Swamp Thing E07 Review: The Return of Alec Holland

Swamp Thing, Season 1, Episode 7: Brilliant Disguise

I've been oh-so-slowly making my way through Swamp Thing and Punisher episodes, but they're... they're kinda heavy shows, y'know? It takes me a while to go through each individual episodes mostly due to how tense and serious they are.

"Brilliant Disguise" moves the plot along presumably to the final arc of this season, as we basically get introduced and are shown the name of "The Rot". The Swamp Thing spends a good chunk of this episode as Alec Holland because Abby ingested some... hallucinogens or something? It's certainly an excuse for Andy Bean to run around as an actor instead of just voicing a plant monster suit. The two of them sort of spend almost the entire episode sort of bonding and moving around, eventually leading to a sequence where Abby was nearly killed due to an encounter with a vine of the Rot. Really, she couldn't have asked Alec to take the sample for her? We do get some pretty neat showcases of the Swamp Thing's abilities, including apparently summoning and/or growing a bunch of exotic herbs to cure Abby's rot infection, and stab her with vines to help her inner microbes or whatever heal. 

While sort of a workaround in order to give the Swamp Thing and Abby a whole lot easier-to-film emotional interaction, the episode sort of ends with Abby going back to Atlanta's CDC facility to find a cure for what she's discovered, while the Swamp Thing seems to recognize that he's now part of something much, much bigger, with a much more powerful set of powers. Not sure what this will mean for the future. Are we writing Abby out until the last couple of episodes of the finale, giving the Swamp Thing some much-needed focus in his own series? Or are we just going to have an Abby-in-Atlanta subplot happening in the background of the next couple of episodes?

Meanwhile, the B-plot finally brings the Sunderlands and Cables together. It's a whole set of fun little backstabbing and treachery, and the revelation that Lucilia Cable and Maria Sunderland are actually in cahoots the whole time to get rid of Avery is pretty neat. Of course, it doesn't seem to be the end of Avery just yet since he survives falling into the swamp, but it's pretty fun to see the plan unfold -- especially since it's completely plausible that Avery and Lucilia were going off to hunt down Swamp Thing, which would bring them into conflict with the Alec/Abby pair.

That sequence where Avery tries to turn Matt and Lucilia against each other by revealing that he is Matt's father is pretty out-of-nowhere and kind of a silly soap opera complication to the whole Avery/Cables thing, but eh, it worked. Meanwhile, Maria shows that when not under the influence of a ghost, she's a lot more awesome and ends up arranging a meeting with both the naive and easily-manipulated Jason Woodrue with Avery's contact, one Nathan Ellery, representing a spooky organization that I think is called the Conclave. 

Ultimately, the plot moves nicely onwards and this is another very solid entry in Swamp Thing's first season. Despite some of the themes and general vibe of the show not really jiving with me, all of these episodes are consistently solid and it's a shame that the season was cancelled prematurely. 

Let's Play Pokemon Uranium: Part 20: Rematch & A Butt-Ton of Cutscenes

Part 20 of my playthrough of the fan-game Pokemon Uranium! Last part I was dealt a horrific loss against one of the bosses, main villain terrorist-lady Curie and her pet legendary nuclear robot thing, Urayne. This one features both a rematch and an exploration of a bunch of plot.

Not too long, this time around, because it's sort of meant to be a single page with the previous part, but I split it up.

Young Justice: Outsiders S03E24 Review: Booyah

Young Justice: Outsiders, Season 3, Episode 24: Into the Breach

Well, okay, so the Apokolips stuff, or at least Granny Goodness and his space satellite, is just... it's just over in this episode. And it's at least a lot more epic than the lukewarm "Terminus", yeah? And the episode more or less plays out like how you expect it to, with the Earth-bound team of Beast Boy's Outsiders to deal with things on Earth. And, hey, Beast Boy does have a pretty strong antagonistic relationship with Gretchen Goode,  Ultimately, though, it sort of all comes down to Cyborg and his exploration of his new superpowers, which is kinda Mary-Sue-y but at the same time Cyborg has been pretty foreshadowed throughout the season as slowly growing into a main character. I just kinda wish that, again, the pacing has been done a lot better.

The Outsiders end up fighting against Gretchen, Overlord and the X-Pit, which mostly amounts to most of the team being disabled by the X-Pit while Cyborg and Overlord tangle in some Matrix-ReBoot style dimension, while Gretchen Goode torments Beast Boy in the force-field cube, showing that apparently good ol' grandma can actually toss around gorillas and ma'alefa'ak's. The Cyborg sequence is actually pretty good -- Overlord is mute and is less of a character and more of an obstacle, but Victor looking at his 'avatar', which is fully human, and then embracing who he is -- a Cyborg -- is pretty damn great. It's just kind of a shame that this lesson of self-acceptance ends up coming off the heels of some superpower shilling of just how-awesome-Cyborg's-new-powers-are, which felt like it was throwing it on a bit too thick.

The fight between Beast Boy and Gretchen is perhaps a bit more brutal than I was expecting, but it was pretty well-animated and well-scripted... shame that there's... there's not a whole ton of thematic significance going on here beyond Beast Boy just being generically defiant against Gretchen. Once Cyborg wins against Overlord, the rest of the Outsiders is freed. The rest of the B-team try their best to contribute something (poor El Dorado's huge scene is basically his teleportation powers being useless) and help to subdue Gretchen and blow up her machine, but Gretchen teleports away, while Cyborg alone follows.

And this leads to Gretchen returning back to the Orphanage, with the completely-bizarre-why-did-we-need-this-twist of Gretchen and Granny Goodness apparently... uh... they fuse together? I genuinely don't get what use this whole storyline is all about. I don't think any of the superheroes in-universe ever believed that Gretchen Goode was not evil, it's the matter of actually proving that the old granny is evil, isn't it? I dunno. It feels like a completely unnecessary storyline, and the whole "two Grannies merge into one" scene feels like it's just there to give instant evidence for Cyborg proving Gretchen Goode's evilness in the epilogue.

Cyborg then basically frees Halo from the mind-control rig, allowing Halo to Plot Device MacGuffin the Anti-Life Equation away. The combined strengths of all the superheroes present blow up Granny's satellite machine, blows up Overlord, Halo threatens Granny with repercussions, and Granny ends up buggering off with her own Mother Box. And... and that's about it. As I mention before, it's just a matter of whose plot device is bigger, and I genuinely feel like there's a significant lack of tension over the events that's going on. It's not like the first season's climax where you're wondering who the traitor is, and why he became traitor. Or the second season, where Jaime and the Scarab's relationship was key on how they were going to react. Sure, Cyborg finally accepting himself and having enough confidence to do something superheroic is neat, as is Halo unleashing her rainbow stuff, but they both feel pretty tame and just like the show's going through the motions.

And I guess that's it for the Granny Goodness storyline? So I suppose that the final two episodes are just either going to be wrap-up plus foreshadowing for the fourth season? After a couple of shippy moments, we get a bit of an epilogue.The kidnapped metahumans are returned to Earth. The Furies and Mantis (who didn't even do anything) are captured by the JLA. Cyborg has evidence to bring down Granny Goodness, then adopts a codename and joins the Outsiders. Granny informs Darkseid of her failure, and about how it was Vandal Savage who sabotaged their plans, so at least we're maybe not done with the glacial Apokolips plotline?

We get a potential storyline for poor, ignored Forager -- with Mantis being among the supervillains captured by the Justice League, is he going to return to New Genesis? Also, going on throughout this episode is the slow revelation that Lex Luthor is the one sponsoring the Infinity Inc. team, which has been foreshadowed in the background of the past couple of episodes as the cast is far more preoccupied with catastrophic stuff. I guess this was what Luthor ended up taking from his conversation with Godfrey about "joining them"? I must confess that the idea of some publicity war between two teams of young superheroes in media don't really feel exciting.

Ultimately, it's... it's all right. There isn't enough things that went on that I would call this episode bad. But man, this Granny's Orphanage two-parter ended up really sort of just playing out as "well, we kinda need a big epic climax", and the events that happen feel like they just happened for the sake of happening. We still have two more episodes left for the season, and I wonder just what material we'll cover within those two. 

Roll Call:

• Heroes: Beast Boy, Bio-Ship, Cyborg, Wonder Girl, El Dorado, Kid Flash II, Blue Beetle, Halo, Elongated Man, Superman, Geo-Force, Icon, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, Captain Atom, Forager, Green Lantern (John Stewart), Green Lantern (Guy Gardner), Green Lantern (Hal Jordan), Nightwing, Aquaman II, Miss Martian, Superboy, Tigress
• Villains: Gretchen Goode/Granny Goodness, Overlord, Lex Luthor, Killer Frost, Lashina, Gilotina, Mantis, Darkseid, Mercy Graves, Lobo (post-credits)
• Civilians/Others: Trajectory, Other Infinity Inc. Members, Terra
• Various other characters appear in flashbacks. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• "Booyah", of course, is Cyborg's catchphrase, popularized by the 2003 Teen Titans cartoon. 
• As mentioned before, the second incarnation of the comic-books' Infinity Incorporated was a publicity stunt play sponsored by Lex Luthor. 
• The credits scene hover over Lobo's severed finger transforming into what appears to be a mutated baby. Are we getting a Slobo out of that? Is that the whole foreshadowing going on there? That we're getting Slobo, one of the original members of the comics' original Young Justice team?

Reviewing Magic: The Gathering #10 - Visions

We're now going to go through the first of the two smaller sets in the Mirage block: Visions. Visions basically picks up where Mirage left off, with the conflict between the nations and mages in Jamuraa. Again, I'm going to do a cliff's notes version of the conflict -- the actual storyline is told via multiple text stories, and you can find some of it in the Wiki and archived in older versions of the M:TG website.

The story of Visions:

• The war rages on! Kaervek's forces continue to conquer Jamuraa, managing to destroy Femeref, while the other nations of Zhalfir and Suq'Ata began to splinter due to internal political problems.
• Jolrael, who came to her senses, met with the ancient planeswalker Teferi. Unable to leave his island, Teferi instead caused multiple major figures native to Jamuraa to dream and get visions that told them to gather in a place. The heroes Asmira, Rashida Scalebane, Hakim Lorewalker and Sidar Jabari (all legendary cards from Mirage) gather from the different nations, and they figure out that they have to rescue Mangara from the Amber Prison.
• Kaervek's army assaulted the Zhalfirin city of Ufunguo, causing the death of the hero Sidar Mwigo, while Sidar Jabari managed to lead the population to the overcrowded city of Tefemburu. That city, too, quickly came under siege, and the city won't hold out for long, suffering from a lack of resources. 
• Hakim Lorewalker cast a spell that caused the creatures besieging the city to vanish at dusk, allowing the city to be evacuated. The guild-mages laid magical traps in the city, and when the creatures returned from Hakim's spell, they charged to their deaths as the city was destroyed alongside Kaervek's armies. 
• This distraction caused Kaervek to panic, and he eventually figured out that Teferi's Isle has returned. He gathered Jolrael and his remaining armies and sailed there, leaving his lieutenant Purraj with a skeleton crew to guard Mangara's Amber Prison. A combination of Teferi's immense power, as well as Jolrael deciding to pick then to switch sides, caused the utter annihilation of Kaervek's fleet, although not before Jolrael was wounded. 
• Simultaneously, Asmira, Rashida and a group of elite soldiers charged in to rescue Mangara, but nearly failed due to the treacherous Mwonvuli jungle... until the arrival of the flying galleon Weatherlight and her captain Sisay allowed them to reach Kaervek's fortress. 
• The battle against Purraj was a victory for the heroes, but with great cost -- the dragon-loathing Rashida was forced to don the cursed dragon mask to slay her enemies, and Asmira being killed by Purraj while casting the ritual to free Mangara. 
• Kaervek, meanwhile, survived the encounter with Teferi, and crawled to the Uuserk marshes to absorb the rich concentration of Black mana, and chanced upon Aku, a floating city controlled by Zhalfir's Shadow Guild. Kaervek attempted to take Aku, but he was interrupted when Mangara and the forces sent to rescue him teleported before him. Kaervek was able to wrestle control of the djinni unleashed by the mages of Aku, but this was a ploy by the Zhalfirian mages that ended up empowering Mangara instead. Eventually, Mangara was able to cut down Kaervek's minions, and seal him in the Amber Prison. 
• In the aftermath of the "Mirage War", the rest of the heroes drove away the remaining allies of Kaervek back into the mountains, while the Viashino tribes returned to the Great Desert. Mangara aided in rebuilding Zhalfir and Femeref, while Jolrael and Teferi returned to hermit-like lives respectively. 

The original draft of this article also covered the third expansion in the Mirage block, "Weatherlight", but the storyline and general feel of the Weatherlight expansion was actually pretty damn different from Mirage and Visions, and it ended up feeling more like a prologue to the entire Weatherlight saga that's going to span multiple blocks in the future. In hindsight, I probably should've combined Visions with Mirage, huh? Oh well, you get multiple smaller articles instead of a big one. This one is kinda short, I don't have a whole ton to talk about.

• Click here for the previous part, Mirage.
• Click here for the next part, Weatherlight.
• Click here for the index.

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Let's start off with a pair of cards that are pretty significant to the climax of the story, and it's a neat way to show that the Black mana cards aren't always evil. The Pillar Tombs of Aku is meant to be the huge floating city created by the Shadow-Guild of Zhalfir, meant as a mausoleum and nothing that's too sinister... despite, y'know, being a goddamn floating Necropolis. Very Warcraft III-y, I approve.

Meanwhile, the Aku Djinn are the creatures that ended up being instrumental in Kaervek's defeat, and just as how it was in the story, while the Aku Djinn are powerful, it also allows the opponent to buff their own creatures. All of them, apparently. Silly Kaervek, read the descriptions of the cards before you take control of them! Design-wise, the Aku Djinn is a stark departure from the more benign and humanoid looking djinn from the Mirage block, looking positively demonic with exposed ribcages and a very fucked-up-looking arm.


Brood of Cockroaches and Crypt Rats are another bunch of "swarm of X" Black creatures, and Crypt Rats in particular is the sort of swarm-of-rats monster we see almost every expansion. The Brood of Cockroaches is really unsettling because I've never really seen cockroaches as a carnivorous, all-consuming horde the way things like locusts or whatever are, y'know? It's gross. Also, there's an asshole cat just looking, not helping, its master.


I thought the Nekrataal was meant to be a specific character, a legendary creature of sorts, but apparently according to the MTG Wiki it's just a type of djinn that takes a more humanoid form. Okay, then. Apparently it's got swords with runes that look like crude drawings of beetles.

Tar Pit Warrior is a pretty creepy looking cyclops, although part of it is likely due to the very painting-like art style. Absolutely love how gaunt and tortured he looks with that massive bulging eyeball, and I absolutely love the little flavour text noting that the cyclops can take physical blows, "but casual insults made him weep". That sounds like something straight out of a children's story, and, well, apparently the Tar Pit Warrior will just straight-up die when you target him with any spell.


WHAT THE FUCK. Urborg Mindsucker looks pretty fucking gross, man! Later retconned to be a "Horror", the Urborg Mindsucker is apparently Kaervek's pet, and it's this hunched-over, creepy-looking humanoid with gangly arms and a face that's... how do you even describe that? Kinda like a flat squid with extra eyes? Feeding upon someone's mind is creepy enough, but when you look like that? Ew! Definitely a creepy looking monster. Mirage and Visions are actually relatively light on actually weird looking monsters, mostly just being restricted to generic undead or the nightstalkers in Mirage, but man, there's this one dude that just looks so weird.

Breezekeeper would've been a pretty generic angelic warrior dude if not for that head. And, like, there's nothing wrong with being a twin-bladed warrior that floats and flits through the breez,e but when your fucking head or mask is like, a weird stylized snow-bird with a crude face drawn in the stomach of the bird? The Breezekeeper's a weird looking fellow, and I love him.


Hey, we get another Atog! And this time, it's the Chronatog, who, as his name implies, fucking eats time. And since Blue is the colour most associated with Teferi, I guess it's appropriate that the Chronatog is blue? Design wise he looks like a bizarre mixture of frog and worm, with two beady eyes and that grinning mouth full of teeth. Have we actually seen what an Atog's full body is like at this point? I don't think so, and that makes them feel a bit more bizarre and weird. The Chronatog eats time itself, and, well, it eats your next turn to gain a +3/+3 buff. Which, I dunno, seems pretty damn self-destructive, but apparently it's part of a one-two combo to basically mill your opponent out of cards in combination with cards that cause your opponent to basically be unable to do anything but draw cards in their turn.

Cloud Elemental is a pretty neat looking monster. It's just this mass of rolling red clouds that have taken the form of an angry fat baby, but I'm not sure what that little creature next to it is supposed to be. Some sort of weird... fly-like bat creature with two long legs? Whatever it is, it's probably fucked. Cloud baby's going to blow that thing away.


(Portuguese) Man-o'-War isn't technically a true jellyfish, and more accurately it's a hydrozoan, but eh, potato poteto, right? I'm not sure what it is about these jellyfishes that make me really love them and end up choosing it as one of the cards I want to talk about from Visions. Maybe it's the art? That art's hauntingly neat.

OVINOMANCER! Hell yeah, I guess this is the dude that caused the hilarious Polymorph sorcery from Mirage. Ovinomancer, of course, is basically a "Sheepmancer" in somewhat questionable Latin, and, of course, its ability is to turn a creature into a motherfucking sheep, like that one random dude in the background. Look at that assholish grin on the Ovinomancer's face, too. He knows what he's doing is both horrifying but also hilarious, and he knows it. Like, out of all the magic in Dominaria you could use, you don't shoot fireballs or lightning blasts or cause a time flux. No. You turn someone into a fucking sheep just because you can.


Blue doesn't get quite as many dragons and drakes this time around as they did in Mirage, but they did get Shrieking Drake, which looks pretty hilarious. From that dead fish-eye, to the angry yelling pose, to the name "Shrieking Drake", to that random dude running away from the angry drake... I just imagine this drake is shouting the dragon-language equivalent of "get off mah property!"

Blue this time gets a fair amount, proportionally speaking, of djinn and efreet cards. We've basically sort of ignored the original intent of efreeti as fire spirits, yeah? Shimmering Efreet looks like a particularly assholish dude, and I assume he's going ooga-booga-booga to scare that random traveler as he pops into existence behind him.


GIANT CATERPILLAR. Man, what is it about caterpillars that make them so hilarious looking in fiction? Real-life caterpillars are gross looking, whether it's the squishy-looking ones or the hairy ones. But this one just looks hilarious as it rises up above that massive tree and just om-nom-nom's away. Those little zebra-antelope things are just looking, absolutely confused at what the shit's going on. Apparently, it's not just wurms that move around in the forests of Jamuraa. Absolutely love the flavour of the card, too, which basically summons a flying butterfly token when it dies.

The Panther Warriors are basically cat-men people that serve Purraj and was mentioned in some Mirage stuff, but they don't actually get to appear in card form until now. Again, whether it be D&D's Tabaxi or Elder Scrolls' Khajiit or those anime catgirls, you can never escape cat-people!


Uktabi Orangutan is famous for two things -- one, it's apparently a powerful tool at that time for Green, which traditionally had no way to destroy artifacts, and is powerful enough to be listed among the 'notable cards' of this set. Two... it's got two monkeys fucking in the background.

Lichenthrope is a hilarious pun on 'lycanthrope', and it's... it's a dude made entirely out of lichen, apparently, arranged into a bulb-headed humanoid creature. I'm not sure if he's meant to look horrifying, or friendly, because he's like, waving hello, right? We don't get any sort of flavour text for the Lichenthrope, but as a creature that's actually quasi-creative, and a pretty rarely-seen fungus monster to boot, I like this dude.


Yep, from the hyenas, the meerkats and the lions in Mirage, and now to those asshole Stampeding Wildebeests that killed Mufasa and Pumbaa the Warthog, someone on the M:TG team pdefinitely really likes Lion King.


Oh, hey, it's another gorilla card! Raging Gorilla isn't quite the same thing as the sentient gorilla tribes-men from Alliances or something, but it's still an angry gorilla. I do like the little detail of the local myth about how every time someone gets a temper tantrum, a gorilla is born. Okay, then.

Bogardan Phoenix is a pretty neat-looking phoenix. Out of hand, I can't remember if we've had any phoenixes before -- and I wouldn't be surprised if we had. But I do like how this specific one can come back to life... exactly once, before being completely removed from the game. The "Bogardan" moniker refers to one of the Burning Isles, so the Borgardan Phoenix is actually one of the creatures brought to Jamuraa by Kaervek.


Hooray goblins! Goblin Swine-Rider just looks so hilarious. That pig looks like it completely doesn't give a shit, the goblin in front looks so happy and pleased, and the one behind just looks so unenthused as it shakes that maracas. "Yay. Great idea, Ulchrok. Hooray. The pig is taking another step. Yay." He's like the big brother roped into a boring merry-go-round ride by a far younger sibling.

Goblin Recruiter has got a pretty hilarious card art. That goblin on the left has been shot in the ear by the archer dude. Silly goblins, memorize your CV and your resume before you come for the interview. Next!


So we get a pair of wacky cards that work in conjunction with each other, which is hilarious! The first is the bandaged Keeper of Kookus, an insane-looking goblin that apparently is one of several goblins that answered the ad for "guarding mean ol' Kookus", and that this dude must like fires and must heal quickly. That's funny! And his ability, of course, is to temporarily gain protection from red, which explains why Kookus can't hurt him.

And who is Kookus, you ask? It's a fire djinn that apparently is kept in chains by the Keeper of Kookus. And it's apparently somehow enslaved by these goblins, and will fight for you... so long as its Keeper is around. once its keeper isn't around, it's going to rampage wildly, dealing damage to you. It's a pretty interesting and fun little mechanic, and hey, the goblins at least manage to win against this one powerful-looking creature! (Kookus, of course, is a mondegreen of "cook us").


For all the mentions of the Viashino in the Mirage and Visions storyline, even if they aren't like the main characters, we didn't get a lot of them, yeah? There's a total of four in the two sets, and two of those are legendary creatures. Again, future sets would be a lot better in trimming away cards that aren't as flavourful or tied to the setting in favour of those that are. Viashino Sandstalker is a pretty neat, card. The art's pretty standard lizardman warrior stuff, but the idea is that the Sandstalker keeps jumping in and out of the sand, which is why it keeps "bouncing" back into the controller's hand after attacking post-summoning.

Army Ants is a dual-colour creature, and a Red/Black one, interestingly, instead of being part-Green. A massive migrating carpet of nomadic Army Ants is an actual real-life phenomenon and a menace that can actually cause relative damage to the ecosystem as they pass through. It's probably not as drastic as what this artwork shows, though, with one side of the forest being completely nothing but leafless tress, but it's a neat enough exaggeration.


Not too many White creatures to pick from, I'm afraid. Archangel is a neat looking angel lady, and Daraja Griffin is a neat looking griffin, but we've seen a lot that are more interesting than these two. Especially griffins! We had a lot of cooler, non-standard griffins in Mirage. 


We do have a couple of interesting part-White cards, though. I'm not sure what that huge green demon-dragon creature whose body seems to be made out of a writhing mass of snakes is supposed to be in Righteous War, and likewise, I'm not sure what that angel is supposed to be. I mean, I guess it's Asmira the Holy Avenger summoning that angel to fight one of Kaervek's demons?

Tempest Drake is a very cool looking artwork. From the thin body of the drake, to the massive, almost insect-like large wings, and the tornado and weather just swirling around in the background... it's such an interesting contrast, the inherent fact that tornadoes and twisters are meant to be destructive, but for the Tempest Drake, it's just so peaceful looking, y'know?


We have a bunch more dragons! Viashivan Dragon is another one of those dragons that look like the artwork's based more on the more lizard-like classic European artwork, and as much as I do prefer more modern-looking European dragons, I do appreciate that these lumpier, more animalistic dragons exist as cards.

Firestorm Hellkite is a badass name, and I absolutely love just how its wings is just this massive, almost Tron-like cloak that extends back into the horizon. It's got a neat pterodactyl-like mouth, and I absolutely love the teeny tiny elephants in the foreground. Curiously, it's Red/Blue? The red part, I kind of see, it's a fire dragon. But I'm not sure what part of this creature is Blue from a mana/thematic sense.


Scalebane's Elite are meant to be the elite dragon-slaying party gathered by Rashida Scalebane to fight against the Viashino and their dragon soldiers. The actual Scalebane's Elite aren't apparently as dragon-murder-happy as their boss, though, being satisfied to just be regular soldiers who have protection from black. While Mirage does have a fair bit of story-tie-in cards, Visions... really doesn't, yeah? Where are all of Teferi's phasing experiments? Where is the destruction of the cities, or Hakim's reality-warping spell? Again, not every card needs to tie in to the story, but it's kind of a hit-and-miss at this point on just how much you get the gist of the story from looking at these cards.

Pygmy Hippo is just here because I love that we keep getting these random adorable hippo cards in M:TG. This one just looks so happy to be around, y'know? It's no Pheldagriff, but it's a hippo doing hippo things!


Visions actually has a lot of artifact creatures I like, including a pair of Phyrexian monstrosities. Which is kinda weird, because, well, Phyrexia doesn't really have anything to do with Jamuraa, other than that one card in Mirage where Kaervek at least knows of Phyrexia. I guess a couple of Phyrexian constructs just got through? The Phyrexian Marauder is an interesting creature of metal that seems to have multiple limbs, and looks like it's an approximation of a jackal or some sort of four-legged mammal, but as alway, it doesn't really have eyes or mouths or anything like that, just a bunch of metal murder-parts arranged together in the shape that sorta-but-not-really resembles a wolf's head.

Phyrexian Walker, meanwhile, is a massive crab/spider robot with massive floodlights... and it's a mere 0/3 vanilla creature. Okay? I guess despite the very impressive looking artwork, it's meant to be tiny and non-threatening? If nothing else, apparently the presence of the Phyrexian Walker is enough to freak some dude called Kasib Ibn Naji the fuck out, mostly because it confirms that all those scary tales about the realm with "metal that screams" are true. We'll get to see Phyrexia and Phyrexia-corrupted locales pretty soon!


And now we get a set of four "Chimeras", artifact creatures that are all 4-mana 2/2 with different effects, all drawn by the same artist with some funky Leonardo da Vinci style schematics in the background. Brass-Talon Chimera is perhaps the goofiest out of the four, looking like the artificer was about to build a robot based on a lion's head... then ran out of budget and just slapped a pair of spindly chicken legs onto it. Look at that silly ass thing, it looks so goofy! It's like the AT-ST from Star Wars, but even sillier because it's got even spindlier feet and a goofy ass half-open lion head!

Tin-Wing Chimera, on the other hand, is clearly where all the budget went to, presuming all of these are created by the same inventor. The Tin-Wing Chimera does have a couple of ersatz metal pulleys and doodads jutting out of its shoulders, but it's otherwise a pretty impressive giant robot dragon. The gimmick with all of these Chimeras is that you can sacrifice them and turn them into a buff as they combine with a fellow Chimera, granting their keywords and stats. It has absolutely nothing to do with the Mirage War storyline, but it's pretty cool!


Lead-Belly Chimera is this fun contraption vaguely looking like a bull, but with a lot of pulleys, no real head, and I love that it's got immediate forwards-pointing horns, and a more anatomically accurate curved bull-horns on the side. Love those pistons in the front legs, too. I'm not sure what those spikes that run the Lead-Belly Chimera's belly are meant to do, but I guess if the horns fail to gore the enemy to death, the Lead-Belly Chimera can just jump and stab the enemy with his belly-spikes?

Iron-Heart Chimera, meanwhile, is the most interesting looking one out of the four, looking like the contraptions that would be designed by those World of Warcraft goblins and gnomes. It's likebasically a wacky looking furnace with wheels, but that's not it at all -- it's got little spindly bird legs that spin around on the wheels, and the front of the furnace appears to open into some sort of dragon-like mouth. Okay, then! That's certainly an interesting looking artifact creature.


Matopi Golem is a mud golem monsters, and it just looks so, so tormented. It's screaming in anger, and apparently, some potmakers had the bright idea to make bowls out of the clay from these screaming and clearly sentient Matopi Golems... and then they get surprised when the bowls scream when fired. Why, potmakers, why? Look at that thing. Look at that Matopi Golem. Does that doodoo-looking mud look like anything you would want your bowls to be made out of?