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Episode 265: We're being Invasioned by the Melthos People!
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Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome back to another episode of the Goblin Lore Podcast! Before we dive into today's episode we wanted to highlight that September is Suicide Prevention Awareness Month. Hobbes has been continuing to train for the Twin Cities Marathon (running to raise money for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention) and Goblin Lore in conjunction with Drew from Show and Tell will put putting out stories of hope. You can find the ongoing playlist here.
Taya and Alex are back to talk about the Weatherlight Saga with a focus on the Invasion Block. This week will be a dive into flavor and form with our Melthos Review of this block!
link: https://multiverseinreview.blogspot.com/
We also finally have a Linktree with all of our discounts/resources including how to join our Discord
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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
- 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
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Opening and closing music by Wintergatan (@wintergatan). Logo art by Steven Raffael (@SteveRaffle)
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Suicide Prevention Awareness
00:00:00
Speaker
are help are are
00:00:28
Speaker
Hello everyone, Hobbs Q here. Missed you all. um Just like last week, I wanted to jump in before the show and just remind everybody that it is Suicide Prevention Awareness Month. All month long, The Goblin Lore, in conjunction with Drew Show and Tell, will be releasing videos of stories of hope related to my marathon project where I am fundraising for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
00:00:55
Speaker
There's a link to the playlist where you can watch these videos as they come out. And I just really hope that people are having a good month and I hope to be joining the cast regularly again soon.
00:01:07
Speaker
And now, here are Taya and Alex to talk about the Malthos of Invasion.
Hosts and Podcast Introduction
00:01:12
Speaker
Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome to another episode of the Goblin Lore Podcast. We are back again to to continue actually talking about the set we talked about last week. So if you you missed that last week, we talked about Invasion Story. We yeah don't have a lot of story going on right now, and I just realized that I'm rolling and haven't introduced our ourselves. We haven't done all of the other things, so we'll just we'll say
00:01:39
Speaker
We're going to talk. We're going talking invasion. This is the thing we're going to We'll circle back to that. But I'm Alex. Not found on social media. My pronouns are he, him.
00:01:50
Speaker
Do you want to introduce yourself? And then we can kind of roll into that. Yeah. Hi, I'm Taya. Taya transcends on Blue Sky. Or you can find me on the Discord. Yeah.
00:02:02
Speaker
And so before we get rolling into our opening question and then the the main topic where we're talking invasion and and the cards this week, I would just want to mention Hobbs is still taking a break from being on the show.
00:02:15
Speaker
He's still active in the discord. He's still doing editing for us, which is, which is great. So thankful for, for that, but he is working on, um, a marathon training for a marathon and getting ready to to do that and and raising some money for the specific cause. But I know it's, it's for suicide awareness because September is suicide awareness month.
00:02:37
Speaker
There is little bit stuff in the show notes. Also, if you're looking to join a punch, a magic ish, sort of magic centric discord, the govlin Lord discord is a great place to, to, to hang out.
00:02:50
Speaker
So yeah, take a look at that. Great place.
Absence of Magic Stories in Current Sets
00:02:55
Speaker
So, yeah, um as we we kind of talked about last week and even a little bit the the week before that, there isn't a lot of magic story happening right now. we We had edge Edge of Eternity just happened. And then the next two major standard sets are both universes beyond. So there's no magic story for us to talk. although Today we did get the universes within version of the Spider-Man cards and there was, there was some neat flavor stuff in there.
00:03:24
Speaker
And none of them have flavor text because they're alchemy cards or arena cards, but there's a lot of art that takes place across the multiverse. awesome I did not see that. I'll take a look at that.
00:03:37
Speaker
and And I'm sure we will. We are planning to come talk about these these sets too. We'll talk about some of the cards and stuff from the the Spider-Man and the the Avatar potential. Like, we'll... well We'll be talking about these sets, but there's just a lot less for us to talk about than a normal magic set where we have magic story, because that's a big piece of of kind of what our podcast is.
00:03:58
Speaker
um And so we kind of talked to the community and we got some good feedback and suggestions. And one of them that we got a couple of times was, this game's been around for more than 30 years. We could talk about other story that happened later.
00:04:12
Speaker
decades ago before our podcast, before any podcast. And that's what we did last week. we We started, we talked about the story for the Invasion block, which was a really important set for me.
00:04:26
Speaker
thats I'd started playing before that, but Invasion was really the first time I paid attention to story. And I remember... And so that was that was a lot of fun. But we're we want to kind of do some other or some of our other stuff.
Melthos Set Reviews
00:04:38
Speaker
In addition to talking about story, we we like to do, and don't know, I've called them Melthos set reviews, but that seems a little much because we don't go through all the cards or even most of them. But we kind of look at the sets from the the perspective of a Mel and a Vorthos and look for fun mechanical things and fun flavor things and times where there's flavorful mechanics. Yeah.
00:04:59
Speaker
in in these sets, which is also fun because we tend to talk about, we tend to talk about cards that don't show up ever anywhere else. A lot of comments and uncomments that are really cool.
00:05:10
Speaker
So, all right. And we have an opening question, which I'm remembering four minutes into the recording that I forgot. So as we're talking about Invasion and talking about cards, we thought, you know, we tend to be commander players. Commander players care about legends a lot. We also care about the story, which also tends to care about the legends, though.
00:05:30
Speaker
This time, that was a little weird, too. So a lot of important story legends didn't always get cards in their sets because the story was written after the card file was made. But that's yeah they just didn't print as many legendaries as they do nowadays either.
00:05:45
Speaker
Yes, that's that's a good point, too, because that's one thing to keep in mind is as we're talking about this. So we pulled it up. This is a very big set, 335 cards, which we just don't do sets this big anymore.
00:05:57
Speaker
But there's only 16 Legends because this was more than a decade before Commander out. this was a Legends heavy set for that time period. Yes, absolutely.
00:06:07
Speaker
So it it's it's interesting kind of looking back and and how how things have changed and how Legend is really important now. It's a good thing. You put Legend on a card, that makes a brand new Commander Back in the day, you had legend on a card. We had to look this up. We found the old legend rule.
00:06:24
Speaker
You totally called it, Taya, that this was the era when only one legend with the same name could be in play at the same time for everyone. If I played a legend, Taya could not play the second the same legend while mine was in play.
00:06:41
Speaker
It was just stuck in her hand. Yeah. which is which is fun. i I forgot. I thought it had changed by now. But yeah, that was apparently Legends through Champions of Kamigawa. So that rule held for quite a while.
00:06:53
Speaker
But anyway, opening question.
Role of Legends in Invasion Block
00:06:55
Speaker
I want to talk about Blind Seer, which is a little bit of a weird one for the story. we We mentioned it last week. ah The Blind Seer is kind of, sort of, if you squint, the first time a Planeswalker showed up in Magic in a card.
00:07:15
Speaker
grece Or post-Spark, I guess you could say, because there's a few people who showed up pre-Spark. Blind Seer is Urza's disguise that he uses in the first set, ah in it or the the first the story for Invasion, the first set of this block.
00:07:30
Speaker
that then kind of becomes revealed and Blindseer doesn't show up He doesn't use that persona in the next two sets as the story closes out. but So this was kind of a fun little nod for people who paid attention to the story.
00:07:43
Speaker
It was fun to be like, well, we got a Planeswalker. But also I wanted to talk about it because Blindseer is... it It really, really cares about a thing that almost does not show up at all anymore.
00:07:54
Speaker
So Blindseer's ability is 3-3 for 2, blue-blue, and has the ability activated ability 1 in blue. Target, spell, or pernit becomes the color of your choice until end of turn.
00:08:07
Speaker
Yeah. And there's also just, you know, the fact that we know now this is Urza, but then this is just a a blue creature with a basic ability like that, that is a a legend for some reason. And, know, at the time, no one would have known that this was Urza wouldn't have known, you know, until reading the story.
00:08:26
Speaker
yeah head leader And that that's a good point. Like there is a... Possibility. Don't really know. Someone may remember, but it's been long enough, even if this is the case. It's probable nobody even remembers.
00:08:37
Speaker
There's a possibility this wasn't even a legend until the story was written. And then they went, oh, can we stick? We can't put Urza in the set, but can we put his persona in there somewhere? And then they just like pasted him onto this this card that preexisted.
00:08:53
Speaker
Yeah, it's just like random. What would now be like if they even printed this color thing anymore? This would be like a blue uncommon, maybe. Yeah. But back then, starting in Alpha and running through Legends and even a little bit further, like there was some really nasty color posing that people could do just really, ah even in this set, you pointed this, this one out to you. Well, we were talking about it beforehand, but mana maze in invasion is a blue enchantment with flavor text from the blind seer. In fact, that says players can't play spells that share a color with the spell last played this turn.
00:09:34
Speaker
And then there's a lot of, there are a lot of colors matters in this this set too. That's one of the overall themes. Yeah, that's that's true. There's a lot of stuff like that. You could be a little tricksy and ah use this to get your coalition victory to turn on or that was in this set, right? Coalition victory was an invasion.
00:09:56
Speaker
Yeah, ah control one of each basic land and a card of each color, creature of each color. You win the game. but Yeah, that's actually on my list to talk about. Oh, I'm sorry. Jumping in. No, that's all right. So we can do it.
00:10:09
Speaker
ah Yeah, you win you win the game if you control a land of each basic land type and a creature of each color. It costs three in Wooburg. It's an eight mana sorcery that was banned in Commander for until like last year, earlier this year. Yeah, within the last 12 months it got unbanned. Yeah.
00:10:29
Speaker
Because... ah Basically, since the format was invented... yeah it Yeah, that's right. It was on the end like the very first banned list. the This is now a format, here are the banned cards list.
00:10:42
Speaker
Which probably made sense then. there are i mean, eight mana spells were a lot more common in Commander... Back yeah then, there weren't a whole lot of five-color commanders either to choose from.
00:10:55
Speaker
that's That's true. But yeah, yeah yeah having having to play five colors and an eight-mana spell that just wins you the game. I mean, the criteria aren't that tough, but even an eight-mana card, it's like...
00:11:07
Speaker
By the time you're casting this and getting it through people's, you know, counter spells. Have you seen one played since it was legalized? No, I have not either. not No. And I don't really want to.
00:11:19
Speaker
it's It's fine. It's totally fine. But it was a really, really cool card, as as we talked about last week, too. this is Invasion was the first multicolor set since Legends, like major multicolor themed.
00:11:34
Speaker
Sets had had multicolor cards, but it'd be like 3 to 10 or something. Like it was very few cards set to set. since legends when they invented that legends was a multicolor major theme. And then invasion was the next time they kind of brought that theme back.
00:11:53
Speaker
And so then to have this big five color thing, I don't think legends had any five color cards. This was the first five color card in the game. I think no sliver queen was five colors. You're right. Absolutely.
00:12:04
Speaker
About a year or two before this would have been sliver queen and tempest. Yeah. Yeah. Tennis block. yeah a Stronghold. a Stronghold. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, like that that's true.
00:12:14
Speaker
but But yeah, it's still just a really cool thing. And there were a few alternate wind conditions then, but it that also wasn't nearly as common.
00:12:25
Speaker
But yeah, and this this has flavor text from Urza. You can build a perfect machine out of imperfect parts. Almost makes them sound reasonable. Almost. If you don't know anything about Urza, you'd be like, okay, cool.
00:12:39
Speaker
Yeah, there there is some flavor text in this set that makes him seem less of a pain than a problem that actually was. but Yeah, it feels like there's the the flavor the Blind Seer flavor text of Mana Maze feels a little ironic.
00:12:54
Speaker
Those who know only one path to victory can never hope to triumph. I mean, in I guess in a little bit of fairness to him, he he definitely had like 15 paths to victory. Oh, yeah. He he had lots of plans. Yeah. he they were all They're all awful.
00:13:10
Speaker
Yeah. That's fair. That quote doesn't say anything about being like maniacally single focused. It just says, if you do that, have more than one plan. Yeah.
00:13:21
Speaker
Yeah.
Captain Sissé and Legendary Cards
00:13:23
Speaker
right. And so my legend that I want to talk about is Captain Sissé. And the main reason I'm bringing her up is ah even the, this was despite her being like a central character all the way back to weather light ah when this whole thing really kicked off, this is her first time she got a card.
00:13:43
Speaker
ah And she was also just kind of a cool, a cool early commander because she was a two, a green and a white for a two, two, but you could tap to search for ah fora legendary and ah card and put it in your hand and shuffle. So you could do a legendary matters Selesnya deck with her.
00:14:06
Speaker
oh and her, I just realized her formatting on the original card is because the game is weird. So it said a legend or legendary card because back then legend was a creature type.
00:14:19
Speaker
And so there were legendary artifacts, legendary lands, but then legend was a creature type that later became a super... tued Magic rules are weird. Oh man, I forgot about that.
00:14:32
Speaker
Yeah, Sissé super cool. And... There we go. There we go. Yeah, a lot of... lot lot of cool...
00:14:44
Speaker
Flavor there for sure. And very flavorful mechanic too. She's the captain of the Weatherlight. flavor The Flavor Dex even says that her leadership forged the Weatherlight's finest crew. that she can go find the whole crew. they they We had to wait for the later reprinting of Captain Sissay that let her or was a five color version so she could actually find her whole crew.
00:15:05
Speaker
Yeah, in in Legends, or as a commander. But you know at this point in time, she's just one of your 60 cards in a 60 card deck, she could go find everybody if you happened to stumble upon Captain Sissé.
00:15:20
Speaker
Which is part of the reason that Legends like this were less... The card was cool, but not really done. you did you You didn't really do much with it until Blender Formats.
00:15:35
Speaker
Yeah, it's a fun card. And she actually got flavor text. Not many others. Hannah had fli like got flavor text. Hannah did have flavor text. And this is one, you know, i was gonna's I never thought I'd spend my life fighting. I'm a maker, not a destroyer. And she was like, she was the engineer. I guess she's a ship's, Melissa is a ship's navigator, but she also was like the engineer on the ship.
00:15:58
Speaker
She made all of their artifacts. And in in her original art, she is using a laser blaster to take out a Phyrexian lobster. Yes, which A, is awesome.
00:16:12
Speaker
But B, totally flies in the face of her her actual ability of ah one white blue tap return target artifact to sham it from your graveyard to your hand.
00:16:23
Speaker
Yeah, well, it's also just art like you don't you didn't You wouldn't expect to see in a high fantasy game, but did this this set had a lot of a lot of like ah you know sci-fi fantasy.
00:16:40
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And and this is this is a really good example. I suppose we can just transition into... yeah also my second commander that I ever made. ah Nice.
00:16:53
Speaker
i I had Hannah a list... It was on a list of commanders I wanted to build for a long time, and I never actually put the deck together. Oh, the deck was so awful. i mean... like Fair.
00:17:04
Speaker
My first deck was Slivers. It's hard to screw up Slivers. But then i then I tried to make an artifact deck with Hannah, and it just was kind of awful. my My first deck was some plane chase thing, but then my second was a Chromat Charm deck.
00:17:21
Speaker
That was also awful.
Power Armor and Early Game Design
00:17:23
Speaker
that was i put a lot of charms in that deck, and there's some really bad charms in this game. They've started making good ones. The cycle that's coming out now are really good.
00:17:35
Speaker
Yes, they have. they've They have made some good ones. Those were not out when I made my time. I also didn't have commands yet, because those weren't a thing. Well, the Lorwyn ones might have been out, but...
00:17:46
Speaker
Anyway, let's ah let's talk about power armor. Yeah. We talked about this and in the episode last week, but Urza at one point in time, like, builds a bunch of mechs for the Planeswalkers to go destroy Phyrexia. And this is a really good example of just early game jank before they had a lot of good technology to build some of these artifacts.
00:18:14
Speaker
Yeah. And so power armor is a artifact for four that has three tap target creature gets plus one, plus one until end of turn for each basic land type among lands you control.
00:18:26
Speaker
After paying four to get it out. After paying four to get it out. So you are at yeah seven mana for your first pump. That is somewhere between plus zero, plus zero and plus five, plus five.
00:18:38
Speaker
No trample. My God, no trample. No. And this is how they used to template these things that became equipment and mirrored and that gave you like temporary buffs. These go back to at least to fallen empires, if not earlier.
00:18:52
Speaker
where they've had like swords that tap to give plus one, plus one to lend a turn or something like that. There's some really janky ones in yeah and Antiquities. Oh, yeah, that's right.
00:19:03
Speaker
Like Ashnod's Battle Gear. You make sure it's not to untap this artifact during your untapped step. To tap, target creature gets plus two, minus two for as long as this artifact remains tapped.
00:19:15
Speaker
That is surprisingly, like, it it it hits what you need to do with an article of with the equipment, but it is so, so much more clunky than equipment.
00:19:27
Speaker
But yeah, so this this power armor, I just, I love, and it's also just got, like, really cool art. Yeah, the art on this is sweet. And it's got more Urza flavor text. Great peril demands formidable weaponry.
00:19:39
Speaker
Which is, unfortunately, not the card that the flavor text is featured on. it does not. ah All right, I'm going to... I wanted to... talk a I just picked one of the cards to talk more about the color matters mechanic in this set. So that there's a Metathron Transport, which is a 1 and 2 blue for a 1, 3 and flying.
00:20:06
Speaker
but So not not great on the old vanilla test there. It can't be blocked by blue creatures, right? So it's it's a blue creature that can't be blocked by other blue creatures. So most of your flyers, your non-white flyers are pretty much all out. and but You can pay blue and make a make a creature blue until end of turn.
00:20:28
Speaker
Which is, yeah, it is that that color matters thing. Which there's so many cards. I forgot how many cards like messed around with color back then or how they'd throw that on as like an upside or like this card can change its own color. Like, OK, like it just does not. Oh, and there's a lot of protection from colors back then, too.
00:20:48
Speaker
um But also this is funny because this is what I would have called in high school a one card combo. Yeah, you actually mentioned that, you know, cards that could change their own color. I also had Ancient Kabu on the list because you can pay two to make it colorless until end of turn.
00:21:03
Speaker
Yep, get through all of those protection from red, you know, things. Oh, yeah. But yeah, I just I love the mechanical design of a card that kind of does its own combo thing.
00:21:14
Speaker
and And it's Predator flagship, which is not in the set, but that is kind of the. Oh, yeah. Right. Yeah.
Color Mechanics and Protection Themes
00:21:20
Speaker
you To the Weatherlight is like that, where it's got two abilities, one where it kills a creature flying and one where it gives a creature flying.
00:21:28
Speaker
Yeah, because um yeah one of the things that happened on the Predator was Grevin Ilvek tossing his first mate off the side of the ship. Yep.
00:21:40
Speaker
Yeah, so that that's a flu of fun one, the Metathron transport. Yeah, i would just be I was mentioning that one as an example of the color mechanics, because there's a lot of cards with color mechanics in this.
00:21:51
Speaker
Yes, there are. And like a lot of cards in this set, it's an awful card. Yep. Yep. No, was like, there's, you know, i didn't have this on my list, but I might as well talk with this. I think there's a full cycle of the two color ally pairs where there are two twos with protection from the mutual enemy of those two colors.
00:22:13
Speaker
So Lawn War Knight is the one that's in front of me because it's right next to Metathon Transport on this page. Green and white for a 2-2 with Elf Knight that then has protection from black. So again, that mechanic doesn't really exist these days. I think they'll print it on occasion, but it's rare. Yeah, and even then it's only in sets like a Modern Horizons or something like that.
00:22:37
Speaker
Yeah, it'll it'll be at set where the expectation is people are more experienced ah when they're playing it. Because protection really is a funky mechanic with what it does. It's hard to kind of grok sometimes, like what how you can interact with those creatures or those cards that have that.
00:22:55
Speaker
And this is literally a common. and it's It's a common that has this. And so this whole cycle must have been at common. But also that kind of goes that multicolor thing. and And again, like some of this Vorthos or this Melthos stuff. Yeah, there's there's an old ah mnemonic for remembering everything protection does, which is debt. And it's damaged, damaged enchanted, blocked, or targeted.
00:23:23
Speaker
Those are the things you can't do to a creature with protection. Yeah, that's that's a good way to start it. Yeah, I just kind of wrote, I remember there's four and then I just start talking until I hit all four.
00:23:36
Speaker
But yeah, and and i just I love the idea too, the the protection from the mutual enemy of those two colors. You've got Shiv and Zombie, 2-2, red and black, protection from white.
00:23:49
Speaker
And it really kind of helps to mechanically tell that story of these color you know people coming together to try to fight the invasion or be the invasion, I guess. Cause like the shivan zombie is a Phyrexianized, uh, Keldon barbarian.
00:24:08
Speaker
Yeah. We, we talked about that last week, how the, uh, the Keldon, myth did not go as they expected it to go. Yeah. The the flavor text barbarians long for a glorious death and battle.
00:24:22
Speaker
Phyrexia was eager to grant that wish.
00:24:28
Speaker
So the next one I want to mention is Recover. And we did mention this one last week, but I wanted to talk about it a little bit more. It's two and a black for a sorcery that returns a creature card from your hand and then draws a card. So it's just a, it's a raised dead with a cantrip attached.
00:24:44
Speaker
The art shows Baron exhuming Hannah, which for some reason she is wrapped in a funeral shroud, except for her head and her hair still looks really good for being buried.
00:24:57
Speaker
Uh,
00:24:59
Speaker
Her hair is a fantastic blonde for having just been dug up out of the ground.
00:25:06
Speaker
ah Old art. And then I think you mentioned a flare text last time. I'm just going to read this as Baron exhumed his daughter's body. He finally realized the full price of his face. Yeah.
00:25:19
Speaker
yeah Yeah. Very good. Very, very poignant, like, story moment. Yeah, this would absolutely be a story spotlight if it was printed now.
00:25:33
Speaker
Yeah, I just can't get over the hair being flawless after being dug up. Oh, yeah, that's that's funny. I didn't even think about that. Also, so very weird thing that I'm not used to because we're, we are so far back in time.
00:25:49
Speaker
This, you know, this set was printed in the 2000 is what the copyright on it. 25 years ago. And so there's the names. The names of cards are a whole thing because as soon as they use a name, they can't use it anymore. that is That name is that card forever.
00:26:08
Speaker
And so like these days, really, really rare to find one word names that are not but yeah like basically at all. Even like characters don't get one name words, one named cards anymore.
00:26:22
Speaker
You'll get a you'll get like a name, sometimes two or three words, and then like a subtitle. And so that when they bring the character back, there's a specific second printing with a different subtitle.
00:26:33
Speaker
There are five cards in a row in this card viewer that have a single word as their name. ah Recoil, Recover, Repulse, Restock, Restrain. Just different times. Opt was the first that Opt was printed in.
00:26:51
Speaker
Oh, yeah, tons of other ones. But just like five of these in a row, I got Route not too far down. God, I love Route. I played that card a lot in high school. yeah All right. What's your next card? you want Yeah, I want to talk about some a cycle of really bad cards.
00:27:08
Speaker
So we will use the one that I just scrolled past. This is the closest one, a Ruby Leech. One and a red for a 2-2 with first strike that says red spells cost you red more to play.
00:27:20
Speaker
This is a rare.
Critique of the Leech Cycle
00:27:22
Speaker
Yeah, yeah Red wasn't allowed two twos without drawbacks until like the last 10 years or so.
00:27:34
Speaker
Oh yeah. Well, and, and even be, it's a, the whole cycle is like this. Yeah. Yeah. The, the entire cycle, there's one in each color in, and in, uh, invasion, all five of them.
00:27:48
Speaker
cause your spells of their color to cost more. And they are all like ostensibly under costed. at least for the time. For the time.
00:28:00
Speaker
But a 2-2 with First Strike for two is normal, and then having a downside. But its it's like this is a design space that they just kind of stopped doing for a while ago, where there's cards with... It's under-costed cards with downsides.
00:28:17
Speaker
Yeah, i mean, if you go back to Alpha, we got two twos with First Strike and Protection for two mana. Yeah. True. Yeah, their mana cost was slightly harder to cast as double color, but still so much better than than this Ruby Leech. None of the other ones are great.
00:28:34
Speaker
The Alabaster, the white one, is a 1-3 for 1. No, nothing else. like Essentially vanilla. Makes all your spells cost more. And then makes all your white spells cost more.
00:28:45
Speaker
And it's like, why, why the, if it was a three, one, I could see, or even a two, one, even though we had a two, one, Savannah, Savannah, but it's like, then at least you're your, your under costed card is aggressive, but like, why do you want to, a one, three that makes your end, like that you can cast on turn one and make the rest of your game worse. It's, it's just,
00:29:10
Speaker
But, you know, like I said, they they tried for a while, I think, to to do this under cost with with up downside. think more cards need downsides nowadays because it's just positive thing after positive thing after positive thing. But it's making downsides that still make the card playable where some of these old downsides were just like you you would never play this card no matter what the rate was pretty much. Yeah.
00:29:40
Speaker
Yeah, and especially this downside in general, even beyond Alabaster Leech, the whole point of if it's an under-costed card, you're trying to get out fast and aggressive, having a card that then screws you over starting on your very next turn kind of defeats that purpose. It underco undercuts the advantage that you would be getting from it.
00:30:01
Speaker
But yeah, just it's it's interesting to go back and look at some of these cards because like that's that's a thing they just haven't done in a long time. now Now we get things like Ice Till Explorer, which just have three positive things on them and all synergized together and no drawbacks whatsoever.
00:30:21
Speaker
So the next one I want to talk about, ah another uncommon, another Urza card, Rewards of Diversity, which coming from Urza is kind of funny, but when whenever an opponent plays a multicolored spell, you gain four life.
00:30:40
Speaker
Not bad for three mana ah for an enchantment. But the the flavor text is everything is in place. Nothing can happen that isn't part of my plan. And we even talked last week how he he part of his plan was Tevish Zot betraying them when they were in Phyrexia.
00:31:02
Speaker
Yeah, ah part of his plan was not apparently becoming Yawgmoth's servant. That was not part of the plan. Or becoming just a head for a little while. Apparently that that also just was not on his plan.
00:31:23
Speaker
But yeah, I just thought, I thought there was some good Urza flavor text and in a card that, i mean, could potentially have some home somewhere ah and a life gain strategy because that'll trigger quite a bit in commander.
00:31:40
Speaker
yeah That's fun. And that's also good flavor text. I love gets some good or is a flavor text on this block.
00:31:49
Speaker
right I want to talk about another like brand something brand new that they did in this set for the first time ever. Invasion was the first set that had split cards.
00:32:01
Speaker
Oh yeah, that was a really cool um addition. Just a really, really cool way to like show this this whole multicolor thing and like doing multicolor-ish in a different way. And so like the one i guess I'll pull up... i but I was looking for one specifically and then I remember, wait, that wouldn't be in the set because it was Fire and Ice. That would be an apocalypse that's red and blue, where all the enemy colors are. But Wax and Wayne...
00:32:28
Speaker
is the green and white one that I know I definitely put in more decks than it deserved. Because... So you these are... that I think about it, we haven't done split cards for a while.
00:32:38
Speaker
These, like, you can literally... No, not the traditional... Not the traditional ones. No. They do, like, dual-faced cards for various things. Well, we got the we got rooms was the last time we saw split cards, but they're not the same. Oh.
00:32:52
Speaker
Yeah, I didn't think about that. The rooms. But yeah, so these ones, which have happened on Ravnica once or twice, too, where they do with gold, where they share the two halves share color. But these are really cool where they they like the the magic card itself is split ah horizontally into two.
00:33:12
Speaker
different mini miniature cards. So it's like, it's a full on name. Cassie costs like the entire thing. If you turn the card on its side, it's like two little mini cards and then you can play one side or the other.
00:33:25
Speaker
They have two different mana costs, two different effects. I think they're always the same type of spell, but I don't know that they need it to be necessarily, but it's probably just easier for players to remember what to do. Like these are both instant.
00:33:37
Speaker
Wax and Wayne are both instants. So Wax is green. Target creature gets plus two, plus two until out of turn. Wayne was white. Destroy target enchantment. And so this is just a cool, ah really cool way to kind of do multicolor in a different way.
00:33:53
Speaker
We got hybrid much, much later as ah as another way to kind of do that. But this was them kind of coming back to multicolor, doing a lot of gold cards, which is cool, but then finding another way to kind of iterate on how else can we do multicolor. And then you get these Like you pull these, you've ever heard of this, you don't look at card previews. When I came when i came back to Magic, I saw one, I saw one, uh, for the first time and I was like, oh, this is a, this is cool.
00:34:21
Speaker
I, yeah, this idea of like, oh, there's two cards. Uh, and then they came back in, uh, They came back in Dragon's Maze not too long after I started playing. They came with with Fuse that time.
00:34:35
Speaker
Yes, that's right, because those are the ones that you can cast both sides if you have a ton of mana. Yeah. All right. Well, I'm going to mention another enchantment with Urza Flavor Tech. I'm surprised because this just happens to be the order I open these in.
00:34:49
Speaker
But a Spirit of Resistance, which is two and a white, for another color matters card. If you control a permanent of each color, for prevent all damage that would be dealt to you. ah This is the kind of
00:35:05
Speaker
card, like, I played this, and when I built my first Slivers Commander deck, this was in that deck, just because I thought it was so cool. It's like, oh, I got my Commander out, nothing can hurt me. um ah
00:35:19
Speaker
But it's... Yeah, I haven't seen this played in several years now. But the Urza of Laira text, our victory must come from all of Dominaria or it will not come.
00:35:33
Speaker
Yeah, once again, making him seem reasonable. Yeah, the the the second line there is about him like killing people until they start helping or something. yeah But also of note with this card, there's some gorgeous John Avon art. Yeah, this is some awesome John Avon art.
00:35:56
Speaker
Yeah, it's still in my Slivers deck to this day. I haven't removed it, but ah it's not too hard to have a five color permanent in Slivers. I never looked close enough to start to realize there's a Metatron in there.
00:36:10
Speaker
I just thought it was three raptors for like a Kabu, like a Raptor and a Metatron. Yeah. It's a, it's a cool, that's a cool piece of art.
00:36:23
Speaker
Yeah. And the whole area outside of the sphere is just completely annihilated. and Yeah, just just destroyed. And then there's this like little string of of all five colors kind of coming out of this into the sphere, which is neat.
00:36:38
Speaker
ah Why don't we yeah we cover some more flavor text? This not a quote from Urza, but rather a line about Urza. So to to kind of follow a recover, talk about the card Mourning.
00:36:52
Speaker
And this is M-O-U-R-N-I-G, Mourning. which is one and a black for an enchant creature. Enchanted creature gets minus two, minus zero. Also has black return remorning to its owner's hand. and this is another one word card name.
00:37:07
Speaker
But that this flavor text, oh, just wondering about the art. Well, the flavor text is Baron waited for the nausea to pass or for Urza to say something else. He waited in vain.
00:37:18
Speaker
yeah yeah yeah you he won't even get a i'm sorry for your loss from urza no nothing no so that would be the scene immediately before well maybe not immediately but a scene like right before he goes to recover yeah that that would be right when he was told that hannah was dead and yeah couldn't even get so much as a sorry for your loss from urza Well, I'll go right, you know, continuing our Baron discussion, Baron Spite, which is a two, a blue, and a black for choose two target creatures controlled by one player. That player chooses and sacrifices one of them and returns the other one to their owner's hand. So a good example of a black and blue card doing both things.
00:38:06
Speaker
It's pretty cool. And then it's flavor text is only vengeance matters now from Baron. so Yeah, and it in and that leads into...
00:38:18
Speaker
but That is... to even take a step back from that. But it's it's cool that there there is this much like of the story told within the art like this.
00:38:29
Speaker
Yeah, too bad the art is from a terrible person because this art is pretty cool. Yes. Yeah. and And yeah, even beyond that, you have you have that are like but i be these cards you have.
00:38:45
Speaker
bear in spite kind of following morning follow you know then you have recovery then follows to obliterate obliterate talk about as one of the major story spotlight cards that yeah so we have basically the whole story from when he finds out about hannah's death all the way to when he self-immolates and takes a bunch of phyrexians with him yep um Yeah, that's a good one.
00:39:12
Speaker
um want to talk about like the domain spells. and I just realized I didn't pull up a good one. So this is a word that got keyworded later. This was not actually keyworded at this time, which. No, it was a repeat mechanic that happened on more than one card in the set. Like we already mentioned power armor had it on it. That's right. Power armor was a good one where there was it was a mechanic that would scale based on the number of basic land types that you had.
00:39:40
Speaker
This set was would have been just a year after thereabouts, Mercadian Masks, which don't need to get too far. to but like Mark Rosewater talks about Mercadian Masks, and he says one of the biggest problems. There's a lot of problems with Mercadian Masks. What he attributes to one of its biggest problems was that its two major mechanics, or it's a couple of major mechanics, had no keywords on it.
00:40:04
Speaker
None of them were keyworded. So players felt like they didn't get into a new mechanic, even though they did. there were some There was some innovative space. I would argue that that space wasn't great. But yeah Invasion, I think, was probably too close to that set in development for them to fix that, which is probably why we have all of these cards.
00:40:26
Speaker
Why we don't have a mechanic name for Domain. But that is a thing that happened earlier in Magic's sets within the next year or so worth of sets after this. Things like Vigilant still weren't keyworded at this time.
00:40:43
Speaker
Yep, it would say it does not tap to attack. um yeah There was a few things, I don't know if we had any in this set, but like Reach didn't have a keyword for a long time. just was a creature without flying that said it can block as though it had flying.
00:40:57
Speaker
Yeah, and so that kind of continued with some of these other these other things. And that's why I noticed this set does not... it does have one keyword that I could find, one new one.
00:41:10
Speaker
I think this is our first set with Kickr. It might might be the first set with Kickr, yeah. Which has kind of come back a lot in a lot of different forms. But then they didn't... Like Domain...
00:41:24
Speaker
would have been, it was a mechanic. I'm sure this was on, on their board as here are the new mechanics because it shows up in a lot of cards, but the, never put it in one or you have kavu scout is another random example tuna red for a zero two kavu that gets plus one plus oh for each basic land among the lands you control so you could get a five two for three mana which was probably good right at the time five three vanilla if you happen to have domain five yeah yeah
00:41:55
Speaker
Yeah. but So that's just, ah that is an interesting thing, especially if you're looking at older sets. A, sometimes you're going to run in mechanics that are just not typed. Like given a, given a, a name like that, but also B, Kicker, Kicker showed up here, i think.
00:42:13
Speaker
And yeah. All apparently I picked a lot of enchantments with Urza flavor text on it without even realizing that because I've got another one.
00:42:25
Speaker
Teferi's Moat, which is three of blue and a white. but As it comes in into play, choose a color. Creatures of the chosen color without flying can attack you. So not only does this cost one more than Moat, it only works on one color of creatures.
00:42:41
Speaker
Yeah, they're trying to... Scale it back a little bit, maybe. And the answer or the flavor text is isolation is not the answer. Urza Teferi. Of course, Urza would say that because he wanted Teferi's army to be there to fight the Phyrexians.
00:43:02
Speaker
Yeah, and Teferi just took Salfir and Shiv and said, peace out. And nothing ever came of that. Yeah, nothing negative happened.
00:43:13
Speaker
Yeah, no. Yeah. There's ah there's another mechanic thing. sort of mechanic thing that I find interesting. Again, this is kind of getting into just that melthos, the mechanical stuff, the places where I think they're really starting to stretch in and experiment with stuff.
00:43:36
Speaker
I think this is really, this one is really harder, much harder to research. So I'm not, I'm not fully confident, but I believe this is the first place, at least on mass, where we had a lot of creatures with activations of different colors.
00:43:53
Speaker
um In fact, now that I'm saying that, I know it wasn't the first place because we had some cycles. There's a cycle in this set that I'm going to talk about that goes back to Mirage. So there is definitely some of those in Mirage, but there's a lot of just random common and uncommon creatures that that have off-color mechanics. And again, I think that's like the two-color cards having protection from their mutual enemy.
00:44:19
Speaker
videl This isn't Vidalcan. Vidalion Hypnotist is a one and a blue wizard for a with two and a black tap. Private player discards a card. Play this ability only as you could as a as a sorcery.
00:44:33
Speaker
But so there's just so many of these card of one color having a allied color activation. Again, I think showing that in the face of this invasion, you kind of this from the story side, you know, you in the face of this invasion, you have the the the so people on Dominaria reaching to other colors to try to fight the this force.
00:45:01
Speaker
Because see there's, again, it's first set with Kicker, but there are a bunch of cards that have Kicker from an allied color as well. Kind of keeping that theme going. all right, next card I'm going to talk about a Savo Tavik, who is our big villain for this set.
00:45:16
Speaker
We didn't talk a lot about her last week because she gets killed promptly at the beginning of Plane Shift, but she was the one who was constantly going back and forth with Gerard during this set. I'm actually going to cover another card with her at the same time, but she she has she's five black and a red for a 7-4 with first strike and protection from legends.
00:45:42
Speaker
But she also has an activated ability for black and a black. You can destroy target legend. It can't be regenerated.
00:45:50
Speaker
I, when I first came back, I always wanted to make a commander out of this, but I ended up, I ended up making Rakdos Lord of Riots instead because he was printed and not too long afterwards, after I started playing again.
00:46:05
Speaker
but Yeah, and so the the Flavor Text is, I might almost pity my enemies as if it wasn't so amusing to watch them die. She is a very sadistic character. She loves torturing people.
00:46:18
Speaker
Lobotomy in this card shows her screwing with the mind, and it's also Phyrexian Altar shows the same thing of her torturing one of the Metathron generals. And she was keeping him alive like the whole time on the verge of death so she could keep torturing him. And eventually his...
00:46:36
Speaker
his twin has to put him out of his misery. Yeah. When I remember that scene too, she was vivisecting him and a human. So she could point out the differences. It was like, wow, whoever made you knew what he was doing. Look at how long you're surviving. And it's just like, he's kind of, yeah, very.
00:46:56
Speaker
And she's, she's this like spider like thing. is She's got six legs and four arms. Yeah. Yeah. Like, Very, I think eight legs and for me, she has a pair of front legs. Yeah, she has eight legs and four.
00:47:13
Speaker
Just just limbs for days. Like, goodness. Yeah, very, very. and And like metallic looking legs and and set up ah very like sci fi strider sort of thing. If you're yeah with weird D&D stuff.
00:47:29
Speaker
And so I'm going to go with the the related card I wanted to talk about was Dueling Grounds, which is another enchantment. There were a lot of enchantments in this set. And this goes to one of the times that Sabu and Gerard were fighting each other during the set. It's one in a green and white for no more than one creature can attack each turn, no more than one creature can block each turn.
00:47:49
Speaker
And the Flare text says, you think you can stop me, hiss Sabo, and I think I can kill you, replied Gerard. ah Gerard never does get to kill her. She ends up sneaking back through the portal right before the coalition wins and then gets promptly executed by the Evan car for failing her mission.
00:48:10
Speaker
Yeah. So I want to talk about a weird card. Oh am my God. So here's some weird templating that I never saw. So this is part of a cycle too, which apparently i'm talking about all the cycles and,
00:48:23
Speaker
So there was a cycle of sorceries in this set. I mentioned one i'm already, Rout, that all did like big stuff. So Rout was like destroy all creatures, but all this whole cycle of sorceries, if you paid two extra, you could cast it as an instant. Or the modern templating, you can cast it as though it had flash.
00:48:41
Speaker
But the blue one is weird. Kind of weird. So it's a two blue blue called breaking wave. And outside of that, you can cast it if you pay more as an instant.
00:48:54
Speaker
the The actual text of it is simultaneously untap all tapped creatures and tap all untapped creatures. But I realized like you couldn't really template like that any other way.
00:49:06
Speaker
Because if you did one action before the other, it would undo itself. or Or you'd have to like do some funky thing where you exile all tapped creatures or something. Tap everything and then, ah you know, whatever. Futs it around. but It's just just a weirdo. They're all supposed to be like big boards.
00:49:26
Speaker
Large things. You have the Twilight's Call as the black one that each player returns all creature cards from his or her graveyard to play. Only half of... What was the...
00:49:37
Speaker
ah what's what was the the big one that does this living death living death thank you that the card that hobbs plays a lot yeah he likes to cycle i mean yeah anybody's playing living death they're not doing anything fair with it
00:49:55
Speaker
all right well i have i have one last card dimension and this one is because it's got flavor text about our very favorite goblin on it And it's the Zap, which is a terrible card. It's two and a red. for it deals one damage to any target. Draw card.
00:50:12
Speaker
So you get ah you got a whole one point of damage for three mana. but Yep. But the flavor text says, All this time I thought Squee was useless. Checkled to say, Who knew he'd be such a good shot? Because apparently he is a very good gunner.
00:50:29
Speaker
he shows the Weatherlight shooting down a Phyrexian ship. Yeah. Yeah. That's fun. I knew that was there. I knew it was bad. I forgot it was that bad. oh my God. Three mana for one damage. It's just the inverse of a lightning bolt.
00:50:49
Speaker
So I wanted to talk wanted to talk about the apprentice and master cycles, which I'll just throw out there, but I have a different card I want to talk about. The apprentice and master cycle what I i referenced when I said you know this happened and oh Mirage first, but there there is a full cycle, two for each color.
00:51:11
Speaker
Apprentices are common. The Masters are rare. And these are all... So I will just pull it, I got the white ones in front of me now. So you have Sunscape, Apprentice, and then Sunscape, Master.
00:51:27
Speaker
And so these are all wizards that have two abilities. The apprentices are one ones for one. The masters are two twos for two and two of their color. And so, and, and it's just like an interesting mirror. I think a really fun mechanical thing. And I don't know that these cards are ever relevant, but I love these.
00:51:44
Speaker
So the apprentice has green tap target creature gets plus one, plus one into light of turn and blue tap put target creature. You can, you control on top of its owner's library.
00:51:55
Speaker
so again a white spell that has a green and a blue activation so white creature going to its at two allies but then the master has like a juiced up version of both of those abilities so it's green green tap creatures you control instead of just one creature creatures you control get plus two plus two and then blue blue tap return target creature to its aura's hand Whereas the white, the apprentice like bounces only your creatures and then it takes up your next draw because it puts them on your library.
00:52:28
Speaker
This one can bounce anything to its owner's hand. And so there's, there's a pair of these in every, so every color. ah And all of them do this sort of thing. The green ones have a white ability and a red ability, but they're different ones that kind of pull from the things the, the, the two allied colors do.
00:52:50
Speaker
which was just kind of a neat setup. I'm going to mention one more because I missed this on my first pass. One of what has to be the most limited counter spells ever printed is Teferi's Response, ah which which is a waste of a perfectly good name. It's one and a blue for an instant. Counter target spell or an ability in opponent controls that targets a land you control.
00:53:14
Speaker
If a permanent ability is countered this way, destroy that permanent, draw two cards.
00:53:21
Speaker
Slight upside. It's also to an instant two cards for two mana as an instant. If you can ever get the ability to cast it. True, because it needs a target if you can't actually cast it. If it's a spell or an ability an opponent controls, it targets a land you control.
00:53:38
Speaker
Oh my god. That's wild. That's fun. i i want to throw in Undermine as my last card, which I didn't have on my list until we were talking here.
00:53:50
Speaker
And I just happened to notice its flavor for text as I was scrolling around looking at things. So this is a blue gold card, an instant for blue, blue, black. Counter target spell. Its controller loses three life, which like you said about a previous one, it's very much...
00:54:05
Speaker
Gold card with one effect from each of those two colors. I mean, it's literally blue blue for counter spell. And then you throw in a black mana, probably three life. That's probably about right at that time.
00:54:17
Speaker
But then the flavor text is, which would you like first? The insult or the injury? yeah It's one of my favorite flavor texts. That's such a good flavor text. Yeah. so And the art is pretty sweet too.
00:54:32
Speaker
Yeah. There's there yeah some really cool art in this set.
00:54:38
Speaker
right. Well, that is Invasion. That was a lot of fun. And I think we're going to stick with this block for the next set. So we we hit all of the story last week because it there was enough. like we could We could summarize that into a single episode, but there was enough cards in this set.
00:54:57
Speaker
We it got a nice full episode with just this one set, but Plane Shift and and Apocalypse are both smaller sets because that's how they did it back in the day. and One big set, two small sets.
00:55:08
Speaker
So we'll probably combine those two together. We'll see. I think I'm going a lot to say about Apocalypse. I love that set. That was my first favorite set. that makes any sense.
00:55:20
Speaker
Funny. but Undermine was reprinted in the Starter Commander decks. Oh, yeah. I mean, I could see that being something that kind of fit back then is as a good counterspell with a little extra upside. Yeah.
00:55:34
Speaker
And those were printed in 2022. So that was the last time that was printed. But yeah. but So they picked it as a representative of what blue-black is ah for that these those starter commander decks were two-color. They were allied color, very simple commander decks that just highlighted what the color pair did, really. Mm-hmm.
00:55:54
Speaker
Oh, that's cool. I did not know that came back. oh But yeah, well, I hope you enjoyed us talking about these old cards. There are so many bad cards in these old sets. wow it's It's glorious. Just a bunch of terrible cards.
00:56:10
Speaker
and But a lot of fun ah fun, interesting things, at least for me. like i I find it fascinating to look at that old design and see what they were trying. You can see what they're trying in a lot of cases, too.
00:56:22
Speaker
Yeah. Doesn't mean they had good ideas. No. ah Or were as successful. i think there's definitely things that get iterated on. but yeah you know But, you know, people should be thankful for how good we have it nowadays.
00:56:36
Speaker
Yes. Yes. I remember that thing in that set was awesome. I mean, but for the day, it was great. There's a lot of cool stuff there, but.
00:56:47
Speaker
it does is A lot of it doesn't age as well, which is common for, I guess, a lot of media, unfortunately. All right. Well, this was fun. Yeah, well we'll continue to kind of stick with this. ah We got figure out where we're going from here when we kind of finish Invasion Block, maybe next week with that said. And if you have other suggestions... What we need to do is actually get Hobbs back to talk about Spider-Man since he's a big Spider-Man fan.
00:57:13
Speaker
um Yeah, that'd be good. Yeah. hello podwwalkers you have been listening to the goblin lore podcast goblin lore can be found on blue sky at goblin lopod or by going to our linkt treee for all of our links especially to our discord and our discounts we welcome all feedback through social media or by joining our discord which is very active and now goblins i just want to remind you that goblins like snowflakes are only dangerous in numbers