So after the huge "Ice Age" event where Dominaria was frozen by, well, a massive ice age as well as the invasion of the necromancer Lim-Dul and his hordes of the undead, we sort of got the unrelated "Homelands" expansion... which is then followed by the expansion we're covering now, Alliances. Which follows the Ice Age storyline, which follows Dominaria after the ice age itself has started to melt. A good-aligned planeswalker, Freyalise, cast a world spell that ended the Ice Age... but y'know, apparently the population of Dominaria has actually adapted to the cold and has to re-adjust to the warming weather, and that's actually a very cool theme to explore. In these settings where magic can just revert what was originally such a global, world-shaking change, it's easy to assume that the citizens of the world would basically react to citizens in any given Marvel or DC comic book where after the superheroes beat up whatever evil alien overlord or reality-shaking, multiverse-rending event, they just basically go on their daily lives in time to be shocked by the next event to happen. The fact that Dominaria actually doesn't just have to deal with the Ice Age, but also the aftermath of adapting to it and then forced to adapt to old Dominarian weather is definitely an interesting one.
Of course, in addition to all of this adapting business, Lim-Dul the necromancer is still here with his big ol' undead army. Oh no!
This one... is going to actually be a bit quicker. I don't really have a lot to talk about a fair amount of the cards, and as a 'small' expansion, it doesn't have a whole ton of cards to go through anyway.
- Click here for the previous part, Homelands
- Click here for the next part, Mirage.
- Click here for the index.
Basically, some of the land cards and whatnot in this set show that the snow is finally thawing, and that things are changing. Thawing Glaciers shows a bunch of Eskimo-looking people looking at the snow turning into rivers, although it's clear that this is a process, as the world-enchantment Winter's Night shows. I do like that as much as I tend to not have much to say about land cards and whatnot, they're at least being used to fulfill a narrative purpose this time around.
And while it isn't entirely absent, I do think that this expansion really needed a bit more flavourful cards to really show the changes to what's happening in the world of Dominaria once the ice has melted. It's these sort of cards that really hammer home that this is a changing Dominaria... and I kinda wished we had more.
As always, we're starting with Black, because that's how the cards are officially ordered in this one. And we do have a bunch of good old-fashioned undead as Lim-Dul's army is still here. Balduvian Dead is a nice little nod to the nation of Balduvia. We saw Balduvian Barbarians as Red creatures back in Ice Age, and now apparently Lim-Dul's evil energies have turned one of them into a zombie. Notably, the Balduvian Dead still uses a Red mana to activate his ability, which, in addition to being a neat dual-colour card mechanic, is also a neat nod to the Balduvian Dead's original form. He even has tatters of his red viking beard!
Lim-Dul's High Guard could've been a generic skeleton with swords, but there's a lot going on with him. He's got a bunch of golden armour grafted to his body, and it's all asymmetrical, which is neat! He's got a chain attached to his right side, while his left side has two very skinny-looking arms attached to it. It turns what would've otherwise been a boring skeleton minion to a more interesting one.
Y'know, at this point, "just a real-life animal" should have sort of lost its novelty somewhat, with us being eight or nine expansions in, what with M:TG already having their own unique creatures as of Fallen Empires... but I dunno. There's just something pretty fun to see just a Swamp Mosquito that's just flying around in the swamp, y'know? Magic's unique association of the Black mana colour with swamps does mean that this is appropriate, and I do enjoy the idea that a mosquito's disease-spreading ability is represented with mosquitoes just straight-up infecting the enemy player until he dies -- the poison counter mechanic is infamously not that good, but I do appreciate it from a flavour standpoint.
Diseased Vermin is yet another "swarm of rats" card, and every second Magic expansion tends to have one of these in the Black colour pool. In this expansion, Black has a flavour theme vaguely related to disease and contagion, and a swarm of rats just apparently consuming that poor dude is definitely pretty much in tone with this. Look at bit closer at that artwork and you realize that the poor fellow's left arm is just dangling off of his wrist by sinew and bone, which looks pretty dang painful!
A lot of the cards in Alliances have multiple card artworks, and we have a couple expansions of this to look forward to before the production team stops doing this entirely for a long while, and only include alternate artworks for promotional pictures. But Phantasmal Fiend is one where I really do like just how interesting the two alternate artworks are. Done by the same artist, the Phantasmal Fiend's first artwork just shows off this hideous, demonic creature in its full, nasty-looking glory. Gangly limbs, insect-like claws, goat hooves, a massive lower jaw with two massive claws jutting up, and, most importantly, it's a "phantasm" (retconned into "Illusion" later on), so it's translucent and you can see the details of the archway and corridor behind it.
The alternate art shows off the Phantasmal Fiend as it's about to attack its prey, and while it's not the most impressive artwork by today's standards, I do really like just how horrifying the dead-fish eyes look in close-up, really showing off just how horrifying it would be to have this creature jump up at you and gnaw your face off. Not the most novel of demonic designs, but still a pretty cool looking classic critter. The effect of swapping its power and toughness is pretty interesting, too!
"Insidious Bookworms" has a pretty hilarious name, and the fact that it's literal buggy bookworms crawling all around a bunch of books in a library is pretty fun! Apparently, they gnaw through your opponent's hand and discard a card in their hand, and flavour-wise presumably they basically gnaw through the scroll or whatever way that the enemy 'mage' is attempting to cast the spell out of? After all, a lot of the "discard an opponent's card" cards have a memory loss vibe to them, so this might work similarly to it.
Krovikan Horror is another one of those "Horror" cards, and while it's not going to be for a while, this is about the start when Magic: The Gathering starts phasing out "demons" and "devils" for more eldritch, abominable "horrors". Krovikan Horror is a pretty creepy one, and I'm not sure what it even is. It's sort of transparent like the Phantasmal Fiend, it's got a body like a worm, it's got tentacles, it's face looks like something straight out of Berserk, it's got a weird mouth that seems to shoot a ray that's... draining power from that poor bald dude? And it's got two weird appendages with flames on top of them jutting out of its shoulder. Sadly, Krovikan Horror doesn't have flavour text so we have no fucking idea what this is even supposed to be. A minion of Lim-Dul, I guess, but it'd be nice to have something to tell us what this is, y'know?
Speaking of horrors... here we are face-to-face with the most prominent villain in Magic: The Gathering, the Phyrexians! And this is another where the alternate card arts really look like they belong next to each other -- they look like two mirrored images, and I do like how the left one seems to be a giant mound of flesh with two very human-looking hands, granting some sort of glowing tendril that reflects its first effect -- granting a stat buff and the titular Phyrexian Boon to "the blackest of hearts". Meanwhile, on the other card art, the hands are far more monstrous, with spikes and tendrils and spooky beady black eyes are starting to sprout out of the mount of blobby flesh, because it will weaken those that aren't Black-mana creatures.
We did get hints of Phyrexia name-dropped here and there, but unless I forgot something (and I may have), that second card is probably the first to talk about Phyrexia creating a "mechanical utopia", isn't it? Which is kinda weird to put on a card that clearly features a fleshy-looking creature as the main monstrous highlight, but eh.
Casting of Bones is honestly not that far-fetched, because bones have been used in divination and fortune-telling in some cultures. Of course, most cultures nowadays view anything to do with desecrating corpses to be vile, which is why it's a Black card in this one. I wouldn't have probably placed this enchantment here if it wasn't for the pretty fun-looking tentacle jutting out of the fortuneteller's hooded robe... and the fact that it took me a while to realize that the huge white thing on the upper right was a skull bouncing towards the 'camera', and not some sort of eldritch moon.
Lim-Dul's Paladin is here mostly because I kind of find it funny that Lim-Dul the great necromancer has 'paladins', which, as someone growing up on WoW and D&D, have became synonymous with warriors of light, knights of justice, yadda yadda yadda... but turns out the real meaning of the word 'paladin' is just a trusted military leader, so, yeah, Lim-Dul can have paladins. They're just probably launching evil necrotic energies at people. Also... we have dual-colour cards again in this set.
And this is basically a neat little showcase of the four main kingdoms, of sort, that are featured in this expansion other than Black, which is just sort of there with more of Lim-Dul's stuff. Soldevi Excavations shows off the Soldevi people, a race of archaeologists who end up uncovering something that they really shouldn't, which is told in Blue and Artifact cards. Kjeldorian Outpost represents the Kjeldorian empire, whose story is mostly told in Red and White cards. They're like the knights and castles guys. Balduvian Trading Post represents the barbarian nation of Balduvia, told in Red cards. And Heart of Yavimaya represents the Yavimaya Jungle, where the Green cards are set in.
Browse is here just because of the fun artwork. That blue skinned... goblin? Orc? Troll? Genie? That blue skinne dude is just straight-up confused and ripping off pages from a book in search for something, and that is exactly what is going to lead to "look at five cards from your deck, put one in your hand, remove the rest from the game". That's what happens when instead of turning the page, you rip off pages from a book!
Phantasmal Sphere is a very, very cool creature, too. It's just this swirling ball of blue energy, and seems to be siphoning pink energy from whatever that yellow orb the human next to it is holding. Is it feeding on the yellow orb? Or is it creating a yellow orb, which would make a bit more sense considering the Phantasmal Sphere's effect of creating a token minion when it leaves play? Either way, a pretty cool creature -- too often in these fantasy settings, Elementals end up basically looking like humanoid genies made out of the elements they are supposed to represent. Which is kinda cool, don't get me wrong, but giving a design like this is a lot more alien-looking and cooler.
Blue really loves to put in random weird aquatic creatures, like that Giant Clam from the previous expansion, but Spiny Starfish is particularly funny. It's not just a monster starfish, it's also a starfish that stands up on two legs and launches little baby starfish friends as shurikens. That's hilarious.
Speaking of weird-looking elementals that's not just the standard genie-like humanoid body, the Storm Elemental looks pretty cool, yeah? It's got a distinctly bat-like body, a massive weird stinger-tail like a wasp, and a face that is a bizarre combination of something like a fish and a human, and also it only has one eye. And on its cheek are seemingly vestigial claws that just jut out from his body without any clear ability to actually function as hands. A pretty weird but cool looking critter for sure.
Storm Crow's honestly a card that isn't super interesting. It's just a bird with the additional effect of having a thunderstorm following behind it, which... isn't actually reflected in the card's ability. But it did end up with me going on a bit of a brief google research because I could swear up and down that "Storm Crows" are an actual mythological creature... but apparently it's just the common name for the yellow-billed cuckoo. Okay!
Viscerid Drone is interesting. It is of course a reference the Homarids of Fallen Empires, and even the tribal tag designates the Viscerid Drone as a Homarid! I guess the ice age has caused the Homarid race to transform and mutate into a slightly different variation? The original Homarids alternate enough between just lobsters holding human tools to straight-up lobster-men mutants, and there are only a couple of Viscerid cards out there. I guess it's intelligent enough to cause floodings, if the flavour text is anything to go by... and seems to disguise it as the natural flooding from the melting ice age. Cool to see some old races come back, even if it's in minimal amounts. We do get a couple of extra Viscerid cards, but none that are actually creatures.
Okay, wow, Thought Lash is a creepy-ass card. That poor lady's skull has mutated into an upside-down animal skull, with a gigantic, fleshy tongue that starts off with the texture of a brain leading into a curling green serpent's tail, all the while the poor lady's just apparently babbling out mathematical equations or something. Blue cards have always been great at showing just how much its spells fuck with the opponent's mind, but man, Thought Lash is particularly grody.
Deadly Insect is, as you could probably tell, a card I instantly like, because I love bugs. But man, what a weird bug Deadly Insect is! It's shaped like something out of Dr. Seuss, with a very stylized and angular neck with lots of personality, and that's coming from a little bug which doesn't seem to have eyes. It's got an upraised abdomen kind of like a scorpion (but it's an entire abdomen chunk instead of just a tail), very thin legs, and two vaguely mantis-like front legs that are posed as if the Deadly Insect is pantomiming and trying to ask the bird for directions. Or, more likely, mimicking the nearby flowers and plants.
So for Green in this expansion, they got gorillas. Because gorillas are apparently popular, if the sheer amount of random "Marvel/DC Apes!!!" and sentient monkey enemies are anything to go by -- Planet of the Apes, King Kong and all that. Apparently according to the Wiki there was some conflict between the 'creative' team and the card team about whether to include the Gorillas? They exist in multiple different forms, at least, and tries to be more creative than the Minotaurs. Green is honestly pretty damn boring in this expansion, so I guess kudos to whoever was fighting for the sentient tribal gorillas?
Gargantuan Gorilla isn't quite King-Kong sized, but plays up the sheer size of the monster as a threat. Gorilla Berserkers go a bit more Planet of the Apes -- at least the later movies -- and play up the general fury and scariness of a rampaging ape. And apparently this particular monkey's gotten his hands on some spears and a weird helmet.
Yavimaya Ants is just a good ol' devouring horde of army ants marching through the jungle and eating everything in their path, and apparently are so ravenous that they require an upkeep of you tapping two forests every turn. The one in the foregroud is a pretty awesome looking monster ant, too. Lots of cool ridges on the head and thorax part. Not much to say here, it's pretty cool.
Yavimaya Ancient, meanwhile, is an interesting take on the whole Treefolk bit -- which in M:TG previously was always kind of been portrayed as giant trees with cartoonish human faces... but this one is just a giant mass of clearly sentient trunks, branches and brambles that has clearly wrapped around and about to crush the knight and his horse. Pretty cool, and honestly, I do like how you could squint and actually see a screaming face among the bark, actually made out of the grooves and creases of the tree. It looks so much more natural and looks so much creepier. Throw in some good old-fashioned roots moving around like octopus tendrils or whatever, and the Yavimaya Ancients end up looking pretty dang neat.
Chaos Harlequin is honestly kind of a regular clown, and not even a scary-monster-clown like Pennywise or the Joker, but man, look at those things aroud him and he's apparently summoning a bunch of insane looking fire-sprite demons. Also, his card text is essentially kind of an RNG-based effect that Magic would sort of phase out since sacrificing mana as well as a card from your library for a chance to get +2 power isn't something you really do want.
Red gets gorillas to, like Gorilla Shaman over here. Gorilla Shaman's pretty neat looking as far as these go... I generally don't have much to say for giant ape monsters, if we're being honest. I don't hate them, and I appreciate just how powerful gorillas look and how they make for some classic looking adversaries, but I really just don't have a whole ton to say about them.
We've got a bunch of random barbarians and humans for red. Rogue Skycaptain is pretty cool, mostly because he's a dude riding a freaking giant bird and that will never not be cool. I do also like that he's apparently actually rogue, and can very well swap sides if you don't pay this mercenary.
Balduvian Horde is a bunch of angry, half-naked men with tattoos, and evidently, while Lim-Dul got some of the Balduvians, he didn't get all of them. I'm not sure why two of the Horde barbarians seem to just be breathing out foggy breaths, though. What, did they think they were Skyrim protagonists?
We get some cards related to the city of Stromgaldcards are in Red, with Agent of Stromgald apparently someone who spreads poisonous lies. Seeing that the Agent of Stromgald has an ability activated by black mana, it actually fits with the ongoing theme that Stromgald being slowly influenced, insidiously, by evil forces. We actually have cards like "Stromgald Spy" over in Black, and that tells a neat narrative. According to the Wiki, apparently the Order of Stromgald attempt to kill Kjeldor's king and hand over the nation to Lim-Dul.
Meanwhile, the rest of Kjeldor is being led by some dude called Varchild and they continually go onto war with Balduvian barbarians instead of dealing with infighting. Kind of a shame that the flavour text wasn't as clear about what faction belong to which, and I had to keep looking up the Wiki for which one is the nation -- Kjeldor, Varchild, Stromgald or Balduvia?
Look at that Carrier Pigeon with the adorable little message chest-pack! It's not just a regular "tie a message around this pigeon's leg" like what would be accurate historically. This Carrier Pigeon accesorises itself, and it's adorable! That's also a pretty cool flavour text. I like this one.
Unlikely Alliance has a hilariously fun card art where that lady cyclops in a hilariously stripper-like outfit (is that a metallic demon skull on her crotch) is... married? Engaged? Just dancing together? With a nobleman. Look at those cyclops parents shedding a tear in the background! I'm not sure if the cyclopean parents are actually crying because they're happy their daughter's getting married, or if they're sad because this seems to be a marriage for stately convenience. I kinda wished we had actual cyclops in this expansion to make this actual "Unlikely Alliance" make some sense, though.
Reprisal is pretty fun, though, thanks to the artwork. Drawn by the same artist, it shows the villagers in a village fighting against giant kaiju-sized monsters, and I'm a big fan of that! The first one looks like some sort of weird crocodile-dragon-dog creature that wouldn't look out of place in a Chinese legend, while the second one looks like some sort of dinosaur with a hammerhead shark's head stapled onto it. I'm not sure if these are references to specific past Magic monsters or not, but I like them. Moreover, it's, again, very awesome and flavourful that White has a couple of cards that show these random civilians of the world just fighting back and beating at least the weaker monsters and enemies, while leaving the bigger Gargantuan Gorillas for the actual heroes.
We've got a couple of fun multi-colour cards here. Lord of Tresserhorn is one of the few Legend cards in this expansion, something that the early expansions are very inconsistent about. Sometimes we get Legends which has a whole slew, and then you get Alliances where you barely get a handful. And this dude is just a horned zombie in a fancy suit with an axe -- not even a flavour text! The artwork's cool, I guess, but he's just some minion made by Lim-Dul to command the undead in Tresserhorn.
Phelddagrif is pretty fun! It's a purple hippo with big wings, and it's got a name that sorta sounds vaguely believable as a Greek monstre. Like, Hippogriff? Griffon? It isn't a stretch to think that maybe in Greece's many, many monsters-and-gods legends, there's some hippo-eagle hybrid. Except that the Phelddagrif, according to MTG Wiki... is actually an anagram of (Richard) Garfield, PhD, one of the creators of Magic. That's hilarious! And the Phelddagrif is pretty dang cool, too -- especially the ability to apparently just summon hippo minions.
Hey, y'know what's cooler than the Rogue Mercenary, being a fantasy knight man that rides a giant bird? Aesthir Glider, which is a fantasy knight man that rides a giant ROBOT bird. A pretty damn cool looking warbird, too, particularly around that multi-layered head. Apparently this particular artifact creature was made out of the corpse of "a noble ally in life", and that at least a Skycaptain views this as sacrilege. I dunno, I'm pretty sure the Aesthir Glider would be happy to continue to rip and mangle Lim-Dul's hordes even after death.
And now we have actual Phyrexian creatures! See, the whole gimmick of Phyrexia is that they're this sort of horrible mechanized realm that seeks to invade Dominaria. Phyrexian Devourer is this weird, giant war machine that honestly looks more like a long, conical snail or shellfish, with a gaping maw that is apparently devouring everything in its path. I do like how it works, too, where it continually devours cards from your library, increasing its power and becoming greater and greater, but only to a point before it presumably explodes.
And we get to see the Phyrexian War Beasts, which honestly looks like the same thing mirrored... and it does look pretty alien. It's like some sort of weird... carriage or bird-like thing, but with a 'head' that sort of tapres off into a swirling proboscis with scissors attached on top of it. Or am I looking at this wrong, and that's an upraised tail, while the dome-like figure with a row of weird cannons the actual 'head'? Which one is the front side, and does it even matter?
Apparently, they were excavated by the people of Soldevi, which, if you remember back in Ice Age, were all about excavating artifacts from the Antiquities era. Of course, it's never a good idea to activate ancient artifacts you uncover that you don't understand, and, of course, according to various other flavour text and lore bits, the Phyrexian War Beasts eventually went out of control and destroyed cities. Oops!
So apparently, some dude called "Arcum Dagsson, Soldevi Machinist", ended up making these Soldevi Steam Beasts, presumably based on the Phyrexian War Beasts. And they're pretty cool looking, with enough spikes and a general nondescript shape that would make one believe they were inspired by the Phyrexian War Beasts, but the massive AT-ST chicken legs, the little T-rex arms and the chimneys vomiting steam into the air. Ido like how the Soldevi Steam Beast is shown in different terrain, one in a more seemingly-benign location where it's just lumbering along, and another in a wasteland with dead trees, presumably after the Soldevi Steam Beasts go out of contrlol. Silly Arcum Dagsson!
I liked these two as well. The Shield Sphere seems to just be another in a series of magical items, but it's apparently sentient enough to count as an artifact creature specifically. And it's a floating sphere that... creates weird aura projections of massive arrowheads? That's... that's not exactly an effective shield, and probably doesn't block a whole lot of damage, but maybe that's why the Shield Sphere gets a "-0/-1 counter" when it blocks. It's trying its best, though!
Soldevi Sentry is just a humanoid figure made entirely of metal, and apparently able to launch lightning bolts at anyone who tries to interfere with Soldevi affairs... but man, I absolutely love the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure pillar man pose that the Soldevi Sentry is pulling off as it blows a hole inside that poor thief's chest.
Seriously, though, Arcum Dagsson has this bizarre Dr.-Seuss-meets-Salvador-Dali giant machine of gears, drills and wacky shit that apparently looks like it's the size of the mountain... and instead of being happy with it, he can't leave well enough alone and had to poke on to ancient extra-dimensional ancient war machines. Soldevi Digger's gloriously bizarre. I love it.
Lake of the Dead is just pretty awesome. Mostly the art, with the point of view being from within the lake, looking through a dessicated, drowned corpse of some poor schmuck with a rotting ribcage, looking up at an ominous tower beyond. It's also got a pretty interesting little gimmick, where you must sacrifice a swamp you control to first put Lake of the Dead into play, which sort of implies that the swamp gets transformed into the far, far more potent Lake of the Dead. Cool little concept!
And now we go through the rest of the Alliances expansion!
Again, alternate artwork is here a fair bit. Insidious Bookworm, Lim-Dul's High Guard and Swamp Mosquito look a lot interesting here, though, with the Bookworm in particular looking very unimpressive and kind of like a turd. The Keeper of Tresserhorn is kinda neat-looking, even if he's kind of a generic evil Death Knight-y creature.
Soldevi Adnate has taught me the meaning of "adnate" -- it's an adjective used in botanical terms for things that grow closely together, so I guess Lim-Dul has a bunch of his minions infiltrate the Soldev people? I like both the hooded elf with face tattoos, as well as Mr. "Dear God What Happened To Your Face" on the right. Stromgald Spy is a pretty basic as far as flavour goes, but I do like the implication that if it actually successfully acquires information, you get to look at your opponent's hand as long as the Spy is active.
Ritual of the Machine apparently shows off just what happened, depicting Arcum Dagssom's creation of the Steam Machines or something. It's interesting that this particular ritual is shown off in Black, when Dagssom (when he eventually gets a card) is Blue, while all the machines themselves are colourless artifacts.
An alternate art for Casting of Bones features clearly animal bones, which is less impressive, but I do like the random detail of the fortune teller having a prosthetic pinky finger made of bone. Contagion and Dystopia are neat mood-setters of how the world is fucked. Fatal Lore is something that's a neat little trope in fantasy, where reading too much into the words of Satan or Cthulhu will drive people to death sometimes... but man, that card art is really super-dramatic, huh?
Feast or Famine is an interesting name? It just kind of shows a generic ritual of unfortunate saps being fed to hordes of zombies, though. Fevered Strength is one that's a bit weird to see on Black, because it doesn't seem particularly evil... until you see the second card art and read the flavour text, and realize that the burst of strength is caused by a plague that also causes the poor minions of Lim-Dul to break in boils and froth at the mouth. Contrary to what the flavour text implies, though, the enchanted creature isn't actually harmed by the process.
Stench of Decay as well as Krovikan Plague are more cards that hammer home the whole decay and plague theme of Black in this expansion. Not sure what's going on with Misinformation, and how a knight facing off against a weird yeti creature fits with the action of spreading misinformation, or how this is a Black card.
More Blue cards, and we've got a bunch of Soldevi mages! Or, well, Soldevi Heretics, who are shoting and yelling and just looking like douchebags. Meanwhile, Soldevi Sages are basically just reading books. Their flavour text basically describe even more of the Arcum Dagsson and his foolish machine activation tory, as well as throw in some zen "Arcum, thou hast fucked uppeth" from Sorine Relicbane.
We get two more Merfolks for Blue, but neither that I really find super intresting. Benthic Explorers are just kinda there, although I do like the little flavour text acknowledging the Merfolk/Homarid conflict from Fallen Empires, and how the Merfolk now have to contend with re-emerging Homarids. Tidal Control shows a bunch of Viscerids or Homarids presumably fucking up the tides and causing floods or whatnot.
Arcane Denial is the latest in Mage's many Counterspell-esque spells. Pretty awesome art, I have to say. Awesome Presence shows off Cthulhu's second-cousin-removed, and that's actually pretty cool, even if I'm not sure who or what creature either of these are supposed to represent. They look awesome and they have an awesome presence is all you have to know.
Not a whole ton to say here, I guess. I like that the second art for False Demise shows some dude hiding underwater with the good old-fashioned "straw breathing apparatus" ninja trick, but otherwise these are just kinda there. I can't help but think that both artwork pieces for Foresight were originally meant to be other sorts of cards, actually -- neither really has anything to do with foresighting.
Lat-Nam's Legacy and Library of Lat-Nam and a series of cards from the Antiquities era, and it's neat to see that cards and locations from previous expansions are just straight-up ancient archaeology for these Soldevi people. Apparently, whoever is investigating Lat-Nam's Legacy has these weird blue homonculi whose sole purpose is to go around and fetch books.
Viscerid Armor is an enchantment that relates to the Viscerids, and apparently this is one thing that the Viscerids can do -- they can wear the discarded carapace of their fallen kin as armour. And I get that the artist here is trying to distinguish the Viscerid wearing the armour and the Viscerid corpse that became the armor by making the two have different colours, but it does end up with the Viscerid looking like he's wearing a suit. Pretty neat, and the idea that this particular Viscerid Armor just keeps returning to the player's hand is probably meant to showcase that it's continually being salvaged by your next set of creatures.
The alternate art for Deadly Insect just shows a couple of them, which appear to be the size of large scorpions, over the body of a presumably dead elf or something. Speaking of elves... we've got a lot of elves in green. Elvish Bard, Elvish Ranger... they exist, they're neat, and they do admittedly set up a pretty consistent world-building of the forests of Dominaria consistently being relatively peaceful and populated by elves, but at this point I really wished they did something more, y'know?
Elvish Spirit Guide at least has a bunch of butterfly wings, and she looks different in that way, but Fyndhorn Druid is just a generic dude in the forest, and even the Legend Kaysa is just a generic elven lady with a spear.
More gorillas! Gorilla Berserkers' alternate art isn't quite as appropriately berserking as the other one. Gorilla Chieftain is just a gorilla with tribal clothing. Neat, I guess, but i do feel like they could've done more.
While the other Yavimaya Ancients card art has a more explicit face, I do feel there's some credit given to this one, where we just see the remnants of some fool human who was crushed to death by the Ancient, and we only see the remains of the human tangled by the branches and brambles.
Whip Vine is notable because it's Green's Wall for this expansion. Actually, there aren't many walls in this expansion, huh? Is that a first? I kinda always thought each colour will at least get one wall in every expansion. Whip Vine's not the first "wall of vines/thorns/wood" we've seen, though.
Hail Storm and Bounty of the Hunt aren't super exciting, but they do show some snow -- the snow still being strong in Hail Storm, and it being melting in Bounty. I appreciate that it showcases how the climate is changing and all.
I guess the parallel between the two dancing elves in Gift of the Woods in the background, as well as presumably the dude becoming the dog and the lady becoming the cat is... it's neat? Kinda wished it came with some poetic or romantic flavour text, though.
These are essentially a neat showcase of the different enchantment/sorcery styles of Green. Tornado and Splintering Wind showcases the 'wrath of nature' side of Green, while Taste of Paradise shows a more peaceful coexistence between man (or, well, elf) and nature. Splintering Wind also features these gnarly-looking demonic fairy-beings with leaf wings, which I don't think I've seen elsewhere in this expansion.
I guess the logic of paying red mana to bypass Undergrowth's damage nullification is using fire to burn the grass? That's neat, I guess.
Even more Balduvian minions, this time the Balduvian War-Makers. I now kinda realize why the artists that draw these fantasy or comic-book characters really love to over-exaggerate muscles and whatnot. Sure, they look frankly ridiculous sometimes, particularly the '90's age of comics, but the alternative ends up making these supposed barbarian tribes end up looking like a bunch of angry sports hooligans.
Enslaved Scout is the only goblin card in this entire expansion. Poor Enslaved Scout! The enslaved goblins are not even doing anything funny in those card art.
...eh, nothing too interesting here. We've got the alternate Gorilla Shaman art, a couple of Storm Shamans which presumably are allied to Balduvia, and a generic Soldier of Fortune mercenary man.
...still nothing too interesting, although I am very, very disappointed that Guerrila Tactics doesn't have a gorilla joke thrown in at all.
A bunch of angry gorills enchantments and instants! Bestial Fury and Gorilla War Cry are pretty fun little card arts, particularly the second card art for the Gorilla War Cry with the fancy, colourful ornamentations on that gorilla.
A bunch of red spells. Not a whole ton of interesting ones here, just soldiery stuff and burning stuff. Not to say that any of these are super-bad or anything, they're just kinda boring. At least the flavour text is kinda-sorta all right, it contextualizes who General Varchild and the Kjeldor king are like.
Still not a whole ton of interesting stuff here, more Red spells. Primitive Justice is another one featuring an ape, Death Spark's got a neat artwork. Not much to say here.
The alternate card art for Carrier Pigeon still has the adorable little chest fanny-packs. Love.
Not much to see here, it's a bunch of dudes that are allied with the kingdom of Kjeldor. "Home Guard" is not a commonly seen title among fantasy military units, though, and Kjeldorian HOme Guard has got a ridiculously long... what is that thing from his mouth?
Oh, hey, apparently that's what the living versions of Aesthir Glider is. They're big birds! Wild Aesthir is pretty neat, actually, and I assume it's the same sort of giant bird that the Rogue Sky-Captain ride around in. Also, a bunch of generic humans.
Also a bunch of generic humans. I guess the Juniper Order Advocate is pretty interesting in that he's actually doing something interesting and actually meeting with what I assume to be the Green-mana elves? Sustaining Spirit is an angel. That's about the most interesting thing I can say about her.
Kjeldorian Pride's two card arts have pretty cool symmetry, kinda like Gift of the Woods. It's otherwise pretty much kind of just there. White enchantments and instants are kind of honestly pretty boring.
Errand of Duty is... interesting? It's basically a little squire token summoned by an instant spell. I don't know if Magic has some sort of interaction where a token creature summoned by instants have some sort of intrinsic advantage or interaction to just a regular creature card, but okay.
I do like that Matyrdom's two card arts sort of tell a story, where the first card art shows the knight dude defending the green-shirt and yellow-shirt people from what I assume to be an incoming threat, and the second card art showing that the knight having been slain and the two people he rescues to be... sort of lurking over him? Could've shown them weeping or something, the art's kind of ambiguous if the knight was killed in honour or if the two of them has something to do with it.
Compare it to Noble Steeds, where we just sort of zoom in and get a Horse L'oreal pose.
Reinforcements is another one that the alternate card art sort of tells a story, even if it's as simple as "this is the army of warriors coming" leading into "this is the army of warriors attacking an orc."We've got a couple more of multi-colour cards, and I do like the artwork of the Wandering Mage in the snow just etching magical runes in the air before her.
A bunch more multi-colour cards. Not a whole ton of interest here, although I do like the artwork for Misfortune. See, kids, this is why you don't throw your bones around, you slip on them, smash onto a mirror, crack your skull open and smash your magic staff.
A bunch of artifacts and whatnot. None are super-duper interesting, although I do like the less-magical inclusion of an Astrolabe among the artifacts here.
We don't get any orc or goblin zaniness in this set, but we do get Whirling Catapult, which seems to be built by silly, reckless wacky goblin engineers. Floodwater Dam shows another Viscerid off, and apparently he's plugging a dam with starfishes. Is this how the Viscerid have been flooding Dominaria? Not with water manipulation, but with beaver dams clogged up with starfishes? That's a lot less impressive.
Phyrexian Portal shows off some hideous mechanical abomination with many hands trying to reach through a portal into what I assume is some fool magician that's accidentally opened the portal to their realm. Apparently it's a thing that's becoming more and more frequent ever since... What was the catalyst? I think it's the big magical boom at the end of Antiquities?
Mishra's Groundbreaker is interesting. We don't really see what it is, other than it's some sort of vague, large machinery drilling a hole in the ground, kind of like that ground-borer machine in the Chris Pine Star Trek movie, but apparently whatever it does, it can convert a land card into a creature that still counts as a land. And I am pretty sure one of the newer Magic sets features heavily Land cards that can also transform into creatures. Was it Zendikar? It was one of the newer ones with the giant Eldrazi monsters.
More artifact stuff. They're neat. We get to see Urza's Engine, which is some sort of bizarre giant catapult-tank-winery-machine contraption. It's sure is an "Engine"!
And here we go with the rest of the effect lands, since I featured the rest on top. And... that's about it for Alliance.
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