Friendship is Card Games: Pony Life, Week 4 · 11:33am Sep 6th, 2020
Time to resume the Pony Life catch-up. Week 4 marks a transition point in the series. Where before each half-hour of G4.5 content consisted of two roughly eleven-minute episodes, now it’s four five- or six-minute ones. This will be interesting, but doable. If I can work with EqG shorts, I can work with these.
The Trail Less Trotten
Nice touch with Pinkie whistling the classic My Little Pony theme.
Trailcharters Troop? Curious. And that’s not bringing up the Ponies Earning Badges Organization, LLC. The Mane Six seem a little old for this kind of thing, but bringing excessive logic into this universe rarely ends well.
Oh hey, canon confirmation that Pinkie did, in fact, inherit Sugarcube Corner from the Cakes. Though that does raise the question of what they’re doing instead.
Celebrity… dolphin. As I said, overthinking this universe rarely ends well. I’m walking a tightrope for this review. And I have to wonder what Finn Tastic is famous for.
Ooh, first look at Fluttershy’s cottage in Pony Life. Interesting integration of a willow tree.
I have several questions about the clearly human rendition of Munch’s The Scream in Fluttershy’s foyer. Perhaps a gift from Discord?
So… are those castle ruins where Twilight lives, or just where the ominous cloud of evil was entering this universe?
You can see the red X on the application for a split second before Applejack announces the result. Nice touch.
Oh, I was right. They are too old for this. Officially so.
The more I see of this Fluttershy, the more I appreciate how she is vastly more menacing than her FiM counterpart.
You’d think being twice as large as the target would lessen the impact of puppy-dog eyes. You would be wrong.
Oh, Applejack. Falling back on bad habits… though possibly out of self-preservation.
Protecting her feelings won’t last forever, Twilight. The truth will out eventually. And in the meantime, maybe get her to stop carrying that body pillow around everywhere.
Oh dear. This one doesn’t end on a lesson so much as a ticking time bomb. Let’s see where else it leads.
Death of a Salespony
Caution: Using Pinkie Standard Time may result in weight gain, hyperactivity, and fluctuations in the space-time continuum.
Pinkie, you run a bakery. You were going to sell cookies at some point.
Huh. Apparently, these cookies are so good, even the alternative ponies don’t mind liking them.
This world has a Spear Shaker, going by how Finn Tastic has played Hamlet.
Pretty clear to see where this is going, even without considering the Sisphyean title card.
Yikes. I’m pretty sure Fluttershy is becoming a physical incarnation of Cookie Clicker. The Grandmapocalypse is nigh…
Speaking of the alt crowd, I’m not at all surprised to see Rarity found a way to get them to model.
I will never understand oatmeal raisin cookies’ bad reputation. They’re delicious.
Huh. Giant Fluttershy sitting on a pile of treasure as the sky burns red. I wasn’t expecting a turn for the draconic, but it works surprisingly well.
I have a number of questions about Pinkie apparently encountering some mix of the witch from Hansel & Gretel and Baba freaking Yaga. To say nothing of her having a brother, though I’m given to understand that comes up later.
But yeah, suffice to say, never go full corporate. And yes, I’m aware of the irony of a Hasbro ad carrying that message.
Big Hoof Walking
I have to appreciate the literal cloud data, both because it’s a hilarious yet brilliant application of pegasus magic in the Information Age and because Estee called it it five years earlier.
Between the Sass Squash and the Great Seedling, there’s something very appropriate in having Applejack be the authority on cryptids. Though this particular Big Hoof feels more like a lycanthrope than an apeman. On the other hand, the Storm King appears to be a horned yeti of some description…
I’ll need to see the beastie before I can analyze this further.
“Scary ravioli” is a hilarious alteration of creepypasta. Kudos to the writers there.
Dash’s delayed scream doesn’t really work as a joke.
The giant fruit embedded in the ground continues to baffle me. As do the floating chunks of earth. Were the Eldrazi sealed here once or what?
So… is this meant to be thick forest, or is Big Hoof more of a grassland-wandering creature?
Ah. Now we’re in thick forest. Though I’m not sure why the group didn’t start here to begin with.
Just in case it wasn’t clear that this Dash is channeling Sonic the Hedgehog, here we see her doing a Homing Attack.
Ah, there’s the creature. And it is bipedal, though with a much more robust build than the Storm King. It’s like a sasquatch crossed with a moose. Given hooves and horns, I think it’s technically a satyr.
The Fluttershy Effect
Not sure what to make of that opening shot. The blockiness and neon makes it feel like if Las Vegas were made out of crashed spaceships.
Owloysius is an absolute borb in this art style, and I love it.
Interesting demonstration of time dilation. Dash has intimated she can do this before, but it’s neat to see a demonstration. Her powers do seem to be consistent from universe to universe, don’t they?
“Thank hoofness I found you!”
I want to believe I misheard that, but I’m almost certain I didn’t. Shame on them.
So… either ponies have hip pouches, Dash is wearing invisible saddlebags, or she’s storing her phone in a rear orifice.
Huh. Wonderbolt-branded Flappy Bird. Seems fitting for the setting, though it does raise the question of whether Dash is a Wonderbolt. Signs seem to point to no.
Also, that’s some impressive battery life.
Seems like Twilight does live in the crumbling castle. Odd choice.
There is something delightfully surreal about Dash holding a balloon duplicator like she’s Heavy Weapons Guy.
And then Rainbow Dash created so many butterflies, she warped into a future where they’ve conquered the world. Now all she needs is a magic sword and a head butterfly voiced by Mako.
Tank reuniting with Rainbow Dash after decades. This is approaching Tenacity from a very unexpected angle.
Ooh, Shrine to Celestia in the corner of the room. Very ominous note there, and a much more subtle touch than Pony Life usually goes for. I like it.
Well. That was a bit of anticlimax. I mean, you always run the risk of that with a time traveler, but they wasted a perfectly good dystopia. Monarchville presents a number of intriguing plots to explore. Still, Twilight had years to prepare for Dash’s arrival. Makes sense that she’d prepare an efficient means of fixing the problem given all that time.
The fuse of the deception is still burning, but that seems to form a plot arc akin to Pinkie competing in the Royal Jelly Juggernaut. The shorter plots seem divided between story-focused and moral-focused episodes, which works fairly well. Still, halving the runtime definitely makes them feel more shallow than the earlier stuff.
Still, I can get plenty of material from these shorts. Especially when I factor in Zendikar Rising mechanics:
Limited Stock 1W
Enchantment
Each player who controls three or more artifacts can’t cast artifact spells. The same is true for creatures, enchantments, and planeswalkers.
There’s only so much to go around.
Altar of Solar Blessings 2W
Legendary Enchantment — Shrine
At the beginning of your upkeep, support X, where X is the number of Shrines you control. (To support X, put a +1/+1 counter on each of up to X target creatures.)
Some revere Celestia, despite her best efforts.
Cryptid Hunter 3W
Creature — Pony Warrior
When Cryptid Hunter enters the battlefield, destroy up to one target creature with power X or greater, where X is 7 minus the number of creatures in your party. (Your party consists of up to one each of Cleric, Rogue, Warrior, and Wizard.)
3/3
Herald of Vengeance 3W
Creature — Spirit Noble
Flying
Regicide is rarely a clean crime.
3/2
Serve Justice 2W
Sorcery — Adventure
Destroy target tapped creature. (Then exile this card. You may cast the creature later from exile.)
Altar of Echoed Devotion 1U
Legendary Enchantment — Shrine
5U: Copy target triggered ability of a Shrine you control. You may choose new targets for the copy. This ability costs 1 less to activate for each Shrine you control.
Some revere fantasies in the guise of idols.
Enrapturing Reflection 1U
Enchantment — Aura
Enchant creature
Enchanted creature doesn’t untap during its controller’s untap step.
4U, Sacrifice Enrapturing Reflection: Create a token that’s a copy of enchanted creature.
Cloud Distributor 2U
Creature — Pegasus Wizard
Flying
Whenever you cast an instant, sorcery, or Wizard spell, scry 1.
“Every cloud holds valuable data. The trick is converting it into a form you guys can process.”
2/2
Twilit Insight 3U
Sorcery
Draw two cards.
“My friends have taught me so much over the years. I just wish they’d let me return the favor more often.”
—Princess Twilight Sparkle
< Land T: Add U.
Twilit Ruins
Land
Twilit Ruins enters the battlefield tapped.
T: Add U.
“Of course, one lesson I could’ve used earlier was how to work the Ponyville real estate market.”
—Princess Twilight Sparkle
< Sorcery 3U
Sugarcube Timekeeper 3UU
Creature — Pony Wizard
When Sugarcube Timekeeper enters the battlefield, return to their owners’ hands all creatures your opponents control with power less than or equal to the number of creatures in your party.
2/3
Legacy Holomind 4U
Artifact Creature — Illusion
Legacy Holomind’s power and toughness are each equal to the number of instant and sorcery cards in your graveyard.
When Legacy Holomind enters the battlefield, each player mills four cards. (Each puts the top four cards of their library into their graveyard.)
Made to remember.
*/*
Check the Wiki 6U
Sorcery
Undaunted (This spell costs 1 less to cast for each opponent.)
Draw four cards.
“The perfect blend of research and friendship. Of course I brought it to Equestria.”
—Princess Twilight Sparkle
Greater Evil B
Sorcery
Target opponent sacrifices a creature with power less than or equal to the greatest power among creatures you control.
Once word of Fluttershy spread through Tartarus, demonic incursions almost completely ceased.
Altar of Heartless Gains 2B
Legendary Enchantment — Shrine
At the beginning of your upkeep, you create X Treasure tokens and you lose X life, where X is the number of Shrines you control. (Treasure tokens are artifacts with “T, Sacrifice this artifact: Add one mana of any color.”)
Some revere profit above all else.
Sugarcube Scavenger 2B
Creature — Crocodile
Whenever another creature with a +1/+1 counter on it dies, put a +1/+1 counter on Sugarcube Scavenger.
When Pinkie runs a bakery, cookies are guaranteed to end up on the floor.
2/3
Spawn of Arabus 4B
Creature — Elemental
Flying
When Spawn of Arabus leaves the battlefield, distribute three -1/-1 counters among one, two, or three target creatures.
Evoke 1BB (You may cast this spell for its evoke cost. If you do, it’s sacrificed when it enters the battlefield.)
3/1
Frosted Familiar 4BB
Creature — Horror
Flash
When Frosted Familiar enters the battlefield, create a Food token for each creature that died this turn. (They’re artifacts with “T, Sacrifice this artifact: You gain 3 life.”)
“I miss my brother.”
—Pinkie Pie, Bearer of Laughter
4/4
< Land T: Add B.
Frosted Cottage
Land
Frosted Cottage enters the battlefield tapped.
T: Add B.
“I told him those peppermint accents spelled trouble, but did he listen to me?”
—Pinkie Pie, Bearer of Laughter
< Horror 4BB
Altar of Frantic Toil 2R
Legendary Enchantment — Shrine
At the beginning of your upkeep, create an X/1 red Elemental creature token with trample and haste, where X is the number of Shrines you control. Exile that token at the beginning of the next end step.
Some revere the end of their shift, distant as any god.
Growing Capital 3R
Sorcery
Create X Treasure tokens, where X is the greatest power among creatures you control.
Fluttershy’s size and greed fed each other worse than any dragon’s.
Altar of Primal Might 1G
Legendary Enchantment — Shrine
1G: Target creature you control has base power and toughness X/X until end of turn, where X is the number of Shrines you control.
Some revere what came before, and what will remain after.
Stalking Bighoof 2GG
Creature — Satyr
Stalking Bighoof can’t be blocked by more than one creature.
Landfall — Whenever a land enters the battlefield under your control, you may have another target creature you control become a copy of Stalking Bighoof until end of turn.
5/4
Trailcharter Troop 3G
Creature — Pony Scout
If a land entering the battlefield under your control causes a triggered ability of a permanent you control to trigger, that ability triggers an additional time.
Anypony can explore. Professionals discover.
2/2
Watcher of Ages 3GG
Creature — Elder Turtle
Indestructible, reach
Suspend 4—G (Rather than cast this card from your hand, you may pay G and exile it with four time counters on it. At the beginning of your upkeep, remove a time counter. When the last is removed, cast it without paying its mana cost. It has haste.)
2/5
Replitron 5000
Artifact — Contraption
Whenever you crank Replitron 5000, create a token that’s a copy of target nonland, non-Contraption permanent.
Trail of Hoofprints (gu)
Sorcery
Investigate. (Create a colorless Clue artifact token with “2, T, Sacrifice this artifact: Draw a card.”
Whenever you cast a Pony, Pegasus, or Unicorn spell, return Trail of Hoofprints from your graveyard to your hand.
Tracking ponies isn’t much of a challenge.
Sea Seraph 2WU
Creature — Whale Angel
Flash
Flying, lifelink
Commanders you control have hexproof and lifelink.
Through sea and sky, they swim to attend the worthy.
2/2
Oppressive Swarm 3WB
Creature — Insect
Flying, lifelink
Your opponents can’t gain life.
After the Replitron Disaster, the swarms outlawed all forms of celebration not their own.
4/3
Monarchville Pathway
Land
T: Add B.
“The swarms blot out the skies. Their drones patrol the streets. It wasn’t always this way.”
—Pinkie PAI, holomind
< Land T: Add G.
Ponyville Pathway
Land
T: Add G.
“There was a time when fun was legal, when ponies ruled. We can make it happen again. We can make it happen instead.”
—Pinkie PAI, holomind
< Land T: Add B.
More interestingly, perhaps, that scene confirms that the Elements of Harmony do indeed exist in this world. In some way, at least.
And wow, so many little details mentioned here that I missed the first time through. I definitely will need to re-watch the whole series like I was planning to. And then do it one more time, probably, the first one I might be distracted by my boyfriend's reactions since I plan to do that with him.
As for Pinkie's brother, he hasn't actually shown up in the show yet. All I know is that one of the clipshows up on YouTube apparently revealed he will indeed be relevant again, but I have refused to check that out. For all I know he might appear on today's episodes. Still, knowing he will be appearing does somewhat lessen the impact of that first mention, where it really sounds like Pinkie is implying he's dead.
Edit: And looking at the cards (which I usually don't, and when I do it's mostly for the flavour text)
And you still haven't seen what she's like later on.
>Oatmeal raisin
I knew you were secretly evil!
>Altar of Heartless Gains
Aww. Really doesn't play well in Xshrine.
>Stalking Bighoof
I assume the landfall copies over too, giving you an exponential army of stompers?
>Trail of Hoofprints
Insert joke about dusting for prints. Favorite of the lot.
I have to believe that Andrea Libman is having an absolute blast with this Fluttershy incarnation.
Monarchville - I really want some kind of Venture Bros crossover. I'm just picturing The Monarch sitting on a Discord like throne cackling while overlooking a butterfly dominated Pineville. Wish I had the imagination to write something like that...
5349747
Of course....
Inside Baseball Alert: My sources say that the G1 villain Erebus did in fact directly use the Greek spelling rather than trying to turn it into a horse pun. Possibly because Poseidon, who was the god of horses in addition to his better-known portfolio, raised a stink over it.
Inside Baseball Alert: Shrines always come in cycles of legendary enchantments that scale to Shrine count, and I'm going to contradict 5349747 by pointing out that the white member of the original cycle directly counteracts the drawback of this one's black member.
Stupid Complicated Game Alert: If you don't control any creatures as Greater Evil resolves, the opponent doesn't sacrifice anything and isn't penalized for this fact. No, not even if they have a creature with 0 power. No, not even if they have a creature with negative power, which is a thing that the rules can handle.
Stupid Complicated Game Alert: Ark is technically correct about Stalking Bighoof's landfall-created copies having the landfall trigger, but since the copying only lasts until end of turn and requires a creature to turn into the copy, this isn't really going to go anywhere. Especially since landfall is normally only once per turn.
Stupid Complicated Game Alert: the "non-Contraption" on Replitron 5000 is because copying contraptions doesn't attach them to a sprocket and therefore doesn't work at all without a bunch of additional words.
Stupid Complicated Game Alert: Amusing color pie time: Oppressive Swarm could actually get away with being W/B hybrid with those effects. Sure, it'd be a little strange to see white preventing lifegain, but preventing arbitrary stuff is still its thing.
Inside Baseball Alert: FoME, FoME, FoME. We are explicitly getting the remaining Pathway lands sooner rather than later, we are explicitly getting only the ten, and we don't even know which parts of the cycle will be in Zendikar Rising yet. This is going to be one of your cards that age poorly, like the Cakes you made before there was such thing as Food.
Argh, another way to wreck the FICG parser...
I gather from above that Twilit Insight/Twiliit Ruins, Frosted Familiar/Frosted Cottage, and Monarchville Pathway/Ponyville Pathway are all Modal Double-Faced Cards. Is there any reasonable way to signify that this is the case, other than the absence of an empty line between them? (In all other cases, such as transformers, there is enough context for the parser to deduce that the card is double-faced, but here, there is not).
5349776
Hmm. Tricky. Modal DFCs don't give much indication themselves. Would trying to replicate the little bottom indicators help? (For the Twilit pair, it'd be "Land T: Add U" and "Sorcery 3U" under the flavor text of each.) Alternatively, I could try to replicate the triangular flip symbols.
They are delicious.
5349787
Either of those methods could work. I guess the most definitive way is to wait until the set comes out and see how Gatherer formats it, but either of those methods should provide enough information. Up until now I've been able to get away without needing line breaks as a card separator (they don't always come through correctly when copy-pasting, so I ignore them) but it seems that this new case has made them semantically important.
I'm pretty sure this world is just what Pinkie dreams about at night. Or she's their god, could be either. Could be both.
5349845
This is Equestria seen through a Hunter S. Thompson-esque sugar binge. And possibly some high-strength poison joke essence.
5349840
They walk among us.
5349745
I did mean to mention the mention of the Elements. That raises even more interesting questions about this world's recent history, especially how they may relate to Twilight's nature as an alicorn. It almost seems like these versions of the Mane Six have a Triptych Continuum-esque relationship with the forces of darkness, thwarting them so often it's become a full-on second job for them. (Or third if you count helping Pinkie with Sugarcube Corner.)
5349767
Friendly reminder that Azusa is currently in Standard and Uro hasn't been banned yet.
As for the Pathway, you may call it aging poorly, but I call it seizing an opportunity. Plus, I did make these before I learned that Kaldheim and Strixhaven will both also have modal DFCs. Also, the six Pathways we're getting in Zendikar Rising were among the first previewed cards, and the BG one isn't among them. So nyeh.
5349843
I've added the bottom-of-the-card indicators in an attempt to make your life easier.
5349845 5350015
I personally subscribe to the idea that Pinkie created this universe while she literally and metaphysically held Discord's chaos magic. Though the mention of Hunter S. Thompson gives me an excuse to dust this off:
5350461
Much appreciated, cheers!
5350461
That's what I meant by "normally"; you need additional cards just for it to matter at all, and there are still far better things you could be doing with them. It's the jankest of jank, if only because One With Nothing saw tournament-level use at one point. Which couldn't have happened in an Eternal format, because there's a better way to empty your hand for one black mana.
I knew you were a man of taste. It's good to have confirmation.