After the Weatherlight expansion acted as a bit of a prologue for this whole Weatherlight Saga and acted as an introduction and recruitment storyline for our bunch of heroes, the story starts proper in the Rath Block, starting off with the large expansion Tempest and continuing on with two smaller expansions, Stronghold and Exodus. Much of the storyline is told via the novel Rath and Storm, and it involves the crew of the Skyship Weatherlight going off to infiltrate the artificial plane of Rath, ruled by the despotic villain Volrath, in order to rescue their captain and to prevent some sort of large apocalypse.And, again, we have a bunch of cards that sort of tell the story of the events of Tempest as Weatherlight's crew goes off buggering into the plane of Rath. This time around, I'm going to leave the story-related cards after the page break, while talking more about general monsters and flavour of the cards -- I was definitely a bit too wordy with Weatherlight, which I could stand to do because it's a smaller expansion block and it's the first storyline in the Weatherlight saga, but I don't think I'll necessarily be able to keep it up indefinitely for the entire rest of the series. So...
- Click here for the previous part, Weatherlight.
- Click here for the next part, Stronghold.
- Click here for the index.
I did complain that the previous expansion, Weatherlight, didn't have a great representation of the actual main characters in the story. Sure, the likes of Gerrard, Tahngarth and Mirri do show up on a lot of cards, just under half of the cards in the set in fact, but without paying close attention to the flavour text or accompanying fiction, it'd be hard-pressed to realize that these are meant to be characters and not just a random adventurer. And while the actual main characters aren't still represented as individual cards of their own (maybe they're saving it for the climax?), the arc-relevant characters do show up.
The main villain of this storyline is the evil mad scientist Volrath, who has created the artificial plane of doom and horrors called Rath, and is preparing to royally fuck over Dominaria. Or something. Volrath doesn't show up as a card himself (though he shows up in some cards' artwork), but two of his minions do. Commander Greven il-Vec is an evil bald man with some really mighty neck muscles and an evil spiky black armour, and he's essentially the arc villain that menaces the crew of the Weatherlight, commanding an evil skyship and apparently being forced and/or brainwashed to submission by Volrath. Not the most interesting design, I admit, but it's all right for a pretty basic villain.
Vhati il-Dal is also a villain, and the treacherous second-in-command of Greven. He's got some really intense dreadlocks going on there! He's Black/Green, so I guess he's got some nature-loving deal going on in addition to being evil? Not going to go too deep about their stories, that's going to be saved after the break.
And now we have two members of the Weatherlight crew. Orim, Samite Healer apparently has been in the background of the previous Weatherlight stories, but hasn't shown up in card art until now. She's... she's there. She's just a lady in a turban.
Starke of Rath is also just some dude with standard fantasy outfit and a knife, and he's basically the token evil teammate among the Weatherlight crew, having infiltrated their group while posing as a 'local guide' to Rath in the final recruitment arc throughout the story of the Weatherlight expansion. Again, he's kinda generic. It's all right to have some characters that are just-a-human, but... y'know, it gets boring after a while and I don't have much to say about either character.
We get a couple of local characters, too, with Eladamri, Lord of Leaves, being the leader of the elven resistance who's living in the forests of Rath. He's sure an elf dude in armour!
The Oracle en-Vec isn't a legendary card, but is technically a character, as far as I can tell. He's the leader of a human tribe who assists our heroes. He's... he's sure a prophet-looking dude! By the way, the difference between the Rath-native characters with "en" and "il" basically boils down to the en-Vecs or whatever being good guys, and the il-Vecs and il-Dals being loyal to Volrath.
And we have Selenia, Dark Angel, who's both Black and White, and her story's a bit more interesting. Design-wise she's just an angel lady with black wings, but she's actually a fallen angel! She used to be a Serra Angel who was transformed into a darker creature by the Phyrexians, and she became the jailer of Crovax, one of the Weatherlight crew... and Crovax fell in love with Selenia because of Stockholm's Syndrome, I guess. Throughout the events of the Weatherlight expansion, Crovax attempted to 'rescue' Selenia by stealing the artifact that controlled her, and even destroyed the artifact after the rest of his family was killed by Morinfen and Gallowbraid, but Selenia's still callous and unable of feeling love, leaving Crovax behind... until they meet again in this expansion, where she's straight-up returned to being a Phyrexian minion. She doesn't do much in this expansion other than cause Crovax to angst, but she does have a neat little mini-story.
One thing that Tempest does well, and I argue this is something that they've been slowly building up towards, is to give each Plane a couple of unique creatures or cultures. They did do this a bit with Fallen Empires with their Thrulls and Thallids and Homarids, but in Tempest, I think we reach a particularly neat way of world-building, and as thus, I'm going to go through the various new races and groups first before we go into the more standalone monsters.
Look at Soltari Foot Soldier here! One of the many races in the plane of Rath are the Soltari, a race of spirit-like beings that are trapped in Rath's shadows. When Volrath created Rath, three factions were trapped in a maelstrom of energy during the plane-shifting, and they all ended up being trapped in a shadowy dimension called "The Shadows", trapped in this in-between plane, unable to truly interact with either Dominaria or Rath. They all have the keyword "Shadow", representing how they can only interact with others in their own shadowy dimension. They can't be hurt by physical creatures, but they can't hurt them either.
All the Soltari are able to maintain their mental states due to their religion offering them peace and solidarity, which is why they're all still relatively sane. And also, they're all White-mana creatures, and, hooray, we're getting cool White creatures at last! While the Soltari Foot-Soldier up there just looks like a regular chalk-skinned humanoid with a lumpy head, Soltari Trooper's completely fucked-up flesh-blob body shows that these Soltari dudes have really been transformed by their planeshifting. Or were they already bizarrely malformed in the first place? Whatever the case, man, look at this dude's intensely bent spine, the horrifying way those arms are connected to the torso, that random protrusion on his back... and yet he's not a monster, he's just a regular trooper of a race of warrior-priests.
Sadly, the contorted body-shape seems to be the exception rather than the norm, because the Soltari Monk, even though he has a head that looks like it belongs to a Star Wars alien, is just a regular dude with a robe. Or is he? You never know what's under those robes...
Soltari Crusader has a more mundane body shape than the Trooper, but what is that thing he's riding? Is it some sort of bizarre rhinoceros-like beast made out of swirling masses of cloth? It's an interesting mount. Or is it even a separate creature at all? We know so little about the Soltari physiology that I wouldn't be surprised if it's part of the Crusader's anatomy. Also, their flavour text detail that the Soltari are at war with another race, the Dauthi.
Soltari Lancer is another trooper, and while he's also a mounted knight-man, where the Crusader looks more like it's smooth and flowing, the Lancer's art shows his weird spirit-flesh of being more bubbly and sinewy. I do like that Magic: The Gathering is finally starting to branch out and create a bunch of new races, instead of relying solely on White creatures being the same old human paladins and clerics and monks all the time. The Soltari aren't super creative, but I do really like that we're at least trying to branch out among the design of White creatures.
And here we have the Dauthi, the enemies of the Soltari. We're not sure if they looked exactly like this prior to their plane-shift, but now they're a bunch of insane-looking monsters -- all of them would receive the "Dauthi" tag retroactively. Dauthi Ghoul is perhaps the most mundane of these creatures, just being an angry shadowy creature with a massive, fanged face. It's a cool shadowy ghoul for sure, but at this point in Magic's history we've got a fair amount of shadowy demon-men with long claws and sharp teeth. Considering all of these "Shadow" creatures are meant to exist in a creepy shadowy dimension just adjacent of ours, though, the fact that the evil ones basically look nightmarish does work thematically.
Duathi Horror, meanwhile, looks distinctively more corporeal, and I have no idea what the fuck's going on with that face. It's almost trumpet-like, ending with a maw full of teeth, and that chest has bizarre muscle anatomy. It's still humanoid and straddles the line on being goofy and threatening. I like it. It's weird.
Duathi Mercenary, meanwhile, is a knight mounted on a beast, and what the fuck is going on here? I'm not sure what's going on, but it definitely does look like the sort of enemy from a 90's extreme-violence game. The Mercenary's armour (or body) is made almost entirely of spikes, and so is the beast's head, which is some sort of unholy fusion between a ram, an iron plate and three dozen knives. I like this thing. It's so over-the-top.
And finally we end at my favourite Dauthi, the only non-humanoid one, the Dauthi Mindripper. What is this thing? We don't really know what it is other than the fact that it's a "Dauthi" and a "minion", and we don't have any flavour text to go off on. How big is it? Is it like a tiny parasite, or a dog-sized beast, or a giant monster? How does that anatomy work, with a pair of frog-like legs that end in massive claws, and two fangs that look like some hideous animal skull with sharp teeth, with creepy, sinewy flesh wrapped around it? The Mindripper honestly looks so fucking weird. I love this thing, and it gets my vote for the most "what the hell" creature design of this set.
The Soltari are peaceful and organized, the Dauthi are chaotic evil monsters, and we have a third faction that's blasted into the shadow realm, the Thalakos. Who are just driven insane by the jump to the shadow realm. And they... they look kinda-sorta weird? The Thalakos Dreamsower has my favourite artwork among the Thalakos, showing off this massive humanoid figure trapping another person under his hand and just looking lazily at them. There's random spines and spikes and veins, and parts of his cheek skin being pulled away like silly putty, but the title "Dreamsower" makes it ambiguous if this is just the appearance that the creature takes in dreams, or if it's literally just a giant,dude with weird veins and goopy skin.
Thalakos Mistfolk, meanwhile, is just a bunch of dudes with apparently skull-faces that, judging by their name, moves around in the mist. That one on the bottom right seems to even have two faces under the hood! Not as interesting as the Dreamsower, but definitely does look pretty weird.
Thalakos Sentry would look humanoid if not for the weird head, that just juts forwards like some bizarre turtle-man. Look a bit closer into the artwork and you realize that the hand isn't quite bent the same way like a human's, and his legs taper off into tendrils. Yeah, these creatures are apparently made out of the mists and shadows, and I do like that there's not a shred of uniformity among the Thalakos designs in this set.
Thalakos Seer, meanwhile, is just so fucked up. Her body is vaguely humanoid, but look at the ends of her legrs and arms, which just fray apart into wibbly-wobbly string nonsense that join with other strings, look at that frayed arm exposing musculature, and especially her head, which just looks so bizarrely torn apart to shreds. Like, the Soltari and the Thalakos have some sort of weird "cloth being pulled into ribbons" aesthetic going on among them. It's not going to last, especially in subsequent expansions, but I really do enjoy their attempt at portraying this race of mysterious beings that got ripped apart by dimensional magic and now live in this mutated, twisted state between dimensions.
And here we are with the Slivers, a cycle of monsters that span all five colours. Each colour gets two Sliver sub-types, and they're apparently this hideous abomination native to the plane of Rath... and they're a pretty cool creature! Drawing somewhat from Alien, the Slivers have such a bizarre anatomy. They have a swept-back Alien-esque head, no eyes, a beak, a somewhat humanoid-like chest, a single mantis-like talon that juts out of one side of the chest, and two long whip-like tails that it slithers around (or floats around) on. Like, it's one of those monster designs that doesn't quite correspond to anything in nature and looks so unnatural, but you kinda believe that this is a combination of features that would function in a way, yeah? Visually, each Sliver is slightly mutated thanks to either the general nature of the species (is some Alien-esque or Chimera-Ant-esque biology going on here?) or Volrath's experiments. Gameplay wise, each Sliver basically buffs all the other Slivers on the board, basically being one of the more synergistic tribal-buffing archetype in early Magic. The unique thing is that all Slivers on board get this ability, not just yours, and the flavour, I think, is the presence of, say, a Mindwhip Sliver in the battlefield means that all of the Slivers gain the 'mind-whip' ability based on their unique biology. Sharing is caring!
Anyway, we're going to cover all the Slivers here, because I love them. We'll start off with Black's Mindwhip Sliver, which is a neat design to start off with because it doesn't deviate too much from the standard Sliver body-shape. It has some neat little "white flesh with red blood-marks" texture going on, looking like something from a 2000's horror game, and a bunch of extra spikes on its back and head, but ultimately, the Mindwhip Sliver is a neat, simple design to illustrate what the Slivers look like.
The Clot Sliver, meanwhile, looks particularly hideous. One of the few Slivers to have eyes, or at least eye-like growths, the Clot Sliver's tapering Xenomorph skull splits into four almost metallic-like prongs, exposing the gooey pink brain inside. Its beak looks almost like one of those hadrosaurs, and the combination of its slobber and the blood on its talons really sell the Clot Sliver as a hideously dangerous beast. Each Sliver has an ever-so-slightly different design from the others, keeping the same basic anatomy but adding or substracting enough to make them really feel cohesive in a way that the Dauthi or Thalakos don't necessarily do. It's neat!
We're just going by colour order, and next up is the swarm of Winged Sliver, which really do feel pretty Pterosaur-like. They have a bunch of leathery, silver wings that also apparently extend as a web between their two tails, and their swept-back head has been covered with a metallic, sharp Pterosaur-esque armour piece. It's a cool design, even if it does admittedly make the Sliver a bit more mundane looking since now they just look like mutated birds. The Winged Sliver basically allows all Slivers on the battlefield to gain flying, so they spontaneously sprout wings as long as the Winged Sliver is alive or something? Flying's a very Blue ability to have, so it's definitely neat.
Mnemonic Sliver is a neat little close-up view of the Sliver's head, and since Blue's the colour of intelligence and general mind-manipulating powers, this Sliver has a massive, creepy exposed brain with loads and loads of veins between the gyri and sulci of the brain. I'm not sure if it's just the art perspective, or if this Mnemonic Sliver just has a particularly large chunk of brain that bulges out off the side of the normally sleek and slender Sliver skull. It also kind of gives the image of some sort of fucked-up set of eye sockets, too. Pretty wacky!
Horned Sliver is another Sliver that's basically a more basic-looking one, although this one looks decidedly more like a malnourished animal as opposed to the grodier Black-mana Slivers. The Horned Sliver's skull splits into two horns, and he's got a bunch of horns running down its spine, and I do like the nasty-looking sinews and muscles that run down this thing's neck. Not the most exciting one, but another one that kinda looks 'basic' enough to kind of showcase the classic look of what Slivers are meant to look like.
Because without a baseline point to know what Slivers look like, you probably won't appreciate the more drastic-looking ones, like the Muscle Sliver, which is apparently one of the most ubiquitous Slivers in the actual metagame, because of the simple ability of the muscle Sliver causing all of your other Slivers to basically go Bane and be buff and get +1/+1. Its got a face that wouldn't look out of place in an Alien movie, and it's swapped out its mantis claw for two massive dinosaur/dragon-like talons. While a drastic departure from the sleeker Sliver designs, it does look pretty monstrous, and if nothing else, does fit with the name of a "muscle" sliver. Not sure if I like this, honestly, but it sure does look different!
The Barbed Sliver's anatomy sort of confuses me, because this thing looks a bit more like a weird octopus with a giant head and a bunch of tentacles, until I realized that the Sliver is facing towards you, the lower limb is the Sliver's chest-arm, and those two whips are the tails pointing away from you. This one honestly kind of feels like it would've fit with Green a bit better, since it has that whole 'bramble' vibe going along with it? Hell, even the flavour text notes that the Barbed Sliver can create giant deadly hedges out of its Sliver buddies! Like the Horned Sliver, this one has a pretty cool dual-horned head, looking like a sinister robot antelope or something.
The Heart Sliver looks super-duper metal, and while the Muscle Sliver has the Alien Xenomorph's grinning fanged face, the Heart Sliver has the Xenomorph's weird organic-looking-but-also-metallic-looking skin. This thing's head just looks so bizarrely cluttered, and while I'm not sure why this thing is specifically called the 'heart' Sliver, it's a pretty nasty-looking design. Also, worth noting is that both the Heart and Clot Sliver show that these creatures apparently hang and perch on stalactites like some twisted bat, except they live in a specific area in Rath that overlooks a lava pool.
And we reach White, with the Armor Sliver, which has the classic Sliver body design (albeit drawn in the artist's unique style), and doesn't feel super-armoured until I realize that the bizarre outgrowth from its spine that also jut out to become some sort of bizarre external ribs might probably be what the armour is meant to be. Apparently even the in-universe characters are confused how this armour works, although I guess weird bony protrusions is a neat enough handwave to show how the Slivers are able to spontaneously gain +1 Health.
Talon Sliver has a pretty neat colouration, and I think the intention is to show that it's glowing red due to some sort of red glowing energy from its chest. It's got a neat segmented head that looks like a bird's plumage, and the rest of its body looks delightfully metallic. It doesn't really have a whole lot of anything special on its talon, though, which, in fact, actually looks shorter than most of the Slivers in this expansion. Did they swap Talon and Heart Sliver's names? Like, Talon Sliver has a glowing chest while Heart Sliver's head looks like a particularly nasty, large talon.
And we have Metallic Sliver, an artificial creature that is apparently created by Volrath in order to influence the Sliver hive. So I guess Volrath didn't actually create the Slivers, but is manipulating them through his artificial creations? There's nothing super special about this thing, it has the basic Sliver anatomy and doesn't even look artificial, but I guess that's the point -- it's meant to look generic and part of the hive, in order to fool the Slivers into accepting it.
Another creature type introduced here is the Licid, and the Licid are a bunch of parasitic creatures that enhances a creature, but at the price of dealing some kind of drawback to its controller. It basically looks like a weird combination of octopus, slug and insect, and we don't really get a whole lot of lore other than the fact that some people in Rath use them as basically steroids. Leeching Licid here seems to actually just straight-up go Facehugger on that poor dude, though.
We have a cycle of Licids, and it's interesting how the Stinging Licid and the Enraging Licid seem to be taking over uncooperative hosts, while the tiger-man in Nurturing Licid and the elf in Quickening Licid seem to be a lot less disturbed at attaching a weird slug-octopus parasite to their body. I do love my parasitic monsters, but there isn't a whole ton to talk about here. The Licids are cool conceptually, and I do like how they function mechanically, but visually they're all a bit samey and we don't have any lore or flavour text to talk about.
And now we have the 'notable creatures', where these are all kinda random creatures that aren't affiliated with any of the groups above. Rath is a murder-plane of doom, so there's a whole load of spooky creepy monsters in it! Like Servant of Volrath. Volrath is big on experimentation. And while he does his fair share of making demons, undead and Phyrexian cyborg-undead nightmares, sometimes this results in something like the Servant of Volrath, which is a fucked-up Frankensteined monster of random creatures. Four arms, two of which come from a giant crab and an octopus; an oversized ogre-demon head; furry legs; spiky back shell.... yeah, this is a pretty horrifying amalgamation. It's also hilarious and charming enough to not be 100% terrifying, but maybe that's part of Volrath's sinister plan, to make you drop your guard while this thing murders you with its crab claws and the tiny little shiv.
Pit Imp would've been a boring little devil imp-person if not for that amazingly hilarious face. Eyes on top and on the bottom of the imp's grinning mouth? A mirrored head that juts down from the chin? That's some gloriously weird anatomy, and this definitely makes this cheeky little imp particularly neat!
Carrionette is a glorious pun. It's apparently a bunch of weird shadowy hair or worms or tendrils reanimating a skeleton (or part of a skeleton) with a gigantic knife attached to one hand. Or is it a skeleton exuding the hair-like structure? Either way, the Carrionette is actually a monster encountered by the Weatherlight crew in their journey to get to Volrath, and it's certainly a weird skeleton monster! I like him.
Kezzerdrix is a horrifying creature and I do not like it. It's a hdieous bunny-man with the most disturbing-looking photorealistic animal skull face, some really hideous looking muscles, the most sinister grin, and honestly, looking like a naked muscle man with bunny features and the most deranged face just adds so much unsettling implications to this. What the fuck, the more I look at this thing, the more disturbed I am.
What is Souldrinker? "Spirit" is sort of an ambiguous tribal term thta you can slap onto anything vaguely ghostly, and this particular spirit is a giant tumorous blob with a bunch of weird human-like limbs, as well as some that are a cross between a limb and a tentacle. It's totally choking the shit out of this random Viking man, while presumably drinking his soul with... with that weird proboscis-like structure that's stuck down the dude's neck. Is the Viking dude expressionless because he doesn't haev a soul with which to feel? I'm not sure how these thing really works, just that I am disturbed by what's going on in this picture. The background of the image shows what appears to be the Souldrinker's "default" state, which is some War of the Worlds tripod machine thing. Pretty creepy!
Coffin Queen's pretty neat! I do like her weird four arms, the way she's doing a weird variation of the Michael Jackson Moonwalk with how her legs and spine are posed, and I do like the artwork of the blood moon behind her and the army of skeletons rising up from the grave. I dunno. THis is a pretty cool sorceress lady.
Oh man, Bellowing Fiend looks fucked up. Sure, he's got a regular old demon body with muscles and spikes and bat wings and all, but between the mismatched ram horns and that completely fucked-up demon face that's a mass of screaming toothy maws and haphazard eyes, man, apparently this thing just yells a lot so much that it deals damage to both you and your opponent due to its indiscriminate bellowing. I guess "Spirit" is just what they're replacing "Demon" and "Devil" with? Like, this thing is obviously a 'demon', right?
Blood Pet is the surprise return of the Thrulls, those poor race of malformed creatures made to be sacrificed by a crazy cult in Fallen Empires, and one of my favourite M:TG original races. Volrath apparently has his own Thrulls, and one of it is this pathetic-looking creature called a blood pet, which looks like something out of The Night Before Christmas, with a lumpy rat-like body, a very sad-looking eyeball, and stitches all over. It's a bit of a departure from the other Thrulls from Fallen Empires, which tended to look less ratty, but it's a welcome return of an old creature type, and on such an adorably sad little creature. It's like this thing knows it exists just to be sacrificed for mana advantage!
Volrath really loves his experiments, and this includes Spinal Graft, which looks so goddamn uncomfortable. His patient-victim is strapped onto this bizarre operating bed with metal octopus tentacles while a metallic spine is surgically implanted by Volrath... who wears some sort of fucking bizarre monocle contraption. What happens to the original spine? What use is a metal spine (as opposed to, say, metallic sword arms or jetpack boots or laser eyes or whatever, if you're making a cyborg) in a primarily magic-based fantasy world? Volrath's craaaazy.
We're going into Blue, and I include Benthic Behemoth here just because I really like the artwork for this giant reptile-whale beast. It's also a serpent, meaning that we're just looking at the head of a far, far larger eel-like creature, which is pretty cool looking!
And here we have the Rootwater merfolk, and the merfolk of Rath don't look like extras from The Little Mermaid or even fishmen from Aquaman comics. Rather, look at just how gloriously spooky the Rootwater Diver is! A face like a predatory deep-sea fish; long, tapering claws with webs; spiky fins down the tail, tendrils running down his face... The Rootwater merfolk are apparently warped when the plane of Rath was created, but man, they look cool and also pretty damn horrifying! Honestly, they look like they should audition for a more badass adaptation of Lovecraft's Deep Ones.
Rootwater Hunter is a lot less creepy, but I absolutely love those glowing dead eyes, as well as the massive, beautiful fins attached to a skinny body that make it look like the merfolk equivalent of a leafy sea-dragon. Which is pretty damn cool looking, and I argue moreso than the monstrous Diver.
Rootwater Matriarch takes a different approach, with her face seemingly not even having mouth but instead made up of a mass of dots, while her head and arms are covered with coral protrusions. The rest of her body look eel-like but nowhere as mutated as the first two Rootwater merfolk, other than her massive, long-webbed hands. Pretty cool variation that still manages to look more monstrous and unnaturally animal-like, while also not looking as spooky as the Rootwater Diver.
And also the Rootwater folk ride manta rays, becoming the Manta Riders. These riders look far more mundane, though, and nowhere as monstrous as the other Rootwaters. The idea of merpeople riding giant fishes is rad as hell, though, and I'm not complaining too much. This is neat.
What the FUCK is the Mawcor? It's a big-ass creature that's like almost entirely a gigantic maw attached to a pair of bat wings, and said maw looks more like a fucked-up set of tongs. I'm not even sure how the anatomy works. He appears to just go straight from being a giant maw to a tail, so where do all the food it digests go to? Apparently, it's also able to unleash blasts of winds. How does this creature survive in the wild? Or does it even do so? It's so weird, I love it.
Flyamarid is just a gigantic flying yellow squid. It's a flying yellow squid that's also a giant, shooting ink sprays that make other creatures into Blue creatures, and apparently, by virtue of being a giant yellow flying squid, it cannot be blocked by Blue creatures. I'm not sure what the fuck is going on, and why Blue creatures can't block the Flyamarid, but its name is glorious, and it's a giant flying yellow squid. What's there to question?
We've got two shapeshifters, and I love how the Escaped Shapeshifter is just trying to mimic these weird two-legged kangaroo-armadillo reptile creatures drinking from the lake. Like, it's trying so hard to mimic the general shape, but gets the details wrong and the colours wrong! Poor dude, he's trying his best, okay?
Unstable Shapeshifter is a creature that the crew fights in the journey, and apparently this particular creature will reflexively transform into any creature in play, continually moving in a flux and becoming copies of whatever creature you or your opponent most recently summons into the battlefield. The artwork isn't the most clear due to how the creature's transforming in the backrground, but it's changing from what appears to be a red frog into Mirri, the cat-lady from the Weatherlight crew, with the entire head of a human-sized cat-person morphing out of the body of a tiny frog.
I have no fucking idea what's going on with the Krakilin. It's a beast that is apparently "brutal, fetal and lacking truth", and it's just... it's just this mass of screaming faces, some of which are attached to snake-necks. The more I look at this thing, the more confused I am. And I'm even more confused that this is a Green-mana monster, so it's meant to be natural... but what in god's earth looks even remotely like that?
Crazed Armodon is one of the three "Armodon" cards in this set, but I'm using one to represent them. Armodons are apparently this bizarre species of elephants with mottled, armoured skin, and a fuck-ton of extra spiky growths and an extra pair of tusks. They're like, extreme elephants, and they're apparently used by the Rath elves as mounts, Lord of the Rings style.
Canopy Spider is a critter that I sort of debated back and forth on including in the 'notable monsters' list, but hey, I like spiders, and this is a spider that hangs out and decorates her massive web with human skulls. That's pretty neat.
Skyshroud Troll, meanwhile, is... it's an interesting troll. On the top of my head I'm not sure what, exactly, this creature design reminds me of, but between that dumb-but-angry lizard face, the turtle shell, the massive lower arms with sausage fingers, the Skyshroud Troll definitely looks pretty interestingly weird, and a neat little variant from M:TG's trolls, which tend to just be ugly humans.
Verdant Force is an Elemental, and... and hoo boy, what a weird looking elemental he is, and I mean that as a compliment! He's not just a boring old tree-man or a Swamp Thing ripoff, but this is just this gangly humanoid figure covered with vines, random thorns, and the most "hurr durr get out of my swamp" face. He's like the Lorax, if the Lorax was that grumpy, unkempt old man living down your street instead of a happy mustachioed buddy.
Rootbreaker Wurm is actually a massive wurm that Gerrard ends up fighting through the course of this expansion's story, and apparently it eats those Rootwater merfolk! Wurms tend to just be giant worms with reptilian heads, but the Rootbreaker Wurm has a particularly gristy-looking one, with the creepy exposed gum-and-teeth thing going on and honestly, kinda looking like something out of Alien.
Heartwood Treefolk is pretty... interesting. The Treefolk in M:TG tended to be giant trees with faces, basically a more whimsical adaptation of the Ents from Tolkien's work, but the Heartwood Treefolk is apparently a teeny-tiny tree person with gangly root-limbs and a lump of wood that very vaguely resembles a face with little dot-eyes, and it clambers up and down other trees. I like this thing! It's adorable.
I'm not 100% sure what the Scragnoth is, but it's apparently some sort of... lizard creature with the most knotted, multi-joined creepy arms ever, and its head and shoulders are just this mass of colouration and spikes. It's apparently a creature that possesses "counter-intelligence", and this means it has complete protection from Blue spells. What is this thing? Is it a natural beast of some sorts native to Rath that's somehow anti-smart? Is it an intelligence-feeder? What does the rest of the Scragnoth look like? What a bizarre-ass creature.
Spike Drone is a "Spike", a sort of a weird slug-like creature sort of introduced here, and what a weird-ass creature it is! It's got a slug body, but it's got these little weird pods that apparently shoot out little versions of itself out like cannons. but most weird is its face, which look like it should belong on some sort of weird mutant spider or solifugid, with rows of beady eyes and two massive fleshy fang-like protrusions. And it just launches its little babies out to buff up its ally creatures, which is just such a weird thing to do to your young. We're going to see more Spikes in the future, which is neat!
And here's an interesting Green enchantment, the Frog Tongue, where your minion apparently grows a frog-like tongue, with which they can capture and draw in weird little bug-fairy people. What is that bug-fairy man, by the way? All of the fairies we've seen in M:TG so far has been the same old humanoid ones, and I'm not saying that those are bad or anything, but there's so little variety! I guess Phil McFrogface here ate all the cooler bug fairies.
The Moggs are our resident goblin tribe for this one, and instead of being super-duper comedic, as Mogg Squad shows, these are far, far more gross, bloodthirsty and creepy. More Goblin Slayer and less World of Warcraft. Pretty nasty looking creatures, whether it's the crowd of Mogg Goblins, or the singular Mogg Raider jumping out towards the enemy. The Mogg Raider's flavour text and effect is interesting -- apparently the Moggs are very bloodthirsty goblins, and they get invigorated by the evisceration of one of their own, which is why when you sacrifice (i.e. kill) any goblin under your control, the Mogg Raider gets a bonus buff. Psychopaths!
And Mogg Fanatic is just a straight-up suicide bomber. You sacrifice him as he just jumps out of a skyship to deal damage to your enemy at the cost of its own life. Poor man!
The Shocker is a giantspider-like beast that lives in lava caves, and is actually an enemy that's specifically faced by our heroes in the story, which is pretty awesome for what would've been kind of an unremarkable creature in a set with so many monster factions already. It's got a fun design, with its base form being a spider, but also having weird little scorpion pincer-arms, as well as two wasp-like stingers jutting out of its bum. One of which apparently glows with electricity, which is why this thing is called a Shocker. Either way, it's definitely an alien-looking arthropod, and even its effect is weird. A simple 1/1 bug, but when it damages a player, they have to discard their hand and draw a new one. That's a weird ability all right!
Lightning Elemental is an interesting one. Again, I really love how the elementals in M:TG isn't just weird half-humanoid genies, and this one is quite literally a mass of lightning bolts vaguely sprouting out of a cloud that also has a humanoid face etched onto it. It just looks so weirdly interpretative. I like it.
It's not super important in this particular block, but Flowstone's going to be something that's relevant in subsequent installments of the Rath block, because it's a powerful, malleable substance used by Volrath and his Phyrexian allies to keep increasing the mass of Rath and maintaining the artificial plane. But in addition to that, it can be used to make Flowstone Giant, which is a creepy clay-rock giant with an angry face. I like this one.
More Flowstone creatures! Flowstone Salamander is just a lizard made out of the flowstone, but I do like just how its rear body is melding into the rock around it, and I like how despite having eyes, it's clear that this rock creature doesn't really see.
Flowstone Wyvern isn't the only drake (or dragon) in this set, but it's got a pretty neat artwork and it ties to the whole Flowstone gimmick, which I guess is Red mana's "tribe" since they don't have any Shadow-related tribal mechanics or whatever. The Flowstone cards don't exactly have a keyword attached to them, but we get to see a bunch more of them across the block, and some of them have a +X/-X ability, presumably representing them shifting into a more powerful but more fragile form. Not the salamander, though, it knows it looks great and isn't going to change!
What is a Pallimud? I don't even know what's going on. It's a huge purple thing seemingly with multiple legs, and a weird kaiju-like face? And it's living in a caldera? I'm not sure what's going on here, other than it's vaguely reptilian, and apparently the Vec people are super afraid of it. Kinda wished we see more of this beast's anatomy, honestly, but I do like the idea of prehistoric Kaiju-like monsters in general, and being able to only see part of an immense monster is pretty neat.
Goblin Bombardment shows that the creative team are still having some fun with the goblins at least, because despite being more serious, the goblins of Rath still don't know how the fuck to use a giant ballista, because they still apparently launch their own in order to operate it. "One mogg to steer the rock", apparently, which... I mean, sure, why not, silly goblins? Interestingly, you don't have to necessarily sacrifice a goblin for this to work, you can sacrifice, say, a Pallimud, or a dragon, or a golem, or an orc... but the damage is still 1 damage, whatever you launch on your goblin siege engine. Silly goblins.
We don't have a lot of interesting White creatures to talk about, as usual, but Auratog is our Atog of the expansion, and this one is a skinny goblin with a grinning face! Other Atogs tend to look more like frog-men or lizard-men, but the Auratog probably is the one who has the most human-like body shape. It eats auras, which in this case means enchantments.
Master Decoy is just here because I really love the look on this dude's face. He's got like four white flags on his back, he's got a fancy looking coat, and he's riding on a zebra unicorn. And he is apparently distracting an entire army running through random purple grass! I just really, really like this artwork. Phil Foglio is one of my favourite Magic: The Gathering artists, thanks to just how zany his artwork are, and I'm sad that his artwork tends to be phased out in a lot of the later sets. I think the Tempest block is the last one we ever get to see his artwork. Boo!
Speaking of Phil Foglio, look at the card artwork for Humility! I'm genuinely not 100% sure what's going on, but I think the robed skeleton dude and the dargon goober are like, performing in an alleyway, like they are street magicians? I love this art piece a lot. It's just so random.
Artifact creatures now! The Telethopter is one of our first Thopters (basically steampunk helicopters), and this one looks like it's some crazy-ass post-apocalyptic Mad Max vehicle with a giant kite stapled on top of it. I love it. Apparently, the goddamn Moggs pilot the Telethopters, and as goblins are wont to do, they cause a lot of accidents. Silly Moggs!
Patchwork Gnomes and Bottle Gnomes are neat-looking! I really do love how M:TG's gnomes are basically a huge, huge pun on garden gnomes, making a fun little running joke. I like that the Patchwork Gnomes are apparently tiny little helpers, and I absolutely love the one in the foreground with just a single huge wheel. Bottle Gnomes apparently are just portable 1/3 creatures that fight for you, but can be cracked open and drank like a potion in a pinch. It's certainly an interesting artifact creature, for sure, basically making a potion bottle come to life!
A bunch more Phyrexian war-machines! Volrath is allied with Phyrexia, technically, so of course he's going to have a couple of Phyrexian minions! Like the Phyrexian Splicer, which is a combination of a torture machine and psychotic robot surgeon. This one looks like it's stitching together some sort of Frankenstein monster, and the imagery of the giant nail and that one prominent robotic arm puling the strings taut is just pretty spooky.
Phyrexian Hulk is a simple, giant hulking monster, with massive shoulders, a tiny head, a dome-like structure above the head, and a hunched-over 'spine'. For something that doesn't seem like it has any real anatomy, I do like that the artwork really do manage to imply a hulking brute without having a strictly humanoid form.
Phyrexian Grimoire is another Phyrexian-related artifact, and I really do like that this basically combined the concept of a vile book of unholy secrets like the Necronomicon or something, but instead of regular eyeballs and Cthulhu tentacles, it's metallic robot eyeballs and wires. It's not the most consistent aesthetic, but I do like it when we have the techno-organic aesthetic being played up.
Energizer looks just so tormented, with that disproportionately large metallic face. He kinda looks like a half-transformed Transformer, in pain because he's not quite robot or vehicle, and he's just running around with his wheely lower body and his upper body that's approximately 60% pointy ends. I actually like this thing. It just looks so cobbled-together but also deadly at the same time.
Dracoplasm is a pretty interesting creature! It's a blue/red dual-coloured card, and it's apparently a shapeshifter... but a shapeshifter that seemingly exclusively only takes the forms of dragons. And it basically consumes your creatures and gains power and toughness depending on the creatures you sacrifice. It's also got a pretty dang cool artwork.
You gotta love goblins. Squee's Toy is an artifact, and I don't even know what that is. It's a weird porcelain figure of some sort of bizarre mutant cat? Squee loves it, and apparently it's the goblin equivalent of a comfort blanket. I'm not sure if the toy is going to be surprisingly important in the plot in some way or another. I kinda have the feeling that it's one of those innocuous joke objects that turn out to be part of the plot or something, y'know?
STORY TIME!
Last time on Magic: The Gathering, the motley crew is assembled! Time to go off into the hideous plane of Rath! And I feel I have to credit the M:TG Wiki's page on the Weatherlight Saga and the cards that tell the storyline, otherwise it'd be too much work for me, yeah?
So basically the Weatherlight's crew eventually crossed over to Rath through a portal of some sorts, and the mage Ertai (whose butt got shot with a laser in Ancient Runes' artwork) decided to stay behind and watch that massive, arch-shaped portal with Volrath's face in order to keep it open when the rest of the crew have to flee the plane. He's just not aware that he's being watched by the Soltari Priests.
Shortly after, as depicted in Gerrard's Battle Cry, the Weatherlight is attacked by another Skyship -- the Predator. Battle time!
(Also, I'm not sure when chronologically some other crew members show up -- maybe they've been in the background all the time, or maybe they joined slightly before the Weatherlight Skyship entered Rath. Either way, Intuition and Ancient Runes both show off Orim, the healer of the crew, who I'm 99% sure we haven't mentioned in the previous expansion.)
The Predator is led by Selenia, Dark Angel (who we covered above), an angel who used to be the guardian of Crovax's estate, as well as Crovax's love interest, and this caused Crovax, during the battle, to hide under the deck in Enfeeblement due to his many conflicting emotions, and would later angst over the betrayal.
And then as the battle goes on, the Moggs, a group of goblins, end up boarding the ship as they are attracted by Legacy's Allure -- that is, the Legacy artifacts. The sentient steel golem Karn, despite being a mighty being with invulnerability, is paralyzed by his conscience and his thou-shalt-not-kill code of honour, and as shown in Pacifism, refuses to fight the Moggs and are captured and taken abroad the Predator.
I'm... I'm genuinely not sure when Karn made it on board the Weatherlight, if it happened prior to the events of the Weatherlight block, or if it happened between Weatherlight and Tempest.
While Squee is up to his antics, Gerrard and the commander of the raiding party, Greven il-Vec (who's basically the arc villain for a good chunk of the Tempest storyline) battle each other in hand-to-hand combat, as shown in No Quarter and Sadistic Glee's card art and flavour text. Despite Greven il-Vec seemingly having the advantage in battle, the Weatherlight is hit by a Sudden Impact from Greven's treacherous first mate Vhati, knocking Gerrard off-board. The Weatherlight itself is damaged, as shown in Capsize.
Hanna has to watch helplessly as Gerrard, knocked off of the Weatherlight but as shown in Broken Fall, his plummet down towards the earth from the skyship is broken by some trees. Hanna is forced to Abandon Hope, though, because the ships are moving and poor Gerrard is just sort of running around on the ground. Greven to order a retreat back to the Predator, but the minotaur Tahngarth ends up grabbing onto the boarding cables and as shown in Tahngarth's Rage, climbs his way up the enemy ship.
(Also, during this fight, good old Squee hides his favourite toy, shown in Legerdemain. Which is apparently an important event, but hey, that happens.)
Greven returns on board the Predator to challenge his treacherous first mate, Vhati, as shown in the card art and text for Repentance. Vhati pleads innocence, and that it's all an accident, but Greven il-Vec's Diabloc Edict is to toss Vheti overboard.
Meanwhile, on the ground, Gerrard ends up having to stun a random rootwater merfolk right in its skully face, although he's forced to escape from the Rootwater Shaman. Eventually, Gerrard manages to utilize the distraction that is the Rootbreaker Wurm (which we covered above), who attacks the merfolk indiscriminately and allowing Gerrard to make his escape.
As shown in Anoint, Gerrard ends up finding a tribe of humans called the Vec. The oracle of the tribe, the Oracle en-Vec, sees that Gerrard is apparently the "Korvecdal", the chosen one that's going to lead them in the fight against Volrath. Because of course Gerrard is the chosen one.
On board the Predator, Tahngarth tries to free Karn, and are about to leave the ship,but they are spotted by a band of angry Mogg Conscripts, which are as vile-looking as the Mogg Scouts. Tahngarth ends up fighting hand-to-hand with Greven, but Greven ends up winning and subduing Tahngarth.
The Weatherlight, meanwhile, crashes on another part of the Skyshroud Forest, and Crovax ends up investigating the Root Maze. Eventually, Crovax uses his Giant Strength to help move trees and whatnot, although it's clear that Crovax is pretty morose.
While Crovax deals with freeing the ship, Mirri the catfolk lady and Hanna end up going into the forest, as shown in Mirri's Guile, presumably to find Gerrard. They end up finding the hideous Unstable Shapeshifter (which we cover above), and while Mirri is wounded by the shapeshifter, Hanna ended up slaying the creature in a display of Gallantry that impresses Mirri. The two of them take a short break at a Natural Spring, but they get attacked by elves!
As shown in Elvish Fury, Mirri and Hanna end up fighting the Skyshroud Elves led by Eladamri, the Lord of Leaves... but apparently Gerrard and the Oracle end up showing up just in time to rescue, give the elves some insight and prove that Mirri and Hanna aren't a threat to them. Gerrard ends up befriending the elven leader Eladamri, and the two take a walk in Eladamri's Vineyard. This sort of earns them a respite, and the elves also cease to attack the Weatherlight (while Crovax and Orim continue to do repairs on it).
Eventually, Gerrard and his newfound allies discuss plans to attack Volrath's stronghold as shown in Reap. There end up being some friction between Starke (who was the suspicious 'local guide to Rath' recruited at the end of the Weatherlight block), one of Gerrard's crewmates, with the Oracle. As shown in Duplicity and Opportunist, Starke ends up growing suspicious of the Oracle, and attempts to assassinate her... but fails.
While all of this is going on... in Volrath's stronghold, Greven shows up without Gerrard, and the enraged Volrath (the Big Bad of the whole block) is so enraged that he tortures Greven by apparently doing some nasty manipulations on the dude's spinal graft. Apparently, Greven's not the only bad evil boss in this setting. This is shown in Fevered Convulsions and Coercion. Volrath is as cruel to the prisoners as he is to his henchman, as the vile villain also attacks Tahngarth with Volrath's Curse.
Tahngarth and Karn are held within a Torture Chamber, and Tahngarth is disfigured, as shown in the art for Dark Banishing.
While Tahngarth's torture is physical in nature, Karn is subjected to some psychological torture, first by some mean words and propaganda from Volrath (look at that artwork, Karn looks so sad!) and later by the Imp's Taunt.
Ertai, left guarding the portal at the beginning of this expansion's storyline, ends up being visited by a member of the Soltari called Lyna, who drags Ertai into the shadow dimension. As shown in Soltari Emissary and Shadow Rift, Ertai was dragged into the Shadow dimension, but manages to escape with his magical spells.
With a Reality Anchor spell, Ertai is able to drag Lyna the Soltari back to Rath, and from Lyna, learn all about the Soltari and Dauthi conflict in the Shadow dimension, which I detailed above.
The rest of the Weatherlight crew, meanwhile, finally decide to enter Volrath's Stronghold and free their captured allies. As shown in Interdict and Disenchant, they eventually come to battle with a swarm of Slivers in the Cinder Marsh. A failed attempt to use an artificial sliver later, and the Weatherlight crew has to resort to more mundane ways to destroy them. Eventually, they enter the Furnace of Rath...
Where, as shown in Safeguard, they get attacked by the goddamn Shockers, the giant bug monster-men! A group of minor, unnamed crew-members are kindled by the Shockers and the heat from the furnace. As shown in Havoc, Orim attempts to put a lightning rod on the bow of the ship, and nearly dies from the attempt.
They survived, though, and they end up entering the Death-Pits of Rath, where they end up being attacked by a bunch of undead monsters as shown in Hero's Resolve. Gerrard ends up fighting the Carrionette (which I covered above), who ends up being slain by Crovax with in Dregs of Shadow and Deadshot, presumably allowing him to atone for his inaction during the earlier conflict. The rest of the lesser undead are shooed away with the force of Orim's Prayer.
Eventually, having braved through various little mini-dungeons, the Weatherlight sails on, leaving Crovax to brood about the involvement of the angel Selenia, as shown in Whispers of the Muse. As shown in Dread of Night and Endless Scream, though, Selenia is warped by the dark whispers of the Rath, and Volrath's intent on using this fact to torment poor, poor Crovax.
(Hanna's Legacy is also probably one of the few times that the "Legacy" set of artifacts itself is first said in the flavour text of a card, although I'm not sure where chronologically this fits).
And... overall, I do think that Tempest did such a better job at showcasing the story, even if there were a couple of obvious "hey, let's go through a bunch of side-quests" in recruiting the elves, and going through a different set of Rathian monsters. It did help to actually incorporate the many, many unique Rathian monsters like the Slivers and Soltari into the actual flow of the story, though, and while the proportion of 'story' cards is a lot... it does tell a pretty neat, if somewhat convoluted, storyline. Having the actual important characters represented in legendary cards is also a very smart thing for the design team to do! Plus, these are just the cards that represent the story. This set's cards make liberal use of assigning quotes to Volrath, Mirri, Gerrard, Crovax and the other characters in the storyline.
______________
And... and let's go through the rest of the cards of this set.
Not a whole lot to say here, these are a bunch of cool Black-coloured monsters. Skyshroud Vampire's pretty cool by virtue of being a giant bat, Darkling Stalker's a cool image, Marsh Lurker is neat... but they're just not as cool as the other creatures we've spotlighted above. I did think really, really hard before relegating them to this part of the page, though.
I didn't put all of the Dauthi up above, because I think the Dauthi Slayer and Duathi Marauder are just kinda mundane, and a bit repetitive with the other Shadow creatures. The Slayer's just some dude with Goku hair lurking in the background, and while the Marauder's another pretty neat wispy gangly man, he's kinda mundane compared to the others.
Gravedigger's a pretty simple creature, just this huge, burly zombie man who digs graves, but I really do like him! Screeching Harpy's... we haven't seen a harpy in a while, yeah? I forgot M:TG harpies have a far, far higher proportion of how much of the body is a bird and how much of it is a human.
Rats of Rath is our obligatory "Black creature that's a swarm of rats". The Easter island sewer pipe's something all right, but I kinda wished that the rats would look a bit more monstrous, y'know? Not a whole ton to say here. Maddening Imp's an interesting bat-like imp.
So sometimes other creatures outside of the Dauthi, Soltari and Thalakos needed to get Shadow for some reason, and it's cards like Dauthi Embrace, where you drag this poor bug-creature into the shadows and give it the Shadow keyword. Living Death had a really fun card art, I like it.
Oh yeah, some of the cards in this set have the Buyback mechanic, which is, I think, a mechanic that's going to stick around for a while. it basically allows you to pay an additional cost to return the instant or sorcery into your hand instead of discarding it.
Not a whole ton to say here. The artwork sure is cool!
Sarcomancy is kind of a cool word. My Latin's rusty, but I think 'sarco' literally means 'flesh', so the ability to control dead flesh can definitely be termed as Sarcomancy.
Y'know, it really speaks to the amount of neat monsters in this expansion when I didn't consider the Giant Crab notable enough to be put on top. It very nearly was, and mostly becasue of the pretty cool demon-spider-face that the artist gave it. We also have a pretty neat giant snapping turtle in Horned Turtle, and a weird anglerfish-sea-serpent in the very generic-sounding Sea Monster.
We have a couple of drakes which certainly have cool artwork, but ultimately not something we haven't seen before. The Tradewind Rider is a neat looking ghost-man, and Wind Dancer's a rare fairy that isn't from Green.
Between Counterspell and Dismiss, this expansion's got a bunch of "no fuck your spell" Blue interrupts, yeah?
Dream Cache is a very, very interesting card art. So presumably that random dude's dreaming of coin, and it bleeds out into reality? Shit, a true dream job.
Mana Severance looks like some sort of bizarre Starcraft-esque machinery charting out laser borders or some shit.
Let's do the Time Warp again! I see the M:TG team knew very well what they're referencing when they gave that card that exact name.
Twitch really does look particularly uncomfortable, yes? I do like that some spells are like, giant meteors or time warps that manipulate the fabric of nature or animating the dead, and some spells are just, well, magical twitches.
A bunch of animals for Green! None quite as interesting as Blue's Giant Crab, but I really do like the expression on the very angry Apes of Rath.
Flailing Drake's got an interesting crocodile-like mouth. The rest of these are kind of the expected woodland elves and dryads.
Rootwalla has a very neat name, but it's ultimately just kind of a weirdly-coloured giant monitor lizard. It's neat. Pincher Beetles and Mongrel Pack has got some neat artwork, but ultimately, another example of "just an animal", which, again, nothing wrong with that, but we do have a lot of cards to go through and these just aren't that special anymore.
The other two Armodon cards are the Trained Armodon and Trumpeting Armodon. Very Lord of the Rings, and, honestly, giant multi-tusked, horned rabid elephants are pretty dang cool.
Charging Rhino has an awesome, dynamic pose. Dirtcowl Wurm is another giant wurm-lizard, and he's got a neat weird bony face. Otherwise, though, we've seen variations of both the troll and the wurm before.
Rampant Growth is pretty neat! At first, I thought it's a giant caterpillar or a worm cracking out of its giant egg-sack, but apparently it's a giant plant growing out of a giant seed, according to the card's flavour text. Okay!
That elemental person in Nature's Revolt is doing the Thriller dance and I love it.
Verdigris: noun. (/ˈvərdəˌɡrēs/) a bright bluish-green encrustation or patina formed on copper or brass by atmospheric oxidation, consisting of basic copper carbonate. Also, apparently, it can destroy artifacts. Or it symbolizes destroyed artifacts?
Is... is Recycle showing a goblin feeding a human recycled remains of... of... shit, I don't even know. It's either coprophagia or cannibalism or any variation of the joke of "fuck, what did I just eat", and whatever it is, the artwork is glorious.
Chaotic Goo nearly made it to the list of monsters I nearly put as 'notable', but I didn't find enough to talk about other than "it's a spiky ooze monster and I like ooze monsters". Firefly nearly made it into the notable monsters list thanks to the pun.
JACKAL PUP IS A GOOD BOY WHO IS A GOOD BOY YES YOU ARE.
Magmasaur's got a pretty cool art! It also counts as an elemental, because who says elementals have to look humanoid? Some want to look like Brontosaurs.
A bunch of drakes and dragons, and a very draconic-looking wurm. Pretty cool creatures, but ones we've seen variations of before. Nice to know that even the plane of Rath has vicious dragons, though.
A bunch of Red spells! I... I've got nothing.
Also I've got nothing. Again, Lightning Blast is certainly cool, but we've seen it before.
More red spells! Shadowstorm has a cool name and an even cooler artwork. It basically fucks up any creature in the Shadow dimension by creating a portal, and it's pretty neat!
And while I do enjoy the Soltari White creatures, we still have our usual obligatory bunch of White clerics and knights. Not that it's a bad thing, mind you, but I still just have nothing to say about here.
Between Avenging Angel and Angelic Protector, though, we're seeing more and more variations on angels, and while these two don't really bring too much variety into the table, I approve!
Also, we've got the obligatory white eagle and the obligatory white pegasus.
Knight of Dawn presumably fights Black's Knight of Dusk. Okay! Marble Titan is a huge plump boy.
White gets a cycle of Circle of Protections which... yeah, they exist. I don't want to be mean. They exist. I have nothing interesting to say about them.
They even have one especially for Shadow.
More White spells.
Even more White spells... and artifacts, now! Thumbscrews look and imply something horrendously painful. I don't know why this thing just gives me the heebie-jeebies when, say, a guillotine doesn't.
A bunch of artifact creatures! They're neat robots and golems, and I do like all of the ones here, but special shout-out goes to the Manakin, due to the dad-joke-level pun (it's a mana-generating mannequin) and the weird springy arm that it has.
Altar of Dementia is a very... interesting name for an altar. Fool's Tome has got a very hilarious and fun artwork.
Echo Chamber looks very sci-fi esque, and Lotus Petal is definitely a homage to Black Lotus.
Apparently Volrath's wacky helm is called the Helm of Possession. The art for Grindstone looks very painful, and Excavator looks like that one stupid boss fight from Batman: Arkham Knight.
A bunch of jewelry. They're probably powerful. I don't care for them.
Magnetic Web's artwork really looks painful. It also looks like schematics of some sort, and I don't even know how the fuck is a 'magnetic web' supposed to function, let alone one that seems to take the shape of a cyborg tongue replacement that shoots darts.
Mogg Cannon isn't just a cannon used by Moggs. It's a cannon that shoots Moggs. Somehow, I'm not surprised. The artwork for Puppet Strings is extra disturbing, because holy shit, Volrath, what the fuck.
Dual-coloured cards! Soltari Guerrillas have the same design as the default Soltari Foot Soldier, but is otherwise the only dual-coloured Soltari card, being White and Red. The rest of the creatures are honestly kind of unremarkable.
Lobotomy is such a Blue/Black card, huh? Some of the dual card mana assignment are kind of arbitrary, but Lobotomy is definitely one that fits in both blue and black equally and perfectly.
Lands! I have nothing to say here. The art's cool.
The art's cool, but, again, not much to say here.
At least this batch has tie-ins to the Mogg, the Rootwater merfolk and the Vec humans.
Skyshroud Forest is a major setting of the place, butas a card, it's just a spoopy forest.
And now the basic lands! Nothing too interesting here.
Or here.
Or here.
The Plains have eeeeevil skies.
Or here.
And that wraps up Tempest. Join me next time for the Weatherlight crew's future hijinks in the evil plane of Rath as they assault Volrath's Stronghold!
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