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Episode 137:Melthos? I hardly know those!
137 Plays3 years ago
Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome back to another episode of the Goblin Lore Podcast! Taya is back with us!!! In case you missed she visited the cast way back in Episode 115. Hobbes and Alex previously took on Psychographics/Aesthetics when it comes to Magic Players and that episode introduced the concept of the hybrid Melvin/Vorthos player... the Melthos . Today we dive deeper into what this could mean with examples that we feel both hit and miss this aesthetic. Today's episode mentions a lot of works previously done especially by Mark Rosewater so we are including links to these .
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/vorthos-and-mel-2015-08-31
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/melvin-and-vorthos-2007-05-07
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As promised, we plan to keep these Mental Health Links available moving forward too. For general Mental Health the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) has great resources for people struggling with mental health concerns as well as their families. We also want to draw attention to this article on stigma from NAMI's site.
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You can find the hosts on Twitter: Hobbes Q. at @HobbesQ, and Alex Newman at @Mel_Chronicler. Send questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to @GoblinLorePod on Twitter or GoblinLorePodcast@gmail.com.
Opening
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsors
00:00:29
Speaker
Hello Podwalkers, and welcome to another episode of the Goblin Lore podcast. And this episode, like all of our episodes, is very special because we have a wonderful guest with us tonight. Our friend Taya is here to talk about wonderful story things. But so before we get into the topic too much, we're going to do quick introductions.
00:00:52
Speaker
Wait, no, I'm a professional podcaster. I remember we have sponsors. We should mention that. We should do that. Hey, Hobbs. Yeah. Hey, I just had a cup this morning.
00:01:04
Speaker
the bourbon blend, which is really, really good. What we're referring to is the Grinding Coffee Company, which is an LGBT minority owned business that sponsors gamers and they partner with gamers when it comes to coffee. They've been awesome. I was talking to Alex earlier. They continue to support whenever we do mental health
00:01:30
Speaker
streams, they give away stuff for us, they've been very supportive of us, they hype our material, they retweet us, they give us all of those support, and it's also really good copy.
00:01:41
Speaker
I will say that it's been, since their Kickstarter, it has been pretty much my predominant coffee, and I drink it every day. So yeah, we always have to say thank you to them. I was gonna thank them. And I pass this off to Hobbs, because I am not a coffee drinker myself, but I do really appreciate all their support. Every time you just even from when we take breaks and things that are very, they're supportive, and they're great, and we love having them be a be a sponsor of our cast.
Personal Updates and Scheduling
00:02:09
Speaker
So before we go too far, I suppose I'll actually introduce myself and then I'll lead into kind of what we're doing and then we can get to our wonderful guest.
00:02:17
Speaker
Um, but I'm Alex Newman phoned on Twitter at Mel underscore chronicler. Um, we do have an opening question, which I'll get to in a second. Oh, my pronouns are, are he him? Um, but I do just want to give everyone a heads up. I know, um, at the end of the year we talked, we gave a quick heads up. I even recorded a quick little episode that we were going to be a little more sporadic and that may continue. We'll see how things go. I just want to let everyone just take, not to go too deep, but just to let everybody know, I personally have been having issues sleeping lately and.
00:02:47
Speaker
A few months ago, a witness spoke to a doctor and then last month was finally able, after a couple months of waiting, able to get an appointment with a sleep specialist and now I have a sleep study scheduled this week. So it's moving and hopefully I can get a CPAP or something to help and at some point then I'll have more energy to actually do things. But right now it's really starting to drag and I'm starting to notice it in my life. That's part of why
00:03:12
Speaker
When American health care system, it's so wonderful. Yeah, we have so much freedom in our health care system, right? Freedom. It took you it only took you how long to actually get this when I talked about it initially, when I went initially in to talk to a doctor and have a physical that was in September.
00:03:32
Speaker
I believe. And yeah, maybe it was October, because then it took a few weeks. And then it was two months before I had my sleep specialist appointment on December 9. We're recording this now on January 16. So it's been a month and a almost a month and a half over a month since I had the meeting with the sleep specialist. And now I'm finally getting the sleep study this week. And you literally had to all in follow up.
00:04:00
Speaker
Oh, I had to call him up with American healthcare. After three weeks, I was told it was going to take 10 days and they would call me within that time. And if not, call them. Based on my experience with sleep doctors, you're, you're running a little above par. Yeah. And it's, it's so sad.
00:04:17
Speaker
One nice thing, the sleep specialist I talked to did say, normally, after doing a study, the data would go to him, then their office would call me to come sit down and then move from there. He's like, you probably have sleep apnea. If that's what the data says, I'm going to get it started immediately to get you a CPAP before we even talk to you, because then that will at least shave off some time for you. It's like, well, thank you. That's a fantastic thing to hear.
00:04:45
Speaker
It's rough. So not
Exploring Melthos in Magic: The Gathering
00:04:47
Speaker
to get off on a tangent before we have an actual topic to talk about, but I wanted to just give everyone a heads up that I, due to that, there may be a little more inconsistency with our schedule. We'll do what we can, but it's kind of tough right now for me to get things done, particularly with the status of the rest of the entire world. And then you add on the stress of just not getting enough sleep.
00:05:12
Speaker
Um, but so we are here to talk about our, you know, best or worst, like Melthos story moments. This was a wonderful topic that Taya brought to us. And we thought a good way to sort of introduce what in the heck does that even mean is for us, is a part of our intro for part of our daily question to talk about a card that we think really fits sort of a good Melthos card. So Mel,
00:05:37
Speaker
and Vorthos, it's kind of a combination of those two aesthetic profiles that we've talked about in past episodes. The stuff exists all over the magic community, kind of talking about those if you're interested.
00:05:51
Speaker
Vorthos is very story-oriented, cares about the lore, cares about the story and the characters. And then Mel is much more mechanically inclined. So a good Mel card, because I'm going to tangent even further. And this is a good excuse for me to talk about this card that I will never ever in the entire world probably get to talk about again.
00:06:13
Speaker
There's a card called Drudge Sentinel from Dominaria, and I love this card. Wow, you're right. You are completely right that this is not a card I wouldn't say. This is not like my bingo to be talking about today. No, it is one of my favorite cards from Dominaria. It's a creature, 2-1 for three men or whatever, but it's ability
00:06:35
Speaker
three, tap drudge sentinel, it gains indestructible until end of turn. And that sounds like why, why do you care about this? Well, the reason I care about this is because that is such a perfect, wonderful way for them to bring back regenerate without bringing back regenerate. And drudge sentinel is a skeleton referencing the drudge skeletons from alpha that regenerated.
00:07:04
Speaker
I love it. It's such a good callback. This was a great way to mechanically recreate Regenerate without actually creating Regenerate. Because Regenerate's weird, it was an early mechanic that went through so many rules, changes, and it's one that it's just really confusing for new players in particular, old players as well sometimes. It's just a little weird. You think you understand how it works,
00:07:29
Speaker
And most of the time you do, but there's that like 10% of interactions that are just weird with it. So they try not to put like a shield on it even that could be delayed. It's yeah, that is in the rules text. It's weird. So that's a card that I love that from a Melvin stamp or a male standpoint, excuse me that that is for me like that's I think hits the metal. That mechanical representation was so good. So then
00:07:59
Speaker
That was my bonus card. Now I'm going to actually talk about my Melthos card is Floodgate. I talk about this card on the cast every so often, but I realize it's probably been a while. Like literally our first episode, I talked about this card. It's a blue card called the Floodgate. It's a 0-5 wall.
00:08:18
Speaker
If it gains flying, it gets destroyed. It's a sacrifice. It is the current rules text. The old one was weird. And if it leaves the battlefield or when it leaves the battlefield, it deals damage equal to half the number of islands you control, rounded down to non-blue creatures without flying.
00:08:35
Speaker
Again, arbitrary kind of random card for me to have this great passionate love of, but it's because those mechanics so perfectly encapsulate this kind of the flavor of what it is. It is literally a floodgate. It is a wall built to hold back water. And if you destroy it,
00:08:54
Speaker
water floods and all of your creatures you know flying creatures are fine because they can fly above it blue creatures a lot of those can probably breathe water so they're fine too everything else takes damage and again the damage is based on how many islands you have
00:09:10
Speaker
because that, you know, it's holding back the water. It's holding back the water, exactly. So I love this card. It also is great because it has goblin flavor text. So for me, it is, it's not my favorite magic card, but it is probably the perfect, like my favorite intersection between all of these things. Because then of course the flavor text was quick Rorik, teach me to swim. And that's attributed to Makut, goblin casualty.
00:09:39
Speaker
Oh, casualty. Most goblins are going to be a casualty when that floodgate breaks too, because they're going to be on the smaller side. And we've got some great Jeff Miracola art of goblins trying to run away from the floodgate. It's just, for me, it's just this perfect card and intersection between all of the various things that a card has. It's just so perfect. So yeah, that's me.
00:10:06
Speaker
Well, I'll go next.
Character Evolution: Grenzo Cards
00:10:07
Speaker
I'm Hobbs, pronouns he him. I can be found on Twitter at Hobbs Q. And I actually have two, but they are related and why they're and how they're related mechanically and flavorfully is why there might melt those cards. And I'm cheating, because it's a card I talk about a lot.
00:10:25
Speaker
Again, just like Alex, but it's Grenzo dungeon warden and we talked about this kind of in the whole like scheme of when we did when I did my episode and I complained about the people out there who build Grenzo where they don't use goblins.
00:10:42
Speaker
And they actually just use the ability, which is to put the bottom card of your library in your graveyard, if the creature with power less than or equal to Grenzo's, put it on the battlefield. And their goal is to just get Grenzo to be big and beefy and then cheat in these like big creatures and set of goblins. And I've always complained about that and how it seems to be not really in line. But when Alex and I did the episode on my Goblin 8 artist proof deck,
00:11:09
Speaker
we actually talked about like as a dungeon warden, there isn't going to be just goblins in the dungeon. So it actually is very flavorful that it's any creature and it is based on this kind of idea that Grenzo is only letting out people that are the same size as him or smaller. He's not just letting out big beefy things that he doesn't think he can deal with.
00:11:34
Speaker
Why I love then to see is the transition into Grenzo Havoc Razor, and this is where it becomes a mechanic thing for me. So, Grenzo gets fired from being the dungeon warden.
00:11:45
Speaker
Because he's bad at it. I don't know if he's bad at it or if Queen Marchesa just doesn't need a dungeon anymore because she kills everybody that she doesn't like. That's a fair point actually. She also was letting out people that he thought was going to be able to help him kind of rise up. I mean, Savala deserved to get out. She was praying for Brago's first death. And Brago is just, yeah, I agree with this.
00:12:11
Speaker
And, but that, that wasn't Grenzo's reason for letting her go. He wasn't thinking that far. He wanted to kill Muzzio, but I mean, story wise, it's kind of cool. Cause he gets put out on the street and he becomes a havoc razor and the abilities mirror that so well. So that Melvin kind of the mechanical abilities on it, which just,
00:12:33
Speaker
He's basically out there raising havoc and it lets him goad creatures and also lets you play cards off of other people's library with that kind of that new reddish mechanic ability. But I think it encapsulates kind of the lore and the change in Grenzo. And also we now get flavor text with you burn all pillage, which is great. His story where he tries to teach Doretti how to become a goblin again is very amusing.
00:13:00
Speaker
Right? It's like this very much both versions of this card very much marry the mechanical aspects really speaking to the flavor for me. So those are the ones I'm going with and I'm going to pass it over to Taya.
Taya's Insights on Vorthos and Melthos
00:13:14
Speaker
Hi, I'm Taya. My pronouns are she, her, or they, them. I've been, you know, really enjoyed the Vorthos side of magic forever. And when I heard the concept of Malthos, it's like, oh, this makes perfect sense for this idea of flavor and
00:13:34
Speaker
mechanics just melt perfectly and I have a few cards on my list I want to discuss in detail later and I want to save those so right now I'm going to start with one of the just clean mechanical cards that I absolutely love which is hijack introduced in the original Kaladesh block with vehicles and it's it's a threatened effect that untaps it takes control of an artifact or creature until end of turn you know it is
00:13:59
Speaker
literally hijacking someone's car. That is, and they reprinted this. They reprinted this in Ixalan as well with Art with Angraff on it, hijacking someone's boat. It's just such a simple car that mechanically does exactly what you think it would do.
00:14:20
Speaker
I love the flavor text on the Angrath one too. Yeah. Trapped on Ixalan because maybe that's the whole idea behind Ixalan is like they're trapped there. They can't leave. Yeah. Angrath is the only Minotaur sailing the seas no matter how many ships he captures, he can't break free. Yeah. He just wants to get home to his daughters. That's what. Yeah. Yeah. He's stuck on this crappy plane with all these dinosaurs.
00:14:49
Speaker
I mean, I've seen a Jurassic Park movie or two. The whole point of those movies is people trying to get off the island, and that's... His aircraft is just trapped. I love Hijack. That's a great one, I think. I'm not sure if we talked about that one specifically, but Ixalan had... Sorry, Kaladesh had a lot of great ones like that.
00:15:13
Speaker
Names, I think we talked about that and our name a while ago This was a couple years ago But didn't have so we talked about card names as a weird is it as a like design space because as soon as they name a card thing they can't name another card that thing that name is used forever and Kaladesh with vehicles had so many cool it had so many cotton the bright is the one with the gremlin that
00:15:37
Speaker
I like Revoked Privileges, which is a pacifism, but it also shuts down vehicles. There are so many, and I think top-down sets tend to encourage those type of cards.
00:15:57
Speaker
And I know that Alex, you know, you we talked about, like, at the start of this, that this was one that we had been kind of waiting to have Taya on for something that you guys had even talked about doing, when I might not be available, because it just, this is a topic that is very along the lane of what I've always thought of you bringing to the show, like, this is marrying kind of the two loves that you have. And I was hoping that you might be able to speak a little bit more to that. Yeah. And so, and that's, that's early on, like,
00:16:26
Speaker
There's a lot of reasons people engage with this game. And lots of reasons why people play this game. And the Psychographics are talked about a lot. And those are things where Wizards identified, here's how people play our game and what they get out of playing the game. And so those were identified fairly early. But these aesthetic profiles were looked at later. And be honest, this is mostly how I experience the game these days.
Art and Craftsmanship in Melthos
00:16:53
Speaker
I have not played a game of Magic since pre-COVID.
00:16:56
Speaker
So for me, it doesn't matter how I enjoy playing the game because I haven't for two and a half years at this point. But it's the story, it's the community is a big part for me too. But like how I engage with magic itself is through the story, through kind of these mechanic things. It's through some of lately, it's even I've brewed a few decks and
00:17:17
Speaker
again, how I just how I tend to brew decks is looking for sort of these interesting mechanical overlaps for myself where things, two cards that don't necessarily go together, I can find ways like these interact with different things. So for me, the whole Melthos, it's a lot of there's a lot of Mel, which is hard, I think, to explain and a lot of the story stuff, too, is it's that's why I love when we can find these places where they come together, because I do have a love for the story and the characters. But
00:17:48
Speaker
I don't know, I may have lost track of what I was trying to say there.
00:17:52
Speaker
But so I think you're kicking me to try to talk about this topic. So let me try to get back to the actual topic. So what we want to try to do is want to try to talk about some cards and some story moments here where like sort of the, what the card does fits mechanically and flavorfully with what was going on and like the story, because it's fairly easy and sometimes really super necessary.
00:18:19
Speaker
to kind of handwave these things a little bit, which is a term, I guess, in the writing community. I don't know how many other committees use that term. And you kind of go, I guess this kind of works. We're going to make this sort of loose. And I actually have an example that I think fits that pretty well. There's some hand waving in it and some other things to it, too. So maybe I'll just smoothly transition into that in just a moment.
00:18:44
Speaker
I'll link this again because this is something we've linked before, but from 2007, there's kind of the Making Magic article that really talks about these two concepts, and we've covered them in the past.
00:18:57
Speaker
One of the things that, you know, to go back, and I will link this so people want to see it, talks about, you know, Vortos enjoys seeing the whole is the sum of the parts. Melvin likes seeing the individual as pieces of the whole. And I really think of that when Taya talks about kind of that top-down design. How are, you know, what are the tight connections between cards, keywords, cycles? You know, kind of think about like for, you know, for a lot of Melvin players, probably the idea that the swords of X and Y are still not completed is probably a frustrating thing.
00:19:25
Speaker
Yeah. Mel tend to be the want to see a cycle completed. Like a completionist for some things. Or will be the people who see things like me, you'll find the cycles that are common, uncommon, rare. Or you'll see the M, whatever course that was the bolus course that I can't remember. It was M19. 19? Okay. I want to say 20.
00:19:48
Speaker
19 where they did a quote unquote cycle of both big splashy rares in boluses three colors like normally a cycle is one of every color or you can do a I think Mark Rosewater is the head designer magical call a common uncommon rare like a vertical cycle I think is what he refers to that as
00:20:09
Speaker
but so you'll find things like the bolus cycle because it's just his three colors or as you say Hobbes they're the ones who will see in original Mirrodin where they printed sort of a light and shadow and sort of fire and ice and that was it there weren't any other swords and so people were like
00:20:29
Speaker
Where are these swords? And now they're coming out, and we still don't have them. No, they first finished the enemy color combos, and now they're working on the allied color combo. And just think, next year is 20 years since Muradin came out.
00:20:49
Speaker
Really? I needed another thing to make me feel old. So maybe we'll get the last couple of swords in X and Y. That's how they did the last three. The enemy colors when we went back to Meredith, it was one in each set.
00:21:09
Speaker
Yep. But the last thing I wanted to point out from the article just before we move on finally was that Mark Rosewater addresses this idea of Malthus and I think that what's funny is he almost seems them is he calls Malthus the center of the spectrum almost as if he saw Vorthos and Melvin
00:21:34
Speaker
on the same line, and we've talked about this before Alex, you and I, about all of the psychographics really being not, I think we even meant, we don't really think of Melvin and Vortos as being the same dimension, or like, that they're the same spectrum, that they're at two ends of a spectrum. We actually think, he talks about, Melthos is the one that admires both the art and craftsmanship.
00:21:59
Speaker
And I think that those don't need to be on the same line. This is one area that I think that is kind of a miss in some ways. Or someone could be both. Yes. And a higher degree as opposed to somewhere sort of in the middle.
00:22:16
Speaker
Well, yeah, that's a fair point. And it bears talking about when we talk about some of these things. And this is, I mean, and again, when we get into the psychographics, when we start talking about some of these label things, I want to just one like little addendum or asterisk here is, at least for me, I think that these can be very useful when they are used descriptively, personally.
00:22:42
Speaker
They are much less so if you try to use them prescriptively for other people or say, and how I mean that there is, if I say I'm a Melphos, I can kind of decide why and how that works for me as opposed to saying, well, if I'm a Mel, then that means I have to X, Y, and Z. And it's like, no, no. For me, it's because I do A and B and I kind of like C, I'll consider myself a Vorthos.
00:23:07
Speaker
that's how I think these are best used and that's kind of the case for basically all categorization sort of things like this I've ever seen at least that I've had experience with I think tend to be much more useful.
00:23:21
Speaker
as a description because you this and that so this label fits and works for you as opposed to the other way around where because of this you have you know you're of orthos and thus you have to appreciate the art that's that just doesn't fit for me um but one thing so we're trying to talk about these milthos story moments and sometimes just
00:23:45
Speaker
Story and examples, I feel like, yeah, we'll have examples are going to help. I think examples will help. But I do want to say that sometimes these gaps, particularly on the worst side or the bad side, will exist because story and games need two different things. What you need to make a story work and is going to be different than the mechanics and specific things that you need to make a game work. And so sometimes there's going to be misses like that. Like mine, I think will have
00:24:14
Speaker
some of those. So I'll just I'll just lead into this because it's also a good way to kind of poke Hobbs too.
Nicol Bolas: Mechanics vs. Story
00:24:19
Speaker
So I want to talk about bolus being de sparked and imprisoned in the meditation realm. So this actually you did say imprisoned because it is it is not a fair sentence. It was, you know, I think this happened to a nicer desktop. Couldn't have happened. Wait, no, wait, wait a second here.
00:24:42
Speaker
This goes back to Ugin being a bad big brother is all I know. This is where we'll end up, but I'm going to let Alex take us there. Okay. So I'm going to start with, we're going to kind of break those two pieces and I'm going to talk about the imprisoned side first. And I think this mostly works really well in a milfos sense. There's, there's a little niggles and this is where it kind of fits that sometimes you have to, the story has to be a little different than the mechanics.
00:25:04
Speaker
So like Ugin has exiled permanents that are more than one color before. It's a big thing he did on the first one. And honestly, I really like the idea or the imagery of sort of exiling being like stuck to this plane. Like that fits really well to me. I don't know that they connected that specifically, but someone being exiled from this world and then being stuck in a quasi plane
00:25:31
Speaker
seems like a good flavor fit to me. And you go even further if you look at that particular power from that Ugin planeswalker, it's also a minus X, so it requires you to dump more loyalty into it to get bigger permanence.
00:25:48
Speaker
And he specifically sits out the entire fight the entire time. And so it could kind of fit that part of his plan was to conserve energy so that he could pour all of it into this moment. Now, the justification in text, which makes sense too, was that he was not participating because it was too surprise Bolas, because then Bolas didn't know he was there and couldn't plan for it.
00:26:11
Speaker
I think that still kind of fits and then where it doesn't quite as his exile ability was everything on the battlefield which is a weird mechanic term but
00:26:22
Speaker
So I'm not going to say it should have hit everything, but it would have probably splashed to more than one single target. But Ugin has also destroyed specific targets before, so it's not inconceivable that that kind of fits in his power set. It just isn't, you know, exile in one target. It just wasn't represented in a card yet. So that part of it, I think, fits pretty well.
00:26:47
Speaker
with, again, a little wishy-washy that might be just because story of the cancer. I think the file side is actually shown more from the D-Spark card itself than Ugin is really just kind of like hanging out and making sure he doesn't go anywhere now.
00:27:04
Speaker
Yeah, but see, then that's where things are a little more walkie. Because the card D-Spark kind of conflates the two. Because other people being D-Sparked weren't flown to planes, they were just killed. And so that kind of was represented more by like Spark Reaver. And some of those that I guess those two, it's Sacrifice of Planeswalker, which is a little different than Killing a Planeswalker. But again, that's a mechanical thing you can't have.
00:27:34
Speaker
a common creature just like blow up someone else's planeswalker that just game balance doesn't work. So that that's where the D sparked it. But I think honestly, I think the big gap there is just that bolus survived the process will no one else did and they again just kind of hand wave did it's like it's bolus, which is fine. It's fine. I think your villains and cold storage for when you need them in the future.
00:28:00
Speaker
Exactly. And exactly. They did that. So wait, I'm sorry. So I totally blanked out during a lot of that. When did when did Ugin get just put on cold storage? Just want to make sure I missed a lot. That's what he's doing there with Wallace. So they're both kind of.
00:28:21
Speaker
They're both hanging out. In a sense, you can say that Ugin is actually stuck there because Bolas made himself such an issue that he forced his brother to spend all eternity with him in the meditation realm. Yes, thank you for calling it the meditation realm. I appreciate you not calling it the prison realm that Ugin tried to turn it into. Yeah. But yeah, I do think that kind of the D Spark piece
00:28:52
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it's it's fine. Again, it's fine. I'm not saying that there's this big issue, though, at the risk of starting tangents, and maybe other episodes of our podcast in the middle of this one. Now that I was thinking about it, well, while I was writing these notes before the show, I realized like, I think and maybe this is just right now me thinking about it. And I
00:29:16
Speaker
There's other things I didn't think about because, you know, it's these Wizards property, so they they know what they're doing. But honestly, I think part of why they were killing things is they wanted to set this tone that anyone can die. And and except at least for me, it didn't land very well because they only they showed us everyone who actually died who had a name tag that we knew. So it really kind of didn't pay off.
00:29:39
Speaker
And I think what would have probably been more interesting for Future Story is if none of them were killed, and now all of a sudden Ravnica had a whole swath of people from all over the multiverse who are now stuck there for the rest of their natural lives. Because we know we're going back to Ravnica at some point. It's the most popular plane, a recent plane for sure, I think possibly the most popular plane in Magic's history.
00:30:04
Speaker
That could be interesting. That's fair. See, I'm thinking, I'm honestly thinking more about Dak Faden. The one, the one positive thing, like, well not the one, but one of the few positive things I can say about that first war, the spark book, is that it made me actually like Dak Faden.
00:30:27
Speaker
I actually liked his character and I would have loved to go back to Ravnica to see what he made of a life stuck there and maybe potentially see him try to figure out a way to steal himself a spark and show up as an antagonist in a story arc sometime down the line. Like there's, I think there's some interesting story potential, but maybe not. And that's maybe not neither here nor there. It's on Ravnica.
00:30:55
Speaker
Yeah. Poor Dak. Rest in peace. Poor Dak. Rest in peace on the trailer. So the whole book I just kept saying. So is this when Dak gets his spark taken? Yeah, exactly. OK, so we have Ravnica. We got them there. Taya, I know you had some examples.
Emrakul and Story Mechanics
00:31:17
Speaker
So I think I think this was on the top of my analysis list was Emercool in
00:31:25
Speaker
Um, mechanically, this is the, specifically the version from Eldritch moon. It just shows up in mind, flavor or something, which is exactly what it did in the story. Um, once it kind of figured out, I'm not supposed to be here. It just like looked for the most awesome person on the plane, which was Tamiro, of course. Yep. Let me borrow some of that magic and I'm going to go take a nap now.
00:31:56
Speaker
Uh, and that's exactly what it does. It mind slavers someone for a turn and then it's got protection from instance, which the counters, you know, the spell that Tamio cast is in prison in the moon, which is an enchantment removal spell. Uh, so that pair of mechanics alone was just so perfect and.
00:32:17
Speaker
I've never had it happen, but I, you know, just from a flavor point of view is I think if I ever mind flavor someone with Emrakul and they have imprisoned in the moon in their hand, I have to cast it on Emrakul. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. It's you've got to do it. It just, it doesn't matter.
00:32:37
Speaker
I went on a rant last night, well, it was a mini rant, about cards like this in EDH since Sheldon will no longer allow me to tuck generals, but I could turn them into moons that tap for mana and I could turn them into tree folk and zero ones that are indestructible. But in Prison in the Moon, you had mentioned just Emmerkle in general, that was the companion card that made me think of it too, right?
00:33:03
Speaker
The flavor text only one vault was great enough to hold Emrakul It's like you're literally taking this cosmic beam and sticking them in a moon Yeah, and she did it to herself. That's the real and that that is Which fits very much like you said with why you would have to cast it that way I mean if yeah into this this great melt those moment Yeah, it's it that was that's a really good one and that that was a much simpler
00:33:31
Speaker
example to give than the one that I came up with. But yeah, I love that one. And we'll also get to talk about Tamiya, who is possibly my favorite character in Magic right now. I really hope she shows up in Neon Dynasty somehow, some way. I would be so disappointed if they don't have her and her adorable little family in it. I still missed her on Strixhaven. I wanted to see her as a professor.
00:34:01
Speaker
Instead, we got Kazmina, who we still know essentially nothing about other than she has a creepy stalker problem. Like capturing little kids, too. Yeah, just spying on everybody. Alright, so I have actually, oddly enough, both of my other two transition off of
Helvault: Mechanics and Theme
00:34:25
Speaker
that. So I'll just go with the one that's next in order on my list. The Hellbolt.
00:34:30
Speaker
actually that's a good segue yeah
00:34:38
Speaker
The Helivolt fits in a similar way that, talking about Emrakul, like, oh, wow, I guess on the same world. But the mechanics of the card, like, do exactly what the thing is. It's not just the same world. It's the same moon. Yeah, it's the same moon. Well, yeah, and like the Helivolt was a piece of the moon, I believe. Yeah, it was a chunk of the moon that, you know, old Walker Soren pulled out to use as a prison. Yeah, and so it actually does the exact same thing.
00:35:07
Speaker
Well, it exiles people, but also to get into a little bit more of a male rabbit hole. Another reason I love the Hell Vault, too, is one of the earliest magic cards in the game that removed things was Tano's Coffin.
00:35:25
Speaker
And Helvault is a much more modern, much easier to use and much less clunky. I mean, it does slightly different things. And Helvault is kind of a removal. You exile it and it's kind of gone. You can bring things back, but you have to bring everything back. Tano's coffin exiles something and makes it, it's much easier to bring back. You tap the artifact, you leave it tapped, the thing remains exiled.
00:35:48
Speaker
Yeah, it's like it's a suspended animation chamber as a card. Exactly. Kind of a frozen in ice. Suspended animation chamber is a much easier way to say it. I'm trying to cryo. There we go. My brain came up with the sci-fi version, cryo chamber. I love it when we talk about this too, as you were saying, Alex, from the storyline too.
00:36:10
Speaker
the mechanics match it and that, you know, exiling your own creatures almost as a save type thing is very cheap. Getting rid of your opponents takes a lot more. It actually it's a seven mana versus a one mana difference. I mean, like, it's hugely different. And at the end of the day, even if you do this, if the hell vault is gone, everything comes back, which I think mechanically really fits for the story beat of what the hell vault was being used for.
00:36:36
Speaker
Well, that's and that's precisely how it worked in the story you had. That was Lilliana looking for for all the demons that, you know, she signed on. She wanted she wanted Gristlebrand and he was stuck in there, so she had to crack the thing open. Which then brought out Avicid and brought out everything else that had been in there, including one really crazed planeswalker. And a poor Gristlebrand who.
00:37:05
Speaker
Rest in peace, Gristlebrand, too. Am I rooting for villains? Is that all I do when we talk about this? That's the pattern so far, but I mean, two isn't quite a pattern yet. It's three. I don't know. We got Grenzo. Grenzo is, like, chaotic. That's a pattern. You got Krenko. You got Volus. You're simping for Gristlebrand now. I think we have a pattern here. Let's step back here when it comes to Krenko.
00:37:31
Speaker
Cranko is not a villain. Cranko is the leader of the revolution. Cranko is a legitimate business goblin. We had Jay and Ellie on the show and I learned, if I learned nothing else, it's that Gristlebrand is a legitimate businessman.
00:37:49
Speaker
And I have to call by a source on this. I mean, I think by annoyance, this is I mean, we could talk about so, you know, I actually had Cranko on my list for the second build of Cranko is kind of a is a miss. And I think that it is the miss is more on the the Vortho side of it more than the Melvin side of it. Um,
00:38:14
Speaker
Because we saw Krenko as kind of a... Jay would agree with me. The most powerful being in the multiverse is what he called Krenko. Am I incorrect on this, Alex? Did we have a line here that he is the most powerful being in the multiverse for scratching Gideon?
00:38:35
Speaker
That's right. That's right. That was a comment. We had we had that is a valid point. But we had Franco is this lean, mean, like, like fighter, right? And when he becomes a kingpin, and if one thing I go say to this is where it's a miss kingpins are not pillagers.
00:38:58
Speaker
Kingpins are not gonna be there. You know, if we think of what a kingpin is doing, a kingpin is not after the people flee, but before the enemy arrives, that's grabbin' time. This is a miss for me, is for like the mismatch there. And then the mechanic piece of it is like, you're making goblins again, but it's based all on Krenko's power. I mean, I thought that in general, Krenko was a miss, but this card to me just doesn't read kingpin.
00:39:28
Speaker
at all. From a flavor mechanic, none of it works together. And I think that this is where I get frustrated is like, Cranko I believe could have been set up. And I think this was what happened with War of the Spark in general, that like all of a sudden, we got to get Cranko in, we don't get him in until a point where there's no storyline for him. And then we just turn him into like a common thief. And I think that
00:39:53
Speaker
What could be the leader of the revolution because I think that we talked about this a lot about like the guild lists and like cranko is actually primed I think to have been a better like person to rise up and I'm tangent, but this was on my list to talk about completely unrelated to y'all bullying me into this and claiming I only like villains
00:40:17
Speaker
Either way though, this was a miss for me.
Critique: Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin
00:40:19
Speaker
And I just, I'm sticking with that part. We don't have a pattern yet. It'll happen when we get to another character. Okay. That was, that was well, well-reasoned. I, I, yep. I'm on board with you with the, the flavor mess on that Cranko card. And I know we've talked about kind of the, not just the milfels miss, but sort of the flavor mess where we think they didn't do a great job by Cranko in the set.
00:40:43
Speaker
And like I said, it is both. Like it's a general crinkle, but it's just also a kingpin. This is not a kingpin at all. So, yeah, I think, I think they definitely did better representing an actual kingpin with Gonti. Yes. Yes. Yes. That works. Yeah, they got real good representation.
00:41:07
Speaker
No, that's just like, uh, your stuff is mine now and I'll just, you know, I'll do something with it in my leisure and otherwise I'm going to sit back with my big butt and, uh, block things. And continue my aetherborn existence longer than I'm supposed to. I love it. It works completely.
00:41:27
Speaker
No, but speaking of goblins that were hit is pretty much any Squeak card. Yes. Squeak does one thing, he survives and his cards have all shown exactly what he does.
00:41:48
Speaker
And as much as I complained about the lack of story, the fact that we now get the name moved to immortal and the ability even has changed enough that you can cast him from exile is a really cool like growth or just little like Alex you talked about earlier with kind of the callback. It's a good like addition to the callback.
00:42:08
Speaker
Yeah adding the Adding the exile clause definitely makes it you know, it's just like it's impossible to kill squeak You cannot get rid of him. He will always be there That's goblin the one you can't get rid of and even even bolus can't get rid of him I'm looking at these tea cards too and I so they're both three mana
00:42:31
Speaker
But I really appreciate that, apparently, in his time on Dominaria, he was doing some lifting a little bit, because now he's got a bit stronger. He's a 2-1 instead of a 1-1. Hadn't noticed that before. Gotta do something for those years, I guess. Perfect flavor text, too, on the Immortal.
00:42:51
Speaker
I mean, they're both good flavor text, but they are. More importantly, he became more red, too. Yes, he did. Yes, he actually requires a second red to be immortal. And so just this time on Dominaria, somehow the most chaotic and like, ridiculous member of the, you know, the weather light became even more red.
00:43:16
Speaker
You know what? Sorry. That is true. And I agree with that Hobbs about. I'm looking at all of his different, I'm looking at all his different flavor texts. Sweet Goblin to Bob, his original card has three different flavor texts. And I think they're all good.
00:43:34
Speaker
Though my favorite is probably the serious one. The Commander Knight team printing with the flavor text from Stark. Some goblins are expendable, some are impossible to get rid of, but he's both at the same time. His original, that one I think is, it's the funniest of them. I, but, cause then Squeak Goblin to Bob from Mercadians is General, Tom Grathroard, General Lucence maybe, which is okay, but.
00:44:00
Speaker
What's amazing is the one from the Ultimate Masters for some reason is serious. Yeah. It's all of a sudden, for some reason they printed a serious one. Like dark. If Yagua meant squeeze immortality as a curse, no one ever told Squee, Karn. Like I was just like, Jesus Christ. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, we did have an episode talking about Karn being depressed and maybe this just, he's in a dark place.
00:44:29
Speaker
making this observation, which I mean, is a fair observation. But I do, I do like that, that flavor text too, because it's kind of talking about, well, you know, this is, this is kind of a terrible thing. I mean, it was done for an incredibly terrible reason. He was made a mortal so he could be tortured to death over and over again. And yet, Squee has made something good out of that, apparently, at least in Karn's eyes.
00:44:55
Speaker
So who has misses? Did either of you come up with some more misses? I have a few. I think we've been hitting very well on that. I want to see where these went wrong. So there's a couple that I actually thought Aldraine had quite a few of them. And I'm going to start with a card that I absolutely hate seeing in Commander 2, the Greathenge.
00:45:17
Speaker
which in the story is the part that doesn't make sense. It needs to be operated by giants. So the cost reduction makes sense from a story point of view, but it's a transportation device instead of just, Oh, gain life, draw cards, you know, do all these wonderful things versus in the story. It's a way to hop around the, you know, the, the wilds. And I, I thought that for something that was kind of a centerpiece of the whole story, not to mention in
00:45:46
Speaker
really annoying high profile card that there was a big miss as far as that went. I would completely agree with this. You know, it does not to me represent what a hinge is doing at all. It's more like stapled abilities onto a card to be splashy. I mean, it's yeah, it's it's extra value, the card. Oh, it's also green. Who would have thought green got a card that gives value?
00:46:09
Speaker
And I think it's the problem is because it's a named card. It is, you know, it's like, I mean, along these lines, and I guess it's funny that you mentioned Eldraine, it's like Questing Beast, right? Yeah. Like, Questing Beast is another one that is a named legendary and then it just does everything and it. Yeah.
00:46:26
Speaker
it's not only that is it's also just missing the in there it's a legendary there is only one questing beast but right but it's not yeah you forget it's legendary yeah yeah and that one i wonder because it's it's just a questing beast but that that's one where we get back to the game mechanics sometimes require things that are different and this is where we get these misses but that's like that may have been made legendary for game balance reasons which then
00:46:55
Speaker
kind of makes our stuff. I mean I think it was legendary in the story too where there was only one mythical questing beast giving out these like grand quests and your immortality swords. So like it's one that's funny like it would have been fine to just add the word the into it then.
00:47:12
Speaker
I laugh because, you know, you talked about the fact of missing not having the the the would have really cute us into the legendary. But I think it's like the fact that there's always an ability on there that people forget just because of how many there are. Yeah. Oh, it has vigilance. Oh, yeah.
00:47:30
Speaker
I mean, but it does feel like these abilities don't even seem to go together for something that is a questing beast. Like, yeah. Yeah. And then if you don't mind me grabbing one because I didn't have any and then you talking about that reminded me of one. That's a miss.
00:47:48
Speaker
So I'll jump in, unless you have more to talk about with the Questing Beast in your head. Another one which was a big miss for me is Golden Demise, because there's a card that doesn't even actually take place in the story. It's one of the false memories that Jason plants in Vraska, but you have no way to actually know that from the card. And the mechanic seems a little bit weak for dousing everybody in molten gold. For a Golden Demise,
00:48:16
Speaker
a lot of things are surviving this. Yeah, it gives everything minus two minus two. If you get the city's blessing, it's only your opponents, but it's still only minus two minus two. Really? Yeah. And we've even had like creatures turn into gold in a previous set. And yeah,
00:48:37
Speaker
Yeah, we had our, our King, King minus analog from the original Theros block, uh, Mccarr, the gold cursed. Yep. And then I still love the fact that we now have two, uh, two, two tokens to do the same exact thing. Yeah. Gold and treasure. Well, one requires tapping. So they're slightly mechanically different. Ooh, that's good to know. See, I did not know that. Yeah. Um.
00:49:03
Speaker
They chained, when they introduced treasure, it was improvised, it was also a thing. So they made treasures have to tap, were gold, and otherwise you'd be able to use it twice. Oh, that's good to know. Wow, thank you. See, this is why we don't play the game, Alex. I've barely played Magic since Treasure came out. They have become a scourge in Commander. There's too many things that just incidentally make treasure.
00:49:34
Speaker
And it's kind of too good for an incidental. Have a bonus. There better not be a doc side discussion coming up right now. I mean, you're the one who brought it up. That's all on you house.
00:49:49
Speaker
Yes. I was jumped into conclusions that somebody may go there. I was going to go to a, I would say well-known, but it's, I mean, well-known in very specific circles of the community. Well-known example of flavor sort of taking a backseat to mechanics and creating like a Malthus fail that was prompted that I remembered from these previous conversations. Velikut, the molten pinnacle and the whole cycle of lands from Zentenkar.
00:50:20
Speaker
There were five lands that tap for a man of one of each color that are actual single locations on the car that even have in the name. Exactly. And they aren't legendary because they didn't want them to.
00:50:39
Speaker
Was that at the time? I can't remember what the legend rule was at the time. I think I've heard Mauro talk about this before on one of his podcasts that they just weren't using legendary land at the time. So that's kind of, again, it's just a gameplay thing where they're like, well, this card is fine if you have four of them, but it breaks the whole thing. And going back to Eldraine, the castles were the same way for me there.
00:51:08
Speaker
Oh, those aren't legendary. They are not legendary. They are all specific castles, but they're not legendary. Yep. And so they're just repeating the same. I shouldn't say mistake, like they're doing it intentionally because they've decided that the balance for them between hitting the flavor and mechanically making the card work the way they want to, they're going for the mechanics. But for me, it made it in the same mistake again.
00:51:32
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, aren't we dealing with this too? Going back, the land has been historically, like the artifact lands from the original Mirrodin were all named places too.
00:51:44
Speaker
No. Not all, because the white one is ancient den. That's pretty much an ancient cat place. It talks about Taj-nar, which is a name. That was the throne. I think there were places where it's conceivable that there's more than one location in this place.
00:52:06
Speaker
I guess the flavor text would be the missus there because it's like even vault of whispers is what I was thinking of. They mentioned like a den and it's a very specific thing. I mean, I guess if there are multiple vault of whispers, but we're running off of the prominent flavor text.
00:52:25
Speaker
No, that's fair. They definitely are evocative of a specific place, even if a tree of tails is talking about the sanctum of the trolls. The castles in the specific named places are more problematic, but I think that lands is probably an area that they do miss with this more often, or it doesn't fit.
00:52:48
Speaker
for this kind of sensibility. The artifact lands also would be less busted if they'd been legendary. Yeah. Just see this as I'm looking at them in Scryfall and reminded they are banned in modern. No, they fixed them. That's why they now come into play tapped and they're indestructible. Yeah.
00:53:15
Speaker
I really do love that series of artifact dual lands. I have the original art for Russell Bridge hanging on my wall right next to me. Yeah. Yeah. I remember when you, when you, when you were getting into that, because it is a cool, that's a cool cycle to me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The bridges between each of the terrains was, that was a very cool cycle. It's a general enough thing that it's like, okay, there could be multiple bridges.
00:53:45
Speaker
So we've I think we've you know, one of the reasons I wanted us to do when Alex you brought this episode up and why I wanted to make sure I was able to record was thinking along those lines of like Where these have been successes where they have been misses to kind of just help people really maybe visualize what melt those is like I said a little bit more than what the article initially said because I think treating it as opposite and the spectrum is not fair and an article from
00:54:12
Speaker
2007 it's fine 14 years ago. So it's from somebody who who in my opinion these these Psychographics are were well as we've talked about they don't even call them psychographics. They call them They just say aesthetics and we've done these full episodes on like each one of those can be a domain and it doesn't need to be that your
00:54:34
Speaker
as you said, Alex, that there don't need to be prescriptive that you are Johnny and you are Spike, you can be both. And I think that we're trying to show that you can be both on these. And the marriage between them is interesting. And I'm wondering if you have ever you finished your question. Yeah, I'm just curious if you have ever
00:54:53
Speaker
built more around this then? Because that would be the next thing to do. Where are we going in terms of like, what could you do with this? I haven't done as much Vorthos building. Honestly, most of my decks are metal build, because that's just how I build decks. I look for mechanical things that seem interesting to me, or several mechanical things I can smash together and see if they play well together in the same deck.
00:55:17
Speaker
So I can go on this because, um, as you know, both of you saw, I shared in the discord chat the other day that, you know, theme deck I've been working on for over a year now based on reincarnated slime. Thank you for taking this and running exactly where I was hoping you would go on this. Each of the, you know, it's a legendaries matter commander deck, but each of the legends I picked have more to do with actual, the character, their,
00:55:48
Speaker
meant to fill in for than anything else. There's like I have Mawu in there as Ranga, even though I have zero ways in the deck to add plus one plus one counters to anything. Oh, but he's such a perfect fit. Yeah. Oh my God. And also, you know, I went the same way with
00:56:15
Speaker
Most of the cards, there's very little synergy between what's going on in that deck and what cards I have selected, but they match mechanically as close as I could get to the characters to the point where if I could find one mechanically that matched on creature type and mechanics, I took it no matter what the card actually did.
00:56:38
Speaker
Uh, and I spent a lot of time looking on that. I, you know, made some updates after the initial start because I did come out with a bunch of useful dragons and like AFR, for example, which widened my legendary set. But, uh, I mean, you already going down that route and you were willing to sacrifice some elements. I think similarly to the joke being, you know, if you had controlled somebody with Emricle and they had imprisoned in the moon, you don't have an option. Uh, you have to do it. And.
00:57:09
Speaker
I think that that deck, when you were kind of just starting to show it off, and it's not an anime I know, but just from your description of it, it seemed to be that you'd be willing to kind of make that sacrifice to have more of these kind of moments. Right. Yeah. It's. It just it is there's so little synergy to the deck as a whole, other than it being legendary matters. But mechanically, I made everything fit as much as possible to the characters flavor wise and.
00:57:38
Speaker
Uh, you know, I've, I've only gotten to play the deck online twice at this point. I just finished the paper coffee and looking forward to playing it some more. Uh, which I think it's going to be more fun as like a storytelling exercise than anything.
00:57:53
Speaker
Yeah, it's really cool. And I am familiar with the anime. I really enjoyed what's out of it. And I keep looking forward when there's new seasons, but I love this. This is such a great fit. And not just mechanically too, but as you say, like when you have creature type fits, you can. Or a lot of the flavor of the cards you picked too,
00:58:17
Speaker
with, you know, um, more phone being the commander, but also being, oh, I'm not even going to pronounce it correctly.
00:58:27
Speaker
the main character of the show. He is a slime. That's why the name of the show is when it's reincarnated as a slime. And so it fits that sort of creature type or that creature so well too. And also just this idea that he's pulling things together because that's so much what he does in the anime. He works with all the various species. It doesn't matter what creature type it is to him. He's willing to incorporate them.
00:58:56
Speaker
Yeah, he just anyone. Wow. That's actually real. I mean, for me not knowing that would you as soon as you described that I was like, Okay, it makes complete sense. Yeah. And then the right neck, I'm looking at the pictures you had a discord and then right next you have a demon Lord claiming and it's TV sat so perfect because again, he's a manipulative bastard. Yes. And he isn't just like TV that it's it's so perfect.
00:59:21
Speaker
This does give us the quick opportunity. I know we're, you know, kind of coming more to a close to mention that Ursa's card is a perfect Melphos example of why Ursa is the worst. Yes. Perfect Melphos. I mean, Ursa is the worst in every. Yeah. It's a card that comes with a mini car and it turns your artifacts into a Tolarian Academy.
00:59:46
Speaker
And you just if you're playing it you're probably a jerk You sit down with that people are already gonna have a preconceived notion about you and it's that you're the worst It's not just a mouth those fit it's also metatextual It is the ultimate belt those it actually creeps into the real world
01:00:13
Speaker
Oh, and that is the perfect way to end an episode. Erza is the worst. Erza is the worst. And I'm looking forward to seeing what they do with him in Brothers War in the fall. Oh, did you not know Brothers War is actually about Ugin versus Bolas? I need to make sure I get that speculation in again. Yeah, get that in as often as you can until I do it wrong.
01:00:42
Speaker
I think they're recording what you've already said that it's not. Yeah. But it would be awesome. And that's our show for today. You can find the host on Twitter. HopsQ can be found at HopsQ. And Alex Newman can be found at Mel underscore. Send me questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to at goblinmoorpod on Twitter, or email us at goblinmoorpodcast at gmail.com.
01:01:10
Speaker
If you want to support your friendly neighborhood gobsmores, the task can be found at patreon.com slash goblinworkpoffins. Opening and closing music by Vindergotten, who can be found on twitter at Vindergotten, or online at vindergotten.bandcamp.com. Logo art by Steven Raffaele, who can be found on twitter at steve raffled.
01:01:33
Speaker
Goblin Lore is proud to be presented by Hipsters of the Coast as part of their growing Vorthos content as well as magic content of all kinds. Check them out on Twitter at hipstersmtg or online at hipstersofthecoast.com. Thank you all for listening and remember goblins like snowflakes are only dangerous in numbers.