Fallen Empires | The Resleevables #7 | Magic: The Gathering History MTG
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 23 ก.ค. 2024
- Cedric Phillips and Patrick Sullivan are here for their deep dive on Magic's fifth expansion - Fallen Empires!
The duo dissect Magic's worse set yet, with their thoughts on Fallen Empires' nonsensical attempt at lore, the set's comically large print run that almost killed Magic, and why the set isn't as short on power level as many people think it is.
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Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction
2:31 Facts
18:33 Lore
22:14 Mechanics
35:14 Cycles
50:14 Misprints
57:12 Awards Show
1:13:19 Final Grade
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Sponsors:
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Credits:
Directed by: Jonathan Choi
Produced by: Cedric Phillips and Jonathan Choi
Edited by: Jonathan Choi
Written by: Cedric Phillips and Patrick Sullivan
Graphics by: Ray Dill
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Information sourced from MagicTheGathering.com, TheSideboard.com, MTGWiki.com and numerous conversations with previous and current Magic players
#theresleevables #mtg #podcast #magicthegathering #commander #mtgcommander #mtgstandard #mtgmodern #mtglegacy #mtgvintage #mtghistoric #mtgalchemy - เกม
This video coming out has gotta be the most excited anyones ever been about anything Fallen Empires related
"Our refund policy is that we don't do it" absolutely killed me.😭😭😭
Also killed many LGSes at the time! (It’s still the distributor return policy, btw.)
One of the lore elements you missed was that the fighting over resources was sort of a "civil war" within each color.
The Order of the Ebon Hand created the thrulls to be slaves and the thrulls got out of hand and became uncontrollable.
The elves were breeding the thallids and the same thing happened to them.
Within white Farrel's Zealots went about usurping the Icatians and followers of Tourach.
The homarids had a population explosion that put them in direct competition with the merfolk,
and a similar thing happened with the goblins against the dwarves.
All of this can be gleaned from the flavor texts throughout the set.
While the set is bad it's super nostalgic for many of us who played it heavily at the time. Those of us who didn't play at an LGS but casually with our friends had a different take on it. For many of us the unavailability of earlier cards had us playing more of this set.
I started playing in the summer of 1995, so fallen empires would have def been on shelves yet don't ever remember buying a single card from it. Can't wait for 4th edition since that was 95% of the cards I had back then. Interesting even back then they realized how good the OG dual lands were they just stopped printing them in normal sets
Yup my situation too. No LSG but I got cards from a Hot Topic equivalent whenever we went to the mall. I actually liked the dupe cards since it would be more flavor text to fill in the world more.
I think Patrick missed an important part of the story of Fallen Empires which is the warring factions within the same color. Merfolk vs homarids, thrulls uprising against the order of the ebon hand, etc. IMO this is the most interesting part of Fallen Empires since previously that conflict bore out between enemy color pairs.
Definitely agree they weren't giving the story enough credit. First of all, the approach to narrative was different with the early sets. Instead of spelling out everything they only gave you bits and pieces through the flavor text deliberately leaving blanks to be filled in by the player's imagination. This both elevates the importance of the flavor text and actively engages the player in world-building. That the story has to be pieced together in this way via excerpts from fictional historical accounts (that may or may not be reliable) - the six volumes of "Sarpadian Empires" - like you're some kind of scholar trying to make sense of a lost civilization seems like a more elegant approach to conveying a set's narrative then the bland and derivative "Jacetice League" stuff of more recent times. If you actually read the flavor text on the FE cards you can infer a lot more about the story than this review suggests, e.g. the competing factions within each color, the theme of "servants turning against their creators" in green and black (I think Thallids were created as a kind of cattle-like foodstock by elves?) and so forth.
I also think they missed the impact this set for the lords in alpha. So Vodalian Soldiers, on its own, perhaps wasn't the coolest thing but at this time these first additions of merfolks (with exception of Merfolk Assassin in The Dark) was a huge deal for tribal. This is (almost) equally true for goblins but they had some more additions in The Dark.
ps. I also think that Vodalian War Machine was the og Vehicle... I really do love Fallen Empires! 😅
Agreed, btw in the Duelist you can find letters that the tribes write ✍️ to each other. It’s pretty cool. You can find it in Duelist 3 I believe 👌
the lore is infighting in colour. Elves created the thallids to be a food source but whoops they were intelligent and didn't like being eaten. In blue the homirids were at war with the merfolk etc etc. Great episode! I bought way more of this set than i needed too lol
Little nugget of trivia from Wikipedia regarding Wyvern: "In 1996 Mark Justice, a former champ of the 1995 U.S. National Magic tournament, won $1,000 for the 1996 Pacific Coast Championship for Wyvern. Previously, Justice had never played a game of Wyvern but remarked "It's basically Stratego with Giant Growths" and that "once he figured that out, it was simply a matter of applying the skills I learned in Magic."
So he's basically admitting cheating there too.
Fondest memory of Fallen Empires: my former LGS (Wizard World in NYS suburbs) was so desperate to get rid of excess FE packs, in 1998 the co-owner Jon ran an unsanctioned tournament called "Jon's Dumb Booster Draft" using 3 FE packs per entrant. The fee was either incredibly low or possibly free, I honestly can't remember. But even so, few people joined for some strange reason. I want to say only six of us, but again, this was 25 years ago so some details are fuzzy.
Of course FE was not designed to be drafted so the games were all long and tedious. But it was all worth it because 1st place (ME!) won something else the store had been trying to get rid of: a multi-deck storage container in the shape of a castle.
Must have been more than 3 packs 😄
Technically speaking, they are Wyvern cards with Magic fronts, as these misprints were only ever in Wyvern packs.
haha, interesting...can you imagine getting into wyvern and you just open a bunch of MTG cards
I love that there's a community who play Fallen Empires 40
we're currently experimenting with having homelands as well. August will be the first month where decks can run unlimited amounts of homelands cards (previously limited to 9 total homelands cards). But its also the first month that Apocalypse Chime is allowed, so it will be interesting to see how much exposure to chime people want to build into their decks.
I love FE40
I actually think the lore for fallen empires is better than The Dark. I just find the theme of creators being undone by their own creation very impactful. So even if the cards were bad, I still enjoyed the story in the set
The best cards from The Dark (at the time) were probably Ball lightning, Fellwar stone, and Ashes to ashes (all three were reprinted in 4th so maybe they were more popular then) I didn't really see anyone using Tormod's crypt or Blood Moon until years later.
The best cards from Fallen Empires, Hymn to Tourach, Goblin Grenade, of course you had the Order of the Ebon hand and the order of Leibur. High tide was apparently a thing but I never saw anyone using it but I do remember Soul exchange getting used quite a bit.
Finally time for the set with 3 busted commons and nothing else in it ❤
Regarding the set's story, there was also a prerevisionist novel published later, "And Peace Shall Sleep", which was set in Sarpadia. Through following the travels of a group of main characters the readers learn for example how the Havenwood elves farmed the thallids, or how the thrulls rebelled against the Ebon Hand.
Dwarven Ruins actually made an on-camera appearance at the Legacy 5k last weekend, here in 2023: www.twitch.tv/videos/1855446654?t=02h33m15s
Really? I figured there would have just been strictly better versions of it somewhere in magic's past.
@mattm7798 Well Sandstone Needle is generally better if not strictly, but the deck in question is already playing 4x Sandstone Needle. In fact it plays 40 lands, most of which produce 2 mana as it's very mana-thirsty, so in reality it's mostly a case of "going so deep that it even plays Dwarven Ruins" since it wants to reliably be able to have 3 2-mana lands in play in a Wasteland format.
Dwarvern Ruins is also a staple in Godo cEDH decks.
This is my favorite series on TH-cam right now. I can't believe there's a couple more years worth of episodes to go.
I have hoped for years we would get an "Arisen Empires"-style set that reimagines the themes, tribes, mechanics, and flavors of Fallen Empires in a far more compelling way than the original. May the game last long enough so I can see that day. If not, maybe we need to crowdsource this idea outside of WoTC.
This was the first booster pack I ever cracked. Seeing those Brassclaw Orcs will forever be burned in my memory.
Alternate timeline “Empires Redeemed”.
Rage had the awkward, but also pretty dope, innovation of the combat deck. Whenever you got into a fight, you grabbed your second deck which consisted of gory depictions of ways to savage your opponent.
You would secretly pick a way to wound your foe, and your opponent would do the same, then reveal at the same time and figure out what happened. The combat cards had various costs to allow you to play them, but within certain limitations you could “bluff” any card you wanted regardless of the cost. If your opponent also bluffed, or didn’t or couldn’t play a card, you just get away with it and your combat card does its thing.
Can I suggest a new section, "Reserved List Cards". Bet you'd be surprised that 27 cards in Fallen Empires are on the Reserved list.
This is the set where the "Feldon's Ice Cane" anagram mess up was fixed with "Delif's Cone".
Fallen Empires is my favorite set of all time. So flavorful, so evocative! yes the power level just wasn't there, but it is internally consistent for the most part. And it was super-formative. Thrulls, Cephalids, and Saprolings, oh MY!
I think some of the internal consistency gets missed because of the experiment with multiple arts on the commons
Sac lands were gas back in the day. Being able to leave one land up for a fork, eye for an eye, simulacrum, or counterspell was clutch
Vodalian War Machine is like the first try at Vehicles and Crewing. Pretty cool to see that.
The only bad thing about this video is knowing the next one won't be for another month
I was the "Homarid Spawning Bed is my pet project" guy. Loved that card as a kid, one of the first decks I ever built was centered around trying to make it work. This is the first episode I have actual nostalgia from, can't wait to get caught up!
Another great episode guys! Man, Fallen Empires was 50 cents at my local grocery store, so when grandma gave me $3 to get a booster, I could choose either a single pack of 4th edition, or 6 packs of FE. This review was a good trip down memory lane! Can’t wait until the 4th edition episode, that set is where I started!
Wyvern was actually fairly fun! Much more limited than Mt:G, but I played quite a few games of it back in those days.
Other interesting CCGs from the era that had their quirks but also perks:
* Spellfire - the official D&D game. Too complex and fairly unbalanced, but fun to build a broken deck with OP creatures & artifacts.
* Jyhad/Vampire: the Eternal Struggle - Fun lore, but often confusing and overly complex gameplay. Encouraged multi-player games, which is a good thing.
* On The Edge - Really weird lore/worldbuilding, in a fun way! I remember games being short, and a few OP cards kept showing up, but there was a lot of variety with how it could be played.
I still think that a design like the Goblin chirurgeon's one was pretty fun and neat. Alongside Goblin wardrums- and of course THE holy grenade of Antioch- I remember having a lot of fun playing those back in early 1995 and the boosters were so cheap, even here on the other side of the Atlantic. And the face of your opponent when you cast THE hymn and were wondering which cards you'd want to pick, priceless. But Orgg not being a goblin? Come on, such a fail in so many aspects. I'm so glad that "Goblin Mutant" corrected this a couple of months later BTW - Ice Age, best souvenirs ever
The information about distros shoveling product upon stores is incorrect and addressed in Rooks' book, A Collector's History of Magic: The Gathering. In it he states that WoTC specifically did not make distros take all the product they ordered as they did not want to see stores bearing the brunt of the burden... and then passing that burden on to customers by overpricing future sets, which may account for the warehousing costs. This is also addressed in Chalk's Generation Deck, I think.
I wanted to add that this series is incredible, though! Always a fun watch.
Absolutely love this series, thanks for doing it. I started playing right about the same time as Patrick did, so these extended discussions of the early sets is super fun for me.
I will say that on the topic of this set that Patrick actually understated how available and cheap this was. $1 a pack? Forget it; locally there was a hobby store that had a literal stack of these, just sitting on the floor, for sale by the box (remember, of 60 packs!), for $25; and they still weren't selling. They just sat there, and sat there, and sat there. You could still easily get these for a dollar or two per pack into the early 2000s.
I also remember organizing more than one chaos draft at a different small local shop that still had some in the Invasion block era (2000) that was "Draft: 2 packs of your choice, 2 packs of Fallen Empires" just to help the guy get out from under the last of his FE. The set, like all of the early sets, was terrible in draft, but it was entertaining to have in the mix because of that epic badness.
1:11:56 I also appreciate that you can get power out of the dwarven ruins but only by sacrificing the past, using it all up so nothing is left. The last throes of a fallen empire.
Conch Horn, though, is one of a rare handful of cards that can put something from your hand back on top of your library. There's VERY few of these cards. Brainstorm, Brainstone, Scroll Rack, Conch Horn, and Volrath's Dungeon (at great cost) are about it. This effect is really useful in certain circumstances because there's a few powerful effects that depend on the top card of your library--Nine-Fingers Keene, Yuriko (the big one--she loves these cards), Call of the Wild, Polymorph effects, etc. They make a lot more of the "if the top card of your library is X, you get this cool thing" than things that manipulate the top of your library (mostly R&D hates this because of the "Sensei Top effect" to slow down games) and even fewer let you get cards that are not supposed to be in your hand back into your library.
I feel like I wouldn't mind a set coming out nowadays like Fallen Empires, where there' snot too much hype, the cards are average or less, and there's not much going on all considered.
When I started playing magic, I had a deck and some extra cards from some of my friends, and was really enamored by the art over anything else. To this day the biggest point of me remembering a card is by its art, rather than by name or set; and I love having various artworks for my favorite cards in my collection.
I got quite a handful of bulk lots over the years, and at one point my collection was something like 25,000+ cards including what I chose to keep and in my decks (sold all unnecessary stuff years ago,) and I do remember having a handful of Fallen Empires cards over other expansions in magic's early history. I still love the old magic art, it looks like it was ripped from older D&D books, and had a unique charm to them.
Fourth edition packs are the first packs that cannot be searched. That's kinda cool
Not that anyone would bother searching an FE booster though :)
Back in 96, my LGS had a one-time special "$10 limited" event: choose whatever sealed product totaling under $12 ($2 bonus) and build a 40 card sealed deck. Everyone was doing a mix of Alliances, Ice Age, Chronicles and/or 4th, with an FE or Homelands pack if they had room.
I went with 13 of the 0.89c FE packs and never dropped a game.
Uuh im excited for the new episode
It got down to $20 a box. Let that sink in -- $20 a box of 60 booster packs. Yup, it was the first set that was truly print to order -- you nailed it as to the situation.
Lesson...old MTG booster boxes will always increase in value eventually lol
Shoutout to the Quinton Hoover art for Homarid, the come-at-me-bro crab. What a time that was to be alive.
There are three cards that enable goblins in this set and only two actual goblins: Goblin Chirugeon and Goblin Flotilla. Goblin Grenade is administered by a medical professional 50% of the time, and the 50% failure rate of the kites is explained by the fact that half the time it's a boat soaring around up there.
Loving y'all's show, every episode is a fun ride down memory lane and at the top of mtg related content IMO.
Some other tcg games that were out at the time that were vying for those booster pack bucks that i was trying out along side of mtg:
Star Wars, Wyvern, and Werewolf Rage(based of whitewolf ttrpg b6 same name).
Then ones Patrick didn't mention that were also there.
Vampire, the masquerade(similar system to rage also based on the ww ttrpg), netrunner, shadow run, guardians, and spellfire.
I really enjoyed spellfire, Wyvern, and guardians but they never picked up with my other friends. Rage and vampire were fun but were pretty much the same game with different arts and backs and suffered the issues Patrick mentioned. Shadowrun and netrunner weren't really my cup of tea and didn't get past using friends cards to learn.
Hey Cedric, wanted to help you with Scryfall searches. Limiting cards to only the Fallen Empires set, and with “flying” in the Oracle text = “set:fem oracle:flying”
I started at 4th ED (coming up!) after trying my pals' Revised decks. Fallen Empires was the booster expansion, besides 4th ED boosters, that were out at the time (before Homelands), so I have a soft spot for Fallen Empires. Love that the booster packs used the "vintage design" for the wrappers from Arabian Nights, Legends, and The Dark. I remember the first Fallen Empires booster I cracked had Hand of Justice in it, and through the late 90s, that was the most valuable card in the set at $5! So yes, good nostalgia with Fallen Empires and the fact that it is very cheap to complete the set is a big plus nowadays.
Some reasons you might want to put a card from your hand on top of your library using Conch Horn: to set up a miracle card, to hide a card from being discarded, to put back a card you want to cheat into play (like a tinker target). This last one is best with fetch lands. So the card is like a precursor to Brainstorm. Plus it's an egg. This card seems very sweet to me.
So, I never noticed on the Homarid Warrior how incredibly bad the artwork is in regards to how he's holding the spear. The spear is draw with the bottom of it angling inward towards the center of the body. The top is angled out. But, the spear is in a pair of claws. And the claws are vertical. The claws literally can't hold a spear in that orientation. I've never noticed how bad that was until this video.
1:05:49 fun fact about scryfall, you can search for key words. O:flying
I started playing around the time shortly after Fallen Empires came out, and getting into the game at that point, it really felt like "you missed the boat". The older sets were gone or insanely expensive, just Revised and ten boxes of Fallen Empires at the card shop... It didn't even matter that the old multi-colored cards in Legends were trash, (and even at the time we knew it) it still felt like Legends and multi-colored cards were part of a bygone era you missed. You missed the power nine, Juzam Djinns, gold cards, and legends. Here's a $1 pack of Fallen Empires, enjoy your two Homarids with different art and your Icatian Moneychanger.
Proud patreon member. Exceptional content. WotC is crazy for not making Patrick and Cedric the A announce team for their brand.
We were new to Magic then and I remember my brother building a Breeding Pit deck with Lord of the Pit. DOING IT!!!
I'm always hyped for the new uploads, for years I've missed hearing You guys talk about anything
This is the only show I eagerly wait to see a notification for
The "what a deal!" in Delif's Cube review killed me.
Fallen Empires is my all-time super nostalgia set. Thanks for making this fun video 😊
Thorn Thallid is also removal....eventually
Great episode as usual. Did y’all know Ron Spencer started hiding names of his friends in artwork with this set?
01:06:16 Goblin Kites is actually great to use to give a Goblin flying, attack with it and then use Goblin Grenade in your 2nd main. Also a flying creature made it pretty much unblockable at the time, so it was great to deal some dmg. Sorry for leaving so many commons btw 😂 it just brings back so many memories.
First card i ever had was homarid warrior (shuler art), learned to play in ice age and made a deck based on getting out the deep spawn. Love this set. Great video- took me back to old old school.
Icathian town is by far not the weakest card of the set, we all played with tons of Crusades, Jihad's back then. (remember most colors could not remove an enchantment)
I would argue that Icathian town is among the top 20 cards of the set
I’m really digging the art for Conch Horn. If you could choose to put the card on either the top or bottom would be nice.
But even just putting it back on top could let you protect an important card from Hymn to Tourach.
Orgg!!! Played it a lot as I couldn't afford Balduvian Horde. Great card if you played a lot of removal.
Fallen Empires is one of the best expansions ever made, and that's not just my opinion. Just ask Richard Garfield. Its a shame that people confuse 'powerful' and 'good'. There's nothing easier than making powerful cards. The art, flavor and mechanics in this set are super interesting. They overdid it a bit with the buffing/debuffing counters, but the set is so good you can actually play just Fallen Empires and have a great time playing basically any color (blue is a bit weak). I don't understand all the complaining about the counter types since the type doesn't really matter. Like the fact that thallids use a counter with a different name than homarids and moneychangers and delif's cube and whatever doesn't really matter. They're just counters and all you need to do is keep the count. It was a pain to keep the count back in the day because we didn't think to use dice but with dice it's easy. There's a fairly active Fallen Empires 40 community going right now.
also delif's cone is absolutely worse than the cube. cube regenerates vs cone which gains you life. plus cube doubles up with stuff like zealot and necrite and its reusable.
Fallen Empires was the first set released after I started playing. I still like it to this day. The issues of it having low power are undeniable. But the flavor and art were cool. I wanted to build an Icatian deck, for instance.
Gotta love early Dom history wish they'd return one day.
37:34 conch horn was actually great in combination with cards like Sindbad or shuffle effect, like in a land tax deck. You get rid of the cards you don’t need, shuffle them away the next upkeep with the tax and draw into a whole new card. Pretty useful in those days.
I think it would be interesting if you guys didn’t know what each other picks were for the award show. I think it would open more discussion about the rankings. Love the show guys!! ❤
Dwarves Ruins has the Moria vibes 1:13:29
I can’t believe I stuck with magic after this, ice age and homelands. It wasn’t until visions that things got better. Side note, mirage block is awesome constructed format.
This is my Fav video so far in series! Truly funny, thnkx
Lol the PTSD of "I'm thinking of night soil, I'm thinking of my girlfriend dumping me" slayed me.
Oh yesss, the Saprolingables my favorite Magic the Saproling show
Yes, this set is printed into oblivion. I have fond memories of this set, because as a kid everybody used to give it to me for free. Loved the art and yes, the power level is low, but there are some gems in there. Still surprised that the set has gained some value and that booster box that you have there is now pretty valuable (currently going for €690 on mcm), who would’ve thought 😅 Anyway, thank you for making these series, love it ❤
Pretty neat to hear our guy Evan get a shout out.
One of my favorite piece of art in Magic is from Fallen Empires. I love the Wolf Head Hymn to Tourach! It is easily one of the best pieces of art in the game (in my taste and opinion)! 18:09
Patrick laughing at 31:35 at the amount of ridiculous counters got me good.
My LGS had Fallen Empires (and Homelands) packs for sale in 2002-2003
I wonder if Homarids inspired Werewolves as part of the problem with Homarids is that you can have multiple Homarids on the battlefield that are experiencing different levels of the tide.
Fallen empires is like epiloge set for antiquities and legends like the epiloge set for March of the machines. Small set with small booster packs and was a storyline bridge to ice age.
And wotc over printed fallen just like it did for the aftermath epiloge 😅
I remember going to the LGS in '98 or '99 and being able to buy Fallen Empires packs for $.99. You could also see through the packs, so I picked up my playset of Hymns by buying packs that I could see a hymn in😂
Can't wait for Ice Age and Homelands. 4th, FE, Ice Age, and Homelands were my high school years in a nutshell.
NEW RESLEEVABLES DAY!!
Everyone poops on fallen empires! I started when this set came out and it got my little kid imagination going! The Icatian were my favorite. Goblins and the knights were so cool! It is what got me into fantasy. It has super nostalgia for me.
I love this series, but this one really missed on the lore for me. There’s a strong story here of nature rising to consume civilization. In the post-apocalypse of the brother’s war, the humans and dwarves are wiped out by orcs and goblins, homarids destroy the merfolk and take their place as lords of the ocean, and elves and dark wizards try to harness and exploit their creations only to be overwhelmed by them. And it’s all told through glorious flavor text, attributed on many cards to the multi-volume historical epic Sarpadian Empires (an in-universe chronicle of the fallen empires).
When discussing the lack of removal, Aeolipile and Dwarven Catapult were missed as key cards that dominate in a Fallen Empires limited environment. While games do have the potential to be grindy, the mechanics of the set are very evocative of the lore they represent, flooding the board with tokens to simulate the clashing of hordes. Endless warfare ensues.
Richard Garfield wrote of the set “Fallen Empires was the first expansion designed entirely inside Wizards of the Coast. It is easily the most complicated and best-looking of the expansions. The play value is high for the complexity, and the cards are very valuable for play. The flavor is probably the most cohesive since Arabian Nights. This expansion is easily my favorite.” Maybe he was just trying to sell boxes 😉
I also find humor in the theme of various species multiplying out of control juxtaposed with the relentless overprinting of the set itself.
If you’d like to experience the greatness that is Fallen Empires limited, look no further than the Fallen Empires 40 group on Facebook.
I was lucky in that Fallen Empires hit my local kid playgroup right after Pog. I had plenty of random circular cardboard disks lying around to be tokens and counters.
Funny thing is when I drafted this, only about 4 or 5 times, drafting really wasn't a thing back then, but I played green and black every time and always always won. I'd pick the fungus cards higher than anyone else apparently. After turn 20 or so you can easily swing for lethal. It's so not fair because the creatures were so bad. Ebon Hand could basically stop everything from attacking. Especially if you sacrificed an Armor Thrull. 3/3 with those abilities!?! Then just make like 18 saps and swing. Lol
The only cards I really worried about was Deep Spawn, Prator, and Hand of Justice... Spear throwers also slowed down my combat slightly.
So I just arrived at the Awards and finally I see _the_ reason I opened a box of FE. I to this day have a play set of each variant from FE. Later I sold off all the copies of High Tide and all the pump knights for enough to cover the cost of that box.
I started in between this set and ice age. Even back then, not knowing really anything about this game, knew this set was horrible. Love this channel.
Great episode!
the fallen empire counters be the most deranged patrick guessing game in the series
Hymn to Tourach was one of the best black spells back then and still is one of the best discard spells. It may not have been a great set overall, but there are some gems in there. I could imagine it being refreshing to draft it also with friends. After being used to such heavy power creeped cards these days, it would be nice to lower the ceiling again once in a while.
I came in with Ice Age, but this is the set that always caught my eye most on the tables because the flavor and lore was so strong! I still treasure the cards I was able to collect from that time.
Would be cool to hear about some of the flavor text in the lore section imo
Just in time for my long road trip
Fallen empires ruined Magic for me, while we knew about the four of rule, we assumed this meant that you could have four of each different art in your deck.
IMAGINE, you sit down with your 16 thallid deck and then your opponent (who will no longer be your friend after this game) comes packing sixteen hymns to tourach.
I've never heard of wyvern but I actually really like that card back haha,
That's a nice shirt you got there!
Hope to watch this later. I kept arguing to everyone at the time that the set was ok. But a year after release the boxes were going for less than on release. I was young and an idiot and just wanted it to not be bad no matter how many times I saw it.
Best thing about the set bar none is the superlative art - it's possibly the best art of all the early sets.
Personally I don't mind the card variants, I particularly like how the flavor, when presented, is expanded upon in the different pieces of art. This set wasn't powerful, and it was overprinted for the time of it's release, but there's something to be said regarding the depth of lore, use of flavor, and art direction. Like Homelands, this set does have a charm to it that's often lost in modern sets.
I think a big thing that's missing is are signature/chase rares. Legends was highly regarded in its time even though it's dreadful--290 of the cards are unplayable trash and the best cards ruin the game (Moat, Nether Void, etc.). But those game-ruining cards were something to chase after. Even The Dark had Ball Lightning to seek; FE has nothing. Then again, the print run ensures everything is easy to get but even then, from a power standpoint, there's no standout rare. The best cards are un/commmon and since there's 4 arts for all those, you can get all the copies you need from a handful packs and be done.
This has pretty instantly become my favourite MTG podcast and I'm sad that there isn't presleevables for the lotr set
My fallen empire story is that I someday bought 5 cases (I think that was 5x6 boxes) for $12 a box. We thought we could make a profit at 20 cents a pack. We eventually did, but it took years, so it was never a good investment, even at that price
I drafted Fallen Empires! Alot.. that's right when I started playing. Main reason name on Mtgo and arena is Fallen Emperor.
The total print run on this was big for the time but it's way less than modern sets