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Episode 221: The Cards of Thunder Junction
151 Plays7 months ago
Hello Podwalkers, and welcome back to the Goblin Lore Podcast! The full spoilers are out for Outlaw of Thunder Junction. Today Alex and Taya look at the flavor/mechanics of the set and discuss what cards they are excited to try out!
We also finally have a Linktree with all of our discounts/resources
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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
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- 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
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Opening and closing music by Wintergatan (@wintergatan). Logo art by Steven Raffael (@SteveRaffle)
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Personal Insights
00:00:30
Speaker
Hello Podwalkers and welcome to another episode of the Goblin Lore podcast. We are here today to talk to you about Outlaws of Thunder Junction, the new set that is out. We're gonna actually talk about some cards today.
00:00:45
Speaker
with someone who could make it tonight, and that's fine. But I'm going to do, just circumstances come up, but I'll come, I'll do my intro real quick and then pass it off. So I'm Alex Newman, filmed on Twitter at Mel underscore chronicler. Occasionally, I've mostly kicked the habit, but I do check into Twitter every so often. So that is a way to get a hold of me if you want to, want to send me a message that way or ping me for something.
00:01:11
Speaker
But my pronouns are he him. And what we wanted to do for a fun opening question, seeing as we're going to be talking about cards, is there's one of the mechanics
Card Mechanics and Personal Preferences
00:01:24
Speaker
in the new set. It defines outlaw as a group. There's a group of classes that are creature types, which are considered outlaws. And it's like, which one do you think fits you? And I think I'm going to go with Warlock for myself.
00:01:40
Speaker
because I did once have a conversation. So this is a weird tangent, but it's relevant. So I play a lot of Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder. And one of my groups, the Game Master, my Pathfinder group, really likes to do this thing where you kind of make yourself as a character in the game. We've done a few different iterations of it. And the most recent one, he kind of
00:02:05
Speaker
With a little bit of guidance, he had us rank the six stats in order that we think are our highest to lowest, and that he kind of distributed things that way and built our characters a little bit, and then gave us some input, say, hey, is there anything egregious you think I should change or not? But he gave me a lot of, in the Pathfinder, you have different types of knowledge, very specific. You have knowledge geography and knowledge nobility, but knowledge arcane is one of them.
00:02:30
Speaker
normally it's magic stuff. But he was like, yeah, the actual like dictionary definition of arcane is about knowing esoteric things. He's like, of all of my friends who have knowledge arcane in real life, it's you, you have knowledge arcane. And it's like that, that probably fits for a warlock class for me, I think. So pass it off to you. Hey, I'm Taya. I'm
00:02:57
Speaker
Pronouns are she, her, they, them. Taya transcends on Blue Sky. I'm not on the Twitters anymore, so if you message me there, I won't see it. I also choose Warlock. One, because it's my favorite D&D class, I have to try to avoid picking Warlock whenever I start a new campaign. I don't know, it's kind of a toss-up between Warlock, Monk,
00:03:25
Speaker
for me is my favorite class. So a warlock usually wins out. I just really like warlocks. And I don't know, it just got to give me a good Eldritch Blast and I'm happy.
Rakdos Joins Up and Deck Potential
00:03:38
Speaker
Nice. But also kind of what you said, you know, I just
00:03:46
Speaker
I don't know. I want all my power to come for no effort. I'm just going to rely on somebody else for all my power. Uh, just like, where do I sign? You know, you want my soul. Sure. I'm not using it. You know, learning to be an assassin sounds like a lot of work. You have to do all those drills and learn breath control and keep practicing. And it sounds like a lot of work.
00:04:16
Speaker
Yep. Yep. And I don't know that I could spend a lot of time on a boat. So pirates were right out for me. Yeah. Yeah. I definitely couldn't. I got so seasick on the first show. Co-cruise. I went on when we had some rough waters. I was.
00:04:33
Speaker
I spent three days pretty much confined the cabin when we had really bad rough waters. So pirate is definitely right out. I am absolutely not stealthy enough to be a rogue. Same. Very much the same. No, I am not sneaking around anywhere.
00:04:53
Speaker
And, uh, mercenary, I mean, I, I think any of these classes can be mercenaries. So I, I think that's. Yeah, that's, that's the open ended enough. It's like, I, I suppose working as a freelancer, Hey, that's a mercenary freelance writer or something. They're mercenaries. Yeah.
00:05:13
Speaker
So, I mean, it's for magic reasons, they're different classes, but any of these can work as mercenaries. That's a matter of more, you know, not so much your job, it's who's paying you to do your job. Yeah. Who's footing the bill?
00:05:32
Speaker
Yep. All right. Well, that was fun. I'm glad you reminded me before we hit record that we should have a question. That was a good one. All right. So for cards that we want to talk about, I suspect we're going to be all over the place, which is on brand for us. Do you have one you want to start with or should I pick one to go off? I'm going to start with one that
00:06:01
Speaker
I just think is very unique because as far as I know, the first time that they have done this on any card, it might have been done on an unset, I'm not sure, but the card that I'm talking about is Shoot the Sheriff. And this is just your regular uncommon removal spell, one in a black, destroy target, non-outlaw creature.
00:06:31
Speaker
Flavor text is now where's that deputy from Jana, Helpsburg, Thunder Slinger. Okay, everything up to this point is totally normal. What makes this card different is the reminder text says, assassins, mercenaries, pirates, rogues, and warlocks are outlaws. But then they had everyone else's fair game. They put a joke in the reminder text. Oh, that's, I didn't even notice that. That is brilliant.
00:07:01
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, that's super cool.
00:07:04
Speaker
Yeah, I remember, and this I can't back up because it's just occurring to me now, and I have no idea where I read this, and that's just the whole thing. But I'm pretty sure, I saw one of the Wizards people talking about how reminder text isn't actually rules text, so they can be a little more- Right, it's the same reason why you can play extort cards in black or white decks in Commander. The text does not exist on the card for all intents and purposes.
00:07:32
Speaker
Yeah, it's not like the rules just don't even, you can't even see it. It just doesn't exist. But it's kind of there just to help the player, or in this case, crack a fun joke. That's great. That of course, that card I had on a list of, for a different reason, that's on my flavor list. Because of course, well then that is a reference to a song that I should have looked up before. Is it just, I Shot the Sheriff? Is that just this game? Yeah, I'm pretty sure it is.
00:08:02
Speaker
Yeah, song by Bob Marley and the Whalers, according to the people here. With the follow-up line, but I didn't shoot no death movie. That, of course, is the reference there, which is a lot of fun. That's a thing that I'll talk about a little bit as we get to some of these other cards.
Legends and Modal Card Design
00:08:19
Speaker
Hobbs and I did a whole episode of this like three years ago, and maybe we should revisit. This might be a good topic to revisit again, especially with you, Taya, but we're talking about
00:08:29
Speaker
names, and like the design space within names, because it's like whatever name they use for a card, the way the rules work, they can never use that name again, that name is only that card. And so, in that context, we were talking about like Kaladesh, having cards
00:08:48
Speaker
that had really flavorful names for that situation. And this set has a similar things where they have some really good West themed names that are perfect for this set, but also kind of do the double whammy of they'll never use a card called Shoot the Sheriff on another plane. It just doesn't fit on Kaldheim. It's just not gonna happen. And so it's a perfect, great flavorful name.
00:09:17
Speaker
that doesn't use a design space from a future set. Right. Yeah, this set along with Nuka Pena were sets where they had a lot of room to use names that would not be used in any other place. Mm hmm.
00:09:31
Speaker
There was something on Kaladesh about taking your license away. Revoke privileges. Revoke privileges, that's right, which was the arrest of the site of the pacifism. You got your license taken away. It's a thing that I think happens more now, but there is good examples of very specific flavorful card names early in magic. But it's also why you don't see very many cards that have
00:10:00
Speaker
one-word names anymore that aren't reprints because there's only so many words that hit as a descriptive name or good enough name to use as a card title that you run out of those eventually.
00:10:16
Speaker
Right. So for me, I'm going to talk about there's a couple of legends in this set that I'm actually interested in building. It's like I do not build. I just haven't built a lot of decks lately because I have a bunch. The amount of decks that I have compared to how much I play magic is way off proportion right now for me to look at building too many more. But looking at Riku of many paths has me really thinking about building a deck now.
00:10:46
Speaker
So this card is green, blue, red for a 3-3 creature. And I love that color combo and have yet to really find a good deck for myself in that combo. Oh, I guess I have a cascade deck I've been playing around with a little bit. But anyway, so Riku has, whenever you cast a modal spell, choose up to X, where X is the number of times you chose a mode for that spell. It has three bullet points to choose from. Next, I have a top card in your library. Until the end of your next turn, you may play it.
00:11:16
Speaker
put a plus and plus encounter on Riku of many paths, it gains trample till on a turn, or create a blue bird token with flying. I love modal cards. I once had a modal cube that was just exhausting to try to play because every single card had two or three or four different things it could do.
00:11:37
Speaker
I do not have that cube anymore, but I would be interested in suffering that pain once again myself and trying to build a modal deck around Riku. Yeah, this Riku is interesting.
00:11:53
Speaker
You know, I wouldn't be able to put it in my other Riku deck because they're just not synergistic with each other, which is kind of a bummer. I can't do that with the new Vial Smasher either. There's no synergy between them. And same thing with me
Gonti and Blix: Abilities and Synergies
00:12:08
Speaker
and the new Gitrog. Yeah. So I'm kind of bummed out that we're getting new versions of these cards and there's no synergy between them. But this Riku I like because this is a completely new design.
00:12:23
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. They're like caring about the number of modes on the card. It is a really cool space to play in. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's, it's super interesting. And it's like, I gotta, I haven't put a lot of effort into thinking about it, but this is, this is one of those cards that makes me want to put in that effort. Yeah. Yeah. I, I like that. It's,
00:12:51
Speaker
It's a really cool card. I liked it when it was, I'm kind of shocked that they brought it to me. Riku never seemed like it was popular enough to get brought back or reference, but they, uh, apparently he is. And I was happy about that because I have a Riku deck, which is one of my favorite decks. It's it's, uh, oops, all clones ice.
00:13:21
Speaker
And I'm really happy to see him get a new card. I just wish it was synergistic enough that I could use it in my existing deck somehow. Yeah, I did once. Cool that there's a whole new archetype here. Yeah. And that's a good colors for modal cards, too. There's a lot of good modal cards in those colors. Yeah. Yeah, I did once have a Riku deck myself.
00:13:47
Speaker
But it taught me a lot about deck theory because it was the very first commander deck I built that was all promos. And this might have been even before they started doing every rare and the set gets a previous promo. So the actual pool of promos was kind of garbage.
00:14:08
Speaker
And it was just me trying to do nonsense, but because Riku is such a dangerous commander, nobody would let me have Riku on the board.
00:14:18
Speaker
And I'm like, I just want to clone my wood elves. Riku is so out of class nowadays that nobody even cares. Yeah, but it was like at the time it kind of it taught me a lot about just deck theory. It's like, oh, there are there are commanders who are just too dangerous for me to build because whatever nonsense I'm doing can't stand up to this people trying to prevent the nonsense that I don't even have. Yeah.
00:14:47
Speaker
you know it's yeah it's pretty uh it's a pretty cool card i like the art on it too it's got some neat neat art i'm not sure kind of where riku of the uh where riku's reflection is here but uh he looks pretty cool yeah it seems uh
00:15:18
Speaker
It was really neat.
Legendary Enchantments and Flavor
00:15:20
Speaker
So for my next card, since you mentioned a legendary, I'm going to go with, I'm going to mention a cycle about legendaries and that's the join up cycle. Not everybody in the crew got one of these, but specifically I want to mention the Rakdos joins up card.
00:15:41
Speaker
All of these cards are similar. They do something, they're a legendary enchantment that does something when they come into play. And then they trigger again whenever a legendary creature does something, either comes into play or in this case dies. So Rakdos joins up as three, a black and a red. When it comes into the battlefield, you return a creature from your graveyard to the battlefield with two additional plus one, plus one counters on it. So you get a reanimate,
00:16:10
Speaker
Makes it a bit bigger for five mana. But then whenever a legendary creature you control dies, it deals damage equal to that creature's power to target opponent. So this is absolutely going into my Rakdos Lord of Eldrazi deck. Nice. Because the biggest problem with that deck is board wipes. And if anybody wants to board wipe my Eldrazi, I'm going to make it hurt a lot. Yep.
00:16:41
Speaker
Oh, that's cool. Yeah. That's a cycle I wanted to talk about. And so I'm glad you picked, you picked when you were going to play like Rakdos. That sounds great in that Rakdos deck. And also, also is symptomatic. Yeah, it is. It's, you know, sadly the Rakdos card itself won't make that deck.
00:17:01
Speaker
Rakdos Lord of Riots doesn't really play well with any of the other Rakdos. It does its own thing where all the other ones either have to do with demons or sacrifice or anything. Rakdos Lord of Riots just cares about big things pretty much and doing damage. I've never gotten to play any of the other Rakdos cards with him.
00:17:25
Speaker
You know, Rakdos the Muscle is a pretty cool card too, but I think it's, Rakdos the Muscle might go in my, you know, it can't even go in that deck. I was gonna say it might go, it might play other people's stuff deck, but it's the wrong colors for that. Yeah. Look at that. I know. Actually, no, it's fine. It could go in that deck because I play Vile. I'm running the four colors for that deck, so it could go in that deck.
00:17:54
Speaker
Oh, there you go. Yeah, that'd be fun. Yeah, and I just, I love the legendary enchantment space that they're starting to kind of do, because this fits the, was it the Oath cards they did for the Gatewatch for a while?
Unique Cards and Mechanic Exploration
00:18:08
Speaker
Had a similar thing where they're legendary enchantments tied to a specific character, they have an ETB, and then those had some like Planeswalker synergy that was static while they were on the board. It's kind of like that space for legendary enchantments.
00:18:25
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And they're the ones that they did are all pretty cool. Vraska got one. Kellen got one. I forget who else got one. Tiny bones. Tiny bones. It was a fifth and I'm liking it. I don't know. I just want to do Vraska's real quick because. Yeah, I like her. There's only two mana. When it enters the battlefield, put a death touch counter on each creature you control and then
00:18:52
Speaker
Each legendary creature you control deals combat damage to a player, draw a card. That is a real sweet deal for two mana. Mm-hmm. Yep. Just the effect on its own, just a legendary creature deal combat damage thing is nice, but then the ETB ties into it in a nice way where you make your legendary creatures less blockable. It's...
00:19:17
Speaker
I really like it. It's too bad that this does not, color wise, does not go into my Dehada deck because this would be so perfect in that deck. Yeah. I don't have a deck I would put this in, but Vraska joins up was the one I was going to talk about just as an excuse to talk about the... I love the art on this card. The art is fantastic. It's very good. Wylie Beck, a great artist. All right.
00:19:45
Speaker
I'll talk about a card I am almost certainly going to put in a deck, and it's going to be a card. This is one of the reasons I love this deck, because probably no one is looking at this card, but I want to talk about quickdraw. This is a really good card for my Zata deck. I think this is, I'm pretty sure this is going in Zata. So it's a combat trick, red for an instant, target creature you control gets plus and plus one and gains first strike until end of turn.
00:20:13
Speaker
Also, creatures' target opponent controls lose first strike and double strike until end of turn. The creatures lose double strike and first strike, one opponent's creatures, is super unique. But also, oh, this is a choice I make before, so when I copy it, that choice is the same, regardless. That's still a unique thing.
00:20:41
Speaker
I have a bunch of one band of tricks in that deck. One, one and first strike has a place. Not as much as one and, you know, plus one power and tramp. I need a lot more of those, but the first strike has a good place in that deck. And so this- Yeah, that's a good consideration for feather as well. I haven't updated my feather deck in about two years and there's been a lot more, there's been a lot of new
00:21:07
Speaker
A lot of new combat tricks.
Oco's Gang Cards and Giza's Abilities
00:21:09
Speaker
I need to go through and pick, you know, update Feather's combat tricks. That's what I do every so often for Zod. I was just like, red instance and, you know, instance or sorceries from Scryfall and just what's in the set and just add all those to a list somewhere. Whenever I buy other things, because those are always like a quarter or a dime, just add those into an order with other cards.
00:21:34
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. They're so easy. They're so easy to overlook. And that's, I just need to sit down and basically do a side by side with what's in there now and what's been printed in the last couple of years to upgrade. I don't play that deck a lot though, because people don't like it. It's so, you know, it's so quick and get cranky about it sometimes. Yeah. All right. So yeah.
00:22:04
Speaker
One of the things I want to talk about is, you know, we're going to talk about the story when Hobbs is here, so I'm not going to get too much into the story. But we got cards for all of Oco's gang in the Wanted poster frame. And we talked about this a bit during the Breaches preview episode.
00:22:30
Speaker
and they're all out now. And I just wanted to bring up the Giza one specifically, Giza the Hellraiser. And this is one of the most, I don't know, off-putting arcs because she's just sitting there smiling and waving and holding her shovel. And I don't, to me, this is like, it's pure Giza and obviously because she's totally unhinged. Yes.
00:23:00
Speaker
Her card is great this time around. For three black blacks, she's a 4-4 with Ward 2 and Pay 2 Life. Give Skeleton and Zombies plus one plus one in menace. And whenever you commit a crime, you create two tapped 2-2 blue and black zombie rogues. It only triggers once a turn.
00:23:25
Speaker
She gives you two twos that are essentially three threes with menace. And she gives you two of them for just targeting another player or their stuff. Yep. And she's a four four with work to pay to life. She she's a fantastic card this time around. Yeah. And that ability only triggers once each turn, but it notably doesn't say it can get anyone's turn. Anybody's turn. Yeah.
00:23:57
Speaker
And you just need a way to target somebody on their turn. Yep. But that smile is so creepy. Mm-hmm. I mean, she actually has a similar smile on a normal one, but it's more zoomed out. It's harder to see that. This wanted poster is like she's, it's one of those like poster, the eyes, you know, follow her sort of thing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the grin is disconcerting.
00:24:27
Speaker
It is very disconcerting. I, uh, and if you haven't read the story by Seanan McGuire, the side story with the two of them, she send her off, go read it. And I hope they let Seanan write every story with Giesen Guralff in it for the rest of time. Um, they should just be her characters. Yep.
00:24:57
Speaker
All right. Well, going, going to the opposite end of the spectrum. I'm going to, I'm going to, I want to talk about another card off my flavor list. So did you see rambling possum? Uh, yeah. Let's see. What color is that one green? Mono green. Yeah.
00:25:17
Speaker
Honestly, it's not even so much the card. I mean, the card is kind of fun. 3-3 with saddle one. Whenever it attacks, we'll saddle. It gets a plus and plus two until it'll turn. And then you may return any number of creatures that saddled it to their owner's hand. It's kind of a fun card. But what I was curious about, so I looked into this, at least according to my very cursory search, this is the first possum in magic.
00:25:41
Speaker
No, he describes all sorts of feature type possum. We got a couple of new creature types this set. We got possum, we got varmint. Oh. I don't know, was Armadillo knew this set? I don't know. We get another brush wag. Is that number two? Or have we gotten a second one of those before?
00:26:06
Speaker
Yeah. That is number three. Of course, Ikoria gave us Brushwag. Brushwag is a creature from Mirage that has its own unique creature type. And whenever it was that Wizards of the Coast decided they needed to condense or reassign creature types to make the game a little smoother, which they've done once or twice, it has somehow evaded those.
New Creature Types Overview
00:26:31
Speaker
It's not like anything else. It's not a real creature. So I don't think they could just
00:26:36
Speaker
Just change its creature type so it it persisted and now we have three of them right and they also in Infinity when they made that pump spell that does for each creature type you have they made it non brush wag creatures Yeah
00:26:58
Speaker
So yeah, it's like plus one plus one for each creature type. Target non brush white creature gets plus one plus one for each creature. That is brilliant. Yeah, well, it keeps you from targeting shape shifters. Yep. And that's and that's the other part of it where it is really funny, but it's also wonderful. It's like goat nap is one of my favorite cards from a flavor standpoint, because it's it's an act of treason.
00:27:27
Speaker
It takes control of a creature for just the turn, but it just takes control of goats. But that was during Lorwyn when all the changelings were printed. So all of those changelings are goats. So it actually is kind of a good card in that way, at least. It has a lot more use than you would get just looking at it on its own. All right. That was mine. Do you have another one?
00:27:58
Speaker
Oh, one second. Oh, okay. I just want to reveal that, yeah, it was in big in, one green until end of turn target non-brushway creature gets plus one, plus one for each super type, card type, and subtype it has. Nice. And the flavor text was flea circus. No, flea circus. I only remember this because we, my friends and I did a infinity draft for April Fool's.
00:28:27
Speaker
Oh, that's super fun. Yeah, I want to bring up one of the commander deck cards, and that's Gonti, because playing other people's cardboards is one of my favorite things. I know we talked about it during my File Smasher deck episode. This is one where his new card does exactly what you would expect his card to do.
00:28:56
Speaker
Two and Saltai for spells you cast but don't own costs one less to cast. So that's really helpful when you're doing this strategy. And whenever one or more creatures you control deal combat damage to a player, look at the top part of that player's library, then exile it face down. You may play that card for as long as it remains exiled and mana of any type can be spent to cast that card. So it's kind of like Gonti's original trigger, except it happens every time a creature you control deals combat damage to a player.
00:29:26
Speaker
and he's a rogue. And his backup commander, which I also wanted to talk about because it's a ooze rogue, is blix five boots, which is a five four with menace and ward two. And this has an ability which I think they need to stop printing honestly, which
00:29:50
Speaker
is ability doubling abilities. If a creature you control dealing combat damage to a player causes a triggered ability of a permanent you control the trigger that ability triggers an additional time. Wizards, please stop. We have enough ability triggering. Yeah, and I was so distracted by that I didn't notice its creature type was Ooze Rogue. And its flavor text is multiple pseudopods and no vital organs make dueling a whole lot easier.
00:30:20
Speaker
Perfect. Perfect. That's brilliant. Oh, I love that. Yeah, I mean, when you can hold multiple guns and getting shot doesn't really affect you, it would make dueling a lot easier. Yep. OK. Well, I'm going to talk about another kind of goofy card that also is a commander that I'm highly unlikely to play, but I'd like to entertain
00:30:48
Speaker
dreams of the world where I actually build this commander deck. I want to talk about Bruce Tarle, Roving Rancher. Nice. He was a 4-3 for two red-white and has Oxen you control have double strike. Yeah, playing off his original card which gives double strike to things.
00:31:11
Speaker
When he enters the battlefield or attacks, exile a top card to your library. If it's a land, create a 2-2 white ox creature token, otherwise you may cast it until the end of turn. I did look, and there are 15 cards with creature-type ox in his colors. Plus every shapeshifter you can get. Plus all the shapeshifters. Yeah. So that... I am unlikely to ever do anything with this card, but I like to believe
00:31:41
Speaker
that in some world I would. I didn't even notice he got a card until I was looking through the set again tonight. And I was like, yay, my boy Bruce. You know, if anybody ever listened to my previous podcast of lore guys, you know that we had a we had a special place in our hearts for Bruce and he was we used him in a lot of our skits.
00:32:05
Speaker
You know, our whole Zendikar framing story, Return to Zendikar used Bruce and we really did like him a lot, so.
00:32:20
Speaker
It's, this is a thing we'll talk about more when we talk about the actual story, but I really, I really enjoy, I'm really happy to see the Omen Paths kind of working out the way we were thinking. And I think I saw you talking about this somewhere too, maybe in the Discord.
00:32:37
Speaker
where it's like, this is kind of what I was hoping for. We get people from all over just hanging out. Right, yeah, I did talk about it on the Discord. This is the payoff I wanted from Omen Pass. The set is where we're getting it. I'm just getting to see all these legendaries, and I have no idea how many legendaries there even are in this set. I should count it on...
00:33:00
Speaker
Scryfall or something but there are so many legendaries in this set. Yeah I mean like the story itself has a ton and not beyond even just with their crew as we saw because they kind of you know in the reveals and the hype trailers and things kind of gave us an idea of who was in the crew but
00:33:17
Speaker
even beyond that. There are so many more that are in the story. Yeah, and two of the four side stories have nothing to do with the main crew at all and feature legends from other planes, which is really cool. But then even beyond that, then the cards themselves have all these these folks that we have seen before and some we haven't, but just lots of people from all over getting to come out the other range.
00:33:45
Speaker
And then you add the commander decks and you get even more. So yeah, it's a lot. It definitely is. And I think this might be the most legends we've seen in a standard set since like Dominaria United or something. Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me.
00:34:12
Speaker
And in a lot of ways it kind of feels like a commander set because of, I mean, even beyond the actual commander set, but you look at through the standard set and it kind of feels like we're looking at a commander booster release. I mean, we have Lazov here. He appears for, you know, he appears again for the second set in a row. And I love his artwork so much.
00:34:38
Speaker
He's once again not a very good card. My poor Lazov just... I don't think he's had a good card since his first one. But he's only an uncommon this time around. He's laying low. Yeah, for a guild leader, he gets no respect. I mean, he just... He gets no respect at all. Yeah. Poor guy. Or girl. Or we really have no idea what Lazov's true...
00:35:08
Speaker
gender identity is. I don't know if Lazov remembers what his or their original gender identity is. Seems about right. Yeah. They've been other people for so long they might not even know what their original form was. That seems very possible, very likely to be honest.
00:35:34
Speaker
But yeah, I just, I really liked the kudos to whoever came up with the name for this card. Lazov, familiar stranger. That's good. That's a very good him. Yeah. You know, you just mentioned some other guests. We have Marchesa. I don't know why she would leave her throne behind that. That was when I saw her, I'm just like.
00:35:59
Speaker
Or is there trouble on Fiora? Because why would she leave the comfort of her throne behind? Yeah, and go back to her original color identity too. Yeah. Maybe she's just got bored of being the queen and wanted to go out adventuring again, but it's like, hmm. Yeah.
00:36:27
Speaker
another well we're talking about legends and this is a newer one but when I I really enjoy to give a mention to Bonnie Powell Claire cutter oh yeah is a very clear like gender flipped
00:36:45
Speaker
reference to Paul Bunyan, the North American tall male.
Bonnie Powell and Folklore Influence
00:36:49
Speaker
Because Paul Bunyan had a blue ox named Babe. Bonnie has a blue ox named Bo. And this is some simic bullshit right here. Oh yeah. No. Oh yeah, that's just whatever you attack, draw a card, and then you may put a land from your hand. And you get a second creature with power and toughness equal to the number of lands you control. Yep.
00:37:15
Speaker
yeah you get two two big creatures for six mana and you get an attack and it doesn't even have to attack with her or the other creature it just you can just any attack yeah
00:37:29
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. That is some simple. Just, just Simic good stuff as always. Just get, play Simic get value. That's just how those colors work for, for commanders. Yeah. I obviously hadn't even read the card. I was just like, oh, Bonnie gets a bow. And I'm like, that's kind of fun. Yeah. It was other. Oh, we got, we got Jolene back already. She's gotten significantly nerfed from her previous iteration.
00:37:59
Speaker
She still makes treasure, but not nearly as much as she did before. Thankfully. Yeah. Rebecca is a really fun card. I tried so hard to win the art for that card, but boy, did that go out of my price range. Yeah. That's a dead ability of.
00:38:20
Speaker
So to Rebecca, one blue, red, black for two, five menace. Whenever Rebecca splitter of seconds deals combat damage to a player, you get that many additional upkeep steps after this phase. It's just a really fun, but strange way to like represent time manipulation. Yeah, it is such a cool build around. There's so many neat things you can do with that. And also it's got this amazing, beautiful art by Ryan Pancoast.
00:38:50
Speaker
You know, Becca is amazing. She's beautiful. I want to be Rebecca, you know, as a tall, broad lady that looks like an ogress. She's real style goals. Yeah. But yeah, oh, that art went for eleven thousand five hundred dollars, which was needless to say, way out of my price range. And I think a shock to
00:39:19
Speaker
even the people that were putting it up for auction based on some of the discussions I had. Wow. That's good. Yeah, there was a bidding war right at the end that drove it in the last half an hour from the 5,000 range all the way up to the 11,000 range. Holy moly.
00:39:41
Speaker
Interesting. People like their hot ogre mamas. Yeah, can't blame them. But I was just looking at Rebecca's other cards. So it's the exact same casting cost. They're both one blue, red, black, but went from ogre wizard to ogre warlock in the intervening years. And power and toughness are still not symmetrical, I guess, went from three, four to two, five.
00:40:06
Speaker
Yeah, well, three would be really strong default power on this card. Yes, I agree. But I think there's some interesting, but it's the same number of power and toughness combined. They just flipped one to the other side. I wonder if they weren't using Warlock yet when they did her first printing. I think Warlock fits better for her than Wizard. Yeah.
00:40:29
Speaker
Because they didn't start using Warlock until Thrones of Eldraine, I think. That could be. And yeah, like I said, Warlock fits better, and then Warlock also has mechanical in this set that makes... Yes, it also has mechanical in the set, which makes sense. But I also just think it works better for her as a character. Yeah. Because her powers are more innate than studied. True. She does not seem like the kind of person who studies much. Nice.
00:41:00
Speaker
Another legend. I think this is a new one too. I don't think there's another... I've never seen this one before, but this character before, but it's from the Commander Dex actually. This is one really... I gotta look through that list again, but this is like one of the few cards I pull out of there that I'm really interested in is Kiri Talented Sprout.
00:41:22
Speaker
Yeah, that is yeah, it's Yuma's pet cactus from the side story. Oh, yeah, of course. I read the story. Yeah, and there's even flavor text from Yuma on here.
00:41:35
Speaker
Yeah, but yeah, it's a it's a fun little card, I think, for one red, green, white, a zero three plant druid who gives other plants and tree folk you control plus two plus zero. And at the beginning of your post combat main phase, return a plant tree folk or land from your graveyard to your hand. Love me some land synergy, but this is like gives me other things to do than just land and kind of build a deck that has some land stuff.
00:42:05
Speaker
but is more focused in other directions. So this is like the other commander that I might build. I think a little less likely than Reeku, but I might. This one I may very well try to put a build together for. Yeah. It's an interesting card, that's for sure. And it plays well with Yuma, which obviously I think they were designed to play well together.
00:42:35
Speaker
I like the cactus people in general. Their designs are really neat. They're mostly in green, but their art style is pretty cool. There's quite a few of them on there. Let's see here. I mentioned Rebecca.
00:43:02
Speaker
Yeah, we did a lot of... I know we missed one. I should have done a better job of making only notes here. Do you want me to talk about another? Yeah, if you got another one handy, go for it. Let me do another flavor one. I'm going to call this the greatest art in the set that might get no attention because it's just a random uncommon.
00:43:31
Speaker
Omen Port Vigilante. I love this art. Just 2-2 for one and a white.
00:43:41
Speaker
It has double strike as long as you've committed a crime this turn. It's like probably a solid limited card or something, but I love that art. It's like, I have this written down here. Grease Blade Artisan is another card that I absolutely, I think has stunning art. The Grease Blade Artisan was from the cons block, but it's another one where it's just like sort of like that interacts with auras. It kind of interacts with the
00:44:10
Speaker
set mechanic is probably going to be forgotten as soon as, you know, people stop drafting this set. But I love the look of this card. Yeah, I remember what I was going to talk about now. Totally throw away because you're never going to see them probably ever played outside of limited, but we got our Roadrunner and Coyote cards. Yes.
00:44:40
Speaker
Yeah, Resilient Road Runner and Cunning Coyote. We went to the west, we got them. You know, it's not those like design space sort of things where it's like this is a reference that really only fits in the old west sort of setting, even if the characters aren't necessarily old west, but it has that
00:45:10
Speaker
desert cactus, stark cliff sort of aesthetic to it. So I love that they made that. I'd be curious, and Mark Rosewater probably talks about it in his sets, but in his articles, but I'd be curious how early on they wanted to put those two in the set. Yeah. And I love that the Roadrunner has protection from coyotes because they can never be caught by the coyote. Well, that's so good.
00:45:39
Speaker
Yeah. And the flavor text on it is chasing the roadrunner Omen Port slang for wasting energy on impossible pursuits. Yep. All right. Have I waited? Go ahead. I didn't want to say, before I move on, one thing I want to mention real quick is just mechanically, we haven't talked about anything. And I, I want to talk about, I want to talk about the spree mechanic real quick. Yeah.
00:46:08
Speaker
I think this is a really neat design space because being able to have a base cost for a spell and then make it modal, but you can choose the modes based on mana.
00:46:21
Speaker
Investment. Yep. The modes don't have to be equal mana, which I can't remember reading someone talk about that, but I'm sure our cross water has talked about how that can be a challenge. Yeah. And I'm sure it's gotta be really hard to design those too, because, but some of them, and then just the way that they're
00:46:44
Speaker
their order, like the board wipe one, which lets you get, you know, it orders out. So it gives your thing indestructible after it takes away abilities from everything else. Oh yeah. And then, um, and then it kill wipes the board. Yeah. Since you resolve them in order, uh, it just means that yours is going to be the only thing to resolve if you do all three modes. Mm-hmm.
00:47:13
Speaker
Yeah, and I'm just the one that happens to be on the screen for me, and where I was scrolling was one last job, which has three, it's three Spree abilities. The first costs two Return Target Creature cards from your graveyard to the battlefield. The next ones are each only one, being a Mount or Vehicle card, and the second being Aura or Equipment.
00:47:39
Speaker
Oh, and that one you can attach to a creature, but still like a creature is more valuable to return straight to the battlefield, so that one gets to be more expensive. But then like you said too, this order works too, because the creature is first, then when you get to the bottom one, return target or equipment from your graveyard attached to a creature you control, it allows you to just slot that aura right onto a creature you already have.
00:48:05
Speaker
from this spell. So that one I was talking about was Final Showdown, which has some cool art too. And for White and 1, it's all creatures lose all abilities till end of turn. Okay, that's situationally very useful. So 1, and then, you know, the second one is also plus one creature, choose a creature of control that gains indestructible till end of turn. So that's not even targeting, which is
00:48:30
Speaker
Yeah. And two mana give a creature indestructible. I have played a lot. Yeah. And then, and then it's it's two, white and three destroy all creatures. So, you know, it's, it's pricey, but for a grand total of eight mana, you can wipe the board of all but one of your creatures. Yeah. But even just for six, you get to destroy all creatures at instant speed, which
00:48:57
Speaker
Yeah. You don't always get to do it instead for that cheap. At instant speed for six is a pretty good deal. Yeah. And those two cards both have that, uh, the name, it's like perfect to the setting. Like final showdown is a quintessential, like Western movie trope. And one last job is the, is the same thing. Always the heist, the heist trope. Yeah.
00:49:25
Speaker
All right. Well, talking about names, um, is this far enough in the show to bring up Holy Cow? Yeah, go for it. We're there. So, so this is the one contribution Hobbs brought for, for this episode, which, um, when I was talking about, I had a list of flavor things. His first response was Holy Cow, because there is literally a card called Holy Cow in this set. And I, I love it. It is an ox angel because of course it is.
00:49:54
Speaker
Flash, flying, it's two in a white for a two-two, and then whatever it enters the battle for, gain two life and scry one. Neat. Just a solid draft common Karvek for, as a common. That's really good value for all the things you get. But I just love it. It's called Holy Cow. It's just...
00:50:16
Speaker
That is very funny to me. And then it is literally an angel, an ox angel, because- Yeah, the ox angel line is the, yeah, that was the part that really got me, is that it's an ox angel. Yeah. After passed by the rancher swore, she saw hope shining in the pig's eyes, is the flavor text. It's like, I love this card. Yeah. This is the kind of card I would expect to see in an unsaid, that I would not necessarily have expected to see in a normal set. Oh no, I, I, uh,
00:50:45
Speaker
Absolutely, you did not expect to see this in a normal set. Yeah, I think that gets everything. We didn't even discuss either of the two bonus sheet sets, the breaking new set or the vault set, big score set. The interesting thing about the big score this time is that there's new cards in it. It's not just reprints like these usually are.
00:51:13
Speaker
And there's some interesting new cards, I mean. Yeah. Yeah, including one that I think probably put in my Kozilek deck, because that's similar to how Zata I get to look at all the combat tricks. For Kozilek, I'm looking at all of the colorless lands. Oh, yeah. I think Fomori Volt probably goes in my Kozilek deck.
00:51:42
Speaker
that land the taps for colorless and has three tap discard a card. Look at the top X cards of your library where X is the number of artifacts you control. Put one of those cards in your hand and the rest on the bottom of your library. By and large, that deck needs lots of mana and some amount of ability to dig. And this card is really good for digging. And you'll have a lot of artifacts in that deck for mana rocks.
00:52:11
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I got to look at it more, look at that set more, the big score to see what else is on that sheet. But that's right where I went first. He said it's red combat tricks, colorless lands are kind of the first two things I look at in a set now for those two decks. I do like the new sword to sort of welcome powers.
00:52:35
Speaker
Yep. Pretty sweet. Yep. I like that too. I'm, I'm slowly collecting a promo sword set. So at some point I'll probably build a equipment, all promo equipment deck. So we'll see. I did have to cringe a little bit when the creature's name was loot though. The creature in the vault's name was that was a little, that was a little cringy. Yep.
00:53:04
Speaker
that and it looks a little too sickeningly cute for something that's going to doom the multiverse. We all see where this is going. It's not going to be good. We can discuss that more during story time next week. Yep.
00:53:24
Speaker
Absolutely. I was interested, like I've been waiting, they said that we have the next three years, they have that planned as a specific arc. And now we know what it's about. At least you have some idea.
00:53:39
Speaker
I do want to mention real quick on before we wrap up, the Prosperity Showcase has some really fantastic art in it. We get a Managrain reprint, a Mindbreak Trap reprint, which I think might be the first reprint for Mindbreak Trap. Yeah, that's the first reprint for Mindbreak Trap, which was up to $72 before this. Holy moly.
00:54:07
Speaker
I thought that might be the first reprint of that. I did try to build modern mill at one point, so I have a play set of those. I never quite worked out, but I really like the art style on these. Yeah, some cool stuff in there.
00:54:36
Speaker
though I'm not sure I took with trying to look through everything else. I didn't look at that very closely. Yeah, just the the card frame just looks really cool. I love that card frame. Yeah, I would really hate though, to open a mythic one of those and get
00:54:58
Speaker
get anguished on making instead of like manage rain or minecraft traffic. Yeah. Yeah, it's just how it goes. Well, I think we can wrap it up here and hopefully Hobbs will be back next week and we can talk story. Yeah. Yeah, that'll be fun. Like we gave a little preview of some of our thoughts about it. I can't wait to unpack it more, especially with Hobbs here.
00:55:27
Speaker
Great to do that. There's a lot of cool cards in this set. Yeah. A lot of good puns. Oh yeah. Way more, way more puns than I was expecting when we were setting out. Yeah. Oh, I knew this is a set that Mark Rosewater has been looking forward to for a while. He's always been saying that a Wild West set would be a when, not an if, and he loves his puns. So I think we were, you know, we were definitely going to get them.
00:55:55
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I gotta, I gotta say I, I like the ones we've talked about. I got, I can't leave bovine intervention on the table though. That, um, that might be my favorite pawn in this set right now. Hey, it's another card that makes some ox tokens for that Bruce Charles deck. Yeah, it does. Awesome. All right.
00:56:20
Speaker
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 Tayatransends, and Alex can be found at Mel underscore chronicler. Feel free to send us any questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to the Goblin Lord pod on Twitter, or email us at goblinlordpodcast at gmail.com.
00:56:42
Speaker
If you would like to support your friendly neighborhood gobsugs, 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 for 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.
00:57:10
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.