Multiverse Set Review: MODERN HORIZONS 3 (PArt 2)
Burning Brighter
JUNE 15, 2024 - By Nicholas Fair
Welcome back, friends and my fellow Vorthos’ (Vothoses? Vorthosees?). This is the second entry in my card-by-card evaluation of Modern Horizons 3, encompassing Black, Red, and Green cards from the set. If you haven’t already, go ahead and read part 1 first before reading this review, and make sure to read the preface there on canon; it applies here too.
For those who are new to these reviews, the goal is to discuss new cards, evaluate their artwork and mechanical design, and use what we know to assign them to known planes in the Magic Multiverse. It’s not a small exercise, but to lovers of lore and those who build plane-specific cubes or decks, it’s hopefully a huge help. Plus, it’s great for discussion among the community.
As with the other set reviews, I am only one person, and quite often I miss a thing or two (despite my best efforts!). We also owe an incredible amount to the community for crowdsourcing card origins and lore, so please feel free to send me your feedback or details on anything you think I may have missed at mtgmultiverse.feedback@gmail.com.
MODERN HORIZONS 3: BLACK CARDS
Amonkhet
The Hekma, as referenced in the flavour text here, is a magical barrier that was generated by the god Kefnet on the plane of Amonkhet. The entire plane is essentially a desert full of wandering zombies (“the accursed”, as so named here) and demons, with its world soul long since dead, and the Hekma was the one thing keeping the pristine city of Naktamun safe from the wastes outside. Once Kefnet fell, so did the Hekma, eaten by the Locust God’s swarm as part of the Hour of Devastation.
Mirrodin (Mephidross)
I believe, barring other vague entires in Modern Horizons, “modular” is an ability we only ever see from Mirrodin. Initially designed for Darksteel, modular is a mechanic that represents an artifact creature being made of chunks of metal held together by energy, and that these pieces can attach and re-attach to one another if they are separated (i.e. the counters.) This energy is a binding arc, or so-named “arcbound” and is a really fun limited mechanic to boot. This condor is roosting in the very iconic Mephidross (or “Dross” for short), which vents toxic fumes that turn humanoids into mindless Nim.
Lorwyn
As part of its much more lighthearted world building, Lorwyn’s goblins were referred to as “Boggarts”, and fun of casual pranks that, at most, escalated to concussions and arson. A species that primarily focused on sensation and pleasure, these goblins are more in-tune with their curiosity than most on other planes, and arguably the least destructive. The trawler here is a fairly straightforward boggart, although a quirk of Lorwyn is that they all look incredibly distinct from one another. This is also mechanically a reference to the Zendikar card Bojuka Bog. I wouldn’t be surprised if this card was named “Bog Boggart” or “Bojuka Boggart” in playtesting.
None/Unknown
Despite the Liliana Vess flavor text, I think it's fair to say that this card depicts an abstract scene of a generic afterlife or at least the passing from life to death. There's always room for these in Magic, and even more so when they can fit in any plane or plane-inspired deck/cube.
The Abyss (If any)
I was puzzling over this art for quite a while, but the other day we actually got the art direction given to the artist. It turns out it’s a “nonspecified plane”, really only meant to evoke the artwork on the card that inspired it: Recurring Nightmare.
Chthonic is an adjective that means “concerning, belonging to, or inhabiting the underworld.” Given that, I can see the card art here as possibly also referencing Underworld Dreams, and in turn, The Abyss, as it’s certainly not akin to any explicit planar underworld we’re aware of.
Ixalan
There’s just something about a skeleton in a rowboat moored in a swamp that reminds me of Ixalan. It’s probably because Ixalan is chock full of folks on boats adventuring through swampland, but in this case it’s also because of that dashing rapier the skeleton is wielding that just screams “I’m a pirate!.”
None/Unknown
I love everything about this crab demon so much. I love that “Emerge from artifact”, aside from being a cool twist on Emerge, implies that it’s a hermit crab using an artifact as a shell. I also love that it’s bonkers to actually play, and that it’s rad as hell to look at. Do I know where it’s from? Not at all. It could arguably be from Innistrad, although we’ve really never seen anything like it before from the plane. Innistrad does have moody shores that wash up giant crab horrors, but they’re Eldrazi, not Demons. For now I’ll leave it unanswered, but keep the door open.
INNISTRAD
Is the flavour text on this a reference to actual earth car commercials? I feel like I’ve heard “Built tough, with extra horsepower” somewhere, but a cursory search turns up nothing, so who’s to say? Regardless, this card is wacky but in a classic Innistrad fashion. High gothic-horror vibes in a carriage made out of bones and ghosts, although it would also be at home on Thunder Junction if the environment wasn’t so clearly a dark and spooky forest and not the Wild West.
Unknown
Unlike the usual blood-drinking vampire that we’re used to in Magic, Dreamdrinker Vampire here is more akin to a Faerie than a vampire in that it seems to drink dreams. This would define it as a psychic vampire, which we’ve really only seen on Ravnica as part of the Dimir guild. The artwork here is fascinating as the vampire seems to be conjuring some kind of snake or small dragon to attack its victim as well, and the neon stylings remind me of the Reckoner tattoo magic from Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, but Kamigawa has no known vampires. For now, this one is a mystery.
New Phyrexia
By the very nature of having the mechanic “Living Weapon”. Drossclaw here belongs on New Phyrexia. The mechanic was developed for the New Phyrexia set, and the token it makes is Phyrexian to boot. Flavoured as a tiny little ooze-germ moving into and inhabiting a part of a larger being, the living weapons in MH3 are a bit more obvious and direct than what we’ve gotten in the past, but I suppose it keeps them distinct.
Kaldheim (Karfell)
There are times when I write these reviews that I come across a card I know in a split-second where it’s from, but have trouble articulating why. This is one of those cards. Kaldheim is a plane depicting Magic’s version of Norse Mythology, with separate realms around a large interconnected world tree. Karfell is a frozen waste full of frozen berserker zombies called Draugr, and Emperor of Bones here would fit in perfectly. He’s a skeleton, not a zombie, but he’s in a frozen-over ice cave and has a classic norse-styled crown similar to King Narfi, with Scandinavian-inspired decoration if you zoom in far enough. The fact that hes still got his beard is part of what really convinces me: most beards dry-rot off of corpses, but they stay on when the corpse is frozen and preserved beause of how the body mummifies in the cold. Also, it’s a very, very long beard.
New Phyrexia
The twin to our Hexgold Slith from the first part of this review, Etched Slith here is what happens when a Slith runs afoul of some phyrexian oil. In the last visit to New Phyrexia, we got to see how Phyrexians like to etch and inscribe words of power into their constructs and bodies, and this is referred to as The Argent Etchings. Phyrexians have loved etchings for as long as they’ve been a cult (always), but the Slith here makes it much more explicit.
The second part of its mechanic may just exist to be a way to interact with energy and mirror the Hexgold Slith, but it may also be a reference to the phyrexian Hex Parasite, which was in turn a reference to the Mirran Ferropede.
Extra fun fact: the Sliths were, in turn, inspired by the card Whirling Dervish. Magic is really just a Russian nesting doll of inspiration and references all the way down.
Alara (Esper)
Etherium is one of the easy ways to ID a card’s plane, because it’s only found one place: Alara. The core identity of the shard of Esper, and then later Alara Reborn, etherium is a magical metal that’s essentially purified, solid aether, and used to dramatically enhance the power of mages and magical beings. The process of integrating it usually involves replacing flesh-and-blood limbs, most well-known being the arm and stomach of the planeswalker Tezzeret. A Pteramander is a type of Salamander-Drake initially seen on Ravnica and which this card is very clearly a mechanical callback to. But given that ethereum is very clearly associated with a single plane and pteramanders, although weird, could conceptually be seen on other planes, I think this card belongs to Alara.
Alara (Esper)
Awe, it looks like that’s a dismantled Solemn Simulacrum in the foreground of the artwork with its glowing red heart removed. That specific design of Simulacrum was never printed in a plane-bound set, but it was always fairly easy to see that it was made with etherium from Esper on Alara. Given that, this new card would take place on Alara as well… and give us a great target for our spell in the first place.
Dominaria
Another easy ID; a huge thanks to whoever keeps labeling their call-outs in the flavour text for this set! Ayrel is a knight from Dominaria who got her card from the first revisit to that set back in 2018. She rides a panther mount to honor her namesake, Lord Windgrace, who was a pre-mending planeswalker and panther warrior from Urborg. Windgrace was a powerhouse member of the Nine Titans that helped destroyed old Phyrexia, gave his life during the Time Spiral crisis to close a rift to an alternate reality where the Phyrexians had won, and left an immensely powerful enchantment over Urborg to protect it after he was gone.
Innistrad
One of my favorite ways to find a card is on Innistrad is to look for the gravestones in the shape of Avacyn’s Collar, like the one in the top-left of this artwork. But, even without that hint, flavour text from Kessig works too. Now, is this a golem made of gravestones? A graveyard elemental? Apparantly not; it’s just a horror, but maybe that’s because it’s got zombies crawling out from its insides.
UNKNOWN
After the rush of really nailing the first Flare card, I’ve taken special care to look into the others, but there’s nothing obvious about Flare of Malice that calls out to me based on my research. There’s not a ton of pink/magenta magic in the game, but looking at similar visual cards like Demon’s Disciple from Zendikar or Blightcaster really didn’t seem to match up for me. Does anyone else have a visual match to make?
Dominaria/Rath
The original Gravedigger card was printed in Tempest (or Portal, depending), and has a very iconic bit of Dermot Power artwork with the gravedigger considering the corpse he's burying (or uncovering.) The art has been referenced in Modern Horizons' Graveshifter, and now again in Gravedig, which splits Gravedigger into its component parts. Given that Tempest took place on Rath, it could easily be argued that Gravedig does as well. But given that Dominaria and Rath are now one plane, Dominaria would also be a great answer.
Unknown/many
The Innistrad planar page has gotten filled to the brim with a lot of the more generic horror cards as of late, as there have been a lot of them, and Grim Servant isn’t going there but easily could. He’s a zombie warlock, but despite maggot-filled hands and a book with runes of power, there’s not much we can cling to about his otherwise somewhat tattered appearance. Zombies are as common in Magic as angels, but oftentimes much less distinct.
Kamigawa
As I’ve written at length in other reviews, the Kami are the spirits of Kamigawa, and are living, personified embodiments of everything from “law” to “pus” to “industry.” They have an infinite range of visual designs and are downright abstract at times while very obviously physical in others. The spirit here is somewhat reminiscent of the demon spirits known as “Oni”, although horns don’t always make someone a demon, obviously. It seems that this guy is the same one on the card Debt to the Kami, though, moments before the art on that card. I love little tie-ins like this. Actually, this design looks dead-on for the concept art for “Kami of Venom” by Steve Prescott from the Kamigawa Neon Dynasty concept push.
New Capenna
In my head, this card sounds like one man screaming and another going “You said you wanna TUSSLE?!” in a deep and angry New York accent as wind rushes past them both. The visual cues here, primarily the industrial construction girders and winch hook point towards the only plane with that level of technology: New Capenna. Given that the art also depicts a human and a grey-skinned ogre, who are generally members of the blue-collar Riveteers guild, means this is a slam-dunk.
Kaladesh
Awe, look, Marionette Master is all… un-grown up. I really like that we’ve managed to make art of this character (or her apprentice, I suppose) in a vastly different medium/style and keep the same design for her Servo controllers and gold-blue pallette. That’s the kind of attention to detail I live for in Horizons sets. I’m a little dissipointed that she doesn’t have the same “lose life equal to power” mechanic as her grown-up self as that made the Fabricate mechanic that much more interesting, but I suppose it would have been too hard to balance while keeping it good but not overpowered.
Innistrad
Huh, a massive tower of zombies, like the Magician’s horrible swarm of mind-puppets from Season 3 of the show Castlevania. Or sort-of like that promo image from the movie World War Z. Regardless, it’s not really something we’ve seen in Magic explicitly. Visually, this card is very Innistrad-coded, with the deep blue, cold, and spooky atmosphere throughout. And the purple haze is reminiscent of either Liliana’s necromantic magic or the fae magic for The Wicked Slumber from Eldraine. We don’t have any real assistance from the mechanics, as amass Zombies was created for the Eternals in War of the Spark, and the environment is basically absent in the card otherwise. It could almost visually be that the zombies are underwater, but that’s likely just a twist of the artwork’s perspective. Given all this, I think it’s likely an Innistradi card as that’s the plane with the most zombie hordes, but it’s not a very open-and-shut case.
Theros (Underworld)
The Therosian Underworld is a fabulous, fascinating place. Just like Nyx, the realm of the gods, the Underworld is a real, physical space; a landscape of ink-black water and chains that endlessly reach into the deep purple-blue sky above. This world is home to more than just dead mortals and the occasional planeswalker visitor, however. Imprisoned in the underworld are many monsters, including the ancient Elder Titans from before the Therosian gods ever existed. These titans once walked Theros freely, the first creations of mortals from their collective fears. But once Klothys, God of Destiny, defeated them, she locked them all away in the underworld and allowed a new age of gods to flourish in the mortal realm. The titan depicted here is Kroxa, Titan of Death’s Hunger; a nasty giant made of basically nothing but mouths. The card is, of course, actually a mechanical homage to the card Necropotence, one of the most broken cards to come out of early Magic besides the power 9.
Dominaria
Ah, Lhurgoyfs, another one of Magic’s unique species and the kind that’s only found one place: Dominaria! There have been a number of ‘goyfs over the years, most famously Tarmogoyf, but this one is unique in that it uses the escape mechanic originally from Theros blended with the delirium mechanic originally from Innistrad. That, my friends, is some good graveyard synergy.
Zendikar
I’m quite surprised that “Quest” isn’t an enchantment sub-type. I suppose it’s not mechanically relevant, as opposed to things like Sagas or Traps, but it almost feels like they could be tied together with a subtype. Regardless, the “Quest for the-” naming schema, the use of quest counters, and the use of the landfall mechanic that was initially designed for Zendikar really makes this card look like it’s part of the Zendikar quest cycle. The only thing that gives me pause is that the art depicts some gigantic skeleton of unknown species on the side of a snowy peak, and that’s not something I think we’ve explicitly seen on Zendikar? It doesn't mean it doesn’t exist, of course, but just something to consider.
Unknown
Ah, what a classic and heartwarming story. Artificer finds pet rat. Artificer enhances pet rat with robotic wings and limb augments. Pet rat dies. Artificer zombifies pet robot rat to continue living. A tale as old as time. …But not a tale that could take place in any of the magic settings we’re currently aware of; at least not with these visual designs: an argument could be made for Alara’s love of necromantic magic and artifact augmentation otherwise.
Dominaria (Past)
Transmogrants are a type of flesh-and-artifice creature created by the artificer Ashnod during the events of the Brothers War on Dominaria. Ashnod would essentially use corpses as the mechanical basis to shortcut a lot of the engineering involved, and in doing so very efficiently combined necromancy and artifice in a terrifying way. Luckily, all transmogrants wear the Transmogrant’s Crown, which is supposed to help with how otherwise terrifying it would be to see these things up close.
Ikoria
Although there aren’t the telltale crystal structures of Ikoria in this artwork, the very large, thee-eyed skull in a nightmare bog very much evokes the visual design of the plane. Especially given the visual design associated with Ikoria’s nightmares, and the reference to it as a “monster” specifically, which is very Ikoria-coded language, I think Ripples of Undeath fits there very neatly. It seems very much like something Nethroi would get involved with.
Fiora
Oh, Queen Marchesa (long may she reign), please never change. This is such a fun, flavourful use of the connive mechanic, and there’s something about “secret agent infiltrator in full plate armor” that both looks cool and would be absurd in practice, Marchesa is queen now, so I suppose she’s switched from her usual rogueish agents to more obvious agents of the crown.
Innistrad
First point of order: this guy’s name is literally Shil-Gengar. So he’s a pokemon. Case closed.
…Silliness aside, Shilly here is actually a major player in the lore of Innistrad, as Elder Demons often are. He was the demon who offered Sorin Markov’s grandfather, Edgar Markov, a deal to save his starving town by turning them all into vampires. Of course, it took the humans capturing and sacrificing the angel Marycz and drinking her blood to do it. The fact that all this comes across in his abilities, AND that he’s got a throne made of angel wings? GOAT-ed.
Innistrad
Speak of the white-haired little guy and he shall appear! Looks like Sorin sparked when he drank the angel blood, turning into both a vampire and a planeswalker at the same time. It’s a really cool character concept, and also led to such a glow-up, even if he’s as moody as ever.
Innistrad
The planeswalker Sorin Markov, prior to the mending, held almost godlike power. Oldwalkers had access to nearly infinite mana, but they were still limited by the kinds of magic they could actually perform. Sorin, a vampire from Innistrad, primarily had access to many different kinds of magic that all essentially ended up with the person on the other end of the spell being very dead. It should come as a surprise, then, that when he saw that the sudden appearance of vampires on the plane was quickly resulting in the annihilation of humans, he realized that he couldn’t just murder and kill his way out of his people’s eventual starvation and death. So, Sorin decided to make himself a daughter, or at least, conjure himself one. Using the only magic he knew how to use, Sorin sacrificed a portion of his soul and created Avacyn, a guardian angel for all of Innistrad, who would grow stronger the more peril humanity was in, and would grow weaker the stronger they became. She was to be the keeper of equilibrium, and the ultimate apex predator and equalizer in a world of monsters. That is, of course, until Nahiri messed everything up.
Alara (Grixis)
A fairly classic-looking goblin, this is the kind of artwork that could fit almost anywhere. The design of the goblins could easily be Dominarian, but I actually think this card belongs on Alara. The goblins of Alara have a similar “short green humanoid” appearance to Dominaria goblins, but they all have very thin, pointed ears like the ones in this artwork. More than that, they’ve been known to dress in bones, and most importantly, the shard of Grixis was primarily a land that ran on recycled soul energy (“vis”) commanded by powerful necromancers. The flavour of the Soultrader here seems like it hits that concept dead center.
Arcavios (Strixhaven)
Artist Richard Kane Ferguson is a magic all-timer, but his artwork tends to be enormous and somewhat dreamlike. This makes it very evocative, but hard to parse for individual details about the setting of the illustration itself. Luckily, flavour text saves us one again, with Dina, a Witherbloom student at Strixhaven, chiming in. She’s a dryad, and is known to make fantastic tea, being no stranger to the cycle of life and death like this cards displays.
New Phyrexia
I don’t know what to make of someone who is reading this article that doesn’t know about Wurmcoil Engine, but for those unaware, this is a baby Wurmcoil engine. Neat!
MODERN HORIZONS 3: RED Cards
Kaladesh
Once in a while, Wizards of the Coast likes to make cards named after sets. In MH1 we had Mirrodin Besieged, and in MH2 we had Urza’s Saga. They can be pretty obvious when they are printed, so I’m very glad that they get released so selectively. Aether Revolt, named after the set Aether Revolt, featuring the mechanic “revolt,” which was designed for Ather Revolt the set. It’s like poetry.
Though, looking back, it seems insane that the color red didn’t have a single card with revolt until now.
Ikoria
Awe yeah, he’s AMPED. You know, as in, “getting excited”, but also as a reference to amperage, a way to measure the strenghth of an electric current, aka energy? Gotta love it.
Anyway, this little dino is from Ikoria because he’s (1) a dinosaur, and Ikoria is lousy with dinosaurs, but mainly (2) because he’s covered in glowing crystal shards, and Ikoria is lousy with glowing crystal shards. Sometimes it’s that simple.
Lorwyn
God damn do I love the visual design of Lorwyn’s flamekin. RK Post, you mad lad, well done on concepting out these fairytale creatures. Ashling here, who also goes by “The Extinguisher” when she’s feeling a bit spicy after the sun goes down and the plane becomes Shadowmoor, is one of the protagonists of the Lorwyn/Shadowmoor series of novels. I can’t wait for us to eventually return.
Ravnica
I have a fun development story for you all. Apparently, this card was designed without knowledge of the set Murders at Karlov Manner (as it was also in deveopment at the time). Detective Phoenix basically had exactly the “collect evidence” ability without the name when it was designed, but then, when Murders came out, the card matched so closely they had to do something about it. In the end, they decided to just switch it to “collect evidence”, but that required them to re-tool the card thematically. It had to still be an enchantment to bestow, and it had to still be a phoenix, but it couldn’t be a phoenix who was a detective, so they made it a phoenix who was the pet/familiar of a detective instead. Given that Lamplight Phoenix is already a phoenix that reanimates with collecting evidence, I’m yet again amazed by the mechanical depth that Magic has to offer. Anyway, Murders at Karlov Manner is on Ravnica, basically every Detective in Magic is on Ravnica, and thus so is this card.
Zendikar
Awe yeah, weird Kozilek-brood eldrazi with eyeball tentacles and more obsidian crown goodness. This more bestial Eldrazi (and by that I mean four-legged and chasing you) is more reminscent of the eldrazi designs from Battle for Zendikar, where red-black Eldrazi aggro was an archetype in limited.
Unknown
Usually, and by usually I mean basically always, the ‘Devoid’ mechanic refers to Eldrazi or Eldrazi magic. The only instance we know of where colored mana was labeled as colorless, besides the technology of The Thran, is Ugin’s ghostfire and I guess his binding magic, both of which were specifically designed to combat the Eldrazi. Fanged Flames is no ghostfire, and it’s certainly no eldrazi spell… it’s just a red mage summoming a fire snake to eat some unluckly and poorly dressed ogre fellow. It could, arguably, be on Zendikar for mechanical reasons, but I’d ask you: why? how?
Uknown
“Mastery is just killing you to fuel my awesome spell.”
Mirrodin
When in doubt about what card to make, take two classics and mix them together. Frogmyr Enforcer here is the fantastic blending of Myr Enforcer and Frogmite from the original Mirrodin, with the prototype ability from Brothers War. I don’t love red mana for the “frog” half of the card, but that’s fine, because the rest of this card is great. The fact that the art is similar to some of the unused Myr concept art designs from the set is just icing on the cake.
Mirrodin
Clearly a Mirran dragon from before the days of Phyrexia making them all into skeletons, this fellow is Furnace Dragon’s best friend. Mirran Dragons have literal furnaces in their bodies, as life on Mirrodin is all part-metal, and because they can literally rocket themselves around they don’t really need to have normal dragon wings. Some still do (due to cowardly retconning art directors!), but the majority of them had little vestigial chicken wings and if that isn’t the coolest bit of world building you’ve heard today I don’t even know what to say to you.
Because I’ve read some confusion online, the “red sun” in the flavour text here is a reference to Mirrodin’s red sun/moon, the Sky Tyrant, and the furnace in the name is a reference to the Great Furnace, not the Furnace Layer/Autonomous Furnace of New Phyrexia.
Dominaria
Although from name alone you might think that “The Great Desert” referenced in the flavour text here is on Thunder Junction, it’s actually on Dominaria. The Great Desert is on the continent of Jamuraa, near Shiv, and populated by Viashino and the Suq'Ata people. There was actually a second Great Desert on Dominaria on Terisiare in the past, and it was home to the nation of Tomakul and where Mishra ran off to after his teacher’s death in the Brothers War. I’m not sure which this card is referring to, but either way, it’s Dominaria.
Tarkir
This is a pretty cool re-interpretation of Ghostfire from Future Sight. Initially when making Battle for Zendikar, Mark Roswater says that his team tried to put Ghostfire into the set, but it not having devoid itself was a very weird mechanical disconnect. Given that this is a chance to do it all over in a manner of speaking, I like that they made a few devoid cards that reference Ugin’s ghostfire magic. This technique, which was actually adapted across the color pie into five different techniques, is on display for us at the call of what looks like a Jeskai monk from Tarkir.
Innistrad
Oof, poor Gisela. This likely depicts the moment when the archangel Gisela, Blade of Goldnight, went to oppose the invading eldrazi Emrakul alongside her sister, Bruna. As two of the plane’s most powerful defenders, it makes sense they’d face her tentacly-ness head-on.
It didn’t go super well, but the sisters are now closer than ever before.
New Capenna
I find it wild that Wizards of the Coast has now made multiple references the line “posession is nine-tenths of the law” and that I’ve never actually heard anyone say it in real life. With that said, this is an open-and-shut New Capenna card because that’s an iconically New Capennan devil in the artwork. These devils are usually comedians, valets, or ruffians, but I guess they’re into kidnapping and exploitation now, too.
Kaladesh
Energy isn’t a Kaladesh-only mechanic, but it was made for Kaladesh, and most energy cards take place on Kaladesh. This axe is conveniently enough made from delicate and interwoven filigree brass in the iconic way that Kaladeshi technology tends to be, however, so I don’t think there’s any doubt here!
Dominaria/rath
I love Moggs. Moggs are a type of goblin from Rath that were incredibly stupid, hulking, and very easy to command. They were bred specifically by Volrath to be effective cannon fodder and a great slave race/army to control the other more free-willed species on the plane. The look of moggs was fairly unique, but after the planar overlay with Dominaria, moggs cannonically interbred with Dominarian goblins. Modern Dominarian goblins carry certain mogg traits for this reason, the most notable of which is a large shovel-shaped bony crest at the apex of their skull.
I say all this because Mogg Mob, here, is three Mogg Fanatics stapled together in the same way that Llanowar Tribe was three Llanowar Elves and Healer’s Flock was three Healer’s Hawks. But these goblins are not moggs. Hell, I don’t know what they are with their underbites and little muscular baby bodies, but they’re nothing close. For clarification, moggs only existed on Rath, but are now extinct, so a card depicting Moggs has to be Rathi, or, arguably, Dominarian if it’s prior to the hybridization of goblins. But these are weird airbrushed goblins in an alpine meadow with barrels of… gunpowder? So they’re not any of those things. It’s a frustrating artistic oversight.
Ixalan
The art for the molten gatekeeper here is a bit of an odd one to consider. The most prominent thing to notice is that it’s entrenched in magma, but a quick secondary note is that its body is literally an anvil (what a cool little detail, artist Joe Slucher!) There have been a few magma-dwelling creatures over Magic’s past, primarily artifacts from the Shivan mana rig on Dominaria, artifacts in the Mirrodin Oxidda mountains and forge layer, and Fomori artifacts in the core of Ixalan. I think our gatekeeper here is a member of the last group for a few key reasons. The first is that he’s made of a literal anvil: that level of specificity of form isn’t found on Mirrodin’s more organic golems. The second is that he’s got a cone-shaped head and one eye, akin to the Gnomes from Ixalan (even if he isn’t a gnome himself, it’s more a mark of Fomori technology.) And finally, Ixalan’s underground caverns and molten rivers are the only logical “gate” he could be guarding.
New Capenna
Waistcoat-wearing lizards are a multiplanar novelty, but not hard to come by on the glitzy and glamorous New Capenna! We’ve even got Capennan elves in the crowd with their telltale tiny horns to help hammer the concept home.
NEW PHYREXIA
Awe, hey, it’s our boy Slobad! At least it’s him in the flavour text; the creature that’s being created in the forge is clearly just more fodder for the Splicers.
…Speaking of, where are my red and black splicers, Wizards of the Coast? I need my cycles compleated!
Tarkir
Normally, the monk here would be typed not as a Djinn, but as an Efreet, as he’s got the unique look of the Tarkir-native efreets that are part of the Jeskai and Atarka clans depending on what timeline you’re on. I wouldn’t miss those three-pronged heads from a mile away! However, as part of a consolidation in MH3, “Efreet” has been phased out as a creature type, so all Efreets going forward are Djinns. If this is for typal support, or just because the difference between them was vague at best, it’s hard to say, but I don’t believe we’re retroactivly turning Efreets into Djinns, which makes it all the weirder.
Dominaria (if any)
So, the card Counterbalance, which Powerbalace is clearly a reverse-callback to (in the same vein of Red Elemental Blast to Blue Elemental Blast), is from Dominaria. But it’s a fully abstract spell; we only know it’s from Dominaria due to the set it’s from. So is Powerbalance from Dominaria, or is it from nowhere at all? the ethos of this project says Dominaria, but disagreements are very well taken
Ravnica
Ah, another of the "Planeswalker origin" sagas! I do think these are quite interesting designs, and I love the lore behind them. In this case, the "implicit maze" was also known as the "Dragon's Maze" given the set of the same name where we first got a Ral Planeswalker card after he had been teased in the video game Duel of the Plainswalkers for ages. That art by Eric Deschamps still makes me nostalgic.
Ravnica
Speaking of, hey, it’s Ral, our favorite scamp who breathes lightning for fun and eventual leader of the Izzet Guild on ravnica. I quite like the twist of seeing him as a younger guy here with his more casual attire. You can easily forget that Ravnicans wear a lot more than their guild uniforms, given how much we see the guilds represented every time we visit.
Dominaria (Shiv)
One of the most grounded and visually appealing peoples on Dominaria, at least to me, are the Ghitu. The Pyrosurfer here is clearly a member, with the telltale white headdress with red bandanna, and they’re likely surfing a lava floe in Shiv, their homeland. Easily the most famous of her people, the immortal artificer Jhoira, is one of my favorite characters from Magic lore in general, and it’s in no small part due to her Ghitu heritage.
I’ve also heard that this card was created as a reference to the teeny-tiny surfer in the art of Flamewave, which I just about believe.
Innistrad
The scene depicted in Reiterating Bolt is one that's a *little* vague, but I'm still fairly certain it belongs on Innistrad after a good discussion with Reddit user EmptyStar12. It likely is meant to be a representation of magically levitating "Tesla Spheres" (you know, the ones from novelty shops in the mall back in the day?), with the scientist at the center dressed in a metal chest piece to match the somewhat steampunk ports around his workshop. The tech is threadbare enough to be Innistradi, not Ravnican, and "The Academy" in the flavour likely refers to the Nephalia Academy. How fun that this set is showing how energy as a mechanic fits on multiple planes!
Dominaria (Sarpadia)
Ooh, what a fun blast from the past! Sarpadia is a smaller continent on Dominaria, and the setting of the Fallen Empires expansion. Most famous for the various empires (all of which fell, go figure), Sarpadia was once the home of self-sacrificing Thrulls, wild Thallids, and lobster-looking Homarids. It also had red-aligned Dwarves, Orcs, and Goblins, though we didn't see many of the latter in the set that weren't actively blowing themselves up. Given that most of the wars seemed to be through proxy armies of various magical make-up, I like that this card gives the goblins their own unique combat pawns for the conflict. And is it throwing two Aeolipiles? Neat!
Eldraine
This is just a best guess (though isn't it always?) but Eldraine does feel very much like the right plane for this card. The "strike" though the center is the really slick "before and after" art direction that (nearly) all Split Second cards have, but unlike most of them, this one feels distinct from Dominaria.
Our original visit to Eldraine had a very strong "humans versus nonhumans" vibe to it that set up the wilds against the courts, and one of the major players in that conflict were giants and ogres. Due to their size, they made quick work of the normal castles and war machines found in "The Realm,” like we see here.
Zendikar
Red eldrazi from Ulamog's spindly, bonefaced brood. Plucked right from the front lines of Battle for Zendikar.
Dominaria
Wow, I did not think I'd ever see the grandeur mechanic again after Commander made it seemingly obsolete, but I am so very glad to be wrong! Drafting multiple copies of Skoa here turns the others into alternate-casting-cost Fireblasts, which is super freaking cool. I also really like that the original Fireblast is clearly a goblin on the receiving end of an embermage's spell based on the flavour, implying Skoa to be from the same location as the set Visions, which was Dominaria! Case closed.
Extra bit of trivia for you fans out there, do you recognize the reference to “kindling” in the flavour text? That’s calling back to the card Kindle from Tempest which was also a “draft as many as you can” card.
Kaladesh
Smelted Chargebug here is wandering a war zone, but I do think it fits right next to the likes of Augmenting Automaton in both build and environment. It's got more "lightning orbs" than I think we're used to on the more subtle Kaladesh, but the technology certainly isn't unheard of on the aetherpunk plane. I wish it was a Servo to really hammer the idea home, but it being an insect leaves just enough doubt for me to be open to reconsidering in the future.
Dominaria (Non-Canon)
As with many of the card concepts for Modern Horizons sets, I imagine that Spawn-Gang Commander began as “what if we made [famous card], but as an eldrazi?” the callback to Siege-Gang Commander is obvious, from mechanics to name to every number on the card itself, but that leaves us in a trouble spot, because Eldrazi and Dominaria do not mix. Luckily, we can have goblins on other planes, but unluckily, there are no goblins on Innistrad, the one plane that had the perfect storm that made “eldrazification” possible.
Even if we were to push past the idea that a being becoming "eldrazified" is byproduct of Emrakul emerging on a plane that hasn't yet been reformatted into raw mana, a phenomenon that’s only possible when a powerful Lithomancer like Nahiri (who knows how to direct and trap Eldrazi) purposefully lures her away from the other two titans, it doesn’t work to put this little guy anywhere else. He looks nothing like a goblin from Zendikar, and that was really our last lore hope.
Zendikar
Ah, a classic “Zendikar is a plane of lethal adventure” illustration; how I revel in these. We have to look at the back of the card and see a reference to Akoum, a very prominent mountain range in Zendikar, to know for certain, however.
Kaladesh
Kaladesh is home to a somewhat uniquely tiger-inspired species of Dragons that I have always loved, and it's great to see another here! As of MH3, the previous two have been updated, fittingly, to being cat dragons, though it looks like they're still attacking Kaladeshi skyships for fun.
Kaladesh
Delicate filigree amulet with an energy mechanic? Sounds like Kaladesh to me!
Zendikar
What void is Voidpouncer pouncing from? I'm not sure, but it's got cool hedrons, so it's Zendikar! Oath of the Gatewatch actually had a mini cycle of colorless-mana not-quite-kicker eldrazi that I'm certain this is a callback to.
It’s a little bit of a stretch, but given the design, I wonder if this is meant to be a call-back to the card Skizzik from Invasion. The kicker makes it a 5/3 trample haste, which is what the OG Skizzik was once kicked as well. Hmm.
Dominaria (if anywhere)
Magic sure does love its wheels. Wheel of Fortune, first printed in Alpha, is an incredibly powerful spell, and WotC has printed "fixed" variants of it time and time again; Wheel of Potential included. Most of these are vaguely placed; the wheel is an abstract visualization of the spell itself and not usually meant to be literal, but it does match the original judge art well enough for Dominaria.
I want to also add in that name here is a pun; "potential" meaning both that there's a potential for any outcome (ala wheel of fortune) but also referring to potential energy, which you charge up a wheel like this with before releasing it to spin.
MODERN HORIZONS: GREEN Cards
Innistrad (-ish)
So, this card is likely a non-canon entry for all the same reasons the other cards like Spawn-Gang Commander are, but I’m listing it as -ish because a lizard is a lot easier to handwave than a goblin. Hear me out.
This, visually, is more-or-less an eldrazified Basking Rootwalla. Rootwallas are a Magic-specific type of lizard that are based on the real-world “chuckwalla”, and have appeared on Dominaria and on Rath in past sets. They are, however, a fairly mundane and generic lizard, and seem at home in any jungle environment, so it wouldn’t be outlandish to find one on Innistrad. Are the leaves in the artwork a little less arboral than the normal Innistrad oak and fir trees? Yes… but I still think it fits *well enough.* Let me know if you agree!
Ravnica
Funnily enough, both the full-art promo and standard art for Birthing Ritual depict the exact same scene, but the full-art one is a little more clear, so I’ve chosen to feature it instead. As artist Alix Branwyn called out on her Twitter post about the artwork, the art description for Birthing Ritual called for depicting the evolution of an Arboreal Grazer into a Nullhide Ferox. Both of these species (and cards) are fairly prominent members of the Ravnican ecosystem, and you can see Alix’s wonderful little smol Grazer on the right turning into the big Ferrox on the left, like an Animorphs cover. This card is also a mechanical and naming callback to a very iconic modern card: Birthing Pod.
Eldraine
We’re given an easy out, as we often are, from the flavour text on this card, which references Vantress, the blue-aligned court on the plane of Eldraine. Eldraine is full of knights and fairytale beasties, such as trolls, so the art here fits perfectly, and is even a cheeky reference to the troll-under-the-bridge story of The Three Billy Goats Gruff. The knights blue-and-white armor suit the outfit of the Vantress knights very well to boot.
Dominaria (Past)
I love when I can see a direct 1:1 reference in an illustration to concept art for a specific set. Illustrators for Magic are often given reference materials in the form of a “World Guide” so they can match the visual design of specific objects, beings, or worlds when needed, and it’s clear that artist Raoul Vitale was given an Argivian treefolk and a Fallaji soldier to refer to for this illustration from the Brothers War world guide. Given that this shows a treefolk and what would have been an invading human teaming up against a dark metal machine with a single orb-like eye, it’s safe to say this takes place in the last hours of the Brothers War, where Mishra had revealed himself as warped by Phyrexia.
NEw Phyrexia
Mirrodin was somewhat unique, and by unique I mean awesome, in that it was a sci-fi plane with alien dinosaurs. As a kid, this was peak worldbuilding, and New Phyrexia has not ignored these dinosaurs as vectors for compleation in the years since. Of course, none of them were dreadmaws per-se, but this card is half-joke, half-game-ending-mini-bomb, and all-around cool. If you see the meme, it’s already too late.
Dominaria
This is an interesting card. Not for where it is; that’s fairly apparent, but for its design. “Freyalise” is a pre-mending planeswalker who had an eyepatch and was generally a badass. She cast the World Spell to end the Dominarian Ice Age, she was a member of Urza’s Nine Titans that took their battle to Phyrexia during the first Invasion, and she became the protector of the Skyshroud Forest when it appeared on Dominaria next to Keld during the Rathi overlay. She would eventually sacrifice herself, her spark, and most of Skyshroud to close a massive rift during the Time Spiral crisis, and she was a bit of a xenophobic dick at times, but I still love her.
…Oh, right, this is about her disciple. The card is a Momentous Fall on a stick, which is a weird part of green’s color pie that feels black, but is really just prime territory for both. The mechanical ability is basically the same as the card Disciple of Bolas, which Disciple of Freyalise mirrors both in name and in art direction.
Rath/Dominaria
Speaking of Skyshroud, here’s another hero from the first Invasion: Eladamri! His first legendary card left a little to be desired, but this more than makes up for it. For those not in-the-know, Eladamri is one of the biggest names from Dominarian/Rathi history. He was a native of the artificial plane Rath, and leader of the elves of the Skyshroud Forest who directly opposed the Phyrexian Stronghold. He united the free people of Rath against Phyrexia and, when he came to Dominaria, did the same by forming the Dominarian Coalition. His daughter, Aliva, was killed, captured, and turned into a Phyrexian named Belbe, but she still aided Eladamri in escaping the Stronghold via the use of her repurposed Phyrexian Portal.
The art for this card is the same as the art on Belbe’s Portal, but after Eladamri passes through and comes out the other side on Dominaria. Not only that, but his mechanic, tapping two other creatures, is likely a reference to his two heroic allies, Lin Sivvi and Takara, who were by his side on Rath. Of course, it’s also just as likely that the ability is a call-back to another Eladamri-centric card, Symbiotic Deployment, from Apocalypse, where you pay {1} and tap two untapped creatures to draw a card. Oh, and if you were curious, the “Korvecdal” is a prophesized savior who would unite the class of the Kor, the Vec, and the Dal tribes of Rath together.
Zendikar
I touched on the awesomeness of General Tazri earlier in this article, but needless to say, this is a pretty bread-and-butter Zendikar Eldrazi Drone right out of Battle for Zendikar.
Ravnica (Simic)
The Simic on Ravnica are one of the guilds that have undergone the most change. They were, arguably, the villains of the first block, with their cytoplast technology going rogue and forming a giant ooze kaiju. Since then, they’re still up to their genetic splicing ways, but with a little bit more rigor and specificity in the form of Krasis creatures. Evolution Witness here is a Simic elf kneeling in a fairly standard Breeding Pool, but is also a callback to the card Eternal Witness from Fifth Dawn. The pose and flavour text mirror the original very well, and the returning-a-card may have changed somewhat, but the parallel is still fairly strong.
Amonkhet
Rhonas, the snake-headed god of might, is one of the original (albeit brainwashed) gods of Amonkhet. He’s as green-aligned as they come, and is a proponent of ‘might makes right’, and a ‘go big or go home’ strategy in terms of cards devoted to him. Although it wasn’t named explicitly in the set itself, the “theme” Rhonas and his devotees from our first visit to Amohkhet was ‘ferocious’, or caring about having four or more power. It’s really convenient that Eternalized creatures (ones that have been mummified and plated in lazotep by the Scarab God) have 4 power, isn’t it?
Shandalar
Ooh, I do love a random call-out for Shandalar! Shandalar was a plane created for the Magic MicroProse PC game back in the 90’s, and has been visited during core sets a few times in the past. Kalonia is a very green-mana-rich area on the already verdant and mana-rich plane, full of behemoths, treefolk, hydras, and beasts.
Unknown
Is the elf in this art wearing a face-crown similar to Liliana? The one she famously took off her first angel kill? Now, that’s not really telling is anything as the headdress is not very plane-centric to begin with, but rather I think indicates how freestyle this artwork is in terms of locale. It’s an absolutely beautiful piece of illustration, but the elf depicted is somewhat plane-agnostic, which puts them in the same boat as 3/4 of the other Flare cards.
Tarkir
This has to be unused Unstable art, right? The elf holding onto inflated air bladders, smacking the eyes out of a bird like it’s a Ren and Stimpy cartoon? Artist Warren Mahy did do work on Unstable for cards like Target Minotaur, so it’s possible timeline-wise, but i could literally just have been a bit of levity ordered for the set.
Fellow lore sleuth and Reddit user NivMizzet pointed out that the druid’s design and antler helmet match the design of the Atarka druids on Tarkir quite well, and that the “giant punch” joke found on Savage Punch and Epic Confrontation is continued here as well. Although I find punching a bird a few steps below a dragon or a bear, it’s still quite funny, so it works. I still don’t get why it wouldn’t be art of Surrak, but a joke falling flat to me isn’t the same as the joke not being there, so to Tarkir it goes!
Dominaria
Ohran Viper and later Ohran Frostfang are both from the chilly Dominarian ice age, but getting some added lore about them is especially cool. The mountains they both hail from (of the same name) are part of the continent of Terisiare, although once the ice age thawed the mountains became an island as a portion of the continent went underwater. In the modern era they’re the island of Gulmany, though sadly “Gulmany Gift” is a dumb sounding name for a magic card.
Unknown (Grist’s Home Plane)
The more we learn about Grist, the more I want to know about it (her?), Grist is a single insect with a planeswalker’s spark, and the central “mind” of a hive-mind of insects that gather anywhere Grist planeswalkers. Firstly, that’s such a cool concept for a character that I’m almost offended we haven’t seen Grist more. We learn a bit, below, in the saga The Hunger Tide Rises, but how did Grist spark? Did it eat a dead planeswalker and somehow eat the spark? Did it eat too much, sparking from pure gluttony? We need answers!
Innistrad
The art of this and Glimpse the Impossible (above) are both very cool, but their comic stylings friends me more of something suited for a Secret Lair product. I’d really love to see these cards in the traditional Magic painterly style given how they depict rather gross and supernatural things occurring during the period known as “The Travails.”
Theros
When this card art was spoiled as part of the announcement for MH3, I fell in love with it. It’s such beautiful work from Ryan Pancoast, and the warrior in the center is both beyond gorgeous and terrifying given that she, well, trains hydras. If the greek pillars in the background weren’t enough, the hydra depicted here has all the hallmarks of a classic Therosian hydra, including hooked/beaked mouths and webbed spines along their back.
It’s a bit of a shame the art ended up on this card instead of a badass legend, but I suppose that’s always the nature of these things: the better the art, the more mid the card.
Eldraine
So, it’s not Ellivere, of the wild court, but this is certainly a member of Eldraine’s caste of knights, likely from the kingdom of Garenbrig given the traditional armor with draped green panels and silver chestplate.
As I mentioned previously about Dog Umbra, Umbra magic was introduced on Zendikar, but has a distinct “spellcaster sitting in a giant bubble animal” look. It seems like WotC has done the smart thing and given umbra armor on different planes slightly different visual distinctions, which I applaud.
Also, given that this card is thematically referencing Daybreak Coronet, which cost {W}{W} for +3/+3 and could only enchant an enchanted creature, it being a lion to mirror the lion on the art of the Coronet is an extra nice detail.
Zendikar
“Turntimber” is a location on Zendikar that’s a nearly impossibly dense tangle of trees and foliage. It’s also a place that was famously wrecked by Eldrazi during the invasion of Zendikar. I guess we see how that happened, now.
Ixalan (if any)
Even looking at the art itself for individual animal designs, I really do think that this is a planeless card. It has discover, which is a new mechanic introduced in Lost Caverns of Ixalan, but is otherwise so nondescript that I struggle to say it goes anywhere. There’s a slight connection with the green “animal magic” from Ixalan’s catfolk, which is a threadbare connection for a green spell about casting creatures, but it’s better than nothing.
Unknown
There are 51 Dryads in Magic, which is somehow less than I thought while still being enough to build a truly terrible Commander deck. They vary wildly in design from “humans with leafy hair” (Ravnica) to “naked star people” (Theros) to “walking wicker basket” (???) to “just a lady in the woods” (Dominaria) to “gnarled horror” (Innistrad), but none quite match the Nightshade dryad here. Nightshade is a real-world plant, too, and likely found all across the multiverse, so for now, the case remains open.
Theros
As I’ve mentioned before in my reviews, the“nyxborn” are a type of being from the plane of Theros, and so named because they are born from the sub-plane known as Nyx, home of the gods. Nyxborn are primarily “children” of the gods for this reason, and spawned from the starstuff that makes up the celestial pocket plane where the leylines of divinity and belief converge.
Unknown/None
This is another piece of art that strikes me as quite odd: I’d love to see the art description for it! The name and illustration are both very evocative of “Path to the World Tree”, but the mechanical design of it is sort of all over the place. We’re seeing all three broods of Eldrazi affect the plane in front of us, and the entire thing reads as very metaphorical in nature, so I’ll slot it into exactly that. Maybe the design just changed late in development?
Dominaria
Although the art had me thinking of the Radix on Mirrodin, it’s really just a “magical glowing orb of nature magic”, which can belong anywhere. Luckily, the card itself is a reference to the card Aluren from Tempest, and the flavour references Gaea, the Dominarian World Soul. When you see Gaea, you know it’s Dominaria without a doubt.
Zendikar
Green eldrazi drones making eldrazi spawn, seems like a pretty quintessential Zendikar experience.
Dominaria
Dominaria is one of the few planes in the multiverse with sentient, armor-wearing apes, and it’s also one of the few planes in the multiverse with classic, earth-like dinosaurs. These have been a part of the game essentially since its beginning, but it’s taken over two decades for us, the fans, to see the wisdom of these decisions. That wisdom? The art of Signature Slam. I mean my god. Even my cold heart becomes 10 years old again when I see a gorilla dropping an elbow on an allosaurus.
Innistrad (Kessig)
Six is one of the three host trees that Wrenn has bonded with over the years that have come from the Kessig forest, which she claims hosts some of the finest oak trees in the multiverse. Wrenn and Six, as the duo were called, are from the first Modern Horizons set, and there's some great interlinked graveyard-land-retrace flavour here that mechanically ties into what Six clearly brings to the relationship. Sadly, as Wrenn’s dryad fire empowers her bonded trees, it also burns them out over time. To prevent their death, she leaves them after a period of time together to retire where she first found them. Like a whirlwind relationship, Wrenn lights your fire, shows you the universe, and then vanishes forever.
Innistrad
Once can only assume that this little guy is what Thraben Inspector was looking at all those years ago before Emrakul showed up fully on the plane. This is why you don’t let mold and fungus grow unabated in your homes, everyone! Infections, and also eventual eldritch monstrosities.
Kamigawa
I grew up playing Odyssey block, and in doing so learned to love the Nantuko of Otaria. When Magic decided to revisit Kamigawa, they weren’t sure what the green race was going to be, and concepted out a type of insect monk derived from the “lucky pet cricket” trope. The designs were very different than the ones from Dominaria, with pink bodies that resembled flower petals.
They ended up returning the Orochi (thank goodness!) but kept a single Nantuko in the set, and for that I am eternally thankful. Getting a second feels like such a gift.
Ikoria
Oookaayyyy. I can see that not getting rid of the “Brushwagg” creature type during the Grand Creature Type update was a slow-burn payoff, because we’ve gotten three in the past few years. Wild. But despite the terrible nature of this haunted creature, and how we usually associate oozes with the Simic, it’s almost certainly a denizen of Ikoria. The crystals in the environment are really the hedrons of that plane, and given that the entire world is about mutating monsters, it looks like the “Almighty Bushwagg” has leveled up.
Zendikar
Thank goodness for all these clearly Zendikari eldrazi, or I would probably have carpel tunnel by now.
Unknown (Grist’s Home Plane)
The story of Grist, at least according to this saga, which lets you fetch the planeswalker Grist by sacrificing the three insects, makes me think that Grist is actually a really well-hidden The Very Hungry Caterpillar reference.
Zendikar
A mash-up (I assume) between Skyclave Apparition and Thought-Knot Seer, making this an all-star whenever it sees play.
Apparently, during design and playtesting, this card was called “Time Unraveler” as it was designed to counter Teferi, Time Raveler in modern.
Eldraine
Ha. The planeswalker Oko turned the king of the realm, Kenrith, into an Elk in an attempt to start a war and/or as a sick prank. This is a great nod to that, and a call-back to Kenrith’s Transformation, depicting the same mechanic and scene.
Innistrad (if anywhere)
Alright, so we’re ending this part of the review on a weird one! Wumpuses are a bizarro type of beast that are found on both Dominaria and Mercadia, as of the three known wumpuses, two are from Mercadian Masques and one is a plane-shifted Planar Chaos card from Shiv (somewhat non-canon, remember?). If we assume that the lack of Wumpus creatures printed since indicate a total lack of them, this means this card is very much non-canon, unless something insane happened to Mercadia recently. However despite the Hunted Wumpus callback, this looks like it could exist on Innistrad, as the plane is no stranger to gigantic and bizarre beasts in the woods. I think it fits narratively, although it’s a tenuous connection that’s more vibes than proof.
UNTIL NEXT TIME
And there we have it! Thank-you so much for reading. I hope it’s been an enjoyable experience, and that you’re looking forward to parts 3 and 4 after I finish icing my wrists. Once all four parts are live, you’ll be able to find all the cards on their home planes as part of the MtG-Multiverse, but until then, let me know your thoughts via email.
Cheers!
-Nick