Tag: Greengrocer

  • Gram’mrakul: A linguistic guide to the Apocalypse

    Emrakul is learning about Grammar. from a "for dummies" book.

    Emrakul has risen on Innistrad! Of course you’ll want to tell your fellow townsfolk, city elders and lab projects about this exciting news, but don’t get caught out. Before you start jabbering in eldritch terror, you need to make sure you know your I’amrakul from your Be’mrakul. Don’t sit there gibbering like a tooth collector with delirium – get a clue with this handy grammatical guide to the ineffable terror that awaits us all.

    I Nominative pronouns
    I’amrakul
    You’rakul
    He’srakul / She’srakul / It’srakul
    We’rakul
    You’rakul
    They’rakul

    Examples:
    (1) Edith is summoning Emrakul at the coast of Nephalia. “I’amrakul!” she wails in doomed elation.

    (2) Two angels have become fused together into a terrifying ur-being. They’rakul now and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

    II Accusative pronouns
    Me’mrakul
    You’rakul
    Hi’mrakul / Her’rakul / It’rakul
    Us’rakul
    Y’allrakul
    Th’emrakul

    Examples:
    (1) How I long to become subsumed into your unknowable essence! Choose me! Me! Me’mrakul.

    (2) Tobias was always more devout than me – why don’t you subsume hi’mrakul instead?

    III To Be’mrakul
    I’amrakul
    You are’mrakul
    He / She / It is’mrakul
    We are’mrakul
    You are’mrakul
    They are’mrakul

    Examples:
    – Looking pretty bleak, what?
    – It certainly is’mrakul.

    IV Other verbs

    Verbs are usually expressed in the imperative, in a formulation known as an entreaty, formed thus:

    (1) Come’mrakul!

    (2) Abide’mrakul!!

    (3) Consume’mrakul!!!

    (4) Take’mrakul the second road on the right.

    V Numbers
    One’mrakul
    One’mrakul
    One’mrakul
    One’mrakul
    One’mrakul
    One’mrakul
    One’mrakul
    One’mrakul
    One’mrakul
    One’mrakul

    Examples:
    (1) One’mrakul

    (1) One’mrakul

    (1) One’mrakul

    (1) One’mrakul

    (1) One’mrakul

  • UNCHARTED REALMS: VICTORY BY PROXY

    The setting sun glinted redly off a shirtless Gideon Jura’s hairless chest. Red, too, was the glow in Chandra Nalaar’s eyes, though it seemed a little brighter than one would expect from a sunset alone, even on Zendikar, the magical plane with a special kind of mana where the newly-formed Gatewatch, a super-cool team of four planeswalkers, had just defeated the unimaginably fearsome Eldrazi.

    “Way to go, Gideon,” said the fire mage (Chandra), resting her staff on a blackened tree stump. “Way to go everyone. At last the multiverse is free of the Eldrazi and I can get back to what I do best – makin’ peppy wisecracks and settin’ stuff on fire!”

    Jace Beleren smiled enigmatically. “It is so,” intoned his enigmatic voice. “I realised that there was one thing those plane-devouring beings from the blind eternities hadn’t reckoned on, and that was a team made up of a master telepath, a powerful pyromancer, a mighty soldier, and an elf.” The enigmatic mage smiled again, giving his face a somewhat enigmatic air.

    “Iffaith,” agreed Gideon, his muscles rippling where his shirt (or jacket etc) would have been if he was wearing one. “The bards of Zendikar will sing of our deeds for many moons. In time, mayhap, it will be we who are mistaken for gods.”

    “And goddesses,” he added ruminatively, his granite brow furrowing and his burly chest muscles moving as one would expect. “I do confess, ’tis passing strange that there should have been two women on our team. One is the usual number, in sooth.”

    Chandra Nalaar rolled her reddish-glowing eyes. “Zip it, Giddy. Those rules don’t apply here. The only tokens this multiverse needs are 3/1 elementals.”

    Nissa coughed slightly. Jace gave her an enigmatic look.

    Ever restless, Chandra stood and stretched herself, as if to planeswalk away in search of her next adventure and a new permutation of direct damage, looting and casting spells for free. She smiled and turned for a parting remark. “You know what’s funny, though? When I cast that final spell to flambé those Eldrazi guys for good?”

    Gideon smiled shirtlessly at the memory. Jace’s enigmatic visage took on an aspect of enigmatic curiosity as Chandra winked a fiery eye at each companion in turn.

    “I never had time to learn that spell properly, so I just sharpied FALL OF THE TITANS on a Magmatic Chasm. And those world-eating goombas will never know!”

    As she laughed her carefree, convention defying laugh, she didn’t notice that Nissa’s face, always somewhat ghostly, had turned a shade paler. Veins bulged visibly in Gideon’s neck, abdomen and left biceps, while Jace, ever the enigma, merely looked into the enigmatic distance.

    Quietly at first, a very low rumble began. A rumble that seemed to stir the bowels of the very plane of Zendikar.

    The rumble grew louder.

    Nissa turned colorless.

    The Gatewatch’s second challenge was approaching sooner than anyone had expected. And this time, even the combined awesome powers of the four happening and diverse mages would not be enough. They needed to recruit… a sexy necromancer.

  • Dueling Mages in Proxy Row

    Leading duelists Blugar the Callous and Zhazha Firegloves face suspensions today, following their involvement in an unsanctioned ‘proxy spell’ tournament. This controversial dueling format permits mages to duel using ‘proxies’ of rare artifacts, and of old spells from the 90s that can’t easily be learnt any more.

    In the match in question, instead of a sought-after Black Lotus, Blugar used an acre of local plains with LOTTUS written in 30ft letters using a ride-on lawnmower. Firegloves’ proxies included a selection of Mox jewels that were in fact spray-painted Juju bubbles, and a Tarmogoyf represented by a Goblin of the Flarg in a wig.

    Merfolk Spy with Jace written on it Stabbing the air with inky fingers, Blugar protested: “It’s completely unreasonable that we battle mages aren’t allowed to duel this way if we want to. If I summon a merfolk spy and tell him he’s Jace, the Mind Sculptor, and Zhazha agrees to suffer a complete mental breakdown as if he really was Jace, then what’s the harm?”
    “The real Jace is kinda busy at the moment. Does that mean all duels, all over the multiverse, should take place without him? It just makes no sense.”

    Zhazha Firegloves claimed that she had only taken part for playtesting purposes. “Look, I know there are mages who can cast the real Ancestral Recall, if they’ve been dueling for 20+ years. But that’s not a test of dueling skill. If I decide I want to commit to this format, I’ll learn the spell for real. Until then, I should be able to use this Animate Wall instead. Look, it’s basically the same thing.”

    “Hey, where’s that outhouse going? Come back, you!”

    Defenders of ‘proxies’ claim that they are far preferable to more convincing counterfeit spells, citing the recent incident in a grand prix final where Kiki Jiki, Mirror Breaker turned out to be a troupe of ouphes in a long trenchcoat.

    But the Multiverse Duelist Convocation remained immovable. A spokesperson said: “We have always been clear: proxies are an attack on intellectual property. Duelists should continue to use low-powered spells to trade fetchlands from noobs, as they have always done, and not as stand-ins for playable effects.”

  • Behind the Veil

    Swamp, Innistrad – I’m sitting in the home of Liliana Vess, the infamous planeswalker. There are no black cats, no demonic blood runes. The furniture is pedestrian with a bit of Ravnican flair. A single print hangs on the wall, a Meloku original, the table and chairs a dark Llanowar pine. Liliana hands me a mug of tea and pulls a strand of long black hair away from her eyes, “I like to think that, overall, I had a positive effect.”

    She is, of course, referring to the long and tangled history of Sexy Necromancy. How did something so innocent as animating dead bodies take on such a hyper-sexualized aesthetic? And how does the queen of exanimate action, increasingly shunned by her own subculture, fit into the Multiverse today?

    How did you get your start in necromancy back before it was sensual?

    “I think it all started with Animate and Raise Dead. I remember hearing about them in church. My parents didn’t really talk culture beyond Avacyn’s annoying brand of glam so it was actually my Preacher that brought them to my attention. The whole slippery slope argument: if we let people animate dead bodies, what’s next? Artifacts? Lands? But try and find me one teenager who wouldn’t want to resurrect a corpse to slay their enemies; it comes naturally with the frustrations you feel then. It drew me in. Then came Hell’s Caretaker, Dance of the Dead, and the whole cult of personality around Lim-Dûl. It got main-stream. I dabbled and of course my parents didn’t like it but they were divorced so they weren’t exactly providing me with a stable home environment. I was doing magic at the time with the whole wholesome white mage thing. Healing Salve, Martyrdom, people called me Becky. But somewhere down the line, reanimation got racier.”

    What was the state of necromancy like when you joined it and what was the erotic turning point for you?

    “It was under the non-knee-high, non-stilettoed boot-heel of conservative culture. No pentagrams, no demons. But boobies were fine so already things were pushing towards Adult wizardry. Mainly a lot of guys sitting in basements trying to look sensual. But if I had to identify a particular moment, it would be when I saw Coffin Queen. I was all locked up in my own preconceived notions of life and death and titties and here comes this woman who uses her sexuality as a weapon, you know besides the armies of the dead.”

    One Nighter of the Living Dead_zpsdoz2bn0o

    It was around that time that Liliana’s spark ignited, but that only made her burn out faster. Traveling around the Multiverse, Liliana’s trademark black heels and boob window became synonymous with come-hither hocus pocus.

    How did people react to your unique take on zombification?

    “There was the usual outcry that you’d expect. White and green mages who of course forgot about Elvish Ranger and Serra Angel. Support from some really nice guys like Deathrite Shaman and even Scavenging Ooze, who I didn’t consider Mature but with the internet things have opened up a lot. I even remember Squire said something like, ‘I geese that all these kids care aboute is nipples and skulls, and I gesse that that’s the Dominaria we leeve in nowe.’ I put that on my fridge. It was exciting.”

    Listen All You Basic Witches_zpsnpzmilcl

    But at a certain point, things began to fall apart.

    “That’s the real tragedy of art isn’t it? People always want a bigger zombie and a hotter spell. You can’t keep up; no one can. I was performing huge revivals weekly, little Chainer was on the way, Sorin had totally checked out. I had just done Sex and Drugs with Chandra and was becoming very aware of how I perform for mortals. I had put myself in service to my fans, when I should have killed them and made them serve me. When that specter of fear comes over you, you just have to put your foot down and say, ‘I have to make this abomination for myself.’ It really is okay to let things go.”

    Sex_zpsobwg9pqe

    How do you think people view your work in retrospect?

    “My earlier work seems to be my most popular. People seemed to be confused by Liliana Vess because it just sort of came out of nowhere. But with Liliana of the Veil, then people knew that necromancy was going to be steamy. I think I’m the most fond of Liliana of the Dark Realms though. That started with a concept, ‘What if instead of reanimating one dead body, I reanimated all dead bodies?’ It was so much fun to work on and Nicol Bolas is a wonderful producer.”

    You seem to have slowed down in recent years in part due to Sexy Necromancy’s popularity waning.

    “You get derivatives like that Markov’s Servant girl; all Sexy, no Necromancy. It just comes across as desperate. And I’m very public on my stance that vampires aren’t even undead. They’re a disease or something right? And everyone is ramping into those Eldrazi things.”

    “But I’m being too harsh; I’m very grateful for all the pain and suffering and despair I’ve been able to cause. I have enough stored away to work on the classics that I love, the Megrims and the Snuff Outs. I think that midnight loving will always have a place; wherever a boy thinks that a girl should be a pair of gray boobs, I’ll be there to support him. I’m just ready to put this all behind me and live forever.”

    Do you have any comment on your relationship with Garruk?

    “Who is that? What did you say? Garrook? Geruk?”

    Liliana of the Book Deal_zpsgiomwhlt

  • Disappointing Turnout For March Of The Returned

    March of the Returned

    ASPHODEL — A planned demonstration against the recent increase in exploitation of zombies was branded “a shambles” this morning after only two demonstrators turned up to take part.

    The pair of masked protesters both stayed for forty-five minutes to wave placards, shouting “What do we want?” and “Who are we?”, but were described by onlookers as lifeless and lacking in spirit.

    “It was completely dead,” said Asphodel resident Gary. “I’ve got more devotion than either of them, and I’m nowhere near as active as I used to be.”

    Speaking off the record, leading black mage Timmy* said, “If they wanted more zombies, they should have come to me – I could have emptied the pits for them. Although that would only have provided token support.”

    Gary added, “This was a missed opportunity. At this rate, by September, everyone will have forgotten about Theros entirely.”

    *Name has been changed.

  • Magic Arcana: Announcing Nephilim in Commander 2015

    One of the most enjoyable parts of my job is getting to announce something that Magic players have spent a long time clamoring for. Today is one such day! On behalf of Wizards of the Coast, I am proud to give you the first peek at Commander 2015, in the form of…

    (drum roll, please)

    …a cycle of legendary Nephilim!

    As veteran players will know, the original Nephilim were a cycle of creatures printed in the first Ravnica block. Ever since the Commander format started, a significant number of players have been asking why the Nephilim weren’t legendary, and whether we could errata them so that they could be used as commanders.

    We don’t do that kind of errata these days, but we’re delighted to bring you all the next best thing (or we’re hoping, even better): a new full cycle. And I can guarantee that all five of these exciting new creatures will be legendary, so you will be able to use them as your commanders.

    Here’s the full list of new Nephilim, as well as a glimpse at the artwork and the names of the five awesome decks in Commander 2015 where you’ll be able to find them:



    Fuddle-Fan Nephilim – from Blazing Esteem (White)



    Fool-Pity Nephilim – from Elemental Roil (Blue)



    Mood-Sourer Nephilim – from Noxious Toxicity (Black)



    Ire-Fisher Nephilim – from Wrathful Bellow (Red)



    Clod-Bait Nephilim – from Primal Grunge (Green)



    Keep checking DailyMTG.com because we have more information on Commander 2015 coming soon!



  • Did It Have To Be Dragons, Ask Tarkirians

    dragonsoftarkir

    Tarkir residents said today that while they appreciate Sarkhan Vol going back in time to retrieve a race of creatures that had been missing from their world, they aren’t certain that dragons were the best choice.

    “Is he mad?” asked Temur representative Kurrash The Ferocious. “I know he meant well but these things have been nothing but trouble. The skies are full of the things, flying around breathing fire, ice, poison, you name it. I was happier when it was just that one lammasu.”

    “It’s true that we used to revere dragons, yes. But that was when they’d been dead for a thousand years. Some people in other worlds revere Mahatma Gandhi, I’m told, but they wouldn’t necessarily want him moving in next door, or taking to the skies to rain fiery destruction on the bivouacs of ordinary people.”

    Abzan’s Fazenaza The Brooding agreed. “I don’t see why the lack of dragons on Tarkir was such a big deal, personally. Why couldn’t that awful man have brought back some elves instead, or kithkin? Or how about metathrans? We haven’t heard much about them for a while, so they would have been a good way to bolster the population.”

    “Yeah that’s right, bolster,” she continued. “It’s a perfectly good word that is in common usage. It certainly doesn’t sound clunky to me.”

    Vol himself was unrepentant. “My focus groups have told me time and again that dragons are the most popular type of creature bar none,” he said. “Anyway, the threat to ordinary Tarkirians has been overstated. Many of these new ones are overcosted Timmy-bait that will never see constructed play.”

  • “Where Did All the Mist and Rain Go?” asks Borko the Bear


    Man, I used to love living here. The mist wafting through the trees, tropical rain pattering on the wide leaves of hardwood trees and washing away that early morning humidity. Piranhas at play in the abundant streams and brightly-colored frogs croaking in the short hours of twilight.

    Then this freaky mermaid-looking wizard turned up and ruined it.

    She muttered some sort of spell and then grimaced as though she was in pain – I’d say about as much pain as if you were stung by a hornet. Then everything turned sideways and the next thing I know, I’m just in a regular forest. No mist, no rain, and the trees are all oaks, pines and suchlike. I’m not meeting anyone except wolves, boars and elf after elf after elf – what happened to all the fish crabs?

    Not only that, I keep seeing cat warriors and boggart loggers tramping through here like they’re on their way to beat somebody up, and no one can seem to stop them.

    I think I’m going to move to those nice wooded foothills I’ve been hearing about.



  • Behold, I Know Four Of The New Dragons Already

    (TRANSCRIPT RECORDED AT SURRAK’S BIVOUAC, THE TEMUR FRONTIER)



    Puny weaklings, come and gape in awe at the latest triumph of your highest superior, Surrak Dragonclaw! I, Surrak, insulter of the Sultai, wearer of bears, present my greatest feat yet: I can already name no fewer than four of the new dragons. The gold ones! Now listen, obey and be attentive.

    First, Atarkar.



    Atarkar is the Temur one so it was the obvious one to learn first, plus it breathes fire like a normal dragon. The only thing is it lacks blue, which of course is totes vital to the Temur identity, but still, love the antlers.

    Next: Kolaghan.



    This one was quite easy because it sounds like Callaghan, a Labour prime minister, and Kolaghan is red. There’s black in there too but that must just be to fit the cycle – or is it because of the high toughness? Did that catch on as a black thing? He breathes lightning. ZAP!

    Underling, more meat!

    Yum. Now this is where it starts to get tricky. I’m gonna go with Ojutai, Soul of Winter.



    Behold, I even know some of the nickname bits! Bite that, Sidisi. No, she’s not here. Ojutai is revered by the Jeskai, and she (?) lives on mountains and terrorises the… Jeskai? Is that right? So she must breathe… rocks or something. I do know she has feathers. But she’s still a dragon, it’s one of those things like whales not being a fish. Whatever, next.



    Quake with amazement as I bring you…

    Darig… no, Dromar… Drom-something…



    Now I do know that this one breathes light. I remember one of them did because I thought it sounded silly when I heard it. And it can’t be the other black one, that would breathe, like, darkness, right? Or tar, maybe. Or bats. So this must be the beam-of-light one. Drom-something, Finder Of Lost Keys. Har har har.

    Har.



    And it has one of these jumped-up titles like “the avenger” or something. Dromongar the Harvester, we’ll call it. So that’s four. It breathes light and it has a big pointy chin.

    Now begone! Return hither on Friday when I will have the fifth one down for definite. I think it has a mill effect.

    I do so still exist