Emergency Blog Post: No Phelddagrif in Marvel's: Spider-Man
Wizard's Sinister Scheming Blocks Phelddagrif from Entering Standard!
September 8th and the full set for Marvel's Spider-Man has been released. Well, technically the full set was spoiled on Friday, September 5th, but today we got the Through the Omenpaths cards, which my original prediction said that Phelddagrif would appear in the Arena only version of the set.
Turns out Phelddagrif did not appear in either the main set or the arena only set! Something went Spectacularly, Amazingly, Superiorly, Ultimately, Sensationally wrong!
What was it?
What Went Wrong
They didn’t reference “One More Day”, or any of the other classic Spider-Man stories like “Spider-Man: Reign”, “Sins Past”, “Sins Remembered”, “Fathers and Sins” and “Sinner’s Delight”. Chances are they couldn’t print Phelddagrif because the set was so small and tiny. As a micro set, that was all the room they had for cards. Phelddagrif was going to appear on card 199, most likely, but because they only had 198 cards, they couldn't print the Phelddagrif card, so they sent it to the same warehouse where they kept Coldsnap and all those Legend's Booster Boxes. So tune in next time where I'll tell you how Phelddagrif appears for certain in—
What's that?
Sorry, I'm receiving word from the editor that this blog post needs to be longer. After some focus group testing, it seems that micro-blog posts do not sell well with readers, and I need to bloviate a bit more.
What Went Wrong (Arena Version)
There was only room for one purple mammal in the set.
Verilax the Havenskin by Raoul Vitale.
A deer? Come on, Wizards. Get real. No one wants a cute little purple baby deer in the middle of a hulking monstrosity. Why would a deer be purple anyways? Magic already has a perfectly cromulent purple animal to use. Wouldn't it be cool to see a Phelddagrif in there? Wouldn't it be interesting? More interesting than some unnamed deer.
I'll drop the deer thing for now, because I'll acknowledge that it doesn't make much sense for Phelddagrif, a moderately-to-high power level being in the canon of Magic: the Gathering to be swallowed up by some nothing creature that doesn't have a face. Phelddagrif has too much dignity for that. And the ability of the card doesn’t really make too much sense for Phelddagrif. A reanimate and some weird Stuffy Doll sort of effect doesn’t seem like Phelddagrif. It is great for Helldagrif, but I suspect others don’t know or care too much about that fan-made card.
Although Helldagrif is probably more well known than a purple deer.
And what is the deal with that deer anyways? Does it have a name? Is the deer supposed to be Verilax? I doubt it, pretty sure that's the giant spike monster, not the purple deer.
The blurry bane of my existence. The horrible child of Sasquatch and Nemesis.
Can we even be sure if the deer was meant to be purple? The Arena art tax takes half the pixels away from these cards, so maybe there's some sort of optical illusion happening here? Seems like it would be better for a Mysterio card than a card that could have had Phelddagrif but they put a purple deer on instead even though the deer may not be purple. I feel like there’s some sort of illusion like The Dress happening to me here. The more I look the more I think the deer isn’t purple, maybe it’s a trick of the light. But my eyes see what they’s see. And what they don’t see is Phelddagrif, who is also purple.
But that's just my opinion, I'll seriously let go of the purple deer thing.
Review the Omenpaths
The Through the Omenpaths cards are unabashedly cool. Super neat and lots of fun. And, my first reaction to seeing them was that this set feels like Magic's homage to Spider-Man. This set brings Spider-Man into Magic, where the paper set brings Magic into Spider-Man. I'll try to explain briefly through the cards Gallantry and Repentant Vampire.
The art of both cards combine to make a panorama, showing an athletic woman fighting alongside a vampire in a valley, while also being a reference to the 90's television show "Buffy: the Vampire Slayer". But the reference is oblique, a bit askew. The art doesn't depict teens in love fighting monsters in Sunnydale, California in the 1990's. Both characters are wearing fantasy leather armor. They don't exactly look like movie stars. Both characters are sweating, bulging veins and taught muscles as they do their karate kicks. It still takes place in the world of Magic (Otaria specifically), they are in a valley where some ruins can be seen on the side. Additionally, the cards don't bend Magic's mechanics to pop culture references. Gallantry doesn't have too much to do with Buffy, other than her being Gallant, but the same can be said for plenty of other characters, such as Hannah from the first printing of the card. Threshold was a set mechanic in Odyssey block, and maybe that relates to Angel's story about getting his soul back? Although it's not a perfect analogy, it can be there, but it makes use of the set mechanics that the designers wanted to use over the mechanics that they didn't. By designing for Magic first and making the reference through the existing world and set design, the cards bring the Buffy-verse into Magic.
Where the flavor seems a little more “bottom up” here, Spider-Man feels a bit top down. Looking at Peter Parker//Amazing Spider-Man:
undoubtedly a cool and powerful card. Lots of fun stuff gameplay wise to be had with it, but why does Webslinging cast legendary spells? Is Spider-Man casting Urza’s Ruinous Blast or Karn’s Temporal Sundering? I’ve heard that the mechanic is supposed to feel like the character is “swinging in” quickly, which seems a bit like warp. Is there a reason why Spider-Man has Vigilance? That he can’t Web-sling himself? I’m at a bit of a loss finding the flavor, because it’s hard to translate these characters into Magic mechanics. It also feels weird that Spider-Man can die to Whack.
This isn’t to say that the cards are “bad”, and this is just one example, and there’s probably a lot of flavor wins in the set, but I think there’s a larger issue when it comes to trying to translate characters with, if not a “rich” history then a long one at least, into Magic.
EDIT: I don't really know how I feel about this section anymore. In the clear light of day, there doesn't seem to be much difference between gallantry's Buffy reference and Spider-Man. I suppose comparing Spider-Man to the Omenpath version would show how we could ask how the ability reveals the character and what they do, that there's a bit more room for interpretation when it comes to cards with Magic characters on them instead of outside properties, but I don't have the energy to think about that further. I’m giving off the cuff remarks here so that I keep my mind off a certain purple deer.
Free Slushy Day
I don’t even know what I’m doing, that subheading doesn’t make sense. 7-11 sells slurpees, not slushies. Two entirely different frozen beverages.
There's something interesting about the use of slush art in this set. “Slush art” meaning art that was originally commissioned for the set but didn’t end up being used and is left lying around for later.
Fire-Brained Scheme is interesting to me. This was a moment in Episode 5 of the March of the Machines story:
It's funny and I think a lot of people liked this part. I have to wonder if this was art that was originally in the set and was going to get a story spotlight, then was removed, or was it art commissioned afterwards because people resonated with that moment in the story? I feel like it has to be the former, especially when there’s already another card showing Chandra flying through the air after being propelled by Koth:
I wonder if we’ll get a card with Chandra landing too.
This cheerleader card is wild though.
Acrobatic Cheerleader got a lot of hate, one of the most hated cards in Duskmourn, so it’s hard for me to imagine that another Duskmourn cheerleader card was recently commissioned. But it could be an excellent prank on Wizard’s part. Sort of hoping for the Duskmourn cheerleader to come back as a broken commander at some point.
But plenty of things are rad as hell.
More cards from the Edge? A decent counterspell with the Drix? Perfect.
Loving the large spider.
There’s a certain flavor to this set, especially the “spider-rider” cards, that feels so silly, so goofy, but still playing it straight that came from early magic.
Sure, a lot of these come from Jesper Ejsings cards, Wardens of Silverweb Summit and Scions of the Ur-Spider are goofy cards with a lot of character (and color) to them. But a lot of the other cards also deliver world-building to a fundamentally goofy seeming world.
The chair is a bit much
And it reminds me of some of the weirder things, like the sapient gorillas in Ice Age that Jaya Ballard has beef with, the king of all atogs with Atogatog, or the game-within-a-game cards: Goblin Game, Mana Clash , and Thieves’ Auction.
Sometimes you got to make the card you want to see in the world.
I'm actually a big fan of the purple deer now. Just had to write myself out of it
In the Desert of Eternal Spoiler Season
I’m desperate, so desperate, for Phelddagrif, for my desires to manifest. It’s like I’m in the desert, someone sees me, naked, bestial, squatting upon the ground. I’m putting my heart out there, it’s in my hands, exposed and eating. Perhaps this person sees me and asks “Is it good?”, and I would tell them “It is bitter — bitter. But I like it because it is bitter. And because it is my heart.”
“But I could go for some water to wash down this bitter heart of mine.” I would tell that stranger. And that stranger would tell me that there’s a set coming up that’ll help. It’s the quenchiest!
