduced in Legends that... was one of MTG's first attempts to try and spotlight a creature type/race. It... did not go so well. Let's look at Kobolds of Kher Keep, yeah? It's a 0/1 Kobold that is casted for 0 mana, and the card text... gives you absolutely nothing. It just re-explains that this card counts as a Red spell, which is already indicated by the borders. The artwork is charming enough, being red-skinned humanoids in hilarious sleeping outfits, but here's the problem:
Look at Crimson Kobolds and Crookshank Kobolds. Notice something? Yes, they all have the same effect as Kobolds of Kher Keep. 0-mana 0/1. Which means that we've spent 3 card slots and card names just to duplicate a creature with the exact same stats. It would be something if said creature was actually useful in some way, because perchance you can now have 12 copies of the same card instead of 4 copies... but they're all 0/1 vanilla creatures, which meant that there really was no incentive to play them.
Also, from a 'reviewing monsters' perspective... there is also no thematic continuity with these guys. Early MTG already has some problem keeping orcs and goblins distinct due to the difference in artist art styles, but at least you could make an educated guess about the height. But the Kobolds? Kobolds of Kher Keep are red-skinned, portly and comical. Crookshank Kobolds looks like a warrior that's a cross between an angry monkey and a goblin, and he's got purple skin. Crimson Kobolds doesn't even look like he's the same race as the other two, looking more like a werebear or something.
The way that these cards were originally meant to interact with each other is that you'd spam the board with the 0/1 kobolds, and then use these 'lord' style cards to buff them. In addition to Kobold Overlord (which I included after the break), we've got Kobold Drill Sergeant and Kobold Taskmaster, all of which buff the kobolds with frankly rather minimal stats and effects for the card investment that they're asking. The way that creature types worked, only the ones with 'Kobold' in their creature type can get this buff. Later updates would make all of these buffing cards count as Kobolds as well, but it's still quite nothing.
And there's still the inconsistency in artwork. Kobold Taskmaster is straight-up just a muscular goblin-orc guy whipping his minions. Yeah, the flavour here is that the stronger kobolds abuse the weak and this abuse is what gives them the stat gain as the lesser kobolds are forced to work. Meanwhile, sharing an artist with the Kobolds of Kher Keep, the Drill Sergeant has an actually fun artwork where the Drill Sergeant kobold is wearing a set of modern-day army outfit. If nothing else, it's silly and fun to look at.
And now we're on the home stretch with the White cards. the original version of this article had me try and have equal representation among all five colours (and multi-coloured) cards, and that led to a very dreary breakdown of a lot of the White-colour cards... which is a bit of a mistake on my end. I have gone on record that particularly with early MTG, White is my least favourite colour flavour-wise, and I'm not going to force myself to write up a short paragraph for a dozen cards that I don't actually have anything interesting to say.
Thunder Spirit is quite cool, though. Later retcons would establish him as an Elemental Spirit. I really like how he's just this silhouette of a pointy-headed, pointy-eared winged being, whose hands just erupt into tendrils of lightning over the field. It's not quite a 'god' or an 'angel' like you'd expect, but I do like them diversifying a bit.
Amrou Kithkin is something that I do have something to say about, though! I'm not sure if they had a whole new humanoid race in mind when they made this card, but Kithkin in MTG would eventually take on the role of Halflings from D&D or Gnomes from Warcraft, as the slightly-shorter humanoid race. That's not going to come until much later in the Lorwyn block, but I am quite surprised to see a representative this early in the game's life. I like the flavour text and how it matches the effect, where the Amrou Kithkin is so versatile and used to dodging and weaving around larger opponents that she can't be blocked by strong creatures.
Elder Land Wurm is interesting. MTG's Wurms tend to be gigantic worm-beasts that tend to bring to mind creatures from Dune or Tremors (just like the iconic Craw Wurm from Alpha), but this guy is very clearly a dragon sleeping in the desert. I guess back in the day they just didn't have consistent terminology? Subsequent retcons would make this guy a 'Dragon Wurm', which... okay, I guess.
I like the flavour text and the effect as well. "It's best to let sleeping dragons lie", and the Elder Land Wurm can only attack after it's been blocked once... in other words, it needs to be struck by an opponent before waking up and wreaking havoc.
We also have our very first Sphinx, the Petra Sphinx. In MTG, sphinxes would eventually graduate to become one of the iconic Blue monsters -- fitting with the riddle theme and Blue being associated with knowledge. But just like how the first hydra debuted in Red instead of Green, I do find it interesting that in an alternate universe where they doubled down on this, sphinxes might be characterized in MTG as more 'holy' beasts. You can see that particularly with the Petra Sphinx artwork here, which does admittedly look quite holy with the wings and lion mane!
Land Tax is a hilarious Enchantment, showing a frazzled-looking fat tax collector holding a bag of money. I guess taxation is 'lawful' even if it's not always morally right. It's an interesting enchantment that allows you to search for land cards in your deck if your opponent has more lands active thatn you. That's cute!
Apparently, Eureka up above in Green isn't the only Einstein reference here, because the dude shows up in Presence of the Master here. In addition to the rather badass artwork of him posing surrounded by the planets, apparently Albert Einstein's presence has the ability to counter all new enchantments. I realize the novelty of having non-fantasy elements show up is a bit diluted with so many crossovers that MTG's had in recent years, but a real person is still going to be quite interesting, I think!
The expansion ends with, as usual, a bunch of Artifacts and Lands. I'll never talk about Lands in the main part of the article, but some artifacts are fun enough for me to talk about in terms of a monster design. Triassic Egg is quite cute, even if its existence does hint that Dominaria has its own version of a Triassic age. Pumping mana into Triassic Egg eventually lets it hatch and summon an 'ancient creature'... represented by you summoning a creature from the graveyard into play!
The best artifact ever has to be Serpent Generator. After so many artifacts that are just some variation of magical jewelry or a sword or a golem, Serpent Generator is a sausage-making machine that somehow turns that molten red liquid into snakes. The snakes have the same poison-counter mechanic that Pit Scorpion has, but that doesn't really matter. Look at how ridiculous that artwork is! This is the kind of wacky that I approve of.
