Friendship is Card Games: Triple Threat · 11:47am Aug 20th, 2017
As if in response to his notable absence last week, this episode is all about Spike, the cause of and solution to all life’s problems.
Heh. No flowers for the visiting Dragonlord. We don’t want anything too flammable in the area.
I do like how much Spike takes after Twilight. She did raise him, after all. He may act as her voice of sanity and perspective at times, but it’s hard not to have that kind of anxiety ingrain itself on your subconscious when you’re exposed to it on a constant basis.
“The Dragonlord is a dragon.” And the first rule of Tautology Club is the first rule of Tautology Club.
Ambassador Spike! I love it. Plus, it’s a nice follow-up to “Not Asking For Trouble” with Twilight exercising her friendship princess powers.
The Dragon Flame of Friendship makes for an excellent bug zapper.
Wow, is Thorax a nebbish. And this is the guy in charge of the changelings now. Interesting point about the new diet. I suppose going from emotions to matter is going to be a rough transition.
Why do the ponies buy into Spike’s apocalyptic fears enough to help him keep his guests apart? I suppose they might be worried about a lesser international incident, but still.
Heh. Superhero landing. Classic. Very hard on the knees, though.
Do not welcome the Dragonlord with trumpets. She will see the high volume as a challenge.
Notable absence of the Bloodstone Scepter. I guess after the Gauntlet, it doesn’t matter if some other dragon tries to claim it.
Huh. Going by her reaction to Ember, I guess sending Starlight to the Dragonlands would’ve worked out after all.
Double huh. The castle is dragon-edible. Given how Spike’s never sampled it onscreen, I figured it would smell better than it tastes. He’s clearly developed better impulse control than, say, “Just for Sidekicks.”
I do love how Twilight has different chairs for different kinds of reading. She might have been stretching for time, but it feels wonderfully in character.
Wow. If both Spike and Starlight, can be called by the map, there’s no reason to rule out any sapient in Equestria. (And possibly beyond. We’ll probably never get a Sunset map episode, but I can dream, darn it.)
Heh. The way Spike’s going around town, it’s not clear if he’s looking for friendship problems or offering to cause them. And given his track record this episode, it’s a reasonable ambiguity. Also, he’s clearly been learning a lot from Pinkie, given his offscreen teleportation.
Obvious resolution is obvious, but we need to fill more time. “Comical” misunderstandings and sitcom plots it is!
Also, there’s a rebel faction of changelings still feeding on love. Which changelings are also still capable of doing. Definite story fodder there. Heck, that may come up later in the show.
After that introduction, I’d certainly want to get to know Ember, son of Mogh daughter of Torch.
Ember's conclusion regarding muffin walls is logical, just founded on faulty data. Best Pony is just getting away as subtly as she can; the only thing scarier than a dragon is a crazy dragon.
I do love how Ember is having trouble telling the two *lights apart. Lovely bit of metacommentary. At least Trixie isn’t there to further muddy the matter.
Also, “Mine’s more of a glimmer.” “How is that different?” is an amazing exchange.
Huh. A bear… that beats its chest. Gorilla bear? In any case, interesting to see that changelings are still capable of transformation. That wasn’t clear until now; after all, the only time we saw reformed ones shift was in one of Twilight’s fantasies.
You know, Ember and Thorax aren’t wrong. That was Spike’s thought process in a nutshell.
Wait, the collective noun for changelings is a pack now? What happened to the hive?
So, Thorax is basically King Fluttershy. Understandable. Beyond his very passive attitude, he’s probably afraid of turning into another Chrysalis.
Wow. Thorax didn’t even notice the dragonfire clipping his horns. Do those not have any sensation, or does he have better pain tolerance than he thinks?
Spike’s interaction with his friendship problem is… interesting. Especially in terms of causality. He actually solved it before he caused it, forming friendships with the two disputants that got them to Ponyville in the first place, where they could bond with one another once they could get free of his interference. I’m sure it all makes sense to the Map.
… Oh goodness, imagine if Ember tried to eat the Map. 
Yeah, reciting lessons out loud is a pretty big part of pony culture. You get used to it.
In all, this was an interesting one. A lot of good moments, but they were attached to a rather flimsy skeleton with a spine made of artificially induced communication failures. Still an enjoyable episode, though certainly not one of the best. Hopefully the cards will be better:
Ponyville Trumpeters 2W
Creature — Unicorn Citizen
Whenever Ponyville Trumpeters or another creature enters the battlefield under your control, creatures you control get +1/+1 until end of turn.
Every brass player in Equestria dreams of announcing royalty.
1/1
Blend Together 1U
Instant
Creatures you control of the creature type of your choice gain hexproof until end of turn.
Draw a card.
”It’s not my fault you’re all shaped the same.”
—Dragonlord Ember
Digestive Issues B
Enchantment — Aura
Enchant creature
At the beginning of your upkeep, put a -1/-1 counter on enchanted creature.
Prior to their reformation, the changelings’ stomachs were vestigial at best.
Renegade Lovebug 3B
Creature — Insect Pony Rogue
Whenever you gain life, target opponent loses that much life.
1B: Renegade Lovebug gains lifelink until end of turn.
”My new carapace changes nothing. I remain a predator.”
2/3
Ember’s Introduction R
Sorcery
Target creature gets +3/+0 and gains menace until end of turn.
”Ponies usually don’t punctuate hellos with fire,” said Twilight.
“Huh.” Ember considered that. “Why not?”
Dragonlands Ambassador 2R
Creature — Dragon Advisor
When Dragonlands Ambassador enters the battlefield, you may search your library for a Dragon card, reveal it, then shuffle your library and put that card on top of it.
”How many tons of rubies were we willing to spend again?”
2/2
Fire Duel 2R
Sorcery
Clash with an opponent. If you win, Fire Duel deals 4 damage to that player. Otherwise, return Fire Duel to its owner’s hand. (Each clashing player reveals the top card of his or her library, then puts that card on the top or bottom. A player wins if his or her card had a higher converted mana cost.)
Burning Allure 3R
Instant
All creatures attack target player or planeswalker this turn if able. (Creatures can’t attack their controllers or planeswalkers their controllers control.)
Some fight for honor. Some for survival. Some because there’s a shiny thing on the horizon.
Badlands Siege 4R
Enchantment
As Badlands Siege enters the battlefield, choose Changelings or Dragons.
• Changelings — At the beginning of combat on your turn, create a token that’s a copy of target creature you control. That token gains haste until end of turn. Exile it at the beginning of your next end step.
• Dragons — Attacking creatures you control get +2/+0.
Eat the Decorations 4R
Sorcery
Exile target land and all Fortifications attached to it.
”In hindsight, bringing a dragon to a castle made of crystal wasn’t my best idea.”
—Spike
Curse of Competition 4RR
Enchantment — Aura Curse
Enchant player
At the beginning of enchanted player’s upkeep, that player chooses two target creatures he or she controls. Those creatures fight each other.
”This is why we can’t have nice things.”
—Dragonlord Ember
Global Ruination 4RRR
Sorcery
Each player sacrifices half the lands he or she controls, rounded up. Global Ruination deals 6 damage to each creature.
”I don’t know where Spike gets these ridiculous fears.”
—Princess Twilight Sparkle
Push Past the Pain G
Instant
Target creature gains undying until end of turn. (When it dies, if it has no +1/+1 counters on it, return it to the battlefield under its owner’s control with a +1/+1 counter on it.)
Draconic has no word for “Ouch.”
Confluence of Champions 2G
Enchantment
When Confluence of Champions enters the battlefield, draw a card.
Whenever a player casts a commander spell, each other player may put a commander card he or she owns from the command zone onto the battlefield.
Tedious Paperwork 1
Artifact
1(wu), Sacrifice Tedious Paperwork: Detain target creature you don’t control. Activate this ability only any time you could cast a sorcery. (Until your next turn, that creature can’t attack or block, and its activated abilities can’t be activated.)
When Tedious Paperwork is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, draw a card.
Comfy Chair 3
Artifact
3, T: Target player loses 3 life unless he or she sacrifices a nonland permanent or discards a card.
Among the most unspeakable torture devices in the Equestrian Inquisition’s vault of horrors.
Dragonflame Pedestal 3
Artifact
T: Add R to your mana pool.
T: Add RR to your mana pool. Spend this mana only to cast Dragon spells or to activate abilities of Dragon sources.
As furious and long-lasting as the ones it honors.
Ember Monument 3
Artifact
T: Add U or R to your mana pool.
4UR: Ember Monument becomes a 4/4 blue and red Dragon artifact creature with flying until end of turn.
Ember was most impressed when she saw ponies could to turn rock into treasure.
Emblazoned Banner RW
Tribal Enchantment — Flagbearer
When choosing targets as part of casting a spell or activating an ability, your opponents must choose one Flagbearer on the battlefield if able.
Whenever Emblazoned Banner becomes the target of a spell or ability an opponent controls, it deals 3 damage to that opponent.
Charging Bruin 2(rg)(rg)
Creature — Bear
Haste
When Charging Bruin enters the battlefield, put two -1/-1 counters on it at the beginning of the next turn’s upkeep.
”Let him tire himself out. He’ll calm down soon.”
—Fluttershy, Bearer of Kindness
5/5
Dominant Dragon 3RG
Creature — Dragon
Flying
RG: Dominant Dragon gets +X/+X until end of turn, where X is the greatest power among other creatures you control. Activate this ability only once each turn.
Dragons adapt to many stimuli, including bigger dragons.
3/3
Live 1G//Learn 2U
Sorcery//Sorcery
Live: Target land becomes a 4/4 Elemental creature with trample and haste until end of turn. It’s still a land.
Learn: Whenever a creature you control deals combat damage to a player this turn, you may draw a card.
Fuse (You may cast one or both halves of this card from your hand.)
Here's a fun thing: the map mission appears when Spike is in the map chamber, talking to Twilight about the situation, and immediately after Twilight agrees to go along with Spike's plan.
The map was listening in on their conversation. It was waiting for Twilight to point out how stupid Spike's idea was, and decided to intervene only when it saw that she wasn't going to
On that note:
SUDDEN FULL FRIENDSHIP COUNCIL EMERGENCY PROBLEM PLEASE REPORT TO THE MAP CHAMBER IMMEDIATELY
I still want some clear answers on that, and the upcoming Thorax episode had better give them.
I would think it does. It'd be one thing if the Scepter was just a symbol of office, but we've seen that it explicitly gives the Dragon Lord some degree of control over other dragons. If nothing else, you can cause some horrible itching with it. One would think that the first step of any coup against the Dragon Lord would be claiming the Bloodstone Scepter.
Personally, I think she must have some high-security vault for it somewhere. I can't imagine that any Dragon Lord would want to carry that thing on their person every minute of every day. Especially one of Ember's size.
Thorax also mentioned his brother in this episode. And we're getting another changeling episode later in this season. I expect that both his brother and the rebel faction will feature in that. Though, I don't hold any hopes that the rebel faction are going to last beyond that episode.
I also liked that line.
Well, "hive" sounds like a descriptor of their physical home. I'd have thought "swarm" was the proper collective noun until now. But I suppose that a change of collective noun is one of the less jarring transitions that their species has gone through lately...
I think I enjoyed it on the whole. I'm not super happy about the main cast's characterisation, and the plot was indeed flimsy, so that fulfills the requisite major flaws that every season seven episode must have. But it had a lot of nice little moments, and Ember and Thorax were both great.
And trust me, I was not expecting that, because in all his previous appearances, I actually found Thorax to be a really boring character, recently with a horribly garish design added on top of that. I still think his design is horrible and garish, but his characterisation was much improved here. The fact that he's such a loser despite being a king is actually really endearing, even if it makes it all the more unbelievable that he became king at all.
Ember eating the map is probably one of the better things that could happen
Oh wow. Now I totally want to see a crossover episode where the map is calling Sunset (no doubt causing Princess Twilight to freak out), and meanwhile Sunset has had her cutie marks manifest on her human body and emit disturbing flashing lights and tingling sensations while she tries to get through her day at school.
This episode wasn't awful, but it was definitely a step down from the last several episodes. The only part that makes me want to re-watch it is Thorax
ramblingpouring his heart out to Spike. I was only half listening and apparently I missed quite a bit of potential foreshadowing.Little Tree: *screaming her head off* "BAKABAKABAKABAKABAKABAKABAKA! STOP EATING MY--YOU PERVERTED DRAGON!!!!"
Maybe not one of the best episodes out there, but it was definitely one of the better Spike episodes out there, at least recently. At least it was funny!
Hmm, maybe using the term pack is an intentional move to make them sound less alien to the ponies.
"Dragonlord" is a title, I would assume that if allowed to compete by the current Dragonlord ANY species could run the gauntlet to get to the Scepter, or whatever challenge is going on at the time. So you could have a pony Dragonlord, or maybe say, a rabbit Dragonlord.
Well, Queen Chrysalis did get away after her anti-magic throne was dealt with. I'd be more surprised to find she wasn't leading a rebel group of changelings.
Burning Allure has the obvious multiplayer "You guys attack him" use but it can also be used to make everyone attack your face instead of going after your Plainswalker(s) that is (are) about to go ultimate. "Yeah, no, you leave Karn alone and come right to me. Not enough for lethal? Time for a not-quite-even restart then."
On Eat the Decorations: I'm a little sad that we're unlikely to ever see more Fortifications.
Confluence of Champions works really good with a high CMC Commander to get it out for free or even a low CMC Commander if you want to do some sort of shenanigans with other Commanders.
I almost wish Tedious Paperwork put itself back in to your deck from its activated ability, because the paper work never really ends. (Yes that would mean you didn't get he draw, but you'd get the draw if someone destroyed the paperwork instead of letting it go through.)
Emblazoned Banner would go best in an Enchantment Creature deck, but otherwise it's not going to be doing much of anything. Not many people run any sort of Enchantment interaction most of the time because most of the time it's not really needed.
Interesting color shift to green of Undying Evil. I remember strangleroot geist and young wolf having the keyword. Green's way of coming back here is a nice parallel with black.
Also, gotta love all the red whenever there's talk of dragons.
And the bruin has a nice mlp "surviving" effect instead of just dying like most ball lightning-like creatures.
WANT
I think this might be one of my favorite gags in the entire show. Ember sells it perfectly. XD
I knew there was something weird about that!
4641794
...
WANT.
Frankly I can't even figure out the rules by which it was claimed in the first place. Spike was the first to touch it and his eyes totally squizzled and there was a big burst of light and stuff... but apparently the rules are that you just have to take it back and the squizzles don't mean anything?
I'm not shipping it though. Well, not until someone wins me over with a good shipfic.
"The map is really reaching out!" ...to the only other person who lives in the castle, and who technically actually has a seat at the Map Table
While I am a fan of the map calling on ponies outside of the Mane Six, I was rather disappointed that the icon for Spike is just his head. It would have been awesome to have some kind of cool abstract Spike symbol! I like to think that the Map would have attempted to "invent" a proxy cutie mark for Spike.
4641794
4642168
Double want!
This episode spoke to Spike's maturity. Sure, he still messed some stuff up, but he found the resolution eventually and made progress. That's the key, progress. So many episodes build the dude up just to have his character regress in a later one. So, I'm glad he finally had a solid episode of progression.
As a major Spike fan, I approve.
4642168
4642194
For the record I was making reference to one of the MLP Time Loops entries where Angel Bunny (who was likely Awake) and Fluttershy (who was ambiguously Awake) ran the gauntlet for the Scepter so the former could become the Dragonlord.
Sadly I can't remember which chapter that was in, but it was a more recent one.
I always thought in MTG's terms, changelings would be shapeshifters with the ability "Changeling".
Not to gain +3/+0 and menace until the end of the turn or anything, but I'd like to note that Might Make Right totally called Ember going for shock and awe upon first reaching Ponyville.
(Granted, in that story she was a little more upset upon arrival. And correspondingly scarier.)
4641600
Makes sense to me. Sometimes map missions are temporally transcendent reports of future victory. Sometimes they're smacks to the head.
4641638
Regarding the Scepter, it may be one of those artifacts that only transfer their power when given willingly. Torch symbolically gave the Scepter to the first dragon to clear the Gauntlet. Spike explicitly gave it to Ember. She plans on holding onto it for as long as dragon law permits, so there's no risk of a coup nor need for her to lug it around.
That, or she can do the same hammerspace trick with her fire that Spike does with business cards in "Spike at Your Service."
"I thought we were an autonomous collective..."
Thorax's continuing leader position could be seen as a deconstruction of the unlikely hero being crowned king at the end of a fairy tale. It's a nice ending, but the plucky peasant still has no idea how to rule. Thank goodness for helpful dragonlords.
4641645
"Looks like Sunset's getting a..."
"Booty call!"
"Please don't say what I think you're going to—"
(Also, you may be interested in Oversaturation.)
4641680
Remember, folks, just because you can eat them doesn't mean they were meant to be edible.
4641722
"Ponies move in packs, right?"
"I think it's clusters."
"I thought it was harrases."
4641794
Hmm. By that logic, Twilight could've performed a devastating coup. Princess of Friendship and Dragons has a nice ring to it.
From the sound of it, one of Thorax's brothers seems to be leading the rebellion. I don't think anyling wants anything to do with Chrysalis when given other options.
As for Emblazoned Banner, remember that it works just as well on spells like Anguished Unmaking and Indestructibility.
4641805
The episode's full of emotion, acting before thinking, and dragons. It's only natural that red predominate the cards.
4642192
See my reply to DannyJ for my hypothesis on the Scepter's behavior, and Daedalus Aegle's post for why the Map may have slapped together a quick and dirty Spike symbol.
And yeah, I do love giving Twilight ironic flavor text. (cf. Long Absence)
4643792
They would be if the show were set on Lorwyn. However, Equestrian changelings behave very differently than the amorphous wanderers of the faerie tale plane, and my cards primarily reflect the episode on which they're based.
4644468
Ha, awesome.
I forgot all about Oversaturation kicking off with the manifestation of the EG girls' cutie marks! I liked the idea in that one that Sunset had hers all along, and never realized that other humans didn't come with cutie marks. Good story, good excuse to reread.
There's something especially funny about hearing this quote coming from the living embodiment of anxiety herself.
This feels somewhat underpowered. Unless the spell returning to your hand justifies it being a sorcery or costing 1 more.
Hah, nice expansion of the Flagbearer type. I didn't even know this existed, but it's very creative and this card expands it very well.
Episode was sorta cringey... Sorta ship Thorax + Ember now. Sorta.
OMG. Castle-chan likely really hates Ember eating her... castle... ... Man, without that last word...
... Also can't figure out what the walls would correspond to?
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