Friendship is Card Games: Micro-Series and Friends Forever #2 · 12:08pm Oct 30th, 2016
Welcome to the sixth interseasonal hiatus, ladies and gentlemen. For those of you joining me since the second half of Season 6, I’ve long since run through the backlog of past pony episodes (easily findable through the archive here,) so I’m making my way through the comics. This week, it’s side comics, with Rainbow Dash’s micro-series issue and the CMC/Discord team-up. Let’s take a look.
Micro-Series #2: Rainbow Dash
The Summerfell Festival? Well, add that one to the ever-growing lists, both of Equestrian holidays and of temporal touchstones that make little to no sense when taken collectively.
Huh. Seems like both Dashes can play guitar… though I have to wonder how that works with hooves. Especially since that appears to be an electric guitar. Is Dash powering it with her own bioelectric aura? That seems like a somewhat feasible application of pegasus magic, but it still feels more than a little peculiar.
Also, to my surprise, Dash performing with the Wonderbolts isn’t a dream. Who’d have guessed?
They really went with the twenty percent comparative unsound effect. Why?
Oh, that’s interesting. Dash describes her own wings as “on the fritz.” I’m not sure if the issue is purely physical or if she overchanneled magic through them. She’s clearly still generating magic, since she’s walking on the cloud, but this presents a fascinating glimpse at pony thaumobiology.
Sorry, Dash. Anonymous meanies never play nice.
Going by that reference, I definitely don’t want to know what these guys would do to a tipped-over tortoise they found in the desert. Still, interesting to see another variety of emotivore on top of changelings and windigoes.
TV? Really? And it’s been around long enough that it’s the reporter’s special talent, despite his inability to phrase any kind of coherent or relevant interview questions? I know, it’s the comics, but I’d still appreciate some attempt to maintain the tech level.
… So. Let me get this straight. Absolutely no one else is doing a thing to try to address the cloud cover. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fascinating to see other demonstrations of pegasus magic from one of its greatest prodigies but seriously? The Wonderbolts? Specialists from Cloudsdale? Celestia? Anyone? I can’t help but suspect that we’re actually reading one of Rainbow Dash’s novels.
I’m familiar with the cloud gremlins from other issues, but I do quite like their design. A little impishly menacing, but a lot more goofy, which fits creatures who thrive on psychological warfare. It encourages them to never show their true faces to their victims unless they’re already in an unassailable position of power.
… Okay, seriously, what is that cloud even made out of? There’s magical reinforcement, and then there’s blithely ignoring any suggestion of physics.
Given the interview montage, I have to ask, where’s Pinkie Pie in all of this? She should be capable of counteracting this gloomy atmosphere with three hooves tied behind her tail.
Also, again, why has literally nopony else been trying to do anything to or about the cloud gremlins for a month? That’s the question that hack at PNN should be asking, especially since no one else seems to blame Dash for any of this.
…I’m yelling at the in-story media coverage. I can’t tell whether that means that the writing’s immersive, sloppy, or both.
I do have to appreciate how part of Dash’s motivation to fix this is that ponies are too depressed to talk about how awesome she is.
A black, fluid substance that grows, feeds, and corrodes. It occurs to me that prior to Kaladesh, every gremlin in Magic was associated with Phyrexia.
Applejack explicitly mentioning pork chops isn’t quite as horrifying as that, but she does somewhat confirm my suspicions about why the Apples raise pigs. (Obviously, they sell them to griffin butchers rather than eating them themselves, but still. That, or meat as food qualifies as a curse in Equestria, which isn’t outside the realm of possibility.)
Huh. Interesting addition of lift jets to Tank’s flight gear.
Again, if you need positive thoughts, there’s a pony whose purpose in life is to provide them. I like Dash laboriously adjusting her mind as she tries to grasp that this isn’t about her, but Pinkie still feels like a hard counter for these jerks.
That being said, Dash acting like this is going to kill her is equal parts touching and concerning.
Whoa. The double Rainboom turned every apple in the trees into a Zap Apple. That or it just made the skins go full-spectrum.
Oh. There’s Pinkie. What the crap has she been doing all this time?
“The collective happiness of Equestria’s ponies.” Uh, Ponyville isn’t Equestria. And if this problem really was nationwide, that only emphasizes the question of why someone else wasn’t trying to address this, to say nothing of the continued insistence on the news anchor’s part that this was somehow all Dash’s fault. Seriously, how do we get this guy back to the Triptych Continuum?
“Orthotics” does make for an amusing unsound effect, but shouldn’t the shoes and insoles be, you know, hoof shaped?
Huh. I guess the double rainboom really did zap all of those apples. Though going by AJ’s dialogue, you’d think she’d never heard of rainbow apples before.
While I always like a happy ending, I have to think that in the future, the hospital might be a better option than a pie-delivered happiness transfusion.
Friends Forever #2: Discord & the Cutie Mark Crusaders
Procedure is important, Scootaloo. Today we’re not calling roll, tomorrow we’re all eating grass in some field while Ponyville burns to the ground.
Given how far Scootaloo got while wall-running, I’d say the parkour went very well. I like the idea of her being able to defy gravity so long as she has some solid surface under her hooves. Of course, I like the idea of her getting altitude by any means.
To be fair to Apple Bloom, given Equestria’s pun-based ecology, I wouldn’t be surprised if crustacean crabapples really did exist.
I quite like the design for the pony-built falconry gauntlet.
Figures that the Spirit of Disharmony would be a fan of the Crusaders’ musical performance. Also, I love this constructive use of Discord’s magic. It’s something the show could stand to do more often, though that would mean making Discord a contributing member of society. Not a high priority for him, and even here he has an ulterior motive.
Ugh. I really don’t like the undercurrent of slow-witted Sweetie Belle running through this issue thus far.
Okay, Scootaloo? You should not put a blade that close to your own face. Especially not when you’re going to crash into someone else.
Oof. Pickle at pi. That’s definitely not going to beat the Cloudsdale team. They got purple monkey dishwasher.
I admit, I laughed at Dash’s one idea. Also, I can definitely believe that Twilight can’t trump Discord single-hoofed, especially not when it comes to reality distortion.
Sweetie, you do not, under any circumstances, ask Discord to be more creative.
You have to appreciate the TNG reference. I don’t care who you are, this is glorious.
Wow. Scootaloo’s a real downer in this issue, isn’t she?
I quite like the montage, aside from Sweetie rolling a d8 for an ability check… and somehow getting snake eyes. Before the die lands. But stuff like Scootaloo the loose-cannon cop, disaffected Noirple Bloom, and the subtle Friendship is Witchcraft reference are amazing.
I love how this resolves. A shame “Make New Friends but Keep Discord” shoots it in the foot, though I suppose there’s nothing stopping this issue from being set after that. (Plus, there’s something beautiful in Sweetie successfully defeating an evil overlord outside of the intended scenario.)
I hold by my “This is Rainbow Dash’s novel” hypothesis with the Friends Forever issue. She probably found a book on cloud gremlins, another on the hypothetical science of cathode ray tubes, and decided to throw together something based on that. And going by her costars, I’d say this happened in a worldline that favored Appledash. The Friends Forever issue is miles ahead in terms of internal logic and general feel, and when something involving Discord makes more sense, you know the other one has issues. Still, both were quite fun.
Now, on to the cards:
Take Off the Case W
Sorcery
Investigate, then exile target creature if its toughness is less than or equal to the number of Clues you control. (To investigate, create a colorless Clue artifact token with “2, Sacrifice this artifact: Draw a card.”)
Inner Rainbow 1W
Instant
If target creature you control is white, it gets +2/+2 until end of turn. If it’s blue, it gains hexproof until end of turn. If it’s black, it gains lifelink until end of turn. If it’s red, it gains first strike until end of turn. If it’s green, put a +1/+1 counter on it.
Triple Lutz 1W
Snow Instant
Target creature gets +2/+2 until end of turn. If it’s a snow creature, untap it and it gains indestructible until end of turn.
The soulgorger’s form was perfect, but the Kjeldoran judge still only gave it a 4.0
Sweetie Belle, Soul Searcher 2W
Legendary Artifact Creature — Unicorn
Defender, lifelink
When Sweetie Belle, Soul Searcher becomes the target of a spell or ability that couldn’t target it if it weren’t an artifact, transform Sweetie Belle.
When small things get pushed around…
3/3
Sweetie Bot, Devastator
(BR) Legendary Artifact Creature — Golem
Indestructible, trample
Sweetie Bot, Devastator attacks each turn if able.
…they just might destroy the town.
6/6
Defenders of Justice 4W
Creature — Pony Pilot Soldier
Lifelink
Whenever Defenders of Justice crews a Vehicle, that Vehicle gains lifelink until end of turn. If that Vehicle is named Noble Mechanosteeds and you own both it and Defenders of Justice, exile them, then meld them into Mega-Pony, Heroic Titan.
3/3
Prismatic Vortex 2UU
Instant
For each color, return up to one target creature of that color to its owner’s hand.
Like all works of pony magic, it desires numerous companions.
Blustering Visage 3U
Creature — Elemental
Flying
Whenever Blustering Visage blocks or becomes blocked by a creature, that creature gets -2/-0 until end of turn.
An eye of a storm is peaceful. An entire face less so.
2/3
Wireframe Infiltrator 3(up)
Artifact Creature — Ninja
((up) can be paid with either U or 2 life.)
Ninjutsu 1(up)
Infect
Whenever Wireframe Infiltrator deals combat damage to a player, proliferate.
1/1
Drooling Kaiju 4U
Creature — Crocodile
5UU: Monstrosity 4. (If this creature isn’t monstrous, put four +1/+1 counters on it and it becomes monstrous.)
Drooling Kaiju can’t attack unless it’s monstrous.
By the time it remembered how to rampage, the town was already evacuated.
4/4
Advocate of Gloom 1B
Creature — Pony Rogue
Advocate of Gloom gets +2/+2 for each -1/-1 counter on it.
”It’s really not so bad once you get used to it.”
2/1
Crackling Rage 3R
Instant
Crackling Rage deals X damage to target creature or player, where X is 3 plus the damage dealt to you this turn.
Anger augments amperage.
Tameable Lions 4G
Sorcery
Create a 3/3 green Cat creature token. Create another one of those tokens at the beginning of your next upkeep step unless an opponent pays U before that step.
”Aw, who’s a precious face?”
—Fluttershy, Bearer of Kindness
Fantastic Fortress 2
Artifact Creature — Wall
Defender
Whenever Fantastic Fortress blocks, you get EE (two energy counters).
Pay EE: Put a +1/+1 counter on Fantastic Fortress.
Every great wall has to start somewhere.
0/2
Prismatic Axe 2
Artifact — Equipment
Equipped creature gets +1/+1 for each of its colors.
Equip 2
The more ostentatious the player, the louder the notes.
Chaos Cart 3
Artifact — Vehicle
Whenever Chaos Cart becomes an artifact creature, roll a six-sided die. Chaos Cart gets +X/+X until end of turn, where X is the die roll.
Crew 3 (Tap any number of untapped creatures you control with total power 3 or more: This Vehicle becomes an artifact creature until end of turn.)
1/1
Noble Mechanosteeds 3
Artifact — Vehicle
Vigilance
Crew 3
(Melds with Defenders of Justice.)
5/5
Mega-Pony, Heroic Titan
(W) Legendary Artifact Creature — Construct
Haste, vigilance, lifelink
When Mega-Pony, Heroic Titan dies, return target Pilot or Vehicle card from your graveyard to your hand.
Fighting for truth, honor, and relatively little collateral damage.
8/8
Fumble (ub)
Instant
Move a counter from target permanent onto another target permanent.
Draw a card.
”If you wanted it, you clearly would’ve kept a better grip on it.”
—Discord
Mule Tzu, Master Tactician RW
Legendary Creature — Pony Donkey
1R: Target creature attacks this turn if able.
1W: Destroy target creature that dealt combat damage to you this turn.
To this day, Chineigh has not responded to Equestria’s diplomatic overtures.
1/1
Scuttling Crabapples GU
Creature — Plant Crab
Scuttling Crabapples can’t be blocked except by creatures with power equal to its power.
Evolve (Whenever a creature enters the battlefield under your control, if that creature has greater power or toughness than this creature, put a +1/+1 counter on this creature.)
1/1
Dismal Atmosphere (br)(br)(br)
Enchantment
Wither (This deals damage to creatures in the form of -1/-1 counters.)
At the beginning of your upkeep, Dismal Atmosphere deals 1 damage to each creature and player.
Ponyville wilted under the constant gloom as the gremlins glutted themselves on its sorrow.
Cloud Gremlins 1WUB
Creature — Gremlin Rogue
Flying
Whenever a creature attacks you or a planeswalker you control, that creature gets -1/-1 until end of turn and Cloud Gremlins gets +1/+1 until end of turn.
4U: Target attacking creature has base power and toughness 1/1 until end of turn.
2/2
Curse of Bad Publicity 2WB
Enchantment — Aura Curse
Enchant player
Whenever you cast a spell, enchanted player loses 1 life.
Whenever enchanted player casts a spell, you gain 1 life.
Found guilty in the court of public opinion.
Reality Bubble 2GWU
World Enchantment
When Reality Bubble enters the battlefield, each player draws seven cards, then may put any number of nonland permanent cards from his or her hand onto the battlefield. Those permanents gain “When Reality Bubble isn’t on the battlefield, sacrifice this permanent.” Then exile all other nonland permanents for as long as Reality Bubble is on the battlefield.
Double Rainboom 9
(WUBRG) Sorcery
If you spent W to cast Double Rainboom, double your life total. If you spent U to cast it, draw a card for each card in your hand. If you spent B to cast it, each opponent loses life equal to the life he or she lost this turn. If you spent R to cast it, Double Rainboom deals damage to each creature equal to the damage dealt to it this turn. If you spent G to cast it, double the number of each kind of counter on each permanent.
Liquid Ruination XBG
Instant
Choose one —
• Target creature gets -X/-X until end of turn.
• Destroy target noncreature, nonland permanent with converted mana cost X or less.
Entwine—Pay X life. (Choose both if you pay the entwine cost.)
Experimental Field
Land
At the beginning of each player’s upkeep, that player untaps and gains control of Experimental Field.
T: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool.
”Apple seeds already have incredible genetic variance. With me involved, who knows what could happen?”
—Discord
Whoa, that's quite a bit of card variance in color and mechanics. Hats off to you.
With the sheer volume of comics, I am really beginning to wonder about their consistency. They are mostly enjoyable, however.
Quite a contrast between those two, one of the really great issues of Friends Forever and one of the... not so good Micro Series ones
My take on Discord stories is that they can work really well when they challenge Discord. "Make New Friends..." and "Dungeons and Discords" are good examples. They don't radically alter his character, but they bring him down to the human level where we can both be happy to see him frustrated and happy to see him learn something.
The other kind of Discord story, though, like "What About Discord?" or "Three's A Crowd" lets him just be a horrible person who plainly isn't their friend, thus putting the lie to the tagline of the entire show
I forgot how bad the Rainbow Dash micro is. But Discord/CMC remains one of my favourites from the comics, even if Tony Fleecs was still finding his style at the time.
Shouldn't it be 'for each color used to cast this card' or something like that?
With PonyMTG fully up to date with FiCG, it's now passed the 7000 card mark. Huzzah!
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If nothing else, the comics offer me plentiful opportunity for more out-there designs. Plus, I'm not sure what I'd be doing for FiCG otherwise. Famous fanworks, maybe? (Though I have already dipped into Friendship is Witchcraft with this one...)
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Excellent points both. The same applies for just about any story involving the nigh-omnipotent in what's supposed to be a sympathetic role.
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Nope. It functions similarly to All Suns' Dawn; it can bounce up to one white creature, one blue creature, one black creature, and so forth.
4277426
Wow. It's kind of staggering to think about how much I've contributed to that.
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Okay, first time I've ever seen an effect like that is all.
I forgot how much I liked the CMC/discord FF comic and how much I loathed the Dash micro.
I suspect that this comic was written before “Family Appreciation Day” aired. Either that or the writer had never actually watched the show before and only knew about pony memes. I like the interpretation that it was Dash's novel, though.
Now I want to reread the CMC & Discord comic, since it's one of my favorites.
There's got to be a better, non NWO breaking way to phrase Advocate of Gloom.
4277477
At some point you should consider doing bordered mock-ups of the cards, with screenshots, etc.
Very late on this one. These past few months have been super hectic. And I've been doing stuff other than pony. I am so very behind on this site... .
I want to play Inner Rainbow targeting Transguild Courier, just because.
The wording on Sweetie Belle, Soul Searcher's transform trigger is a bit awkward. I'm guessing (which is not a good thing) that it boils down to when she is targeted by a spell that can only target an artifact. Maybe reword it to the following:
There are no cards with "if it weren’t" in them, and you don't need to be overly fancy with it. We know the targeting restrictions of spells and abilities, so just use the straight up targeting restriction of "target artifact". If a card has "target artifact or creature" then it can not "only target an artifact", which is what I'm guessing "it if it weren’t an artifact" is meant to mean: to exclude things that target it because it is a creatures or because it is a permanent.
On Defenders of Justice: Meld is really hard to do with fan cards. It's very wordy.
I know people liked the transform mechanic, but I haven't looked to see how well meld did with the fans... .
I like the flavor text on Blustering Visage.
On Wireframe Infiltrator: Is this the first time you've use Phyrexian mana? In other news holy sun-horse is this card strong, two poison counters out of no where can be game ending if your opponent is not expecting it, especially at the low cost of one generic and two life. I love it!
I'm a big fan of poison counters (any alternate win condition really) and I really like the proliferate mechanic as well, since it's such a combo enabler.
That's a really neat mechanic on Advocate of Gloom, you can use it if you've got a bunch of cards that you have to give your creatures -1/-1 counters as an additional cost to play them. Though I'm curious as to if it works right with timing.
It's a passive ability, so I'm guessing it happens in the same timing that state-based effects would check its toughness. So you give it a -1/-1 counter, it would be a 1/0 and die to SBE but at the same time that would happen its passive says "No, I'm a 3/2" and SBE goes "Oh, my apologizes, continue.".
The flavor text for it is amusing as well. I could just image the image for it is a pony with a lot of knitting needles sticking out of them.
Sadly Crackling Rage doesn't work with loss of life, but it does work with the "deal damage to EVERYTHING" sorts of cards.
We're getting into Channel-Fireball territory here though. You deal seventeen damage to yourself some how and them one shot someone else for twenty. But, well, COMBO! Good luck getting it to work.
I like that Fantastic Fortress can block two power worth of creatures and still survive if you want it to.
I like to think that Prismatic Axe is both the chopping kind and the musical kind. I didn't think of the musical kind until I read the flavor text.
On Fumble: i really liked Leech Bonder and this is a one-shot step up from that. I like that you can put it on a scepter and really go crazy with counter moving.
Though you'd get into situations where you've got -1/-1 counters on lands that can't naturally become creatures and charge counters on enchantments... . I kinda want to make a deck that uses every single sort of counter there is and bring a bag of different colored stones and an index card that states what each color is... .
Also, a good use for a single word card. The only other use I could see for it would be instant speed equipment dropping.
On Scuttling Crabapples: Kinda surprised we don't have anything that uses "with power equal to its power" yet. We've got "greater than" and "less than" but not an "equals" yet.
Ah, Dismal Atmosphere, the sort of thing that would make an Advocate of Gloom happy, if being happy wasn't anathema to them being an Advocate of Gloom in the first place.
On Reality Bubble: World Enchantment!
Also, shouldn't it be "When Reality Bubble leaves the battlefield"? Now that it is on the battlefield the only reason it wouldn't be there any more is if it left the battlefield. And I feel that the order things are done should be flipped, because right now Reality Bubble would actually exile itself because it is not part of the cards it put onto the battlefield and is thus part of "all other nonland permanents". I suggest the following:
On Double Rainboom: WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
It means a wall of text and Mister Rosewater's wet dream.
DOUBLE ALL THE THINGS!
A fun group, now, onto the next one and I'll be caught up here for THIS week's set in... two days. *sighs* I was a I was a Chronomage, or a Dittomancer, or something. There needs to be more of me or more time just, more something... . (And I just thought that since a Dittomancer can double things they could double your side's turn and we've seen just how powerful it is ending a turn early... .)