Anyway, the expansion we're going through here is the third expansion set, Legends, which included two particular types of cards that multi-coloured cards, cards which required more than one colour of mana to play, and tended to mix flavours from both colours. It also introduced Legends (later renamed as 'Legendary'), which are supposed to represent important figures, objects and locations, and only one Legend of a given name can exist on the field. Both of these are pretty revolutionary, and are going to be one of the biggest staples from here on out.
Unlike Antiquities, though, there isn't any full story in the Legends expansion, and instead we've got a bunch of short stories, comics and novels crafted out of the characters introduced in this set. There's no real overarching story beyond just building up the fantasy setting of Dominaria, which is... it's neat, but at the same time also makes it a bit of a pain to get the gist of the stories some 20-30 years later.
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And let's start with a couple of the titular Legends! All of the multi-coloured mana cards in this set are actually Legends, and they're... they're supposed to be heroes and villains of the setting, but, honestly, not all of them are particularly interesting design-wise, and even with the extended universe and whatnot, not all of them received any sort of notability beyond "yeah, he's a legendary card one time". Some of them starred in novels or something!
Boris Devilboon does definitely look like a minor evil necromancer or vizier in a fantasy setting, probably a mini-boss or something. Sivitri Scarzam is a half-naked lady with some very badass looking boots, a cape and whatever those green spikes are, and she goes around riding dragons! Pretty neat looking.
Every legend/legendary card in this set is just called "Summon Legend", but Wizards of the Coast would later release an errata for every single old card that tells us that someone like Axelrod Gunnarson and The Lady of the Mountain are actually legendary giants. Axel is a bit more obvious, although I'm not sure what he's doing in that art. Spreading some powder over a bunch of trees?
Oh, hey, it's a tiger-man! I don't think the actual race "Catfolk" or the Leonin race would be introduced until much later, but Jedit Ojanen here would be retroactively retconned to be a "Legendary Cat Warrior". He's like if Tony the Tiger spent a couple of months hanging out with the cast of Sparctacus! Kinda cool, actually. Jedit's apparently starred in a two-volume comic! Neat.
It's not super obvious from the art, but Rubinia Soulsinger is actually a Fairy, as established by the same errata'd races. Under closer inspection, those are indeed bug wings growing out of her back! Appropriately, she apparently has a fairy's bewitching powers, able to take control of one of your opponent's creatures.
We're going to get some actual non-legendary Kobolds down the line, but they also get the Red/Black legendary boss, Rohgahh of Kher Keep. Kobolds are some of the more interesting creature types whenever you delve into a fantasy-RPG setting, with practically most forms of Kobolds I've seen in different settings being relatively different and the only similar feature among them are that they're short, quasi-magical creatures. Apparently, M:TG's Kobolds are just fat, warty goblins.
And then, holy shit, we've got... what is this? Xira Arien is apparently a member of a humanoid wasp race known as the Eumidians, represented exactly in the thousands of cards in Magic: The Gathering with this one lady. She's a humanoid lady in a dress with bug wings, a pointed face with only bug-eyes, and I'm not sure if that wide-brim headpiece is part of her anatomy, or just a fancy hat. She's a pretty cool looking insect lady, in any case, and while the card talks about her being a guest at a masquerade, she's actually an assassin, and faced off against Tetsuo Umezawa in a couple of novels.
Dakkon Blackblade is a tri-coloured legendary warrior, and he's reasonably cool, being an armoured warrior with a pretty badass sword and shield. That shield's pretty dang interesting of a design, honestly, and that's actually a pretty neat little blurb. Blackblade is apparently the star of a short comic book series released around this point in time. Halfdane is another one that's kind of interesting, being a legendary shapeshifter, and apparently went around impersonating people and killing them off, becoming one of the major antagonists in a couple of novels. Kinda cool, I guess?
Ramirez DiPietro is a pirate, apparently, and one that is noted as "a most flamboyant" one. Okay? Definitely would've thought that he's a woman if I hadn't read the flavour text. I'm pretty sure that this is our first pirate card in M:TG? Gwendlyn Di Corci (not Gwendolyn, Gwendlyn) is apparently meant to be a seducer-assassin and... as far as these things go, she's actually a somewhat tasteful depiction of one. Even if I'm not sure what part of her is "Red".
Oh, hey, a samurai! Drawn in a style that tries to mimic classical Japanese art, too. Tetsuo Umezawa is neat, I guess, even if he's ultimately kind of "just a warrior", but he's apparently one of the main characters of a series of M:TG novels that deal with him angsting about being torn between his honour and his master, the evil dragon Nicol Bolas. Kei Takahashi is another one with a vaguely oriental-inspired style, and is apparently an antagonist in the same novels starring Tetsuo.
Lord Magnus is a powerful human druid, and while there's not a whole ton to talk about him (he's a minor character in some novels), he's got a pretty neat-looking helmet! That's my problem with a lot of the legendaries after the break -- unlike Magnus here, they are all just... men and women standing around in generic looking garb. They don't look "legendary" at all.
Another pretty badass villain is the Blue/Black Ramses Overdark, who, despite looking like he should be on a death metal album cover, is actually a human assassin. Just one dressed in really, really dope-ass demon-themed armour. Ramses Overdark is a pretty badass looking villain, and one of the primary antagonists of the Assassin's Blade novels. He's got a cool design!
Oh shit, it's fucking Darth Maul! Except instead of actually being a demon man, Johan here is just a dude with some really metal tattoos. He's apparently a warlord of the Northern Realms, and a particular master of destructive Red magic. He's apparently the main antagonist of the Jedit Ojanen comic book. Not sure why he's Red/Green/White, though. Red, I get. The other two? Nah.
In contrast, the vanilla creature Lady Orca is actually a demon, despite being just a bald woman visually. Looks are deceiving, kids! Orca is one of the villains in the Assassin's Blade novels.
Sol'kanar the Swamp King looks like those Barbarian cards from Yu-Gi-Oh! He's also apparently a 'demon', and supplementary stories would reveal that Sol'kanar was once a benevolent nature spirit until a powerful planeswalker twisted him into a montrous demon. He's a minor antagonist in the Dakkon Backblade comic, and that is one hell of a cool spiky totem-club he has there.
And we're going to cover the final legendary cards that I have anything worthwhile to talk about, and it's the Elder Dragons, a cycle of five mighty dragons that are far mightier than all the other dragons in the plane of Dominaria, and, according to supplementary material, they're basically survivors of an ancient war. The cards themselves are mighty creatures that cost multiple instances of three different types of mana, and you have to pay an upkeep of mana to keep them in the field.
The first of them is the Black/Red/Green Vaevictis Asmadi, whose card art... presumably only depicts his head, and it's kind of a hilarious, almost fish-looking lumpy thing. Actual depictions of the Elder Dragons in the future would actually be fairly more mundane, and Vaevictis's 2019 card actually reveals that he looks like a pretty ordinary badass dragon. A combination of Black, Red and Green basically combines Black and Red's destructiveness, and Red and Green's impulsiveness, so Vaevictis is apparently a rampaging beast.
In contrast, Arcades Sabboth, depicted here less of a wyrm and more of a dragon-man with a shit-eating grin sitting on a throne, is apparently a very wise ruler, fascinated by mortal races and ruling over them... both of which you'd expect from a combination of Blue and White. Not sure where the Green comes in, though.
Everybody among the Elder Dragons have badass sounding names with two words, but the Black/White/Blue Chromium is just... "Chromium"? Really? He sounds like a last-minute name, honestly, and the MTG wiki tells him that his last name is apparently "Rhuell". He looks pretty cool, if somewhat mundane, as a classic European made entirely out of metal. (His newer art is pretty fucking badass, though) Basically taking a page out of D&D's metallic dragons, Chromium is apparently another pretty nice dragon, taking a human form to walk among mortals.
Palladia-Mors has really wacky hands, actually, in that artwork. She's the archetypal monstrous demonic dragon in a cave, and the artwork makes her look a lot more demonic than dragonic, I feel. Apparently Chromium and Palladia-Mors engaged in a couple of conflicts told in some stories, with Chromium, under the guise of a human, assisted a group of humans against a rampaging, murderous Palladia-Mors. Palladia-Mors is White/Green/Red.
AW SHIT IT'S NICOL BOLAS. Where I talked about Phyrexia in the previous M:TG segment, another one of its longest-running villains is Nicol Bolas. Whose original card... is pretty hilariously goofy, actually, looking like an old, retired lizard-man reading a book. Honestly, comparing Nicol Bolas to the other four Elder Dragons, you wouldn't think that he's easily one of the mightiest beings in the setting. We'll talk about Nicol Bolas's ascent into planeswalker and basically godhood, but in the Legends material, in addition to all the Elder Dragon lore, he's apparently the manipulator pulling the strings of the kingdom of Madara, and basically the Bigger Bad behind Tetsuo Umezawa's story. The idea of an intelligent dragon being the true ruler of a kingdom has always been a plot element I enjoy in D&D-inspired settings, for sure!
Also, Nicol Bolas got really badass in recent years. Look at that newer art! Apparently those impressive horns are just off-screen when he's wrinkled and reading a book.
We're getting into the regular, mono-coloured cards now. And we're starting off with what the official checklist starts off with, Black. And Abomination here is a pretty neat one to set off the colour! I've always really liked the grotesque artwork for Abomination here. It's not playing up the body horror too much, but the lack of a neck, the lumpiness of the flesh, those dead eyes, and the simple detail of the Abomination's lips being sheared off to reveal the teeth... it's actually a neat, somewhat more subtle way to set off a monstrous, well, abomination instead of going full-on Resident Evil with the design. Abomination would later have his race changed into "Horror" when these older wacky creature types get updated, which is pretty appropriate, I think.
Takklemaggot is technically an enchantment that moves around from creature to creature, and I'm not going to read that long prose, but I really do like the idea of a parasitic 'enchanment' that takes the form of a monstrous giant maggot. And the Takklemaggot is a pretty awesome-looking maggot, too, seemingly made up of (or covered in) the bones of its victim as it wraps around a corpse of an unfortunate mook, with bristles and two long mandibles, weird web-goo out of its lower body, and a distinctly disgusting maggot-face.
What are horrors, you say? Well, they're basically creatures beyond mortal comprehension and the laws of physics, like Cosmic Horror here. Not all of them are lovecraftian and 'horror' is just going to be Magic's family-friendly stand-in for Demons when they get phased out, but hey, I really do enjoy Cosmic Horror here! It's a mass of eyes, fangs and tentacle-tongues of different sizes on a pillar of flesh, and the artwork makes it clear that this is part of a far larger creature. Definitely a fun Lovecraftian reference, and I always love the eldritch cosmic abominations that are more "masses of eyes and mouths".
Speaking of Lovecraftian influences, Horror of Horrors is actually a pretty dang awesome piece of art, showing the silhouette of any normal person... but comprised of pretty Xenomorph-esque tentacles and claws and horns and shit. The best part is probably that grinning, eeriely human set of teeth on the dude's throat, and the eyeball on the temple. It's a nice chunk of art for sure! How are these the "normal" cards, but freaking Ragnar or Jacques LeVert are considered legendary creatures?
Going into more mundane evil Black creatures are these pair of bugs. Carrion Ants is a pretty nasty looking swarm of ants, and while it's not super-impressive compared to the Abomination or the Cosmic Horror, I included it here instead of the rest of the expansion after the break due to the utterly hilarious flavour text. Pit Scorpion is a pretty generic "it's just a scorpion", but I really do like the fact that it directly injects poison via "poison counters" into the actual player instead of its monsters, so despite being a weak 1/1 monster, Pit Scorpion has the ability (albeit a pretty impractical one) to murder the enemy by itself.
Also, while "Ant" would get retconned into "Insect" as a race, actual non-insects would retain their race, so while there's not a lot of them, Scorpion is still a distinct M:TG race until today!
Where the ants and scorpion are pretty simple creatures, Giant Slug is a pretty interesting take on the concept of a slug. It's giant, obviously, but in addition to being a giant slug, it's got two mustache-like tendrils that is wrapping around poor, unfortunate Jimmy-the-Swordsman over here, and instead of the slug eyes, the Giant Slug's eyestalks instead end in disturbingly human-like eyeballs. Two relatively simple alterations that actually turn the Giant Slug into something a bit more unique. (Also, Slug is an actual creature type and I love it).
Our last quasi-buggy card isn't a creature, but an Instant -- Hell Swarm, which features a pretty demonic giant wasp-like creature, with a pretty awesome, spiky head with four bulbous eyes, and only a single pair of insect wings and a pair of antennae that curve backwards like a demon's horns. I also love the fact that the creature we see is just one of many, with a cloud of these wasp-like demons in the background. Neat flavour text there, too!
More horror movie trope goodness. I'm really curious about Cyclopean Mummy, though. Is it a cyclops that they bound up in an Egyptian-style tomb? But the artwork seems to show two prominent eyebrow ridges. The flavour text seems to imply that the mummy is cyclopean because one of the eyes is plucked out as part of a ritual of whatever culture Cyclopean Mummy belongs to, but it's still, y'know, far larger than Bob the Archaeologist there. (Mummy would later be changed into "Zombie" in the grand creature upgrade).
Is Infernal Medusa our very first Gorgon? I actually thought there was one of her in one of the previous expansions, but apparently not. While she's referred to as a "medusa" here, later revisions of the card would correctly call her race a "gorgon". Remember, kids, the mythological Medusa is the name of a member of the race called the gorgons! Anyway, I do like the pretty unconventional hair of snakes that Infernal Medusa has, especially the differing sizes of the snakes and the fact that a bunch of smaller ones are apparently forming a braid.
I'm genuinely not sure what piece of media popularized evil, floating eyeballs as enemies. Is it 2D RPG games? I'm genuinely not sure. Evil Eye of Orms-By-Gore, whoever Orms-By-Gore is, is apparently one of these giant evil eyes, even though it clearly has some flesh around it. All things considered, though, Evil Eye of Orms-By-Gore is a pretty boring eyeball monster.
Also not particularly interesting is Hell's Caretaker, who is just a very abstract silhouette of what's a demon that, according to the flavour text, basically wants those it torments to doom an unlucky soul to take their place, a pretty sadistic thing to do. Maybe it's ashamed because it looks goofy? Maybe that's the Demonic Tutor's brother or something.
Hey, it's an evil Fallen Angel! I really like the detail of the still-raw scars on her back where her wings were sliced off or removed or something. It's one of the few angels to exist outside the White colour, and she's a pretty appropriate one! The Headless Horseman, is a pretty common trope in horror stories, and of course this card quotes The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. It's a pretty basic Headless Horseman, though, and he's just a mere vanilla minion! Really makes me wonder how cards with very boring concepts like Barktooth Warbeard got to be considered a "Legend", while the Headless Horseman is a bland vanilla 2/2.
Did we never get a werewolf in Unlimited? Huh. That's kind of an obvious horror monster, actually, and I'm surprised we didn't get one. Lesser Werewolf is basically what you'd expect from a werewolf, though, and I really don't have much to say here. M:TG would go back and forth between naming there werewolf with the "Werewolf" or "Lycanthrope" race, I think.
We've definitely had vampires before, but Vampire Bats are a fun little trope for a weak Black creature. Not much to say here.
Shimian Night Stalker is... it's an interesting creature! Unlike most other creatures with a 'weird' race/type, the Night Stalker continues to keep its tribe, and subsequent creatures would be included into this race in the future. It's a pretty neat, actually, and the design is... it's pretty strange. The Night Stalkers are apparently meant to be swamp beasts, with vaguely goblin-like faces and spiky hair, but they have very, very gangly arms and legs. Not particularly special as far as monsters go, but one that definitely does feel like it probably came from some folk tale somewhere.
Mold Demon is... man, what a fun creature name this is! Mold isn't a creature you really associate with making monsters, and even then you'd probably make plant monsters out of the concept of a mold monsters. But Mold Demon here is a fucking demon, and it's a pretty fun artwork showing a vaguely humanoid creature whose spikes and features trail off into light-blue hyphae-like spikes. Pretty neat creature for sure!
We have a pair more demon-themed cards, starting off with The Wretched (who gets retconned into a Demon in the grand creature type update), who is a pretty neat demon! Again, while all of the angels in White tend to remain basically the same aesthetically, they really do some weird shit with the demons. The Wretched still looks pretty standard as far as demons go -- winged, horned humanoid, but the fact that his body is half-decaying, with a skull-like face, obvious pelvic openings, an exposed ribcage and those weird framework-like ornaments above his tattered wings... and the name "The Wretched" does work pretty well at describing this tattered thing.
Hellfire is a sorcery, and it's a pretty basic-looking card, I suppose... a giant red demon with cape-like wings unleashing hellfire at the human knights all around him, but that's a pretty damn cool artwork nonetheless, and I really do like that the demon's legs are a fair bit longer than you think it would be.
In the original Unlimited, each colour gets a couple of walls, and in Legends they all have Walls again! And I am actually glad that these Walls are actually a running theme throughout M:TG's history. This time around, Black gets three walls. Wall of Shadows is a bit of an obvious thing for an evil necromancer-warlock to summon, but it's still pretty cool nonetheless. Wall of Tombstones, meanwhile, is a pretty fun visual image. A bit similar to Wall of Skeletons from before, perhaps, but we so rarely see the actual creepy tombstones in a graveyard be used as anything but creepy backdrops. Wall of Putrid Flesh, meanwhile, would've just been a boring rehash of Living Wall from the original set if not for the completely bizarre artwork we got. I'm not sure what's going on there, but it sure does look like a wall of putrefaction!
We're almost done with Black -- again, Legends features close to 300 cards, which is why this is almost over. Don't fret, though... the Whites and Artifacts of this set are actually pretty dang boring. Anyway, we have Darkness here, an Instant which is... wow, what a fucking cool-looking demon-creature that is! Some sort of strange... well, "creature" is about as much as I can get to describing that thing, and apparently it bleeds out shadow demons that look like Xenomorph heads? The name of the card might be pretty simple and tame, but that's easily one of my favourite pieces of artwork here.
Greed, meanwhile, is a pretty fun but tame little card with a comedic man amassing a pile of coins and chomping into them. Compared to the other black spells like Siphon Soul or Blight or Darkness, it's just such a strangely light-hearted but still pretty "evil" bit of sorcery. A fan!
The last Black card we're discussing is The Abyss, which is a world enchantment. Instead of regular enchantments, these are meant to actually transform the entire world, basically transporting the magic battle into another realm. Only one world enchantment can be active at any time, equivalent to Field Spells in Yu-Gi-Oh. In the Abyss's case, since it's cast by an evil sorcerer, transports everyone to a realm of darkness with a pretty artistic piece of artwork, too, showing a bunch of souls being dragged into a dark vortex. Blue's world enchantment, on the other hand, is a wee bit less flavourful, but In the Eye of Chaos is a pretty cool name, and it basically expounds on Blue's own love for counterspells. The artwork could really stand to be a bit more exciting than just a dude with a really horny Viking helmet casting a spell, though.
Oh, hey, drakes! I actually like that M:TG made "Drake" its own thing as opposed to Dragons, depicting completely bestial lesser dragons that allow them to have a lot of dragon-like cards in a set while not undermining the badassery of dragons. Azure Drake is a pretty neat-looking serpentine wyvern. You can insert your own Hearthstone joke here, too.
Zephyr Falcon is a far more mundane creature, but you kind of need weaker creatures in a set, which is where these "just an animal" creatures show up. I don't remember us having a whole lot of birds in previous sets, and "Zephyr Falcon" is a pretty cool name regardless.
Blue's always loved to include aquatic-themed beasts, and I do like Brine Hag. She's a combination of a more common hag/witch with that of mermaids and sirens, and I really do like her effect where on the turn she dies, she 'curses' every creature into harmless 0-power tokens for a turn. Really would've thought that "Hag" is another retired type, but apparently it's still a thing!
We've got a pair of elemental walls, but man, what a pretty awesome set of artwork we get here! Wall of Vapor is a bunch of vaporous clouds condensing into the vague shape of a humanoid figure that's mostly obscured other than a pair of praying hands. Wall of Wonder, though, seems to just be the contents of a madman's mind, featuring, among others, a flat tentacle, an eyeball, the dummy from The Rack card, a giant butterfly, a jack-in-the-box featuring mohawked Joker, a glaive and a carpet. "So confusing is the Wall's appearance that few of its victims even see it move". It can move! What a bizarre wall!
Continuing the psychedelic feel of Wall of Wonder is the Time Elemental. Once you get past the obligatory air/water/earth/fire/storm elementals that are just vaguely-humanoid creatures made out of the elements, RPGs tend to just slap "elemental" on anything that doesn't fall into any other group. And Time Elemental here is... wow, what the fuck is this, even? It's a bunch of clocks and... and doo-dads glued together, with two pairs of giant wings that make the thing end up looking like some sort of bizarre giant clock dragonfly. And there are extra clocks floating in the background, that I choose to believe are actually part of this bizarre "Time Elemental" creature.
A lot less flashy than the first two, but Psionic Entity is definitely pretty flavourful as a Blue creature, considering how much Blue loves to mind-fuck their enemies. Later retconned into the "Illusion" type, it's still a pretty neat creature, this long, snake-like beast with arms and a face that looks just a bit too humanoid to be uncomfortable.
A pair of giant sea serpents, and I've always loved that one of themes in Blue seem to be that their big creatures are these giant monsters that live deep in the ocean, always a welcome trope. Segovian Leviathan is our first leviathan, and while she's a relatively weak 3/3, it's neat that apparently 'leviathan' refers to a whole set of mighty underwater creatures. Segovian Leviathan is also a pretty interesting take on a mighty sea serpent, with a face that looks far less like a giant underwater dragon and more like an angry fish, with that bizarrely insect-like set of compound eyes and antennae. Pretty neat monster, actually, and I absolutely love the addition of regular old whales next to it. Just a shame that it's just a pretty pathetic 3/3, apparently making this massive beast of the deep weaker than Gwendlyn Di Corci.
Devouring Deep, despite its impressive name and pretty badass artwork, is also actually a small creature, being a 1/2. It's weaker than a Raging Bull! Still, pretty great design, and I absolutely love that giant, thin mouth with so many teeth that makes it look like a pair of scissors. Lots of great detailing on the fins. Interestingly, Devouring Deep is later retconned to being just a mere "fish".
Apparently someone in the M:TG staff is having a bit of a Lovecraftian binge while designing this set. Elder Spawn is... it's a formless mass of lumps that from the artwork seem to imply that it... maybe lives deep in the ocean, near volcanic vents? A lot of Lovecraftian elder gods do tend to be depicted as slumbering deep beneath the waves, and we've just gone through a bunch of giant creatures living in the ocean, so, yeah. Elder Spawn interestingly "eats" one of the islands you are controlling each turn. Interestingly, though, Elder Spawn isn't a Horror, but considered an Elemental in subsequent erratas. Huh!
(Ia! Shub-Niggurath!)
Blue actually gets a couple pretty awesome sorceries in this set, with Acid Rain being a pretty awesome weather-manipulation spell with a pretty neat-looking artwork. Likewise, Remove Soul ends up being pretty surprisingly graphic, showing some poor muscular schmuck having his flesh magically disintegrated into nothing but skeletons. Not quite "Remove Soul", but still, when you're reduced to a skeleton, you probably won't have much of a soul left, huh?
A trio of spells that I really do like that do sell Blue's flavour as the "wizard" or "sorcerer" colour. Telekinesis and Teleport are both very mage-like things to do, and Gaseous Form has the bonus of fitting in with the water/air element theme that Blue has going on. Pretty fun artwork on all of them, too, and I especially love the completely surprised goblin-dude in the artwork of Gaseous Form.
Mana Drain is showing... what is that thing? Some sort of aquatic tick or slug or copepod creature that's embedding its feet-tendrils into the island? Is it draining mana from the land? Pretty neat artwork. Puppet Master, meanwhile, is a bit of a misnomer since it doesn't actually take control of an enemy creature like you would think it did, but instead returns a creature to its owner's hand when it dies. Still, pretty neat artwork.
We're going to Green now, and Green has a lot of creatures, and while I've been pretty consistently talking about almost all of Black and Blue's creatures, I'm going to shove a lot of Green and White's creatures in the post-break segment. We'll start off with Cat Warriors, the same race that Ojanen the tiger-man up above belongs to. I like that one of them has a leopard pattern, and the other has a tiger pattern.
Barbary Apes is our second Ape card after Kird Ape in Arabian Nights, and instead of "just a gorilla", Barbary Apes shows off a bunch of tribal gorillas with skull necklaces, spears and ornamentation. Way more interesting than just a boring gorilla, right? I also find the name, "Barbary Apes", to be pretty dang charming.
A bunch of beasts show up in this expansion for green, and they're all pretty neat! I'm not going to talk about them too much in-depth, but I do like them. Giant Turtle shouldn't be super-interesting, but I like the artwork really well, with that poor hatchet-wielding dudes really showing the sheer scale of this walking titan. Durkwood Boars, on the other hand... they're just very disgusting-looking boars. Don't actually think we've ever had a boar monster in M:TG before, though.
Emerald Dragonfly is... it's a nice art piece, almost looks like it belongs on a framed photograph in someone's home, but it's also kind of just a dragonfly. Wolverine Pack is a lot more unexpected, but I do like how the Magic team seemed to look up creatures and went, "okay, let's have a bunch of bears, leviathans, werewolves, dragons... and a pack of wolverines." "Wolverines?" "Have you been bitten by a wolverine, Tim? Fucking hurts, man." Real-live wolverines are actually solitary creatures, and apparently a pack of them is exactly as powerful as a gigantic turtle.
Rabid Wombat! HAHAHAHAHA! Man, I just can't. Rabid Wombat! I just... I have no idea what to say here. It's a fucking rabid wombat! HAHAHAHAHA! Rabid Wombat is apparently such a beloved joke card that "Wombat" one of the few M:TG races that has a single member, and that's Rabid Wombat over here.
Also hilarious? It's Eureka over here, and apparently that Merlin-like wizard is visited by a little blob-genie that gives him Einstein's E=MC-squared formula. HAHAHA!
Okay, while Emerald Dragonfly is kind of a boring "just a bug", Killer Bees is not just a swarm of bees. It's a swarm of bees with the most adorable set of little swords and shields ever. HAHAHAHA! Oh, man, the regular cards of this set is just so much more enjoyable than the actual legendaries.
Hornet Cobra, sadly, isn't actually an awesome chimera of a hornet and a cobra like the name implies, but it's at least a pretty cool looking monster snake, with the hood flaying out like a beetle's wings, making it look so much more impressive than a regular cobra. Some pretty neat detailing on the scales of the monster, too!
What do they mean with a "Craw Giant"? Is it made out of craws, like the bird organ? Looks like it's made out of rock, honestly. Regardless, though, kind of a cool-looking rock giant. Aisling Leprechaun is a reference to the Irish fairy, and it's a reasonably neat drawing of one, I guess. It's not really doing anything interesting, though "aisling" is apparently a sort of poetic genre in Ireland that doesn't really have anything to do with this creature's effects.
Pixie Queen is sure a neat fairy queen, with butterfly wings and all. She's just not super interesting. Fire Sprites is a lot more interesting, in the fact that they're not just winged little humanoids... they're on fire! It's actually quite surprising to see a Green card have such a fire-themed flavour to them, but hey, it's neat.
Shelkin Brownie, on the other hand, is a fairy that oozes a whole lot of personality, and you just know this is one fucker that's up to no good. I love the detail of two of his buddies lurking in the background, and I absolutely love the lounging pose he has with his head resting on his chin, that mischievous grin, and one curly-booted feet pointing upwards. "Brownie" is also a type of fairy that I actually rarely see being represented in fiction, and part of the Brownie's real-life lore (it will cause mischief if you don't leave an offering of milk) is referenced in the flavour text, so it's definitely a nice bonus!
Less obscure than the brownie is the satyrs, goat-men from Greek mythology, represented here by the Willow Satyr. Like most first appearances of a certain monster type, there's really not much creativity here, it's just a satyr standing by a willow tree.
Nope, not a treefolk, despite just being a tree with a very grumpy face and giant bark-arms, Wood Elemental is an elemental! Do like the wacky-looking face it has here, and I love the sense of scale that it has compared to the little soldiers facing off against him. Meanwhile, Moss Monster is kind of a neat-looking Swamp-Thing-style monster, which we're going to see a fair amount of throughout Green's history, and while not my favourite, I do appreciate the little tree-deer-horns and the nasty set of chompers this thing has. Of course, its race, "Monster", is changed to "Elemental"in revisions.
Oh man, the hell is this? Floral Spuzzem is a "Spuzzem", which, as far as I know, isn't a creature from any mythology. Sure, it's later retconned into an Elemental, but still, what a bizarre creature this is! Unlike the Atog, which is basically just kind of a rock gremlin, the Spuzzem here is... shit, what is this? It's like a skinned, headless chiken, walking on two long legs that extend out of its "shoulders", and it's "tail" seems to be wrapped around some mysterious obelisk. I think it's made up of plant matter, but I'm genuinely not sure -- that upper body does look like flesh of sorts. A pretty bizarre creature for sure!
Green gets a couple of world enchantments, and both Arboria and Living Plane basically play off fantasies of nature itself being enraged and trying to kill silly human tresspassers. Arboria apparently features a particularly gigantic venus flytrap esque plant eating some hapless Naruto-running adventurer, and I do like how the plant doesn't actually just look like a Pac-Man jaw. Living Plane actually just straight-up transforms all your land cards into creatures that fight for you, represented here by all the trees apparently sprouting mouths and faces.
We've got a surprisingly mundane "just an animal" with Raging Bull. Who is a bull crashing through things. Actually, considering how violent bulls can be, I'm somewhat surprised we don't see more bulls in fantasy video games. It's always wolves, bears and predatory cats.
Beasts of Bogardan is an interesting set of creatures, being these... almost canine-like hounds with demonic horns and goatees. They're interestingly classified with the pretty generic creature type of "beasts", basically noting that there's no quick equivalent from our world? I'm not sure if the Beasts of Bogardan are three hound-goats or if they're a Cerberus-like three-headed entity. I prefer to consider it as the latter, since it's more bizarre. Bogardan, apparently is a volcanic part of Dominaria that's referenced by a fair amount of Red cards.
Speaking of Beasts, let's talk about the Spinal Villain. What is this motherfucking thing? Its race is just "Villain", and would be later updated into "Beast". This isn't a "Horror" or a "Demon". This is a natural Beast that apparently just lives in Dominaria, and what a fucking bizarre beast! One with a somewhat phallic set of eyes, too. And... and what a bizarre monster all around. It's a giant worm that seems to be encased with a bone-like chitin, and it walks around on its two-fingered knuckles. And that face, man, what the shit? Two giant tusks, a mouth that seems to open vertically with a whole ton of gross tentacles, and two dick-like eyes... yeah, this is truly a bizarre creature. And its effect? Tap to destroy a Blue creature, because apparently its mere presence is an insult to intelligence itself, or something. Definitely a bizarre monster, and one I actually do like a fair bit!
Mountain Yeti is kind of... it's kind of silly looking, huh? Looks just like an ape with more human eyes. Not that huge of a fan, although I do appreciate that both the flavour text and effect seem to focus more on the Yeti's elusiveness more than the fact that it's a giant muscular ape-man. Speaking of giant, muscular ape-man... the Frost Giant! Which is another two-headed Ettin-style giant. It's neat, and what with it being associated with Red, clearly this Frost Giant cares far more about his strength than using any sort of frost powers.
It's our first ever phoenix with Firestorm Phoenix, and while the artwork is, again, pretty simple for a depiction of a phoenix -- a bird on fire -- the effect does adapt the legendary phoenix's regeneration ability pretty well. Neat card!
Crimson Manticore is also another first, and I do appreciate that M:TG treats manticores as their own race. Most fantasy settings tend to lump manticores in with either sphinxes, griffons or chimeras. It basically looks like the most common depiction of a manticore -- lion body, human face, scorpion tail, bat wings. THe only thing it's missing are the porcupine quills. I do like the weirdly stunted legs the Crimson Manticore has, too.
Blazing Effigy is an elemental man on fire! It doesn't really look a whole ton like a real-life effigy (a statue being burnt) but it's definitely a funny-looking fire man.
Meanwhile, Quantum Trench Gnomes just looks utterly ridiculous with that forwards-leaning pose and that bizarre drilling contraption. I'm not sure if Magic pioneered the idea of gnomes as tech-savvy tinker-engineers, or if it happened concurrently between Warcraft and Magic, but it's definitely a fun piece of art!
Okay, I'm wrong. Apparently nearly every single kobold in the M:TG game came from this set! Whoops. Still, we've got six cards, all of them Red, and they're... they're neatly different, due to being done by different artists! Kobolds of Kher Keep look almost grotesquely malformed, due to the children's storybook style that they are drawn in, and they're even wearing weird sleeping clothes. Do they just dress like that, or did they steal them from children?
Crimson Kobolds is a far more ravenous-looking beast, though, far less silly than the red-skinned plump goblin kids, looking more like a rabid bear monster, with a pretty awesome flavour text. Meanwhile, Crookshank Kobolds looks a whole lot more like some beaked humanoid shaman-hag thing. All of these creatures are 0/1 creatures, though, and presumably they fight by receiving buffs from the more powerful kobolds.
Kobold Taskmaster buffs the power of all kobolds in the field, and it's interesting that the artwork seems to portray it more like a goblin-like creature, whipping the lazy, 0-power kobolds into shape. Kobold Drill Sergeant goes back to the same wacky plump storybook red midgets that Kobolds of Kher Keep are drawn in, and I absolutely love that the Drill Sergeant actually wears a contemporary military jacket and helmet, and is so pissed off at the other kobold minions. Kobold Overlord, meanwhile, just lazily sits on that ugly-ass throne. Rohgahh, he ain't. I do love that the Overlord has a little Kobold Jester next to him, though.
Primordial Ooze is apparently a "moving mass from the beginning of evolution", and it digests everything in its path, be it "animate or inanimate". It's our first-ever ooze, and I really do like the concept of sentient blobs of goopy slime as monsters in a fantasy setting. Primordial Ooze's artwork, depicting it as going in and out of what seems like ruins like a twisted colony of worms, makes it extra bizarre. I do like how Primordial Ooze is depicted as always drawing, while attacking mindlessly each turn while demanding you 'feed' it with mana or it will attack you.
I find it hilarious that Dwarven Song is depicted by a bunch of posh dwarves apparently having an argument in front of an open book. That looks more like a debate more than a song! And apparently, their song is considered a spell that changes things into red-coloured monsters.
Wouldn't think of Red as the colour with the most Walls in this expansion, and... and they're pretty neat, I guess. Wall of Earth is pretty expected, and something that is commonly see in fantasy fiction. Wall of Dust is kind of interesting, I think, as something that doesn't really feel effective as a wall... until you read the flavour text and realize that it's meant to disorient instead of outright block. It's basically a sandstorm!
Wall of Heat plays off of the same abstract feel as the Blue Walls from Unlimited, while Wall of Opposition is, interestingly, meant to just be a mind-into-matter style of wall, which feels more Blue than Red.
There is a lot of cards I went through on this page, and White... White really doesn't give me anything new. Which is why the White segment is going to be pretty truncated. I really tried to talk about some of the creatures, but most of it are just repeats of the same old clerics and knights and angels we've had for three expansions straight. Amrou Kithkin is the first appearance of the Kithkin race, though, one of White's own races, and is basically the equivalent to Hobbits, or D&D's Halflings, or WoW's Gnomes. A race of agile, small humanoids. This one's... kinda boring, though, and is only up here because she's a new race.
Also, we've got Osai Vultures, which I find entirely interesting that they're associated with White as opposed to Black (since they eat corpses) or Green (since they're natural animals).
Okay, Thunder Spirit is actually cool! It's this ominous, transparent demon/angel-like being that hovers in the sky, with lightning bolts as his fingers, and I really like the spiky, almost alien-like head-crest he has. Pretty awesome looking creature, honestly, and a nice break from the banal knights and angels of White.
Petra Sphinx is pretty interesting, because I'm pretty sure in M:TG sphinxes would be associated with Blue as the "intelligent" colour and sphinxes being associated with riddles, but Petra Sphinx definitely does look the part of a holy beast, with those angelic wings, a completely-white body and a face-mane combination of a pretty regal-looking woman. We even get the classic sphinx riddle on her flavour text!
Elder Land Wurm is... it's pretty interesting, and I had thought that the Elder Land Wurm is some inconsistency -- in most Magic expansions, Wurms are just giant Dune-inspired worms mostly associated with Green. But apparently there's actual lore as to why the Elder Land Wurm looks like a sleeping dragon, because these Elder Land Wurms are apparently the losers of the war between the Elder Dragons, and they have been stripped of their power, being turned into Wurm-status. Which is definitely pretty neat!
Land Tax is a hilarious Enchantment, showing a frazzled-looking fat tax collector holding a bag of money and he's clearly irate. It's also funny for White to have "Land Tax" as an enchantment, but I guess White is the colour of law, and it's definitely one that's going to enforce said laws!
White gets two Walls, and they're... they're all right. Wall of Light has a fun, psychedelic artwork, while Wall of Caltrops just... kinda feel pathetic. How is a bunch of caltrops on the ground constitute a wall? A field of caltrops, sure. A trap of caltrops. A scattering of caltrops. But if nothing else, it has the most hilarious flavour text ever. Which is just "Ow" repeated multiple times.
Oh shit, Green's Eureka is actually right -- Albert Einstein is apparently in Dominaria! I'm not sure why, of all things, they decided to put both Einstein and his formula into a card game about magicians and whatnot, but Presence of the Master here is worth a giggle or two.
There are a lot of Artifacts in this set. Not as much as Antiquities, but a lot, and I don't have anything to say about any of them other than these two. Triassic Egg is just hilarious, a little prehistoric egg that slowly hatches as you spend mana on it, transforming directly into any creature you want. Honestly, I just like the name!
Serpent Generator, meanwhile, is just such an utterly bizarre contraption, where you apparently pour molten slag into this machine that looks like a sausage-making meat-grinder, and it churns out snakes. The snakes also work off the same "poison counter" mechanic that Pit Scorpion does, but it's just so much bizarre! Really love the flavour of Serpent Generator here.
A bunch of legends that are just... just fantasy adventurer dudes. Gabriel Angelfire and Nebuchadnezzar are two characters named for more characters from a sacred text, this time from the Bible. (Gabriel, of course, is an Angel Legendary)
A bunch more "just people standing around", although Kasimir the Lone Wolf and Ayesha Tanaka actually appeared in a couple of novels.
More "just people standing around", and some of these don't really even have much lore beyond a couple of paragraphs mentioning them here and there in novels or whatever. Not sure what you must do to get the name "Barktooth Warbeard", though.
More dudes standing around. What kind of title is "of the Closed Fist", though? What did 'Jerrard' do to own that lofty title? Close his fists a lot?
Livonya Silone actually has a pretty badass card art, I feel! Also kind of a big fan of how Princess Lucrezia's artwork depicts her in a somewhat artistic style of her visage in the background of what I assume is her tower-palace. That's a far more interesting image than most of the "fantasy dude/lady posing" cards.
"There once was a hero named Ragnar the Red..." Yep, I've really got nothing else for some of these but to make bad Skyrim jokes.
Seriously, they have so much awesome artwork in the regular, non-Legendary cards, why do they pick some of the most generic-looking "dude posing for a photograph" make-your-own-level-one-characters for the Legendaries?
His design isn't super interesting, but I do appreciate that among all of these knights, wizards and warlocks, we've got Riven Turnbull, who's just an evil politician. I also really like the name "Stangg", which is just pretty fun of a name.
Bartel Runeaxe is another one that's actually a Giant, as revealed by the revised version of the card released some time later. A very uninteresting-looking giant, though. Also, Tuknir Deathlock is apparently just a head floating in the mist (with a fancy Triceratops helmet!) but is in reality just a human wizard. In addition to legendary creatures, we also have legendary lands, like the city of Karakas. S'neat.
More Legendary lands! I like that Pendelhaven is apparently a giant tree that they use as a city, Teldrassil-style. Nothing much to say about pictures of locations, though. Urborg is a pretty neat, if generic, Castle O' Doom that you'd see in a Saturday morning cartoon.
Also, holy shit, there are a LOT of Legendary cards, huh.
A final legendary land, and a bunch of regular lands. Which I'm putting here just to have them be lumped together with the legendary lands. I really don't have anything to say about any of these.
I really do like the sheer insanity of the horns on that demon in the art of Chains of Mephistopheles. Oh, and as part of a cycle, each colour apparently gets their own Glyph of X. Which is neat, but also kinda boring.
Ghosts of the Damned and Lost Soul are actually creatures that I did want to talk about, but they're ultimately just another pair of undead ghosts, and they sort of just aren't as interesting as many of the other Black monsters here. Also, MTG's The Walking Dead is also kind of just another zombie.
Not much to say here, a bunch of eeevil Black enchantments and sorceries. I absolutely love the name "Jovial Evil", though, which just feels so freaking charmingly silly. The fact that it depicts a snarling skull-demon is the icing on the cake.
Blight is a very fun word to say, and definitely a pretty flavourful Black-themed spell. You just fuck up a Land, completely decaying everything in it. I'm also tickled by the fact that All Hallow's Eve is actually a card.
Demonic Torment has one of the more bizarre artworks on this page, actually. I like it! Also, considering how Black's default land is the swamp, Quagmire is a pretty appropriate card to give to Black.
Can I just say how hilarious that the card called Force Spike is just the magician summoning a giant magical flail to whack an enemy? Spectral Cloak has a pretty awesome-looking artwork, and I actually do like the weird blue octopus-creature in Undertow's artwork that's just so desperately clinging to that tiny tree to avoid being dragged into the depths of the quicksand.
I absolutely love the cartoonish art for Silhouette there, that looks like it came out of a children's book. Also... shit, this set has a lot of cards, huh?
...is that the fucking KKK in the artwork for Invoke Prejudice? Holy shit, Magic.
A bunch of additional Blue spells. Nothing to say here.
I am not sure why the artwork for "Boomerang", which boomerangs a card your enemy contorls, features a melting demon made out of red gloop.
Okay, the artwork for Backfire is admittedly quite cool. Also, Part Water apparently features Dominarian Moses.
I try to include as many creatures as I can in the discussion since I tend to have these reviews be more about the creatures than anything, but Green this time around have a lot of "just a druid" or "just a rider" creatures. None of this are bad-looking, but they're also just kind of just a bunch of humans (and a spirit), and I'd rather talk about Wood Elemental or the rabid wombat moreso than Master of the Hunt or Radjan Spirit.
Craw Giant is a neat-looking rock giant, I suppose. I'm not sure why it's called "craw" giant. It has nothing to do with craws, presumably. Rust is also a very flavourful spell for Green, I think, that features nature naturally destroying things.
A bunch of fun, peaceful looking nature stuff for Green. Not much to say here, though they do add to the flavour of green. Typhoon's art is neat!
Insert "racism is not good"rant for Pradesh Gypsies. Meanwhile, I do like the artwork for Cocoon, with that little stinger at the end of the cocoon's tip, but I also don't have much to say about it.
A bunch of Green spells that... I really have nothing to say about either. I guess I appreciate that Green actually sometimes also represents winter, as shown in Winter Blast here? Most druid/shamans in fantasy tend to just focus on growing trees and animals, not the entire cycle of nature.
Revelation really seems like its artwork should've belonged to White, actually. Is that a Bird of Paradise in Concordant Crossroads? Caverns of Despair, Red's world enchantment, actually has a pretty cool artwork, but I don't have much else to say about it.
Arathi Berserker is kind of boring, and also has a typo in his name. Blood Lust has a disturbingly appropriate artwork, and Chain Lightning is always a pretty cool name to give to a spell.
I find the artwork for Backdraft, with the dude's quasi-Roman armour sticking its tongue out, to be hilariously appropriate for the fool who's about to zap himself in his dumb face. I also really like the art for The Brute, which, despite its name, is actually an Enchantment rather than a Creature.
Red now, and holy shit, 300 cards is a lot of cards, huh? These are just a bunch of spells and Red's Glyph.
Jeez, look at that utterly grumpy, cartoonish face in the artwork of Giant Strength! That is just pretty doofy-looking.
A bunch of Red stuff. Really do like the weird, quasi-Mongolian fur hats that the orcs (?) in Disharmony are wearing.
Remember when I said "White tends to be the most boring colour?" Yeah, that's particularly true this time around. I really, really ran out of things to say for White here, especially since I've sort of hit my "describe a somewhat generically-cool warrior" quota with the Legendary creatures.
More White. I do like the pose of the artwork in Remove Enchantments, but, jeez, White really more than any other colour just sort of repeat the same themes over and over again, huh?
There's a bunch of hooded priests in the Clergy of the Holy Nimbus, and from that name you'd expect that they worship a holy air god or something, but nope, they're just a bunch of hooded dudes.
A bunch of generic White things, and then Indestructible Aura features Falconman there doing the Wakanda Forever pose. Falconman's neat. I like Falconman.
More White things. A glyph, a wall, an angry Atlantis-man and a bunch of priests. Holy shit, there's a lot of White cards I just didn't have anything to talk about, huh.
A bunch of angels! I... I have nothing to say here. They sure are angelic and stuff. I kinda wish that they really did more with the angels, though, and I know that the angels will be a lot more interesting in subsequent expansions.
That is a pretty cool depiction of Equinox, I have to admit. Also, holy shit, there are a lot of cards.
Not much else to say here. Cleanse's cool, I guess.
A bunch more White stuff. I had almost placed Akron Legionnaire and Ivory Guardians on top, but then I really didn't have anything to say about them.
Whoa, hold on, Al-Abara's Carpet, did you miss out on Arabian Nights? Did a gust of wind blow you out of the way?
I am genuinely not sure why Alchor's Tomb and Arena of the Ancients are artifacts instead of Lands.
One of the cycles in this set are the Mana Batteries, that basically help you stockpile mana of a certain colour. Not much to say here, although I appreciate the grody artwork on Black Mana Battery and the bizarre abstractness of Blue Mana Battery.
Life Chisel actually has a pretty dang haunting artwork of mummified corpses hanging from a ceiling while some creepy psychopath walks towards them with the eponymous Life Chisel.
Mirror Universe is where Spock has a mustache, Superman is a tyrant that takes over the world, James Bond can't ever get laid and Urza does not have a pair of kick-ass sunglasses.
Voodoo Doll's mechanics works pretty well with the fantasy of someone cursing you with a voodoo doll, at least.
More generic artifacts! And, yeah, when I say "I don't have anything to say about artifacts"... I really don't have anything to say about artifacts. They are all neat, but Antiquities really have burnt me out on artifacts.
Oh man, that's a whole load of cards, huh? Shit.
Arcades Sabboth is green due to being wise mostly. Segovian Leviathan is only 3/3 due to being Segovian, the plane defined by being small(retroactively iirc, no clue why they messed it up in the first place)
ReplyDeleteThat's actually hilarious if that's right, if they decided that "Segovian" now meant that every creature coming them was small because someone gave a giant leviathan 3/3 stats.
DeleteI guess green does count as wise, I suppose? And blue's more for intellectual intelligence? Wisdom is kind of such a vague quality in magic that you could argue it belongs in like, white or green or blue and I'd believe you.