The third expansion in the Rath cycle is Exodus. I had originally wanted to do this alongside Stronghold as a single article, but, well... I decided to split them apart so I can get these out in a relatively timely manner. It also kind of allows me to talk about more cards without feeling the fatigue, and the Rath block in general does give me enough to talk about that I really don't want to rush and blaze through them.(We will definitely be blazing through the Urza cycle, though, which I do have a lot of problems finding interesting cards of. The question is whether it's going to be one article or two articles)
Anyway, the story of Exodus is sort of the temporary conclusion to the saga of the Weatherlight crew that ran through Weatherlight, Tempest and Stronghold, as the crew's finished their rescue mission and their plot device collection mission, so all that's remain is to escape the plane of Rath and maybe defeat its vile master, Volrath. Again, as another expansion that's part of the years-long Weatherlight saga, a lot of the story is told via tie-in novels, comics and stories, but a lot of the events that happen are depicted in the cards of the expansion. As always, though, we're going to go through the design of the interesting creatures in the cards first.
This is going to be a pretty quick one, because, well, it is a small expansion, which is why I had wanted to wedge it with Stronghold... but turns out I have a lot to talk about in Stronghold. Oh well.
- Click here for the previous part, Stronghold.
- Click here for the next part, Urza's Saga.
- Click here for the index.
I do like that we start off with White first, because I really don't have a whole ton to say about White cards. The Soltari continue to be pretty neat designs, even if three expansions down the line, formless mist-men are starting to lose their charm. Soltari Visionary is still a pretty neat artwork, though, even if he does look pretty miserable. What got you down, Soltari Visionary? Cheer up, tomorrow's a new day.
We've been sort of just lumping most of this block's dragons in the post-break card dump, because... well, none of the dragons and drakes have been super interesting, just being generic dragons. But I really do like the artwork for Exalted Dragon! It just looks so sassy with the way he's posing. It's like he's a JoJo character or something, with very pronounced muscles, and just that pose he's making with the slav squat position, the show-off-my-deltoid pose and the way that hand is posed. And even then, that black-coloured mask-like head is a pretty interesting feature, as is the very blade-like wings. Not the most interesting thing to see on a M:TG card, but definitely a wacky enough looking dragon for me to consider notable.
Oh, hey, another one of the characters introduced all the way back in Weatherlight finally gets represented by a card, and it's Ertai, Wizard Adept. He's honestly sort of forgettable, and he's spent the entire cycle just sort of standing guard over a portal and briefly meeting the Shadow dimension people. If not for the story, he'd be completely unremarkable, since he's just a generic fantasy wizard dude who's apparently great at counterspells. I really don't have much to say here.
Equilibrium has a bunch of Beebles! Click here for M:TG's history on them. They're based on some creatures featured on the cover of a M:TG magazine, and while the design isn't fully finalized here, we do get to see these tiny, pink blob-homonculus creatures that are apparently meant to represent "souls" being traded in Rath. We're going to see these Beebles show up here and there for a while, at least until those in charge of Magic: The Gathering decide that these little flesh-blob gremlins are too goofy for the super-duper-serious-card-game. Boo to that, honestly.
More Thalakos creatures, and the Thalakos Drifters honestly just look like a bunch of generic ghosts as opposed to the more formless-mist-creature thing that the Thalakos have been depicted as in most of the block. I do like the artwork, though, the contorted faces look like something out of Ghostbusters or something, and definitely really showcase the madness of the Thalakos very well. I just kind of wonder why the crazy Thalakos is assigned to Blue... which honestly kind of seem pretty arbitrary. It's not like they're particularly smart or anything, right?
Thalakos Scout is a pretty neat, interesting artwork that really go back to the weird mist-gas-shadow-creature aesthetic of the Thalakos, with that right arm basically gooping all over the tree bark, the face being contorted, and the left arm bending like a vine while holding a spear. It's like this creature can actually just be nothing but formless mist, but is trying so desperately to hold on to a humanoid form, y'know?
Oh man, I really kind of want to know what the story is behind these two creatures. Mirozel and Ephemeron are both considered 'illusions', but both are these floating creatures with tapering, serpent-like tails. What are they? The tribe 'illusion' is even more ambiguous than something like 'spirit' or 'horror', and I'm honestly not sure what it implies for these two. Are they just creatures that Volrath or some other mage creates as fake creatures to populate the plane? Are they born out of the chaotic magic around Rath? Why exactly are they considered illusions?
The Mirozel are these bizarre giant flying Sunfish-like creatures with fangs, six eyes and a long tail that ends in a spiky barbed mace, and apparently are the "stars in Rath's opaque skies". Very bizarre! The Ephemeron is even weirder, with a head that's like a weird mixture between dinosaur, giant brain and slug eye-stalk, and the rest of his body is this weird eel-like figure with two massive mantis-like arms and whatever those weird blue tentacle things are supposed to be. "From nothing came teeth" indeed. It's just such a weird, randomly bizarre creature that we don't get any explanation towards what it really is, and I kinda wished we did, y'know?
More of the monstrous merfolk that live in Rath! Merfolk Looter has a very savage-looking head with all those tentacles and barbels trailing behind him, and the empty-loking eyes and the dude's mouth really look like some sort of hideous jungle river fish. Rootwater Mystic, meanwhile, is far ganglier and straight-up skeletal, with massive, clawed hands and a facial expression that looks far more intelligent than the Looter. It's interesting how these two have basically the same body layout, right up to the position of the head tentacles and whatnot, but really sell the fantasy of one of them being a brute that physically assaults trespassers, while the other is a non-combat being that uses magic to scry on the land-dwellers. Pretty neat art!
Whiptongue Frog. Okay, yeah, sure, why the hell not? I've long since lumped a lot of the "just a giant animal" at the end of these reviews, but man, the Whiptongue Frog's overly long front legs, and the fact that its tongue is used as some sort of crazy lance-like projectile to kill random tribal hunters? That's a fun bit of personality. I like it. For some inexplicable reason, its ability is to gain flying, so imagine this frog with its gangly frog arms and its stab-you-in-the-chest tongue spear somehow inexplicably flying for some reason. Okay!
Nausea features another Beeble, and we get a clearer view on this weird lumpy pink blob with a face and teeny-tiny spindly limbs, and apparently it drives the Moggs nauseous with its cuteness. That's what the flavour text claims, anyway. The artwork kind of makes it pretty clear from the Beeble's position that it's likely to be some sort of Beeble flatulence that's causing those poor Moggs to have such an adverse reaction. It's kind of a juvenile toilet humour, admittedly, but come on, the Beeble farting on some badass musclebound goblins' faces and driving them to vomit and lose stats is kind of such a hilariously bizarre concept. Perhaps not the most mature card, but, eh, I kinda find it funny.
Okay, the Carnophage is pretty cool. The idea of a zombie that has its skin stripped off and reduced to only musculature above bone should be more gross than cool, but the artwork on the Carnophage with the hollowed-out eyes, the bulging veiny muscles, those creepy long claws, and most of all, those hideous chunky teeth really do lend an element of neat weirdness that really do sell the idea that this Carnophage is a creature worthy of the flavour text of "eating is all it knows".
It's actually quite interesting how superficially this looks to the Dauthi Warlord, another one of the shadowy monstrous Dauthi creatures. It's also got a bunch of chunky chompers, but instead of being made up of muscles, the sinews that cover the Dauthi Warlord's body has a bunch of moaning, screaming faces on them. Of course. It's also got one hell of a massive crown-like structure that extends up from its head, and I do like the absolutely alien-looking eyes it's got. This expansion, by the way, is the last we're going to see of the Dauthi, the Thalakos and the Soldari, because they're all Rath-unique creatures.
I'm not 100% sure what's going on with Dauthi Cutthroat. It just seems to be some dude with shadows leaking out of his shoulders perched on top of a dome. I kind of don't really have much to say here, it's actually one of the more boring Dauthi cards. I'm just sort of obligated to talk about all the Shadow-realm creatures because they're one of the unique features of Rath.
Dauthi Jackal, though, is anything but boring. On a quick glance, it's just a generic skeletal dog, but take a closer look at the positioning of those legs and you realize just how weird the proportions are. I'm not sure if it's intentional or if it's just me, but the way the rear legs are bent makes them feel more at the forefront than the two spindlier front legs. And of course, that massive skeletal jackal-maw is a pretty creepy feature to have.
Okay, Entropic Specter is also pretty dang cool. The artwork's pretty dynamic. I think that massive swirling cloud-vortex is located in the specter's cloak? However the hell that makes sense? We don't actually get any explanation to what the shit this creature is, other than it's a vaguely humanoid-shaped thing with spikes all over, a hooded head, a hand that looks frayed, and a bizarre cloak trailing across her back. And her effect is just so bizarrely weird that I'm genuinely not sure what's going on... but I like it!
And then there's something so mundane like Grollub. Who's an ogre-like beast thing that's just flea-ridden and standing in the foreground of a couple of arguing moggs. Apparently, nasty little mogg children always blame the Grollub for any misdeeds, and the asshole mogg taskmasters will beat the shit out of the Grollub. Poor Grollub, someone give him a hug. For whatever reason, any time the Grollub is damaged, all its opponent gains life. Okay? Y'know, sometimes these card effects really do make me wonder what it's supposed to represent.
Pit Spawn is another beast, and while we don't really get any explanation, it's pretty demonic, yeah? Particularly since our very first demon was, what, Lord of the Pit or something along those lines? Wizards wasn't allowed to use the D-word in this period of time, though, and I'm kind of curious why this thing is called a 'beast' as opposed to a horror or a zombie or something along those lines. A pretty grisly creature, in any case, with a face that looks like some sort of twisted Luchador mask, and the bone shards that fly out of its mouth is a pretty neat little detail.
MIND MAGGOTS! Are you uncomfortable yet? Look at those half-transparent, squirming, wiggling worms squelching and wiggling out of that poor woman's ear, with teeny-tiny little feeder-mouths at the end of each maggot face. It's not even just one, and from its name, it's kind of implied that these things eat either your brain or eat your thoughts, both of which are completely believable in the M:TG world. I don't know about you, but shit, the Mind Maggots are a couple magnitudes creepier than the Pit Spawn.
"Its respiration is your expiration" is such a fun flavour text for the Plaguebearer, one of the grossest and more disgusting looking monsters I've seen in Magic so far, and that's definitely a compliment. Like, holy shit, what a nasty-looking zombie this is! From the inhumanly large mouth to the vomit being belched out (that apparently dissolves that poor human's face straight off!) to the massive toad-like cheek pouches, to the inexplicable cyst-like growths on this thing's back... a genuinely nasty-looking zombie design that wouldn't look out of place in something like Resident Evil or something. Definitely a pretty cool monster!
The only non-Green Spike we see so far is the Spike Cannibal, who apparently is so evil it eats its Spike buddies! And this evilness causes it to be counted as a Black-mana creature. I do really like just how odd the Spike Cannibal looks in comparison to most of the Spikes, which tended to look like a mixture of slugs and arthropods. The Spike Cannibal's colouration brings to mind something more fleshy or even rock-like, and that very smooth sheen it has on its face, with its beady eyes... yeah, if Spikes can talk, this one probably sounds like a goddamn serial killer.
Holy shit, what's even going on with the Thrull Surgeon? There's always been a theme of horrifying surgery and experimentation in the Rath cycle, but man, the Thrull Surgeon is just such a bizarre, fucked-up thing that's doing brain surgery on that poor goblin. And in addition to multiple limbs with way too many joints, it's also got a whole lot of bizarre features like spider-like legs, a squirrel tail, and a buzzsaw made out of flesh. Perhaps the creepiest thing is its head, which... I am not sure how to describe. Its upper jaw is less a jaw and more a chunk of beetle-like armour, while its lower jaw is a massive underbite with a beard of tentacles, and a slug-eye with a tiny eyeball where a tongue should be. Such a fucked-up looking creature! Sadly, this is going to be our last Thrull in a while, although unlike the Shadow-realm creatures, the Thrulls will show up in future Magic expansions. Just give them a decade or two.
I really don't have a whole ton more to say about most of the moggs and goblins in this set, but Mogg Assassin is pretty funny. Apparently, assassination in mogg terms includes a grinning goblin running around with a bag of bombs. I mean, sure, I guess even Ezio Auditore carries around a bunch of explosives from time to time...
Red actually has a bunch of salamanders in this set, and I'm not sure if there's some significance that salamanders have to the plane of Rath, but the Cinder Crawler is a pretty neat creature that apparently lives in burning lava. Which I'll believe. Apparently, it just pushes everything into the burning lava and just waits it to cook. It's not just a lava salamander, it's a lava salamander connoisseur. It's not like any of its other plebeian salamander cousins, it knows that food's meant to be enjoyed when it tastes good.
Furnace Brood is a bunch of elementals, and it's... interesting. They look like little devil-Beeble creatures. Elementals are supposedly beings that are born out of and represent an aspect of the elements, and these things represent... the furnace? A bunch of red creatures with a lightning spark jumping around their heads? Sure, the flavour text attempts to explain it off as furnace air apparently crackling with magnetic cackles, but... eh, I dunno.
Sabertooth Wyvern is a pretty neat looking creature. It's a relatively simple concept, just slap a saber-toothed tiger's teeth onto a wyvern, but sometimes you don't have to go all the way and reinvent the wheel, y'know? Sometimes a familiar creature with just a detail or two changed can be kind of memorable, especially with the Sabertooth Wyvern's pretty cheeky flavour text.
And, hey, it's Mirri! Who's essentially the main female protagonist in the Weatherlight saga, what with Sisay being the object of rescue and everything. She's pretty perfect in green, honestly, and I do like the idea that she's such a fast-attacking character that jumps through the trees. All her abilities from 'first strike' to the fact that she doesn't tap after attacking to forestwalk really do sell the fantasy pretty well, even if I'm not sure if this combination of keywords are actually good. I'm here to talk about the art and flavour. Mirri's pretty cool, I guess, and it's always nice to see more of the actual characters represented as cards. By my count, we're still missing Gerrard, Sisay, Volrath, Tahngarth, Karn and Squee, though. And those are the ones whose names I remember.
The Skyshroud elves keep showing up and I keep finding them to be as boring as ever, but the Skyshroud War Beast is pretty cool. On a quick glance, it looks like a generic raptor-like dinosaur, but look closer and it just looks so weird. Its head is a combination of a ceratopsian dinosaur with a bird's beak, and a pair of random mammoth-like tusks... and it doesn't even have an eye! Its arms also taper off into mantis-like scythes. A pretty cool looking mount!
Plated Rootwalla! I didn't talk too much about the very original Rootwalla, because I thought it's just a generic monitor lizard. Apparently it's going to be a recurring critter. Huh. The Plated Rootwalla looks far more savage, looking like a Thorny Devil Lizard, but far more exaggerated, particularly that massive headplate and those mean-looking claws.
I think this is the last we see of the Spikes as well. I'm not sure how I feel about the constant 'abandoning' of some of these unique creatures. On one hand, it does end up making the individual planes a lot more unique. Like, Rath's going to forever be remembered in my head as "the plane with weird shadow creatures, Spikes, Slivers and Licids", and it does make the creatures we get here end up looking pretty unique. But I kinda wanna see these creatures in other planes, too, y'know? Ah well. Spike Hatcher's kind of a simple looking Spike, honestly, although I do like the visual image of this green Spike gently using its massive fangs to pull out the baby Spikes out of the little pods on its back. I think this is one of the few Spikes whose pods have completely 'hatched'>
Spike Rogue is one hell of a daredevil! I'm not sure what makes her more rogue-like than the other Spikes, but I suspect jumping and biting some random armadillo-like beast all yee-haw cowboy wrangler style isn't something most Spikes do. A pretty interesting and dynamic artwork! I like the more mottled texture on the Rogue, too.
Spike Weaver is easily the most spider-looking Spike. Those two fangs look particularly like pedipalps, and coupled with the massive eyes, it really does look like a spider's head, particularly something like the jumping spider with its prominent large eyes. Throw in those webs around it, and, yeah, the Spike Weaver looks pretty spidery. I'm not sure why the ability to weave webs apparently translates into disabling combat damage, but I guess everyone just gets stuck in the webs.
Jackalope Herd. Jackalopes are honestly always one of the weirdest cryptids ever, and it's nice that the M:TG team acknowledges the sheer bizarreness of a bunch of cute bunnies with deer antlers and orc fangs. And I do love just how intentionally harmless these things are... but they're still a 4/5 creature, which means that it's more than double the raw power of something like the Carnophage or Mirri the Cat Warrior. I would chalk it up to M:TG's story-and-gameplay-mismatch as far as stats go... but y'know what? Maybe jackalopes are that badass. I mean, it's not like I know any better.
We're going into the Artifact creatures, and I do like these two. Mindless Automaton looks hilarious with those clunky murder arms, a massive fanged underbite and a genuinely goofy looking face. It looks like something out of a children's book, except it's doing something brutal by whacking these silly Moggs around.
Workhorse, I suspect, owes its entire existence to a pun. Presumably, Mr. Mage over there gave this otherwise-humanoid-shaped robot a gross-looking horse head just to make the pun. I can appreciate that.
Hey, it's a bunch of Thopters! I love the Thopters, it just sounds like the sort of clattering, possibly-unsafe steampunk/magic-punk helicopters that would exist in a fantasy setting. And this particular Thopter Squadron is apparently piloted by Moggs, and I do kind of like that these things sort of look like they're designed, in some way, after some weird insect. Or maybe after the Mawcor? That's a Rath-plane creature, after all, and the anatomy's similar enough, sans gaping mouth.
Our final Licid as we leave the plane of Rath is the Transmogrifying Licid, which looks particularly weird, like some bizarre tick or crab like creature with a metallic exterrior and two massive whiplike antennae. The fact that it apparently "transmogrifies" you (I love the word transmogrify) apparently means that the Transmogrifying Licid transforms you into a goddamned Artifact. Somehow, whatever this parasitic thing does, the body of the person ends up being counted as essentially a robotic creature. That's creepy, and, man, what an interesting creature to end on.
Story cards!
Last we left off, Team Gerrard's left the Stronghold after rescuing their captured allies and recovering the Legacy artifacts, but it's not without cost because some of them got tortured, Mirri got wounded, Starke got blinded and Crovax got turned kind of crazy. Outside the Stronghold, though, the leaders of the Rath natives -- Eladamri's elves and the Kor, Vec and Dal human tribes -- make an Oath of Lieges to basically bring down Volrath once and for all. Which leads to Pandemonium as the united forces attack Volrath's Mogg army.
In Convalescence, we get to see some of the wounded, with Orim tending to the wounded Mirri and the mind-broken Crovax after their encounter with the dark angel Selenia. Meanwhile, Hanna and Karn inspect the Legacy artifacts, as shown in Treasure Trove.
It's not over for the Weatherlight crew, though, because their old adversary, the skyship Predator, attacks them with rope harpoons, as seen in Cataclysm. Not seen in the card, though, is the fact that Hanna manages to maneuver the Predator and crash it onto Volrath's Stronghold, freeing themselves. Greven il-Vec (the bad guy from Tempest) sends out a Thopter Squadron, but a gigantic Killer Whale destroys some of the squadron. The Weatherlight goes back to Volrath's Stronghold to pick up their teammates that are left behind.
Speaking of which, over in the Stronghold, Gerrard manages to help Sisay regain consciousness (Fugue), while Tahngarth makes use of the cover in Volrath's garden to take out the Thopter-riding goblins (Onslaught).
In Curiosity, Mirri ends up witnessing Crovax, who skulks out of the room the two are interred in. Driven mad by the voices in his head thanks to Selenia's curse, Crovax attempts to sabotage the Weatherlight. The still-wounded Mirri attacks Crovax, and the two tumble out of the Weatherlight and engage each other in combat (Slaughter).
Meanwhile, Greven il-Vec finally faces off against Gerrard (Hatred and Maniacal Rage), but is distracted by Mirri and Crovax's fight. In the ensuing fight, Mirri realizes that Gerrard is going to put everyone at risk with his divided attention, so she chooses to allow Crovax to kill her, allowing Gerrard to take Sisay and board the Weatherlight.
The Weatherlight then attempts to escape, pursued by a massive mass of Flowstone (Seismic Assault). With the aid of the Soltari, Ertai manages to open the Erratic Portal. Ertai's Soltari ally, Lyna, uses her shadow-realm ability to inform the Weatherlight of this fact.
After their long journey the Weatherlight avoids the massive tide of enemies and rides the Aether Tide away from the plane of Rath back to Dominaria... and as the Weatherlight safely flies back to Dominaria, the ancient planeswalker Urza (from Antiquities), who has been fighting against the Phyrexians for thousands of years, shows up and shuts the portal before the Predator can follow, although this leads to Ertai being captured. Urza! He's going to be important, since the next three expansions are named after him!
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Other cards!
...I don't have much to say about any of these. As usual, they're White's typical batch of knights and priests. It's neat to see some en-Vec and en-Dal peeps, but they're not super interesting.
There's a cycle of Townsfolk creatures that returns cards from your graveyard to your hand in this expansion. One of them is the Treasure Hunter, and I really do like the fact that we've got a random set of dots leading to an X scribbled on top of this card art. I dunno. I just find it neat.
You've got your obligatory hawk, and I do like the imagery of the Wall of Nets just being a massive ship's mast that's trapping a bunch of dumb goblins.
Also, High Ground. Insert your own Anakin/Obi-Wan joke here.
More white stuff.
Even more white stuff. I
Dominating Licid is our other Licid card, and I almost missed the fact that it's a Licid. School of Piranha is a pretty neat if obvious creature concept. Love the flavour text.
Keeper of the Mind has a pretty fancy little skull-with-the-top-sliced-off magical focus thing. She's part of a cycle of Keepers, I believe, but they're all kind of generic mage people.
Wayward Soul's a neat looking spirit.
Theft of Dreams has a pretty cool artwork, and Robe of Mirrors is kind of a hilarious enchantment that apparently reflects all spells and abilities... but all that dude can think of is "does this make me look fat?"
Cat Burglar is an example of a Kor dude that shows up out of the White mana colour. Vampiric Hounds are pretty cool, although I didn't have much to say about them.
Cursed Flesh has a pretty creepy looking artwork. I like it. Scare Tactics has a lot of wacky cartoonish fiends in the background, one that's surprisingly whimsical for a Black card.
Necrologia is also a pretty neat artwork, and one of the few times Volrath shows up in cards here. Rcurring Nightmare is a pretty neat artwork, and that spiked wall with creepy squinting eyes definitely looks nightmarish!
A bunch of Red mages, and a salamander.
Two red animals, an ogre and a goblin. Again, it's cool, but we've seen all of these before.
A bunch of Red spells, but I really do like the pose in Sonic Burst and Spellshock, as well as the arcing effects in Shattering Pulse.
More Red spells. Flowstone Flood is very thematic, too. Actually, with the Weatherlight leaving Rath behind with no mention of the elf/human alliance, what became of them? After all, we only see them fighting Moggs and we know damn well Volrath has a lot more monstrosities under his employ...
A bunch of animals! Rabid Wolverines is pretty hilarious, particularly with that flavour text, but I think we've seen wolverines before. Rootwater Alligator has a neat artwork.
Elves. I don't have anything to say.
Pygmy Troll has a fun set of proportions.
So the Oath of Druids is a cycle of oaths across the five colours. They're neat, and predates the Gatewatch Oath cards by a couple decades.
Survival of the Fittest has a particularly gory artwork, holy shit, look at that fucked-up goblin corpse.
Are we almost done yet? Artifats! That dude in Medicine Bag looks so weird, what the hell is it? It's got a weird beak-like face that's like, armadillo-like or something, and his bag has its own Pot-of-Greed-style face.
The Skyshaper is one of the Legacy artifacts, I think, and apparently they used it to get to the Portal.
And that's about it for both Exodus and the Rath block! I'll take a break before doing Urza. It's not a cycle I genuinely care about too much from a flavour or design standpoint, and I'm not sure I'll have much interesting things to say. We'll see.
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