Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 227: A Dig into MH3
138 Plays7 months ago
Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome back to another episode of the Goblin Lore Podcast! May is Mental Health Awareness Month and the plan is for all the episodes this month to relate to important topics within Mental Health. And while that was the plan... things happen. So our final planned topic for MH Awareness Month will hopefully be next week.
In the meantime Alex and Taya dive down into MH3 the Future Sight of the Horizons some may say (it's Alex... Alex says it a lot)
We also finally have a Linktree with all of our discounts/resources
____________________________________________
As promised, we keep Mental Health Links available every episode. But 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.
If you’re thinking about suicide or just need someone to talk to right now, you can get support from any of the resources below.
- National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988
- Veteran's can Press 1 at anytime to be taken to the Veteran's Line
- Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741-741
- International suicide hotlines: A comprehensive resource list for people outside the US.
- IMAlive: Click Chat Now to access a live online network of volunteers through instant messaging.
- TrevorLifeline, TrevorChat, and TrevorText (LGBTQ+ crisis support): 1-866-488-7386, or text “Trevor” to 1-202-304-1200
- Trans Lifeline (US): (877) 565-8860
____________________________________________
Opening and closing music by Wintergatan (@wintergatan). Logo art by Steven Raffael (@SteveRaffle)
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Host Updates
00:00:29
Speaker
Hello Podwalkers and welcome to another episode of the Goblin Lore podcast. We are coming to you today, unfortunately, Hobbs-less, just due to some circumstances. So we kind of audible and are doing a little bit different topic than we were planning for this week. But why don't we do introductions and can get into that shortly. So I'm Alex, you've been found on Twitter at Mel underscore chronicler. My pronouns are he him.
00:00:58
Speaker
And May is mental health awareness month, so we're gonna do, our topic's a little different, but we're gonna do our opening question is kind of a mindfulness thing. And so wanted to do something like that we're looking forward to. And this weekend is my best friend, it's his oldest kid's birthday. And his youngest, who's turning, oh, before, I believe he's turning four.
00:01:23
Speaker
And then his youngest actually had a birthday like a month ago when he turned two. So it'll be interesting. I'm looking forward to going there and hanging out with him. And I love hanging out with him and his family, his kids. But it's always interesting watching like his whole extended family come to the kid parties and all of the kids that show up. And I do not have kids. And so it is a little bit of a novel experience for me to like hang out with the adults in one corner while the kids are all just running around the yard having fun.
00:01:52
Speaker
Oh, well at least they have a yard to put them in. Yes, they have a nice yard. The house that they found and bought just happened to have this
00:02:03
Speaker
mildly ridiculous, like not absurd, but like big sweat, like swing set. And there's a slide in it and like this little like one room cabin on the top of the stairs. And so there's this like play set thing, it's a little sandpit under it. And then they have some other just yard toys and things. So the crowds of kids just have different places to go and things to do, which is fun to watch. Nice. So yeah, I'm a,
00:02:32
Speaker
I'm good, I'm Taya. Taya transcends on Blue Sky, pronouns are she, her, they, them. And I'm looking forward to some travel I've got upcoming. I'm going to be gone for basically the second half of June.
00:02:49
Speaker
I've got to fly to Berlin for work and because of that I am going to on my way there to split up the flight I'm actually going to stop and visit my girlfriend on the east coast for a few days then I'm going to go to Berlin and when I'm done in Berlin I'm going to take a train over to Prague for a few days and do some sightseeing there so I've got to really pack
00:03:15
Speaker
agenda for my second half of June, and I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, that's awesome. My second half of June is Elden drink DLC. And that's the end of it. But that'll probably last me for a while. So no, that's awesome. All right.
Modern Horizons 3 Overview
00:03:34
Speaker
So I mentioned it's May when we're recording this, and May probably, hopefully, when this gets out.
00:03:42
Speaker
which is Mental Health Aware this month, that's normally, we want all of our topics to be mental health related, unfortunately, this week, with some last minute family stuff, just things that came up for Hobbs. He couldn't make it, and so we had a topic we wanted to talk about, we decided that we were gonna wait and try to record that with Hobbs to come out next week. So this week, we are kind of audibleing into something that we can talk about in a little bit shorter notice. So we're gonna talk about Modern Horizons 3,
00:04:11
Speaker
which has the full preview is out for the main set while we're recording this. The commander set still has some things that haven't been revealed, but we'll kind of talk about what's there, what's interesting for us. The pre-release is coming up, so it feels relevant. It's a fun thing to actually look at the cards and talk about the game. I always like the modern Horizon sets tend to have some lore deep pets in them.
00:04:35
Speaker
Yes, I made a little note for myself while I was collecting some cards to talk about. And I was like, I forgot how these sets sometimes feel like time spiral. Yeah, the mechanics list was like 42 mechanics for the set when they published it. Yeah, and you get stuff. And I suppose if we're just going to talk about cards, maybe I'll talk about my first one, which I like purely from a Mel perspective.
00:05:04
Speaker
Frogmire Enforcer. The main reason that I find this so interesting is because it is a
00:05:18
Speaker
So it has this mechanic prototype. So it's just a quick recap of the card for folks listening. It's a 7 generic mana for a 4-4 artifact creature that has affinity for artifacts. But then it also has a prototype cost for a 3 and a red, and then it's a 2-2. That's a mechanic that showed up in the Brothers War.
00:05:40
Speaker
Yeah, brothers were. So this is a mechanic that showed up sort of historically, quote unquote, within Dominaria, which kind of fit what was going on there with the two brothers and the experimenting in this age of artifice where all these different artificers were experimenting with things. So it's a cool, flavorful mechanic to kind of represent that. But now we're seeing that because again, this sort of time spirally thing where, where they
00:06:04
Speaker
They have the ability, because this isn't a main standard set, to A, make the set more complicated. Like you mentioned, there's 42 mechanics in the set. Something like that is ridiculous. Yeah. And I wonder if that even counts the commander's decks that might be... No, that doesn't even count. That's just the main set mechanics. Yeah. And so they allow this, because I think this was the only prototype card that I saw. So that got pulled off with this mechanic.
00:06:31
Speaker
But they're putting it on a different plane. And so one of the things in the time star block, they had sort of the alternate, alternate timeline thing. So this isn't necessarily alternate timeline, but mirrored in being a major artifact plane, being a plane with a few different ages, I mean, you had the sort of the phyrexian age,
00:06:49
Speaker
Well this one specifically mentions, the flavor text specifically mentions Mirrodin, so this is pre-forexian. Yeah, that's fair. So yeah, the laws of nature on Mirrodin are always malleable, which is a fun text. But it just means you're seeing that same mechanic that was representing a very specific historical
00:07:09
Speaker
thing on one set, getting used in a similar way, but because it's a different place, it's maybe there's a little different context for it. And just from a, from a Mel standpoint, or even really a Mel Thos standpoint, I guess, where I love the story, but I love the mechanics, and I love when that story and the mechanics intersect in interesting ways. This was a card that called out to me.
00:07:34
Speaker
All right, well, I'm gonna just randomly pick one of my open tabs here. Nice. Because I have a lot of them. Okay.
Card Mechanics and Strategies
00:07:42
Speaker
The first part I'm gonna talk about is Aether Revolt. Because they're doing the thing again. They always like doing in this set, which is putting in cards that are named after a set that has already existed. Yes. Which- And they do this repeatedly. Like, the... I think Mirden Besieged was in the last...
00:08:03
Speaker
minor horizons so that yeah and and again to go back and let you talk about your courtesy but like that is a thing they specifically did with the time spiral block where all three sets were named after a card that had been printed in the past yeah and this is an ongoing thing though that they've been doing for a while is specifically printing cards with the sets name and in in these you know commander sets or
00:08:30
Speaker
Modern Horizon sets, they've also been setting it on that plane rather than just having it be something that happens to share a name with it. But this one, I really like because it plays well off of things that let you trigger Revolt, which is a mechanic on this card, which is as long as a permanent you controlled left the battlefield this turn, a source you control to deal non-commodemics to an opponent,
00:08:59
Speaker
or permanent, it deals that much damage plus two instead. So this encourages you to either play with treasures or other things you're going to sac to get mana or have some other way to discard things. But it also does have a built-in way to do it, and there's a lot of energy cards in this set.
00:09:20
Speaker
Most of them generate energy and spend it. This one, though, only triggers off of gaining energy. Whenever you get one or more energy, Aether Revolt deals that much damage to any target. So this is... Yeah, I just really like the fact that there's another card now, you know, in this card name cycle. Yeah, and I like that this one managed to also have a mechanic that has half of its name. Yeah.
00:09:51
Speaker
All right, that was actually on my list. I'm going to do one more weird one before I talk about things that I'm actually going to play in my decks, though this I might play. The card Grave Dig, talking about Lorthos or Malthos stuff.
00:10:10
Speaker
I love this card. This is the kind of thing that gets me excited from a Mel standpoint. It's a grave dig. I'll just read it and then explain. Oh, I did not read this card and the name. I just browsed through it. When I was scrolling through, I just thought, oh, this is just some generic sorcery. I didn't even pay attention to it.
00:10:30
Speaker
Okay, this is great. Yeah. Yeah. What they're doing is it's a search. It's a search rate for one and a black and it says choose one target creature or target player creates a two, two black zombie creature token or return target creature card from your graveyard to your hand. And then it also has entwine. We can pay two generic mana to get both. Well, there is a card called grave digger.
00:10:55
Speaker
Which used to be reprinted in every set it felt like. All the time. There's so many gravediggers. It's just such a good card that fits the thing that Black does. That's a creature for three and a black. That's a two-two zombie creature. Comes into play, return a creature card from your graveyard to your hat. So if you pay the entwine cost on gravedig, it is exactly a precise
00:11:19
Speaker
Yes. You can pay half cost and only get one half of that, which is beautiful. Yeah, this card is beautiful. I skipped right over this card and I shouldn't have that is that is great. I that is a golf course card. Oh, all right. Yeah, I actually wrote best. I forgot I actually wrote best milfel sticks to it. Yes.
00:11:48
Speaker
I'm going to do an honorable mention real quick just because I want to read the flavor text and I'm not going to talk about the card at all because it's just generic removal. Breathe Your Last has wonderful new flavor text from Liliana. Bodies are so much more cooperative with the soul out of the way. It's very nice, which I could miss too. Very Liliana. The art is kind of neat on it. Let's pick a card to actually talk about though.
00:12:20
Speaker
That's another flavor text there. Trickster's Elk. Oh, yes. So this, it's one and a one and two green for a three, three elk creature. Enchantment creature elk. Okay. That's whatever. But it has bestow for one and a green and you can, you can actually, and this has never come up before really, because it doesn't make much sense, but you can bestow onto your opponent's creatures. Yeah.
00:12:48
Speaker
Journey into Nyx had some cards with downsides. It had one single cycle, so it was like five uncomples.
00:12:58
Speaker
but Enchanted Creature loses all abilities in a green elk creature with base power and toughness 3-3, so it elks, it, you know, oko elks a creature. And the flavor text is from Rowan to Will, so wait, is that one dad? It's so cool, and that's, there's so much with this card that's fun, and this is one of the reasons.
00:13:22
Speaker
It's fun too. Again, I realize we've mentioned like five cards and they've all been comments. This is the thing about like Milthos, you know, just having the story stuff from the Vorthos side and kind of the mechanic stuff, appreciation from the mechanic side.
00:13:40
Speaker
We don't necessarily, like, there's good cards in this set, too. But these ones are just cool and fun and can be good, obviously, like, grave diggers. I mean, most of them, most of the ones are, like, limited. They're good, limited cards. And then some of them can be decent filler in some decks and stuff and constructed. But this, these types of sets, and this is the reason why I left the time spiral block back in the day, but it was vastly too complicated to have as a main,
00:14:08
Speaker
Standard set like that it hurt the game because it made it hard for players to get into the game whereas modern horizons is a set that's very much marketed and priced really as a You're in your if you're involved and you're deep in the game This is for the in a franchise player sort of thing.
Deck Building Insights
00:14:25
Speaker
And so that's a good space to do this But oh, that's such a fun card because yeah, it's so perfect fits the flavor of oko the turn of creatures into elk
00:14:37
Speaker
It also is a nice return of enchantment creatures and enchantments are kind of a nice little theme. Yeah, bestow was a sub theme in this set. There was quite a lot of bestow cards. And that didn't even, it just occurred to me too. That's another case where that was a theros mechanic that really only existed there. There's been a handful since then in commander sets and stuff. But a lot of these bestow cards are taking that mechanic and bringing it to another plane where it makes sense mechanically.
00:15:08
Speaker
All right, what's your next one? Well, I don't I talk about something I'm really excited about that maintains the common uncommon, but unlike some of these other ones, I am genuinely going to put this in a deck as soon as I get it. Twisted landscape and by extension, the other 10 landscapes.
00:15:28
Speaker
So this is a cycle of lands. We get all 10 in this set, which doesn't happen terribly often occasionally, but usually we'll get cycles of lands in sets of five.
00:15:39
Speaker
These are just panoramas, but better. So they're lands for three color decks, and these specifically have to be played in them, but I guess I'll read the cards. A Twisted Landscape, this is the one I'm going to use, is a land, taps to add a colorless mana, or you can tap sacrifice it to search your library for basic swamp, mountain, or forest, put it in the battlefield, tapped, but you can also cycle it for black, red, green. So panoramas were on Alara,
00:16:09
Speaker
Yeah, Alara. And so there was the Circle of Five. Alara were the, oh, it's shards, the shards set. So there were three color pairs where each color plus it's two allies. It's like white, blue, and green. And so you got these panoramas, which did a similar thing. They tapped for colorless or had one tap sacrifice and search for basic of their three kinds.
00:16:34
Speaker
but they didn't have that cycling. And then when we got cons of Tarkir that did wedge stuff, they didn't make the wedge panoramas. No. Which is a little disappointing. So actually, when I first was flipping through this set, I just saw the first one was for a bountiful landscape, which is green, red, blue. No. And I went, oh, we got our wedge ones. And then all of a sudden, I noticed, oh, no, we got 10. We got the whole thing. Yeah. Yeah, I was surprised they printed the whole set myself. Yeah.
00:17:03
Speaker
Yeah, real, real excited about that. And then the my, my lands matter deck, my Zyra Irene is green, red, black. And so like that goes right in there. I want to sacrifice lands. I want to discard lands. Cool. All right. I'm going to do a quick flavor text. Only one. It's actually another Planeswalker flavor text or well, we don't know whether there are Planeswalker still or not at this point, but
00:17:28
Speaker
This is a line from Soren Markov on Opheomancer, which, if you haven't played with this card before, this card gets played a lot and sacks shenanigans. At the beginning of each upkeep, you've controlled those stakes to create a 1-1 black snake creature token with Death Touch. So if you have a way to sack something every turn on every player's turn, you get that repeatedly.
00:17:54
Speaker
So it's just a good card, and it's a three-man attitude. So good card regardless makes death-touchers. But the Soren Markov text says, there are dark ancient arts that fascinate even me. So we're talking about a 7,000-year-old vampire, and he's fascinated by snake charming. I kind of found that amusing, that of everything that Soren's seen, that Snakemancy would be the one that gets his attention. Yeah.
00:18:23
Speaker
Yeah, that's fun, though. I'm so glad you're finding these flavor texts, because I'll be honest, I missed. I did not look at a lot of flavor texts as I was going through cards. So the next card I want to talk about, though, is six. And this is a lore, you know, callback to run in six. You know, we had the wonderful story from Sean McGuire when
00:18:53
Speaker
I think it's called Tangles, which is when Ren goes to retire 6 and finds 7 on Innistrad. But 6 was Ren's mount for quite a while. It's a green and 2 for a 2-4 with reach. And it's a tree folk, legendary creature tree folk, because of course it's still legendary even if Ren is no longer attached.
00:19:18
Speaker
And whenever it attacks, you can mill three cards and then put a land card from among them into your hand. So in a green-black deck, this is probably just doing things you want to do anyways. I mean, it's not going to see commander play likely, except in very specific decks. These green-black are usually not attacking. But there is another line of text, though, which makes things really interesting. As long as it's your turn, non-land permanent cards in your graveyard have retreats.
00:19:46
Speaker
So that might actually make this, you know, playable in some decks because being able to replay, you know, discard a land and replay a creature out of your graveyard is pretty sweet. Yeah. Just doing two lines of text there, doing a lot of stuff that you want to be doing in those green, black mill decks. Yeah.
00:20:10
Speaker
or green black X build next potentially too. So I wouldn't be surprised to see six pop up in some decks. And the art on this is gorgeous too. Yes. Okay, all right. And there it is. Okay, so I'm gonna continue this this theme of talking about cards on putting in decks, but I realized
00:20:33
Speaker
I'm still going to probably be hitting a lot of comments and uncommons, because I have weird decks and that's what I like about them. Urza's Cave is a land Urza's Cave. Tap to add a colorless mana, or it has three taps. Sacrifice Urza's Cave, search your library for a land card, put it onto the battlefield tapped. Despite Urza being the worst, I like this card for my coselectic.
00:21:00
Speaker
My Kozilek deck is, it's a colorless commander, so my entire life is- There's so much good stuff for Kozilek in this set, it is. Yeah, though, my Kozilek is a little weird, so I still have a bunch of things I'm thinking about, but because mine isn't lots of colorless creatures or lots of Eldrazi, it's mostly, I'm gonna cast Kozilek as many times as it takes, so I run like 25 mana rocks,
00:21:28
Speaker
There's still some good cards for sure. There's a bunch of good cards, including this. This is just a nice solid land that'll take a land slot and then kind of give me access to literally every, well, like I have two or three wastes just to take advantage of some basic searches whenever I get to search for a basic plan for some reason. But outside of that, like all the rest of the lands are utility in some way, because that's just how colorless lands work. So Urza's Cave is just a nice like, all right, I'll just go cash this in for something else that I want to use at this time.
00:21:58
Speaker
Nice was one of the, it's one of the decks I've had together the longest. And I, when I realized, like, when I, I used to build decks, play them for like two weeks and then take them apart. And I was like, well, now that I have a deck that I've keeping together across multiple sets, it was fun to just get to like every set. I look at the colorless lands every set. This is the fun. Now I suddenly care about every colorless land. Yep. All right.
00:22:28
Speaker
I had one up and then I lost it. Or was I going next? Oh, there it is. I picked, I don't think I picked a single card I'm planning on actually playing. All the ones I picked are ones that I had either flavor or other interesting things. But the one that I'm talking about now is Shulengar, Sire of Famine. It's a three mana, three and a two black. So five mana, Elder Demon.
00:22:58
Speaker
Don't see too many of those It's a flying six six sacrifice another creature create a blood token if you sacrifice an angel this way create a number of blood tokens equal to its toughness instead So we got like wanting to sacrifice angels. I really like where this is going. I love the artwork by the way it is Amazing he's built a whole throne out of angel wings and then for
00:23:26
Speaker
three Orzhov, you can sac six blood tokens and return all creatures in your graveyard to the valley with finality counters on them and their vampires in addition to their other types. So what we have here though is that the reason he's called the Sire of Famine is this is a demon that caused the famine on Innistrad which got the people to turn to vampirism.
00:23:52
Speaker
So we get another we get another legendary from the history of Innistrad after getting the angel which I'm totally blanking on her name that finally got the white black angel after years. Alyssa or Liza or something.
00:24:15
Speaker
But yeah, so I thought it was really cool that we get another Deep Cut. I still wanna see Gabrielle's demons on a card someday, please, Wizards. Especially his secretary. Where was this, okay.
00:24:36
Speaker
So going back to cards I think are cool and interesting. This is kind of a callback. This is one of the cards I look at and I go, oh yeah, Time Spiral's a thing. And these sets kind of are filling that role now. WasteScape Battle Mage.
00:24:53
Speaker
one in a colorless. It's an Eldrazi wizard with Kicker, green, and or one in a blue. When you cast a spell, if it was kicked for green, exile target artifact or enchantment at opponent controls. When you cast it if it was kicked for one in a blue, return target creature and opponent controls to its hand.
00:25:11
Speaker
Well, this battle mage is like this was a thing from the invasion cycle. They made a whole cycle of these battle mages. And actually, I guess they've done some others similar later too. But the ones during that cycle all had these two kickers that were two colors that were at that time, because this was in plain shift. Plain shift? Is that the middle set in invasion block?
00:25:41
Speaker
Yeah. They were wedges. It was like the black card has the blue and red kickers because those are their two allies. They later did do a time spiral one in Planar Chaos, which is the alternate reality one where they did a green one that has blue and black. So that's that one wedge. But now we finally have our second wedge in this cycle.
00:26:07
Speaker
And I think that's neat. It's also fun. Like they're all wizards is a big part of it. And I think that some of the flavor here too, as well, they were using kicker. That was a new mechanic and invasion. It's a mechanic that's come back a lot. It's a, it's a solid, it's a mechanic with a lot of space that they can, they can create cards with, but I think it, it's kind of simulates the spell sort of aspect. Like every one of these kickers is basically a spell effect.
00:26:35
Speaker
And so they're like an instant or sorcery type effect where it destroys a thing or you draw a card or you just a quick ephemeral effect. It's not creating tokens or it's not creating counters. No, I think those are, those are fun to see. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Kicker shows up in various forms all over the place. We even got the, the last set had the, the cards that
00:27:03
Speaker
you can keep adding abilities to, and that's just another form of kicker in a lot of ways. You know, it's like everything's a variant of kicker or, you know, it just, it feels like, all right, I'm going to cover a series of cards in this one that are all rifts off older existing cards.
00:27:33
Speaker
So they might not have wanted to print those cards into modern. So they made rifts off of them and, or they're already abandoned modern or not, or they just don't see it. But so, or they just don't see it. Null Drifter is a, it's a seven mana Eldrazi elemental. When ETVs draw two cards, flying Annihilator one,
00:27:59
Speaker
Uh, and it has Voke for blue and two, and it's a four four. This is just, you know, our old friend, null drifter, but on an Eldrazi body this time, instead of a, uh, just an elemental body. Yeah. We've got null elemental blast, which is one colorless. Choose one counter turret, multicolor speller, destroy turret, and multicolor permanent. This is a callback to.
00:28:24
Speaker
you know, the alpha, beta, red elemental blast, blue elemental blast cards. Yep. And also a card that's going straight into my console attack. Yes.
00:28:35
Speaker
Yeah, and it's also got flavor text I wanted to talk about. And I'm sad Hobbs isn't here to hear this one because it's, despite my years, I'm still but a student to the multiverse. How arrogant to think you self it's master. And that's Ugin to Nicol Bolas. And yeah, Hobbs, you know, what do you have to say about that?
00:29:04
Speaker
The next one I want to talk about is Brain Surge, which is a, you know, Brainstorm is definitely too good for Modern. So we get a variant. Did they print Brainstorm into Modern? I don't know. I don't play Modern. They might have been one of the other sets. But Brain Surge is a blue and two for an infant, which is draw four cards and then put two back. So it's just a slightly better Brainstorm for two more mana.
00:29:33
Speaker
But it's you know another callback serum visionary is a 2 in blue for a 2-2 With when it ETV's draw card and scry to you. So just have serum vision stacked onto a build out bin And then there's the last one I want to talk about there's more in the set but necro dominance is the last one I want to talk about so if you played any
00:30:02
Speaker
of what was standard, the standard equivalent back in like a 95, I think it was the, it's just necropotence everywhere. And it's still one of the best card draw cards and commander. And so now we get its little brother, Necrodominance, which is black, black, black, same cost as necropotence. For a legendary enchantment, I guess you can't stack this one up. I don't know why you'd want to, but.
00:30:32
Speaker
Skip your draw step same as necropotence the beginning your end step you may pay any amount of life if you do draw that many cards Necropotence lets you do that whenever you want and here's the real kick in the butt though your maximum hand size is five So you can't just you know, it cuts you down a couple of cards But this is gonna be this is gonna be a really nice budget version of necropotence to when it settles down I think if
00:31:02
Speaker
if it doesn't get actually played anywhere. And then it has the last line in Necropotence, which is a card or token we put in your graveyard for anywhere exile instead. Necropotence doesn't say token, but yeah, so we've got ourselves another, we've got ourselves a baby Necropotence, which has been one of the most famous cards ever printed. Yeah, yeah.
00:31:26
Speaker
I saw that one. I missed most of the rest of those as references to those. There is one card on my list that I'll talk about next then that is similar to what you're talking about. Only this was a card that was banned in modern and it looks like they're trying to make a fixed version, I think.
00:31:44
Speaker
a birthing ritual. It's a green enchantment for one and a green at the beginning of your end step if you control a creature. Look at the top seven cards of your library, then you can sacrifice a creature if you do. Put a creature with mana value X or less from among those onto the battlefield where X is one plus the creature's mana value. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in any order. Yeah, birthing pod is an artifact that
00:32:10
Speaker
It does more, like it lets you search your entire library. In fact, any creature, you can search your entire library for one plus. So it's not just your end step, it's at any time.
00:32:19
Speaker
And it's your whole library, yeah. This is a lot different, but it does the same thing, but it's... Yeah, it is definitely... This has got more... Yeah, that's got like more restrictions on it than the Necropotence Bear Hand. Yes, yeah, because Pod was like the center point of a deck that just became so efficient. Yeah, it was for a long time, yeah.
00:32:42
Speaker
Yeah, they just had to ban it. They're like, we're only going to print more creatures into this format. And so this deck is just too efficient. And it's going to get more and more able to answer everything with one-offs in the deck. Because it's just a deck full of one-offs. And then you just, whatever you need, sack a creature, go find the answer to the situation.
Magic Lore and Flavor Text
00:33:03
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So we've got
00:33:11
Speaker
Another historical throwback, which is Elder Mari Korvodikal, which is a legendary elf warrior from back in the Wrath Cycle and the invasion block. Guy's kind of a dick, really. He killed his own daughter even though she was
00:33:36
Speaker
She was Phyrexianized, but she actually maintained control of herself to a large extent. He's still offed her. But he was the leader of the Sky Shroud elves. And then, you know, when they got translocated to Dominaria during the overlay, he was one of the leaders of the fight against Phyrexia. But so and I think what we get, you know, I think one of the reasons we're getting a new
00:34:07
Speaker
Aldamri is his other card banned in Commander. Maybe. Yeah, I remember he had another card. I was like, oh, they printed Aldamri again. Oh, I'm so bad at spelling things that are right in front of me. Yeah, that would make sense. Did he have the tap for get mana from all your creatures won? Yeah. Yeah.
00:34:36
Speaker
Well, I can... Yeah. Oh no, his is just an elf lord. All elves gain Forest Walk. Elves cannot be the treasure. Oh, okay. So it's just not very good. Shroud. Yeah. So it's a different elf I was thinking of that... Yeah, you were thinking of... Was that Rulfillos? Yes, Rufellus. Rufellus. Add green to your mana pool for each forest. I don't think he's banned, though. Anyways, we're not a rules podcast, are we? No, you're right. That's just reserve lists. Not bad. I don't know what I'm thinking of then.
00:35:07
Speaker
Yeah. Speaking of things that we are though, flavor people, notice the portal in the back of his art. Yep. That's Belby's portal. Yep. Right where he up and murdered his daughter. Yep.
00:35:24
Speaker
Oh, is that, oh, that is him in the art of Bellby's portal too. Yeah. Like probably having just murdered his daughter. That, I don't know if I'm happy that I made that connection or not now looking at this. Oh boy. Okay. Well, flavor. That's fun.
00:35:43
Speaker
Yeah. So, speaking of flavor, I don't even know what the card does. I could read it, but it has a lot of text, but it has the best name in the entire set. And that's crab domination. Yes.
00:36:00
Speaker
I just had it pulled up. Crab Bombination. Four Black Black emerged from Artifact. Five Black Black for a 5-5 Crab Demon, which is just the best creature line in this set. And that's with a Skeleton Noble sitting right next to it.
00:36:15
Speaker
where I'm looking right now. But then the rest of Crap Ominations is when it enters the battlefield, target opponent exiles top card from the library, a card at random from the graveyard, and a card at random from their hand. You may cast a spell from among those without paying its mana cost. Okay, that's actually kind of a fun effect as well. Yeah. Yeah, that's a pretty cool card. I like the design a lot.
00:36:44
Speaker
Just cool. All right, I'm gonna do a couple of quick flavor text hits before the next card. This is one that I brought to Hobb's attention earlier tonight, and I don't know if he was happy or sad or both, but we got new flavor text from our friend Slobad. I don't know how he's doing today, but it's on Phrexian Ironworks, which is two and a red for an artifact. Whenever you attack, get energy.
00:37:13
Speaker
and tap and pay 3 energy to create a 3-3 Phyrexian Golem artifact creature as a sorcery. And then the text says, we have made a friend today. That is one that is just all pain because of the context. Because then the attribution too was slow bad.
00:37:34
Speaker
The Iron Hand or something. Iron Goblin. Iron Goblin, yeah. It's Phyrexianized name. Yeah. Oh, it's so bad. Like his friend was a golem and now he's making golems and it's... But they're all Phyrexianized and it's...
00:37:51
Speaker
And that reminded me that this being a supplemental set that can kind of do fun things, it can also go back to painful places and give us cards like that. Sorry, you had some more fun text, didn't you? Yeah, I did. That's fine, though, because that's a really good point to bring up, is these cards can be from any time of Magic's history. They're not from a specific period.
00:38:15
Speaker
The other one I want to mention is a Mogmarb, a mob, because it's another goblin. I always love our goblins. It's red, red, red for a 3-3. Saka, it deals three damage divided as you choose. But the flavor text is, there was absolutely nothing suspicious about three mogs carrying barrels of explosives, or so they told everyone who had listened. Nothing suspicious. Nothing at all. So you're getting three 1-1 goblins that each die and deal a damage to something.
00:38:45
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Oh, why did I not see that was mug fanatic times three? Yeah. Of course, of course. Yep. Oh, that's so good. So yeah, it's exactly mug fanatic times three. You get a mug mob. That's beautiful. And then I'm going to go one more. This one, I mainly picked it because of the flavor text, but the art on this is absolutely obscene too.
00:39:16
Speaker
It's Glimpse the Impossible, two in a red for Sorcery, exile a top three card to your library. You may play those cards this turn. At the beginning of your next n-step, many of those cards remain exiled, put them in your graveyard, and create that L-0-1-L Drowzee token for each card put in your graveyard that way. So you get something back if you can't play the cards, which is kind of nice. But the flavor text here is, Gisella beheld true divinity and was humbled. And it just shows
00:39:46
Speaker
Gissella getting emmer cooled. And this art is... it's nuts. It just... I don't know. In the Gissella, you know, we get some more history flavor text from
00:40:04
Speaker
in a straw, but yeah, the combination of everything on this car, this Justine Jones art just rocks. Yeah, it's such a good, again, that's kind of that melt those things. It's got the mechanical things fitting with what's happening. The story stuff is cool because that also represents
00:40:24
Speaker
Gizella was one of the two who had meld from Shadows Over Innistrad. So the two angels that got phyrexianized, or not phyrexianized, the other one, emacralized. Which involved gaining a lot of tentacles. Yeah. Yeah.
00:40:43
Speaker
So I'm going to do a goblin. We're going to continue that goblin theme. And I had to mute a moment ago to laugh because I just finally read the flavor text on this goblin. So this is one of the revealed cards that's from the commander set, actually.
00:40:58
Speaker
Siege Gang Lieutenant. I love it. For 3 and of Red, it has the Mechanic Lieutenant, which is cool, we haven't seen that in a long time. At the beginning of combat on your turn, if you control your commander, create 2, 1, 1 Red Goblin creature tokens, those tokens gain haste until end of turn, and also has to sacrifice a goblin, Siege Gang Lieutenant deals 1 damage to any target.
00:41:22
Speaker
With the flavor text, his crew proudly maintains an accident rate of 100% per day. Just a beautiful goblin flavor text. But this goes straight into Zada. Zada's always looking for ways to get more goblin tokens. This is a goblin who makes goblins. I mean, it's Siege Gang commander, except he's now a lieutenant, so he does it repeatedly. Yeah, it's beautiful. Yeah, he gets more fodder to spend than a commander does.
00:41:54
Speaker
No, it's great. Alright, another, I don't know if this will be a quick flavor text drop or not, but I'm
00:42:04
Speaker
Bum Hobbs isn't here to talk about this one because he did get to do a whole video on it already but it's that utter insignificance which is one in a blue for flash and chant creature and chanting creature loses all abilities at a base power of toughness one one then he can pay two in a colorless to exile the creature um but the whole reason this card is relevant at all is because the flavor text is i and well and the name is really good but i used to think my life was meaningless now i know for certain
00:42:30
Speaker
Which, you know, this guy standing like 50 feet from Bulmaag, I would probably feel the same way. But I mean, that feeling in general, though, is just, yeah, I've definitely felt that. And yeah, you think of things in a galactic scale, utter insignificance is appropriate as well, but it's
00:42:59
Speaker
Just another good flavor text card. The part I want to talk about in detail though is Ugin's binding. This is what kind of shows all of the Hedron network being activated. And it's really cool.
00:43:24
Speaker
It's a two and a blue for a devoid instant return target, nonland permanent, you don't control the owner's hand. So it's just a bounce. But it has, whenever you cast a colorless spell with mana value of seven or greater, you may exile it from your graveyard. And when you do return each nonland permanent, you don't control the owner's hand. So it's a psych rift if you cast a large colorless spell.
00:43:49
Speaker
And it's just like, yeah, it's just, everything is getting, you know, bound up. I like the whole story, the full art on this Carter extended art. It looks amazing. But yeah, it's just another cool story point we get to see, and more Ugin for Hobbs to be upset about. Yeah.
00:44:18
Speaker
And you said, you know, talk about utter insignificance. You kind of wish Hobbes was here and that understandably good, but as soon as then you said your next card was Ugin's binding and I'm like, Oh, maybe it's a good thing Hobbes isn't here to talk about Ugin. So I have another one that I just saw, cause I'm looking at these blue cards because of the cards you're talking about here, but tune the narrative.
00:44:44
Speaker
Just, I, it makes me feel good. There's, there's cards talking about slow, bad phyrexin eyes and things that, that kind of hurt, but this one, this one I really like. So it's blue for an instant draw card. You get two energy kind of interesting.
00:45:00
Speaker
cantrip card from that standpoint. But the flavor text, the commie whisper of other worlds brimming with stories untold, it would take a lifetime to learn them, a lifetime well spent, is not attributed, but has Tamio in the art. And that seems very much like a Tamio thing to say. And that card just feels really nice to see Tamio back in a sort of representing maybe her pre-spark. Right, which is one of the planeswalkers in the set too, is Tamio.
00:45:30
Speaker
Tamio, the flip walkers and the set are all their pre-Spark versions. I didn't put any on my list to talk about because they're all well-known characters except Grist and Grist has like no story whatsoever and somehow got a flip walker before any of the other walkers people actually care about. Yeah, maybe I'm a little thinking that was a waste of a slot, but
00:45:59
Speaker
My next one is going to be one of the commander cards, and it's because the style, you've seen the picture in art before, you've seen references to a lot of things, but we've never actually seen the character themselves, which is Uma, Queen of the Suva.
00:46:25
Speaker
So going all the way back to Alpha with Vesuvendoffelgangers and Vesuvia is just this island of shapeshifting creatures. You know, the Vesuval land enters and copies a land. You know, there's a couple of variants of Vesuvian shapeshifter or at least one other variant of a newer variant, but yeah.
00:46:50
Speaker
So, but now we finally have, we have Uma, Queen of Vesuva. It's a, you know, I always love my clone cards because the, what they do to the game. This is actually, though, this isn't a clone card. It does something different. It's, it's one out of five when it enters a battlefield or attack. So one, you got to get your one to five in the combat there. Put an everything counter on each to one target land and up to one target creature.
00:47:16
Speaker
Every land within everything counter on it is at every land in addition to its type. And every nonland creature within everything on it is a creature, is every creature type. So it turns all your stuff into prismatic lands and shapeshifters are in changeling. It's changeling, yeah. It's just kind of, it's kind of a neat mechanic. And I'd like to see, this is very different from normal Simic. And I'd like to see what somebody could actually do
00:47:44
Speaker
Oh, I also just noticed the typeline is shapeshifter noble. That's pretty cool that the queen is actually a noble because they tend to, there's a lot of them that aren't. But yeah, that's my one from the commander set I wanted to talk about. Yeah, that's a fun one. I always love the references back to some alpha stuff like that. We'll talk about one more card that's definitely going into my Zata deck. This is another common. Again, this is why I love
00:48:15
Speaker
Some of my weird decks where a card like this is such a good card for that deck. Siege Smash. One in a red for an instant with Split Second. As long as a spell is on the stack, players can't cast spells or activate abilities that aren't mana abilities. And it has Choose One, destroy target artifact, or target creature gets plus three plus two and gains trample until end of turn.
00:48:36
Speaker
So that was such a good Zata card. So good, Rosada. Two mana, three-two trample to my entire team, because that's how Zata works. Or a With Split Second, so it cannot be interacted with. Or I can use the utility. Or you can take an artifact that also can't be interacted with. It's like, nope, that needs to go. You can't counter the spell. That artifact is gone. Yeah, love that card.
00:49:03
Speaker
No, that card is sweet. Definitely an include for Zada or Feather. Yeah, so I've covered mine. There's so many callbacks in this that it's kind of ridiculous. The last one, okay, I do want to mention one more. It's another commander card. And I can't take credit for this one because I didn't notice this one,
00:49:34
Speaker
We get a card for Decid the Restless, who has been on flavor text for decades. And she's 2 and a Jun for a 5, 6. When a Wurgoyf permanent card is put in your graveyard from anywhere other than battlefield, put it onto the battlefield. And whenever one or more creatures you control deals combat damage to a player, create a Tarmogoyf token.
00:49:57
Speaker
But the thing that what what's so interesting though is that she is the character mentioned on most of the Lurgoyf cards after the original one. So somebody had posted a picture of the quotes from all the various cards at reference that are quotes from her about Lurgoyfs. And so we have a Lurgoyf commander now.
00:50:22
Speaker
Yeah, it's really cool. Yeah, and it's just cool to get those characters who are on flavor text that we have not a lot of context for. I think, again, I made the comparison a lot, but Tom Charles, one of the first times they did that. And I'm so glad that they found a place to... This is one of those things that I think about a decent amount. Mark Rosewater, who's the head designer of magic, one of the things he talked about when he did
00:50:49
Speaker
great designer searches where they're trying to find new designers to come in for magic. One of his big things that he kind of underlined was an important question for him was he would ask people, you know, what was a good thing about this set that was unsuccessful at the time? I think he was talking about Kamagawa. What was a bad thing about this set that was very successful? It's like there's no unmitigated successes or failures.
00:51:13
Speaker
And so this is one of those things where they look at times prior and say, it actively hurt the game because it was too complex. And there was these issues. It helped to give rise to their whole new world order thing that they did for a while. And then they kind of have changed and backed away from that, but where they were trying to reduce complexity, but they still said, but there's something good and cool here. Where's an appropriate place to use that? And I'm so glad they did that.
00:51:43
Speaker
Nice. Yeah, it's great. I love these references and callbacks that we've been doing. Yeah, it's a lot of fun to get that. But I
Conclusion and Mental Health Awareness
00:51:56
Speaker
think that's going to be our episode today. Hopefully we'll be able to record our other topic and bring that for you all next week. And we'll see how things go. But otherwise, have a good rest of your May.
00:52:11
Speaker
So we make Mental Health Awareness Month is a big deal for us. We want to have, because it's important to just have those conversations. It's important to know that you're not alone. If these are struggles that you have, these are things that lots of people deal with, including the host of this cast. And so we couldn't bring that episode. We wanted to bring something and I think we had some fun with this.
00:52:36
Speaker
And, but hopefully next week we have another mental health topic and then we'll go from there. So then we're in June. And so sure we'll, we'll have some fun stuff for Pride Month coming on, coming up. And that's our show for today. You can find all of the hosts on Twitter for now. Hobbs can be found at HobbsQ, Tay can be found at Tayatransense, and Alex can be found at Mel underscore chronicler.
00:53:03
Speaker
Feel free to send us any questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to the Goblin Lord Pod on Twitter or email us at goblinlordpodcast.com.
00:53:12
Speaker
If you would like to support your friendly neighborhood Gobstugs, our link tree can be found on our Twitter account and in the description of today's show. This has everything from various discount codes to the link from our Patreon. The music for today's show was by Wintergotten, who can be found at vintergotten at bandcamp.com. The art was done by Steven Raphael, who can be found at stevereffel on Twitter. Cob and Lore is proud to be presented by Hipsters of the Coast as part of their growing forthos content.
00:53:40
Speaker
Check them out on Twitter at hipsters MTG or online at hipstersofthecoast.com. Thank you for listening and remember goblins like snowflakes are only dangerous in numbers.