What If S03E04 Review: Trapped In A World He Never Made

What If, Season 3, Episode 4: What If... Howard the Duck Got Hitched?

And here we go with this one. 

Sometimes, the concept for an alternate universe is a simple place of 'different people in a different time'. Sometimes the concept is 'what if the villain won'. Sometimes the concept is a whole different genre altogether. Zombies! Medieval knights! The future! Mechas versus kaiju! Stuff like that. What If's third season has been leaning a lot harder into the zanier and wackier, with the exception of the Red Guardian episode.

But there are some parts of a show when you hit a certain episode and go 'yeah, no'. I think this episode was it for me. Oh, don't get me wrong, I'll still be reviewing the rest of the season, but I just find this episode to give me such a huge "what the fuck are they doing"? And I didn't have this feeling in the dance numbers or the original character episode last season. They took a joke that was somewhat funny in one of What If's more comedic episodes an stretched it out to a whole episode... and then made it an excuse to shoehorn another original character to the climax, which I didn't realize when I was watching this episode for the first time but in retrospect it makes me like this episode a fair bit less.  

In season one's "What If Thor Was An Only Child", there was a running gag of Howard the Duck (who himself is also a running gag in the MCU) going on a date and a shotgun wedding with Thor's supporting character Darcy. It's... it's a ha-ha gag that calls back to Howard's infamous live-action movie where there were a bunch of jokes about alien-duck and human copulation. It's a joke, it's funny. But then they decided to make a whole episode about the result of that episode. The uncomfortable implications of the physics of this aside, I really don't think either Howard or Darcy are funny enough to carry the episode... especially when the entire episode is just them running around trying to stop random villains from attacking their egg-baby.

Which, by the way, that egg baby has cosmic powers for no real adequate reason other than a handwaved hybrid-baby stuff, which also feels like really lazy writing.

The episode takes Howard and Darcy around on a trip through a lot of the MCU's villains, all of whom want the egg for their own purposes. The Grandmaster from Thor: Ragnarok wants to turn it into an omelet. Kaecilius from Doctor Strange wants to use it as a vessel to summon Dormammu into this realm. Malekith from Thor: The Dark World is trying to use it in the Convergence for something or other. The Black Order from Avengers: Infinity War recognize the cosmicness of the egg. Zeus from Thor: Love and Thunder also show up to do... stuff, I guess. Oh, and Nick Fury and Coulson show up as the obligatory shady government agent deciding stuff for civilians, and that's such a waste for the returning actors. We also get an evil child-kidnapping Yondu moment, although he gets killed quickly by the Kaecilius cultists. 

And... I have to remind that this is the What If debuts for a lot of these characters. Remember how one of the constant themes I have throughout these What If reviews is that they're an avenue for underutilized characters in the canon MCU? Characters like Hank Pym, Peggy Carter, Red Guardian, Hela, Kingo, Ultron and a bunch of others? There is, somewhere in a world with better writers, a What If episode that explores a timeline where Kaceilius and Dormammu won, or what the Convergence in Dark World is all about... but it really is just kind of a shame that all we get is a huge joke out of these characters. 

I'm not familiar enough with Howard the Duck as an IP to know if this is a 'proper' Howard story. He's more zany and stuff, I get it. But the comedy on this episode just... it just didn't grab me. I don't know if it's just the lack of chemistry, if it's the animated format, if it's the bad singing or if it's just me being utterly divorced from everything that's happening on screen, but I didn't enjoy any of the two lead couple yelling at each other. I like my MCU content funny, don't get me wrong, but the comedy in this episode just does not land for me. I also feel like none of the supposedly romantic sequences in the episode really worked. 

Ultimately the fight and chase leads our heroes to run all the way to Jotunheim. In this timeline, Loki was never adopted by Asgardians and is more of a frat-bro, and he's created a ski resort in Jotunheim -- probably one of the few genuinely good jokes in this episode. All the villains come in with their respective armies, and Thanos even makes a brief cameo yelling about stones... and then the baby egg hatches and creates a cosmic baby that literally turns every villain and their army into dust. 

So yeah, I don't know. I just really don't like this episode. I'm not the biggest fan of creator's pet original characters taking over established franchises, but at least Captain Carter and Kahhori had some stories tied to them. Taken either as an origin story or as a standalone story, this entire episode is just one bad joke after the next, and honestly feels like everything that the critics throw at modern MCU distilled into one big unfunny package. I'm sorry. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• 
  This particular What If universe is a branch off of "What If Thor Was An Only Child", or the Party Thor universe (season 1, episode 7), from What If's first season. In addition to Howard and Darcy's one-night stand, some aspects of that universe like the chill dude-bro Frost Giant Loki are revisited here.
• The events of this episode is taking place during the Convergence, which places it in a timeframe equal to Thor: The Dark World in the sacred timeline. 
• Returning actors from live-action projects include Seth Green (Howard the Duck), Kat Dennings (Darcy), Tom Hiddleston (Loki), Samuel L. Jackson (Nick Fury), Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Clark Gregg (Phil Coulson), Michael Rooker (Yondu), Josh Brolin (Thanos), Rachel House (Topaz) and Tom Vaughan-Lawlor (Ebony Maw).
• Despite Jeff Goldblum and Ophelia Lovibond reprising the roles in the previous seasons, the Grandmaster and Carina are recasted to Matt Friend and Kari Wahlgren respectively. 
• Making their What If debuts in this episode, Jared Butler replaces Mads Mikkelsen as Kaecilius, Steve French replaces Christopher Eccleston as Malekith, and Darin De Paul replaces Russell Crowe as Zeus. Andrew Morgado returns as the replacement for Laufey over Colm Feore
• Howard the Duck having a romance with a human woman is the source of the most often-mocked aspect of the 1986 Howard the Duck live-action movie, where they filmed an 'almost sex' scene.
• Vormir is mentioned a place to do 'couples' diving'. Vormir was the planet in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame where you need to sacrifice someone or something you truly love to get the Soul Stone. 
• Kaecilius gives a twist of the iconic "Dormammu, I have come to bargain" line from Doctor Strange, by telling Yondu that Dormammu does not come to bargain. 
• Howard's neighbour Mrs. Switzler is a reference to Beverly Switzler, one of Howard's supporting cast members from the comics and his love interest in the movie. 

One Piece 1140 Review: Keyblades

One Piece, Chapter 1140: Scopper Gaban

This one was a bit late from me, but mostly because... I didn't have a whole ton to say. We get the clash between Luffy and Gaban, which is played as being very safe and what you'd expect. I'm not a huge power-scaler (and god knows what you'd get out of this particular clash) so it isn't exactly the most exciting chapter for me. We do get to see Gaban show off a bit, and Luffy and Zoro are at least around Gaban's level. All right. Gaban being a kooky mentor is nicely expected, but I do agree with the sentiment that we do need to move on. 

Gaban plays around with Luffy and dodges all his attacks, before infusing the key with Armament Haki and bashing Luffy with the handle-end. I can already see the huge debates of Armament-vs-Conqueror Haki going on again because... honestly, it's a very valid criticism that Oda is not at all consistent with his applications of Haki into these attacks and how to tell what black lightning is meant to be. 

Gaban shoves the other end of the key into Luffy's rubber mouth and deforms his head, which is some fun little comedy. Gaban then pulls out his twin axes and unleashes an attack called "Yasotakeru", blowing up one of the giant castle's towers. Luffy goes Gear Fifth and Zoro even jumps in to fight... but then Gaban immediately gives up, causing Luffy and Zoro to crash-land next to him. Gaban stops Rodo from telling Luffy about the true identity of 'Ya-san',  and then buggers off, asking Luffy to look for him if 'Elbaf is intact' after what's to come. It is an interesting stance to take considering that he actually sensed the amount of danger coming Elbaf's way, and that his son is also in the crosshairs, but we'll see what Scopper does in the upcoming chapters. It's a rather simple introduction of a mentor-style character, and just as quick of an exit for him. Neato. 

We also get a brief flashback showing that Shanks actually shows up to visit Gaban presumably shortly before he left recently. 

In the school -- which is quite convenient for the Gods' Knights -- we see the kids pointing at a weird-looking bird. Very eerie, since we know that Gunko's going around on her weird arrow-bandage bird. Gunko then decides to 'make the call', pointing her arm and summoning the giant demonic magic circle like, well, something out of Naruto or Doctor Strange with their respective magic circles. We now know it's called the Abyss! Another explosion of black lightning and flames appear, revealing not one but two more Gods' Knights. 

And unlike the Gorosei or even Shamrock, these two are more of One Piece's signature kooky villains. Gunko is only a bit weird thanks to her giant go-go boots, but what made the Gorosei feel so weird and off-putting is how un-comedic they are in the Egghead arc. With very little exception (Crocodile and maybe Doflamingo being the only ones, but they make up for it in being hammy), most of Luffy's villains have had some kind of comedic streak to them, a streak that was broken with the Gorosei. 

We first get Saint Sommers, a member of the Shepherd family, making him a relative of Ju Peter Shepherd of the Five Elders. He does look like a more relaxed, more unkempt version of Ju Peter... though that might just be an unfair assessment since our first impression of him is him in his boxers lounging on a sofa, thinking that he's going to get some time to prepare before the summoning. 

Our other knight is a very weird, lanky guy with a trident-spear, and the half-dragon, half-giraffe neck of a Kirin (or Qilin in Mandarin). He's got cloud-flame-feathers that seem to indicate that he's an awakened half-transformed Zoan... or it could just as well as be the powers of the Kirin. His name is romanized as Saint 'Killingham', but it's pronounced identically to 'Kirin-ham', with the name of his mythical beast being incorporated. He's also wearing the Celestial Dragon bubble-helmet, which is hilarious on a half-Kirin person. Oh, and he's from the Rimoshifu family -- that's another new Celestial Dragon family!

Killingham and Sommers are quite surprised and shocked that they've been summoned to Elbaf. Killingham notes that there are orders from above that Shamrock was demanded to return, which is why they 'sent' two of them. It really is weird. Who decides who comes and goes, then, if it's not the summoner Gunko? 

As Sommers puts on his clothes, he asks Shamrock a seemingly innocuous question -- what is he doing in Elbaf? "Visiting Harald's grave?" The fact that this seems to be said with no irony or malice, I think, confirms with almost near-certainty that Harald was affiliated with the Gods' Knights. After a quick off-screen exposition segment, Killingham bemoans that they can't actually bring 'those without the mark' through the Abyss, so they'd have to sail them normally like peasants. A nice little exposition thing that explains just a bit more about the Abyssal teleportation. 

And then Shamrock closes off the chapter off with a chilling nod that with 'your powers' (not sure which one he's referring to) they could make it a game. So yeah, God Valley hunting games, redux, I guess! I like this introduction. I'm looking forward to seeing more of these Gods' Knights for sure. 

Random Notes:

• Oni Child Yamato Cover Story: Turns out that as everyone else guessed, the two mysterious figures being attacked by Who's Who are Ulti and Page One. This week sees Ulti strung up on a dartboard while Who's Who throws swords like darts on her. Again, this really does look like it's going to lead to Yamato eventually recruiting the two of them as allies.
• I really like Gaban going "wait, Shanks didn't give you the hat? You're only holding on to it? What a cheapskate!"
• 'Yasotakeru' is a term that roughly translates to '80 Tribal Leaders', but is also a term that has appeared in an ancient Japanese text that could either refer to a person, or a large number of courageous men. 
• Shamrock and Gunko seem to be a bit surprised by the existence of a school at all, showing that the World Government really didn't have much knowledge about modern-day Elbaf.
• Both Sommers and Killingham have the 'Saint' title on them, making it even more subtly clear that Gunko is, in fact, not a Celestial Dragon and probably why she was so obsessed with the title when talking to Loki. 
• Sommers also gives a nice little quick drop about the 'food situation', which is a nice nod to what Sabo and the rest of the Revolutionaries have been doing.
• The half-naked Sommers has prominent tattoos on his left arm. This might be the mark that lets summoning happen, if we're going by more conventional magic systems. 
• In Japanese, the word for 'giraffe' is often used interchangeably with 'kirin' due to giraffes being mistaken as kirin in the past, so this is basically an upgraded version of Kaku, isn't it? A new Zoro enemy, incoming? 

Reviewing Monsters: Genshin Impact, Part 13: Natlan 2

I know Genshin Impact isn't the most popular game out there now. It's not even the most popular Hoyoverse gacha game nowadays... but open-world RPGs are where I'm at, and while I had needed to take a couple of breaks from the gave over the years, the main story that they're telling and the worldbuilding always drew me in. The nation of Natlan wasn't the most appealing to me when it was initially released, where the themes felt all over the place... but the juxtaposition between the cheerful festival-like culture and the fact that they are the nation closest to death in their war against the otherworldly forces of the Abyss is pretty well-done. I caught up with the end of the main story over the past couple of weeks, and despite its length, I do feel like Natlan might be my favourite Archon quest. And also, after five nations, I also feel like Natlan is finally moving the needle forwards in the three long-running storylines of the conspiracy around the nature of the realm; the war against the Abyss, and the mysteries of Snezhnaya. 

But we're not here to talk about whether or not the game is doing well from a storytelling perspective. We're reviewing monsters, and here we go!

[This review covers Natlan patches 5.1 to 5.3]
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Qucusaurus Chick

So as a bit of a refresher, the Natlan region is made up of six tribes, each of them associated with a Saurian that also has an exploration gimmick tied to the theme of the tribe. As I mentioned in the first Natlan review, I thought this was a very smart way to make the tribes stand out in a way that the various sub-factions in previous regions did not do quite well. In this case, we're going to one of the two tribes introduced a bit later -- the Tlalocan, or the Flower-Feather Clan -- associated with the Qucusaurs. 

Qucusaurs are probably the ones that resemble 'traditional' dinosaurs the least, though they are based on what people like to call nowadays as 'modern' dinosaurs... i.e., birds. They're based on ratite birds, and the Qucusaurus Chick really does look like an awkward ostrich chick with under-developed wings and long legs. 

Qucusaurus

And the adult Anemo-element Qucusaurus just looks like an ostrich with particularly large wings. Now, if you remember your biology, ostriches are flightless birds. However, the Flower-Feather Clan and the Qucusaurus are all themed around their ability to fly around and master the use of specific natural phenomenon and glide around using 'gaseous phlogiston'. I do find it quite interesting that they're characterized more as creatures that can glide very well, and indeed most Qucusaurus need a bit of a running start or a leap up to really 'take off'. 

An interesting bit of their behaviour is that many of the Qucusaurus you encounter in the wild stand on one leg and keep their entire body bunched up in a form that almost resembles a small tree or a large flower. It does fit with the name 'Flower Feather', although I don't think there's any particular tree in Natlan that resembles the camouflaged Qucusaurus... which is a bit of an odd oversight for a game that's normally quite good at it. 

I would like to note that the previous boss encountered in the first Natlan patch, Holowaqa Ngoubou, is a corrupted Qucusaurus. Ngoubou actually looks like a more traditional 'monster pterosaur' or many of the fantasy wyverns/dragons that are common in this genre. The lore of these Saurians is that they are essentially originally dragons that have taken a completely different evolutionary route, meaning that the Qucusaurus that was 'mutated' into Ngoubou likely simply unlocked some latent genes or something through his corruption. 

Iktomisaurus Chick

The Iktomisaurus are associated with the Mictlan, or the Children of the Night-Wind. This tribe play the part of soothsayers and shamans among the six tribes, able to use 'spirit sight' to look into the world of the spirits and communicate with the Night Kingdom, a parallel realm of the dead. Interestingly, their own Saurian companions are able to do something similar, and the designers have interpreted the dinosaurs able to commune with the other world as being... bats. Which is not quite something I expected considering all the other four Saurians we've seen have all been more reptilian or avian!

But look at these Iktomisaurus chicks. The idea that these chicks -- who we interact with a lot in the game's various side-quests and have been established as sentient -- are creatures we can kill and farm for materials is a bit of a surprising direction for the game to take. I think the Iktomisaurus Chicks are my favourite of the five chicks visually. Look at them! Look at their tiny little hands and their little undeveloped wings and their huge ears! I think the only ones that can match them for their cuteness are the Koholosaur chicks. 

Iktomisaurus

I wasn't sure about the idea of a 'bat dinosaur', but I think they did quite a great job at giving us a creature with the general silhouette of a bat, but looks distinct enough. It's not quite a 'dinosaur', and not quite humanoid either, but I really do like the Iktomisaurus! The huge cloak-like set of wings allows them only to fly upwards in huge bursts so as not to overlap with the Qucusaurs' flight, and a lot of the Iktomisaurus' gimmicks involve more in their ability to sense and use their psychic powers to bring objects from graffiti into reality. 

I really do like the massive ears, and the inner body -- which has two tiny arms underneath that impressive, decorated cape. I also really like the way they move around as well, which is this strange hop-skip motion that really does give the impression of a species that don't really walk around a lot. The legend behind the Iktomisaurus is that they were originally completely spiritual and drift around like spirits between the two realms, which I am sure is a legend that's often ascribed to owls and bats. In the overworld, you can actually find a lot of these Iktomisaurus meditating and being unresponsive to the outside world until you actually poke them with an attack. 

The Iktomisaurus are aligned with the Cryo element, though it doesn't really show a lot in its design. I do appreciate that the second wave of Saurians aren't fully tied to the elements that they represent.

Winged Warrior: Skysoarer, Feathershedder & Skymaster

As with the previous three tribes, all of the Natlan tribes come with additional human enemies. I really don't have much to say here since the Winged Warriors don't actually fly around. I would like to point out how utterly silly the attack animations of the Natlan warriors are, with many of the weaker ones having animations that involve dancing, or getting stuck when they try and add a flourish to their kicks.

I guess the only interesting thing is that the Flower-Feather warriors do primarily Pyro damage instead of Anemo, which is what their saurians are associated with. 

Qucusaurus Warrior: Heartstar Hammer, Blazing Sky

I had a lot more to say about the first wave of these 'elite warriors', but the Heartstar Hammer is just a reskin of the 'big guy with big weapon' enemies, only with a hammer this time around. And Blazing Sky is just a reskin of the 'slingshot surfboard' ladies. A giant slingshot serving as both a weapon and a flying surfboard is weird, but then they give us Chasca as a playable character, who substitutes a Qucusaur mount with a giant magic revolver. This game's weird sometimes. 

Spiritspeaker Warrior: Determinator, Psychokinetic, Contemplator

The Children of the Night-Wind's minions are fun because as the 'shaman' tribe, most of their tribe members actually utilize magical powers. Which manifest in psychic powers! The flavour text note that they utilize a specific form of body paint to channel these psychic powers. I like that they have unique animation that ties into the lore of their tribe!

Iktomisaurus Warrior: Icy Tidebearer, Cryocrystal Cannon

And the Night-Wind's elite warriors are, once more, remixes of other elite warriors we've seen before, only with a different mask and colours. Cryocrystal Cannon is the same with the ones we've seen from the People of the Springs. the Icy Tidebearer is the same with the ones holding giant buzzsaw-spears. It is a bit weird for the spiritual-aligned tribe to swing around giant construction equipment, but turns out they utilize their Spiritspeaking abilities to enhance their physical strength. 

Burning-Aflame Wayob Manifestation; Biting-Cold Wayob Manifestation

Speaking of alternate-elemental reskins, we've got two more Wayob manifestations -- the Pyro one and the Cryo one. I find the Wayobs to be pretty cool enemies, but there's really not much I can say for these two that I haven't said for the other three. Three is some neat lore in their flavour text that note that the Wayob Manifestations have changed over time after they were recorded in scrolls and the Night-Wind spiritspeakers have communed with them in obsidian. Having their current physical forms be altered and influenced by the tribes as their culture evolved is a neat way to make them feel even more interconnected with the Natlan tribes. 

Tenebrous Mimiflora

Our last non-boss enemy is another new one... and I like this one a fair bit from a flavour standpoint. The primary plot of the Natlan stories revolve a main plot that involves them fighting the Abyss, and having new Abyssal enemies makes complete sense! We can only fight Abyss Mages and Riftwolves for so long.

The idea of a 'mimic flower' is a nice, twisted take on the Whopperflowers, which themselves are also plants that mimic other living beings. Only being Abyssal, the Tenebrous Mimifloras straight-up copy the forms of other enemies. Mechanically this is kind of boring, since we've fought many Natlan tribal soldiers and ruin guards and saurians and hilichurls before, but flavour-wise it does make creepy thematic sense that these Mimifloras are taking the forms of beings that faced the Abyss in battle before and perished against them... and are utilizing their forms as a mockery. Or is it even malicious? 

The 'base' form is a pretty simple RPG enemy. A glowing orb with a couple of leaf-like 'wings'. The flavour text even notes that the Mimiflora's reseblance to plants is, itself, a mimickry that it makes to get closer to the "tree-like world". So much of the world-building in Teyvat has been revolving around themes of giant holy tree called Irminsul; which acts as kind of a representation of the world as a whole, sort of like a spiritual database of everything that exists in the world. The flavour of why all of these Abyssal creatures mimic beings from our world is because they're extracting memories to manipulate and imitate from Irminsul, the spiritual world tree. 

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Dragon of the City of Ash

A quick nod to this guy, the Dragon of the City of Ash. Most of the story quests have utilized either enemies or bosses straight-up taken from the game, and I don't think we've really had a unique enemy model as a quest encounter since... since the giant Marana's Avatar all the way back in Sumeru? But the quest in the ancient, abandoned city of Ochkanatlan features us being continually harassed by a monstrous dragon! It's technically just a reskinned version of the pterodactyl-themed boss Holowaqa Ngoubou, but there was clearly a lot more effort here into giving him a more lizard-like head, new colours and textures, and stuff.  

I felt that this was particularly notable because Genshin has been quite hesitant on introducing 'proper' traditional Western-style dragons. We've had dinosaurs and vishaps, sure. And giant epic dragons with unique designs like Dvalin and Apep and Morax... but I would like to note this guy as being perhaps the most 'traditional' wyvern-dragon th8at we can fight in this game.

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BOSSES:

Secret Source Automaton: Configuration Device

We've seen the Secret Source Automatons in the original Natlan patch, and the quests in subsequent patches reveal that they were remnants of the ancient, super-advanced dragon civilization. A bit different compared to the other ruin golems (remnants of Khaen'riah war machines) or the Gardemeks in Fontaine (which are cutting-edge technology). I do find it still a bit hard to get excited over another robotic boss, especially since the Breguet was so much more memorable. 

The Configuration Device is basically a cannon with three 'legs', and there's some fun bits where it can transform into slightly different configurations. Most of the time, it's just sending parts out to shoot lasers, and sometimes the three tripod legs form the facsimile of a dragon claw. It's, again, nothing too special. The lore notes that this was designed as a multi-purpose, transforming manufacturing machine, but can also serve as a security weapon if needed. 

Tenebrous Papilla

The 'boss' of the Mimiflora flowers is the Tenebrous Papilla, which instead of copying regular enemies, have various attack strings where they briefly transform into shadowy purple versions of previous bosses to fight. Just like what I said forever ago when reviewing the Hypostases, it is a nice little cheat to add in another boss variation without loading up more elaborate animations. The Tenebrous Papilla can transform and utilize the abilities of the Regisvines, the Hypostases, the Geovishap, the Maguu Kenki, the Aeonblight Drake, the Terrorshroom, the Statue of Brass, the Seahorse and Kongamoto. A nice selection of beast, artificial constructs and elementals to make each attack feel a bit different. 

Unlike the regular Mimifloras, the Tenebrous Papilla can freely switch between forms as it moves from one attack to the next, and even spends a fair amount of the battle in its 'default' state. Which... I suppose it could be called an 'alien plant' to a degree, but with the eyeballs on the wing-like petals, I wonder if the Papilla is mimicking the Wayobs of the region? 

Wayward Hermetic Spiritspeaker

We haven't gotten a human boss before, I think -- at least not one that's not a major story character. The Wayward Hermetic Spiritspeaker was briefly foreshadowed when characters from the Children of the Night-Wind talked up a certain sealed cave and the powerful hermit that lived beyond it, before the cave opened up and the Wayward Spiritspeaker became a boss. Lore-wise, she's basically a stronger version of the tribal warriors, and her cloak and mask looks a lot more of the Iktomisaurus that her tribe members emulates. Not sure why the tips of her limbs are so bright-blue, almost like an infection of sorts? 

The idea is that this Spiritspeaker is a particularly powerful hermit who spent most of her life in solitude, but the powers are so powerful that they could go out of control easily, hence the isolation. I like how she's sitting on a giant paintbrush (the Night-Wind children are also associated with body paint and graffiti) that acts like a witch's broom. 

Lord of Eroded Primal Fire - Gosoythoth

And we're finally here on the 'weekly boss', as well as the primary antagonist of the Natlan storyline. This guy was initially introduced in the form you see above-- a giant whirling mass of darkness and abyssal power. An orb surrounded by geometric shapes, looking like a giant eyeball or a giant hole if you squint. And it's big, appearing at a break in the sky as the ultimate source of all the other Abyssal creatures that has been plaguing our heroes throughout the course of the main storyline. 

And the way that Gosoythoth has been portrayed, it just seems like it's just going to be that -- a primal force of nature with no personality or independence, just here trying to encroach upon our world. Being an anagram of the Cthulhu mythos's Yog-Sothoth, that's kind of what you expect. 

And then you go deep into the dark Night Kingdom realm, fight through hordes of Abyssal monsters (as you do in an RPG questline) and is about to fight against the giant orb... and then it reveals that it's actually sentient, starts to speak, and transforms into a dragon! I like this little surprise that Gosoythoth isn't only sentient, it's actually actively malevolent. Throughout the fight it's constantly shit-talking you and the nation of Natlan, and even has specific lines mocking Natlan characters that fall in battle against it. It even impersonates the voices of their previous Pyro Archons, their dead and fallen leaders, in an attempt to demoralize the heroes. The form it takes is even the form of one of the ancient dragons that once battled the nation, Xiuhcoatl. It's basically an ultimate boss version of the Abyss mimic plants that we've been fighting, only taken up to eleven!

Design-wise, the 'Lord of Eroded Primal Fire' is... it's a serviceable J-RPG-style ultra mega dragon boss fight. It's primarily a serpentine dragon with two arms and two wings, which keeps its anatomy relatively simple compared to a lot of other dragons I've seen in Hoyoverse's works (at some point I'll maybe do a Honkai Star Rail monster review). The dragon head and the row of spines are quite neat, but there's a lot of details on his wings -- which are of the same style as the Mimifloras -- and the two gigantic swords it's holding. 

It's not my 'style' of favourite monsters, but I absolutely can get behind the presentation of this enemy both in the story it shows up in as well as during the boss fight. 

Reviewing Monsters: Elden Ring, Part 8

So I've been traveling around Liurnia of the Lakes in an attempt to level up. And... I'm just taking it quite easy, since I do think that I've lost a bit of the momentum when I was grinding to beat Margit and Godrick. The lack of overworld NPCs (or at least ones I could find) around Liurnia as compared to Limgrave also doesn't help.

I do appreciate that Liurnia does have a more robust backstory with the Carian royal family and some internal conflict in the academy. I met the Turtle Pope and he gave some backstory about Rennala, but it feels like such an infodump compared to how Godrick was handled? I think a lot of this story is locked within the main dungeon itself, which I've still not progressed all that much. I managed to get past the spellproof zombies or whatever they're called, but I've mostly been progressing bit by bit through the Raya Lucaria Academy. 

I am having a lot of fun with short bursts of playtime, clearing out shorter dungeons or going back and beating dungeons I couldn't do before -- like that one Peninsula dungeon with a Runebear boss. 

As a side note, I am kind of running out of starter class art to use, so I'm trying to think of what to use as the eyecatchers for future articles. Maybe the fancier weapons or demigod Remembrance artwork.

As a side-note, this "Prisoner" is a reference to Berserk's Griffith after his one-year torture, isn't it? Honestly I'm getting a lot of Berserk vibes from this game! The one regret that I do have with choosing Astrologer is that I can't swing around the huge Berserk-reference greatsword.

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Three-Headed Erdtree Burial Watchdog
I wasn't really going to talk about him, since he's basically a 'reskin' of an earlier boss... but I really do respect the Erdtree Burial Watchdogs, and the fact that they now have three heads makes it extra creepy. I like the fact that all three heads seem to grow out of the same neck, and the crown-necklace makes it even weirder. This guy is the boss of the Cliffbottom Catacombs, and wields a giant staff that shoots out magic missile swarms, in addition to the typical creepy 'hover up and slam down' attacks that made it unsettling in the first place.

I like the story told in the Cliffbottom Catacombs just by the monster layout, by the way. A basement filled with Omens, the discarded 'cursed' people that merely had the misfortune of being born with horns? And one of the Omens is even worshipping at an altar? I appreciate that.

Glintstone Miner

We've seen miners before, but the mines in Liurnia has these guys instead, who seem to have rocky growths growing out of their body. We've previously established that Glintstone is a huge deal for the mages of Raya Lucaria, so in addition to the mutated wildlife of course there are some weird creepy mining operations going on. 

Most Glintstone Miners will actually ignore you if you don't bother them, but some are actual guards that patrol the area. They have these weird magic drill-tipped spears. Interestingly, just like the Cuckoo Knights, the Glintstone Miners are able to use some glintstone sorceries, specifically "digger sorceries" that allow them to unleash shockwaves meant to cut rock. Just as happy to use them on lowly Tarnished that wander into their mines, though. 

The mines we find these guys in have Marionettes patrolling, and some material note that the absolute failures of mages get sent to this duty essentially permanently.

Crystalian

The boss of the Liurnia Mine is the Crystalian, who is a guy made of crystal wielding one hell of a giant chakram. There's an interesting mechanic where it really seems like they have a high amount of defense and HP, but deal enough damage (particularly blunt weapon damage) and suddenly that defense drops and they take much more damage. A nice representation of how brittleness works, I suppose.

Even the wiki doesn't have much information on them, but these inorganic beings are presumably another form of life similar to the Alabaster Lords (who are aliens, lest we forget).

I really don't have a whole ton to say here. The model is cool and the animations are cool! I do like the bit of 'uncanny valley' that the slightly off proportions have. And the attack patterns of the crystal blade-ring dude I fought is pretty neat. They're different enough from the enemies we've seen before... it's cool, I guess, even if it's not quite my 'style'. 

Ancestral Follower

Going to a group of overworld enemies in Liurnia are these Ancestral Followers, who admittedly don't have the most catchy name. I remember them for the giant glowing arrows that they shoot, which comically pokes out of my character when they shoot me. I thought they were just this setting's version of minotaurs, albeit a bit more humanoid, but this isn't the first time I've seen a tribal-themed minotaur adaptation in a fantasy game. Looking at you, World of Warcraft Taurens. 

But the Ancestral Followers are actually... well, those horns are not growing out of them. They actually wear the horns that they pillage from animals or something. They also have funky weapons that look strung up together from animal parts they scavenged, which is neat I guess. And they sure are different. I do like that the model makes it clear that the heads are slightly disproportionately smaller than their muscular body, not enough to look silly but enough to be noticeable if you examine them a bit, which hints at their true nature -- they're originally humans, who eschews technology and civilization in favour of living in the wilds, but ends up apparently worshipping and drawing power from the nature or something. 

Troll Knight

A bit of an interesting one. I've only fought these in the form of 'ghosts', but turns out that one of the factions in Liurnia, the Carian Knights, employ Troll Knights... and they're actual, real knights with helms and swords and everything. At some point, thanks to machinations within the rulers of the region, the Carian royals ended up fighting in what's essentially a civil war against the Raya Lucaria Academy, who's basically doing what crazy powerful wizards do and began doing their own thing. All this political stuff is kind of given in piecemeal from different sources, but essentially in addition to knights that use fake sorceries, Caria also employs Troll Knights. And they're not treated like 'let's put some armour on brutes and set them loose', but actually considered as, y'know, knights and allies and comrades and stuff.

Also, the Troll Knights can cast spells! Again, it's a small thing, but it also helps to really hammer home how these guys are just as sentient and capable as the humans in the setting. Sure, the trolls may be giant, grunting lumbering brutes, but they can also learn swordsmanship and summon magical spears and stuff!

Burning Slug

Found in some locations of Liurnia and clearly a portent to the next area -- the obligatory volcanic area -- are these Burning Slugs. Who are... slugs on fire! I think it's a surprisingly common trope in video games? We've got Slugma and Magcargo in Pokemon, and I know Zelda has Torch Slugs in at least three of its games, and World of Warcraft recently added those to their game. What is it with slugs that make game designers associate them with magma?

Not much to say here, they behave how you expect them to. They shoot lava/magma/fire, they move around rather slowly and they're not the most dangerous enemy to fight. 

Frenzied Villager

These guys I encountered a bit earlier in the Weeping Peninsula, in a location called the 'Ailing Village' where they're just standing around with the village itself ransacked -- the church is abandoned and filled with monstrous rats, while most of the villagers are in the center of the town locked in positions of worship (?) around a crucifixion and burning of some luckless corpses. They're just utterly silent until you come close, at which point they start attacking you while glaring with their fiery eyes. Turns out that they are probably converted by the same fire cult that the Fire Monks come from!

Thorn Sorcerer

A little bit more dangerous than the Burning Slugs or the Frenzied Villagers are these guys, who are yet another new class of humanoid enemies, the Thorn Sorcerers. We've got a bunch of plant symbolism in this game already, and we now have the Crown of Thorns nod with the Thorn Sorcerers. They've apparently gouged out their eyes, and wear crowns of thorns and wield giant sticks of thorns... that extend into fire whips for some reason! Some reason that will be explained, but suffice to say that fire isn't particularly friendly to our Tarnished protagonist and the power that the Lands Between would appreciate. 

Anyway, these guys are associated with 'fire briar' forbidden sorceries. These thorns are originally meant to punish these Thorn Sorcerers, who are apparently mostly exiled sorcerers from the Raya Lucaria Academy, but they end up finding some mysterious god-like entity called the 'Blood Star' and began worshipping it, and this entity is granting them power. 

Fire Monk

The Thorn Sorcerers are led by these stern-faced Fire Monks, who look pretty cool, actually. I like the metal armour plate contrasted with the santa-style fur cape. The Fire Monks lead the Thorn Sorcerers throughout Liurnia, and aer the priests that worship the 'Flame of Ruin' and can create fire attacks with incantations. These fire guys will show up a bit more in subsequent areas, from what item descriptions imply, but I do like the idea that they seem to have arrived in Liurnia to recruit Thorn Sorcerers into their little cult. 

Revenant

Before we go into all the dungeon enemies, let me highlight a bit of a 'miniboss' outside of the Academy, the Revenant! Throughout all the lakes, we've seen a lot of the Wraith-Callers, who worship these beings called Revenants. This is a Revenant, and... uh... yeah, they are nasty, huh? I think one of the NPC's call them 'centipedes', and it sure is a centipede! A human centipede. A potentially undead human centipede, based on the title of 'revenant'. 

Bizarrely, unlike almost everything else in Raya Lucaria, there is nothing tying the Revenants to whatever the hell the sorcerers are doing in the academy. They're not a failed magical experiment like the Albinaurics or School of Graven Mages; they're not otherworldly beings that are tied to the glintstones like the Crystallians or the Alabaster Lords; they're not constructs of magic like the Marionettes or whatever. The Revenants just.... exist. 

More bizarrely, they... they really do look like something that should be hanging out in Godrick's realm, yeah? The design of this thing looks like multiple torsos (and only torsos! He's only got arms!) stitched together, terminating in a noblemana's face locked in a grotesque undead scream. Oh, just like real-life centipedes, these motherfuckers are fast, being able to literally teleport next to you with swirls of orange-black energy. The Revenants I've encountered are almost always surrounded with their little worshipper clique, which makes things even more annoying.

Again, we don't know really anything about the Revenant, and unlike most of the other monsters in the game, there isn't a book or a item description somewhere that sheds some light about them beyond "they're undead, so healing spells burn them", and that they are "cursed"... but they don't count towards my little sidequest of gathering 'Deathroot' from 'Those Who Live In Death'. So if we take the lore at face value and not handwave this as 'the dev team moved an enemy to another location from where it's planned', then... then this is a creature that looks like what Godrick is creating, but isn't affiliated with him (Godrick's grafted creations, what little we see, mostly seem to focus on physical strength anyway). It behaves mechanically like an undead and is named after an undead, but isn't affiliated with 'true' undeath like the Deathroot monsters. It is kind of mysterious, but I honestly just am a bit irritated (which might be the intentional response they want to elicit) that this guy is so similar yet so different. 

Ulcerated Tree Spirit

I'll end this with a 'bonus' boss from Godrick's Castle, in a wing that I completely missed. And I went back there to kill the lion boss and everything! In a subterranean part of the castle lies a series of caverns filled with corpses and a giant head made out of fungus that looks very disturbing (and the internet has spoiled me on what this is, exactly), and this motherfucker bursts out of the central chamber and attacks me. 

The Ulcerated Tree Spirit, from its name, implies that it has some connection to the Erdtree Roots or the Minor Erdtrees that we've seen before, and indeed the biggest and most prevalent aspect of the Lands Between is the presence of the mighty Erdtree seen in the distance, and how its roots stretch all throughout the land. We have seen Erdtree Avatars take the form of giant tree-trunk humanoids, but the 'Ulcerated' Tree Spirit here is... it's really hard to tell what it is. I'm way more focused at dodging this massive thing, and the sight of it in the battle makes it look like a giant undulating snake or worm, just with a bunch of branches sticking out of a body that seems to be half-wooden, half-flesh. He also has a giant yawning mouth that shoots solarbeams, and we've established with other plant bosses that the trees and flowers of this setting shoot holy magic. 

Having Youtube videos slow things down doesn't help to make the Ulcerated Tree Spirit any more coherent, though the 'giant snake-worm with long arms' body layout is a bit more clear. A combination of its already very... well, ulcer-covered body, its unconventional and fucked-up proportions and the fact that it's moving around faster than a toddler who's drank a can of energy drink by accident really does make it feel like this is the intended reaction of the audience when first seeing it? It's a bit bizarre and messy, and I would expect this from like, a wraith-style enemy or a Resident Evil flesh-glob giant monster, but this is supposed to be a tree and to see a wood-based creature be so agile adds an additional layer of 'wrongness' to everything going on here. 

I can't say that I particularly like the design, but I definitely don't hate it. It's very memorable, and the seemingly intentional contradictions in the themes that go into making this creature is an interesting jumble of madness. It does kind of embody the frenetic 'oh shit, a giant eldritch creature, survive or die' vibe that these Dark Souls-like games are known for. Too much of it, I think, isn't a good thing and diminishes a lot of the effort that goes into modelling the visuals of these video game enemies, but once in a while -- and as a surprise boss at that -- it is definitely a fun experience experiencing fighting a giant hypercaffeinated undead snake-like wooden tornado of flesh and wood. 

What If S03E03 Review: The Winter Guard

What If, Season 3, Episode 3: What If... The Red Guardian Stopped The Winter Soldier?

Oh yes. Here we are. Out of the episodes in this season, this is the one that I loved the most, and I felt like what was the truest distillation of a proper 'what if' in the MCU. It was such a blast to watch, the performances were so well done, the storyline fit in the greater MCU lore, and it utilizes a batch of characters that could've afforded to have gotten a lot more focus in the mainline stories. 

Yes, turns out when your "what ifs" aren't so random after all, you make good stories! 

This episode is extremely well done. The comedic moments land a lot better here than in the previous episode for the simple reason that the Red Guardian isn't just a vessel to yell meme lines like "technique!" and "kepitelist pig!". No, both the Red Guardian and the Winter Soldier actually get significant character development for these alternate-universe counterparts, while also actually building up their 'buddy-cop' routine. You actually do believe that Red Guardian grows attached to Winter Soldier and genuinely helps him to get a sense of identity. It's basically everything practically every other episode in What If's third season fails at doing.

The episode first makes it look like it's going to be a full-on comedy, not too dissimilar from the Kingo/Agatha episode. Red Guardian has always been an over-the-top character even in his origin movie, Black Widow, and seeing him in his prime, charging in and trying to sabotage the Winter Soldier's dark and gritty mission to assassinate Howard and Maria Stark? I think the sequence in the episode where we see, side-by-side, the Winter Soldier being deployed with those creepy brainwashing phrases while Alexei stumbles his way through airport immigration best showcases the tone that this episode is going for. 

Except that it actually works. We get some establishment that Alexei is frustrated and that the higher-ups in the Red Room are seeing him as essentially deadweight, a failure of a super-soldier, and they're just siphoning all of the most important missions (in this case, the Starks' assassination and the recovery of the Super Soldier serum) to the hyper-efficient Winter Soldier. This, presumably, is also something similar that happened in the prime timeline. 

Of course, Alexei's over-the-top interference botches the Winter Soldier's assassination attempt, forcing the two Russian spies to retreat... and the failure of Winter Soldier's mission. Red Guardian continues to be bombastic, yelling about how it's important to make the "capitalist pigs" fear them, and even when the two spies do go undercover, Alexei feels the need to yell the communist rhetoric at random McDonalds employees. It's not something that should've worked as well as it should, but David Harbour's performance matched with Sebastian Stan's dry 'straight man' routine works amazingly well. 

But, again, just like what the previous episode lacked, we actually get a bit of an actual emotional conflict here. Alexei reveals that he came from nowhere, just some random child of a farmer who lucked his way into becoming Mother Russia's Super Soldier. Despite his eccentricities and gigantic ego, he truly believes in his cause, or the idea of fighting for a cause. He has this almost childlike idea of loving being a hero, something that is a nice extrapolation from the character we see in the movies if he was younger and wasn't abandoned by his country and stuffed in a gulag for years. 

Winter Soldier, meanwhile, is super-morose. This is perhaps the first time that the programmed human weapon has been allowed to remain off the leash for so long, and he reflects on how he doesn't have memories. Alexei refuses to believe this, and at one point he tries to force Bucky to remember... and Bucky remembers bits of his time in Coney Island. Alexei latches on to this, calling Bucky "the hero of Coney Island" or something ridiculous like that.

Again, this is why the over-the-top comedy in the better MCU movies like Ant-Man or the Guardians of the Galaxy movies worked. It's not just clever witty jokes that people care about, but the integration of these jokes with the character growth and emotional core of these superheroes. 

We've also got a bunch of other characters involved. General Dreykov, big bad of Black Widow, acts as the shadowy puppetmaster behind the Russian Red Room spies. He eventually gives Winter Soldier the order to kill Alexei, which leads to the first internal conflict within the otherwise mission-oriented human weapon. On SHIELD's side, we've got Dr. Bill Foster, a.k.a. Goliath. Apparently in this universe he managed to perfect his suit as well, giving us a nice return to the Goliath CGI model from What If's second season. 

(Goliath also deputizes a lady called Ranger Morales. She's not a reference to Miles Morales, and she's just here to... uh... be the 'only sane person' to the superhero wackiness? I felt that she was kind of unnecessary addition).

The mid-episode fight and chase scene across the cornfields is also quite well-done, and surprisingly, the down-to-earth scene ends up being more impressive and fun to watch compared to the underwhelming Gundam-vs-Godzilla or the two cosmic entities beam-slapping each other in the first two episodes of the season. The fun dialogue of Alexei being exasperated at how quickly Winter Soldier wants to go straight into lethal bullets, as well as the action scenes with Winter Soldier pulling out bigger and bigger weapons to fire at the expanding Goliath, culminating in a shield throw and a 'look at these two idiots' car jump across a ravine... pretty fun. 

We get the aforementioned bonding scene after this, I believe, and later on they confront 'Rook', who is the super-secret American sympathizer who totally wants to topple down the capitalist pigs that run America... only for Red Guardian and Winter Soldier to discover that 'Rook' is actually... Obadiah Stane! The idea that Obadiah Stane was the one who hired the Winter Soldier to eliminate Howard Stark -- or at least be complicit in this murder -- is actually quite interesting. It feels so natural, and if Phase I had been a lot more interconnected beyond leading up to Avengers, it does feel like it would've been a revelation that the MCU would do. I actually had to check to see if this wasn't the case in the MCU movies!

The despair that the Red Guardian realizes that "Red Guardian... is working for kepitelist pig?" is done quite well and very in-character for the larger-than-life character, and this time it's Winter Soldier who pulls him out of the funk. He rescues Red Guardian from Obadiah's attempted assassination on the distracted super-soldier, tosses Obadiah out of the penthouse to his death, and subsequently we get another ridiculous over-the-top scene as the two of them fall down the side of a skyscraper while bleeding off velocity with the Winter Soldier arm.

We get a team-up again as they face off against Goliath in the middle of Las Vegas, beating him with 'airborne technique'. Not much to say about that other than it's another fun action sequence.

All of this fun and games go into a head when they are caught in the crossfire of Red Room assassin agents, with SHIELD closing in not far away. Winter Soldier reveals that Dreykov has betrayed Red Guardian, but I also like that there was no question in Red Guardian's mind that Winter Soldier would betray him. With a roar, he destroys the super-soldier serum and declares that it's his turn to betray the Red Room. The MCU flirted with the idea that Captain America is loyal to ideals more than the flag, though never actually had the balls to actually show that on-screen, with most of his conflicts being with specific people in power. This is a nice moment for Alexei, for sure. 

But Vasily Karpov, Winter Soldier's handler with the book of 20 phrases or whatever, show up and begins to rattle off the words to revert the Winter Soldier into a weapon again. And unlike the Kingo/Agatha speech from last episode, Alexei yelling at Winter Soldier to remember that he is his friend, that he is the Coney Island Hero, works. Winter Soldier shrugs off the mind-control, and the two charge into battle, free men fighting for what is morally good... and end scene. 

In a surprising twist for a show that has always been a bit too guilty at giving us happy endings, the two of them fail. Winter Soldier is captured and returned back to the Red Room/Hydra base. It's something that actually is surprising particularly with the tone that the rest of this season takes. Meanwhile, Alexei manages to evade his enemies and goes undercover as a sports coach, but gets recruited by Bill Foster, representing SHIELD. We close off with this universe's version of the 2012 Chitauri invasion, with the Red Guardian counted among the member of the Avengers. 

And... again, I really like this episode. I kind of wish the episode ended at Red Guardian going in on a mission to save Winter Soldier (the way that some of the season 1 Captain Carter episodes ended), maybe with Captain America next to him... which would've been more thematic than the Avengers turnaround shot. But overall? This has been a gigantic blast of an episode to watch, utilizing and expanding upon two secondary characters (instead of reducing them to caricatures) and a surprising gem among the rather bland mediocrity of What If's third season. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• The story takes place in the backdrop of the Winter Soldier assassination mission that is covered in Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Captain America: Civil War. Simultaneously, it also takes and annuls the Red Guardian's prologue mission to infiltrate the United States with Melina, Natasha and Yelena as a family. 
  
• David Harbour, Sebastian Stan, Lawrence Fishburne and Gene Farber return as Red Guardian, Winter Soldier, Goliath and Vasily Karpov from the live-action movies.
• Meanwhile, Piotr Michael takes over General Dreykov from Ray Winstone; and Kiff VandenHeuvel returns as the alternate voice for Obadiah Stane after doing so in What If season 1, taking over from Jeff Bridges.
• Bucky's memories of Coney Island is taken from the last happy moment before he went to war in Captain America: The First Avenger.
• The final shot of the Red Guardian squeezing in net to Captain America among the Avengers is a reference to the iconic turnaround shot from The Avengers.
• The Goliath suit has never really been seen in the main MCU (though allusions to it was made in Ant-Man and the Wasp) but it was previously seen in another universe in What If's second season, with the '60s Avengers universe. 
• While Obadiah Stane has never been mentioned to have had ties with Hydra in the canon MCU, is it... really that hard to believe that he had a role in Howard and Maria's assassination?

Reviewing Magic The Gathering #2: Alpha Pt. 2 [Red, White, Colorless]

And this is part two of my review of the first set of Magic the Gathering, known as either 'Unlimited', 'Alpha' or 'Beta' depending on which print run. This is an article I wrote a half-decade ago which I refurbished and rewrote huge chunks of. I've since played a lot of MTG and have a better understanding of the game and its history in general, and when I went back to reread my old work I realized that there's a lot to be redone. 

And besides... one thing that influences why I'm doing this is that the last couple of years have been quite big for MTG in both good and bad ways. The state of the franchise isn't the best right now with so much crossover product being pushed by the designers, but I feel like several of the most recent sets have been a huge kick that revitalized the franchise. 

And in the first part of my series covering the Alpha set, I covered the Black, Blue and Green colours and went through a lot of the basic concepts in MTG like the card types and colour identity. Since Alpha is a huge set, I split it into two articles! Depending on how much I have to talk about future expansions, some of them might also be split into two. The format of these articles has me talk about the cards that I find the most flavourful and the ones I can talk about the monster designs -- which would be quite a bit in these earlier sets; and then do a rapid-fire card dump at the end. 

I am a bit better than I was in 2019 in talking about card effects, but these reviews are primarily flavour-first, and gameplay a distant second. I will try to acknowledge things that are relevant in MTG's long history (and not just dismiss the Moxes entirely as our good commentor in this article circa 2019 pointed out) but the scope of the review would still be primarily creature-based.

With that said, let's go through the Red and White colours, and cap it off with colourless artifacts!

• Click here for the previous part.
• Click here for the next part.
• Click here for the index.

[Originally published May 2019 as 'Unlimited Pt. 2'; revised November 2024.]

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Red 

Red is the colour of warfare, barbarism, and the 'Hulk smash' school of combat. It's heated emotions, and the super-manly clash of warrior against warrior, of martial warfare, of explosive battlefields -- to be contrasted with the more regimented order of White or the sneaky assassinations of Black. In gameplay, Red also ends up being the colour with the most aggressive cards -- early-game minions and direct-damage spells. 


We have talked about 'iconic creatures' in each colour that was introduced in Alpha. But I think none are quite as enduring as elves in Green and goblins in Red. Red would experiment with a bunch of other creatures over the years -- minotaurs, dwarves, orcs -- but goblins would remain as one of the most consistently enduring races over the many, many different expansions. It would, like everything else in MTG, take some time for goblins to actually reach what the modern MTG audience would recognize as silly goblins. Take a look at the most basic goblin, the vanilla card Mons's Goblin Raiders, who, if not for the card text pointing it out, could just as well as be handwaved as orcs, trolls or even barbaric elves. We also have something that's quite consistent in older MTG sets -- the card name and card flavour text mention a 'Pashalik Mons', who wouldn't actually appear on a card until 2019, more than 25 years since the printing of his name on a card.

The local flavour of lord, the Goblin Lord, is a typical drawing of a 'savage goblin'. And goblins are supposed to be a bit more brutish and barbaric, but this was a fair bit before MTG really redefined the flavour of their goblins. Just like the other lords we've seen in the other three colours, the Goblin Lord is able to buff the aura of other goblins on the battlefield as long as he is screeching there. A nice little flavour text, too, describing the treacherous way that each subsequent goblin king assassinates his predecessor to get the position. Presumably those skulls on his throne are the previous kings!

There we go with what I would associate more with a 'MTG goblin'. The Goblin Balloon Brigade is such a nice bit of whimsy. The inherent idea of attacking with a hot air balloon is already hilarious enough, moreso than if the goblins used a more po-faced flight spell or if they rode on wyverns or whatever. But hot-air balloons! And they're dropping weapons, which is fine. You see swords, spiky clubs and axes dropped down... and a suitcase. For some reason! I also love the goblins on the ground panicking and running away. They could be a rival goblin village, but knowing goblins, they're just as likely to be the unfortunate result of friendly fire. 

Love the flavour text, too. "Yeah, boss, but how do we get down?"

Keldon Lord is a bit weird in this early set since even his creature type identifies him as a 'Lord' (the Lord type itself being retired by modern magic) but his effects are completely different from the Goblin King or the Lord of Atlantis, where instead of buffing other creatures, he gains power by the amount of creatures on your side. Design-wise he's your archetypal representation of a badass, '90's XTREEM barbarian. Rippling muscles, over-the-top WoW shoulderpads, gigantic horns, big sword, black horse, and a burning castle in the background. What more do you need? 

Also, one thing that I didn't have a chance to point out in the first article is how... inconsistently wordy a lot of the cards in the original first couple of sets are. As MTG standardizes its rules and how they were worded on the card, Keldon Warlord's little novella we got there, we would have it simplified as "This creature’s power and toughness are each equal to the number of non-Wall creatures you control."

We've seen elementals in Blue (and thanks to creature-type retcon, in Green), but red also gets some elementals. Fire and Earth show up here, completing the quadfecta of classical elements. Unlike the Air and Water Elementals, however, the two Red-aligned elementals are completely vanilla creatures with no effects. I guess it's an attempt to make Red be a simpler deck to play, but that's not exactly the gameplay flavour of Red, is it? 

Fire Elemental is just a sexy lady made up of flames rising out of a volcano, which is... not the most interesting way to do an elemental. The more common 'genie made up of a substance' is played out in fantasy, and MTG would really stretch the definition of what an Elemental could be, but just making them look like humans is kind of boring. 

Earth Elemental is also not super-interesting, though I really like his very uncomfortable-looking pose. He's almost doing a sumo pose right there, yeah? 

Dwarves also show up a fair amount in Red, and considering the original Magic was just the most basic medieval fantasy, Lord of the Rings demands that the dwarves show up. Dwarven Warriors is honestly kind of minimum-effort compared to the three elves we got in Green, though. It's just the most basic dwarf warrior you could think of. 

Dwarven Demolition Team is a lot more flavourful. I'm not sure which franchise grandfathered the idea that dwarves or goblins or gnomes are pyromaniac explosion enthusiasts, but the card art for the Demolition Team here is very fun! Well, not so fun for that poor blonde dwarf, but I like that this is a group of dwarves that's specifically attuned to fight against the many Wall creatures that run around in early-era MTG. 

Orcs are another race that's associated with Red, who take the basic LOTR idea of them beeing green-skinned, ugly brutes. Ironclaw Orcs are noted to be 'deviously cowardly' due to generations of genetic weeding, and this is reflected with the fact that the Ironclaw Orcs refuse to block any creature that has power greater than 1... which, honestly, considering that anything more than 1 will kill the Ironclaw Orcs, seems to make it look smart more than anything. 

The Orcish Artillery also has some of the black comedy in Red that would later be shunted over to goblins, but I love the artwork here as the orc is operating this gigantic ballista in the most unsafe way ever. Love the flavour text describing that anyone who criticizes the artillery machines get forced to work on them, and while the Orcish Artillery can damage the enemy, they're so destructive that the Red player also get damaged by it. 

I am genuinely surprised to find that in a fantasy set, we only get two dragons! One of them is a baby! Dragon Whelp looks gloriously goofy with that expression. I love the little bucktooth he has, the one crooked wing, and the fact that he's just sitting there like a fat baby. The best detail that the artist put in is the bellybutton -- which doesn't make sense since the artwork shows that he hatched from an egg. But it's still hilarious! Very children storybook-y. I like it. 

Shivan Dragon is one of the more iconic creatures from original Red, being a large green-and-gold monstrous dragon swooping down at you. The Shivan Dragon's flavour text describes it as a particularly sinister and cruel dragon that torments its prey. It's honestly something that's not super interesting other than the novelty of being the first dragon. Both Shivan Dragon and Dragon Whelp has a similar effect -- spend one red mana to give them more power, with the nice additional disadvantage that the Whelp dies if you pump too much power into it in one turn. 

A bunch of giants, now, with... not very giant stats. I tend to find giants to be quite uninteresting to talk about since they're just big dudes. Hill Giant is just a big bald dude with leather armour and a big spiky club. Not a whole ton to say here!

The Stone Giant -- and presumably they're slightly inspired by original D&D's giant classifications -- is a muscular, half-naked bearded guy. His effect is actually hilarious, though. The Stone Giant can be tapped to make another creature have 'Flying'... for one turn, and then it's destroyed. This represents the Stone Giant chucking one of your other creatures into the sky to block or fight an attacking airborne foe, but then that poor creature dies when it crashes down to the ground! That's funny.

The Two-Headed Giant of Foriys is a two-headed giant with a slightly more elaborate tabard. He's basically a D&D 'Ettin', isn't he? The Two-Headed Giant can block two attacking creatures and has Trample, which highlights just what a big boy he is. Ignore the 4/4 statline, please. Love the flavour text: "None know if this Giant is the result of aberrant magics, Siamese twins, or a mentalist's schizophrenia".

The Gray Ogre not quite a giant, but he's an ogre. The lines between ogres and giants tend to be blurred, but ogres tend to be only slightly larger than humans and a lot more brutish. He sure is a guy with tusks and a spiky club. I like the flavour text, who describes, of all things, the 'ogre philosopher' called Gnerdel, who refuses to eat vegetarians and wants to eat those who eat meat because it's higher up on the food chain. Ogre logic! 

Yet another common 'savage brutish monster' is the troll -- and trolls are one of those fantasy tropes that has the widest interpretations. These guys are just misshapen brutes, though, and later expansions would migrate the trolls to Green.

Uthden Troll is a really ugly, gray troll with oversized ears and nose, a snarling face and lumpy limbs. Just like Dragon Whelp above, there's a nice traditional children's storybook quality to him that's helped by the little poem of a flavour text. Both trolls have the 'Regenerate' ability, which allows them to regain health and prevent death by paying that cost. Many fantasy trolls tend to have high-speed regeneration of wounds to set them apart from other brutish enemies, so it's nice that these guys have a bit of an identity even early on. 

The Sedge Troll is a more traditional take on fantasy trolls, being a hunchbacked, green-skinned, warty tall man with an ugly, fanged face. This one gets stronger if you control a Swamp, one of the few cards in this early expansion that rewards multiple colours in a single deck -- which is flavourful for a troll, too! 

It's a minotaur! A vanilla 2/3 minotaur. It's a rather realistic cow-face that they're drawing, with a lot of fancy tribal tattoos. It's a relatively simple monster archetype, but I like the flavour text of Hurloon Minotaur establishing the minotaur race as a spiritual people. After so many descriptions of brutish dumb non-human muscleheads, it's nice to have this.

Granite Gargoyle! Later expansions would associate Gargoyles as being 'artifact creatures', or put them in White, but anything that's not an animal but is a savage monster gets lumped into Red, I suppose. It's a pretty cool artwork, a panther-bull sleek creature with wings. It's a bit different from the stone devils perched on the sides of buildings that are commonly depicted in media. 

My favourite part of this card is the flavour text -- which is an advice on how it can be cooked, with credits to some dude with a gloriously long name called "Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar", who wrote the Underworld Cookbook... a brick joke that took until 2021 to pay off, when ol' Asmo was made into a card that interacted with food. This is why I love this franchise. The makers are such geeks. 

More mythical creatures! Another creature that would later be more associated with the colour Green are hydras, but the very first hydra was in Red. The Rock Hydra has an... interesting artwork. It's kind of interesting that the way that the designers pick the flavour for the hydra's head regeneration is by having it made up of an elemental substance -- being rocks. The effects of the Rock Hydra is that it becomes stronger based on how much mana is spent to cast it, and the caster can pump even more heads to regrow the heads. Not the most mana-efficient, but nice in a flavour standpoint. 

The Roc of Kher Ridges is a roc! It's a giant bird. That's neat! I really don't have a whole ton to say about it other than the neat artwork of it holding a dead person in its talons. The flavour text tries to make a rock/roc pun, which... eh, not the funniest pun. 

We have the two obligatory walls for Red. The Wall of Fire is literally just a wall of fire casted by a pyromancer or something. We haven't really seen it through the creatures above, but Red is very much associated with flames and fireball spells. 

The Wall of Stone, meanwhile, are just... the walls around some random city. That's kind of boring, Wall of Stone! You don't look magical! You're a literal wall! How are you a creature?

And there are a lot of Red spells that just deals damage to targets -- not just creatures, but also the players. We have a bunch after the break, but I think Fireball and Disintegrate are two of the most iconic ones, which can scale up a lot depending on the amount of mana you're spending. 

Disintegrate has a very cool artwork of that guy being reduced to utter dust. Unless I missed a card, I think this is the card that first has the 'exile' effect. Exiling is basically the thing that happens in the game when you're killed so dead that your card doesn't go into the graveyard, it's straight up removed from the game. While later expansions would flavour exiling as being dimensionally displaced, in this card's case it just means that your corpse is so atomized that you can't be resurrected. 

A lot of the Red spells have cool art but are ultimately very similar, and the original version of this article was quite repetitive thanks to me trying to equalize the amount of cards I speak in the main body of the article for each colour. That's a mistake, and my own frustration bled off the reviews. Love Fork, though. It's such a simple drawing of a lightning spell branching into two, but the ismple artwork of the Fork spell and the two targets -- probably meant to be meteors, but they end up looking like choco-chip cookies.

And in-between so many fireball spells, we've got the glorious Wheel of Fortune. It's a spinning spell! A cloaked figure spins around a wooden wheel that either lands on a chalice, a skull, a sword or a heart. It's a bit out of place to see so early on in a 'regular fantasy' set, and I find it quite hilarious. The effect is surprisingly powerful, too -- forcing both players to discard their hand and redraw a full hand. Done well, the Red player reloads his/her hand, but the main factor is that you can force your opponent to discard their hand!

That's it for Red, and I do think I left a huge chunk of spells for after the break. A lot of them really do the same thing of dealing damage, so there's not a whole ton for me to talk about. 

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White 

We reach the final colour, White, which... again, I'm not just saying it to be 'edgy' about how the good guys are lame and the bad guys are cooler. Which is true, by the way, but a very common complaint that I'll have about early MTG is that the White cards tend to be so boring to talk about. They are about priests, paladins, knights and angels, and all that fantasy revolving around clerics and paladins. This being the first set means that I have a fair bit to say, but I also do really think that at least until we branch out of the Dominaria sets, White will probably be the singular colour that I will have the least to say about in any expansion.

We'll start off with the two most interesting creatures in White... the first being one of the strongest creatures in this set, the Serra Angel. She is a 4/4 with Flying and an effect that would later become 'Vigilance' -- meaning that the Serra Angel doesn't untap when attacking. This allows her to be available to defend when the turn passes over. Design-wise, an angel is basically one of the most 'holy' creatures you can have as an equivalent to red's Shivan Dragon or black's Lord of the Pit. Neat!

The Personal Incarnation is fun! As an 'avatar incarnation', the Personal Incarnation can absorb damage done to the caster, while itself also acting as a 6/6 creature with all that entails. And when the Incarnation is destroyed, the caster loses half of his/her life points. This thing is basically a JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Stand, isn't it? I like the art, too, and the fantasy of the frail wizard shadowed in the cliff in the background creating a giant musclebound avatar to wreak havoc against the band of warriors. 

Variety is the spice of life for this original set, and in this fantasy soup setting, the Mesa Pegasus is basically an animal-angel thing, isn't it? The Mesa Pegasus has 'Flying' and 'Banding', with Banding being a mechanic I briefly described in Green but is way more prevalent in White -- the idea is that as the colour of the 'plucky hero', White is able to gather a bunch of weak but dedicated heroes to fight against a singular giant dragon or wurm. The Mesa Pegasus is apparently part of a ritual to check the purity of heart of women, something that's normally associated with unicorns.

Speaking of unicorns... Pearled Unicorn! It sure is a unicorn, and it sure is a vanilla 2/2 creature. It's got a Lewis Carroll passage, though. That's cute. 

Savannah Lions are one of the cheaper creatures in White, and they're stuck in White because lions are the animals representing nobility and knighthood. That's neat, even if this specific piece of art always does a little visual trick of me where the pouncing lion looks gigantic. It's not! It's just a regular lion! But the second lion in the background sometimes looks like he's in the foreground. 

Also worth noting that while these guys had the creature type of 'lions', the Great Creature Type Update would turn all lions and large predatory cats into just 'Cat'. Which is really weird to me, since 'pegasus' and 'unicorn' didn't get folded into 'horse'. 'Wolf' didn't get folded into 'dog'. Rats, mice, squirrels and raccoons remain separate. What made 'cat' so important as a tribe?

The opposite twin of the Black Knight that we started this set talking about is the White Knight, who has First Strike and Protection from Black. This guy is a rather traditional medieval knight, with a tabard and a horse covered with one of those horse caparisons that look like bedsheets. We'll have a lot of knights in White, but this is the first. 

And we've got a bunch of humans. White has a dearth of creatures in Alpha, for a reason that you'll see after the break. Northern Paladin is just a guy in traditional crusading outfit. He has the ability to instantly destroy a Black permanent.

Samite Healer is an old man that heals the sick, and that fits with the cleric trope in a fantasy setting. Instead of just merely healing health, however, the Samite Healer prevents damage instead. It's pretty basic fantasy for the paladin/priest colour.

Veteran Bodyguard is a naked, muscular man with an eyepatch. He's just some dude, but I like the flavour that he's such a dedicated bodyguard that will jump in the way of any incoming damage dealt to the player. You can't prevent the bodyguard from doing so, because he is that dedicated. I like that flavour. 

The Benalish Hero is soldier in armour. She... she exists. She bands. She doesn't get a background in her card art. More cards from the nation of Benalia would appear in White over the years, but that doesn't really make Benalish Hero herself particularly interesting. Neat little backstory, though.

I love that for how muted White has been in terms of creature design, their obligatory wall, the Wall of Swords, is quite interesting. It's a bunch of broad swords, and that's honestly rather unexpected instead of having a wall of light or a castle wall or something. These magical flying swords are powerful enough to stop the 'evil ones', being these strange tentacle-ooze monster that's trying its best to squirm through the swords. Very neat artwork!

All walls normally can't attack -- something found in the rulebook in earlier versions, while the reprints would keyword it into 'Defender'. But Animate Wall allows the walls to attack! And... look at the sheer goofiness of this guy. It's a brick wall with a grumpy face, the stubbiest baby arms on the sides, and two feet that barely grow out of the lower corners. That's glorious. I think that's my favourite artwork in all of White's original set of cards. 

I like the flavour of Island Sanctuary, where at any time, you can hide your forces in an island sanctuary safe from almost all creatures other than those that have Islandwalk. That's an interesting effect for sure.

A card that I'm sure is banned now is Balance, which in theory fits with White's themes of order and justice and balances out the scales to equalize the battlefield... but in reality is just utterly soul-crushing for certain deck types that want to go wide. I like the design of this guy's funky helmet, though, and that's a cool-looking pair of scales. 

Of course, White isn't always nice and protective. They're also the colour of divine judgement, with Armageddon being perhaps one of the most devastating spells if you don't see it coming. All lands are destroyed, which just wipes out everyone's ability to cast spells -- and especially if you don't have any more lands in the field. Great artwork of an ominous sun above a war-blasted city with skulls all around it. 

Wrath of God does something similar but to creatures, and you can see the deity's scowling face etched in the clouds as the orcs and humans all topple over and dead. White is the colour with the most removals in gameplay terms, and has the strongest board-wipes. 

Karma is a pretty flavourful thing to give to the White class. I just really want to know what thing this poor sap did that the equivalent karma is having spiky rose vines wrap him up and slowly choke him to death. This one interacts with Swamps, which is another showcase of White having a lot of anti-Black-mana counterpays 

This particular artwork of Swords to Plowshares isn't the most exciting thing (and this is one of those cards that gets reprinted over and over again), but I like the idea of White essentially forcing an enemy knight to repent and convert to pacifism, becoming a lowly, peaceful peasant tilling the fields. 


I'll close White off with two pretty neat artwork. Guardian Angel showcases a more interesting angel than Serra Angel, even though he's naked (albeit without genitalia). The red wings and flaming hair make the difference! The idea is that the Guardian Angel is intervening to block a certain amount of damage. 

Holy Armour represents how White has a bunch of spells that buff creatures, but I'm mostly tickled by the utterly ridiculously gigantic horns on this guy's helmet, the disproportionately large shield, and the colour scheme of his armour. No wonder it's only increasing this fellow's toughness! 

And we're done with White, but there's a lot of White spells that I'll discuss after the break. The thing with White is that it's the colour that tries to counter specific colours, meaning that a huge chunk of White's original set of cards are colour-specific Circles of Protection and stuff, which does take up a lot of card space. 
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Colourless (Artifacts)

In addition to the five main colours, the original set also has 'colourless' cards, with all of the original ones being 'Artifacts' -- which doesn't need any specific mana colour to cast. The idea is that these are generic magical items or objects that just need to be activated -- not a specific type of creature of spell that requires a certain type of thinking or specific version of magic to channel. It's neat, and you can see how this has influenced other games with factions -- Pokemon also having 'Colourless' to represent the video game's Normal-types; while Hearthstone and Elden Ring having 'Neutral' creatures that can go into any of their factions.

For the sake of these review, though, a lot of the Artifacts will go after the break. Artifacts are great from a mechanic standpoint, but this is a 'reviewing monsters' article first and foremost, and short of discussing each effect in painstaking detail, I'm not really going to have much to say until more Artifact Creatures come along, and that's not going to be for a while. 

There are a couple of Artifact Creatures even in this first set, and they tend to be flavoured as artificial beings brought to life by magic or by other means. The Obsidianus Golem is a cool-looking golem, a jet-black obsidian statue with glowing eyes and mouth that looks alive. It's just a vanilla creature. 

Looking very Asian, the Jade Statue is a praying statue that isn't always a creature -- it's only a creature if you pay some mana cost for it to pop out and fight for a single battle round. That's not the most efficient design. Early on, artifact creatures aren't super-duper useful and are meant to be a neutral but less-efficient alternative to the coloured creatures.

Clockwork Beast is a bit more interesting visually, thanks to the artwork which is a fair bit more stylized. It looks like a weird dog, but if you told me that it's a weird geometry dinosaur-beaver, I wouldn't blame you. It works with the idea that this is an artificial creature animated with fantasy clockpunk technology. The idea of its effect that it will constantly lose its +1/+0 counters and become weaker after every combat, representing either pieces falling off or simply the clockwork energy going off, but you can inject some mana to rejuvenate the power. A later interpretation makes the Clockwork Beast super-badass and nightmarish, reminding me of something from Phyrexia, but I like the goofiness of the original Clockwork Beast more. 

The Juggernaut initially seems to just be some kind of a siege engine pushed by an ogre or something. But it's apparently not! It's an artifact creature still, and the flavour text notes its 'gigantic head', which gives the implication that the upper-body we see here is actually part of the artifact creature's anatomy. I find it a bit more disturbing than other interpretations of the Juggernaut, which tend to go with either just a siege engine or a giant Warhammer 40K metal-monster thing. 

Easily the most horrifying piece of art in the entirety of Alpha is colorless's wall, the Living Wall. Wow, look at this thing. How is this an 'artifact' creature? It's a wall made entirely of flesh, and as its effect and flavour text notes, it constantly regenerates like a sick, nasty version of Wolverine's Healing Factor. Look at this thing. It's supposed to 'just' be a wall of flesh, but it looks more like a tumorous abomination that you see Elder Gods create. Look at this thing. Eyeballs, intestines and teeth all curled up here and there... and in the center of it all is something that isn't a giant malformed eyeball, but an embryo in an amniotic sac. WHY, evil wizards? That's fucked up!

Sheesh. We're going to go deep into the actual artifacts now, and let's go with me acknowledging Sol Ring. It's a ring made out of fire and/or soul energy, and it gives you two mana. It's simple, but it's also one of the most often-reprinted cards in a lot of pre-constructed decks, so there you go. One of the oldest but still most fair and relevant cads. It sure is a magic ring!

Chaos Orb here is famous for having a shitballs-crazy effect -- physically flip the Chaos Orb card into the air, and it will destroy whatever card it touches. Obviously, it's a horrible effect to actually do on a physical card game, and there are urban legends of people ripping up Chaos Orb to rain it down upon the gaming table. Nowadays these sort of 'dexterity cards' have been banned alongside the ante cards, only relegated to joke sets. The artwork is pretty psychedelic, isn't it? It's supposed to be an 'orb', but it also kind of resembles a moon, or a brain, or a meatball. It's got a creepy demon face engraved onto it, and it's vomiting out... lava? Okay!

I just really like the art in Mana Vault. It's this fleshy, Hellraiser-looking cube of maybe-flesh, suspended over a gaping void with a bunch of chains leading up to it. Around it are yawning caverns in wherever the heck the Mana Vault is suspended. It's creepy... but all we know is that it makes mana. One big problem that makes these artifacts so boring is that they don't have any real description about lore. 

I don't know who Nevinyrral is! We do now, he's a zombie wizard! His card was printed after this article was initially published in 2019! But Nevinyrral's Disk is certainly a nasty looking disk with a demonic Sarlacc mouth within it, and nasty demonic elder-god tentacles pouring out of it. It sure destroys a lot of things in play -- those must be far-reaching tentacles!

I really lie the surreal Cyclopean Tomb. Is it called that because the prison is shaped like a giant organic eye, or that it's a prison for cyclopses that just happen to be shaped like an eye? Or is it a cyclops being used as a tomb? A humanoid figure is stuck in the center of the pupil, and the texturing of the eyeball can go either-way on whether this is an inorganic structure or a particularly giant eyeball of some immensely large cyclops. Its effect has nothing to do with tombs, instead slowly infecting other lands and turning them into Swamps. Surreal!

I'm obligated to include these two items, since they refer to one of MTG's main characters, Urza. One of the most prominent characters in MTG, and he will be a major main character in the novels that tied into a lot of the early expansions. And how did we first find out about him? His eyewear. The Glasses of Urza, and more gloriously, Sunglasses of Urza. 

I love how stupid the effect for the Sunglasses of Urza is, where you wear a red-tinted set of glasses that allow you to 'see' the White-mana lands Plains as Red mana. Also, see that they used to separate the artifacts as 'Mono' and 'Continuous' Artifacts, a terminology that would quickly be dropped by the designers .

The Hive is just a gigantic hive that is... somehow counted as an 'artifact'. But it's a nest that spawns giant wasps? I'm not sure if this card was designed in a modern set would be anything but a Land or an Enchantment of sorts. Are these robotic giant wasps? Like, Insecticons from Transformers or something? There are some blue highlights on the very long-legged insect creature in the foreground, but it's really kind of ambiguous whether it's a robotic or clockwork creature, or if it's just the gloss from the insect exoskeleton. 

Also, I think this is the very first card to create 'token creatures' -- creatures that we normally represent with non-bordered cards that don't go into the deck (or, well, whatever you have in hand to represent a creature back in the day), and don't go into the graveyard once destroyed. It's pretty ubiquitous nowadays in MTG, but it would totally be a novelty back in the day, huh? 

And I think we'll close off the main body of the article with the most infamous (and expensive) of the original card, the Black Lotus. Even when I first wrote this article, I was already aware of the sheer financial value of the lotus. Lore-wise it's just a black-coloured lotus flower, but its ability to be casted for essentially nothing and to tap for 3 mana made it insanely good. Alongside the five Mox (which will be found under the break) and three undercosted Blue spells -- Timetwister, Time Warp and Ancestral Recall -- Black Lotus is part of the legendary 'Power Nine', the first nine cards to be banned by Wizards of the Coast for being obscenely powerful and imbalanced for modern play. Black Lotus is the most famous and the most well-known out of these, and has since spawned many, many mana-generating mimics over the various years... most of which are quite powerful in their own right. 

And with that, we close the 'main' article for Alpha/Unlimited, but stick around after the break for the rest of the expansion!