We're back with Magic: The Gathering and... and this time around, it's Ice Age, one of the bigger expansions containing 380+ cards. It's at this point that I wonder if I should just skip a lot of the older sets (like, I was considering jumping all the way until after the Weatherlight saga ended) and just go on ahead and talk about things that I am actually looking forward to reviewing. Phyrexia, Innistrad, Ixalan, Kamigawa, Amonkhet, the Eldrazi... eh, we'll see. Worst comes to worst, I'll probably just make shorter articles for some of these older sets.Anyway, Ice Age! It's a set that was meant to originally be the next "stage" of the game. As in the previous sets were supposed to be Magic: The Gathering, and this was supposed to be Magic: Ice Age. It's sort of what modern terminology would probably call the 'base set', I guess, before the terms really ended up coming to play.
The story for Ice Age is basically a culmination of the storyline that went on through the cards of the expansions Antiquities, The Dark and Fallen Empires, as well as other fiction published by Wizards of the Coast, where after the whole Brothers' War crisis, the eruption caused by the two brothers ended up causing a massive global cooling throughout the plane of Dominaria, causing it to be plunged into a far more primitive ice age. It's basically an in-story version of the World Enchantments we've seen in previous sets! The villain for this setting is the mighty necromancer Lim-Dûl (who will be referred to in my reviews as Lim-Dul, because it's hard to type that fancy u), who unleashes an entire horde of undead upon the frozen Dominaria. Lim-Dul himself isn't actually represented in a card (just like Urza and Mishra in the Antiquities set), and the set apparently went through a whole lot of revisions before being released to the public, according to the MTG-Wiki.
Other than that... there's really not much for me to say before just straight-up going into the cards themselves.
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The expansion still actually goes in a Black-Blue-Red-Green-White-artifacts-lands-multi ordering, but I'm going to move Black to the final part of this and sprinkling the multi-coloured cards among their associated partners to feel things up. Sort of makes more narrative sense considering Black's the main villain for the expansion (for most expansions, technically but I digress).
Anyway... here's our first Blue-coloured cards. Balduvian Conjurer represents the nation of Balduvia and it's... interesting! For what could just be a random wizard manipulating the water waves to, er, wave, he's got... I'm not sure if those really are his bones jutting out of his back, or if those are just neat-looking armour.
Next up is Icy Prison -- and we do have a fair amount of cards like these which are neat ways to showcase the whole new "Ice Age" that has swept over Dominaria. Not much to say here, but Blue does get the most of the whole icy theme, being, y'know, blue. The development of the Ice Age set had initially intended for the set to contain some reprints from older sets, before realizing that it's kind of a bad feeling to open a booster pack and find out that half the cards you got are ones you already own, and apparently they sort of scrambled to make new replacements or something, which is why around, oh, half of Ice Age's cards actually do sell the fantasy of a world trapped in an ice age, while the other half looks like it belongs in Generic Magic Expansion.
As usual we're prioritizing creatures over enchantments and sorceries. Glacial Wall is just a huge, vanilla 0/7 wall, and apparently they're giant ice walls that seemingly stalk their prey. Love that cute little snow-hound there just to make the artwork nowhere as boring as it would've been otherwise. Presumably, slightly offscreen, there's a little dwarf pissing off the edge of the glacial wall.
Thunder Wall is a Flying wall, and... well, I've not really been talking too much about the 'keywords' in the game, which are abbreviated words to denote a gameplay mechanic. I'll try and sprinkle some of them in this one, just so that it makes sense when I go "of course the rhinoceros has Trample". Flying is... well, it represent a flying creature, and it can basically bypass any other non-flying creature when attacking, with the defender only being able to block flying attackers if he/she controls another flying creature. Like a gigantic swirling storm-cloud, which is definitely the nightmare for any given flying creature to pass through.
Illusionary Wall is hilarious. It's just a giant brick wall made out of glowing lights, and it's also a flying creature with First Strike, which, without getting too technical, allows Illusory Wall to make an attack before the enemy creature does. The flavour text actually explains this somewhat, noting that whoever fights this giant, glowing floating brick wall will be so bamboozled that others will get the chance to strike first. Neat!
Illusions of Grandeur, meanwhile, is an enchantment where a magician casts an illusion of a dragon over a teeny tiny rabbit, which is HILARIOUS. Both Illusionary cards here also have cumulative upkeep, a mechanic introduced back in Legends (I think?) with the Elder Dragons. It basically means that you have to pay whatever mana is stated there (one blue, in both these cases) every turn, selling the fantasy of a sorcerer channeling a spell continually to maintain these illusions. Neat.
Also, with Illusions of Grandeur, it's pretty obvious that Rabbit and Dragon form a Best Match. For the two people reading this that get the joke, you are cool.
Ah, is Illusionary Terrain the reason for the inconsistencies in the depiction of terrain in the block? How half of them are basically in permafrost, and the other half show off sandy beaches and normal forests? I like to think that it's the reason.
Phantasmal Mount is a different sort of illusion, and while that massive paragraph is just mechanics instead of any sort of lore, I do like the look of this bizarre green-and-orange horse beast with... dragon whiskers? Fin-wings? A cat's tail? While the original printing just calls it a "Phantasm", later prints would identify this as an "Illusion Horse". Definitely kinda weird. I like it!
We'll try to not show off every single iteration of a type of creature here, especially in bigger sets. Blue actually gets a couple of Spirit monsters, but the only one I really find interesting is Sea Spirit here. The artwork is pretty well-done, showing a haunting lady spirit rising out of the waves. I also love that it takes a while to realize that this is a massive Sea Spirit, because that little thing next to her is a boat, as noted by the flavour text. Spirits are cool, and I always love the fact that M:TG classifies Spirits as a completely different thing compared to Elementals and Undead, giving them a unique, mystical identity.
Mistfolk is another one that has a pretty dang cool artwork, showing a couple of transparent shades moving amongst the trees. Love the flavour text, too, noting some unfortunate expedition leader noting that while they can't find any real evidence, the fact that there is a "cursed consistency" in the eyewitness accounts basically makes it clear that the Mistfolk do exist and are bothering them. Both of these creatures are also pretty thematic to an icy land, too.
Polar Kraken! Look at those poor, poor polar bears falling off from the ice floe that the kraken is eating! Krakens in M:TG aren't just giant octopi or squid (although some versions of those do exist), but are just massive, massive underwater beasts. Like Polar Kraken here! As much as I love cephalopods, I'm always appreciative when fantasy settings go a different direction with Krakens and turn them into a more monstrous looking underwater beast. Polar Kraken is an 11/11 creature with Trample, a keyword that means that after Polar Kraken 'tramples' some schmuck in its way, it deals the rest of its power as damage to the enemy. It's similar to damage calculation in Yu-Gi-Oh, if you're familiar with that game. Also, love that Polar Kraken's mechanic is a cumulative upkeep where you have to keep feeding your Polar Kraken a Land every turn.
Equally cool is Shyft, who is a unique sort of shapeshifter. Blue's no stranger to shapeshifter monsters, but Shyft is a pretty awesome take on one, just being this jumbled-up mass of limbs, tendrils and tentacles, with two prominent wing-arms and a face. It's not quite an "indecipherable hororr", with some degree of organic logic to how Shyft looks, but it definitely looks like a shapeshifter mid-transformation. Great stuff!
I really like the artwork for Clairvoyance. You could make do with just a ghostly eye or specter watching the... uh... Viking dude in the background, but having the magician casting the Clairvoyance instant looking like she's warping reality itself is actually a very neat way of showing this of.
We also have Counterspell, which is... well, it counters a spell. It's one of the more famous cards, as I understand it. It's a catchy name! COUNTERSPELL! That just sounds like a pretty badass thing to say, just as you're fucking up your opponent's game plan.
Reality Twist is a really fun way of showing it, bizarrely showing what appears to be a massive chessboard bent together like a Salvador Dali painting, with a massive pawn piece and what appears to be two humans thrown around. Reality is twisted indeed! Mystic Remora is a hilarious looking card that's just apparently a remora fish with an exaggerated sucker pad, and it basically parasitizes the enemy by allowing you to draw a card as long as the Mystic Remora exists, but you have to keep 'feeding' this mystic fish.
Wrath of Marit Lage is an interesting card. The Lovecraftian reference is a fun little Easter Egg, and the effect is basically fucking up Red creatures. The artwork just shows a tree, which is a bit of a shame, but other cards in this set will make a reference to Marit Lage later on. Updraft is only here because I just find the artwork bizarrely hilarious. It's just a tiger unnaturally jumping into the air! And with the flavour text talking about 'surprise', nothing is more surprising than a tiger randomly dropping from the sky.
Green in this set actually includes a whole lot of other "just a beast" animals that I had considered talking about here... but then relegated to the 'after' segment. Aurochs makes it here, though, because of how fun the word 'aurochs' is. Something that I was first aware of from the Game of Thrones books, the aurochs (Bos primigenius) is a real extinct large cattle that once roamed Europe, Asia and North Africa. I am always impressed whenever more obscure extinct creatures show up! This particular card is a giant bull that will trample, and like a stampeding herd, the aurochs-es will buff each other.
Pygmy Allosaurus is our very first dinosaur card in Magic: The Gathering! The 'dinosaur' race, if I remember correctly, would be retconned to 'lizard', and then back to 'dinosaur' in the dinosaur-centric Ixalan set, a pretty recent set that I actually own a couple of cards from. Because dinosaurs are fucking badass. Pygmy Allosaurus is just an Allosaur that's apparently a bit smaller than normal (it's weaker than an aurochs!) but, hey, it's a dinosaur! Dinosaurs probably won't do well in the Ice Age, though, which is probably why we only see the single one here.
Chub Toad is a hilariously giant frog with some poor sod's arm hanging out of his mouth. They could've just drawn a giant toad and called it a day, but the bizarre hedgehog spines jutting out of the Chub Toad's back, as well as the slightly-bizarrely-off look of the limb arrangements makes Chub Toad just look that much more bizarre than he probably would've been if he's just a big, giant toad.
Likewise, if Gorilla Pack was just a bunch of random gorillas it wouldn't be as interesting. But these apparently are gorillas with a bunch of... weird tribal ornamentation, including that seems like crowns. I'm not sure if those white fur are actually clothing that the gorillas wear, or if they just have multiple fur colours. Neat little beast for an Ice Age, though!
Woolly Mammoths are actually pretty fun and very much fitting for the whole Ice Age theme! There's really not a whole ton to say because they're kind of just generic mammoths, but it's neat that they exist. Absolutely love that flavour text, too.
Yavimaya Forest is the setting of a fair bit of the Green cards in Dominaria, and it's a sentient forest that the elves live in symbiosis with -- none of these Thallid conflicts here in Yavimaya! Interestingly, the Wiki notes that it's not just the elves that are dependent on the forest, but the forest itself has became dependent on the elves for direction. Not sure if this is going to lead into any story direction. But hey, we've got Yavimaya Gnats, a swarm of... they're kind of wasp-coloured giant gnats! I was about to go on a "this looks more like a mosquito-wasp hybrid" rant, but I guess when magnified a lot, gnats do look like that, huh? Apparently, Yavimaya Gnats are the very first type of gnats found in Dominaria,which is... neat? I guess that's an explanation for why the M:TG "gnats" don't look like real-life "gnats".
More beasts, and this time we get a dual-colour card as well. From this expansion on, I'll just slap the dual-coloured cards alongside the colours that they fit the most, I guess, because it's not until much later that I feel the dual-coloured cards have their own real identity. Wooly Spider is a pretty nasty-looking spider, even if that abdomen does look unnecessarily like a glans. That face's pertty unscientific with a couple pair too many fangs, but still looks pretty dang cool! A lot of real-world spiders do have lots of hair, so in this magical world it's not inconceivable that some of the giant spiders would adapt to basically being covered with hair. Even if Antarctica is the only place in the world where no spiders live.
Giant Trap Door Spider is, of course, in reference to the real-world trap-door spiders, who burrow and hide under a makeshift trapdoor to wait for prey. Only instead of crickets and cockroachs, the Giant Trap Door Spider eats humans. It's classified as a Red/Green card, which... I'm not quite sure what part of this card is Red, if I'm being honest. The Green part, sure, since it's a natural beast. But I dunno.
We have Fyndhorn Elves, one of the many obligatory elves. The elves are honestly just utterly boring -- I've personally never found the concept of "dude with pointy ears" to be particularly interesting. Even if you don't want to go D&D/WoW/Divinity levels of weird elves, at least make the elves look more Tolkien-like with fancy armour and shit, y'know?
Folk of the Pines might look boring, but she is a dryad, and I love that the nature spirit in this Ice Age have transformed into basically looking like she's wearing a snow-covered evergreen tree as a dress. So many works of fiction have turned icy locations to be synonymous with death and decay, but I love that in Dominaria, nature just shrugs and accepts this iciness as just another phase in the planet's long life.
For an icy setting, you need your abominable snowmen! Both of these would be retconned by subsequent releases to become simply "Yeti" as their race. The Shambling Strider has a particularly fun grin on his face, and really looks like an intelligent, savage brute. Probably wouldn't be too far off from actually being a comic book villain or something.
The Wiitigo has an utterly hilarious name! Not a wendigo, but a wiitigo. I imagine it makes wiiii sounds as it charges at you, which would probably be far more unsettling than just a generic roar. I love the weird, almost owl-like face (a clever nod to how the word 'wendigo' has its origins from the proto-English word meaning 'owl'), and the bizarrely short arms that look like they sprout from the body just a wee bit too low.
"Ouphe" is a term that's now basically very rarely used to refer to one of those nasty, evil goblin-like fair folk, translating to elf-child or something. Instead of retconning all of these into fairy or elf or whatever, though, the "ouphe" race has basically became its own thing, basically becoming a catch-all for the more nasty forest fairies and spirits. Brown Ouphe certainly looks more goblin or troll-like. Like many stories of these fair folk, the Bronw Ouphe has an artifact-disruption effect, which is kinda similar to gremlins.
Fyndhorn Brownie refers to brownies -- not the cake (which is what my brain goes to whenever I see the term 'brownie'), but the fairy-like spirits from British folklore that act similarly to little household spirits, but Fyndhorn Brownie is apparently just a nasty, snowball-throwing little ass. Don't have much to say about either of these, but they definitely are far, far more exciting than more elves and human druids.
I don't think Pyknite is based on an actual fairy from folklore like the ouphe or the brownie, but he, too, is another card that gets retconned into an "ouphe" in subsequent releases. Apparently, this little grumpy dwarf-man is a nasty scalp-hunter. Kjeldoran Frostbeast is a Green/White card that's a nice little elemental snow monster. It's a pretty neat-looking monster, and I'm surprised we don't actually have more monstrous snow elementals in this set. Especially in Blue.
Walls, now! Wall of Pine Needles is kind of a pretty obvious thing to do, just taking something that blocks your way -- like pine needles -- and turning it into a wall. The artwork is pretty damn badass, too, showing that spiky-toothed skeleton being completely consumed by spiky pine leaves.
And now we have Tinder Wall! Like 'brownie', 'tinder' is another word that has changed its default meaning in my head. It's not always a dating website, it also means "dry, flammable material used for lighting a fire". And it's a pretty flavourful card, too. After casting Tinder Wall to presumably block attacks, you can sacrifice Tinder Wall to add Red mana to your pool. Or, alternatively, use Red Mana to burn down Tinder Wall and have it deal damage to whatever it blocks. The artwork's pretty nice, too, showing this metalhead wizard blocking an army with a wall of trees, and ready to burn some shit. I don't always note the mechanics of cards, but this is a particularly flavourful one.
We're getting Wurms as a semi-consistent large beast in Green, and these two are pretty fun ones. Scaled Wurm is a vanilla 7/6 beast, and he's a neat-looking giant serpent with a vaguely draconic head. I like the colour scheme it has, too, with blues, whites and a combination of purples and oranges that does make sense for a creature living in an icy wasteland. "They embodied the worst of the Ice Age", too, which establishes these Scaled Wurms as the apex predators of the setting.
Johtull Wurm, on the other hand, looks far more different than a regular wurm! Normal wurms look either serpentine, draconic or worm-like, but Johtull Wurm looks like a massive, mutant caterpillar with multiple legs, but then it has this hunchbacked head with the nastiest-looking mouth I've seen in a while, and two gigantic arms. It's a pretty bizarre, ugly creature that brings to mind the original artwork for Fungusaur all the way back in the original M:TG set. Is this the evolved form of a Fungusaur? Or is it just a worm that happens to take on a Fungusaur-esque appearance as some sort of mimickry?
"Ach! Hans, run! It's the Lhurgoyf!" One of M:TG's more endearing original creatures that isn't an adaptation of any sort of folktale or legend is the Lhurgoyf, and... what the fuck is this thing supposed to be? It's awesome! It's got a vaguely humanoid shape with insanely gangly legs and arms, spikes on its back, and its face is... how do I even describe that face? Some sort of cross between a centipede and lamprey, with the consistency of bone? Its effect is even interesting, with the Lhurgoyf's power and toughness increasing with every creature in both graveyards. It's some sort of detritivore or rot creature, then, since it's considered a Green creature and not Black? What's pretty certain is that this thing is something that you have to run away from. Especially when you're called Hans. One of the most endearing original creatures, and I can definitely see why.
Thoughtleech is such a bizarre-looking fucker, huh? It's a horrifying abomination that's considered an enchantment instead of a creature, but, jeez, the Thoughtleech looks far, far more horrifying than anything we've seen so far, except maybe that one Mindstab Thrull.Look at this thing! It's got a vaguely slug or worm-like body, two massive bony legs bent too many times to be comfortable and ending with a needle that stabs you in the ear; a wasp-like butt-stinger that stabs you in the back of the head; two eyes on little stumpy stalks, and that face just goes on in front a bit before spreading sideways and ending in two antennae-arm things that are shoved into the poor sap's mouth. Pretty disturbing mind-parasite, honestly, and considering it's something that apparently leeches the enemy's thoughts, it does something pretty horrifying too.
We're going into Red now! Barbarian Guides and Chaos Lord are sort of the obligatory human warriors for Ice Age. As we go on and on into more M:TG cards, I will talk about these sort of more lore-basic cards a bit less. Barbarian Guides is an interesting card, though -- some land cards in Ice Age are actually classified as 'snow-covered' lands, representing, y'know, the whole ice age falling over the world of Dominaria, and these Barbarian Guides basically help other creatures you own walk through the snow. Chaos Lord is just here because I kinda like the bizarre bone helmet he's got going on.
Two giants! Giants have traditionally been red, and "frost giants" have been a common trope in most fantasy fiction, based on the Nordic legends. Karplusan Giant is a particularly fun, cartoonish looking giant, with a massive-ass nose and lower jaw that just looks utterly comical... while that arm seem particularly small, proportion wise, compared to the Karplusan Giant's face. I love the description that just mocks these giants and noting that they're not particularly smart for giants or rocks.
Bone Shaman, interestingly, isn't a human, but a giant! It's a pretty fun crazy shaman, too, clearly in some sort of ritual dance. It's got a fun crown of bones that seems to grow out of its own flesh, a pretty sinister-looking face, and has a pretty dang creepy flavour text. Giants in M:TG have so far been either brutes or warriors, so it's fun to see one that's a bit different.
Why is a card called "Karplusan Yeti" prominently show two humans? Well, it's actually because the yeti's in the background, doing a stealth takedown on the third member of the human party. That's actually a pretty fun way to incorporate an abominable snowman's elusiveness into the card art.
Balduvian Hydra is a pretty fun, colourful-looking hydra! Hydras range from being multi-headed serpents to multi-headed dragons, and this particular one goes for the serpent route, with Balduvian Hydra not having any sort of legs and being primarily a multi-headed giant red serpent. It would've just be another hydra, though, if not for the fact that each of its heads look like something that a tropical bird would have, being pretty colourful white-blue-green ensembles with prominent beaks. Pretty neat!
A couple that are just fun creatures, really. Wall of Lava is a pretty standard wall, and I think we've gone through enough variations of fire/earth/lava combination of elemental walls for this to just feel like "another one". Wall of Lava is an interesting card to place in the Ice Age set, though. Grizzled Wolverine is just a fun little card -- I always like it when fantasy settings pick a real-life animal that's not quite as obvious as wolves, bears or lions as a monster. Like wolverines! Wolverines will fuck you up, and while they do look kind of ridiculous compared to more mainstream beasts, they will still fuck you the hell up.
I'll try my best to cover every single goblin and orc card, because they are always pretty fun! Red would easily be a far more boring colour than White to me if not for the fact that they have some of the silliest card with the goblins in particular. Goblin Sappers are pretty standard wacky goblins that set up explosions while at the same time blowing themselves up. Very Warcraft-goblin of them, and I'm not sure which of those two franchises plagiarize which.
Goblin Mutant, on the other hand, has one of my favourite grotesque artwork in this entire set. Look at those three, tortured massive flabby faces joined together to the goblin's torso! The two mismatched arms, and the three completely different looking heads... poor Goblin Mutant genuinely looks like a tortured, angry abomination of a goblin... but the flavour text snarks and makes fun of the Mutant. "If only it had three brains, too."
Goblin Ski Patrol. That is how the goblins adapted to the Ice Age. I love everything about this card. I love the name, I love the concept that goblins are just getting an advantage in battle by making ramshackle ski sets, I love the other goblin in the background that is just tumbling out of control, I love the AIIIEEE flavour text, and I absolutely love the fact that poor, poor Goblin Ski Patrol's effect is to gain a temporary bonus and the 'Flying' keyword... but only if you control a snow-covered mountain and the Goblin Ski Patrol dies after flying. Man, it's just such a hilariously morbid effect! Easily gets my vote for my favourite card of this set. A fun little recurring character in goblin flavour text is the luckless goblin tactician, Ib Halfheart, and I'm not sure if he's ever going to get a card.
Goblin Snowman, though, is a strong contender for another favourite of mine. It's just a snowman with spiky goblin ears, while three goblins hide behind the snowman. And apparently, this disguise is good enough that while blocking, the snowman 'takes' the damage instead of the goblins, sparing the actual 1/1 goblins from being damaged, with the 1 damage it deals presumably being caused by the bottom-right goblin pelting someone with a snowball. It's absolutely hilarious that a creature like, say, Nicol Bolas the Forever Serpent, youngest and most powerful of the Elder Dragons and God-Pharaoh of Amonkhet, with the power to decide if worlds will live or die... can be fooled by a snowman made by goblins and get pelted in the god-dragon schnozz while being fooled by said snowman.
Orcs tend to try and be more serious than goblins, I feel, and while it certainly carries with it far more whimsy than the orc cards that we're covering under the break, Orcish Lumberjack does actually look pretty damn threatening. It's an orc driving this weird AT-ST-esque steampunk vehicle with a massive buzzsaw, and its effect is to cut down actual Forest land cards to give you a mana boost. That's pretty flavourful!
Orcish Librarian is 100% comedy gold, though, with the artwork really showing this sleepy looking orc munching on a book titled "The Art of Cooking". Silly orcs, they don't know how to read!
Orcish Farmer is a fun, wacky, whimsical orc dressed up in hillbilly clothes, hanging out with a pig. It's hilarious! The artwork and name itself would've been enough to make me like this card, but its effect is to turn a land into a Swamp (Black's basic land)... because, apparently Orcish Farmers are just that gross.
The final Red card we're talking about is the companion card to Wrath of Marit Lage, the Curse of Marit Lage all the way back in Blue. It's interesting that whatever this mysterious elder god that Marit Lage is (we get another pretty Lovecraftian prose for the flavour text of this card, the artwork for Curse seems to imply that this dread god is sealed underwater with lots of seadragons, crabs and sawfishes swimming around its... tomb? Temple? Whatever Marit Lage looks like, he (she?) apparently really, really hates islands, and both Wrath and Curse fucks with them.
We'll blaze through White, because, holy shit, I tried my best to actually include White in this, but there are just so many generic knights in this set's White, so many repeated Circle of Protection: Whatever Colour and generic holy war spells that I really, really can't do it. These two are probably the most interesting of the Kjeldoran forces, which are the obligatory White nation of the set. Kjeldoran Elite Guard is one that I legitimately like, though, simply for the fact of those ridiculously large Hermes-style ear-wings. Kjeldoran Elite Guard has a face that knows that those are utterly ridiculous, but he owns that look. Absolutely love the fact that the flavour text specifies that the Kjeldoran Elite Guard's ear-wings are only "put on for pageants" and removed during war. Which is neat and all, but now I have the fun mental image of these Asterix-esque dudes holding a Victoria's Secret pageant, which is not a mental image I need.
Kjeldoran Knight's got a pretty damn cool feral nordic warrior look, and probably the most straight-up coolest looking of the White creatures. What? Just because I don't have much to say about them doesn't mean I can't appreciate pretty cool-looking knights
Far, far more interesting than the massive glut of random Kjeldorian soldiers and knights, though are the fact that the Kjeldorans apparently ride around on gigantic, big-ass birds of prey! Kjeldoran Skycaptain and Kjeldoran Skyknight are kind of basically the same concept, only in different poses, but the idea of an army of knights riding massive birds of prey on an icy land is such a far more interesting concept than just another bunch of knights-on-horses, which, at this point, has been pretty done to death in M:TG's White.
Two beasts. Arctic Foxes just kind of has a nice, pleasant-looking artwork, but Adarkar Unicorn has a pretty impressive art piece! The white unicorn's body as it gallops through the snowbanks lifts the snow into the air, and gives the impression of the Adarkar Unicorn being seemingly a horse made out of snowy winds itself, especially with the shading beautifully blending part of the unicorn's body into the night sky. As someone who doesn't tend to get super excited about horses, Adarkar Unicorn actually has one of my favourite artworks in this set, and easily gets the definition of "majestic"
...unlike Hipparion here. Like the Aurochs, the Hipparion is also a now-extinct genus of horse. It's so much less majestic than the Adarkar Unicorn, not helped by that derpy-ass face it has. I suppose that is what makes a unicorn a majestic beast, and a horse just a horse. Formation has a bunch of what I think are either ostriches or Gallimimi, especially considering we've got an Allosaurus in this set. Pretty fun little artwork, though, in either case.
Blinking Spirit is actually pretty fun! The other Spirits in this set (and there's a fair bit) are basically either ghostly entities or elementals, but Blinking Spirit actually does look pretty ethereal and ephemeral -- not quite the same sort of "a human soul returning from the underworld" like ghosts, specters or wraiths, nor are they humanoid creatures like ouphes or elves living in the forests. Blinking Spirit's design -- this long, worm-like figure with not-quite-insect wings, a glowing stump of a head and two maybe-arms just looks so utterly alien yet at the same time familiar, really selling the whole "spirit" bit of something that isn't quite natural, but not artificial either. A pretty haunting design, with a pretty fun flavour text featuring Ib Halfheart, everyone's favourite goblin.
Cold Snap, not to be confused with the expansion name, is a fun little image showing two fairy children using their wands to shape what i think is a frozen lake to their whim. It's a nice little image, for sure.
Our last White cards... are legendaries! Although for some reason, characters like Lim-Dur that has been consistently referred to throughout the expansion doesn't even get a card. I kind of get them trying to preserve the mysticism of this supposed big bad, but at the same time it also makes it hard to care about some of the legendaries that they choose to actually print. General Jarkeld, also known as the "Arctic Fox" is at least a character that is the man responsible for a good chunk of flavour text in White and Blue cards, being the leader of a Kjeldorian expedition. Artwork's not the most impressive, but at least he's a character.
Merieke Ri Berit is a White/Blue/Black tri-coloured legendary human... who's... er... she's someone that can take control of enemy creatures? No card in Ice Age ever refers to Merieke, and we don't really learn what makes her a combination of White, Blue and Black mentalities. The artwork just shows a pretty generic Galadriel ripoff, too, and I'm not sure what she has to do with the Ice Age theme. Pretty m'eh.
Going into Black, now! I don't think we've ever had a wight before in M:TG. Fantasy novels basically just use wight as another term for zombie or undead. Dread Wight has a fun appearance, and gets a bonus thumbs-up for me for both being a dreaded wight, but also a wight with a lot of dread-esque tentacle hair. Ashen Ghoul is here mostly because it's a pretty disgusting-looking old man corpse with gangly limbs, long fingers and a pretty gruesome sight as it's... eating... something bloody. Pretty grisly stuff!
As noted above, the story of Ice Age and the main big bad is Lim-Dul, the mighty necromancer that is taking advantage of the newly-changed climate of the world to "open the gates" of the dead and unleash his minions to the world. Abyssal Specter is a pretty fun 'death knight' style enemy, with a cartoonish skeletal horse that seem to have the outline of a real horse around it or something? I dunno, I find the artwork to be pretty comical.
Gangreous Zombies, though, has a pretty nasty-looking artwork, showing a couple of zombies in different stages of rot. The one in the foreground is nearly entirely skeletal, but has enough sinew and entrails to still count as a 'zombie' and not a 'skeleton', while the other two zombies next to him just look pretty disgusting, with green rotting flesh.
We get a couple of minions of Lim-Dul himself, even if Lim-Dul doesn't really appear in the flesh in any of the cards here. Legions of Lim-Dul is a pretty grisly depiction of a zombie, with that dude with a creepy mask in the background putting the finishing stitches on this monster. I'm actually not sure if I find the rotting, mindless zombie or the mad, grinning scientist-necromancer dude more unsettling, really.
Lim-Dul's Cohort is a couple of zombies that... I'm not sure if those are just hollow, eyeless faces or if they're actually wearing masks. Lim-Dul's little chant in the flavour notes that he wants to bring the risen dead to a land where the "trees have no hearts", which is just silly. All trees don't have heart, necromancer man. Learn some biology!
Krovikan Vampire is a more civilized, high-class Dracula-style vampire compared to the more Nosferatu-style monsters, I feel. I mean, we only get to see half his face as he feeds on a poor woman's neck, but I guess it's that mustache that gives me that impression? I dunno. Krov is apparently the evil city for the Black mana colour this time around.
Speaking of Krov, apparently the Moor Fiend is assigned by Lim-Dul to really fuck up the city of Krov in his conquest. Moor Fiend is... he's certainly a fiend all right! Later retconned to the more abstract 'horror' race, I feel that 'fiend' is a sort of word that can be used to describe anything vaguely evil from demons to abominations to particularly nasty people. Moor Fiend's face does a great job at technically just being a normal human face with some extra cheek-spikes, but at the same time the proportions are so stretched that it just looks plain wrong.
Drift of the Dead is a pretty neat twist on the expected "wall of bones" that we've seen a couple of variations of over the past expansions, in that it's actually frozen, and gains more power depending on how many snow-covered lands you have. Apparently Lim-Dul's magic interacts not just by the amount of corpses he has, but also the amount of snow? Thanks to being introduced to Warcraft pretty early, I have a pretty strong mental association between icy landscapes and the undead,so this is definitely a pretty cool wall minion.
It's interesting that the Legend/Legendary sub-type has brought about a distinction that a card like "Norritt", who really seems like it's supposed to be this particular imp's name, ends up meaning that Norritt is an entire type of imps, despite it sounding like it should be a proper name. It's a pretty cheeky-looking imp that sort of look like how Beast was drawn in the 90's X-Men comics, something I realize is kind of an overly-specific comparison to make, but it dose. We're seeing more and more paragraphs that just describe the effect of the card with barely any sort of lore, which I admit would probably be what the actual players want... but also means that a whole lot of cards get relegated to the "s'cool, I don't have anything to talk about this" category.
Two grubby, wormy monsters! Mole Worms is a pretty horrifyingly ugly motherfucker, showing this pulsating pink worm with the face of a pretty sorry-looking mole and little mole claws. It's a bizarre yet fun fusion of two animals that are associated with tunneling underground, forming this horrifying abomination that apparently helps to disable your opponent's Lands.
Flow of Maggots is a pretty nasty looking artwork, a huge fly settling on a swarm of writhing, wriggling maggots. I've been stated to be a huge, huge insect fan, but maggots are one of those that still manage to utterly gross me out. It's apparently a swarm of maggots that can bypass all other minions that aren't walls, presumably because walls can't move out of the way of an incoming swarm of grossness. I love that it's called the "flow" of maggots instead of the swarm of maggots or the mass of maggots or something that sounds so mundane. It's a small thing, but it makes it feel just so much more disgusting.
Foul Familiar is a Spirit, and... and I'm not sure if that dead-eyed lady is her master or her prey. The Foul Familiar definitely looks like a nasty looking motherfucker, looking like a twisted, ghostly dong with tentacles and a nasty, nasty grin on his multi-eyed face. The Foul Familiar knows how phallic it looks, and it delights in it!
So there aren't a lot of legendary cards in Ice Age. To recap, we've got Marton Stromgald, a Red legendary human knight (who I didn't cover); we've got the legendary white general Jarkeld, who's referred to many times in the flavour text of other cards; and we've got Merieke Ri Berit, a tri-coloured White/Blue/Black lady. The fourth legendary card should be Lim-Dul, right? The main villain of the expansion? Or, failing that, if they want to keep Lim-Dul elusive and untouchable, maybe one of his minions? Nope. It's a Skeleton Ship. I'm not even mad, it's hilarious that the design team of Ice Age made all of these lore characters but decide to not depict them in any way. The Skeleton Ship is presumably a ship made entirely out of skeletons. I just find it pretty funny that this is the only Black legendary in this set, is all.
Future sets, thankfully, won't be quite as disappointing with the integration of the story and actual represented characters in the set.
And we get two other names! Minion of Tevesh Szat is a pretty neat-looking yellow bone demon-skeleton thing, but is otherwise not super remarkable. It does refer to a character called Tevesh Szat, a survivor of the whole Fallen Empires affair. Formerly a nice fellow called Tev, he would be driven crazy by repeated tragedies (covered in comics and novellas) and apparently became a draconic demon-man. Tevesh Szat apparently caused the fall of many other empires, and is one of the sponsors of Lim-Dul during this whole Ice Age mess. Yes, apparently Lim-Dul is less Lord Voldemort and more that one random evil teacher that died in the first movie!
Tevesh Szat hangs out with his buddy, Leshrac, noted here in Minion of Leshrac. And I was surprised to learn that Leshrac came from M:TG! I know the makers of the popular game DOTA did love to draw from obscure geeky references, and I was definitely surprised to know that Leshrac, the Tormented Soul, is a reference to Leshrac, one of the villains in M:TG! Leshrac is one of the two masters of Lim-Dul, and basically wanted to orchestrate some sort of mass ritual that would allow him to go from the plane of Dominaria to Shandalar, because he was trapped or something. It's neat. Minion of Leshrac is a pretty monstrous bat-monster with a set of particularly gruesome-looking fangs.
Oh, hey, it's the puppet from Antiquities' The Rack again, apparently surviving the huge Urza-Mishra blast of doom and it's not being used in Leshrac's Rite, painted over with what looks like a magical circle made with spray paint. I love this card! The flavour text is so long, with Lim-Dul essentially praying and binding his soul to his dark master Leshrac, but apparently the ritual involves this dumb grinning dummy and a bunch of spray-painted magical runes.
Leshrac's Sigil would be unremarkable, but it does look pretty fun and artistic, with artwork that looks like it came off from a cover of Hellblazer.
Just a pair of sorceries that I kinda like. Burnt Offering is a fun little art piece of an effigy being burnt down, and I like the little badass boast from Lim-Dul in the flavour text. "My foes serve me twice: in dying and in death." Pretty awesome thing for a necromancer to say! Gaze of Pain, meanwhile, shows this dude with what seems to be a jester's hat, holding a posh-looking set of opera goggles, and with two scars running down her face. I'm not sure why this card, out of all the other cards in Ice Age's Black selection that I didn't feature here, caught my eye. But I guess I really loved how the artwork really sold the whole 'gaze of pain' name.
Necropotence is a word that, like 'brownie' and 'tinder' up above, is unintentionally hilarious due to the association of impotence with, well, whether a man can perform in bed. The artwork shows off a pretty neat looking skeleton in fancy armour, although apparently this dude has the Hearthstone swirl carved into his skull-head.
Stench of Evil is... wow, what is that thing? It's a giant face-rock-egg thing growing out of the ground with a tortured face and spiky things all over his face, and the background seems to imply that there are more of this... stench-making creature. It sort of looks like the Behelit from Berserk, except instead of driving people into despair and turning them into gross demons, this one just attacks with some nasty, nasty halitosis that are so bad that it destroys all of the plains in play.
Mind Ravel is just such an insanely cool-looking artwork! Apparently whoever the evil dude casting this spell is isn't just content in making someone go insane or catatonic with "Mind Ravel", but just straight up turn the person's entire body seemingly into a brain-like structure made entirely out of worm-like threads, and have it literally unravel. That is such a cool, disturbing visual!
Hyalopterous Lemure is a pretty fun card, and a card that I'm happy to end this on. It's a cute little rodent-like beast with butterfly wings, and according to the flavour text, it's a swarm of cute-looking beasts that will devour an entire troop of soldiers to the bone. It's a charming enough creature of its own, and one that I really like! The thing is, though, is this fun article that details why Hyalopterous Lemure is one of my favourite cards due to the associated story that comes to go with it.
See, Magic: The Gathering is a set where the artworks are produced independently by an art team, with a couple of directions from the art directors. The actual names and effects are attached to them before or after the creation of the art. One of these actual directions from the art team is to paint a "hyalopterous lemure". Hyalopterous is a fancy Latin word that basically means having glassy, transparent wings. So far so good. But 'lemure', in this case, is supposed to be a reference to the Lemures, the spirit of the restless in Roman mythology. or specifically, the D&D monster that shared its name.Somewhere in the project, 'lemures' got misunderstood as 'lemurs', the cute little cuddly primates native to Madagascar, and the rest of the team decided to just roll with this hilarious misunderstanding. But my favourite part of this story is that the artist somehow understood what the 'hyalopterous' part of the name means, but not the lemures part. This got a fun shout-out in a card I actually own from Time Spiral, "Viscid Lemures", which actually do show the creepy demon-spirit sort of lemures, but the flavour text has someone dismissing these as mere lemurs.
We have a quartet of "just a wizard" creatures. Krovikan Sorcerer and Soldevi Machinist refer to two cities in this period of time, with Soldev, ironically, falling to even more rogue artifacts. These Dominarians never learn! Musician, meanwhile, is another piece of artwork that, while pretty neat and abstract, feels like it should belong in any other set other than "Ice Age".
More assorted blue creatures. Wind Spirit and Sibilant Spirit are two more spirits that were originally included in the main body of the article, but I really tried and I can't find anything much to say about them that I didn't already say for Sea Spirit. Silver Erne is a neat-looking bird that manages to feel a bit more exotic just by changing some details into an unnatural shade of metal.
We've got more illusion-themed cards, a lot of which tie in together mechanically with cumulative upkeep. They're mostly neat, although I don't have a whole ton to say about them.
More humans! Zuran Enchanter and Zuran Spellcaster are both followers of Zur the Enchanter, a minor villain, and an insane man that tried to invade the nation of Kjeld. I mostly just want to note what an... interesting way they choose to tackle characters. Like most characters in this set, Zur never actually made it into a card until much later.
A bunch of cards that showcase the ice age itself, which I feel is important to acknowledge that a fair amount of these do exist, as much as I do josh about how half of Ice Age isn't icy.
Can I just say what a hilarious visual "Brainstorm" is? I always love it when M:TG takes a common phrase. and then turns it into something literal.
Hydroblast is a pretty badass name. Honestly, I'm okay with a bunch of these instants and enchantment cards basically sounding like attack spells from D&D or techniques from an anime. Deflection and Ennervate aren't super special, but I like their artwork.
A bunch of random enchantments and an interrupt. Nothing much to say here.
Ray of Erasure and Infuse both have pretty neat-looking artwork. Not a whole ton to say here, though.
Word of Undoing's artwork looks more like it's a dude with some really bad morning breath, actually. The name's still badass, though. Oh, hey, another reference to Zur in Zur's Weirding. If I had to look up that wizard's robes, I would definitely call it a "weirding" for sure!
Force Void's artwork is cool as balls. Also, have a bunch more random dual-colour cards that have blue in them. I don't have much to say here.
Pale Bears, Balduvian Bears, Dire Wolves and Tarpan are all pretty cool beasts that I considered putting on the main page, but it turns out that I really don't have anything to say about either bears. Having polar bears is almost obligatory, even if those poor pale bears will likely just be the snack of some hungry polar kraken. Dire Wolf has a pretty cool flavour text. The Tarpan, Equus ferus, is actually a real-life species of horse that lived in Eurasia before it went extinct. Neat! It probably hangs out pretty well with the Aurochs.
A bunch of elves and elven druids! The backstory is that a bunch of elves, calling themselves the Juniper Order, forsook the cities to live in the forests of Fyndhorn and worship a goddess called Freyalise, who turns out to be a planeswalker (more on those later). It's... it's a pretty bland backstory, if we're being honest, and elves already tend to forsake cities and live in the wild anyway.
A badass-looking bald tattooed elf, and a bunch of spells. Love the artwork for Fanatical Fever, taht dude really looks like he's going to fuck someone up. It's also such a different art style than the rest of this set, too, which makes it so much more cartoonish.
More spells! Not much to say here. Lure looks ridiculously cartoonish, while the rest are generic nature-based stuf.
Even more nature-based stuff. That lady in the artwork on Fyndhorn Pollen really looks high as hell.
A bunch of "NATURE WILL FUCK YOUR SHIT UP, BOY!" enchantments and sorceries. It's kind of weird to see so much of the blue colouration in Green's artwork, but in an Ice Age, it's actually fitting for the nature-manipulating Green to have access to Blizzards, Hurricanes and Snowblinds. Thermokarst is a weird thing to see in an ice-themed set, but I guess it's hinting at the fact that the planet's not entirely frozen permanently?
Anyway, I considered putting any one of these on the main part of the article page, but I really didn't have jack shit to really say about them beyond "oh, s'cool".
More fun spells. Wild Growth is here! It adds an extra mana point to a land card you own! Insert your own Hearthstone joke here about druids. Maddening Wind is a fun concept, and I absolutely love how that poor viking man is just having a pretty bad day.
Yeah, Green doesn't have a whole ton of interesting stuff in this expansion, huh? Maybe that's the side effect of having to have 300 cards and an equal number of cards for each colour, but jeez, they really don't give me much to talk about in Green.
Ehhhh. Hot Springs is neat, I suppose. I do really like the artwork for Foxfire a whole ton. It's just so... bizarrely minimalistic.
I also like the name "Stormbind". I really don't haev a whole ton to say here, I'm sorry. Not sure why Altar of Bone isn't actually an artifact.
Red now! A quartet of orc creatures that I tried to talk about, but didn't really manage to say anything about. Orcish Conscripts has a really fun artwork of clearly incompetent orcs picking their noses, while Orcish Cannoneer and Orcish Healer are pretty fun little extra 'other' units among the orc forces. Orcish Squatters would actually feel more threatening if the small horde isn't called, y'know, "squatters".
A bunch of human warriors -- including the legendary Marton Stromgald who has no lore to him. Two fun beasts in the rather lumpy-looking Sabretooth Tiger and the pretty funny looking Moutnain Goat. The goat and those humans are clearly thematic to the Ice Age. Not sure what the tiger is -- that background really could've used some snow.
Flame Spirit and Stone Spirit follow the spirits theme set up by Blue, although I really don't have a whole ton to say about these two. They're just naked dudes made up of their elements. Tor Giant and Mountain Titan are more giants, although the Mountain Titan is a Red/Black dual-coloured creature. I do like that the flavour text explains why the normally-red giant is considered Red/Black... it synergizes with Black mana because this particular giant has some darker allegiance.
More red sorceries and enchantments. Not a whole lot to say here
Not a whole lot to say here too, although I do like the artworks for Aggression and Anarchy. I tend to really not have a lot to say about sorceries and enchantments, really.
More Red spells! Shatter's got a pretty fun artwork, and Imposing Visage is utterly hilarious! Just look at those terrified-looking dudes in the background. "OH MY GOD WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOUR FACE"
Jökulhaup: [noun] A jökulhlaup (Icelandic pronunciation: [ˈjœːkʏl̥øip]) (literally "glacial run") is a type of glacial outburst flood. It is an Icelandic term that has been adopted in glaciological terminology in many languages. Magic: The Gathering is educational, kids!
A bunch of "natural disaster" Red spells, with Meteor Shower, Lava Burst and Mudslide being pretty expected. Melting, on the other hand, is something that is surprisingly gentle for Red.
Pryoblast and Pyroclasm are pretty badass names for fire spells. In fact, Pyro- is just kind of a pretty cool prefix. Let's see how many I can think of... Pyroxplosion. Pyropanic. Pyroggedon. Pyrobomb. Pyroburn.... yeah, it's not as easy to make catchy spell names, as it turns out.
While the other three are pretty much Red-style destructive spells, it is actually pretty interesting that "Vertigo" is considered a Red-coloured spell.
A bunch of dual-coloured cards that have Red in them. Centaur Archer is just kind of boring, whereas Fire Covenant and Ghostly Flame are more Red-themed enchantments.
As usual, White creatures don't really give me much to talk about. The nation of Kjeldoria is the main White nation, as it seems, and we've got a bunch of generic soldiers, warriors and clerics, including ol' lumpy-head Kjeldorian Guard over here.
Kjeldoran Warrior has a pretty interesting armour set, at least, and so do the Kjeldoran Royal Guard. I am baffled that "Mercenaries" is considered a White card, though. You'd think that they would fit... practically any other colour other than White better. Hell, make it dual-coloured!
I do like the parallel between the artworks of Order of the Sacred Torch and Order of the White Shield. Not enough to really talk about them beyond "hey, dudes on horses!" Snow Hound is a really good boy, and Seraph.... she's basically an angel version of Mary Poppins.
A set of cards we have in White are the Scarabs. And I like scarabs! These are fun little enchantments with fun little artworks. My favourite are the Black Scarab and Blue Scarab, the former looking far more realistic to a real-life scarab, while the blue one looks particularly ornate.
Blue Beetle probably uses that Blue Scarab a whole ton.
More Scarabs, and more White holy spell things.
Even more holy spell things, although I do like the visual of the Armor of Faith manifesting as the deity's hand wrapping around the paladin-priest lady.
CARIBOU RANGE. Somehow, amongst all of these "holy war" cards is a White card that's just Caribou Range. It's pretty fun!
Another series of pretty boring cards, this time Circle of Protection. I realize that these might actually be pretty interesting in-game, but I find that just repeating the same concept, just swapped for different colours, is pretty damn boring.
The lady and that frog-demon-beast on the artwork for Cooperation are so happy! They're just so happy to be buddies!
In Norse mythology, a Fylgja (plural fylgjur) is a spirit who accompanies a person in connection to their fate or fortune.
You know White really doesn't give me much to talk about when I'm just looking for definitions of weird words.
That's sure a nasty-looking demon dragon on the artwork of Prismatic Ward.
A bunch more dual-class card that I sort of associate with White due to how kinda-holy they look. Not much to say here.
I did really try to par down on the Black creatures I talk about. Hoar Shade and Kjeldoran Dead are pretty fun looking undead, but they're just, y'know more undead. Great flavour text for Hoar Shade, too! Infernal Denizen has such an unsettlingly fun abstract artwork with that face that's just really, really long. That's a pretty creepy demon!
A bunch of "just a humans" for Black, this time from Stromgald, the Black nation in this expansion. Knight of Stromgald has some neat armour, though.
Pestilence Rats is the obligatory Black-colour rat swarm card, which is a nice little recurring creature to have keep showing up, but not one I have anything new to say about. Oh, and a bunch of random spells.
A bunch of Black spells. Cloak of Confusion is apparently a pretty fancy Chinese dress! Dance of the Dead has exactly one serious skeleton reaper guy in front, but the other three seem to be pretty intent on just goofing around. They probably hang around with Sans.
Demonic Consultation probably calls Mr. Demonic Tutor for the black-mana mage to ask questions about. Meanwhile, that is a good boy in the artwork for Howl From Beyond.
Icequake is a pretty cool name for a card! Krovikan Fetish is... y'know, at this point in time everyone defaults to the meaning of fetish in the sexual sense, that the other meaning -- a magical object that is worshiped by people -- is basically all but lost. In this case, though, a necklace made out of eyeballs and ears could basically apply to either definition of "fetish".
A bunch of cards referring to Lim-Dul, including Angry McSkullface in that Order of Lim-Dul artwork. Really fun artwork for Mind Warp too!
Hecatomb: the ritual sacrifice to the gods of a hundred cattle in ancient Greece. More random fantasy trivia! That pale lady isn't actually sacrificing cattle, though.
More evil, dark spells! Touch of Death has a pretty energetic and excited looking grim reaper. That dude seems to really love his job! We've got a couple more part-Black spells that, this time around, depict acts of nature, something you don't see often in Black.
A bunch of multi-colour cards that I really don't have a whole ton to say. These three are all tri-coloured cards, which are extra-neat. I think I particularly like the artwork for Elemental Augury. I'm not sure what is happening to that rhino-dinosaur creature but it certainly looks uncomfortable! Storm Spirit's another spirit to go alongside Blue's other Spirits, but having it also be simultaneously Green and White do make sense.
I really tried, but I can't find any of the artifacts of this set all that compelling. Until we get to... oh, I don't know, Kaladesh or Mirrodin, this will be a theme of me lumping all the artifacts in a huge "gee these cards exist I guess" moment.
At least there are a bunch of artifact creatures here. Adarkar Sentinel's flavour text is kinda neat. Soldevi Golem has a neat artwork. It's kind of neat that Snow Fortress, Walking Wall and Wall of Shields below are artifact walls. Not neat enough to include in the main body of the article, though.
Icy Manipulator is hilariously bizarre looking, and probably the only artifact in this set that I actively like. The concept of the Skull Catapult is hilarious, if nothing else, and the artwork's kinda neat.
Arcum's Whistle, Arcum's Sleigh and Arcum's Weathervane are all creations of Arcum Dagsson, apparently a powerful mage that researches the artifacts left after the Brothers' War. Like most early M:TG lore characters, though, he won't be represented in any card for a long, long time.
More artifacts. Doop dee doop.
Jester's Cap is made entirely out of ice. That's kinda thematic, I guess. S'neat.
Y'know, that Pentagram of the Ages would absolutely get censored if this was Yu-Gi-Oh.
One of the cycles in this set are the Talismans, one existing for each colour. They may or may not actually be super useful. The art for Onyx and Malachite are somewhat neat, but I just really can't find myself caring for "just a neat necklace".
You know what? Considering the literal mini-novellas on some of these Artifact cards, I have to agree with the flavour text on Shield of the Ages: "This shield is a true rarity; an artifact whose purpose is obvious." Smart man, that Arcum Dagsson.
More artifacts.
Urza's Bauble is decidedly less interesting than Urza's Sunglasses.
And we're done with artifacts, and we go to... lands! Which will basically almost always be "yeah these exist, I get why they're included in the set." From Ice Age onwards, though, the lands at least have the job of actually helping to showcase what the world of whatever expansion of it looks like. As you can see, some of the special Land cards... don't particularly do a good job of that. Particularly Vedlt.
...while some of the special Land cards actually do portray the Ice Age well, but also at the same time look pretty damn boring. It's just nice pictures of snowy things. That's neat, I guess, but did we need so much of them? Why couldn't they just be the background of more interesting cards?
Okay, that cartoon demon with the biggest, happiest grin in Sulfurous Springs makes me so happy.
The last of our special lands, and now we go to a cycle of Snow-Covered Lands. They're basically similar to the basic lands, but covered with snow, and apparently triggers any "Snow" mechanic? I like the artwork of Snow-Covered Islands, in any case. Love those weird head snowmen things.
Snow-Covered Swamp really does a poor job at looking snow-covered, huh? Anyway, we now have the basic lands, which... yeah, they exist. I would probably take the artwork of some of the non-basic lands and used them for the actual basic lands, because I really feel like they should've gone a bit harder at portraying the Ice Age.
The Islands and Mountains are at least half-decent at portraying the actual ice age, although it's probably a lot easier and more natural to draw snow-covered icebergs and mountains.
More basic lands, whoop de doo.
I do like the fact that the three Plains in this set join into a single artwork, showing the encroaching Ice Age... the problem is, this is the Ice Age set, and the Ice Age should've already arrived. Not "vaguely coming on one out of three cards".
Yeah, none of the Plains or Swamps portray the Ice Age well, huh? Did they just run out of time and artwork and just grabbed spare swamp and plainland artworks? No wonder they needed to apparently add the Snow-Covered basic lands last-minute.
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