Reviewing Magic: The Gathering #20 - Nemesis

The second set in the Masques block is Nemesis, and we're back to the neater, bite-sized smaller sets. I actually considered having both Nemesis and Prophecy here, but I dunno, I guess I kind of want to do more bite-sized articles? Eh. This was originally slated to be posted at some point in May, but I sort of lost a huge chunk of it during a hard drive crash.

Nemesis is another one that is more story-oriented, but unlike most blocks, Nemesis doesn't really have a whole ton to do with Mercadian Masques, which, as I mentioned before, was more of a side-quest storyline. Instead, Nemesis focuses more on the whole Phyrexian invasion storyline, with the Dark Lord Yawgmoth's invasion of Dominaria at the horizon. Two things stand in Yawgmoth's way, though -- the mighty Planeswalker Urza, as well as the unexpected betrayal by Volrath, who abandoned his post and threw the succession of Rath's leadership into disarray. What a dick! Phyrexia ends up installing Crovax, a treacherous, corrupted member of the Weatherlight crew, as the new leader of Rath, giving him a bunch of great powers. This bit of power vaccuum does leave the rebels of Rath, led by the elven lord Eladamri, a chance to fight for Rath while Crovax seeks to prove his worth. On with the cards!

• Click here for the previous part, Mercadian Masques.
• Click here for the next part, Prophecy.
• Click here for the index.

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It's neat that we get to return to a setting that we've visited before, but with a bit of a twist. It's not something that we really saw a whole ton in previous sets since everything is set in Dominaria, just set apart by a couple hundred years. But Rath is like a completely different plane and stuff, and one of the coolest part of Rath were the monstrous, almost Lovecraftian Merfolk variants. So of course when we return to the plane, they have mutated even further. The Rootwater Commando gives us perhaps the most clear full body shot at the basic look of these creatures, although of course they all have relatively different-looking details from art piece to art piece. This is honestly less of a traditional mermaid and more of those Warcraft-style Naga, and I'm all for it. Spiky fins down from the back all the way to the tip of the tail, fins on the side of the face, that huge, nasty fish mouth with tentacle-beards... pretty nasty.

Jolting Merfolk shows off another Rathian Merfolk in a pretty dynamic pose, bursting out of the water seemingly to fight whatever that weird metallic mass of shapes on the right side of the artwork is. This creature also has the new keyword of the set, 'Fading', which, in-game, means that the creature comes into play with four counters, one of which gets removed each turn in the game... and sometimes you can sacrifice the counters for effects, like Jolting Merfolk here. Of course, as of this set, the design team has started to really care for what flavour these keywords are supposed to represent, and Fading refers to creatures that are so unstable they can remain on the plane for a set amount of time. So Jolting Merfolk is already disintegrating into icky red blobs, as you can see on the left side of the art. I guess that's because the plane of Rath is itself inherently unstable or something? OKay.


I could go on and on and just talk about all the creepy new Merfolk art, but it'll ultimately just be me going "oh man what a creepy scary deep-sea merfolk monster, I like deep sea creatures and unconventional looking merfolk". So I'll just leave the merfolk with my faovurite artwork among them, Rootwater Thief. Nowhere as grisly and gritty as the other two artwork up above, the Rootwater Thief still looks pretty damn monstrous with that great pose as it's preparing to totally murder that dude on a sailboat. Also, unlike the other Rootwater Merfolk, the Rootwater Thief has gigantic dorsal fins. Is he part-flying-fish or something? Apparently so, since it can gain flying temporarily.

Sliptide Serpent is a pretty interesting creature. It's a sea serpent, sure, but instead of the fish-like or snake-like face that sea serpents tend to be portrayed with, this dude has the very bizarre combination of what I can best describe as a boar's skull combined with a random assortment of fish parts. Like those eyes. Very cool flvaour text, too, which fits with the fact that this is a card that bounces back and forth into the player's hand representing a creature that presumably ducks in and out with the tide.


Cloudskate is a giant, flying stingray-esque creature... except the shape is not quite right for a stingray and its face looks more like a bizarre isopod or something with those antennae. The more you look at it the less it actually looks like a stingray, too, with that almost marble or rock-like texture on its body, the bug-like ridges running down the spine... It's an illusion, of course, so presumably the mage that made this really doesn't know what stingrays are supposed to look like. Illusions are also pretty much perfect for the Fading mechanic, thematically.

The Oraxid is a beast, and it's apparently some sort of super-powerful creature that persists despite things. It's kinda like a smaller kaiju, I suppose, judging by the size of those Merfolk buddies that he hangs out with? I really like the reptilian face that this thing has, the crab-like exoskeleton on its back, and those arms that are not quite crab arms. They look more like chunky flowers more than anything.


Aether Barrier isn't like, a super interesting enchantment and I tend to not have a lot of interesting things to say about enchantments and stuff, but look at that creature on this card's artwork! It's my favourite creature in this whole set. Look at this thing, it's got a face on its chest, no traditional head, crab arms, goopy-looking legs and a :3 happy face in the middle of its chest. It knows that it's a bizarre, ephemeral being that fades in and out of existence or whatever and it's trapped in a battle for Rath's dominance, but god-damn it, it's going to be happy and smile and wave its dumb crab claws in the air while it does so.

Air Bladder is a very cool idea, it's a very gross-looking tumorous bladder with one of those serpentine Rootwater merfolk fish-tail, and a bunch of suction-like tentacles that are attaching itself onto that poor, confused eagle. Despite the distressed eagle, though, the Air Bladder is sort of a beneficial tumour since it helps your creatures float like a jetpack... except the Air Bladder will never ever let you go back to the ground, as implied by the "enchanted creature can block only other creatures with flying" bit. Plus, the name! "Air Bladder!" That's so gross and descriptive at the same time, while also borrowing its name from a real organ fishes have.


Man, we get a bunch more illusions, huh? Sneaky Homunculus is a cheeky-looking sort. The huge eye taking up most of its face, the lack of a real mouth (unless those chin-spikes are actually teeth), the stout body and, most importantly, that fun pants that the Sneaky Homunculus got from somewhere all give this guy a very, very fun charm. As the flavour text and the massive boot in the foreground (which I missed the first time around looking at this card) tells us, the Sneaky Homunculus is a teeny-tiny creature barely taller than your ankle, which means that it can sneak past most larger creatures. Very flavourful, very fun card.

Wandering Eye is another very cool illusion creature. I don't know, I guess it's a history of playing a bit too much Zelda games as a kid, but I really find eyeball monsters to be pretty cool. This is a very creepy-looking creature whose design brings to mind a bird's skeleton more than an actual bird, and I love its giant eye attached to its face, and I'm not quite sure how the anatomy of the body under those wings are -- it just kind of seems to be a random jumble of spiky parts and bones -- but I like it.


I had tried to write this article out the first time and it's pretty demoralizing losing most of the article, which is why we're going hard and fast, just curating my absolute favourites from the set. These two need to be mentioned either way, though, because I have a sort-of-kind-of policy to mention every single legendary card on any given set. He isn't actually named in the card, but Ascendant Evincar is actually our good buddy Crovax, the emo, kinda-evil member of the Weatherlight crew, and now he's trying to take over the plane of Rath. He's got real buff and muscular,huh? Almost looks like a Lord of the Rings orc. That's a pretty cool set of armour and a funky-looking axe-spear thing. Also, he can fly. He's pretty cool-looking, I suppose.

So Crovax the Ascendant Evincar is trying to take over the plane from Volrath, who, as his flavour text noted "stepped out, but did not step down". Volrath the Fallen is pretty cool! Sure, his head does kind of look like this alien from Star Wars with the horns glued to the chin, but it does give him a very unique, bordering-on-sci-fi vibe. His entire arm is undulating and transforming, because Volrath is a mad scientist whose body is super-duper fluid and always transforming or something. Anyway, Volrath and Crovax are basically fighting over who gets to rule Rath. Now I don't realyl read the novels and my knowledge of this storyline comes mostly from reading Wiki synopses and flavour text, but since the plane is named after Volrath, he kinda has dibs, don't you think?


We get a bunch of Perchers, and they're all considered 'birds'. Not their own unique creature type, not 'horror' or 'illusion' or 'mutant' or something else. Just... bird. Okay, so in the plane of Rath, birds have weird seahorse heads, bony bat-wings, a body like an eel, no legs and weird fins on the back? Sure! I actually like this a lot, that the definition of a regular old 'bird' in a different plane can be so wildly different from what a normal Earthen bird would be. Belbe's Percher even has a hilarious 'named after the man who discovered it' sort of name, like the Cooper's Hawk or something.

Also, judging by the fact that they share the same ability of being only able to block other creatures with flying, and the fact that they don't have feet, I'm going to assume that these totally-natural birds just never ever land and spend their entire lives in the air. Absolutely love that artwork on Battlefield Percher, too, with the Percher and a random falcon having a staredown. "Yeah, I'm a bird, you wot mate? "


So these guys are considered just 'mercenary' instead of horrors? Okay, sure. The great creature update tells me that these are considered 'zombie mercenaries' now, so I guess they're not exactly horors, but just, uh, undead corpses that are somehow able to charge for their services? Is there a zombie mercenary guild like Mercadia? Okay, sure. As usual with Black cards, they look pretty grisly and creepy. Phyrexian Driver is perhaps my favourite, with the skinny head and left arm of the zombie being contrasted very well with the huge, chunky steampunk armoured suit with a big-ass blade-arm jutting out of its side. It's such a fun contrast, and looking at the two figures in the background I'm going to assume that these Phyrexian Drivers don't all look the same and they're just cobbled together from whatever metal piece they had lying around.

I'm not sure what's going on in the artwork of Phyrexian Prowler. I initially thought that the humanoid figure was the victim and the Prowler is that Beholder-esque giant blob of flesh with eyes, tentacles and teeth sinking into the back of the humanoid, but I'm not exactly sure now that I know that this fellow is a 'zombie mercenary. Is the humanoid body part of the Phyrexian Prowler, then? The Prowler also has Fading, shown by its body disintegrating from all the glowing rings and stuff, so I'm going to assume that whatever unholy union created this human-blob fusion, it's not stable and the person's disintegrating.


More zombie mercenaries, and these two seem to be cut from the same cloth. One giant arm and one skinny-but-malformed arm. The Spineless Thug looks much cooler than the Spiteful Bully, with a body that seems to be all cloak with wires swooping in and out of his form, a mask for a face, and it's wielding a particularly nasty-looking ball-and-chain weapon. Very cool evil monster design, although apparently this one's a complete pussy since it refuses to block attacks.

Spiteful Bully looks a lot more wretched though. That tiny, deformed left arm and the screaming expression looks more like a dying, tormented animal than the more badass-looking cyborg zombies going for war, and even the gigantic clawed arm looks diseased and decaying. Hell, een the powered armour looks pathetic on this creature, unlike how it looks on the Phyrexian Driver. This creature is so mindless that it's effect has it deal damage to your own team.


A bunch more mercenaries, and Rathi Fiend is perhaps the most disgusting looking one. The posture of a tall body with traditionally heroic-looking shoulders should not look this gross and so fragile, but undernath those armour you can see that whatever organic parts of the Rathi fiend has basically been reduced to fucked-up, tangled limbs. Is that metal arm on his left side the 'sleeve' that once covered the decaying, dangling zombie arm? I honestly wish that there's a gallery of the full artwork of these M:TG cards somewhere, because I can't really tell if there's a decaying head somewhere in that mass on the head. Still kinda cool. These guys are actually considered 'horror mercenaries', so I guess the mercenary guild doesn't discriminate.

Rathi Intimidator is a lot less ambiguous, it's a more traditional creepy cyborg in that you actually do see a half-and-half human and robotic face... but the rest of his body doesn't look traditionally humanoid anymore. His arms look like they've been turned intomasses of spikes, and I'm not sure how the anatomy of the Intimidtor works with the giant tendril-like leg or something that juts out from the side of his body. Is he just a mass of tentacle-like legs under that cloak? Is there no abdomen or torso there? It's the creepier-looking mental image and a lot more bizarre than just a cyborg in a cloak, so that's my headcanon now.


That's a pretty cool wall monster. We've got wall monsters made out of bones many times over now, but Carrion Wall has these skeletons raise up from their deaths covered in... hair? Oil? What is that black film covering them? Pretty cool artwork, I like it.

I'm not sure what's going on with that Death Pit Offering, but damn that's some pretty nasty-looking black goop demon-monsters. There's a goblin that got thrown there to feed the horrors there, and I kind of think that the face on the left side of the art seems to resemble that of the goblin itself? I really like that the central creature is just a random mess of tentacles that is trying to shape itself into a pair of fangs with eyestalks, and I like how the right side creature's lower just is either just starting to form or disintegrate. Very disgusting.


Red now. Ancient Hydra is another 'fading' creature, and hoo boy, what an interesting way to show this! The poor thing is actually straight-up rotting in parts, and one of its many heads has been reduced to a skeleton. There's a neatly comical, children's-story-book quality to the artwork, too, rotting bones notwithstanding, which i appreciate. Not really a whole ton to say here, I just really like how it looks.

Oh, hey, it's Greven il-Vec! Apparently he's still alive! He's not the focus of this card, though, but rather, Mogg Toady is. The Mogg goblins' whole deal is that they are large, muscular, have deformed foreheads and are super ugly. This one might be the ugliest among the Mogg card arts I've seen, and Greven seems to be even disgusted by this thing, and Greven works with Horrors and Undead all the time! Although it might just be because the Mogg Toady doesn't wear pants. They might be an all-conquering interdimensional army bent on reshaping the planes in their image, but damn it they have standards!


Oh, hey, the Flowstone monsters are back! None of the Slivers are, though, of which I am sad. Flowstone Crusher is a very fun looking art piece, it's just nom-nom-noming on that wooden structure. We don't quite see the full extent and view of this creature's true form, but from what we can see I'm going to assume it kinda looks like a turtle. Absolutely love that flavour text, too.

Flowstone Wall is kind of the obvious wall concept in a set with living, always-transforming liquid rock, but apparently it took us until the 'return to Rath' set to get it. Rather obviously, the Flowstone Wall's gimmick is that it can transform to gain attack value, but losing its durability. I do like how the art illustrates this -- in order to form those spikes, parts of the wall ends up being gaping holes.


Flowstone Overseer is easily the most badass looking Flowstone monster. It almost looks like a humanoid being, but the proportions of the main body is all wrong, sort of how uncanny those Titans in Attack on Titan can look. Throw in the spiky claws that don't seem to grow from where a shoulder would be, plus that grinning, eyeless face? Yeah, the Overseer is super-duper creepy. Look at that flavour text, too, which just adds to the vibe that this is a giant titan that can morph out of the ground to murder you! Shame the actual effect of the card is boring.

I like Shrieking Mogg. It's just a noisy goblin dude that's just a bit too over-enthusiastic, and his two Mogg buddies in the background are so disturbed by his screaming that they're covering their ears. And Shrieking Mogg's effect? When it comes to play, all other creatures are instantly tapped, both friendly and enemy. It's one hell of a weak goblin, but all those dragons on the field? Those dinosaurs, those vampires, demon lords, horror mercenaries, angel warriors, ancient mages, sea serpents, even Emrakul the Aeons Torn, the Titan of Corruption, a being so terrible that she twists all life around her by simply existing... they all are so disturbed by a tiny shrieking goblin that they will be disabled for a whole turn.


'Laccolith' is actually a term in geology referring to a specific type of magma within the strata of the earth, but the Laccolith Grunt is less of a geothermal structure and more of a bizarre, dinosaur-esque bast. I'm not entirely sure how big this is, only that it's got a bunch of tubes on its back that look like mini-volcanoes. They look like little bulbous tumours, too, but the creepiest thing about the Laccolith Grunt is its face. There's just something unnerving to me about that face. Maybe it's because the gums are blue? Anyway, it's nice to see another 'species' of creatures that are original to a plane.

The little gimmick that these Laccolith creatures have is that when it attacks and your enemy's minion blocks it, it can basically cause an explosion that damages the enemy creature, which the card art of Laccolith Whelp seems to depict. Look at that face of the Laccolith Whelp, it actually looks sad that it doesn't get to do combat damage this turn.


Those two other Laccolith cards imply that the Laccolith are some sort of quadrupedal beast, like a bear or a hound or something, but Laccolith Titan is a lot less of a rock-hound and more of a rock-man. Well, a rock-man with a demonic face, and a whole lot of tiny volcanos that spew lava, burning all those tiny humans alive. One of the volcano ports even shoot out of his armpit! I guess since these guys have differing biology or something? Sure.

The Laccolith Warrior is also a lot more humanoid, although his pudgy face brings to mind more of like a dumb ogre or something as opposed to the frogfish-looking face of his Titan boss. I also like the pose of the Laccolith Warrior. The other Laccoliths are rampaging and being angry beasts, but the Warrior is just holding his muscular arms close to himself and shooting lava to scare those people away. He's like, he's not paid to rampage, y'know? All they pay him for is to kill people and he can do it without all of the effort of roaring and waving those big rocky arms around.


Moggcatcher is actually a goblin tutor, which I wouldn't have guessed. I guess it's supposed to show these warrior-women capturing a Mogg goblin and forcing it to work for them? I just find it interesting that this is a tutor card of all things; usually tutoring mechanics are shown to be someone who can summon or care for the type of card being tutored. Okay.

And then we move to green, and we start off with a weirdo! The Coiling Woodworm doesn't realyl look like a worm. It really doesn't look like anything, having the lower body of a snake, a pair of thick arms that end in claws, a second pair of spindly arms coming out of its back, and a face that's some bizarre combination of bird, bull and Voldermort's lack of a nose. And somehow it's an 'insect'? I also really like the flavour text, which is ominously cryptic for no reason. "Only the elves know where the woods end and the woodworm begins". Apparently this creature gains more power depending on how many forest cards are in play, so I guess it's just a creature that's somehow connected to the forests or something? Interesting.


Man, Green gets my vote for the best class in terms of weird monster designs this expansion. Blastoderm borrows its name from a term for a part of the embryo, basically the part of the fertilized egg cell that ends up differentiating into other sort of precursor cells. None of this has anything to do with M:TG's Blastoderm, which is a gigantic creature terrorizing those treehouses, and resembles some sort of giant tree-climbing dog or something. A giant dog with huge orc tusks, a yellow-and-blue colouration, and it's got a bunch of bizarre green bubbles all over its body. It's a 'fading' creature, and we can see its rear parts like its tail and hind legs are dissolving into bubbles, but I really have no idea what's going on here. Is it dissolving because it's not fully formed (like the medical blastoderm?) Are those fungi or some sort of decaying magic breaking it apart? How does this relate to its spellproof ability? Either way, though, I really like this one.

Nesting Wurm is another wurm! I love the wurms in M:TG, and this one's got a pretty cool look. The white-and-black colouration is pretty different for these Wurms, but the face and the mass of tendrils and weird horn-hair things give this particular wurm a pretty cool look. Throw that in with the fact that it's a good mommy protecting her eggs, and her effect basically allows you to 'incubate' her eggs by drawing three Nesting Wurm cards from your deck to your hand while they wait to 'hatch'... it's all pretty neat.


Rhox is like, a rhinoceros dinosaur, but not quite. We don't get any flavour text for this, but I do like how it's kind of a rhino, but not really? It's like another one of M:TG's many bizarre unique mutant dinosaur beasts. It's got a lot of spikes, and I do like how in its artwork it's basically tripping over itself while it's rampaging.

Mossdog is considered a 'hound', and got updated into a 'plant hound' in subsequent reprints... and hoo boy, what a creature! There's a hapless human there trying to stab the Mossdog to no avail, and I do like that the Mossdog's anatomy is not quite certain. It's a fungus creature, and the anatomy is just bizzare! It's just called a 'Mossdog' because it sort of resembles a hound in rough shape. And it does have a head, that black Mario-enemy-esque turtle head jutting out of the main mass of greens and whites with fangs. And even then the Mossdog seems to be sort of sloughing off and melting into the forest floor. Its "tail" or whatever is just a giant mass of fungal vines and whatnot growing up and about to stab the human in the back. I really love the flavour text, too. The more you look at this thing, the more dangerous it becomes.


In yet another variation of how 'saprolings' can look, Saproling Cluster shows us a bunch of creepy-looking fleshy snake-like variants with fangs bursting out of like a mutated durian or something. Of course, Saprolings are always meant to be plant-fungal creatures, and I really do like that they've grown to be so different in such a short time after debuting alongside their Thallid masters. These ones really remind me of the larva chest-burster alien in Alien.

Okay, so the weird bubbly-disintegration thing isn't just unique to the Blastoderm, because the Skyshroud Behemoth is also a giant beast-creature that's also bubbling away. The artwork really makes it look like this giant being is like, howling in desperation or something. The fingers on his right hand is already gone, and he's just bashing those trees aside in panic or something. It's a neat giant ogre-creature or something, although I think he's meant to be some sort of a plant-based being with all the trees jutting out of his back. He's still a 'beast', though, so maybe the trees just grow on him.


'Skyshroud' is a common adjective in this set, huh? None of the Skyshrouds have anything to do with each other, at least I don't think. The Skyshroud Cutter looks like it's related more to the Coiling Woodworm, with a vaguely similar anatomy. A lower body that's serpentine, and multiple sets of arms ending in claws? The Skyshroud Cutter is considered a 'beast' instead of an 'insect', although here it's perhaps a bit more obvious since the Cutter's artwork shows off a lot more defined musculature that insects wouldn't have. It works out. I really don't like its face, but I like that it's got a pair of horns that end in the same stabby pincer-arms or something.

Skyshroud Ridgeback is the best example and the coolest-looking 'Fading' creature. It's literally disintegrating into mush as it's leaping at you! From what we can see, it's a pretty cool-looking beast, too, with eagle-like claws, no eyes, a fanged mouth and a bunch of ridges down its back. Sort of reminds me of the Fel Stalkers from Warcraft. Very cool looking artwork, very cool looking creature.


And we're closing out Green with the Woodripper, another creature who's fading. THis one is also considered a beast, and it's some sort of troll-ogre creature that's... well, based on its name, I guess it's chomping down on wood? Those poor, poor trees. I'm not sure what the anatomy of this thing is, and how much of it is actually intact since like all Fading creatures it's in the middle of breaking apart. Its head is pretty huge and it's got a disturbing looking mouth.

Animate Land looks like something out of a Disney or Ghibli movie or something, and I just utterly adore the artwork of... the waves or the land or something just merging together into that six-eyed, coral-eared dragon creature. Very, very cool artwork, the painting-esque style is great, and the flavour text is hilarious.


...and we're in White now. The Whites represent the rebels, the mass of good people trying to take back Rath for themselves and stop either Crovax or Volrath from taking over and causing destruction to the world or something, but, as always, none of them are super interesting. Except for Lawbringer. She is a god damn badass, she's apparently part of a whole Lawbringer group of paladins, and just look at this artwork! She's using her bare hands to stop the volcanoes on a Laccolith creature, and she's not even looking because she's such a badass. She's literally stopping lava with her bare hands! Of course, judging by the card effect, poor Lawbringer doesn't survive the attempt, but still, she stops lava with her bare hands!

So this Parallax Wave is what's causing a lot of the creatures to fade away, then? There are a bunch of other parallax cards in the set, but it's kind of surprising that one of the more unambiguous "I'm casting this spell, all of you will disintegrate into naught but ichor" spells is a White spell. But looking at the effect, apparently the Parallax Wave only disintegrates you temporarily, and once the wave has passed, everyone affected by it reforms. I like this, really ends up showing just how unstable the Rath plane is. (Also, Moggs have redundant tails, apparently)


Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero is a legendary rebel card, but she's just a lady rebel in desert clothes. I'm really not sure what I can say here, I'm sure she's like, a character in a novelor something. She's got a cool weapon? And I guess that's a cool effect? Man, they couldn't have fit in like a flavour text or something, huh? And also, man, white text on a white background really makes it me second-guess and had to google the spelling because it's actually kind of hard to see.

Meanwhile, Netter en-Dal looks so much more like a legendary creature with her more dynamic pose and casting a net to trap mogg goblins and stuff, and even her outfit is a lot cooler. The M:TG team at this point has been getting a bit better with making the legendary cards actually look legendary and not 'just some dude', but sometimes, like Lin Sivvi, there are still slip-ups. Netter en-Dal is a Spellshaper, so based on the definition of the term from Mercadian Masques, she's a one-trick pony who can only cast magic nets around Moggs.

Look at Lightbringer, he gives no fucks, he's strangling some Phyrexian zombie motherfucker withgiant metal claws, and he's using the Phyrexian as a surfboard while he slides off a cliff. Even that giant dagger and that facial hair looks pretty cool. See, White cards? You can be not boring! Like, so many White cards just show a soldier or a rebel standing or yelling or rallying. Just because they're the good holy guys doesn't mean they can't do rad stuff like this!

And we're moving into artifacts! Complex Automaton is sure a complex creature, with legs that bend all the wrong ways, one random wings two pairs of hands, a bunch of random gears here and there, and I do find the whole design to be pretty charming. I also like how whoever Belbe is notes how the Complex Automaton's design is so wasteful that it cannot be Phyrexian, because apparently things like the Delreich and Rathi Fiend are like, optimal usages of metallic joints or something. 

I really don't know what a "Rackling" is, but the name itself makes me uncomfortable, and the artwork seems to show some hideous four-armed robot with gigantic fingers (look at those giant things on the upper hands) about to twist some poor schmuck's head off. That's a pretty creepy looking face on the back, too. This robot knows what it's doing, and it's loving it.

The big brother of the Rackling is the Viseling, because "this may hurt a lot". It's a lot less ambiguous what the Viseling is doing, it's some sort of cyborg with giant vises for hands and it's using those vises to break someone's arms. It just looks so painful, and I do like the more over-the-top cyborg and metallic parts that the Viseling's face and shoulders are, but its vise arms are just genuinely simple-looking contraptions like the ones you can buy in your local hardware store.


Rusting Golem is a very fun way to make a fading artifact creature. The golem iself looks pretty mighty and stuff, but it's also posed in a way that makes it look like it's about to crumble -- particularly the way that hand is sort of dangling and contorted, and you can see parts of the Rusting Golem flaking off. I do like the effect too, which is very flavourful -- its power and toughness decreases each turn as it keeps fading away.

Tangle Wire is a bunch of wire that fucks up both players, and I really like the name! I'm not sure why it's fading away, though. Poor Tangle Wire! I guess it's meant to show these tangled-up adventurers untangling themselves, which is why the amount of cards tapped by Tangle Wire's effect decreases as it fades away? I mostly really like the name and artwork for this one.

We've got a bunch of vehicles! This isn't Kaladesh, they aren't their own sub-set of cards, but hey, we've got magic-punk steam-punk vehicles! I really like the Flowstone Thopter most of all, looking lie some sort of over-the-top bizarre punk motorbike with giant wheels, a helicopter rotor and two paper wings strapped onto it. Look at how big this thing is, too, judging by those tiny humanoids (goblins?) piloting it. Very funky looking thing,

The Predator, Flagship is Greven's spaceship that fought against the Weatherlight, and is presumably also important in the events of Nemesis. It's a pretty cool flying ship, and honestly fits right at home here -- I think that these flying ships illustrate Magic: The Gathering's theme of magic-but-with-a-bit-of-sci-fi pretty well, because the Predator wouldn't look out of place as an atmosphere-bound ship in Star Wars or something.

Click below for the rest of the cards. 

And here we go with the rest of the expansion:


Stronghold Machinist and Stronghold Biologist are basically two halves of the same card art. Two-thirds of the same art? That dude in the center is the same guy in both pictures. I do like that they're basically a pair of counter-spellshapers who basically master everything about their respective specializations.


Seal of Removal has another funky looking creature, but it's not quite as funky looking as the crab-man in Aether Barrier. Also, we've got a ship-creatures like Stronghold Zeppelin that aren't counted as artifact creatures? Sure.


Dominate has Volrath like, bending Greven over and dominating him with weird back tattoos or something. Okay, sure.


Ensnare has those poor merfolk be tangled up in the very underwater roots they once called home. Poor merfolk people! That creature in the yellow tube in Infiltrate seems familiar and I could've sworn I've seen it somewhere but I can't recall what it is.


A bunch of water-related spells, and Parallax Tide! I guess the parallax spells are like a cycle across all colours, then, with each of the parallax spells affecting both players and reverting them back to normal once the effect has passed.


Black's two Spellshapers are called 'witches'. I like that Divining Witch is basically just ripping up books, which is just so silly-looking. He looks so happy doing it,too. Rathi Assassin very nearly made it into the main body of the article, but I really don't have that much to say, she's another zombie mercenary with a lot of cool 80's/90's comic creepy cyborg parts. She's also got Lady Deathstrike claws.


Jeez, Crovax, calm down. I guess, as shown in Dark Triumph, Crovax beats up Volrath and holds him by his weird head? Sure. Everyone apparently likes him. He shows up a lot in these cards.


Of course Black gets two Parallax spells, although Parallax Dementia affects just a single creature. 'Parallax Dementia' is a pretty interesting name, though, so it's like a temporary amnesia or something? Seal of Doom has a pretty funny-looking card art, the effect of killing the woman in the background is horrific for sure, but the titular Seal looks more like someone is breaking bread.


Oh hey, look, another story-related card in Murderous Betrayal, where some assassin killed the elf boss Eladamri's daughter. The whole set has been revolving around Volrath and Crovax fighting each other and fading and stuff I forgot the elves are still a thing. Mind Slash and Mind Swords both have very cool card art. Particularly Mind Swords, showing Beefy McBeefy holding two swords reflected in someone's eye.


The Spellshapers for Red aren't super interesting, just a bunch of dudes that shoot fire. The artwork's very cool, though, for both Arc Mage and Bola Warrior. I always appreciate a good fire-themed Red card.


Rupture is a Laccolith effect on a spell. I thought that Flowstone Slide had like two tiny eyes on it, but apparently those are goblins being swept by a massive flowstone wave instead of two comical puppet-like eyes.


Laccolith Rig is very cool looking. I'm not sure what's going on there, I guess some dude in funky metal armour is weaponizing a Laccolith volcano-gland or something? It still looks cool.


Oh hey, more Crovax there in Flowstone Surge. I guess the man's part-Red. There's also like a fake Shredder there in Flowstone Strike. Lots of Flowstone-themed spells in this one. Red's also got the Seal of Fire, so I guess each colour's getting one where someone breaks the bread-looking seal in half and something happens.


Also a bunch of Mogg spells here. Not really much to say here, I can't give too much commentary when the goblins are just being dumb and nasty instead of dumb and funny. The flavour text's fun, though.


Green's got a bunch of cool beasts and insects and whatnot this time around, but the humans and elves are still relatively consistent in that they're pretty m'eh.


...still, okay, Stampede Driver is basically elf Tarzan and that's pretty cool. And the flavour text for Wild Mammoth is funny. Not all the elves are boring.


Overlaid Terrain is pretty cool. I'm not sure what's happening, it's like a bunch of mountains crumbling or something, but that's not quite 'overlaid' terrain, right?


Pack Hunt has a bunch of cool spindly-looking hounds that look like they come out of something like The Witcher or something. Very neat looking creatures here, and the flavour text? "The one you see is just a diversion." Very cool.


Saproling Burst is another example of the Giger-esque Saprolings, but it's basically the same thing with Saproling Cluster and I couldn't find anything new to say about this. This shows the Saproling at a closeup which is nice.


And we've got White, and hey, at least they're learning to make White cards look particularly badass! Look at Avenger en-Dal, he's straight up going full-on Highlander on that poor robot. And Defiant Vanguard is sabbing some kind of giant purple jaw beast in the mouth. They're not cool enough to move them up into the main part of the article, but I will admit that the White cards are at least not as boring to look at now.


...well, they can't all be winners? Sometimes they still just sort of hang around and be boring.


Defender en-Vec is fading and disintegrating for no real reason. He's just some dude whose right hand is turning into purple flesh soup.


Yeah, some White cards do get to be a lot more dynamic. in the card art. Lashknife has a very cool pose. Probably impractical in real life, but this is a trading card game so that's like, a very very cool pose. Like, shit, yeah, looking at cards like Angelic Favor and Fanatical Devotion really sell that these good guys are doing something, actually fighting and being heroes and badasses, y'know?


Is that the same chick in Off Balance as in Lashknife? She's really rocking that chain-blade thing. She's pretty cool. Is she meant to be the boring-pose legendary lady? I certainly wouldn't be able to tell, mostly because I don't remember what the legendary rebel leader was supposed to look like and I can't be bothered to scroll up. If she is, both Lashknife and Off Balance really make for far better-looking and more memorable card art.


Oh man, Volrath's green limbs got fuuuucked. I'm not sure why Volrath shows up in Topple, a White card, but I guess a bad guy being defeated fits as a White card?


That Flint Golem is doing a huge FLEX pose. Just for you. The power of a flint flex will burn three cards from the deck to the graveyard. Don't fuck with the flex.


Flowstone Armor is actually quite neat-looking. Kill Switch has a fun card art, and Parallax Inhibitor, I suppose, is a little device to support fading by preventing fading temporarily.


Belbe's apparently a character that designs like armors and portals and stuff and doesn't just identify Perchers. Okay. As you can tell, I don't actually read up much about this expansion. Eye of Yawgmoth is... uh... okay, sure. Yawgmoth is ever-changing, I suppose, so I guess his eye can be like some sort of surgical table or something?


Bunch of lands. I never have anything to say here.

That's it for Nemesis! I actually like this set a lot, and it's just such a shame that I sort of am burned out by writing this article essentially twice thanks to the whole hard drive crash. In perspective, this was supposed to be published less than a week after I finished Mercadian Masques, which was the set I didn't like! Oh well. See you guys soon for Prophecy!