Kamen Rider Zero-One E35.5 Review: Clipshow Plus

Kamen Rider Zero-One, Episode 35.5: How Was Metsubojinrai Created?

Okay, we're back! After around a month or so of dubbed-over clipshows, we're finally back with mostly-new content. I say mostly-new, because this episode is still around 40% clipshows and flashbacks, but the majority of the episode is newly-shot footage. Obviously, because of the whole Coronavirus pandemic thing. But since this episode actually is pretty plot-heavy and does have a fair amount of neat character analysis, I'll talk about it a bit.

The premise of this episode is somewhat similar with the past couple of clip-shows, where there is a bit of a justification made for a character to revisit past events. And this time around, it's the proper introduction of long-haired Izu... or 'Azu', as she introduces herself. Styling herself as the ark's personal emissary and secretary, Azu is a bit more... playful than Izu, clearly happy to nag and poke fun at the more stern and serious Metsubojinrai.net characters. Azu wants to find out about the Singularity Points of the four Metsubojinrai characters.

And talking about the Singularity Points and true motivations of these characters makes for a lot more fun of an episode than just 'oh hey look at all the characters in the past 30 episodes, have some action scenes tossed in' vibe of the past couple of clipshows. First up is, of course, Horobi, because Horobi is a character that the show's actually shown the character development of. Horobi is still pretty tsundere and refuses to admit that he's anything but an Ark-loving one-note fanatic, but Azu points out that not everything Horobi does is "it is as the Ark wills" or whatever, and we get that flashback of Horobi protecting Jin without any orders from the Ark during that one fight with Metal Cluster Zero-One. There's no real surprise here, but Azu teasing Horobi about how he's got a 'papa's face' is kind of cute, and, well, that's Horobi's singularity point. Being a father. And with a Malice Learning Ability sound, Azu uses a new Progrise Key to suck a bunch of weird digital data from Horobi's head. Also, I do like it that all of these scenes are basically taking place in a part of the Metsubojinrai base, particularly this weird little interview living room with a giant glowing white globe on the center of the room.

Next up is Ikazuchi, a character that has easily been the least interesting and least developed among the Metsubojinrai.net base. I still claim that having him have a closer tie to Assassin-chan would've worked a lot better, because Ikazuchi has around a single episode's worth of screentime to him since everything else in the previous episode involves his 'shell' personality. Like Horobi, Ikazuchi claims that it's all about the Ark for him, but Azu mocks his insistence on "Ark-sama LOVE" and does the same thing as what she did with Horobi, pointing out that Ikazuchi is all about being a big brother. Another member interviewed, and another member down.

The third member is Naki, and, interestingly, we also got a bunch of extra scenes taken from Project Thouser. That's neat. Naki doesn't have any memory of their pre-Zaia origins, and Azu gives us a bunch of exposition. Hiden had created Naki to become a systems engineer, and as Naki got some character development in the recent arc of the main show, Azu tells Naki (and us) that Naki's basically had a variant of her old duties as a system engineer. There's an interesting bit where Azu really focuses on 'what are you originally created for?' when talking to the first three Metsubojinrai.net characters. It's an interesting take on Naki, whose newfound dream of 'I will help Horobi's dream even though I don't have one of my own' is read by Azu as Naki fighting for Humagears, noting that Naki's singularity point is Humagears. Okay, sure. That tracks, I suppose.

And then we cut to a bit of Jin discussing his origins with... Aruto? Aruto (actually Azu with a hologram) is pushy about wanting to know what model of humagear Jin originally was, and how it definitely is related to his singularity. Jin, though, notes that it's his hatred for humans that Horobi pushed him in the first arc of the show that ended up having him reach singularity, which tracks with what we know, because, well, we actually did see Jin approaching singularity in the show. Jin's claim that his singularity point is Horobi because Horobi's teachings and eventual death was what ended up with him having a huge hatred for humanity in general, but there's the implication that this isn't the whole story. After all, while that might be true for Jin in the first major story arc, in the second Thouser-centric story arc it's certainly not the case.

Azu (and we can presume the Ark) doesn't actually know how Jin got revived after his death at the hands of Zero-One in the first arc of the show, though, and was pretty pushy in wanting to know that information... but Jin's keeping it close to his chest for now. It's notable, of course, as the flashbacks remind us, that Jin's not actually connected to the Ark like Horobi and the others are. There's an interesting flashback to where Horobi and Jin were entering an alliance to liberate Naki, and I think it's implied that it's Azu and/or the Ark (are they even different at this point?) taking over Horobi and giving him the instructions. Okay, sure? Azu then does the 'Malice Learning Ability' thing on Jin, but notably, unlike the previous three, we didn't actually see the red digital glitter lights leave Jin's head. It's going to be interesting to see what bearing this is going to have in the future of the show.

Azu leaves, though, and claims that she's obtained every single singularity data, and it seems like Jin's sabotaging her efforts? She doesn't notice, though, and goes back into the digital realm of the Ark and talks with the Ark as it reverts into the creepy red-and-black hellscape with screaming and moving words... and we get to see the newest Kamen Rider, a mysterious black thing with seemingly mismatched parts and one glowing red eye. This is the Ark itself, it seems. Okay, I guess we have our final villain.

And we're still not quite sure who Jin is working with at this point, but Jin calls someone after Azu has left, telling whoever is on the phone that 'everything is according to plan' and that the Ark is finally reviving. Who is Jin working with? Aruto? Gai? Either one of these must have been the one that is responsible for bringing Jin back to life, unless there's some other faction that I forgot about. Either way, it's certainly an interesting setup for the final arc of the show. I'm quite hyped.

Random Notes:

• The past four weeks had us the "President Special", "Shooting Special" and "Super Job War" clip-shows, dubbed over by the actors of Aruto, Izu, Fuwa and Yua. It's a neat way to give us some technically new content while the Coronavirus pandemic prevented shooting, but other than the President Special, the others are basically Yua and Aruto making tongue-in-cheek jabs at Fuwa. The President Special basically is a bit of a foreshadowing to this little episode and the introduction of Azu, where Azu masquerades as Izu and tries to get Aruto to tell her all about the Zero-One data that she's going to be gathering on the Ark's behalf. 
• I'm not going to review any of the clipshows, but I am working on a review of the Reiwa: The First Generation movie. 
• "Azu" is a lot more natural to type than "As". I know that's the official spelling, but practically everyone out there uses her katakana spelling, so I'm going to use it. 
• The digital Aruto that Azu uses to talk to Jin is an obvious bit of "the main character has to show up in every episode, no matter what" policy that these shows often have. 
• Malice Learning Ability.
• We didn't actually see Horobi, Naki or Ikazuchi do anything after their respective Malice Learning Ability scenes, and I'm not sure if Azu taking their Singularity Points is going to  actually turn them back into soulless robots after this. 
• This episode's sister show, Mashin Sentai Kiramager, had a bit more of an elaborate episode, but it's obvious that they're also working with the pandemic in mind because the cast only cycles around three sets (and the plotline involves a Groundhog Day time-loop, which probably made shooting easier) and the action scenes are notably a bit more truncated -- they even made a gag on how quickly and stock-footage-centric the giant robot action scene is. Not to complain, though, they're working the best with what they can. Safety is more important!

Let's Play Pokemon Sword: Isle of Armor, Part 4: Kung Fu Showdown

So after spending a bunch of time just chilling and doing max raid battles with no animations, I ended up getting the requisite amount of max mushrooms in order to make the honeyed mushroom soup for Urshifu. Is that a thing, actually? Can you actually add honey to a mushroom soup? It feels like something that could end up being tasty or nasty, I feel. During my little grind, I also ended up catching a bunch of Gigantamax Pokemon -- there's the Appletun and Kingler I talked about before, but I also got two Giga Laprrases from my raids. I had thought that they actually buffed the catch rate for these Gigantamax Pokemon, but a couple of successive failures when I ended up running into a Gigantamax Snorlax and two Gengars tells me that it's probably just my feeling.

Anyway, again, I probably could easily sweep Mustard if I had used my regular team, but I went in with my Isle of Armor team, which at this point are in the 71-76 level range. It's Toxapex, Hatterene, Dragapult, Toxtricity, Dhelmise and Urshifu. The Urshifu has got to be there, because it's her expansion after all. (I didn't notice it until writing this segment, but my Urshifu is a girl kung fu bear, mostly because I didn't think that Urshifu would be one of the legendary pokemon with genders.

And in order to make this a bit of an interesting fight against Mustard, I changed my battle style to set instead of switch, which means I don't get free switches to anything Mustard sends out. And not knowing what Mustard's team is other than the fact that he's almost certainly going to have the opposite version of Urshifu, and that's likely going to be his final Pokemon, I save my own Urshifu to fight his own, too. The battle starts up with Dhelmise versus Mienshao, and... the damn thing knows Blaze Kick against my poor ghost algae monster, but I did manage to ninja away with Phantom Force, and after two cycles of Phantom Force I take out the Mienshao although that left me with minimal HP.

Mustard sends out a Corviknight, which is both faster and super-effective against my Dhelmise, not that the poor algae-anchor ghost has anything to really go up against a Steel/Flying. I send out my Toxtricity against Corviknight and OHKO it with an Overdrive (obaaaa doraibuuu) and man, the animation for Overdrive is pretty awesome, huh? With all those neon electricity effects bursting out of Toxtricity? Next up is an electric-vs-electric fight as Mustard sends out his Luxray, so I get my Toxtricity to use Boomburst, which is boosted by Toxtricity's ability. And the animation for Boomburst gets me every time, with a gigantic sonic boom wave being angled upwards as the user basically goes AAAAA. Mustard's Luxray uses... Psychic Fang? That is a move? What? Looking it up, it's apparently Bruxish's signature move. Okay, that's... that's interesting. My Toxtricity manages to survive with like 6 HP or something, and since he's faster, he manages to take out Luxray with another Boomburst.

Mustard sends out last generation's pseudo-legendary, a Kommo-o, which proceeds to use Clangorous Soul, which is basically Dragon Dance meets Belly Drum. The Kommo-o basically shrugs off my Toxtricity's Sludge Bomb (I really should've used Boomburst again for the damage, huh), and then proceeds to wipe the floor the next turn with a single Aura Sphere hadoken. I bring out my own pseudo-legendary, and my Dragapult is faster, and can hit twice with a Dragon-type move, and the little baby kamikaze Dreepies get sent out and blow up Kommo-o. Mustard's next Pokemon, the Lycanroc, also gets dragon darted to death.

Mustard then tosses out his rapid-strike Urshifu, who, naturally, proceeds to Gigantamax into its giant form, the white-and-blue rapid-strike Gigantamax Urshifu. It's... it's all right? Very Power Rangers-esque, and this is the first time I've actually seen the Gigantamax form. And I probably could've solo'd the giant kung fu bear with my Dragapult, but I do want the bear-on-bear kung fu hustle showdown, so I used U-Turn to switch into my own Urshifu... which is a dumb move since that means my own Urshifu ends up taking damage from the Max Ooze that Mustard's Urshifu uses. Gigantamax time, and Giga Single-Strike Urshifu is... it's the same thing as the other dude, but it's red instead of blue. Okay, then. I don't particularly love either one of these, but they're neat.

And... it's not until this point that I realize that my Dark/Fighting Urshifu is at a severe disadvantage to the Water/Fighting Urshifu, because now the Rapid Urshifu is able to deal a super-effective STAB Fighting move to take mine out. My Urshifu is faster, though, and unleashes the dynamaxed Aerial Ace that blows through around two-thirds of the enemy Urshifu. Which, of course, immediately takes out my Urshifu with a Max Knuckle. Sorry, Urshifu. Better luck next time.

I could bring out Dragapult for the pseudo-legendary stats, or Hatterene for the super-effective STAB, but I sort of dick around with Toxapex. Hey, maybe I can stall and poison-kill Urshifu with Baneful Bunker, right? Wrong, because Urshifu's ability is Unseen Fist, allowing it to break through protect moves. I completely forgot about it, and a critical Max Knuckle takes out Toxapex, Baneful Bunker and all.

It's Hatterene against regular rapid-strike Urshifu now that the Gigantamax time has ran out. But despite having both Psychic and Fairy type moves, which are both super-effective agaist Urshifu... the dang bear is faster and one-shots my Hatterene with Iron Head. All those buffs from the Max moves really made it powerful, huh? Of course, I still have my Dragapult, and my sneaky little Sucker Punch. And that's how I beat Mustard's Urshifu. What? I'm a Tower of Darkness kind of guy.

Mustard really did give me a run for my money, though, especially after I thought that I wasn't even going to need Hatterene or Toxapex. That Urshifu is a beast. Maybe I should've taken the Water/Fighting version instead? Whatever, too late to change my decision anyhow.

Mustard gives this talk about how the apprentice has surpassed the master, gives me his other league card, and the entire population of the dojo show up and talk about how badass the fight was. Klara gets a bunch of final words, and she's still kind of a bitch, but... at least she's aware of her own flaws. Mustard gets to say something cryptic, noting that we should all train "just so we're ready from the time comes..." whoa, wait, some actual foreshadowing for something else in the future? Is the Crown Tundra going to be more epic compared to this more light-hearted 'hey let's join a dojo and have fun' story? That's actually interesting. We get a 'The End', but apparently that's not all the DLC has to offer.

There's still a bunch of grinding for the Max Mushrooms and Max Dens and the like, of course, and I'm honestly somewhat seriously considering dropping money on Pokemon Home and the online services thing just for the hell of it. I'll get a Zeraora and might be able to get some of the other Pokemon like starters and trade evolutions from the GTS (and I could import some of my spare starters from my copy of Sun and Moon), but probably not in this week. I do really like the Isle of Armor, though -- the vibe of the overworld and a lot of neat quality of life changes, as well as making some of the more frustrating things in the base game a bit more palatable is neat.

One of the dojo students tell me about restricted sparring, something like a battle tower where you can only bring a single type of Pokemon. Looking at my current high-level Pokemon, the only ones I can really bring in are probably either Bug-type or Water-type. Sure.

There's a bunch of interesting rewards. Klara gives me the 'Klara 4-Ever' shirt, which is actually kind of cute and on-brand for her. Hyde has a Porygon in the living room and rants about it in a bunch of fun overlapping lines of dialogue, before giving me this awesome, retro Pokemon. Man, remember in the first generation 1 when Porygon's whole deal is that it's this super-advanced digital creature? It's now retro and quaint. Ah, how the times have changed.

There's a bit of a scene where Klara hangs out in Potbottom Desert trying to train her Slowpoke (didn't you have a Slowbro before, Klara?) and is all tsundere and stuff before giving me her other league card. Okay, sure. Kinda wished you had a more intricate arc, but she's kind of all right, I suppose. I read through the two newer league cards, and Klara's second league card has her with a face mask working out while her Slowbro is all derpy-derp. Klara apparently couldn't bear the training required for the Poison-type gym (what gym, though?) and ended up enlisting in the dojo because the master looked kind.

Speaking of the master, we get a neat nod to Opal, who used to fight Mustard when they were both young, but ended up falling into a spiral of depression and eventually his career self-destructed after losing his partner Pokemon (wait, what) and refusing to fight in a rigged match. Okay, fuck, I didn't expect something quite so deep from Mustard.

Also, we get random gym leaders showing up in the Isle of Armor. Marnie shows up in the Forest of Focus going all surprised and stuff, and Kabu shows up in the desert. None of them actually do anything, though. A shame. A battle with them having updated teams or like them wanting to trade or give free items would've been nice, but I guess this is just meant to be like a little easter egg more than anything.

And... that's about it for the Isle of Armor, I suppose! I still have to find all the Digletts, but it seems like the rewards are going to just be more regional variant Pokemon. I'm definitely going to do it in my own pace, though. There's also Honey's little Watt-upgrading project, and apparently Honey's league cards and the battle with her having either a Giga Venusaur or Blastoise is locked behind this Watt-upgrading thing. This is going to be something I eventually finish, but probably not in this week. I'll be maybe updating this part of the text let's play if/when I get around to doing it.

So... yeah. New Pokemon wise we didn't really get a whole ton. There's Kubfu and Urshifu, there's Galarian Slowpoke and Slowbro, and there are five different new Gigantamax forms for the Galar and Kanto starters. And for the most part, they're all great designs, and for the Galarian starters in particular I do feel like it's a very thematic addition, so I don't really mind. And I suppose that's all right for a DLC, especially a DLC whose main point of selling point is the titular Isle of Armor and the reintroduction of 100+ older Pokemon. Yet at the same time... I'm surprised we didn't get a Giga Galarian Slowbro, especially considering it's our new rival's ace Pokemon. What we do get, though, I'm actually pretty happy with -- if we take Isle of Armor and Crown Tundra together, that's probably around a dozen or so new Pokemons and new regional/Gigantamax forms, which is around the same ballpark of new additions in OR/AS and the Ultra Alola games.

Again, the DLC is still very pricey for what it ultimately is (even if it's sold alongside Crown Tundra) but I do like my Pokeymans and I do actually find myself enjoying this one a fair bit. It is definitely a decent little expansion, and while it's nowhere as content-heavy as something like The Witcher 3 or Skyrim's expansions or as well-integrated into the vibe and lore of the main game like Breath of the Wild, I do feel like this is a decent first effort. Probably not worth the $40 price tag, especially after how incomplete Sword/Shield could be and how you still need to pay to use some parts of the online services... but I dunno. Despite being in a foul mood about the Pokemon DLC for the past couple of months, I actually find myself really enjoying the Isle of Armor! And that's about it from me for this little expansion, at least until the Crown Tundra. I'll probably add a couple of addendum paragraphs if/when I manage to grind enough Watts to fight Honey.

Random Notes:

• Let's react to new Pokemon games here because I don't think my reaction is enough for a new post, but holy shit guys NEW POKEMON SNAP! I am extremely excited for this, the graphics look so good (granted, it's a trailer, but I think the graphics look better than Sw/Sh) and it's fucking Pokemon Snap, guys, I played this game twenty years ago! Which makes me feel super old, but holy shit guys New Pokemon Snap! 
• Also, I finally gave in and watched the Crown Tundra trailer. It's neat! Looking at the content added in Isle of Armor, we're probably getting just the new legendary, the two new Regis, Galarian Slowking, and the three regional legendary birds. And maybe it's just because they're legendaries, but man, the new Regis and the new Galar versions of the legendary birds are awesome! Dark Phoenix Moltres looks badass, Roadrunner Zapdos is probably my favourite for how surprisingly well it works out, and masquerade ball Articuno looks so pretty! The two new Regis, Regieleki and Regidrago, look kind of underwhelming in the half-a-second glimpse of them we saw in previous trailers, but in motion, they look pretty dope. I don't like Calyrex and it looks weird, but I don't hate it either. Isle of Armor's storyline does imply that we're getting a bit more plot-heavy stuff in Crown Tundra, but either way, even if it's just exploring the tundra and investigating the Regi ruins and the weird Yggdrasil-esque tree, I think I'll still enjoy it.
• In addition to the six Isle of Armor dudes, I also trained my Coalossal (which I abandoned around halfway through my original Sword playthrough) and my Arctovish up to the 70's. I also got the free Type: Null up to a Silvally and he's pretty neat to fight raid battles.
• Adding Chansey and Blissey as common spawns in literally the entire island (other than obviously ocean areas) is actually a neat way to get some experience points and grind for them if you don't want to use exp candies. 
• Lurantis and Fomantis are in this game! I somehow missed the two of them entirely despite going in and out of the Forest of Focus so many times. 
• I'm not sure if the chairman that told Mustard to throw a match is supposed to be Rose or not. I mean, Rose is a lot younger than Mustard, bu it could be that Mustard was already pretty old when maybe-Rose told him to rig that match. 

Addendum: Welcome to the Internet

So apparently I had Nintendo Switch online activity purchased somehow when I bought the DLC, and I have it active for a month. So I ended up doing a bunch of wonder trades surprise trades and did a bunch of max raid battles and... man, the max raid battle experience is so much less frustrating when it's three or four real people against the AI that it's not even funny. And sure, "go buy the damn online subscription, it's a lot cheaper than the game" is an excuse, but I still don't really like max raid battles at all. I mostly just put the Switch on my lap while doing max raid battles while I watch TV shows and whatnot. Being allowed to join into other people's raids is a fun bit, though, because now I can slide and pick whatever raid I find interesting. 

So far, I've gotten a Gigantamax Garbodor and a Gigantamax Toxtricity from the online max raids I'm doing with people, which I think are the two big 'wants' from me as far as G-Max Pokemon go. I really do like the silliness of Giga Garbodor and the cool factor of Toxtricity. 

Online wonder trading has been... interesting! The lack of a GTS is a huge kick in the nuts (although apparently Pokemon Home has the GTS system?) but wonder surprise trading has been fun. I wonder traded like a lunatic in my Pokemon Y years, and within a day of non-stop button mashing, I've gotten a bunch of Pokemon that I really wanted. A Mimikyu (who I've never encountered in my game) and a bunch of version exclusives like Heracross and Galarian Corsola. As you might imagine, the Corsola is the biggest win for me. I try my best to trade out either Isle of Armor Pokemon (for the people who didn't get the chance to buy the DLC) or Sword-exclusive Pokemon.

One huge thing that I got in the wonder trade is... a Shiny Primarina! What the hell, that's amazing. I've never really looked twice at Shiny Primarina, but changing the colour of his light blue hair to blonde and adding a bunch of pink trims does look so pretty! ...and of course, sadly, my wonder-traded shiny Primarina is actually nicknamed something that is kind of offensive. Oh well, I got a free shiny out of it so I can't complain.

I also booted up the 'free' version of Pokemon HOME, something I've got installed on my Switch for a while but never actually opened up... and Grand Oak is there to greet me. What a character, Mr. Grand Oak, I genuinely had no idea you existed and I am so happy they made you up. You're so much more interesting than the other previous Pokemon storage NPCs. The basic simple version of Home, I think, only allows me to swap back and forth between Home, Let's Go and Sword/Shield. I'm going to have to do a little paying and finaggling to import things from my 3DS games.

I got my shiny Zeraora from the distribution event, plus I got a trio of Galarian starters with their hidden abilities. If nothing else, transferring Pokemon back and forth from Home to Sword or Let's Go seems pretty dang convenient. It's kind of irritating that the mobile and Switch versions of Home seem to have completely different functionalities. You can only claim rewards and access the GTS from the mobile version of Pokemon Home... which is a bit weird. And you can only transfer Pokemon from Home to the main games from the Switch -- that part makes sense, at least. Not the biggest fan of Zeraora, still, but it's certainly another one that I feel looks a lot better in motion.

I might probably splurge on the premium plan for Pokemon Home some time in this year when I bother to dig out my generation 6 cartridges. I do have my backlog of legendaries from generation 4 and 5 stored on my generation 6 games, and I was honestly kind of sort of wondering where I'm going to store them to -- I'm just not the biggest fan of a completely digital service is all, and the fact that Sword/Shield can't actually store all of my trans-generational Pokemon is always something that I felt iffy with. Maybe I'll just transfer the ones that can 'survive' the jump from XY/ORAS/SuMo into Home into Sword? We'll see. 

Let's Play Pokemon Sword: Isle of Armor, Part 3: Hop's Big Honey Hunt

So after completing the three trials of the Master Dojo and getting my new Kubfu buddy evolved into an Urshifu, apparently there's still more! And... well, honestly, I did not expect anything particularly extensive for the DLC's story. Maybe it's because everyone told me that the DLC had 'maybe two or three hours of story and gameplay', and so I came in with an already lowered set of expectations, but hey, either way, there's a fair bit more to go. And while it's certainly nothing particularly intensive, the fact that we still have a fair bit of story left here is pretty neat.


And apparently... Hop shows up in the Isle of Armor, which is something Ididn't expect! This is post-game Hop, who's a Pokemon Professor research assistant, and he's here to research the Dynamax/Gigantamax phenomenon. Which, in turn, raises some interesting questions, too. The game glosses over it because Pokemon isn't the sort of franchise to really delve deep into the semantics of things like this, but we do know from the main storyline that Dynamaxing and Gigantamaxing is caused by Eternatus showing up from whatever eldritch planet or dimension he hails from, lands on Galar and is embedded deep within the earth, which is the reason for all these Power Spots and Dynamax abilities and whatnot. Yet somehow, in the Isle of Armor, a bunch of mushrooms are able to transform Pokemon and alter their dynamax form? It's pretty bizarre. Did some part of Eternatus get embedded here, which is why some mushrooms in this island is so tied to the Dynamax/Gigantamax phenomenon? Oh well, that's for the fandom and the manga to explore, I suppose.

I do like the explanation that Mustard knows about Hop because Leon used to train in the Master Dojo, something that actually makes perfect sense but I didn't really think too much about it. Hop gets roped into my own side-quest, though, because Mustard tells me that Urshifu has a Gigantamax form... but the dumb bear hates the taste of mushroom, and I need to find a 'certain something' to make the mushroom palatable. Hop's theory is that it's some sort of sticky honey or nectar, because that's the sort of things bears like (Hop loves Winnie the Pooh) and goes off to the nearby forest to look for some nectar.

And in the Forest of Focus, Hop quickly directs us to Liligant, telling us that Liligant is famous for its sticky, sweet nectar. I actually like this a lot, Liligant is easily one of the more forgettable vaguely-humanoid flower Pokemon and giving it a bit more focus here, even if it's not in a particularly major role, is something that's going to actually make Liligant a bit more memorable for me in the future. Hop and I find a Petilil instead, who looks sad, and it's missing its mommy. The Petilil, in Hop's words, gets 'smooshed' onto Hop's feet, and is 'glomming on' to him, and Hop can't move without stepping on it, so I have to go off and find the mama Liligant.

And I actually like the Forest of Focus a lot, it actually feels like a relatively large and while not quite maze-like, it still feels kind of neat to explore. It's a bit of a simple escort mission as the Liligant hops around and trails behind us. With a 'gant tu', the Liligant is reunited with its child, thanks us by giving us some of her nectar. Hop, honey connoisseur that he is, immediately slurps it up and decides that it's not sticky enough. Okay though but why don't you let Urshifu taste it? You're not the one that the dish is made for, Hop.

Next up is an Applin hunt, and after hunting for the one Applin in the Forest of Focus, the Applin rolls away with an "appawaaaaaay". The localization team is having way too much fun trying to write wacky dialogue for the Pokemon, huh? The Applin hides on top of a berry tree, before jumping off and bonking me in the head before going off with an "awaaaaaaylin".

Apparently this causes my hair to be drenched in Applin fruit juices (ew) and Hop decides that we don't have to hunt down the Applin and he's going to... uh... drink the fruit juice straight from my hair. NO, HOP! Don't be creepy, personal boundaries, personal boundaries, no Hop no I have an Applin in the box you can take the juice from him! Anyway... after that bit of wackiness that I'm sure is someone's fetish, Hop decides that fruit-juice that he slurps down from hair isn't right either.

Because... well nectar is not honey, and it's something that I can't believe I didn't pick up on. Of course, nectar is the sweet substance produced by flowers, while honey (which is the things edible to humans and bears) is nectar after it's processed by bees. I do really like it when Hop gets this epiphany by seeing a fat Venipede waddle on by and connecting the dots from the fact that Venipedes also create a 'form' of bug honey, albeit a Venipede's is poisonous. Thankfully, while Hop is willing to drink nectar from someone's sweaty hair, he isn't that reckless and doesn't try to drink the Venipede's paralytic juices.

Hop asks me what Pokemon would make honey. Is it a beehive Pokemon or a sheep Pokemon? Obviously it's a sheep, Hop doesn't know what he's talking about, but okay, fine, I guess Wooloos and Mareeps aren't in the Isle of Armor. Hop buggers off to Honeycalm Island, which is actually an island I've explored before, and I thought that it was weird-looking. And, hey, the Liligants hanging out there make a bit more thematic sense now with this story. Presumably it's a whole symbiosis thing where the Liligants and Combee hive hang out near each other.

Hop's power spot detector is active and turns out that the giant tree in the middle of the Honeycalm Island is a power spot. I shake the tree, and, well, a gigantic Dynamax Vespiquen bursts out of the glowing tree with a hilarious "OH BEE HAIIIIV". I'm not sure if there's some pun involved in the original Japanese because I know they like to do something like it, but this is still kinda silly and hilarious. The fight is relatively simple, even if it's a 1-v-1 against a dynamax Pokemon. With how moronic the A.I. trainers can be, I genuinely do think that it's a lot easier to fight a Dynamax raid one-on-one anyway. It's a huge kaiju bug fight with a Vespiquen fighting the Frosmoth from my main team (which I had around just to test if she will fly around when I surf in the ocean) and one Max Blizzard later, the Vespiquen blows up and drops a comb of Max Honey. The game tells me that the Max Honey acts like Max Revive, so the fact that it has an alternate effect means that it's going to be useful for more than just feeding Urshifu.

Hop goes on a bit of a talk about how he's too shocked to help us fight the giant bee monster (sure you are, Hop, I don't see you hesitating when it's licking my hair) and then goes into talking about how something something max gigantamax dynamax max mushroom max soup max max max. Okay Hop. At some point, Hop also drops hints that Sonia is off in a colder place, so that means that Sonia's going to show up later this year in the Crown Tundra, then.

Hop and I return to the dojo, and Mustard is positively shocked that we figured out where the Max Honey is without a hint from him. Which... honestly, do you take us for a moron, old man? We could do the first three trials without your hand-holding anyway. Mustard then tells me that he wants to battle me seriously after 'some training', which to me reads that he's going to level up his team to the 70's or 80's. And he's definitely going to have an Urshifu of his own.

I attempt to feed Urshifu the Max Honey, but the soup lad tells me that I still need three Max Mushrooms and god damn it, I would have saved them instead of feeding them to my Inteleon, then. Which means... I'm going to have to go mushroom hunting. (I had thought that the mushrooms spawn over time too, but apparently it's extremely rare and you really do need to play the max raids in the Isle of Armor like what soup lad tells us).

And it's honestly not that bad, because despite all of my admitted bitching about the shittiness of max raid battles, the Isle of Armor's overworld is at least pretty and not as repetitive as the original Wild Area, and I have so many Wishing Pieces and Watts that I just switched off my battle animations and just go into anything with four stars and lower and just spammed all the max raid dens. Max raid battles don't really make for good video game experience if it's repeated over and over, but this is the Nintendo Switch, so I can just pull the console out and hold it in my lap and button-mash while the game goes through the repetitive animations of shields breaking and stuff while I watch episodes of Star Trek or the Pokemon anime. It's like, something that's neat to do in the background that you mindlessly do like a grindy mobile game, and treating Max Raid Battles as such is probably a way to tolerate and get them over with.

So yeah, I did spend a fair bit of time just running around the Isle of Armor, catching more Pokemon and beating up max raid dens while also hunting Digletts (I got an Alolan Raichu the last time I talked to Diglettman, and apparently all the Alolan mons have their hidden abilities, which is nice). I also tried to do a bunch of Cram-o-matic stuff and curry stuff, and gave Honey a bunch of Watts. It's just... upgrading the vending machine to carry soda pops and lemonades, apparently, and at this point I'll hold off on that because I need my watts for wishing pieces.

At this point I don't think that there's going to be much more to the DLC beyond the final fight with master Mustard, which is probably going to be my final piece of the playthrough. And I'm sure they have snuck in a bunch of little random easter eggs and stuff into the Isle of Armor (and I'll have some opinions about the new designs and new attacks to bulk up that last piece of the let's play) I definitely feel like I'm satisfied with the Isle of Armor. Again, treating the two DLC as a $40 alternative to a 'revised' game you have to purchase all over again like Platinum or Ultra Sun does make it a bit more tolerable in my mind. And... sure, they definitely could've added a lot more. The lack of trainers in the Isle of Armor's overworld is an interesting choice (and if they had them it would've added a bit more length to the story mode's runtime) but the fact that it's just this huge Wild Area with a relatively decent story (which, to be fair, ran a fair bit longer than I expected it would) is something that does end up being far, far more charming than what I had expected. There are a lot of little bits that make the DLC far more fun than what it could've been -- the Diglett hunt, the story, walking with your Pokemon... hell, even the Kubfu stuff. It feels different, and while that feeling might fade in time, I certainly rate the Isle of Armor higher than the 'oh, it's just a new Wild Area with a short two-hour story'. It's pretty fun.

Random Notes:

• All this talk about Max Mushroom soup has got me craving a lot for creamy mushroom soup. 
• Hop notes that Kubfu/Urshifu is the Wushu Pokemon that 'hails from a distant region'. Is that just a throwaway line, or are we going to Poke-China in the next generation? Shit, I sure do hope so. 
• I'm not the type of person to bitch about a lack of an elaborate cutscene in a Pokemon game, but that bit with the Vespiquen tree is actually a bunch of pretty obvious sequences where the game designers had to do some tricks with the camera to zoom in and out of a still frame of the large tree (since they probably didn't animate the large tree shaking like the berry trees) and then we get to see a bird's-eye-view of the giant Vespiquen swooping down and 'sucking' us into the den in order to not animate the Vespiquen emerging from the tree. It's actually pretty neat. 
• I tried tossing Wishing Stones into the Honeycalm Island den, and it's always Combees and Vespiquens. That's kind of neat, actually. It's not always perfect, but I do like that both Galar and the Isle of Armor's raid dens try and follow some sort of a theme with the available encounters. 
• That said, beating up a Vespiquen in a max raid causes her to drop a comb of Max Honey, and all the bonus loot aren't TRs in a Honeycalm Island raid, but rather just Honey. That's neat. 
• One of the Digletts I found on a random small island is hanging out with a goddamn Dugtrio, which is hilarious. Alolan Dugtrio is hilarious. I'm not sure if the Dugtrio counts as three Digletts or not, though. 
• Outside of trade-exclusive evolutions (like Slowking and Escavalier) and version-exclusives (I'm going to assume that Skrelp and Dragalge show up in Shield) I think I've seen most of what's in the Isle of Armor dex? There are still a couple of missing entries from what I can tell, but I'm not sure if it's just the 'restored' legendaries that I know you can import from Pokemon Home. And... honestly, they added a bit less Pokemon than I expected, around only the ballpark of 100, but the Isle of Armor still feels genuinely fun and unique even with that amount added in. 
• Urshifu and Kubfu are both examples of Pokemon that I feel look extremely awesome in motion, and actually have somewhat cluttered-looking official artwork. 

Reviewing Magic: The Gathering #21 - Prophecy

Well, this one was kind of late. And I think it's mostly because I really didn't have much to say about this set? Mercadian Masques had a lot of cards and a theme that's perhaps not the most conducive to letting me talk a lot about monster designs and whatnot, while Nemesis and its return to the Phyrexian-controlled plane of Rath ends up with a lot of wacky horrors for us to dissect. Prophecy, on the other hand, is... I dunno. It is set on Jamuraa, the setting of the Mirage block, and apparently there's like this huge war between the  evil nation of Keld and the nation of Jamuraa, and there's some vague prophecy they are trying to fulfill and tie-in to the Phyrexian war or something. There's an interesting story for sure, but I genuinely didn't think that it translates well into any sort of unique flavour beyond 'hey, fantasy warfare' and we kind of had that for the past twenty or so expansions. I can see now why so many of modern MTG expansions have a theme. Like, this is the kaiju expansion, or that's the gothic horror expansion, that one has pirates, that one has robots, that one has walking landmasses, that one is the steampunk one... because when you have an expansion like this, it's just... it's just extremely unmemorable to me, especially since this genuinely feels more like a stopgap since the next one is the huge, story-heavy Invasion.

• Click here for the previous part, Nemesis.
• Click here for the next part, Invasion.
• Click here for the index.

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We're just going with White first this time, and, again, I apologize in advance if I do come off as a bit tired, because, well, this expansion really didn't give me a whole ton to talk about. We'll start off with Mageta the Lion, who's White's legendary card. He's apparently human according to the revised creature type deals in M:TG's official site, but his card art implies that he's like this stone-person golem leading an army. I do really like the artwork here, the silhouette is pretty stern and generally badass, and I mean, he might just be using whatever 'spellshaper' ability he has to turn himself into stone.

And I tend to handwave angels as being kind of boring and repetitive in M:TG, but the Avatar of Hope is actually a pretty neat-looking one. From a distance she just looks like a normal angel, and I originally thought her legs trail off into mist or cloud or something, but apparently that's just part of her outfit. I really do like that she, for whatever reason, has a swarm of tiny floating eyeballs around her head. That's awesome. I really, really love the flavour, too, that if you have 3 life or less, the Avatar of Hope gets severely discounted in order to essentially bring you hope, and she can block any number of attacking creatures. That's not likely to save you since you have 3 life points left, but it can buy you one or two turns in order for you to draw that one faithful Yu-Gi-Oh anime climax episode card.


The only other fun White card in this set is the Shield Dancer, with a glorious artwork of the Shield Dancer just Kamen Rider kicking that giant man in the face. She's not exactly doing it with her shield per se, but I like to think that 'shield dancer' is more or less symbolic and it's the dance itself that forms her shield. The effect is very flavourful, too.

Alexi, Zephyr Mage, is our legendary card. She's fighting for the Jamuraan side, and she's going to get some back pain if she keeps up that pose for too long. I really don't have much to say here, other than the fact that I think I'm kind of obligated to put all the legendary cards in the main page and try and say something about them. She controls the winds, I guess, which is in Blue's wheelhouse.


So we have a cycle of avatars, then, and while the Avatar of Hope is kind of a weird angel, she's got nothing against the Avatar of Will. The Avatar of Will's effect is definitely a lot less flavourful and wholly dependent on your opponent's hand state, but man that design is awesome .Some sort of vague mermaid floating on a little flying carpet made out of water, and she's got spears and cloth trailing out of all parts of her body. That's a pretty awesome headdress too. From a visual standpoint, I think she's my favourite Avatar in this expansion.

Coastal Hornclaw is just kind of a mosnter bird, with a weird reptilian tail and some of those bat-wing-bony claw thing embedded into their bird wings, but I spent a long time trying to figure out if those weird bumps on the Hornclaw's chin are meant to be people and that this Hornclaw is actually a lot more massive than what it implied. I'm also not entirely sure what the effect entails, because the Hornclaw can only fly if you sacrifice a land. Is the Hornclaw so huge and destructive that it will destroy the nearby terrain if it takes flight?


I like squids, so Gulf Squid is here. We've had a fair amount of cephalopod cards so it's starting to lose its uniqueness, but I do like the prominent beak and the fact that this squid has an armoured, spiky shell like a nautilus or something. That's pretty cool.

And I'm not sure how the anatomy of the Hazy Homunculus works. It's got a head with a snake-like tail, a bunch of weird stumpy limbs, and a blob-body, and there might be a hand somewhere there, but I feel like the genuine bizarreness of the Hazy Homunculus's anatomy might be the whole point for a creature that 'hide in dreams and whispers and faraway thoughts'. It's another illusion creature, and I really do like the vibe that illusions have in these recent expansions where they are just so bizarrely formless like they're created out of half-formed thoughts and imaginations.


I have to admit, Spiketail Drake is just here because I really like the artwork. Drakes in M:TG tended to be depicted as just smaller dragons, maybe dragons with the 'wyvern' body structure, but the Spiketail Drake seems to just be a giant, elongated serpent monster with giant dragon wings. And, of course, the titular spike-tail which glows pink and stabs its prey. The drake's head is also very cool, with a lot of little mini-tendrils and spikes.

The expansion also has its little baby, the Spiketail Hatchling, and we get to see the creature's anatomy from afar, and I really do like how small the snakey body is next to the gigantic wings and massive oceanic waves. Apparently, according to the flavour texts, these drakes are anti-magic, and the effect sure implies that, but the poor Spiketails die in the process. And maybe the counterspell doesn't go off either because it works on what's called the 'Rhystic' mechanic, where your opponent has a chance to counter the spell by paying a certain amount of mana. Poor drakes. They die and sometimes their death is meaningless because the opponent can spare 3 mana.


I am not sure what the hell is going on in the artwork for Troublesome Spirit. Are those two creatures? Or a single one, because they're both bound by chains? Or is it the little flying dot-eyed little pixie that's the troublesome spirit (it has wings and the card has 'flying') that is bullying that white-skinned creature that looks like you spent twenty seconds on the Spore character creator? I'm not sure what's really going on, and why there's this translucent cloth on the foreground that may or may not be part of the Troublesome Spirit's anatomy, with weird clawing hands and stuff. I'm not sure what's going on, and I'm sure the troublesome spirit prefers it that way.

Ha ha ha, Withdraw has the funniest card art I've seen in a while. The flavour text has a typical 'charge, charge... retreat, retreat' joke, but the artwork implies something far funnier than just being abandoned by allies. The two guys flanking that poor dude have literally teleported away back to their base, leaving all their clothes behind. That's funny.


Avatar of Woe is very goth-meets-masquerade-ball, I like it. Also, I wasn't really sure about the anatomy of her right arm until I realized that I think she's meant to have two arms, one holding the scythe and one ending in a needle. Not my favourite Avatar card in this set for sure, although the artwork's certainly neat between the surprisingly subdued Black monster and the unsettling background.

Bog Elemental is, uh... wow, yeah, I'm not sure what's going on here, but it's like some sort of twisted, undulating slug monster with lots of tentacles and barbs jutting out of its 'head'? It is a 'Bog Elemental' so presumably it represents everything about the bog itself and is formed out of the bog. I've always found it interesting that the swamps and bogs of M:TG land is associated with Black. Not much to say here, just a pretty cool slug monster.


We have a bunch of zombies, and... some of them are interesting. Coffin Puppets is a trio of decaying bodies that look particularly grisly. Especially the middle one there. I do find it interesting that the flavour text talks about how the 'ground won't accept them', as if there's just something particularly vile about these particular corpses, and the typical undead 'summon it back from the grave' ability is activated when a couple of land is destroyed. That's interesting.

Whipstitched Zombie is on the other side of the spectrum in terms of zombie monster design, being as over-the-top gruesome and making sure that it's as far from being 'merely' a decaying walking dead as possible. I really like this art, from the little bandage-wrapped knuckle that extends in three hands, from the couple of tiny arms in his chest, to the fact that some of its limbs are clearly taken from humanoids with different skin colouration, to the absolutely nasty-looking leg in the background that's bent in all the wrong directions... nasty!


Death Charmer is one of those monster tropes that's pretty common in fantasy, a combination of leeches and lampreys and an exaggeration of both animals into this terrible, horrifying worm-monster with a maw of fangs that's far, far more deadly than any of its real-life inspirations have any right to be. But the Death Charmer is special solely because of its tag. Its a 'mercenary'. Yes, apparently the Death Charmer is a bizarre lamprey-leech-worm creature that's intelligent enough to engage in the exchanging of funds for services rendered. Okay, then.

Fen Stalker is the return of the Nightstalker creature type from Mirage, since we're back in Jamuraa. I went on a tangent talking about Swamp Thing style monsters because of the name, and deleted that whole paragraph when I realized that this wasn't meant to be a plant monster, but just part of the vague, shadow-based Nightstalkers from the earlier set. Fen Stalker looks positively different from the very ephemeral and gangly Nightstalkers of Mirage, though, having a muscular, heavy-set body and a pretty brutish-looking face. The artwork's pretty nice too even if I'm not sure what that gray-purple goop the Stalker is wading through. I'm pretty sure the Fen Stalker is vomiting the black goop from its... mouth? I guess its mouth? It's creepy.


Infernal Genesis is just here for that artwork, which could only be described as an Animorphs cover gone crazy and given a healthy dose of our good friend Ron Spencer. Look at that artwork, a regular old tiger and bear gets mutated into... into whatever the hell those things are, absolutely terrifying animal-man mutants. The tiger at least has a muscular, 90's-comic-book body but those massive dead cat eyes are so unsettling; whereas the bear has just been transformed into a creepy-looking hairy, chunky demon.

Greel, Mind Raker, is the champion of the evil Keldon forces and according to the wiki, kills one of the protagonists of the Mirage block, Rayne. Greel himself is kind of an alright design for a prominent villainous character. The shadow-tentacles that extend from the back of him make him somewhat more interesting than a run-of-the-mill humanoid undead or horror villain in this card game. I don't really have much to say here, though.


On a first glance, the Plague Fiend kind of looks like a cross between a regular spider and a solifugid, a type of a more obscure arachnid with larger pedipalps. But the more you look at the Plague Fiend, the weirder it becomes. It's got these two tiny crab-hands that jut out the side of its head, which doesn't feel like the anatomy of any natural insect or arachnid. And in addition to that, two of its legs actually end up in even more crab-claws. And there's the eyes, which don't look like a regular dumb bug but instead looks almost cartoonish. And, well, the Plague Fiend itself apparently spread across Jamuraa as a plague, and despite being a mere 1/1 creature, its bite is lethal enough to kill any large creature unless the controlling player pays two mana, which I'm going to assume is like timely medical or magical aid.

Soul Strings is here mostly for its very creepy artwork. The flavour text is cool, too. "Everyone is manipulated. It's just more obvious with the dead."The artwork of those nasty, barbed wires hooking into the dead body of that alien-looking monstrosity with tentacles and whatnot as it's reanimated from the grave... yeah, it's a pretty nasty-looking artwork.


And we're into Red now, with the Avatar of Fury. And I was ready to dismiss this as 'just a generic dragon bursting out of the ground, but man, I don't think I've ever seen a dragon with so many muscular humanoid arms ending in either hands or weird little spearheads, huh? It doesn't look quite as furious as its name implies, more irritated that someone has summoned it from its underground slumber to fight. Pretty neat.

Latulla, Keldon Overseer, is presumably the big villain of Keldon. She's got a cool artwork, a cool dress and whatever that thing is behind her head held aloft with chains. I like those, but, again, like all the other Legendary cards in this set, I just kind of shrug. It's a cool fantasy human character.


I'm not sure what the Ridgeline Rager is, but I like it! I really like its angry reptilian mouth and its gigantic shoulders and the fact that its arms basically end up in very un-organic looking jagged blades. Honestly, if not for the 'Beast' label, I would've thought that this was some sort of elemental in the same vein as the many earth or flowstone elementals we've seen in M:TG before. Very neat, and, again, there's a neat 90's comic book monster vibe to this. I could see this fighting the X-Men.

On the other spectrum of the Beast tag is the Spur Grappler, which I can only describe as the fusion of the ugliest kangaroo in the world with a bird. The result is somewhat bunny-esque, and for such a non-threatening creature, it has the same amount of total stats as the frothing muscular blade-beast that is the Ridgeline Rager, and I do find the flavour text hilarious. Imagine that you're a regular Joe or regular Greel in the land of Jamuraa and then you meet your death because a bunch of parrot-faced baby kangaroos swarm over you and push you off of a mountain cliff. That has to really suck.


We haven't seen an efreeti or genie in a while, huh? Fickle Efreet doesn't even look like any of the regular efreet we've seen in the past, and is far, far more monstrous with bug-like reverse-jointed legs, giant whip arms, a bunch of flames bursting out of his head and back, and his face! Putting that weird vertical Pinsir-style mouth is just the icing on the cake to make this look particularly nasty-looking. The card's effect is pretty terrible since the Fickle Efreet can change sides on the whims of a coin flip, but it is pretty flavourful, fitting with the whole 'flames cannot be controlled' vibe.

SQUIRREL WRANGLER. Yeah, there's just something fun about making a normally harmless looking animal into something that's rabid and about to kill you. And, hey, 'gnawed to death' is indeed a bad way to go, especially when the thing doing the gnawing are little squirrels and not like a crocodile or something. I don't imagine you'll die quickly if you get gnawed to death by squirrels.


We're almost done here, and Green also has its avatar, the biggest of the cycle, and it's the Avatar of Might! It's got a very chunky mouth like some sort of huge hippopotamus or something, and I think it's meant to have four legs? It's a bit hard to tell from the pose. Pretty cool giant monster, though I think it's actually wrecking the forest when it moves through it. Silly Avatar of Might, you're supposed to be buddies with the forest!

Jolrael, Empress of Beasts, is a character that shows up in the Mirage novels but didn't get a card in that expansion, just showing up here and there in flavour texts and whatnot. It's nice that she gets a card now, and her effect is pretty neat (and would be expanded upon in Zendikar or something) where she essentially transforms the lands into more minions. With Jolrael it's less transforming the lands into giant elemental monsters, and I think it's that she's meant to summon all the beasts that dwell within them to fight.


Darba is one of those creatures that is funnier the longer you look at it. It's one of those giant 'terror birds' based on prehistoric giant birds, yes, sure. And the scale is certainly clear here with that poor schmuck running for his life so he doesn't get pecked to death by a fucking giant bird. But unlike modern ostriches or the extinct Diatryma, which had proportional wings to their body, the Darba's wings are just teeny-tiny and yet it seems to be flapping them ineffectively. And the pose seems to be that the Darba's overshot and is about to tumble to the left of the picture. Then you read the flavour text and hilariously, the Darba gave up its wings (to who?) in return for an extra stomach. It gave up flight not for, like, superiority on the land or anything, no. It's just for an extra stomach. And the name, 'Darba', is funny!

Elephant Resurgence. The name of the card is fun, and the artwork is... wow, this is pretty terrifying. Apparently the 'resurgence causes an elephant's bones to be brought back to life covered with plant matter and stuff, and look at that dead eyes on the elephant zombie's face! A very haunting art piece, and yet one that feels so naturally fitting in Green's aesthetic despite the sinister overtones.


Let's get these two out of the way because I like spider monsters, and while we've got a bunch of regular giant spiders at this point, it's still neat that we're still getting them. Rib Cage Spider has a very sinister name, the pose of it skulking through giant trees is creepy, and a closer look shows that it seems to have extra shorter legs that might be the 'ribcage' it uses to grab enemies. The Spitting Spider, meanwhile, is a fat, stumpy-looking spider that doesn't look particularly threatening or even fantastical until you realize that instead of flies, it's catching pterodactyls. Yep, it sure can block flying creatures!


Mugha Wurm is also another one that, like the Spitting Spider, something I was ready to dismiss. But the cool texture work on its snake scales, the neat way that the face is partly in shadow and the fact that it's not a tree stump it's wrapped up on but a giant tower really illustrates the scale of these giant creatures pretty well, huh?

The Thresher Beast is... it's sure a beast, and I love the flavour text. The design isn't bad either, with a big fat porcine face that wouldn't look out of place in Dark Souls, and yet instead of being a huge brutish pig giant or whatever, it has... tentacles? Some of which burrow through the ground and burst out behind the warriors trying to slay it? That's pretty cool, actually. And I also like that it's apparently this destructive behaviour of sending its tentacles to burst through the ground that ends up causing its effect, which is that the Thresher Beast will destroy a land you control if it's blocking an attacking monster.


Speaking of weird-ass beasts, we've got the Silt Crawler. And it could've been just a boring reptilian dinosaur-esque monster, albeit with only two legs and no arms... but look at that mouth, man. A lack of eyes, and a mouth that's like a bizarre upside-down snake's mouth with extra bony protrusions on its chin... yeah, the Silt Crawler's sure a dang mutant reptile monster for sure.

Oooh look at that adorable Spore Frog. I'm not sure if it's a frog made up of spores, or if this is a Paras/Parasect-style thing like Pokemon and the frog's actually being used as a host by a bunch of fungi. Either way, a pretty creepy looking frog covered in so many fungal tendrils and whatnot with little spore-chimneys spewing spore clouds all over the place. Shame that the actual effect doesn't have anything to do with spores or fungal reproduction.


Artifacts now, and we've got the Copper Leaf Angel, which is apparently an artificial angel created by the Keldons. It's a way for them to mock Serra, I guess? Yet it's only around half as powerful as the Serra Angel, so clearly it's an inferior product. Very cool artwork, though, and I do like the moniker 'copper leaf'.

I'm not entirely sure why the Chimeric Idol is just a giant robotic turtle, but apparently it's a giant robotic turtle whose shell has like little sci-fi turrets. Okay, then. It's a pretty cool monster regardless, and apparently it fucked over the Keldons. Honestly, though, the name and the description seems to imply that this 'idol' is a lot smaller than the dinosaur-sized behemoth we see in the artwork, so maybe when it's dormant the Chimeric Idol is actually quite small?


Oooh shit the Hollow Warrior is just awesome. I really, really like it when these bizarre looking metal contraption monsters just look so... cluttered and bizarre. Look at the Hollow warrior. I'm not sure what's going on with that face other than it's a face that I've never seen on a robot so it's cool. It's got a shield, a cluster of exhaust stacks, four bug legs, one arm ending in a mace, two sharp javelin arms, and a little mounted stand for his human buddy. Its almost an action figure at this point. Great flavour text, too!

That's about it for Prophecy, click under the break for the rest of the cards. Next up is Invasion!