Summary of episode 2.
Helga drifts in and out of consciousness. She dreams of Maha, the Night Owl attacking various places, and in each place was a weasel in a red hood. When she wakes up, she finds herself in Mabel’s home. She tells her story to Mabel and the mayor: the visions, Maha’s attack on Pondside, coming over to get help. Mabel believes her and invites her to join her birthday party outside, reassuring her.
While at the party, Mabel privately considers going to Pondside to help. She decides to bring out her family heirloom, Cragflame, after all. When she picks it up, it glows like fire, which she’s never seen it do.
The mayor gives a toast to Mabel, famed in Goodhill for her courage, then Mabel herself gives a speech. She commends Helga’s bravery for coming to warn of Maha. She holds up Cragflame, to the awe of the crowd, and calls on the townsfolk to join her in an aid mission to Pondside. Several volunteer. The audience is briefly stunned, but gradually start cheering.
Who’s coming?
Mabel and her family prepare for her departure and go to bed. She’ll leave in the morning.
Bonus exposition
Cragflame
Mabel chewed pensively, then swallowed. “Everything is so peaceful here, but it feels fragile. As if a storm is about to break.”
Here’s a summary.
Helga is a frog artist who gets a vision of the Sun Hawk, a Calamity Beast. As she runs off to report her vision, warning bells ring and Maha, the Night Owl, attacks Pondside village. Helga survives the attack and flees, heading to the nearest village to warn them of Maha’s arrival.
Mabel (the lead mouse) and her family are preparing for her birthday party. The nosy rabbit mayor prods her about bringing out her precious family heirloom (presumably Cragflame), but she refuses. Their conversation is interrupted when an exhausted frog shows up in town. The frog mentions an attack by a Calamity Beast, then collapses, unconscious. While rescuing the frog, Mabel wonders how she’ll bring this up to her family.
On Ravnica, Ral is lying in bed, malding about Jace and what he did on Thunder Junction. Ral wants to kill him. With a clue from the Wanderer, he follows Jace’s trail and planeswalks away. When he lands, he is shocked to find out he’s been transformed into a literal otter.
“I’m going to kill him!” Ral shouted, his eyes filling with lightning as he shook his paw at the sky.
My unsubstantiated guess is that it’s 2B, to work with the new booster pack structure. Mark my words in spoiler season.
Magic R&D coming out of hibernation to convince me to play this set. I’ve straight up not cared about anything else from the past few years.
The repo has source code and a brief writeup, including run instructions. It’s an x86 port from Atari Basic. Actually, since this video, a contributor cut it down to 483 bytes!
We should divide the year into four suits — one for each season. Each suit is thirteen weeks long, numbered ace to king. Sometimes we have a Joker day.
Once Upon a Time is perhaps the greatest gameplay-flavor integration win Magic has ever had. For a while, standard matches all began with someone saying the name of the card.
RIP
I have [[The Mimeoplasm]] as a “play your deck” commander instead of the usual mill and reanimate plan. Probably the most out-there card I include is [[Chaos Wand]]. This deck is really just an excuse to cast [[Villainous Wealth]].
Sometimes I think of interesting deck ideas but I’m too lazy to bother actually making a list and instead just browse cards on Scryfall for fun. I’m also just not playing nearly as much these days.
Pauper decks always feel so much wackier than other formats’.
I wonder if this set is going to have a minor enemy color theme. We see Mabel is RW. Among the art for her companions, the badger’s background is very BG and the bat’s WB.
Also, multiverse-assigned fursonas.
Steam input is absolutely baller. I use it extensively with my Steam Controller. For FPS games, I have gyro aim activate while the right pad is touched.
The game does not want you to forget about the cassette-ness of the setting. You catch new ones by recording them to tape!
Summary of episode 3.
Going to Pondside
Mabel 🐭, Helga 🐸, and the gang head to Pondside to see the aftermath of Maha’s attack. They chat about their pasts as they walk over.1
Pondside is destroyed. No one is left. Footprints suggest that everyone fled to Haymeadow.
Squirrels
They spot two squirrels digging in the ruins and the gang eavesdrops on them:
The gang fights off the squirrels and their skeleton army. They decide to head to Three Trees City to track down those squirrels and investigate Cruelclaw.
Before leaving, Helga takes an etched copper orb and a wand from the ruins of her grandparents’ home. This feels like foreshadowing.
Three Trees City
The gang arrives by river boat. Mabel and Finneas 🐰 ask around if anyone has seen those two squirrel necromancers but stumble upon a boisterous otter.
The otter’s also looking for someone. Unknown species, blue cloak, and… tattoos? What are tattoos?
Helga shows him a drawing of a vision she had of a fox that matches his description. Things get tense when the otter starts hassling her for more information and Mabel steps in.
Flood
Before the altercation gets worse, panic erupts at the docks as the tide rises absurdly fast.
The Flood Gar, a Calamity Beast, arrives, carrying in a huge wave. Together with the otter, the current sweeps the gang away from Three Trees City. They climb out of the water into a damp cave, face to face with a bunch of rats that don’t welcome them.
[1] Small talk