Reviewing Magic: The Gathering #7 - Homelands

It's been a while since we did one of these in a single siting -- Ice Age was written over the period of a month. But hey, I finally decided to get off my ass and finally do one of these. It's a shorter expansion, which probably helped. And this time around, we're doing the 7th expansion of Magic: The Gathering, "Homelands", originally the second set in the Ice Age block. A 'block' in M:TG is a series of three expansions that are ostensibly tied together with a common theme both story-wise and mechanic-wise... but apparently, Homelands was retroactively replaced a decade later with a different expansion.

And according to the wiki, and I quote, "Homelands is frequently panned as Magic's all-time low in game design, though it has also been praised for the quality of its setting and flavor." Apparently it's hated by the fandom because it's apparently so gosh-damned weak.  And... I dunno, I find myself disagreeing, because... well, I just really didn't have anything interesting to say about this set, despite supposedly being a flavour-first mechanics-later set. And as proven by me just sitting on drafts upon drafts of this card set for months, it really shows just how little I have to say here.

The story is pretty simple, where apparently the planeswalker Feroz and Serra arrived on Ulgrotha, a plane destroyed by the "Wizard's Wars", and eventually got married and basically maintained the only oasis in the land. And then Feroz died, and Serra left the plane, and apparently without the planeswalkers, the plane went straight to shit and the isolated civilizations there fought amongst each others. Ulgrotha was apparently a plane sealed from the other planes with a spell called Feroz's Ban, and the vampire lord Baron Sengir tries to take control of the world.

• Click here for the previous part, Ice Age
• Click here for the next part, Alliances.
• Click here for the index.

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And... here we go with the primary villain of the setting, Baron Sengir, the legendary vampire. And he's... he's all right, I guess. Not too flashy, just a pale vampire dude with a cool ponytail hair and a neat, quasi-oriental-Batman robe going on. If nothing else, I suppose Homelands receives credit for putting its main characters front and center, unlike Ursa and Mishra who were completely absent as cards in the expansions they were supposedly main characters in. Baron Sengir draws his name from an older card, "Sengir Vampire", and, well, if nothing else, Homelands actually adds context to all of these adjectives that the original design team threw in because they thought it sounded cool. Well, it certainly sounds cooler when it's the name of the big bad vampire lord!

Also, there is Feroz's Ban, and I do love the artistic depiction of a spell that segregates a world from planeswalking as a godly hand catching a world inside a flask. It's pretty neat, although I think we've seen something similar in Arabian Nights? I don't care enough to read through all of the lore to see just why the apparently good Feroz cutting off Ulgrotha from the rest of the Magic multi-verse is supposedly a 'good' thing, but okay. 

This is going to be a pretty quick talk because, well, frankly, there really aren't much in the Homelands expansion that goes in lieu of interesting artwork or monster designs, either in the 'cool' or 'hilariously weird' or 'original design' or 'creepy' or whatever, so a significant portion of this expansion's going to be placed after the break. Grandmother Sengir is pretty great, though, and I really do like how the oh-so-badass Baron Sengir still hangs out with his grandmama, who's got wrinkled skin that's just plastered onto her bones, and apparently she also takes hair tips from Marge Simpson.

Irini Sengir is apparently a dwarven girl who Baron Sengir vampirized and turned into his daughter, and is basically marching with great malice towards what was once her people. I actually do like these sort of stories -- vampirism and lichdom and all sorts of 'sentient corrupted undead' always come with very interesting implications, like just how much of you remain when you get turned into an inherently cruel creature?


Look at that vampire behind the Cemetery Gate. He just looks royally pissed, he dressed up for the Thriller party and all, but he can't get through because of the defensive Cemetery Gate. It's a very fun card ar.

Feast of the Unicorn is such a randomly brutal act of some hideous green demon-goblin-man slaughtering and ripping apart a poor unicorn with blood splattering everywhere. And it's not like modern Magic: The Gathering cards are sanitized or super-duper PG-13 like Hearthstone or anything, but man, this is the sort of shit that probably won't get past censorship nowadays. Pretty creepy stuff!

Holy shit that Greater Werewolf is in mid-transformation and it looks so god-damned grisly. The two eyes, and the wolf snout growing out of the side of the man's face, and the disgusting, almost liquid-like quality of the human flesh as it genuinely morphs into a wolf's... werewolf transformations have never really been portrayed as this horrific, usually they just focus on the human mouth turning into a canine snout, and maybe claws and muscles, but this horrifying transformation is pretty damn grisly looking.

I have no fucking idea what's going on with the Timmerian Fiends but I know I really find it hilarious. It's one of those "so much text to describe the mechanics" so there's no real lore so I don't know what a "Timmerian Fiend" is. Apparently, one of them looks like a weird bear/koala-man with a hoodie and deer horns, and the other one is a very, very happy skeleton with... with whatever the fuck's going on with those bone structures around his eyes. They look ridiculous, and I love that. 

That's it for black, let's go to Blue! And Blue really doesn't have a whole lot of flavour this time around. Black's got the vampires and the evil undead, red's got dwarves and minotaurs, green's got the fairies and the people living with them, white's got paladins... blue's got a bunch of sea creatures. I'm not complaining, they're great! And these two are proof that you can just slap "Giant" or "Dire" on any mundane creature and you can make an enemy of them in any fantasy fiction. The GM for my D&D group once nearly caused a TPK with a flock of giant guinea pigs. Like the Giant Albatross! Sure, it's just a big-ass sea bird with silly duck legs spread out wide, but if you had the misfortune of standing on that ship as the Giant Albatross swoops in to land, man, how stupid would you feel in the afterlife? "What got you, man? Swarm of goblins? A dragon? Evil wizard?" "Nah, a giant seagull."

The Giant Oyster, in contrast, doesn't look as impressive as the Giant Albatross because it seems to just be... well, a regular giant oyster in real life, especially compared to those fish around it. In fact, the artwork clearly shows a Tridacna-genus giant clam, not an oyster. Also, while a lot of the more unique creature types have been retconned ("albatross" became "bird" in reprints), Giant Oyster remains an Oyster despite it, so far, being the only creature with the Oyster type.


The Majhan is apparently a gigantic anglerfish with that gloriously horrifying extendable lower jaw that traumatized a generation of children in 2003 with Finding Nemo. Marjhan, though, is apparently large enough to eat that huge whale in a single gulp. Or maybe Marjhan's just a regular-sized sea serpent and that whale's just a miniature whale, in these fantasy settings, who knows?

Wall of Kelp. Each Magic expansion tries its best to give each colour a 'Wall' creature, but Wall of Kelp is hilarious. I'm not sure why. Again, just like the giant albatross example, being strangulated to death by Kelp would be horrifying, but it's fucking KELP, y'know?

I do like the Sea Troll. It just looks so hideous and monstrous, just this gangly humanoid with spiky teeth and random fins. It's not a fish-man, not really. It has fish features, but I really do like that it fits in with the name of 'Sea Troll' pretty well. Aether Storm is just here because I really like the art. I'm not sure if it's significant to the overall story of Homelands. It's cool.


Green's got a lot of cohesive flavour this time around, but most of it are just people living in the forest like Folk of An-Havva here. Which I suppose is all well and good to show just the people that stand to have their merrymaking lives be destroyed by Baron Sengir, but they really do make boring cards.

Willow Faerie is a lot more interesting, as are the rest of the fair folk in Green. I do like her artwork a lot, she's just a little fairy lady hanging out with her deer friend. This is far, far more interesting than her more static alternate art -- oh, yeah, this set features a bunch of alternate artwork.


Hungry Mist! What a spooky monster to give to Green, and apparently it's an elemental according to the later retcons. Apparently it's the manifestation of air itself, forming into a living green creature with claws and what passes for a face. I really do like that it's not just a face, but a very, very crude fascimile created by the wisps of the mist. I like that.

Joven's Ferrets is a card. I'm not sure why I find that so hilarious. I mean, at this point it's a given that M:TG will take any animal and assign stats to it. Ferrets are just hilarious, okay?


Rysorian Badger is... it's apparently playing drums with some poor human's skull and bones. What the fuck, badger? Apparently it can remove things out of your opponent's graveyards, and turn them into percussion instruments. That's fucking metal.

I'm not sure what's going on with the artwork in Root Spider. Is that dude somewhere in an underground caver, and the Root Spider comes out of a tree root or something? Or is it just a boring "giant spider in a cave, holy shit, run" fantasy encounter?


Holy shit Carapace is awesome. I'm including both card art variants here because damn, it's awesome. I know, I know, I'm all about the creepy bug stuff, but I'm not sure if the Carapace enchantment actually showcases these jungle-warrior people actually transforming their bodies into these Giger-esque set of insect legs, ribcages and weird pelvis-like shield coverings, or if they just loot and create armour from other creatures, or if these creatures are symbiotic creatures that happily serve as armour. Either way, pretty damn cool stuff.


And... I really don't have much to say here about Red. The red creatures are mostly Minotaurs, which is pretty cool I guess, but none of the Minotaurs actually look super interesting. Like, Anaba Bodyguard has a hilariously realistic cow-face with a tongue sticking out, and that's neat, and I really do like the Anaba Ancestor with the carved bull skull set within a black silhouette of a fleshy bull head, but otherwise... it's just bull-people zoomed into to their face, and there's only so much you can do with them when they're not actually shown doing anything.


The other half of Red are dwarves, which... are a lot less interesting than bull-people, especially since like Green's humans, the dwarves are boring old civilian dwarves and not cool Tolkien dwarves in armour or anything. Dwarven Trader only gets up here because that flavour text is hilarious. "They wouldn't sell their own families... at least, not for cheap."

Orcish Mine is a land enchantment, but the card art of that grinning orcish mook just whacking and whacking on that rock formation that's probably lead to a grisly death is a hilarious bit of black comedy.


Believe it or not, I have more notable picks from White this time around, despite me consistently finding White as the most boring class to talk about. Aysen Crusader is just another paladin of the flavour-of-the-expansion order, and presumably yet another civilization that Baron Sengir wants to destroy. But I do like the art a lot. I'm not sure if it's the confusing flowing standards on both the Crusader's horse, cape and lance, or if it just actually looks not boring, but I dunno. I like it.

Abbey Matrons are apparently "kindly souls", according to the flavour text, but I call bullshit on that. Look at that card art. That Abbey Matron isn't just the sort of strict nun who frowns at drinking, that lady's straight-up possessed, or secretly a necromancer, or something. Look at that face!


Okay I really love how the artwork for Trade Caravan, with how the two parts of the artwork actually merge into a larger, longer one. Look at that gigantic hedeghog-creature with a massive snout! And that pale-white giant spider creature some dude is riding! Lots of great detail on these artworks. I like this.


Leeches is a card. I appreciate that the time-tried medical bloodletting of the Dark Ages is represented by a card. Man, I just have so many flashbacks to Assassin's Creed II and the random plague doctor NPC's who insist that a good leeching is good for the liver.

Samite Alchemist is one of the good guys (he's a White creature!), and is going around creating potions to help cure the wounded and whatnot. Hell, his alternate card art looks positively heroic, if boring. But this particular card with its asymmetrical eyes gives him so much more character. Not too much that it makes him sinister, of course -- disfigured people can be good guys too -- but enough to make him look distinctive. Or maybe he just got stung by a bee or bitten by a Joven's Ferret or something and has a bad allergic reaction. Maybe that's why he's doing alchemy right now.


Holy shit what the fuck is that creature in Serra Bestiary? Serra is the planeswalker who's apparently all about light and goodness and shit, I know that much, and she's infamous for creating the Serra Angels and a whole lot of paladin stuff are named after her, but apparently her little zoo includes caged... what is that horrifying thing? It's bald, it's got mismatched eyes, it's got a long tongue and a long tail... is it a thrull or some shit? Man, that's creepy.


We don't quite get as much artifact creatures as previous sets, but the Clockwork Gnomes have these hilarious little spiky garden gnome hats and huge wind-up things on their backs. They look positively adorable, but apparently they just go around rattling about and don't blow themselves up or anything. I guess it's Warcraft and Hearthstone's fault that I associate anything mechanical and gnome-y to be explosive.

Roterothopter looks like someone took Leonardo da Vinci's design for a flying machine helicopter thing, mirrored it, and then drunkenly added fifteen different gears and weird gizmos to it. It looks like something out of a Dr. Seuss book and it's actually pretty glorious. Apparently, it is "insidious", but we don't really learn why, so my personal headcanon is that the Roterothopter is actually the secret villain pulling the strings behind Baron Sengir all along, and he's actually the true big bad of Magic: The Gathering's multiverse, hiding out as a boring card in a boring expansion and biding his time before he can unseat all of those silly Eldrazi and dragons and Phyrexians and claim its rightful throne as M:TG's main villain. 

And I really don't have a whole ton to talk about the rest of the cards. I'm going to quickly blaze through them.


The alternate art for Cemetery Gate doesn't have a Thriller vampire man and is therefore a lot less awesome. Black Carriage, Sengir Autocrat and Ghost Hounds are cool undead-themed minions and all, but they're nothign we haven't seen before and don't have any interesting flavour text.

We've got a couple of Legend creatures. Veldrane of Sengir is apparently a minion of the Baron, and really looks like X-Men's Callisto. Ihsan's Shade is a corrupted Paladin, and is one of the main characters in the Homelands stories. Okay, then. There are two artworks for Sengir Bats, and, as all good bats do in a vampire-centric setting, they spy for the vampire lord. The artwork's neat and really looks different from each other.


The alternate Feast of the Unicorn card is a lot less creepy, but still creepy enough, showing the result of the unicorn dismemberment and the poor creature's head on a platter. Drudge Spell's art is kinda confusing but apparently shows a four-armed, no-headed skeleton rider? Dry Spell is an interesting spell as a concept, and has interesting artwork, but I don't necessarily think it particularly fits with the vampiric domination thing. 

Okay, a bunch of funeral-themed instants and enchantments, a broken visage... and Koskun Falls, randomly, is Black's world-enchantment spells. A snowy mountain. That's kind of weirdly themed.


Torture's two artworks are fun. The first shows a torturer with a hilarious mask that wouldn't look out of place in a Luchador parody, and the second one shows the torturer mapping out parts of the body and that's kinda creepy but also hilarious.

Blue now! Dark Maze is like... a bunch of maze walls made out of screaming misty faces. Pretty neat, but we've seen walls of mists and whatnot before, and it's not as silly as the Wall of Kelp.


The alternate art for Giant Albatross doesn't really show its scale until you spot the little saddle. Nowhere as cool as the Albatross about to fuck up a boat! Narwhal is neat, even if it's just another real-life animal as a card. Labyrinth Minotaur is the sole Blue-allied minotaur in this set. I'm not sure why.


And we've got Reef Pirates, which apparently is crewed by an undead pirate called Zeki. Are they allied with Baron Sengir? Maybe they are. Reveka, Wizard Savant, is apparently a dwarven water mage, and according to the card text, apparently dwarves call her a "seafaring muleheads". Dicks, those dwarves. Sea Sprite is a faerie. She's neat. I don't have much to say here.


Baki's Curse refers to "Baki, Wizard Attendant", who shows up a lot in Blue's flavour text in this expansion. We don't learn much about him. Apparently his curse involves... a chicken skull? Eh.

Memory Lapse's artworks are pretty cool, even if the first one over there reminds me of the Wikipedia logo. Generally the showcase of pieces being removed one by one from the head -- whether it's the marble statue or the puzzle pieces, really look pretty damn cool.


And we have the An-Havva humans, who live in the forest and probably make for a good starting D&D town setting. Autumn Willow and Daughter of Autumn are legendary creatures, apparently. They're... people all right. I have nothing to say here.


And we have the faeries who live with the people of An-Havva or something. Again, none of them are interesting other than the alternate Willow Faerie artwork I featured in the main part of this review. They're fairies all right, and we've seen far more interesting faeries in previous expansions. Hungry Mist apparently got to satiate its hunger by eating that bald man. You go, buddy.


Leaping Lizard and Spectral Bears are... they're neat. The lizard's honestly kinda mundane, and the spectral bears are just ghostly bears, but they're way more interesting than An-Havva Constable or Faerie Noble or whatever. Also, there's a bunch of enchantments. Kinda boring.


More green sorceries and enchantments. I don't have much to say here.

More minotaurs for Red. Red has a bunch of minotaurs, even if thanks to the wording of some of these older cards, the minotaur tribe synergy doesn't work at all with some of the minotaurs being identified as "bodyguard" or "ghost" or whatever. Also... man, what a lazy piece of alternate art for the two Anaba Shaman cards, huh? It's basically the same art flipped with a few slight details changed.


Another minotaur, and a bunch of dwarven-related stuff. I do like that Dwarven Pony and Dwarven Sea Clan are a thing, they add some flavour to the dwarven culture.


Also apparently Red gets a lot of Legendary characters. Eron the Relentless, who apparently has some sort of a porcelain face that cracks, and apparently is immortal. Chandler, who probably doesn't star in Friends, and Joven, who in spite of his huge eye-shadow and bizarre choice of facial hair, is apparently a thief. Apparently they hate each other or something.

Y'know what? I can see why people tend to try and over-compensate in making their video game avatars look crazy-weird and distinctive. Otherwise there's nothing to separate Joven from a generic "Dwarven Thief" if not for the little Legend tag over there.


Someone really liked the word "Ambush" in this design team. 

Those faces on the pillars of An-Zerrim Ruins are hilarious. Otherwise, nothing interesting here.


White now. Apparently Aysen Bureaucrats are so interesting they made two card arts for what's basically a bunch of dudes in robes arguing.


Mesa Falcon! That's kinda cool, if sort of a generic animal. Hey, if the narwhal didn't make it up there, just-a-falcon certainly wouldn't. Like, it's not even a Giant Falcon or a Sanctified Holy Falcon or anything. Now look at that Abbey Gargoyle. A far, far cooler looking creature than just the bland old Mesa Falcon.


White's Legends are also pretty boring. Rashka the Slayer is just some lady archer. Hazduhr the Abbot is just a kindly old priest. Soraya the Falconer is just some lady with a bird. Honestly, if these are what counted as "legends", no wonder Baron Sengir won.


Serra Inquisitor are the most disinterested looking inquisitors I've ever seen.


More white spells, and they're.. neat, I guess. There are also a bunch of artifact creatures in this set, too, like the Ebony Rhino.


The Clockwork Steed and Clockwork Swarm are neat, but I really wished the card wasn't literally walls of text that made me really disinterested in reading it. Oh, also, Didgeridoo is a card, apparently, because why not. Other artifacts have badass names like Armageddon Chime, but sometimes all you need is a Didgeridoo.


And... yeah, I tend to have nothing interesting to say about artifacts and lands. So... yeah, that's Homelands done! Next up is Alliances, where we follow up to the storyline of Ice Age, and hopefully more interesting stuff than the ones we see here because it's frankly been a pretty bland set once you get past the whole Sengir vampire army.