Again, I'm not a particularly avid or learned Magic player, so a lot of my opinions is just going to be in terms of flavour of these cards. As with the original... core set? Base set? Expansion? What do you call Beta/Unlimited, anyway? We're not going to talk about every single card. In fact, I'm going to skip a fair amount of cards, due to the fact that neither Arabian Nights or Antiquities' themes really appeal to me.
The first real expansion, Arabian Nights, is... is where Magic: The Gathering is still kind of experimental, with a whole lot of references to actual real-life myths, what with some public-domain (?) characters like Aladdin showing up as cards, and the theme is basically cards inspired by the Middle-Eastern Arabian Nights aesthetic. I'm pretty glad that they actually abandoned it pretty quickly, and instead just goes straight onto trying to craft their own mythology.
General content warning: the Arabian Nights set was released in a different time, for a different audience, at a time when people are not quite as sensitive at making things that might unintentionally offend people from a certain race or religion. And as such, at least for most of the article, I'm not going to do call-outs on any particularly... unfortunate parts of the expansion. Just keep that in mind.
Antiquities is a step in the right direction, slowly weaning off the random quotes and references to real-life literature, and starts building up this world of Dominaria mentioned in passing in previous cards. I'm not super familiar with the lore of older sets, and there are actual novels and stuff written about this setting. The gist of the story of Antiquities, which I read entirely from the very convenient MTG Wiki, two powerful sorcerer brothers, Urza and Mishra, discover powerful artifacts, and one particularly powerful stone splits into two, unleashing the evil of Phyrexia (M:TG's resident main villains, basically magic-themed Borg crossed with zombie tropes), while the two brothers battle to try and gain control of the artifacts. Neat.
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ARABIAN NIGHTS:
See what I mean about real-life myths? We've got Aladdin and Ali Baba amongst the red-coloured creatures. I'm not really going to go too much into saying anything about the actual folk stories that inspired the story of these two. Also, back in this era, the term "Legend", denoting a unique character, hasn't been invented yet, so apparently Aladdin's race is just Aladdin and Ali Baba's race is just Ali Baba. M'kay. Also, Aladdin has... some almost Chinese-looking features in this card. Because some of the earliest versions of the story actually set Aladdin's story as taking place in China, something that I did not know until I typed in "Aladdin Chinese" while doing this. The more you know!
Rukh Egg is actually a pretty neat card, being a weak egg that you spend mana to summon onto the field, and when it's destroyed, it summons the actual Rukh -- the original spelling of "Roc" -- into the battlefield.
I really am not a super huge fan on Arabian Nights, and it's a relatively small expansion, so a relatively large proportion of it is going to be relegated to the post-break segment. Bird Maiden is a pretty nice-looking bird lady, though. I do love how her bird wing and tail ensemble sort of grows out of her back more like a hang-glider, and she just looks so dang happy to be around.
Ydwen Efreet, and efreets (or ifrits, or ifreets) in general are death-jinns from Middle Eastern mythology, and while this particular one doesn't have the best looking artwork, it's definitely all right to see one of these referenced.
Okay, a Magnetic Mountain is actually a pretty neat fantasy location, and I'm definitely a huge fan of the artwork. Blades, pots, pans, a storm of nails and even an anchor-chain ensemble being all drawn to the magnetic mountain? It's also an actual reference to one of the stories in 1001 Tales from the Arabian Nights!
Oubliette: [ou·bli·ette] noun. A secret dungeon with access only through a trapdoor in its ceiling.
The more you know!
As usual, Black gets the 'evil' monsters of the group. Both Juzam Djinn and Junum Efreet are far more demonic than that one Disney-style genie from the first expansion, as well as the Ydwen Efreet up above. Nothing particularly interesting to say here, other than the fact that I do appreciate that they're making djinn/jinn/genies to be fairly more demonic and not just wish-granting smoke-spirits.
I don't actually have a whole ton to talk about this set's Black offerings, actually -- a lot of them are just retreading the same ground that the first expansion did, just a bunch of evil devils and spirits and whatnot without anything particularly noteworthy to mention. Guardian Beast is probably the only other neat one, being this four-armed... ape-like thing with glowing yellow eyes and a figure partially shrouded in shadow. S'neat.
Not going in any particular order, we have green now. Erhnam Djinn is... I'm not sure which of these two green-coloured djinni are supposed to be the Erhnam Djinn, but I do like just how fun they seem to have, with the one in the foreground doing his best Tarzan impression, while the one in the background seemingly walking on tornadoes.
Being the "force of nature" colour, Green actually gets a couple of neat cards based on Sandstorms and Desert Twisters, which I thought was kinda neat.
Singing Tree is such a wacky name and such a weird card to stylistically include in an expansion based on deserts and the like, and I do like how the actual humanoid mouth on the Singing Tree is just subtly drawn to not catch your attention at first glance.
White, now! It's fun to have Camel and War Elephant as cards, and I'm actually surprised that they're classified as White instead of Green. I suppose they're ones used by the 'good guys'? It's neat.
Shahrazad is the alternate spelling of Scherezade, main character of the 1001 Tales of the Arabian Nights, who, in order to keep her husband, the king, from killing her (it's a long story), would tell him tale after tale for 1001 nights. Said stories are what comprised the titular 1001 Tales. In the spirit of the whole "stories within a story" gimmick, the Shahrazad card actually forces both players to basically do a mini-game of Magic: The Gathering while playing Magic: The Gathering.
Dandan is another one that's taken from 1001 Nights, the name of the largest fish in the sea and the enemy of the mermen of the sea, capable of swallowing an entire ship in a single gulp. It's certainly a pretty looking artwork, showing the looking face of something gigantic looking up from the water. The fact that it looks otherwise pretty ordinary for a massive leviathan adds an extra sense of surrealness, I think.
Sindbad (alternatively and more commonly known as Sinbad) the Sailor is another one of the more famous characters from 1001 Tales. The artwork actually depicts him in the second voyage that he did, upon which he faced a gigantic roc and hitched a ride to go to the fantastical breeding grounds of the rocs.
The Old Man of the Sea is one of Sinbad's antagonists, encountered in his fifth voyage, being a monster who tricks travelers to letting him ride on his shoulders, but later on refusing to release his grip and forcing his victim to carry the Old Man wherever he pleased until they die of exhaustion. Sinbad basically defeats the Old Man of the Sea by getting him drunk with wine and subsequently killing him. I really do like how scrawny the Old Man looks in his artwork, although I was slightly baffled by what it is he's holding as a weapon. Is it just like a random reed?
"Serendib", as seen here in Serendib Djinn and Serendib Efreet, is actually the old name for Sri Lanka, and the sheer bizarreness of having terms that refer to real-world cultures and countries is genuinely baffling to me. Anyway... the Serendib Djinn is actually the only djinn or genie in this set that, I think, fits the most common Disney-inspired Disney-genie, being a ghost-man whose lower body trails off, and he's even got facial hair and arm-bands inspired by Disney's Genie! Serendib Djinn goes to a completely different barbershop to get those thunderbolt style hair, though.
Serendib Efreet is a completely different monster altogether, manifesting from a different sort of lamp, and I really do love the short string that connects the Efreet's half-manifested upper body with what's presumably the rest of him inside that bottle. But I really love the bizarre one face, two mouths, two chins deal going on, as well as having his left arm just straight-up be a dagger. It's just kinda bizarre, and in a good way.
A WHOLE NEW WORLD / A NEW FANTASTIC POINT OF VIEW
You got to have a flying carpet in an Arabian-Nights inspired set. Even if this one is called "Flying Men", the artifacts section actually does have a Flying Carpet anyone can buy. Fun fact: the original Aladdin story doesn't actually feature flying carpets, it's taken from a different 1001 Nights story.
It's a Giant Tortoise! I like tortoises, and I especially like giant tortoises as monsters. There's... really not a whole ton else for me to say.
The Island Fish Jasconius is named after Jasconius, a legend taken from Irish myth of the Legend of Saint Brenda. There is a giant island fish in the Arabian Nights stories, though, encountered by Sinbad in his first voyage, and I'm not sure why they decided to conflate it with another random myth. Island Fish Jasconius is pretty awesome, though, with the artwork showing that hilarious dead-fish-eyes and those fish lips poking out from one side of the island, while the rest of it still looks like a couple of mountains with palm trees growing out of it.
We just have Fishliver Oil as a card. After all those fancy giant monsters, djinnis and random legends pilfered from different myths, you just have... fish liver oil. Not even Island Fish Jasconius liver oil. It's just... it's just something you can go to a market and purchase, but apparently in M:TG world it gives creatures the Islandwalk ability. Okay then!
Gonna skip over a huge majority of the other artifacts in Arabian Nights, other than acknowledging Aladdin's Lamp and Aladdin's Ring, the two djinni-containing artifacts from the original legend (the Disney film combines both genies and both artifacts into a single item, the lamp). It's neat.
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ANTIQUITIES
And now we move into Antiquities, which is a set that mechanically revolves around the Artifact card type, with every single card either being an Artifact or mentioning Artifacts in their effect. It's... it's interesting from a gaming mechanic, I am sure, but at the same time I've talked about how Artifact cards tend to be the least interesting for me to actually talk about here. So... let's kinda talk about the actual storyline in Antiquities, I guess? Unlike Alpha/Unlimited and Arabian Nights, there's an actual story here!
Quoting the M:TG Wiki on this expansion's storyline:
Ancient artifacts of the Thran Empire are discovered on the continent of Terisiare, including many advanced machines of war. Two brothers, Urza and Mishra, discover a stone in the Caves of Koilos; but, when they disturb it, it splits in two—Mightstone and Weakstone—unleashing the evil of Phyrexia on Dominaria. The ancient machines of the Thran are employed in battle once again as the Brothers' War takes place, an epic war between Urza and Mishra for control of both halves of the stone. The war culminates in the Sylex Blast, plunging the world into the Ice Age.
Urza is otherwise known on this blog as "that dude with the sunglasses".
It's the backdrop for a storyline that's going to be ongoing for Magic's next... oh, I dunno, six or seven sets? Whatever the case, I'm not as well-versed in M:TG lore at all, and the sheer amount of novels and writings that I would have to track down is a bit immense... but I'll read the Wiki profiles and whenever possible, I'll try and cover boring cards that are relevant to the story.
Let's start with White, this time around, and we'll go off with Argivian Archaeologist and Argivian Blacksmith. Argive, as MTG Wiki tells me, is one of the three kingdoms of Terisiare on Dominaria, and homeland to the two brothers Urza and Mishra (neither of whom actually would be represented in cards for a long time). Archaeologists are a pretty neat fit, lore-wise, into an expansion all about ancient artifacts, even if the Argivian Archaeologist does bizarrely wear what seems to be a set of modern-day clothing.
I really like the flavour text for these, which help to build up a society that's interested in searching remnants of an older era, and reassembling the strange, mechanical creatures in that land. Actually, each of the colours have their own flavour on how they relate to artifacts, and White's is excavation, it seems. We'll go through the different colours and the lands, before going to the artifacts themselves.
I just really like just how utterly baffled Skull-Helmet Johnny in the background looks in the artwork for Reverse Polarity. Which is doubly hilarious for the utterly absurd and very sci-fi sounding name.
Argothian Treefolk and Argothian Pixies here represents, Argoth, apparently a large, lush island that's probably the setting of a whole lot of Green cards in this set. As the flavour of these two cards notes, it's been devastated by the artificer war, and the magical creatures in the forest have adapted to basically counter said magical artifacts.
The Pixies are kinda boring, but I do like the bizarre look of the Argothian Treefolk. While Ironroot Treefolk from the first M:TG set is just a tree with a face, I do like how the Argothian Treefolk look far more humanoid, like someone carved humanoid statues out of a large tree.
Gaea's Avenger is, a creature in the same vein as... Gaea's... Liege? From unlimited. The one where the artwork is a bearded tree-dude's face, in any case. I don't remember every single card name, sorry! Gaea's Avenger is a far more conventionally cool version, and it's far more suitable since it's born out of mother nature's wrath against these damn users of artifacts. I do like the somewhat lizard-like face it has made entirely out of branches, the hair made out of leaves, and the fact that it somehow has fashioned crude armour out of... rocks? Different coloured-bark?
Most of Green's destructive effects have the general feel of being consumed by nature and returning back to dust and ashes, but Crumble is actually pretty cool, representing someone repenting their "faith" on unliving devices, and is thus granted new life (healed, in gameplay terms) while losing one of the artifacts they control. It's actually pretty obvious that the nature-loving Green would be the most opposed to the unnaturally enchanted artifacts.
Meanwhile, while Green is happy to destroy them, Blue is way too busy trying to unravel the secrets on how the world works. We don't actually have a lot of coloured-mana cards in this set, but cards like Transmute Artifact do focus more on flavour with what little space they have. Pretty cool artwork in this case.
Holy shit, Sage of Lat-Nam, I know you're probably busy trying to figure out the science and magic behind all of these magical artifacts, but jeez, that is a long-ass beard. That has got to get in the way of things. Like walking. Or going to the loo.
Reconstruction shows off what the Sages of Lat-Nam are up to, and while it's actually just repairing a broken artifact, the visceral way that this skeletal robot humanoid is put together, with a skeleton-like body to boot, is a pretty dang cool piece of artwork. I really do like the flavour of Blue in this set, too, where it starts to explore Blue's role as the one that's most curious colour, trying to unravel the secrets of magic FOR SCIENCE.
"Artifact Blast achieved widespread fame", apparently, as the first line of defense against Urza and Mishra... until, of course, things that the two main characters create are, unsurprisingly, immune to the power of Artifact Blast. It's a pretty hilarious name regardless, and I do love the fact that this tablet for whatever reason has like eyes all over the pieces. Meanwhile, I just really love the name Shatterstorm, even if smashing a golden wineglass is nowhere as impressive as ARTIFACT BLAST.
Sadly, they don't really have much in lieu of flavour text, but the Goblin Artisans have one of the most hilariously charming artwork, even if the Goblins apparently shop at the same modern-clothes store that Argivian Archaeologist shops in, what with those hard-hats and whatnot. This honestly is the start of goblins turning into M:TG's resident funny, wacky sources of comedic humour, something I'm pretty A-Okay with.
What is an Atog? It's one of Magic's first original creature types instead of just adapting something from a myth, and Atogs will show up a bunch of times in subsequent sets. The original depiction of the Atog is utterly bizarre, though, just showing a creature from the neck up, with a somewhat stone-like consistency to his skin with veins running through it. It's got a pretty neat-looking pair of golden alien-esque peepers, and that insanely wide, wide grin, which just looks hilarious as all hell. The Atog, it seems, is a creature that is happy to chomp on artifacts and shit.
Black doesn't care for crafting their artifacts like Red, or excavating them like White, or studying them like Blue... they just straight up steal the powers of the artifacts, as in Artifact Possession here, where they apparently employ "Thrax-o-demons" to possess magical swords and shit. I do like this wacky-looking Thraxodemon, this worm-man with lots of horns and a bug-like face.
Xenic Poltergeist is a poltergeist, which I am pretty glad is its own race. And it's neither Merlin or Sorting Hat dude hiding under the table, it's the ghost throwing that book at him. "Oh no! A book thrown at me! As a magician with the power to bend reality to my whims, that is my one, sole weakness!" Sod off, pussy wizard.
Gate to Phyrexia? Shit, I didn't realize Phyrexia showed up so early in M:TG! Huh. The Plane of Phyrexia (a.k.a. Machine Hell... no, really) is basically the over-arching Big Bad of the entire series, being this dimension of mechanical, unnatural life, which, in retrospect, is probably very fitting that it's one of the antagonists introduced in an expansion all about artifacts. Anyway, the less-good brother, Mishra (honestly, neither Urza nor Mishra really end up coming off as good people from what I get from the set), would later tap into the powers of Phyrexia in a bid to destroy his brother.
Priest of Yawgmoth is a reference to the main bad guy of M:TG, Yawgmoth, the 'god' of Phyrexia. We'll talk about him more when he becomes more relevant, but Priest of Yawgmoth does show off a pretty awesome-looking man created entirely out of gold metal plates, as sort of a 'preview', I guess, of what Phyrexia looks like. I absolutely love the bizarre skull-but-not-quite-a-skull face he has, the segmented robot fingers as well as the random red pipe running from his wrist to the palm of his hand.
Yawgmoth Demon looks a bit more comical than scary, I feel, just being mostly a stylized skeleton... until you reach his head, which has this utterly bizarre skull-face with a long chin and worm-like tendril hair.
And apparently... you just have Phyrexian Gremlins. And I absolutely love the little bug-eyed buggers are just running around and presumably destroying artifacts in their wake. They're probably Phyrexia's resident pests, aren't they? I just adore the angry-looking one with those adorable fangs at the center of the art, above the huge blue wheel-gear thing. Gremlins and their ability to fuck up machinery is actually a very neat inclusion in this block!
We're going to rush through the artifacts, and talk about some of the ones I find the most interesting. The Golgothian Sylex, presumably named after the Biblical Golgotha, might look pretty boring. It's a fucking bowl! But it's actually the most powerful artifact in this set, and one that ended the Brothers' War. Used by Urza in desperation the final battle of the war, the Golgothian Sylex blew up all the involved armies, the island of Argoth, and destroyed most of Dominaria's major civilizations, causing the Ice Age. It's flavour text, hinting at the mysteriously ancient predecessors to humanity in Dominaria, is actually subtly chilling, too.
Its effect is to just remove every single card from this particular conflict -- i.e. the Antiquities expansion. Which is just kinda fucking crazy!
The two artifacts that the brothers Urza and Mishra found. Urza found the Mightstone, and would later use it to bolster his own armies during the war, while Mishra found the far-less-impressively-named Weakstone, which he would use to weaken Urza's armies. Oh, and in the process of this conflict, they unleashed the evil forces of Phyrexia into the world, so good job there, guys. I would've definitely just lumped these two with the other "cool, but I don't have anything to say about them" cards at the end.
Actually, I do have something to say about the Weakstone, in that... what the fuck is that thing? That weird... emancipated dog-crocodile thing without ears? Is that what the Weakstone does to you? Jeez, no wonder Mishra became evil.
Trust me, there are a lot of these "just a magical artifact" cards, and I'm just going to talk about those that I really find interesting. And I do like the Armageddon Clock, mostly for its name, but also for how it functions. I don't always read the cards, preferring to enjoy their flavour as opposed to their mechanics, but the way Armageddon Clock works, causing increasing damage to everyone as it 'ticks down', is pretty damn flavourful for a doomsday clock. There's a whole theme of risk-taking involved, too, with each player having the chance to spend their own resources to remove a counter from the Armageddon Clock.
Su-Chi is another artifact that I kinda like, being a staff shaped like the upper jaw and face os a snake, complete with exposed brain for some reason, and a 'cage' seemingly representing the snake's scalp bursting open or something. I dunno, I really do like the look of this staff a fair bit. It's also apparently a 4/4 creature in addition to being a staff, which makes it as powerful as an Air Elemental.
Ashnod is Mishra's apprentice, and she's got a bunch of other cards in this set showing off her creations. One of the coolest has to be Ashnod's Transmogrant, which apparently is a process that involves a giant sci-fi glass jar where some poor, helpless schmuck is thrown in, gets whatever that red substance is introduced to them, and they get turned into.. these hollow-eyed naked skinless blue men, basically turning whatever it touches into Artifact Creatures and causing them to lose their humanity. Or elven-ty. Or goblin-ity. Or whatever race the creature originally was.
I do like Primal Clay's flavour, in that you, the magician controlling these spells and artifacts, is able to mould the primal clay into whichever form suits you the most out of several choices.
Meanwhile, while his glasses and sunglasses were some of my favourite cards from the original Unlimited/Alpha/Beta core set, Urza's Chalice continues the trend of Mr. Sunglasses' mundane items being secretly powerful artifacts of doom.
As noted by the flavour text for Yotian Soldier, Urza's more of a well-intentioned extremist, although he, too, ended up escalating the war by creating soldiers of metal. Do love the weird ant-like face on the Yotian Soldier's face, actually.
The Colossus of Sardia actually has a pretty badass artwork of a giant, unliving statue laying waste to a town, and its poem-like flavour text helps to paint a very neat flavour of the whole "ancient magical items laying waste to the land" conflict.
The Rack is a bizarre torture device where you torture weird dummies with disturbing expressions. The poor dummy is ripped crotch-first, which can't be comfortable. It's apparently one of Mishra's creations? His apprentice Ashnod ended up inventing the Cursed Rack, which actually rips all four limbs of the dummy apart and causes non-sentient dummies to have expressions of pain.
Among the many, many magical staves and amulets and swords in this set, one of the artifacts is a MOTHER FUCKING ROCKET LAUNCHER which I just find to be utterly hilarious. It's actually a pretty neat-looking quasi-fantasy rocket launcher too, looking like it is a magical device that has the approximate shape and function of a rocket launcher, but doesn't work in the same way real-life bazookas do.
I love robots and I cannot lie. I also love dinosaurs, and I cannot lie. Clockwork Avian is a fucking metal pterodactyl, complete with a sci-fi red coloured visor! It is pretty damn awesome.
Millstone is the origin of the trading card game "milling", which is basically to moving cards out of your opponent's deck into somewhere less useful (typically the graveyard), and denying them resources that they could use. Just like Demonic Tutor, I never realized just how bizarrely out-of-place a literal magical millstone is. Apparently the sound drives people insane, which is represented by them losing 'spells' from their mind. It's just so bizarre that they chose to give the insanity and amnesia causing effect to the humble millstone.
As a bonus, I absolutely love the newer artwork for the Millstone from Magic 2014, a card I actually own, representing a mill grinding away some poor rock dude's brain to dust. It's just a pretty damn surreal image!
It really is a shame that Tetravus has a literal wall of text but no real description as to what it is other than the fact that it's an 'artifact creature'. It's got some vaguely Aztec-esque feel to it, and I really love how he's got three colours, actually, and that bizarre face, with eyes that have antennae sticking out of them and the weird flap-covered mouth is just wacky. Presumably, it's some sort of non-sentient flying... bug-worm robot thing? I like it, in any case.
The Onulet isn't much better, and I'm not even sure if this is supposed to be a mobile creature or not. For all the world, it looks more like a long dining table with a bull's face carved on the side.
Hahahahaa what the fuuuuuuck is this thing. The Triskelion is no doubt meant to be a scary war-machine, as that chimney on his back shows, but that goofy-ass expression with that gigantic trap-jaw, and those glued-on googly-eyes just makes the Triskelion look so utterly daft, yet charming at the same time. Also a huge, huge fan of those stiff-looking robot arms. Tawnos, the creator of this thing, is apparently Urza's apprentice. I like your style, Mr. Tawnos.
Meanwhile, Mishra's War Machine doesn't really look like a War Machine. In fact, it looks more like a giant carriage that's see through for some reason? It's weird.
Wall of Spears continues M:TG's trend of having Walls in most of their sets. I don't think there's one in Arabian Nights, though. Not much to say here, although it's sure a bit bizarre to go from fantastical magical objects and robots to just a wall made out of spears.
And to close out this set before I go through all of the others I don't have much to talk about is the Ornithopter, which is... it's one of those Da Vincian flight machines, presumably meant to be used like a hang-glider, but it's just got such a ridiculously funny name. The Ornithopter! What a fun name.
Arabian Nights cards:
Apparently among the Efreets of the land and characters from 1001 Nights, we've got... Ali From Cairo. Who is just... Ali. From Cairo. What the frick? Also, we've got a djinn and two more "just an animals". I think this is the first we've seen an ape of any sort? (Also, have another djinn).
Yeah, a bunch of these are just generic-looking Middle Eastern inspired dudes with curved swords, mustaches and turbans. Definitely neat as part of a backdrop, but it doesn't leave much for me to talk about. El-Hajjaj is apparently based on Al-Hajjaj, a real-life tyrannical governor that's painted as a villain in some stories in the Arabian Nights.
So here we have a swarm of devils, a grotesque ogre-lady, a skeleton ghoul and an evil sorceress-queen. A bunch of fun assorted evil creatures, but nothing particularly exciting or new.
A bunch of 'more of the same', actually. Just a wolf, an ogre, a green-skinned efreet and a snake. I do like that Nafs Asp specifically refers to the snake as an asp, which is a neat term that basically means 'venomous snake' in the Egyptian area. I do find the wolf and the asp to look particularly neat, but not much to really say.
I'm too lazy to read the effects for each one of the cards, but Metamorphosis and Cyclone both have pretty cool-looking artworks, if nothing else.
More Middle-Eastern flavoured scenes that I really don't have anything to say about. A special note is Abu Ja'far, who borrows his name from a specific historical figure... but for whatever reason, instead of "Summon Abu Ja'far", it's... summon leper? I'm pretty sure that neither the historical figure nor the Disney villain borrowing his name are lepers, so... what?
Special mention goes to the first two cards here, which have names that are totally never going to be able to see print nowadays. Yeah, using someone's culture and religion and using them as card names in a children's card game is not a decision that aged well at all. I'm trying to not condemn something made in 1993, but still, perhaps the biggest 'what the hell', because, well, assigning stats and effects to someone's religion is not a good thing for you to do. King Suleiman, while based on 1001 Arabian Nights' interpretation of King Solomon (which is flavourful and all), but his card quotes the Quran, which... yeah, another huge oops.
And we're in artifacts now. I... don't have a whole ton to say about any of these.
I have no idea who Jandor is, and why his saddlebags, of all thing, is considered a mighty artifact. The Ring of Ma'ruf is another ring in the 1001 Nights in the story of someone who found a ring with a djinn sealed within.
City in a Bottle has some of the most... wacky effect, for sure, countering an entire expansion of cards, but I really don't have much to say about the rest.
And we get a bunch of new Land cards. Including the Bazaar of Baghdad, with Baghdad, of course, the setting of many of the actual 1001 Arabian Nights stories. Not sure why we have Pyramids (or Library of Alexandria), it's Arabian Nights, not Egyptian Nights! Wait for Amonkhet, Pyramids.
As much as I do have a problem with the fantasy-vs-reality naming of this set, I do actually appreciate them having extra Land cards to sort of 'set' the theme of the location. Like Desert and Oasis, as bland as they kinda are.
White doesn't really bring much for me to talk about in Antiquities. The Martyrs of Korlis really look like a pair of male models posing for a bodybuilding magazine, though, and we get another variant of Circle of Protection from Unlimited/Alpha.
It's an Enchantment, but I do really like that giant weird leech-centipede-snake-wyrm creature on Powerleech's art. We also get to see another generic druid, as well as our first representation of the goddess Titania in Titania's Song, who I know shows up a couple of times in subsequent expansions.
A bunch of "Blue is experimenting on things!" instants and enchantments, but none that ends up being super interesting.
Hee hee, look at that dumb-ass looking Orc Mechanic. He just looks so pissed off! He and Dwarven Weaponsmith sort of play into Red's role as the ones that create weapons, alongside the Goblin Artisans.
We get a bunch of lands, but unlike the backdrops of Arabian Nights, the ones here feel a bit more personal and tied to the Urza/Mishra storyline. Absolutely love the descriptive text on Strip Mine: "unlike previous conflicts, the war between Urza and Mishra made Dominia itself a casualty of war." Really don't have much to say about the rest of them, although Mishra's Workshop and Urza's Tower kinda help to sort of set up the difference between the brothers two.
A bunch of "just a weapon", which, don't get me wrong, definitely fit the set very well, helping to depict the arms race between increasingly powerful magical weaponry. I just don't have anything to say about them.
A lot of these artifact cards actually make small references to minor characters who would be later referenced in subsequent cards, but otherwise they're just kind of nicely-drawn objects.
Obelisk of Undoing has a pretty fucking badass name! Also, Ashnod's Altar is clearly less of an altar and more of an operating table.
You've got sentient clay golems, magical candelabras and golden wands, but apparently Battering Rams also count as one of the many magical artifacts in this set.
Kind of similar to Yotian Soldier as a robot-man created by Urza, Urza's Avenger's artwork is a really cool looking blueprint that sets it apart from many of the other artifact cards here.
Yeah, sure, Dragon Engine is a neat magic steampunk dragon, but he ain't got nothing on Clockwork Avian! I am also not sure why Shapeshifter is considered an artifact creature, we've had doppelgangers in the original core set. Really could've picked a more interesting name for sure.
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