I have been itching to do this for a long, long time, and was wondering if I'm going to do Magic: The Gathering first or Yu-Gi-Oh first. As you probably could've guessed, though, I'm a huge fan of trading card games. I'm not particularly good at it, and perhaps if I spent more time being analytical about playing card games instead of building a flavourful deck, or enjoying the lore, or trying to make ridiculous combos work, I probably would've been a lot better. That also sounds a whole lot like work, though, and these games are meant to be a fun outlet and hobby, not work that I have to be good at 24/7. Maybe that's why I loathe sports. Anyway, I digress.I must make a bit of a confession, though -- I don't really know Magic: The Gathering all that well. I have a bunch of cards, sure, but unlike Yu-Gi-Oh, or Pokemon, or Hearthstone, I've played maybe two games of M:TG in my entire life. I get how the game works, but Magic is a game that I just never really seemed to get into.
Anyway, here's going to be my quick run-down of the 302 cards that made up the original "Unlimited Edition", or "Alpha", or "Beta" (there were multiple print runs) of the grand-daddy of all trading card games, Magic: The Gathering, released all the way in 1993. I won't have much to say about all of the cards, though, so I'm going to be cherry-picking through the 302 cards and talk about them as best as I can, and then leaving the rest for a rapid run-down at the end after a break.
Anyway, take a look at those couple of cards at the top of the page -- taken from some of the relatively newer expansions. They look pretty damn great, huh? I'm not sure how many of these 'older', pre-revised-card-template expansions I'm going to go through, because it does take M:TG some time before they actually develop their own unique lore. (For one, I'm familiar enough with the Kamigawa, Innistrad, Amonkhet, Theros and Ixalan blocks, and I know I'll have a lot to say there) But it's going to definitely be interesting to look at the very first couple hundred cards and just, y'know, talk about them.
Before we really go through with talking about the cards, though, let's talk about the mana colours, a pretty important concept in Magic: The Gathering. The lore is that different sorts of creatures and spells in the world of M:TG require different sort of mana to cast, and you do so by playing 'land' cards. Each basic land card corresponds to one of the five mana colours, and presumably the fantasy is that you draw the power from these lands to channel the appropriate power?
While originally just kind of meant to be a way to distinguish the flavours of the different 'factions' or colours (you can build a deck with any number of colours, but the more colours you put in, the less likely you'll have the right amount of mana to play your cards reliably), it would end up being developed to also reflect the mentalities of both the gameplay and the characters. When M:TG starts getting characters, anyway.
The five mana colours are:
- Black: Represented here by the 'swamp', Black is the most evil, power-hungry, selfish and ruthless colour, tending to have a flavour revolving around the undead, demons, villains and all sorts of nasty things.
- Blue: Represented here by the 'island', Blue tended to be initially just associated with aquatic creatures like merfolk, but later became the colour associated with intelligence, knowledge and manipulation.
- Green: Represented by the 'forest', Green is associated strongly with the powers of nature, elves, treefolk and animals in general. Green is associated with spiritual interconnection with nature and tradition.
- Red: Represented by the 'mountain', Red is the most reckless and warlike, wanting nothing but to fight and blow shit up. Tends to be associated strongly with creatures like orcs and goblins. In addition to being impulsive and destructive, Red would later be associated with the freedom of emotions.
- White: Represented by the 'plains', White is the holy colour, basically seeking to bring law, equality and order to the world, basically being associated with knights, angels and all sorts of forces of good.
It's not quite that simple, of course, and Red or Black aren't always evil, while White and Green aren't always good. And the associations and motivations that each colour has has been developed over 25+ years of lore. Click here, here and especially here for a more thorough explanation of each colour. There is a bunch of actual mechanical significance, about which effects are given to which colour, but as a filthy casual, I'm not going to talk about any of those. Oh, and also, each colour is friends with the colours next to it on the colour wheel, while enemies with the ones opposite to it on the wheel -- though this doesn't really end up being super-duper significant in lore reasons until we get to actual characters.
I could spend some time talking about the pretty interesting colour philosophy... but I'm not going to. Let's talk cards! I'm going to basically make little to no mention about the, oh, viability or whatever of these cards, though, and just focus almost entirely on their flavour.
BLACK: 
We're going to start off with Black, because that's the first series of colour listed in the official checklist for this "Unlimited" first expansion. The newer expansions that I'm more familiar with start off with White, I think, but hey, Black is probably aesthetically the most interesting one to me, so yay!
Anyway, as with most trading card games (all of which follow M:TG to varying degrees), the cards are largely divided into creatures, enchantments and artifacts, although these earlier sets call a creature like this Black Knight "Summon X". Compare it with the hydra card on top that came from the modernized set. In addition to the actual mechanics (which we won't really cover), M:TG cards tended to have a line or two of flavour dialogue. Just like any edgy, cool badass character, the Black Knight's lore is basically "I'm a force of nature, don't fuck with me". Not much to say here, but, again, this first set really just wants to establish generic fantasy tropes, and a mysterious dark knight is definitely a pretty neat, evil villain trope.
Is 'scathe' even a proper adjective? Eh, anyway, to tie in to the whole warlock/necromancer/foul sorcerer theme, we have Scathe Zombies, a 'vanilla' creature, which, in card-game lingo, means a creature that just has stats and no other effect. Old M:TG cards sometimes have flavour text taken from actual real-life books, like "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" here. Otherwise... nothing too special. It's a bunch of zombies, and you gotta have zombies in any fantasy setting.
Scavenging Ghoul, meanwhile, is a far more complex creature, effect-wise (and I'm not going to go through it), but sells the fantasy of a cannibalistic, more savage zombie-like creature pretty well.
Zombie Master here is one of those cards that empowers those of a specific tribe -- it's a lot more clear and far more cohesive in subsequent sets, but under the picture of each M:TG card is the 'race' of the creature, and Zombie Master here buffs all other Zombie cards in play. Of course, the Zombie Master himself is a 'Lord' race, and I'm pretty sure that subsequent reprints would probably change the card into 'Zombie Lord' or something, since, y'know, 'Lord' tends to be a description of status instead of an actual race. Anyway, I do like the little blurb telling us that the Zombie Master is a necromancer-turned-zombie.
Drudge Skeletons. A bunch of skeletons riding a bunch of bony horses! Like zombies, skeletons are a shoo-in for having a place in any given fantasy setting. It's got a pretty neat art, especially in early Magic's pretty inconsistent artstyle, and I'm actually a pretty big fan of this one's flavour text.
Wall of Bone is quite literally just a fucking huge wall of bones. The flavour text talks about Nordic mythology, but, again, M:TG will later develop its own series of mythology. "Wall" is actually going to be a recurring theme of defensive monsters. Wall of Bones is a trope that's been around since D&D, and one that definitely is fun enough to print as a card.
I'll try to go a bit faster now. Sengir Vampire is the token vampire, and we're going for a more bestial version instead of the posh Count. Not much to say here, again, the original set tries to just cover as much ground as far as generic fantasy tropes go. I do love how there's this giant artery in the background for... for some reason.
Frozen Shade is a ghostly shade! I do like how he's just a cloak with glowing eyes and clawed hands, and how his body just trails off into an icy mist. Ghosts are a healthy and necessary part of a fantasy setting! Meanwhile, Hypnotic Specter here is a pretty interesting take on a 'specter'. Specters, ghosts and shades tend to just be either bedsheet-style ghosts or cloaked reaper-like dudes like Frozen Shade, but Hypnotic Specter has a full suit of armour possessed by what appears to be a swooshing ghost that trails down the waistline. Neat little variation, even with the pretty basic-looking art.
I do like that this Bog Wraith really looks initially like some sort of statue in a graveyard. Otherwise, kind of your bog-standard wraith monster. (Not sorry for the pun)
While part of me really likes newer Magic's far more standardized and more digitalized artwork, I do find it hilariously appropriate that this very simple artwork for Nether Shadow actually fits the concept of a shadowy monster pretty well. Do like the weirdly segmented finger-claws and arm bones.
Apparently, among all the zombies, ghosts and demons, are these Will-o-the-Wisp, again, featuring another quote from "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". Interesting to see that Will-o-Wisps are considered evil, dark creatures. Mind you, considering Bog Wraith up above, they might just be playing on the swamp theme.
Oh, I get it. Because the Nightmare is a mare. Like a female horse. Ha! I don't think I've actually gotten the pun on Nightmares even though I've seen them in D&D bestiaries and the like for years, but I've never gotten the pun until like five minutes ago.
We take a break from all those cool undead creatures and other dark, vile beasts of hell to bring you... Royal Assassin, who's just a dude. Yeah, Black isn't exclusively demons and the legions of the dead, but considering that it's pretty much exclusively that in this first set, Royal Assassin's a bit surprising to see.
Plague Rats starts off a fun recurring theme in the Black cards that we'll see in future sets, where the card has stats that increase depending on a certain factor, in this case the amount of Plague Rats in play, basically representing a swarm of smaller creatures that get larger or smaller. Actual Plague Rats are nasty enough, but as the artwork shows, these are apparently zombie rats. Pretty nice, grisly detail with those exposed skull and organs.
Depending on their setting, imps tend to either be classified as weak demons, or just another variation of fairy or goblin. From the artwork, Nettling Imp really looks more like the former. I do like that expression, though. Certainly comes to mind from something described as 'nettling'.
A Demonic Horde! I do like just how bizarrely abstract everything is going on, and considering that these are demons, the dark silhouettes with snarling faces painted on might very well be literal. Demonic Horde, and many Black cards, are basically one of those 'powerful effects, but comes with a drawback'. In this case, an upkeep where you have to spend mana every turn to keep the Demonic Hordes from fucking up your own side of the board. We also get the first mention of the setting of M:TG here, which is "Dominia", a name later retconned to Dominaria, the 'plane' where a lot of early Magic (all or most of the old card format sets, I believe) takes place.
Lord of the Pit is the one of the bigger cards of the original M:TG's Black cards, and he's... he's a big demon! Wizards of the Coast would actually drop the whole 'demon' archetype when parental watchdogs became insanely angry at anything that can remotely sound religious, replacing them with eldritch, Cthulhu-inspired 'Horrors', but they've released a lot of Demons since then when they realized that all the protesting really didn't bring down Harry Potter, D&D or Pokemon.
Anyway, Lord of the Pit's a pretty nasty-looking demon, with dead, hollow eyes, a gaping :o mouth, giant wing-arms, and a whole ton of gory, fleshy musculature and veins running all over his chest and the inner side of his arm-wings. Considering how many of the other cards representing monster tropes in this set of cards is basically "just the most basic ogre/goblin/ghost/unicorn" ever, I'm actually happy that the big demon of the set at least looks pretty unique. Not my favourite card from the set, but definitely respect the design! I also think that there's a huge, huge miss in not making this card have a 6/6 in stats. Also, this dude is clearly what inspired the Yu-Gi-Oh card Summoned Skull, with that particular "Summon Demon" wording being what originally inspired Summoned Skull's Japanese name (Demon Shokan/summon).
Some of the Enchantment and Sorcery cards are pretty fun, and really do sell the fantasy of playing as an evil sorcerer. Deathgrip is such a fun showcase of an evil warlock clutching someone's heart, and just how small the heart looks within the clawed fingers, and the blood vessels still connected to it, paints a pretty bizarrely haunting picture.
On the other side of the spectrum from Lord of the Pit, we have Demonic Tutor, who's the goofiest, doofiest looking demon man you've ever seen. Look at him! He's just pissed off that he has to tutor... somebody, and he's like holding a textbook that probably says "Arithmetic 101" in infernal. Demonic Tutor isn't actually a creature, but a sorcery (magic/spell/action cards for those who are more familiar with other TCG's), and... and, come on, this dude is so fun! He's a fucking demon dude that apparently gives lessons or some shit. The sheer concept of this dude is just utterly fun in a set that otherwise takes itself pretty seriously.
Of course, this is apparently where the TCG lingo "Tutoring" comes from, which is a handy word for "drawing a specific card from your deck", which is easily one of the most powerful effects in any given card game. Could you imagine if Demonic Tutor has been given a more serious name like "Demonic Artificer" or "Demonic Sorcerer" or something along those lines? Nope, we get Tutor instead, which is just... just pretty hilarious.
Also, as an aside... Magic: The Gathering sometimes does reprintings of cards that are important to the metagame at the moment, or just making a particular card available for a larger audience. I will normally skip out on really doing this since my reviews are more flavour-based, but here, have an example of 2018's Ultimate Masters reprint of the Demonic Tutor.
Probably a good buddy with Demonic Tutor is the Demonic Attorney. Which... I'm sorry, what? At least the Demonic Tutor is just a regular demon holding a book. Demonic Attorney here is straight-up dressed in a goddamn purple outfit with one of those fancy Victorian-era wigs (???) and he's facing off against a goddamn demon judge with no arms, a gavel stuck to his robes, and a dong-nose.
I'm sorry, what? This is just... this is just so utterly absurdly ridiculous of a card artwork, and is easily one of my favourites from this set. What an utterly jackass effect, too, basically forcing your opponent to concede the game, otherwise set up for a bigger ante (for its first expansion, ante was apparently part of the game).
Presumably, the Demonic Attorney enforces the Contract From Below, another ante-relevant card. The contract from below reads "I, the undersigned, do hereby agree to all stipulations as discussed above"... but the roll of parchment is so short that the stipulations is either written in some really small print, or "Your soul belongs to Griselbrand, psych!"
I originally stuffed Bad Moon with all the other "I have nothing to say about this" cards, until I realized that there's a little scowling face on the full moon. That's funny. I like that.
Lich is a very interesting card! Instead of actually just summoning a lich creature into the battlefield, it actually turns the player himself into a Lich, basically turning the cards you have in play into your remaining life total, basically taking a huge risk for huge reward. Liches are basically sorcerers who have turned themselves into powerful undead, but with all the limitations that undead monsters themselves have. Again, I don't really play a whole ton of Magic, but this is a pretty fun idea for sure!
Of course, Black really deals a lot with bringing creatures from the graveyard to either the hand or battlefield, and sometimes even summons creatures from your enemy's graveyard! Again, not going too deep into the actual specifics, but Raise Dead and Animate Dead really help sell the whole necromancy and foul magic fantasy for the Black colour. Really like the artwork for Animate Dead, too.
Yeah, the enchantment is called Fear, but honestly, what other reaction would you have other than "OH GOD A WALL OF FLOATING SKULLS" Terror, meanwhile, is such a stark contrast from some of the more whimsical pieces of artwork in this first set and legitimately does look horrifying. That does really show someone that's scared out of his mind.
If you didn't already catch on, Black doesn't care about its creatures, and Sacrifices them with their own card effects. Although sometimes there are just cards like Simulacrum, where apparently you just create an illusion of you around one of your creatures, forcing it to take damage that would've otherwise been directed to you. Nasty!
Anyway, that's about it for Black -- for completion's sake, I've copy-pasted the pictures of all of the other Black cards from Unlimited after the break, and I do have some fun, short comments for some of them that I didn't think is necessary to put here.
BLUE 
And now we go to Blue, which is the 'smart' colour, although early on it's just sort of a mixture of airborne and aquatic creatures. I'm definitely not a big fan of the format of the Blue cards in the past, the random water texture makes it hard to read some of the text boxes sometimes.
Anyway, let's start off with Air Elemental, who is a lady made up of... well, if I hadn't seen the name, I would've said waves from water. The artwork itself isn't bad, but comparing it to the reprinted version that utilizes new artwork (I actually own Magic 2010 Air Elemental here, which is why I can specifically point to it)... yeah, I'm not sure if they repurposed the artwork from a water elemental or what.
In contrast, I really do like the artwork for Water Elemental here. Instead of just portraying an aspect of the elements of the world manifesting into a semi-humanoid, genie-like form, the Water Elemental here is just the waves of the ocean forming into a vague shape similar to a bearded old man's face, saying hello to that surprised bloke rowing a boat. Definitely one of my favourite artworks of this set, I think.
Holy hell what is this even supposed to be? It's a gigantic maw with random eyes and tentacles all around it. Phantom Monster honestly looks like it's part of a different set, maybe from one of the more Horror-centric sets. But Phantom Monster is apparently a 'Phantasm', and the Poe quote doesn't really explain what it's supposed to be. What is it? Is it a phantom as in like a ghost? Is it an illusion made manifest? Is it an Elder One, slumbering deep beneath the Earth?
Oh, hey, it's a big-ass Sea Serpent, crushing a boat! Basically all you need to know about a giant sea serpent, anyway. "Legend has it that serpents used to be bigger, but how could that be?" Oh, you first expansion, you have no idea how much bigger monsters can be.
If Sea Serpent's not for your liking, you can summon the Pirate Ship instead. Which... yeah, it's just a fucking ship! It's honestly kind of a boring ship, to be honest.
Where the Black-mana magicians summon walls of bones, Blue-mana magicians summon a Wall of Water, which, all things considered, is probably far more destructive and scarier than just a pile of bones. The Blue colour also has access to Wall of Air, which... yeah, okay, a swirling mass of tornadoes is probably pretty scary too, even if the artwork for both of these are pretty stylized.
I'm not sure what a "Mahamoti" is, but the Mahamoti Djinn does play after a pretty simple fantasy, that of the djinn coming out of the lamp. It's a pretty boring creature without any real effect, though, just a 5/6 with Flying.
Prodigal Sorcerer is... he's just a random sorcerer with Ra's al Ghul's facial hair. He's not even doing anything particularly sorcerer-y! If this card has been titled "Phillip of the Cynical Eye-Roll", it wouldn't be any less appropriate. While here I'll try to talk about every single creature, subsequent reviews will par down less interesting looking 'flavour' creatures.
Merfolks are going to be a staple seen in various forms and variations in Magic: The Gathering, but the first ones we see is this, Merfolk of the Pearl Trident, which is basically the most basic and waekest minion available to Blue. It's... it's just a merman with pointy ears and fish gills!
The Lord of Atlantis, while seen here as a "Lord of Atlantis" in its race, gets turned into just a regular Merfolk by revisions and reprints. Like Zombie Master up above, Lord of Atlantis basically buffs all other Merfolk in play. I do like his utterly gigantic tail at the end of his eel-like body. And while Pearly is a very basic Merfolk, the Lord of Atlantis has a bunch of extra Creature of the Black Lagoon-style fins and whatnot jutting out of his body. Neat-o!
Blue is also the colour of trickery and illusions, and one of the more interesting facets is copying enemies. Clone is just, well, summoning a clone of any creature in play, and I absolutely love the artwork of two dudes just standing at each other utterly baffled. Meanwhile, Vesuvan Doppelganger is a lot more chill with each other, and the Doppelganger can just switch into other creatures even after transforming.
Phantasmal Forces here are knights with parrot wings! The little flavour blurb notes that these are apparently revived heroes that are summoned from the "dreamrealms". So not quite ghosts, then, but also not quite angels!
Pretty sure that Blue, being the 'intelligent' and therefore more classic mage/sorcerer/wizard archetype, has the most enchantments and sorceries. Take Blue Elemental Blast and Spell Blast, which is just blasting the enemy. The effects has Blue basically counter-acting enemy spells, though, which... which is going to be a running theme for Blue, even if these two cards' artworks look far, far more offensive in nature.
Counterspell is perhaps one of the more common themes in Blue, with many, many other variations in the future. I do like just how utterly devastated that one dude on Counterspell's artwork looks, though, sort of like if you couldn't get it up. Unsummon, meanwhile, just straight up reverses the summoning process of creatures. Again, I do like the flavour of being a class that basically finds loopholes in magic to reverse everything the enemy does.
In addition, in some of the other sorceries not shown here, are cards like "Drain Power" or "Control Magic" or the like, that, well, basically fucks up your enemy's game plan. Where Black is the evil colour, Blue is more like the dick.
I'm not sure what this is supposed to symbolize, but "Braingeyser" has one of the most metal names for a sorcery ever.
"Twiddle" is another one that isn't particularly descriptive of what it does. Every other sorcery or instant or enchantment makes it clear what it does. Invisibility makes you invisible. Raise Dead raises the dead. "Twiddle", though? You usually twiddle your thumbs, but the artwork shows this... this random island, and a piece of rock hovering above it, loosely connected with random... vines? Wires? What is going on here? Did someone 'twiddle' this piece of island? Anyway, I like this card. Not sure what it's about, but I like it.
Magical Hack! In a time where computers aren't as commonplace, hacking involves apparently lots and lots of study with a dumb-looking thinking cap in this one mage's case, and apparently this Magical Hack allows the Blue mage to fuck with an enemy's keywords. Mostly, I really enjoy the sheer absurdity of the name "Magical Hack".
Wasn't about to include this here, but the artwork of Lifetap is pretty badass, showing this pale elf chick draining the shit out of... out of whatever that thing is. A bunch of faces clustered together a central blob? Some sort of elemental or ghostly spirit?
Yeah, okay, you have Flight, which is an interesting, if somewhat mundane, spell. I get it, wizards and sorcerers sometimes use their magic to make them fly. Neat-o!
But then you have Jump, which somehow classifies as an Instant spell for Blue, the intellectual class, which is just something I find utterly hilarious. Apparently jumping classifies as an instant spell that you have to spend as much mana as a Blue Elemental Blast.
Psychic Venom is apparently the Blue magician enchanting one of the enemy's cards, causing them to take damage whenever they activate that land card. The implication is that the Blue magician's implanted, well, the psychic equivalent of poison into that specific card, but I really do like the artwork for this one, showing a hissing poisonous snake in front of a pair of eyes, a fun little symbolic piece of artwork.
In between all of these elemental blasts, psychic venoms and lifetaps is "Steal Artifact". Where the Blue magician just... straight-up burgles the enemy of a magical artifact. It's nothing fancy like taking over control, or wrestling the magical forces away, or brainwashing... it's just "steal artifact". Yep!
In the 'more badass spells' pile, though, are Timetwister and Time Walk, two time-manipulating spells. If JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is anything to go by, time manipulation is powerful as all hell, and I do really like the artwork for Timetwister, where the magician stands before an hourglass with glooping fluid within it, while the opposing warrior's equipment crumbles to rust. Neat looking stuff!
Meanwhile, Time Walk features two very bizarre looking abstract creatures with a bone-like lower body and no face, which... yeah, that's just utterly surreal as fuck. And on that fun end, we close Blue.
Green
The last colour we're covering today is Green, which is... the nature-obsessed colour, basically filling the sort of druid/beastmaster part of the fantasy.
I think when reviewing fantasy settings, I keep noting that wolves and bears are the most common generic savage beasts you'll see, and M:TG is no exception. We've got Timber Wolves and Grizly Bears, and they're... well, they're basically animals living in the forest! Not the most exciting cards here, to be honest.
Giant Spider! Always welcome to see in any fantasy setting, if admittedly about as common as bears and wolves. This Giant Spider is particularly gigantic, though, apparently the size of a smaller castle, and I do like the little running theme of spiders in M:TG specializing in basically blocking flying creatures with their web. Hell, their Web is even a possible enchantment! Neat-o!
Oh, wow, the Llanowar Elves here are some of the first elves we're going to see in M:TG, but if you didn't show me the name, I would've thought that they are buddies with Sengir Vampire up above. It's just such an angry, feral elf with a bunch of accessories borrowed from the cast of Dune or some shit. While I'm a fan of being more creative with elf interpretations, this is just kind of a bizarre one to start off as your 'basic' Elf.
At least we have Elvish Archers, which are more mundane... but despite being called "Archers", there's only one elf seen in that picture.
And here we kind of have our first wacky beast of nature. While I had originally lumped this with the bear and the wolf, apparently Thicket Basilisk isn't just a generic iguana like I thought, and it's... well, a basilisk! With multiple legs and all, as well as the ability to apparently instantly kill anything in its path, referencing the mythological basilisk's supposedly potent poison. Not the most interesting depiction of the basilisk, but a neat one nonetheless.
Another mythological creature is the Cockatrice, which also has an instant-kill ability and is able to fly, but god damn if that isn't the most charming iteration of the Cockatrice I've ever seen. Most depictions of this snake-chicken monster tended to play up some sort of a more draconic or dinosaurian look, but not this Cockatrice. It plays up the goofiness of a cartoon chicken for all that's worth, sticking a dopey-ass face and wings onto a long snake body. Look at that shit! That looks like an extra character from a 80's Disney movie, and I love it.
Haha, Fungusaur! It's a bizarre, contorted dinosaur creature that's apparently made up of fungi. It's got such a bizarre head that's like a weird cross between a hammerhead shark and a dick. I'm not 100% sure if Fungusaur is meant to be a giant fungus dinosaur, or just a dinosaur-like creature that has toadstools growing on its back. It's an ugly beast, and is pretty appropriate for what seems to be a blind, underground creature. Not bad!
Treants, Ents, Ancient, Treefolk or what-have-you have been a common trope in fantasy, and of course Green would have them! Ironroot Treefolk is utterly hilarious, though. Most depictions of tree-people in fantasy tended to contort the trees to look as badass as possible, but the Ironroot Treefolk is just a very bored-looking cartoon face painted onto a tree, with two arm-like branches. Hell, even the flavour text clearly doesn't have much respect for the Ironroot Treefolk, calling it "truly absurd" (okay, its mating habits, but still) and noting that it's a miracle the species even survived at all. An utterly unorthodox way to draw a tree-man, and while MTG would eventually gravitate more towards badass tree-people in subsequent iterations, a lot of these early Treefolk card do look pretty derpy.
Wurms or Wyrms are sort of words that are somewhat synonymous to European dragons, and tended to be used as a poetic way to refer to a gigantic, legless serpent or dragon. In MTG, "Wurm" is an entire race of gigantic serpent-like dragons (or dragon-like serpents?), and the first Wurm to show up is the humble Craw Wurm, a big vanilla creature. Do love the fun description of the Craw Wurm being so big that the sound of it crashing through the forest comes from all over the forest, and are those little people on the Craw Wurm's snout? Poor doomed fools.
We go from fantastical creatures to... a relatively simple real-life creature, the War Mammoth. Not just a mammoth, but the equivalent to a warhorse. I really feel that the artwork could've perhaps communicated this better by showing the rider, though.
It's just a bunch of colourful birds flying. The Birds of Paradise card, I think, is actually the result of a happy error, where the artist is supposed to draw one of the Island cards or something, but the birds ended up attracting attention that the game designers decided to use the artwork for a card specifically about the Bird. Okay.
Each colour is assigned a couple of Walls in this first set, and Green gets three -- Wall of Brambles, Wall of Ice and Wall of Wood. I really love the artwork for Wood, but other than that I really don't have much to say. It's a neat adaptation of another piece of fantasy trope regarding 'wrath of nature' stuff, sure, but I just don't find it super-interesting.
Oh, hey, it's Swamp Thing's angrier cousin, the Force of Nature! We don't actually get any fancy lore here, sadly, but I do like the idea of nature itself taking a humanoid avatar to punch invaders in the face. Force of Nature is hilariously classified as a "Force" here, and, of course, subsequent iterations and reprints would turn this into an Elemental.
Gaea's Liege is another sort of nature-made-manifest, and it's... it's a bearded dude! With horns! Sort of reminds me of Malfurion from World of Warcraft. I guess Gaea's Liege is a less... angry version of the Force of Nature, or something?
With anything surrounding the 'power of nature' tends to eventually go to faeries, and Scryb Sprites are the typical small faeries frolicking in flowers and fruits. I do love the little insect antennae and the huge wing-like capes (cape-like wings?) that they have. I do like the little description that came with the blurb, establishing that these little buggers aren't a joke, and will definitely do the whole 'chase out mortal intruders' shebang.
Shanodin Dryads are, well, the sort of dryad/nymph/wood spirit that is also pretty common in popular culture, being a humanoid female fairy made out of wood. Do like how her arms are actually still branches and leaves. Not really much to say here, the first set just kind of wants to get the 'classic' appearances of these monsters as a baseline, and I do respect that. It's not until later expansions that we get some more creative monsters.
We've got "just an assassin" and "just a sorcerer" in Black and Blue, but Ley Druid, despite being "just a druid", actually feels like he belongs in Green, actually looking like a magician trying to commune with nature! Verduran Enchantress is even more elaborate, going full-on Poison Ivy in how her fingernails just straight-up grow into plant vines.
Sorceries and Enchantments now! Green actually has a whole ton of random natural disasters like Hurricane and Ice Storm that I'm not really covering, but I feel like I have to mention. Likewise, a lot of Green cards, like Wild Growth here, are just 'nature growing peacefully'. I'm just including Wild Growth because of me personally finding it neat that Wild Growth is basically identical in both M:TG and Hearthstone.
Meanwhile, Kudzu (named after a real-life climbing vine) is a far more lethal version of Wild Growth, showing some poor schmuck being dragged to his doom by plants. I think that's one of the themes of Green, that nature can be peaceful and signal rebirth... and can also kill whoever they want. One thing's for sure, being an illegal logger or poacher in the M:TG universe is not worth it.
Oh, I do like the artwork for this one! Living Lands basically turns all of your Land cards into creatures, and the artwork shows the undergrown of a forest straight-up turning into humanoid creatures with that creepy-ass face. Man, between Force of Nature punching you in the face, sprites leading you astray and now these literal chunks of the forest coming to life, you really don't want to piss off mother nature.
Giant Growth is another common trope in fantasy, where small creatures grow larger, but I really do love how the picture here draws your attention to the huge, mangy rat... and then you raelize that the pile of rocks next to it are human skulls. Don't fuck with Mickey, is all I'm saying.
Oh, hey, it's a freaking green embryo! I'm not sure whose embryo Lifeforce is showing, but it's kind of a bizarre yet cool piece, I think. It's just pretty dang bizarre.
I waffled between ending my first M:TG commentary on either Living Artifact or the card after this, and I decided that the honour should go to the next card. Living Artifact is pretty damn fun, though. See, Artifacts are these non-coloured cards that represent magical items that anyone can use regardless of their mana specialty. Well, apparently mother nature just straight-up made a Living Artifact, and I really do love how tortured this thing looks, with tentacles jutting in all directions of its cage, with eyes and a weird mouth with a tongue sticking out... truly, a surprising abomination to find in Green of all things instead of Black. Neat looking monster!
But my favourite Green card has to be this. Natural Selection. It's this weird-looking dude with a tiger body and claws, and a bird's head, and he's holding a peach. Apparently, this is what counts as Natural Selection in Dominaria. This weird gryphon tiger-man that we never really see after this, and he's also holding a peach. "I select this."
Anyway, this has been fun. Click the break for a bunch of cards that I really don't have much to say about, with a couple of brief commentaries for some of them. But ultimately, I did have fun. If I ever decide to do the other pre-Mirrodin sets, I probably would be far, far more concise, it's just that as the first M:TG set, I feel like I'm sort of obliged to talk a bit more.
Cards I don't have much to say about:
Really do like the artwork on Deathlace, though! Also find the concept of "Sinkhole" as an ability to be pretty fun in a card game that revolves so strongly around manipulating 'land'.
Look at Howl from Beyond! RAWR ME DEMON ME SO ANGRY RARR
Word of Command is literally just a blank screen with two sleepy eyes, what the hell. That's just lazy.
I don't have much to say about them, since they're just basically "ah, appropriate abilities for Black to have", but Pestilence and Mind Twist really do have artwork that absolutely fit their cards' names to a T.
What is Stasis meant to be, though? I really don't know.
Ancestral Recall has that Nebuchadnezaar-looking dude really trying his hard to do a Professor X impression.
That dude on Psionic Blast's artwork really needs some Acentaminophen.
Dude in Power Sink's artwork really looks like he had a bad accident with mustard.
So is "Copy Artifact" a magical duplication, or is it just as mundane as "Steal Artifact" is?
Blue has a lot of spells that fuck with the enemy, but none here are super-interesting, honestly.
I'm not sure what's going on with "Lure" there, honestly.
Considering how overused the term has become in social media, I find it hilarious that "Wanderlust" is a card.
I do like the utterly batshit-crazy expression on "Berserk", mind you.
Between Hurricane, Ice Storm and Tsunami, yeah, we do get the impression that Green really embodies the whole wrath of nature deal.
Really stylized artwork on Regenerate and Channel, huh? For better or for worse, these more stained-glass-esque artwork will be utterly phased out after the first couple of expansions.
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