I dunno, i recently got back into magic, and seems like over half the decks I play are chain comboing free spells to keep digging into their library over and over, etc... im gonna implement just as possible disruption to people s turn 1 thru 3
Mountain is my favorite magic card. i just love the way it can be turned 90 degrees to generate 1 red mana, which i can use to play a 1 mana 1/1 goblin with haste. i hope they print Mountain 2 soon. it'll be wild
It gives off the same kind of vibe as a sunken ship does in real life. Over time, monuments to our past become hints at our existence. And then, nothing.
Robot; legs are on the left, head on the right. Something is being held in the hand, though perhaps it was driven into the chest. Looks like some kind of greater Yotian Soldier to me.
Y'know it's really convenient that early Magic leaned so hard on the "ancient advanced civilization" trope. Really helps make the history/nostalgia plane shtick it's got going nowadays feel like a logical extension of the plane's identity and not _just_ pandering.
Basic land art is one of the most underrated parts of worldbuilding in Magic. Before you even see any other cards, you get a feel for what the plane itself is like. This is why, for instance, Shards of Alara's basics will always be near the top of my list, in particular Chippy's set of Esper lands and Aleksi Briclot's depiction of Jund.
I really like that island. I didn’t even know it was Alara cause it was in a core set and I was still relatively new to the game but it was the first basic land I went out of my way to get like 20 matching copies of.
@@williamdrum9899 That's an interesting take because I always felt like the shards had very defined and easy-to-understand identities. The original Alara concept feels much stronger to me than, say, New Capena or Strixhaven. What makes you feel like it's weak?
Man the absolute range of cool as fuck to embarrassingly bad designs across these examples makes me wonder how one franchise can have such lows and still exist.
Good to know Akul's plane of origin. Looking at Twitter for Magic lore tidbits isn't worth the cost of looking at Twitter, so I always appreciate someone else sharing the information.
The "no natives on Thunder Junction" thing still astounds me. Sure, you don't want to unpack the complicated history of American colonialism in your age 13+ trading card game, but it's still wild that's the solution they landed on.
I dislike this card. It feels uncannily like a Yugioh card. For a start, the creature type is squashed so they can fit in Rogue, which reminds me of yugioh archetypes. Then the ability has two cavaets limiting it's activation, which feels like the many of the ways they limit yugioh cards. Nothing about this is strictly new to magic, and by no means do I wish to disparage Yugioh. But they are two different games and Magic has so many other ways to limit a potential combos that putting these restrictions on the card feels so unlike magic. It's sad because a Scorpion Dragon is insanely cool, but to match the set they had to slip that extra word in.
Sorcery + OPT isn't that unusual, but its strange that its OPT instead of Tap Its not a pump effect, nor does Akul have direct combat effects that would justify him having a non-tapping OPT He's just a big dude Its also not something that would be an unjustified blowout if you were untapping him, because you still need an engine for bodies, untaps, and cards in hand to play Its just a Bit Weird yeah The typeline is something that just happens occasionally, its hard to think of exact examples but this set definitely isn't the first to have font size crush due to triple types, but its definitely a lot more present in OTJ due to the heavy Outlaw theme which yeah becomes very Archetypal in application
@@syrelian For me it's really just down to how it all happened on the one card. I can't see and appreciate what the card does because I'm blinded by these distracting elements. Rogue to fill an archetype, sorcery speed to prevent interaction, once per turn to prevent infinite combos. I appreciate that they're trying to make him still be able to use his ability after attacking, it just isn't card design I enjoy.
@@Unormalism Yeah no I was like, breaking it down because I get the same vibe, its WEIRD, its a bunch of individually innocuous bits all stuffed together in an offputting package.... its OTJ in a nutshell Looks sick, is weirdly clumsy, and has offputting design implications
Sure is impressive a bunch of people managed to travel through a magic portal to an entirely foreign realm of existence and instantaneously all found each other, got along perfectly, and built an entire old west civilization from scratch in a matter of days
Are you familiar with a boomtown? The portals dumped them all in the same general place, they found land ripe for the settling (filled with an exploitable McGuffin magic source), they chose to stick around and a society started forming around that. The timeline's rushed (it's been about a year and change, enough time to make some settlements but not enough for all that infrastructure), but out of all the problems with Thunder Junction as a setting you're getting snippy about the Old West plane being... an oversimplified version of the actual Old West.
Literally the only two things you mentioned that are even mildly outside of what actually happened in real life is the existence of magic portals and people being able to like, do things quickly... In a franchise that is literally called Magic: The Gathering...
i'm turbo coping that akul isn't actually dead since we never see his body. Scorpion Dragon Bandit is such a good character concept that surely... surely we'll see him again...
Let's be honest, this is WOTC we are talking about, wasting cool character concepts and ideas is their bread and butter. (Yes, I'm still not over the Phyrexian Invasion plot, such a waste)
Weve had a creature of a similar description to him before, a legend from legends called Ur Drago. No Im not kidding. Its officially described as looking like a large scorpian has a similar face to Akul. Given the name "Ur Drago", it might also be considered a dragon...just like Akul.
Holy shit, I’m so glad to hear somebody else talking about this character - I only recently read the book that had them in it, but tbh I had kinda started assuming that I’d misremembered/imagined their existence while I was reading the book while falling asleep or something??? 😅😅
Was not expecting to be hit with the Munchkin flashbacks after laughing about GAZEBO PLANESWALKER Also makes me think of that goofy greentext about that guy who didn't know what a Gazebo was and attacked it
@@Chorocojo Ya know when you put it like that I would probably fumble it in the same way. Just realizing I gotta step up like I never stepped up before and as a result make the worst possible decision.
There might be a few Decks for this, Zalto Fire Duke gets a dungeon trigger when damaged, vrondiss makes you a 4/4 dragon. You could also use it in Wayta Selfharm Deck with Enrage like mechanics. Bonus is your oppenents can use it and are heavily incentivised to not use it on your stuff.
