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.
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!
And here are the rest of the cards. Again, apologies if I feel like I'm rushing through some of these, but I genuinely don't find much that's interesting to say about any of the cards here.
Diving Griffin has a very dynamic artwork and a surprisingly monstrous mouth for a White card. Pretty neat wing colouration, too. Jeweled Spirit is probably the most boring 'spirit' monster out there.
I thought Trenching Steed was just a regular horse, but apparently it's a giant horse with extra horns. Okay, neat.
The Glittering Lynx and Glittering Lion are at least interesting in that they seem to almost be artifact creatures in a way, the lynx being made out of glass or diamond and the lion being made of marble. Kind of an interesting (although probably impractical) way where it's basically invulnerable unless your opponent pays a certain amount of mana.
Bunch of rebels doing rebel things.
Rhystic Shield, Rhystic Circle and the like is the source of the term 'Rhystic' used for the gimmick mechanic of this block, I guess. I don't think it's a real world. Abolish has a pretty dang cool card art, I like it.
A bunch of White spells, all peaceful like.
And a bunch more White stuff. Is that the Hollow Warrior in the artwork of Mirror Strike? Until it becomes a bit more commonplace, I really do like it when M:TG expansions has random non-plot-relevant creatures show up in other card art.
Excise is another one with a neat card art, that's a spooky looking weird wind tornado funnel thing.
Quicksilver Wall is bullying poor, poor Ogg. All Ogg wants to do is smash wall but it's gooping over poor poor Ogg. Ribbon Snake is just a snake with wings, but the artwork's really cool.
We're getting a bunch more of these floating ships, huh? Like the Windscouter? I'm not sure if these are the Keldon Empire or the Jamuraan Empire's, though.
A pretty cool invisibility effect on Alexi's Cloak there. Also like the spooky faces in the clouds in Denying Wind.
A bunch of mages casting blue mage spells.
Rethink has a pretty cool artwork, too.
A bunch more Rhystic spells, this time for Blue. I'm not sure what, in-universe, the Rhystic spells are meant to be, though, I don't think 'rhystic' means anything and I'm not sure what the flavour of casting a spell that your opponent can counter with a cost is meant to represent.
Bog Glider loooks so ridiculously funny, it's like something straight out of old-school comic books. You can totally see Silver Age Dr. Doom or Brainiac hanging out in something like this. It's not quite as heavy as the past couple of blocks, but they are working in some funky magi-tech into these settings, huh.
Pit Raptor I actually like because of how utterly bizarre the proportions on this is supposed to be. Also, like the lamprey creature, it's yet another animal that's also a mercenary. Wall of Vipers looks positively terrifying.
I actually put Chiling Apparition and Rhystic Syphon on the main part but I realized that other than complementing the card artwork, I really didn't have much to say about either of them. The art's very nice, though.
More Black cards. Greel's Carress shows that those shadowy tendrils look more like strips of cloth? Still kinda neat.
Even more Black cards. Outbreak looks absolutely epic, and apparently between Outbreak, Noxious Field, Plague Wind (below) and the Plague Fiend, I'm going to assume that the Keldons are avid users of bio-terrorism, using a plague to attack the Jamuraans or something.
Not much to say here, I'm still not sure what 'Rhystic' means even with the Rhystic Tutor. It's just some lady with a black... tendril? Hair? Claw? Vine?
A bunch more Red cards, from the obligatory minotaur and a bunch of soldiers.
And we get a bunch more Keldon soldiers. Are Keldons like, gray-skinned and red-eyed? Okay, sure, I guess it's a way to make the villains a bit more obvious.
A bunch more soldiers, a cat and a bunch of mages doing mage things.
A bunch of Red spells that involve explosions and war.
Okay, the artwork of Devastate is pretty neat. Otherwise, more Red stuff.
...and yet more red stuff.
...and even more Red stuff. I'm sorry, I really tried of thinking of something interesting to say here.
A bunch of giant animals for Green. The Marsh Boa would be something I talk about if the set didn't already have that awesome Wurm that I liked. The Pygmy Razorback has an interesting perspective pose, and the Vintara Snapper has particularly large dinosaurian legs.
Vintara Elephant, on a glance, looks like a WoW troll. Wild Might is a neat way of turning a little dirty rat into a giant, while Wing Storm has the druids literally use anything that has wings in the forest to fight from a random bat to a seagull to insects to a midget dragon.
Elves doing elven stuff. I am kind of curious what Dual Nature implies, though. Those are some creepy bird-headed humaniods.
More Green stuff. That Cthulhu-treant in Living Terrain is cool, though, as is the artwork for Root Cage.
More green stuff...
A bunch of artifacts...
...and a bunch of locations.
Yeah, I'm sorry if I come off as being a bit bored about this. I promise we'll be a lot more energetic come Invasion.
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