Friendship is Card Games: A Flurry of Emotions · 11:33am Apr 23rd, 2017
Just in time for the Amonkhet prerelease, we have a different sort of God-Pharaoh. Not as many horns and slightly smaller wings, but she inspires just as much fear and reverence in her subjects. Let's see what trials Twilight goes through in order to survive this hour of devastation.
Huh. We have hard evidence that Cheerilee teaches more than one class in a day. No evidence of other teachers, but I suppose any given foal only has a few hours of lessons each day. Presumably they were all gathered together for election season.
Wow. I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen Shining so dorky as when he was doing his Flurry voice.
Also, based on the happy couple’s disheveled appearance, I don’t think Flurry’s sleeping through the night quite yet.
Flurry standing up is kind of absurd, just because of the sheer size of her wings. Endearing, but absurd.
I do love how much Flurry loves the bears, especially with the growling. “They will lead my doom legions! All shall despair before them!”
“That’s right, Flurry! Such a good girl!”
I do like the idea that all of Shining’s friends in the Royal Guard blend together, even for Spike. Theme naming can be a double-edged sword. (“Nah, Edge and I never got along.”)
Pretty sure nothing’s stopping Spike from doing the shopping himself. Especially given how he’s not exactly over the moon about Flurry. Silly mammals.
Actually, what’s Starlight doing at the moment? She must be in the castle if Flurry’s been born. Or is she with Trixie or visiting Our Town? How conveniently inconvenient. (Actually, Sunburst also not being available to look after Flurry might explain her absence, and vice versa.)
Good to see Twilight’s impressed by Flurry’s magic. I suppose Fledgling’s Forbearance has a limited duration. Or Flurry’s learned how to work around it, albeit not to artifact-shattering levels. (Much to the castle’s relief, I’m sure.)
If mashed peas are Flurry’s favorite, I can only imagine what she does with most foods.
I see Spearpoint drew inspiration from his work.
MythrilMoth came up with the perfect name for Flurry’s antics at the toy store: the Flurry Cart.
Uh, no, Spike. Unless I misheard his rundown, shaving five minutes off of a forty-minute deficit would put them at thirty-five minutes behind schedule. No wonder Twilight gave him that look.
EDIT: I actually did mishear it. Spike was adding those thirty-five minutes to the twenty minutes they lost before leaving the castle.
“Pony Latin”? Really? You guys didn’t even try with that one.
Not only is Equestrian science fiction confirmed, it’s confirmed with alien alicorns fighting space pirates. Amazing. Someone needs to write a story with alicorn Samus Aran now. Princess of Planet-Destroying Explosions?
You’d think Cheerilee would be used to mouthing chalk by now. Or maybe it’s just horn envy; can you blame her?
I can actually empathize with Spearhead. It’s a great feeling when your work evokes a positive reaction you never intended it to. It’s the best form of Death of the Author, wherein the audience finds hidden depths even you hadn’t seen.
Twilight is BAE. She said it herself.
Putting Flurry in the same room as the Cake twins really highlights the design disparities between them, to say nothing of the screwiness of time on this show. Yes, the twins are out of diapers, but they don’t appear to have grown an inch. It bothers me far more than it should.
That said, nice to see Flurry try to mediate the conflict, including trying to get a professional to fix the problem first.
Seriously, Twilight, a little situational awareness would be nice, especially after the other two times you were distracted.
Others have questioned the advisability of putting a foal in a hospital full of sick kids. I say anything with that much magic isn’t going to get sick from anything less than a sneezing tatzlwurm.
Lovely G1 reference. I hope this doesn’t preclude seeing Grogar in a more prominent role in G4. With any luck, it’s actually foreshadowing.
There’s that Sparkle family anxiety. Flurry really is a member of that family.
Twilight merely adopted alicorn magic. Flurry was born in it.
And in the end, none of those diapers were necessary… as far as we know.
A good lesson on prioritization and the importance of quality time over time quantity. A pretty sophisticated one, really. Also, good to see Twilight and Spike go with the intelligent delegation when all was said and done. In all, this was definitely a fun episode, and a reminder that we should be very grateful that Flurry Heart’s upbringing is in the hooves of some very good ponies.
Now, if you don’t fuss, you can have as many cards as you want. Just don’t spoil your dinner.
Midnight Vigil 2W
Instant
Untap all creatures you control. They gain indestructible until end of turn.
”For every hundred nights you spend watching a dark hallway, there’s one where you make all the difference.”
—Shining Armor
Veteran Sculptor 3W
Creature — Pegasus Soldier Artificer
Flying
W, T, Sacrifice an artifact: Return target artifact card from your graveyard to your hand.
He beats swords into pop art.
2/2
Separation Anxiety U
Enchantment — Aura
Enchant creature
Whenever another creature leaves the battlefield, return enchanted creature and Separation Anxiety to their owners’ hands.
Absence may make for fonder hearts, but it doesn’t do anything nice to minds.
Space Pirate 1UU
Creature — Unicorn Pirate
Space Pirate can’t be blocked as long as you have no E (energy counters).
Whenever Space Pirate deals combat damage to a player, you get EE.
Æther is the lifeblood of the spaceways. Some act as leeches.
3/1
Gusty’s Elite 2U
Creature — Unicorn Warrior
U: Return Gusty’s Elite to its owner’s hand.
Dream Valley was a dangerous place. Even the bravest and mightiest herds had to be able to scatter and reassemble at a moment’s notice.
2/3
Curse of Lost Hours 2UU
Enchantment — Aura Curse
Enchant player
At the beginning of enchanted player’s upkeep, that player chooses draw step, main phase, or combat phase. The player skips each instance of the chosen step or phase this turn.
Gusty the Great 2UU
Legendary Creature — Unicorn Wizard
Whenever Gusty the Great or another Unicorn enters the battlefield under your control, you may return target non-Unicorn, nonland permanent to its owner’s hand.
She called upon the wild winds, long before the pegasi tamed them.
2/3
Suspend Gravity 3U
Sorcery
Choose one —
• Each noncreature artifact you control becomes an artifact creature with power and toughness equal to its converted mana cost until end of turn.
• Creatures you control gain flying until end of turn.
Entwine 1U (Choose both if you pay the entwine cost.)
United Binding 3UU
Sorcery
Convoke (Your creatures can help cast this spell. Each creature you tap while casting this spell pays for 1 or one mana of that creature’s color.)
Tap all creatures target player controls. They don’t untap during that player’s next untap step.
Even the unicorns’ best efforts could only contain Grogar for a time.
Astral Alicorn 5U
Creature — Avatar
Alicorn (This card is a Pony Pegasus Unicorn at all times.)
Flying
Astral Alicorn can block only creatures with flying.
”The star-souls are born and bred for the void. Our home is as terrible for them as theirs is for us.”
—Princess Luna
5/5
Grogar, Lord of Tambelon
(B) Legendary Creature — Goat Wizard
Deathtouch, menace
If Grogar, Lord of Tambelon would leave the battlefield, you may exile it with three time counters on it instead.
Suspend 3 — 2BB
Tambelon always returns, as inevitable as death itself.
6/6
Epidemic 3B
Sorcery
Creatures of the creature type of your choice get -2/-2 until end of turn.
Most pony diseases are highly contagious, exploiting their tight-knit communities.
Shower in Gifts 1RR
Sorcery
Target opponent gains control of target permanent you control. Shower in Gifts deals damage equal to that permanent’s converted mana cost to that player.
”Well, the good news is that she’s definitely immortal.”
—Spike
Demanding Foal 2R
Creature — Child
Alicorn
Flying
At the beginning of your upkeep, tap two untapped lands you control.
Alicorns inspire reverence no matter their age.
3/3
Precision Tantrum 2R
Sorcery
Target creature you control deals damage equal to its power divided as you choose among any number of target creatures.
Flurry Heart learned how to aim her outbursts before she was a month old.
Brimferno the Brave 4RR
Legendary Creature — Dragon Warrior
First strike, menace
Whenever Brimferno the Brave deals combat damage to a player, it deals 2 damage to each creature that player controls.
”If you can’t stand the heat, don’t fight a dragon.”
4/4
Imperial Bruins 1G
Creature — Bear
1U: Imperial Bruins gains flying until end of turn.
Flurry Heart drew inspiration from all sources for defending the Empire, even from foalhood games of pretend.
2/2
Misplace 3G
Sorcery
Choose target noncreature permanent. Its owner shuffles it into his or her library.
”It was here just a second ago…”
Pinkie’s Dossiers 3
Artifact
Whenever a creature or planeswalker enters the battlefield, you gain 1 life.
”Let’s see… Chandra likes mango rabri, Gideon loves baklava but never takes more than one piece, Jace will take anything if it has coffee in it…”
Plushiesprite 3
Artifact Creature — Pest Construct
Flying
3, T: Create a token that’s a copy of Plushiesprite.
The toy store owner wasn’t sure where they’d come from, just that they were incredibly popular, yet she never had to restock them.
0/1
Twisted Armaments 3
Artifact
2: Target creature assigns combat damage equal to its toughness rather than its power this turn.
”The Royal Guard: Aggressive ponies who seek only to defend. I captured that confusion in this piece.”
—Spearpoint, veteran sculptor
Sorry Stamp 4
Artifact
Morbid — 2, T: Draw a card. Activate this ability only if a creature died this turn.
”I don’t like breaking it out, but it always works when I do.”
—Pinkie Pie, Bearer of Laughter
Comfort Object 5
Artifact
If a source would deal damage to you, prevent 1 of that damage.
When Comfort Object leaves the battlefield, if a source would deal damage to you this turn, it instead deals that much damage plus 2 to you instead.
You accidentally a word. Again.
Now I'm curious as to what the rest of the Gatewatch enjoy.
Maybe the run was expected to take twenty minutes on top of their forty minutes of lateness, and hadn't been taken into account in the first predictions? A sort of "oh crap I didn't think we'd have to do twenty minutes of travel between these two points, but saving fives minutes of it only adds fifteen to our total" sort of deal.
Which still isn't very solid scheduling, mind you, but as an adjustment of a more recent estimate than the initial one, the math might work out.
Oh man the number of times people mentioned "clever references" in my work, that I had never even heard about.
I actually got chills after reading that Grogar card. I thought Eternal Scourge would be difficult to fully get rid of without non-targeting shenanigans. Grogar? He just... never really dies.
Chills man. Chills.
Actually Fledgling’s Forbearance might have still been working, just she has so much power that even jacked down she could still do things. After all when she stated to meltdown in the hospital she didn't bring the whole place down. Now then I think of it, the spell might actually act as a focus letting her magic. And this proves without a shadow of a doubt pony foals are more intelligent then human babies, but still very much naive. However Mom and Dad horse along with Aunt horse really need to learn counter magic cause the whole barrier when she gets upset will make discipline hard.
Loved the Gen. 1 references with Gusty the unicorn and Grogar.
Don't forget, Twilight is the Princess of Babies, after all! :V
Never actually had baklava. I should fix that.
Hmmm, or maybe they use alternating days for some classes? Rather then a five day straight school week for everypony, it's one or two days alternating between classes?
Here's another bit that says. Not only Flurry not sleeping through the night yet but that Cadance and Shiny are taking care of her themselves. There have to be legions of Crystal Ponies that would be overjoyed to help take care of Flurry Heart, but rather then just let a nanny take care of Flurry, these two are doing everything they can for her themselves, even cleaning up her messes. When they finally just need a break, they find a family member to watch her, Damn they are being great parents.
No, though this makes sense for Twilight. She takes responsibilities like this very seriously. She wants these gifts to be from her and so wants to buy them herself. Not the smartest idea, but very much something Twilight would do and fits for her.
I'm thinking more likely that celebratory trip to Las Pegasus Trixie talked about in the premier.
Not really, Sunburst said it was to curb her power fluctuations not outright cancel out her magic. It just keeps her from bringing down a few walls every time she sneezes or the like.
SO FREAKING AWESOME!!!!!
Given this is an overall positive feeling, wouldn't it by 'empathize' rather then feeling sympathy for him?
They so know what they are doing....
ALL HAIL SNOWMAGEDON! DARK MISTRESS OF ALL!
This was a really sweet, adorable episode.
Now I need a Nicol Bolas alter with a picture of Flurry Heart on it.
Well then.
Let's see. Metroid is about exploring and evolving yourself by confronting the unknown, as manifested by the suit upgrades. My first inclination is to simply make her Alicorn abilities another item to be acquired , but that would either mean breaking down the three tribe's powers into really small pieces to spread them out, or making a really short game. Buuuuuuut, then I remembered something:
There's more than three types of pony.
Check this out: The Chozo in this universe are the reformed Changelings (but with a darker color palette, and less like moose) and Samus is an Earth Pony. I'm not sure what her same should be; something that means "Compassionate and Mighty Warrior." After her colony is destroyed, the Chozo-lings magically adapt her body to give it their ability to adapt to enviroments. As she grows older, her adaption ability increases, and when she takes the Power Suit and leaves to join the federation, she finds that she can use it to adopt the abilities of other pony races.
Of course, each upgrade would change the appearance of the suit. And in theory, she could take on the abilities of other races as well.
It probably was a bit of horn envy – Cheerilee was just drawing attention to the fact that she can't use unicorn magic to write. If she really didn't want to hold the chalk in her mouth, she could get a strap to fasten it to her hoof like that one performer did with the lipstick in “Viva Las Pegasus.”
I didn't expect to like this episode, and got about what I expected. It wasn't all bad – I did chuckle several times, and like you, I appreciated the G1 reference. But the flaws you pointed out bothered me a lot more than they seemed to bother most people. I think it's because I don't like Flurry Heart. Well, maybe it's not fair to say that I don't like her personality – after all, she's only a baby. But I really don't like the way the writers portray the situation she's in.
I've never been fond of babies having superpowers or strong magic in fictional works, and I like it even less now that I have a toddler-age niece. Think about all the measures parents and daycare centers take to baby-proof rooms. There are child safety locks to keep cabinets closed and certain items have to be put up high or pushed far back on counters. Knives, breakable glass, medicine bottles, cleaners, and devices with small choking hazard components all have to be kept out of reach. And those are just the things that could hurt babies, not even including items that a baby could make a big mess out of. Now imagine if babies could just bypass all those safety barriers and take whatever captures their curiosity. The parents would have to watch them like a hawk and never get anything else done, and if they didn't, the child or someone else would get seriously hurt or injured. And you can't discipline toddlers if they do something dangerous. They're too young to understand why the grown-up is shouting and acting scary.
I guess Flurry hits a little close to home because it's unnerving enough imagining my niece being able to unlock doors at her age, much less teleporting who knows where and levitating heavy, blunt objects high enough to hurt someone or break something if she dropped it. So the whole situation bugs me enough that I can't enjoy this episode like everyone else.
I greatly enjoyed the episode, though I feel strangely uncomfortable watching babies being ignored by their caretakers
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don't forget about flurry's face when twilight erased her chalk drawing
"you didn't like it?"
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Ye gawds, seriously
I was in the mood to try something new this Post, though it appears that everyone else beat me to it (in the order of paragraphs):
I see what you did at the end there
Well, Ponyville's a small(ish) town, so maybe all they need is one teacher. Like in the old days with the whole 'School Marms' and such?
Ah the joys of parenthood
Don't young horses learn how to stand up soon after birth? Or is that giraffes?
Everyone seems to be painting little Flurry as a future tyrant; poor widdle Flurry, is everyone being mean to you?
I see what you did there too XD
Starlight barely showed up last Season (even though she was technically supposed to be the guest-star) and now she's disappeared again. Although, after what happened last episode, maybe she and Trixie decided to take some time off to decompress.
Maybe the FF only works on accidental magic, like Flurry's sneezes; kinda like how Huggies and Pull-Ups stop leaks. This is a sign that Flurry is learning to purposely control her magic......oh dear.
Projectile peas are best peas XD Unless they're projectile carrots XP
Art is all about interpretation. I'll let you interpret that anyway you wish
There's a pun in there and I'm missing out on it ;-;
I must admit, the idea of Alien Ponies HAS crossed my mind. If anything, this makes me want to embrace said idea with a lore more gusto now. Why? CANONOCITY!
I wonder if everyone knows that Bae was originally the Dutch word for 'poop'
What sucks about the situation between Flurry and the Cake Twins is a missed opportunity at a bonding experience that may have caused even MORE mayhem. Not too mention Flurry was just trying to help and ends up with confection being thrown at her; poor filly's gonna end up scarred for life in terms of pastry.
I'm too busy geeking out over the callback to G1 Gusty and Grogar to pay much attention to the—oh snap, she lost her toy!
Poor Flurry got traumatized in a whole different way
Thank God this one got resolved, at least.
I liked this episode a bunch! Good Aesop, good subplot, good showcasing of Auntie Twilight vs Equestria's Littlest Princess.
Now just what are you implying with that?
Thank you. The moment I saw them I knew they'd have to be a card.
Come to think of it, Ponyville does seem to be slowly becoming more commercialized now that Twilight's a princess.
("Space Unicorn" by Parry Gripp)
<<Insert joke about Space Pirate's always on the hunt for ecstasy here.>>
I like how you could use Curse of Lost Hours on yourself in order to skip your draw step and not lose the game by drawing from an empty deck.
I would think that Astral Alicorn could only block creatures with flying. I mean, you can't get much higher than being in space.
(For the ones that don't know: the people in Magic R&D refer to a flyer that can only block other flyers as a "high flyer".)
I was about to ask if Grogar, Lord of Tambelon was meant to be the second half of a transform card then I saw that it naturally has Suspend, which is really thematic.
In response to the flavor text for Pinkie’s Dossiers: The answer is to make one very large piece and tell him he can't cut it but can eat the rest of it later.
Plushiesprite looks like it would be a very fun card. Not to play against though.
Let's not mention how we figured it out to her mother though.
I forgot about the alien alicorns fighting space pirates. If someone hasn't written a story about that by now, I'll be sorely disappointed.
And I would love a Grogar appearance. Maybe Season 8 or 9 finale, assuming he hasn't already shown up by now?
Going through these again, and I must finally speak that I'm hella disappointed no one mentioned Shower In Gifts and Bronze Bombshell.
The Grogar is cool and all, but Space Pirate is the most interesting of this lot.
Question: how do you play Grogar? I'm guessing that since he doesn't have a mana cost at all (as opposed to a mana cost of 0) that you have to use Suspend to get him into play?
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Correct. Though any effect that lets you cast a spell without paying its mana cost will work. Cascade is an especially notable option for expediting Grogar's arrival.