Reviewing Magic: The Gathering #11 - Weatherlight
Written on: 10月 10, 2019
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Title : Reviewing Magic: The Gathering #11 - Weatherlight
link : Reviewing Magic: The Gathering #11 - Weatherlight
And here we are. Magic's eleventh expansion and supposedly the final set in the Mirage block, but really it focused more on telling its own storyline, kick-starting the Weatherlight saga which follows the crew of a skyship called the Weatherlight. Briefly participating in the climax of the Mirage/Visions storyline when they assisted some of the champions of Jamuraa in freeing the nation, the actual Weatherlight expansion basically started off a brand-new storyline called the Weatherlight Saga, which ran through all of the expansions told from 1997 through 2001 as we follow around the crew of the Weatherlight. And where I did have some brief complaints about how the previous sets (called "pre-revisionist" by the fans) didn't really represent the storylines well, the Weatherlight saga came under complaints for the exact opposite, where the main characters and their stories actually overrode too much of the cards. We'll see how I feel about these, because even moreso than the previous expansions, when looking through M:TG's history, the huge Weatherlight saga was one that I just basically skimmed through. Well, now's the time to actually tackle and try and read some of the stories, yeah?
As told by the little synopsis, apparently, we're returning back to a storyline and a pair of characters from Antiquities to form the backbone of this storyline. Urza and Mishra, those two brothers, opened the portal to the evil plane Phyrexia in what would now be 4000 years ago of history. (Magic loves its timeskips.) Now the Phyrexians and its lord Yawgmoth wants to invade the plane of Dominaria, the plane where most of the Magic sets we've seen were set... and the only hope is for the crew of the Weatherlight, led by Captain Sisay, to gather a cache of powerful artifacts belonging to Urza called "The Legacy". In addition to Captain Sisay, we've got the roguish main male lead Gerrard Capashen, the bumbling goblin cabin boy Squee and the hulking minotaur Tahngarth. And as Sisay is kidnapped by the forces of Phyrexia, Gerrard has to lead the crew of the Weatherlight to the plane of Rath... or, well, as shown in this expansion, gather a crew to go there.
Basically, kind of like the Infinity Stones thing, only instead of Thanos collecting them, it's the good guys trying to do so to prevent a plane of death and decay from coming into Dominaria.
And I'm going to go on a bit of a different route this time around, something a bit more experimental (and why I eventually split this off from my original intention to review Visions and Weatherlight together). With the help of this handy-dandy guide to how the events of the story is represented in the cards, we'll cover the story of Weatherlight first before going straight into the actual monsters and whatnot.
As usual, early Magic: The Gathering cards don't really represent the actual main characters of the saga as actual cards... but unlike Teferi, Urza, Leshrac or Kaervek, the characters show up in the cards a lot more. And our saga apparently begins when Sisay discovers the Thran Tome and studies it, as shown in Ancestral Knowledge, and I'm assuming that this is where she studied that there might be more to her ship, the Weatherlight, beyond just being an ancestral ship passed down to her.
And then... Abduction! It's the 90's, sadly, so despite the captain of the ship being a woman of colour, the main character still has to be a dude, so poor Captain Sisay is abducted by unknown forces.
The rest of the crew end up going to the nation of Benalia to pick up their former master of arms, Gerrard Capashen. You can see the minotaur Tahngarth in the background, complaining about the Benalish Missionary. And, of course, Gerrard's Wisdom, or Gerrard's Main Character Status, basically allows him to figure out where to go next. And alongside Tahngarth, they go off to recruit members. Just like a D&D session!
First of these crewmates come from the Llanowar forest, where the catfolk warrior Mirri, an old friend of Gerrard. The crew meets a couple of Llanowar residents, like the Llanowar Druid, but eventually find Mirri. Call of the Wild shows off the goblin cabin boy Squee, who also helps out. He's the comedy sidekick in this one, I think? Oh, and that blonde girl next to Gerrard in Llanowar Druid's card art is Hanna, the ship's navigator, who's kind of a recurring, if non-main, character.
Presumably, they probably has to help out Llanowar and the elves before Mirri joins with them, as seen in Vitalize and Nature's Kiss. I mean, it's basic fantasy storytelling. Afterwards they figure out about the whole Legacy artifact thing when Gerrard experiments with the Null Rod, another artifact that belonged to the Legacy...
...but then they have to fight an Aboroth (which we'll cover later individually), a giant monster. Gerrard ends up using the Thran Forge to strengthen the Aboroth so much it turns into an artifact, and then use the Touchstone to destroy the now-artifacted Aboroth. Both the Forge and the Touchstone, by the way, is yet another artifact that makes up the Legacy.
Not really properly depicted in cards, the Weatherlight crew ended up realizing that they needed a powerful wizard with them, and they go off to Tolaria (last seen in the Legends expansion), where they intended to ask Hanna's father Barrin to join... but instead, they get Barrin's apprentice Ertai (seen in Relearn). With their crew complete, they face off against a couple of monsters -- a sawrm of Avizoa (again, we'll cover this one later) and the Abyssal Gatekeeper in the treacherous lands of Urborg. Also, yeah, this is basically getting a representative character of each colour.
As the Weatherlight crew enter Urborg, as depicted in Haunting Misery and Shattered Crypt, Gerrard and company meets another former crewmate, Crovax. Crovax faces off against the agents of Rath, Gallowbraid and Morinfen -- a pair of horrors who have had dealings and a lasting grudge against Crovax. With his family estate destroyed and him only wanting purpose, Crovax joins the team. With Crovax's beloved angel companion Selenia disappeared and the two agents of Rath laying waste to his family estate, Crovax ended up joining the crew once more, albeit after dishing out some Urborg Justice.
Gallowbraid and Morinfen are a pair of legendary horrors from Phyrexia, even though they kinda look like ghouls. Gallowbraid's basically a hideous zombie without a lower jaw, whereas Morinfen's got long, gangly limbs and bat wings. Pretty neat little mid-bosses for our heroes, actually.
Eventually, as they wander around looking for someone to guide them to the plane of Rath where they figure out Sisay is being held, they arrive at the island of Keld, where they face off againstBane Maraxus of Keld. As seen in Desperate Gambit, Gerrard fights Maraxus, who ends up getting killed by a knife to the back by Rathi native Starke, who pledges a Debt of Loyalty to Gerrard... but is actually lying to him! Dun dunn dunn!
And that's about it for the storyline of Weatherlight, told through a mixture of comics, text stories and a bunch of card flavour text. Basically, there are some holes to be filled in here and there about Sisay and Gerrard's respective backstories, and how they basically end up in the stormy, desolate plane of Rath in the next expansion, Tempest, but basically the whole storyline in this expansion is kind of a recruit quest to gather a full crew: Main character reluctant hero Gerrard; the big guy Tahngarth; comic relief Squee; faithful lancer Mirri; smart dude Ertai; glum dude with a long backstory and a vengeance Crovax; sixth ranger obvious-traitor Starke; badass-in-distress mentor Sisay. Again, not the most derivative of fantasy casts, but it's there!
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Anyway, I'm not sure if this is the format I'll be using for the rest of the Weatherlight saga. We might go with this "story cards", "monster cards I have a lot to speak about", break, then the rest of the expansion format, or maybe I'll cover the monsters first before talking about the story and the rest of the expansion after the break. We'll see. Weatherlight the expansion is kind of short and I don't have a whole ton to talk about, so it allowed me to be a wee bit more experimental, but we'll see with future expansions.
With that story time over, let's go to talking about monsters!
First up is the Abyssal Gatekeeper, a horror of Phyrexia that the crew of the Weatherlight had to face off against when going to Urborg to recruit Crovax. On first glance, it seems like this giant gatekeeper is just a giant robot lobster monster that's in-set into the gate, rising up to attack Gerrard... but look a little closer and you realize that inset to the Gatekeeper's "head" is a face, which makes this creature slightly more unnerving. I think this is the set where we sort of establish Phyrexia as having a mixture of techno-organic horrors as opposed to just being purely robots? Or something along those lines?
Hidden Horror is a pretty spooky monster, too. Like, it's an undead creature, and it's shaped like a Giger-esque version of a centipede. Multiple legs that bristle about and kinda look disturbingly like ribcages, and a massive mouth full of sharp teeth set on that disgusting, pus-coloured body... but look at the background and apparently it's crawling out of some poor dead dude's corpse. Apparently, this is Hidden Horror's gimmick -- as an additional cost of casting the Hidden Horror, you must sacrifice one of your creatures, representing the Hidden Horror bursting out of the unfortunate sap, Chestburster style, which is neat!
Mischievous Poltergeist's face just looks straight out of some cartoon, yeah? I'm not sure what artstyle this is specifically trying to mimic. Casper? Looney Tunes? Old Disney? Either way, it's clearly a poltergeist with a goofy-ass face that's trying to poke and kind of disturb that very non-plussed mage lady. Pretty fun card art.
Barrow Ghoul is a nasty ass ghoul that really just looks pretty damn decayed and creepy, and it's a pretty flavourful mechanic where it has to keep feeding on corpses from your graveyeard to even keep existing. Apparently, these are zombies unleashed upon Crovax's property, feeding upon the dead bodies of his ancestors.
Another Atog! Are we just getting a new Atog every expansion? I sure hope so! The Necratog finally shows us a more full body after the previous three -- Atog, Foratog and Chronatog -- showed just the head and upper body, and apparently Atogs are vaguely lizard/frog-like monsters with massive, massive maws. The Necratog has an almost frog-like body layout, and, of course, it eats the corpses of your dead creatures in the graveyard for a power boost.
Odylic Wraith is a pretty interesting take on wraiths. We've seen a couple of these wraiths and ghosts, but none that, I feel, is as bizarre as this. This wraith's multiple arms are basically vines that weave in and out of the trees, and his face is twisted into an angry face that pops out of the trees. A pretty bizarre looking wraith, and you don't really even see the 'body' of this particular ghost. Pretty neat art.
And on a less whimsical side of evil monsters compared to the poltergeist or the wraith is the Urborg Stalker, which is a lot more creepy looking. It's a giant skull with fangs and spotlight eyes, massive long tapering claws that reach into its hollowed-out skull and the green flame that burns within. And it's giant, because if you look a bit closer, his shoulders are made of piles and piles of ribcages, so the Urborg Stalker seems to be a gigantic skeleton monster. Shame that the Urborg Stalker doesn't really even have a whole lot of lore tied to it other than being a spooky undead monster, not being featured in the Weatherlight story or even being an undead sub-type that shows up later on.
What does show up in the Weatherlight story is the Avizoa, which is a flying jellyfish that attacked the Weatherlight crew between recruiting Ertai and recruiting Crovax. And these are giant Metroid-esque jellyfishes that fly in the air, grabbing poor crewmen and apparently eating them through that creepy-ass tiny fanged mouths that jut out from under their bodies, as seen in the upper left. Hey, if you have a flying ship, you got to have flying sea-life, right?
Ertai doesn't have any connections to Teferi, at least I don't think, but Ertai's Familiar is this cute little lizard dude with the goofiest-looking face that can phase in and out of existence. Or it might just be a less fantastical chameleon camouflage ability that they just represent in-game with Phasing. Either way, this lizard critter can both hold a goblet, and has some weird sideburns.
Fog Elemental is a pretty neat depiction of an elemental, and I always love Magic's elementals. Like, sure, they kind of go overboard sometimes with the X-Elementals they have, but at least they're creative and it isn't just the same genie body type, y'know? And the fact that this is just the fog that takes the vague appearance of a sideways mask-like face is just both so serene and sinister at the same time.
Ophidian actually refers to a the clade Ophidia, a group of reptiles that comprises of snakes and other snake-related reptiles. This is a creepy-ass snake, though, with the way its mouth is hinged. It looks more like a bizarre anglerfish jaw... and the way this card art is laid out, it makes it look like the snake's eye is on the top of its nose. Can't even complain, maybe this is a magic snake.
Vodalian Illusionist is an interesting merfolk, and apparently he's got a creepy lamprey buddy! I do like this look for the merfolk, the random fish-fin bits that jut out from his back sort of give the merfolk's upper body kind of an inhuman look without going full Creature From The Black Lagoon. Apparently, the Vodalian Illusionist is able to cause other creatures to phase out, so I guess post-Mirage, phasing out is just shorthand for "hiding", what with this seemingly being caused by illusions?
We get a couple of drakes! Tolarian Drake's got a gorgeous, gorgeous set of wings that look like a glass-stain painting, and I actually mistook the art for the drake perching on top of a building with a glass dome before seeing the bat-like skeletal structure. Apparently, the Tolarian Drake's wings will cause you to go insane after looking into it for too long.
Poor, poor Timid Drake! It's tiny head and neck just looks so adorable next to its plump body, and that face is just so "oh gee oh god I'm so scared" as the Weatherlight flies in the background. Gerrard scared one off with a sneeze, apparently, and I love how the effect means that any time another creature is summoned, the Timid Drake gets so scared it jumps back to the owner's hand. Poor thing, it really should just stay in its lair and eat cookies and not be afraid.
Apathy is a glorious card art. There are wizards, goblins, weird giant purple fanged creatures fighting in the background of this tavern, but maaaaan, Roggvir just isn't feeling it today, y'know? It's one of those days, y'know, he's just tired, it's his day off, and sure, he could probably beat half the bar's patrons to submission, but he's just so fucking done with the day, and he really just doesn't give a shit. Oh, helmet got pierced by an ersatz spear? Boo-fucking-hoo, it's his time off, and he's going to just drink that mug of dwarven ale.
Mwonvuli Ooze is a goopy jelly goop monster that looks like an actual clump of jell-o. It's actually massive, though, large enough to swallow trees and is about to swallow those poor, poor monkeys. We haven't seen ooze monsters in M:TG in a while, and it's nice to see some.
And here is the Aboroth, the massive creature that menaced Gerrard and party and ended up requiring the usage of the Thran Forge and the Touchstone to defeat. Later revisions would identify the Aboroth as an "elemental", which is why it's a green creature -- the first time I saw this giant thing I thought it's like some sort of bizarre flesh abomination. And... I'm not sure what it is, honestly. Some sort of amalgamation of mud and dirt, according to the flavour text, I guess? Whatever it is, it's gigantic and pretty spooky looking, especially with that tortured-looking face, those face-like growths on his chest and the huge, gaping hole in its stomach.
And we have the Barishi, which is another creature later retroactively identified as an elemental. This one is... a deer-like creature, I guess, made entirely out of plants? With tree-antlers and a disturbingly human face? It's a creepy looking face, in any case. It's a bit of a neat looking monster for sure.
So apparently some people somewhere have domesticated Wurms, and use these Harvest Wurms to till their fields by utilizing the tail-spikes on this particular wurm. Okay? That honestly seems impractical, particularly with the amount of resources you'd probably have to feed this massive monster. I guess the farmers don't mind.
Fallow Wurm, despite the flavour text mentioning ruined crops... is probably actually beneficial to the farmers. Not only is this particular Wurm doing its digging in the winter, "fallow" means a patch of land that's plowed and harrowed, but left unsown to restore its fertility, something used in a crop rotation. And honestly, with the farmers apparently domesticating the Harvest Wurms, that'd probably keep other competing Wurms out of their territory? Maybe?
The Fungus Elemental is just this massive tendril made up of fungi that's seemingly in the process of consuming that tree, and it's definitely a pretty interesting creature -- the Fungus Elemental looks more like some sort of parasitic worm or leech of some sorts instead of like a more humanoid or even human-faced manifestation of an actual element. Which, I suppose, makes sense. Why do most of the elementals in D&D take humanoid forms, anyway?
It's kind of hard to tell what is going on in Llanowar Behemoth, but it's basically a giant mecha made out of plant matter, mud and vines, with multiple elves riding it and manning ballistae. That's pretty unexpected of the elves, actually, and while it doesn't jive perfectly with how the elves usually behave, it's a neat variation that still plays into their "commune with and control plants" flavour. These are just a bit more creative... and honestly, when you live in a world where giant mud monsters like the Aboroth exist, you probably have to have contingency plans like this.
We visit Urborg briefly in the storyline, so we get to see a couple of monsters from the other Burning Isles like Bogardan, including the Bogardan Firefiend, which is a spirit of flame that's like this mutated boar monster with long, gorilla-like arms and a set of holes down its spines that spew out flames. Pretty mean looking monster for sure!
Lava Hounds are pretty neat looking rock-themed hound monsters. There's really not too much subtlety here, they're basically just the typical 'hellhound' monster type, but instead of fire and brimstone, it's volcanic rock. Pretty cool.
Okay, the Orcish Settlers are kinda funny. Apparently in trying to make burnt toast, that poor orc just accidentally burned his entire house to the ground, and mammy orc is about to lay some smackdown onto him. Pretty fun art, even though the creatures there does kind of look more goblin-esque than orc-esque, yeah? I guess it's because these particular dudes aren't as buff as regular orcs.
Goblin Grenadiers are another hilarious set of goblins that go around with jackets filled with TNT and barrels of presumably even more TNT. Both Goblin Grenadiers and Orcish Settlers basically blow up a land if you sacrifice them, albeit for different costs -- one blows stuff up, one accidentally burns stuff down. I do like the little flavour text here, where Squee, our goblin friend, is so happy to not be the dumbest one in the room.
Thundermare is just a pretty dang cool looking creature, yeah? The artwork does make it look more like a lava horse than a thunder/lightning-based monster, though, which is kind of a bit of a disconnect between the art and the name. It's still a damn badass looking creature, though, and whether you get killed by lightning or magma, you're still dead, y'know?
Guided Strike is one of the handful of White cards I find interesting from this set, mostly becuase, interestingly, it features this giant, bizarre bug-ghost creature attacking the adventurer with a hood. And at first, I thought this is perhaps one of the first White-coloured creatures that are actually not just another pegasus, angel, griffon or human, since clearly the "Guided Strike" is a White spell, and the one doing the striking is the light creature, yeah? Except as a friend pointed out to me, this unnamed critter in Guided Strike's art would actually receive an actual creature card and a name -- the Ridged Kusite, and that's a Black horror creature. So, uh... it's a White spell depicting a Black-mana monster doing an attack. Okay? The Kusite's a lot cooler in Guided Strike's art piece, I wanna say.
Hoo boy I really don't have anything to say about White creatures this time around. Alabaster Dragon's a pretty cool, if standard, dragon, but I do appreciate just how majestic it looks with that pose and expression, and just how tiny the Skyship Weatherlight looks next to it. But the Alabaster Dragon's only a 4/4!
And we go into artifact creatures, and the flavour text for the artifacts is the first we see of Karn the silver golem, another major character in the Weatherlight saga that we've kind of yet to meet. Or maybe some of the tie-in material at the time features Karn? I dunno. The Serrated Biskelion is a pretty nasty looking artifact creature, though, basically an AT-ST, except instead of being clunky and looking like it's 90% joints, this one is 100% spikes and serrated edges, and I assume those spikes running down its head down to its tail all rotate and spin as it charges and tries to slam its barbed-shieldface at people.
And we get a couple of golems! Steel Golem would've been a pretty generic fantasy not-a-mecha, but man that head just look absolutely bizarre, like an alien or something. And are those wires that give off some sort of white smoke cut off while the Steel Golem is damaged, or are they part of the design? Straw Golem goes for a more magically-inclined artifact creature in comparison to the Steel Golem and the Biskelion, being a giant man-thing made entirely out of straw. It's a giant scarecrow-ogre, and I like it.
And finally we get Jangling Automaton. On first glance I thought it was just a hulking humanoid robot from an odd angle, but look at it! It's got two "legs", one of which resembles a human leg and another a massive gorilla fist, it's got a humanoid arm randomly attached to the fist-leg that also has a chicken leg attached to it. It's got a massive metal canister head-thing, and I'm not even sure what the rest of the body is meant to be -- it's like the shell of a turtle, almost? Apparently Hanna made this. Okay.
Click below for the rest of the expansion.
Rapid-firing through the rest, we do have a bunch of cards that are just... well, kind of "repeated" Black-mana minions that we've seen multiple times even within the block of Mirage/Visions/Weatherlight. Fledging Djinn, Razortooth Rats, Bone Dancer, Circling Vultures... we've seen all of these in more interesting variations. And don't get me wrong, it's nice to keep up the fantasy and these are all solid pieces of artwork, but Black-mana rat #10 and Black-mana undead sorcerer #25 really doesn't lend to much conversation, y'know?
The Shadow Rider has a very Illithid-Cthulhu-esque helmet. That's pretty cool, actually.
A lot of the Black cards of this set feature quotes from Crovax, who's the Black-coloured main character of the Weatherlight set, and, man, particularly on the quote in Zombie Scavengers and Buried Alive, he's pretty emo, yeah? He could be a lyricist for basically every 90's-00's teenage rock band. And I do mean this as kind of a compliment, it's nice to have him just be genuinely morose and depressed and whatnot.
A bunch of Black enchantments and sorceries. COils of the Medusa is interesting, and basically gives a creature the Medusa "turn everything into stone" ability for a single turn.
We get to learn more about Karn in Agonizing Memories and Tendrils of Despair. He's a robot golem man, but he has feelings! He has tears but he cannot cry, he has regrets because he got angry and killed some dude once. It's going to be interesting when we eventually meet Karn.
And now Blue! Manta Ray is a pretty neat piece of artwork, and I absolutely love real world manta rays, but it's kind of just an animal transplanted into Magic, and at that point that's just... that's just all right, y'know?
And we get the Cloud Djinn and the Merfolk Traders, a couple of staple creature types in Blue, the djinni and the merfolk.
...and a bunch of humans, a phantom-illusion and an owl. Again, pretty cool artwork on all of them, but not much for me to say. Noble Benefactor looks equally smarmy and friendly. Tolarian Entrancer looks straight-up crazy and is basically how I imagine Joruus C'baoth looking from the old Star Wars EU novels.
Tolarian Serpent's our obligatory Blue sea serpent. Basically, a significant amount of the Blue card text features not the mage Ertai, but rather the angry, surly minotaur man Tahngarth, whose personality boils down to him complaining about every problem that can't be solved with a hammer to the face. Based on Abjure's flavour text, Ertai's kind of a shithead, apparently.
Mana Chains has a really cool artwork. I like it.
The flavour text for Phantom Wings is pretty funny. "But you said 'when goats fly'!" Honestly, considering the sheer amount of weird magical shit that goes on not just in M:TG but in any fantasy setting, a lot of English proverbs just don't make sense, yeah? Like, "when pigs fly" is probably not going to symbolize what it means in regular real-life English because pigs in M:TG probably can't fly, if you look hard enough, there probably are pigs that can swim, burrow through the ground, then jump up and transform into a dragon and polymorph someone into a caterpillar.
Oh, hey, it's Teferi's Veil, causing things to still phase in and out of existence. Silly Teferi, you may be an all powerful planeswalker, but observe some OSHA regulations! Flux and Paradigm Shift both have pretty cool artworks.
A bunch of "just an animal" with Arctic Wolves, Rogue Elephant and Striped Bears. As expected, Mirri the catfolk is the representative for the colour Green, and her dialogue is kind of like a nature trail tour guide. Not much to say here, they're pretty neat animals!
And we get a bunch of Llanowar elves, which basically builds up on the not-insignificant elf warriors hailing from Llanowar forest throughout these last dozen or so expansions of Magic: The Gathering. Familiar Ground has a genuinely hilarious line from Gerrard. That's actually a neat little line, man.
And we get a bunch of Green enchantments and instants, and they're... very Green, I guess? Briar Shield looks insanely uncomfortable, though. Not the shield, which is probably practical, but that bizarre cage-helmet just looks like it's going to harm more than help.
More green spells. Choking Vines looks like it's fucking up those poor, poor goblins. Not much to really say here.
And Red now! I'm not sure what that weird earless-rabbit-creature in Cinder Wall is supposed to be... but it's sure fucked, huh? Roc Hatchling, Sawtooth Ogre and Hurloon Shaman are representatives of a bunch of common Red-themed creatures in rocs, ogres and minotaurs. Apparently, Tahngarth isn't above insulting his own race's appearance. He gets a pass, I suppose.
Cinder Giant has a pretty cool artwork. And I do like the contrast between the non-standard (read: non-Tolkien) dwarves here. Dwarven Berserker has a mohawk and is nearly clean shaven, whereas Dwarven Thaumaturgist has a very non-dwarfy beard and looks more like he hangs out with Geppetto over cookies and tea instead of hanging out with Dvalin and Gloin for ale and raucous bar fighting.
Not much to say here. Goblin Vandal has a fun expression. That orc (?) in Fit of Rage looks positively shocked at what I think is the exact same mohawked Dwarven Berserker. The thing in Goblin Bomb looks more like a battering ram or siege engine of sorts, but I guess anything piloted by goblins end up becoming a bomb?
And we get a bunch of fire-themed and lightning-themed Red spells. Thunde.rbolt and Firestorm look particularly cool.
A bunch more Red spells. Boiling Blood looks genuinely spooky looking, and I do like just how dramatically jumping the caster of the Cone of Flame is.
We get a couple of Red enhancements and a couple of White human soldiers from Benalia, which we've seen a couple of times before.
"Soul Shepherd" is actually a pretty cool name to give to what's basically a priest. Southern Paladin really looks like the DC character Black Adam for a while. And we get a couple more extra human soldiers and whatnot -- most of the White stuff has Gerrard's dialogue attached to them, but they're genuinely generic heroic stuff. Like, I'm not trying to shit on Gerrard, but so far he's just lie a generic everyday fantasy hero, y'know?
More soldiers! That two-headed ogre in Foriysian Brigade is kinda neat, and I do like the artwork on Heavy Ballista.
And here are the obligatory White-allied beasts. Duskrider Falcon the falcon, Revered Unicorn the unicorn and Mistmoon Griffin the griffin. They're neat.
A bunch of white enchantments. I'm not sure what's going on with Kithkin Armor... I guess the human wearing the armour is... invulnerable from those ghosts? Or something?
A bunch more white spells. I really don't have anything to say here.
Artifacts now. Not... not much to say. The artwork's neat.
The Mind Stone! Thanos is coming for it! Oh no!
Bosium Strip, is, of course, an anagram of Mobius strip.
Chimeric Sphere is a creepy-looking motherfucker, it's got a body like a ball, two lanky arms, bat wings and an angry screaming face. I'm not sure what's going on with Dingus Staff, but that's got to be one of the more unfortunate names for an artifact. Bubble Matrix sounds funny! I like this set of artifacts.
Because this is technically a smaller expansion, we're still using Jamuraan lands despite the Weatherlight crew basically jumping all over Dominaria. I do like Lotus Vale, which is a neat callback to good old Black Lotus.
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Title : Reviewing Magic: The Gathering #11 - Weatherlight
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Reviewing Magic: The Gathering #11 - Weatherlight
And here we are. Magic's eleventh expansion and supposedly the final set in the Mirage block, but really it focused more on telling its own storyline, kick-starting the Weatherlight saga which follows the crew of a skyship called the Weatherlight. Briefly participating in the climax of the Mirage/Visions storyline when they assisted some of the champions of Jamuraa in freeing the nation, the actual Weatherlight expansion basically started off a brand-new storyline called the Weatherlight Saga, which ran through all of the expansions told from 1997 through 2001 as we follow around the crew of the Weatherlight. And where I did have some brief complaints about how the previous sets (called "pre-revisionist" by the fans) didn't really represent the storylines well, the Weatherlight saga came under complaints for the exact opposite, where the main characters and their stories actually overrode too much of the cards. We'll see how I feel about these, because even moreso than the previous expansions, when looking through M:TG's history, the huge Weatherlight saga was one that I just basically skimmed through. Well, now's the time to actually tackle and try and read some of the stories, yeah? |
| Sisay |
As told by the little synopsis, apparently, we're returning back to a storyline and a pair of characters from Antiquities to form the backbone of this storyline. Urza and Mishra, those two brothers, opened the portal to the evil plane Phyrexia in what would now be 4000 years ago of history. (Magic loves its timeskips.) Now the Phyrexians and its lord Yawgmoth wants to invade the plane of Dominaria, the plane where most of the Magic sets we've seen were set... and the only hope is for the crew of the Weatherlight, led by Captain Sisay, to gather a cache of powerful artifacts belonging to Urza called "The Legacy". In addition to Captain Sisay, we've got the roguish main male lead Gerrard Capashen, the bumbling goblin cabin boy Squee and the hulking minotaur Tahngarth. And as Sisay is kidnapped by the forces of Phyrexia, Gerrard has to lead the crew of the Weatherlight to the plane of Rath... or, well, as shown in this expansion, gather a crew to go there.Basically, kind of like the Infinity Stones thing, only instead of Thanos collecting them, it's the good guys trying to do so to prevent a plane of death and decay from coming into Dominaria.
And I'm going to go on a bit of a different route this time around, something a bit more experimental (and why I eventually split this off from my original intention to review Visions and Weatherlight together). With the help of this handy-dandy guide to how the events of the story is represented in the cards, we'll cover the story of Weatherlight first before going straight into the actual monsters and whatnot.
- Click here for the previous part, Vision.
- Click here for the next part, Tempest.
- Click here for the index.
As usual, early Magic: The Gathering cards don't really represent the actual main characters of the saga as actual cards... but unlike Teferi, Urza, Leshrac or Kaervek, the characters show up in the cards a lot more. And our saga apparently begins when Sisay discovers the Thran Tome and studies it, as shown in Ancestral Knowledge, and I'm assuming that this is where she studied that there might be more to her ship, the Weatherlight, beyond just being an ancestral ship passed down to her.
And then... Abduction! It's the 90's, sadly, so despite the captain of the ship being a woman of colour, the main character still has to be a dude, so poor Captain Sisay is abducted by unknown forces.
The rest of the crew end up going to the nation of Benalia to pick up their former master of arms, Gerrard Capashen. You can see the minotaur Tahngarth in the background, complaining about the Benalish Missionary. And, of course, Gerrard's Wisdom, or Gerrard's Main Character Status, basically allows him to figure out where to go next. And alongside Tahngarth, they go off to recruit members. Just like a D&D session!
First of these crewmates come from the Llanowar forest, where the catfolk warrior Mirri, an old friend of Gerrard. The crew meets a couple of Llanowar residents, like the Llanowar Druid, but eventually find Mirri. Call of the Wild shows off the goblin cabin boy Squee, who also helps out. He's the comedy sidekick in this one, I think? Oh, and that blonde girl next to Gerrard in Llanowar Druid's card art is Hanna, the ship's navigator, who's kind of a recurring, if non-main, character.
Presumably, they probably has to help out Llanowar and the elves before Mirri joins with them, as seen in Vitalize and Nature's Kiss. I mean, it's basic fantasy storytelling. Afterwards they figure out about the whole Legacy artifact thing when Gerrard experiments with the Null Rod, another artifact that belonged to the Legacy...
...but then they have to fight an Aboroth (which we'll cover later individually), a giant monster. Gerrard ends up using the Thran Forge to strengthen the Aboroth so much it turns into an artifact, and then use the Touchstone to destroy the now-artifacted Aboroth. Both the Forge and the Touchstone, by the way, is yet another artifact that makes up the Legacy.
Not really properly depicted in cards, the Weatherlight crew ended up realizing that they needed a powerful wizard with them, and they go off to Tolaria (last seen in the Legends expansion), where they intended to ask Hanna's father Barrin to join... but instead, they get Barrin's apprentice Ertai (seen in Relearn). With their crew complete, they face off against a couple of monsters -- a sawrm of Avizoa (again, we'll cover this one later) and the Abyssal Gatekeeper in the treacherous lands of Urborg. Also, yeah, this is basically getting a representative character of each colour.
As the Weatherlight crew enter Urborg, as depicted in Haunting Misery and Shattered Crypt, Gerrard and company meets another former crewmate, Crovax. Crovax faces off against the agents of Rath, Gallowbraid and Morinfen -- a pair of horrors who have had dealings and a lasting grudge against Crovax. With his family estate destroyed and him only wanting purpose, Crovax joins the team. With Crovax's beloved angel companion Selenia disappeared and the two agents of Rath laying waste to his family estate, Crovax ended up joining the crew once more, albeit after dishing out some Urborg Justice.
Gallowbraid and Morinfen are a pair of legendary horrors from Phyrexia, even though they kinda look like ghouls. Gallowbraid's basically a hideous zombie without a lower jaw, whereas Morinfen's got long, gangly limbs and bat wings. Pretty neat little mid-bosses for our heroes, actually.
Eventually, as they wander around looking for someone to guide them to the plane of Rath where they figure out Sisay is being held, they arrive at the island of Keld, where they face off against
And that's about it for the storyline of Weatherlight, told through a mixture of comics, text stories and a bunch of card flavour text. Basically, there are some holes to be filled in here and there about Sisay and Gerrard's respective backstories, and how they basically end up in the stormy, desolate plane of Rath in the next expansion, Tempest, but basically the whole storyline in this expansion is kind of a recruit quest to gather a full crew: Main character reluctant hero Gerrard; the big guy Tahngarth; comic relief Squee; faithful lancer Mirri; smart dude Ertai; glum dude with a long backstory and a vengeance Crovax; sixth ranger obvious-traitor Starke; badass-in-distress mentor Sisay. Again, not the most derivative of fantasy casts, but it's there!
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Anyway, I'm not sure if this is the format I'll be using for the rest of the Weatherlight saga. We might go with this "story cards", "monster cards I have a lot to speak about", break, then the rest of the expansion format, or maybe I'll cover the monsters first before talking about the story and the rest of the expansion after the break. We'll see. Weatherlight the expansion is kind of short and I don't have a whole ton to talk about, so it allowed me to be a wee bit more experimental, but we'll see with future expansions.
With that story time over, let's go to talking about monsters!
First up is the Abyssal Gatekeeper, a horror of Phyrexia that the crew of the Weatherlight had to face off against when going to Urborg to recruit Crovax. On first glance, it seems like this giant gatekeeper is just a giant robot lobster monster that's in-set into the gate, rising up to attack Gerrard... but look a little closer and you realize that inset to the Gatekeeper's "head" is a face, which makes this creature slightly more unnerving. I think this is the set where we sort of establish Phyrexia as having a mixture of techno-organic horrors as opposed to just being purely robots? Or something along those lines?
Hidden Horror is a pretty spooky monster, too. Like, it's an undead creature, and it's shaped like a Giger-esque version of a centipede. Multiple legs that bristle about and kinda look disturbingly like ribcages, and a massive mouth full of sharp teeth set on that disgusting, pus-coloured body... but look at the background and apparently it's crawling out of some poor dead dude's corpse. Apparently, this is Hidden Horror's gimmick -- as an additional cost of casting the Hidden Horror, you must sacrifice one of your creatures, representing the Hidden Horror bursting out of the unfortunate sap, Chestburster style, which is neat!
Mischievous Poltergeist's face just looks straight out of some cartoon, yeah? I'm not sure what artstyle this is specifically trying to mimic. Casper? Looney Tunes? Old Disney? Either way, it's clearly a poltergeist with a goofy-ass face that's trying to poke and kind of disturb that very non-plussed mage lady. Pretty fun card art.
Barrow Ghoul is a nasty ass ghoul that really just looks pretty damn decayed and creepy, and it's a pretty flavourful mechanic where it has to keep feeding on corpses from your graveyeard to even keep existing. Apparently, these are zombies unleashed upon Crovax's property, feeding upon the dead bodies of his ancestors.
Another Atog! Are we just getting a new Atog every expansion? I sure hope so! The Necratog finally shows us a more full body after the previous three -- Atog, Foratog and Chronatog -- showed just the head and upper body, and apparently Atogs are vaguely lizard/frog-like monsters with massive, massive maws. The Necratog has an almost frog-like body layout, and, of course, it eats the corpses of your dead creatures in the graveyard for a power boost.
Odylic Wraith is a pretty interesting take on wraiths. We've seen a couple of these wraiths and ghosts, but none that, I feel, is as bizarre as this. This wraith's multiple arms are basically vines that weave in and out of the trees, and his face is twisted into an angry face that pops out of the trees. A pretty bizarre looking wraith, and you don't really even see the 'body' of this particular ghost. Pretty neat art.
And on a less whimsical side of evil monsters compared to the poltergeist or the wraith is the Urborg Stalker, which is a lot more creepy looking. It's a giant skull with fangs and spotlight eyes, massive long tapering claws that reach into its hollowed-out skull and the green flame that burns within. And it's giant, because if you look a bit closer, his shoulders are made of piles and piles of ribcages, so the Urborg Stalker seems to be a gigantic skeleton monster. Shame that the Urborg Stalker doesn't really even have a whole lot of lore tied to it other than being a spooky undead monster, not being featured in the Weatherlight story or even being an undead sub-type that shows up later on.
What does show up in the Weatherlight story is the Avizoa, which is a flying jellyfish that attacked the Weatherlight crew between recruiting Ertai and recruiting Crovax. And these are giant Metroid-esque jellyfishes that fly in the air, grabbing poor crewmen and apparently eating them through that creepy-ass tiny fanged mouths that jut out from under their bodies, as seen in the upper left. Hey, if you have a flying ship, you got to have flying sea-life, right?
Ertai doesn't have any connections to Teferi, at least I don't think, but Ertai's Familiar is this cute little lizard dude with the goofiest-looking face that can phase in and out of existence. Or it might just be a less fantastical chameleon camouflage ability that they just represent in-game with Phasing. Either way, this lizard critter can both hold a goblet, and has some weird sideburns.
Fog Elemental is a pretty neat depiction of an elemental, and I always love Magic's elementals. Like, sure, they kind of go overboard sometimes with the X-Elementals they have, but at least they're creative and it isn't just the same genie body type, y'know? And the fact that this is just the fog that takes the vague appearance of a sideways mask-like face is just both so serene and sinister at the same time.
Ophidian actually refers to a the clade Ophidia, a group of reptiles that comprises of snakes and other snake-related reptiles. This is a creepy-ass snake, though, with the way its mouth is hinged. It looks more like a bizarre anglerfish jaw... and the way this card art is laid out, it makes it look like the snake's eye is on the top of its nose. Can't even complain, maybe this is a magic snake.
Vodalian Illusionist is an interesting merfolk, and apparently he's got a creepy lamprey buddy! I do like this look for the merfolk, the random fish-fin bits that jut out from his back sort of give the merfolk's upper body kind of an inhuman look without going full Creature From The Black Lagoon. Apparently, the Vodalian Illusionist is able to cause other creatures to phase out, so I guess post-Mirage, phasing out is just shorthand for "hiding", what with this seemingly being caused by illusions?
We get a couple of drakes! Tolarian Drake's got a gorgeous, gorgeous set of wings that look like a glass-stain painting, and I actually mistook the art for the drake perching on top of a building with a glass dome before seeing the bat-like skeletal structure. Apparently, the Tolarian Drake's wings will cause you to go insane after looking into it for too long.
Poor, poor Timid Drake! It's tiny head and neck just looks so adorable next to its plump body, and that face is just so "oh gee oh god I'm so scared" as the Weatherlight flies in the background. Gerrard scared one off with a sneeze, apparently, and I love how the effect means that any time another creature is summoned, the Timid Drake gets so scared it jumps back to the owner's hand. Poor thing, it really should just stay in its lair and eat cookies and not be afraid.
Apathy is a glorious card art. There are wizards, goblins, weird giant purple fanged creatures fighting in the background of this tavern, but maaaaan, Roggvir just isn't feeling it today, y'know? It's one of those days, y'know, he's just tired, it's his day off, and sure, he could probably beat half the bar's patrons to submission, but he's just so fucking done with the day, and he really just doesn't give a shit. Oh, helmet got pierced by an ersatz spear? Boo-fucking-hoo, it's his time off, and he's going to just drink that mug of dwarven ale.
Mwonvuli Ooze is a goopy jelly goop monster that looks like an actual clump of jell-o. It's actually massive, though, large enough to swallow trees and is about to swallow those poor, poor monkeys. We haven't seen ooze monsters in M:TG in a while, and it's nice to see some.
And here is the Aboroth, the massive creature that menaced Gerrard and party and ended up requiring the usage of the Thran Forge and the Touchstone to defeat. Later revisions would identify the Aboroth as an "elemental", which is why it's a green creature -- the first time I saw this giant thing I thought it's like some sort of bizarre flesh abomination. And... I'm not sure what it is, honestly. Some sort of amalgamation of mud and dirt, according to the flavour text, I guess? Whatever it is, it's gigantic and pretty spooky looking, especially with that tortured-looking face, those face-like growths on his chest and the huge, gaping hole in its stomach.
And we have the Barishi, which is another creature later retroactively identified as an elemental. This one is... a deer-like creature, I guess, made entirely out of plants? With tree-antlers and a disturbingly human face? It's a creepy looking face, in any case. It's a bit of a neat looking monster for sure.
So apparently some people somewhere have domesticated Wurms, and use these Harvest Wurms to till their fields by utilizing the tail-spikes on this particular wurm. Okay? That honestly seems impractical, particularly with the amount of resources you'd probably have to feed this massive monster. I guess the farmers don't mind.
Fallow Wurm, despite the flavour text mentioning ruined crops... is probably actually beneficial to the farmers. Not only is this particular Wurm doing its digging in the winter, "fallow" means a patch of land that's plowed and harrowed, but left unsown to restore its fertility, something used in a crop rotation. And honestly, with the farmers apparently domesticating the Harvest Wurms, that'd probably keep other competing Wurms out of their territory? Maybe?
The Fungus Elemental is just this massive tendril made up of fungi that's seemingly in the process of consuming that tree, and it's definitely a pretty interesting creature -- the Fungus Elemental looks more like some sort of parasitic worm or leech of some sorts instead of like a more humanoid or even human-faced manifestation of an actual element. Which, I suppose, makes sense. Why do most of the elementals in D&D take humanoid forms, anyway?
It's kind of hard to tell what is going on in Llanowar Behemoth, but it's basically a giant mecha made out of plant matter, mud and vines, with multiple elves riding it and manning ballistae. That's pretty unexpected of the elves, actually, and while it doesn't jive perfectly with how the elves usually behave, it's a neat variation that still plays into their "commune with and control plants" flavour. These are just a bit more creative... and honestly, when you live in a world where giant mud monsters like the Aboroth exist, you probably have to have contingency plans like this.
We visit Urborg briefly in the storyline, so we get to see a couple of monsters from the other Burning Isles like Bogardan, including the Bogardan Firefiend, which is a spirit of flame that's like this mutated boar monster with long, gorilla-like arms and a set of holes down its spines that spew out flames. Pretty mean looking monster for sure!
Lava Hounds are pretty neat looking rock-themed hound monsters. There's really not too much subtlety here, they're basically just the typical 'hellhound' monster type, but instead of fire and brimstone, it's volcanic rock. Pretty cool.
Okay, the Orcish Settlers are kinda funny. Apparently in trying to make burnt toast, that poor orc just accidentally burned his entire house to the ground, and mammy orc is about to lay some smackdown onto him. Pretty fun art, even though the creatures there does kind of look more goblin-esque than orc-esque, yeah? I guess it's because these particular dudes aren't as buff as regular orcs.
Goblin Grenadiers are another hilarious set of goblins that go around with jackets filled with TNT and barrels of presumably even more TNT. Both Goblin Grenadiers and Orcish Settlers basically blow up a land if you sacrifice them, albeit for different costs -- one blows stuff up, one accidentally burns stuff down. I do like the little flavour text here, where Squee, our goblin friend, is so happy to not be the dumbest one in the room.
Thundermare is just a pretty dang cool looking creature, yeah? The artwork does make it look more like a lava horse than a thunder/lightning-based monster, though, which is kind of a bit of a disconnect between the art and the name. It's still a damn badass looking creature, though, and whether you get killed by lightning or magma, you're still dead, y'know?
Guided Strike is one of the handful of White cards I find interesting from this set, mostly becuase, interestingly, it features this giant, bizarre bug-ghost creature attacking the adventurer with a hood. And at first, I thought this is perhaps one of the first White-coloured creatures that are actually not just another pegasus, angel, griffon or human, since clearly the "Guided Strike" is a White spell, and the one doing the striking is the light creature, yeah? Except as a friend pointed out to me, this unnamed critter in Guided Strike's art would actually receive an actual creature card and a name -- the Ridged Kusite, and that's a Black horror creature. So, uh... it's a White spell depicting a Black-mana monster doing an attack. Okay? The Kusite's a lot cooler in Guided Strike's art piece, I wanna say.
Hoo boy I really don't have anything to say about White creatures this time around. Alabaster Dragon's a pretty cool, if standard, dragon, but I do appreciate just how majestic it looks with that pose and expression, and just how tiny the Skyship Weatherlight looks next to it. But the Alabaster Dragon's only a 4/4!
And we go into artifact creatures, and the flavour text for the artifacts is the first we see of Karn the silver golem, another major character in the Weatherlight saga that we've kind of yet to meet. Or maybe some of the tie-in material at the time features Karn? I dunno. The Serrated Biskelion is a pretty nasty looking artifact creature, though, basically an AT-ST, except instead of being clunky and looking like it's 90% joints, this one is 100% spikes and serrated edges, and I assume those spikes running down its head down to its tail all rotate and spin as it charges and tries to slam its barbed-shieldface at people.
And we get a couple of golems! Steel Golem would've been a pretty generic fantasy not-a-mecha, but man that head just look absolutely bizarre, like an alien or something. And are those wires that give off some sort of white smoke cut off while the Steel Golem is damaged, or are they part of the design? Straw Golem goes for a more magically-inclined artifact creature in comparison to the Steel Golem and the Biskelion, being a giant man-thing made entirely out of straw. It's a giant scarecrow-ogre, and I like it.
And finally we get Jangling Automaton. On first glance I thought it was just a hulking humanoid robot from an odd angle, but look at it! It's got two "legs", one of which resembles a human leg and another a massive gorilla fist, it's got a humanoid arm randomly attached to the fist-leg that also has a chicken leg attached to it. It's got a massive metal canister head-thing, and I'm not even sure what the rest of the body is meant to be -- it's like the shell of a turtle, almost? Apparently Hanna made this. Okay.
Click below for the rest of the expansion.
Rapid-firing through the rest, we do have a bunch of cards that are just... well, kind of "repeated" Black-mana minions that we've seen multiple times even within the block of Mirage/Visions/Weatherlight. Fledging Djinn, Razortooth Rats, Bone Dancer, Circling Vultures... we've seen all of these in more interesting variations. And don't get me wrong, it's nice to keep up the fantasy and these are all solid pieces of artwork, but Black-mana rat #10 and Black-mana undead sorcerer #25 really doesn't lend to much conversation, y'know?
The Shadow Rider has a very Illithid-Cthulhu-esque helmet. That's pretty cool, actually.
A lot of the Black cards of this set feature quotes from Crovax, who's the Black-coloured main character of the Weatherlight set, and, man, particularly on the quote in Zombie Scavengers and Buried Alive, he's pretty emo, yeah? He could be a lyricist for basically every 90's-00's teenage rock band. And I do mean this as kind of a compliment, it's nice to have him just be genuinely morose and depressed and whatnot.
A bunch of Black enchantments and sorceries. COils of the Medusa is interesting, and basically gives a creature the Medusa "turn everything into stone" ability for a single turn.
We get to learn more about Karn in Agonizing Memories and Tendrils of Despair. He's a robot golem man, but he has feelings! He has tears but he cannot cry, he has regrets because he got angry and killed some dude once. It's going to be interesting when we eventually meet Karn.
And now Blue! Manta Ray is a pretty neat piece of artwork, and I absolutely love real world manta rays, but it's kind of just an animal transplanted into Magic, and at that point that's just... that's just all right, y'know?
And we get the Cloud Djinn and the Merfolk Traders, a couple of staple creature types in Blue, the djinni and the merfolk.
...and a bunch of humans, a phantom-illusion and an owl. Again, pretty cool artwork on all of them, but not much for me to say. Noble Benefactor looks equally smarmy and friendly. Tolarian Entrancer looks straight-up crazy and is basically how I imagine Joruus C'baoth looking from the old Star Wars EU novels.
Tolarian Serpent's our obligatory Blue sea serpent. Basically, a significant amount of the Blue card text features not the mage Ertai, but rather the angry, surly minotaur man Tahngarth, whose personality boils down to him complaining about every problem that can't be solved with a hammer to the face. Based on Abjure's flavour text, Ertai's kind of a shithead, apparently.
Mana Chains has a really cool artwork. I like it.
The flavour text for Phantom Wings is pretty funny. "But you said 'when goats fly'!" Honestly, considering the sheer amount of weird magical shit that goes on not just in M:TG but in any fantasy setting, a lot of English proverbs just don't make sense, yeah? Like, "when pigs fly" is probably not going to symbolize what it means in regular real-life English because pigs in M:TG probably can't fly, if you look hard enough, there probably are pigs that can swim, burrow through the ground, then jump up and transform into a dragon and polymorph someone into a caterpillar.
Oh, hey, it's Teferi's Veil, causing things to still phase in and out of existence. Silly Teferi, you may be an all powerful planeswalker, but observe some OSHA regulations! Flux and Paradigm Shift both have pretty cool artworks.
A bunch of "just an animal" with Arctic Wolves, Rogue Elephant and Striped Bears. As expected, Mirri the catfolk is the representative for the colour Green, and her dialogue is kind of like a nature trail tour guide. Not much to say here, they're pretty neat animals!
And we get a bunch of Llanowar elves, which basically builds up on the not-insignificant elf warriors hailing from Llanowar forest throughout these last dozen or so expansions of Magic: The Gathering. Familiar Ground has a genuinely hilarious line from Gerrard. That's actually a neat little line, man.
And we get a bunch of Green enchantments and instants, and they're... very Green, I guess? Briar Shield looks insanely uncomfortable, though. Not the shield, which is probably practical, but that bizarre cage-helmet just looks like it's going to harm more than help.
And Red now! I'm not sure what that weird earless-rabbit-creature in Cinder Wall is supposed to be... but it's sure fucked, huh? Roc Hatchling, Sawtooth Ogre and Hurloon Shaman are representatives of a bunch of common Red-themed creatures in rocs, ogres and minotaurs. Apparently, Tahngarth isn't above insulting his own race's appearance. He gets a pass, I suppose.
Cinder Giant has a pretty cool artwork. And I do like the contrast between the non-standard (read: non-Tolkien) dwarves here. Dwarven Berserker has a mohawk and is nearly clean shaven, whereas Dwarven Thaumaturgist has a very non-dwarfy beard and looks more like he hangs out with Geppetto over cookies and tea instead of hanging out with Dvalin and Gloin for ale and raucous bar fighting.
Not much to say here. Goblin Vandal has a fun expression. That orc (?) in Fit of Rage looks positively shocked at what I think is the exact same mohawked Dwarven Berserker. The thing in Goblin Bomb looks more like a battering ram or siege engine of sorts, but I guess anything piloted by goblins end up becoming a bomb?
And we get a bunch of fire-themed and lightning-themed Red spells. Thunde.rbolt and Firestorm look particularly cool.
A bunch more Red spells. Boiling Blood looks genuinely spooky looking, and I do like just how dramatically jumping the caster of the Cone of Flame is.
We get a couple of Red enhancements and a couple of White human soldiers from Benalia, which we've seen a couple of times before.
"Soul Shepherd" is actually a pretty cool name to give to what's basically a priest. Southern Paladin really looks like the DC character Black Adam for a while. And we get a couple more extra human soldiers and whatnot -- most of the White stuff has Gerrard's dialogue attached to them, but they're genuinely generic heroic stuff. Like, I'm not trying to shit on Gerrard, but so far he's just lie a generic everyday fantasy hero, y'know?
More soldiers! That two-headed ogre in Foriysian Brigade is kinda neat, and I do like the artwork on Heavy Ballista.
And here are the obligatory White-allied beasts. Duskrider Falcon the falcon, Revered Unicorn the unicorn and Mistmoon Griffin the griffin. They're neat.
A bunch of white enchantments. I'm not sure what's going on with Kithkin Armor... I guess the human wearing the armour is... invulnerable from those ghosts? Or something?
A bunch more white spells. I really don't have anything to say here.
Artifacts now. Not... not much to say. The artwork's neat.
The Mind Stone! Thanos is coming for it! Oh no!
Bosium Strip, is, of course, an anagram of Mobius strip.
Chimeric Sphere is a creepy-looking motherfucker, it's got a body like a ball, two lanky arms, bat wings and an angry screaming face. I'm not sure what's going on with Dingus Staff, but that's got to be one of the more unfortunate names for an artifact. Bubble Matrix sounds funny! I like this set of artifacts.
That's the article Reviewing Magic: The Gathering #11 - Weatherlight
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