This content was originally included in Homelands #1. The original article can be accessed via Internet Archive here.

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Homelands Creators Unveil Their Favorite New Cards

Kyle’s Picks

• Didgeridoo

This card allows you to summon Minotaurs directly out of your hand as a fast effect, which is especially useful during the fast effect phase after your opponent has declared which creatures are going to attack. You can respond by using Didgeridoo to bring a Minotaur into play and then use that Minotaur as a blocker!

• Broken Visage

This spell causes one of your opponent’s attacking creatures to be buried and then brings into play a Shadow token with power and toughness equal to the power and toughness of the creature you just buried. Even though you have to bury the Shadow token at the end of the turn, it still lends a note of fear when your opponent’s biggest creature vanishes and you block with one just as large!

• Veldrane

This Legend is Baron’ Sengir’s most loyal servant and is one of the few black creatures in Magic to have forestwalk. Even though it loses strength when it forestwalks, it’s a potent creature to use against forest decks. (As a side note, it’s still questioned whether Veldrane is a real living being, or a special undead of some kind.)

• Jinx

The possibilities of this spell are very amusing, as you can use it to change any one basic land in play into another type of basic land until the end of the turn. The uses for this are too numerous to mention here, but it. certainly allows for your landwalkers to do some serious harm, and is also good for wreaking havoc towards the end of a duel, when every last bit of mana counts.

• Primal Order

This is the balancing card of the — Homelands expansion, sounding a note of fear in the hearts of players who use only non-basic lands in their decks. This enchantment causes each player, during his or her upkeep, to take 1 damage for each non-basic land they have in play.

• Joven’s Ferrets and Mammoth Harness

These spells show that it’s really hard to catch a Ferret, and even harder to catch a levitating Mammoth! Joven’s Ferrets gets +0/+2 when it attacks, and any creature that blocks it doesn’t untap as normal during its next untap phase. Mammoth Harness causes a target creature to lose flying, and all creatures that are blocking or blocked by the creature with Mammoth Harness on it gain first strike until the end of the turn.

• Baron Sengir

Baron Sengir is a 5/5 Vampire and Legend with flying and the ability to regenerate other Vampires, and that gets +2/+2 whenever it damages a creature that goes to the graveyard that same turn. While the Baron is definitely a nemesis-type character in the Homelands saga, he feels that he is by no means evil—just different.

• Eron the Relentless

This Legend is the King of the Goblins in Koskun Keep and is the man who organized the treaty between the citystates of Aysen and the Goblin families of the Koskun Mountains. As a card, Eron the Relentless is designed to just keep attacking, as it has the ability to regenerate from any damage short of Disintegration and burial. The original flavor text Scott and I envisioned for Eron was, “What?! You again?!”

• Folk of An-Havva and Dwarven Traders

Folk of An-Havva and Dwarven Traders may not be the strongest cards in the set, but they are my favorites, as they add a little more theme and flavor to decks and offer a few more possible personalities for my decks. Folk of An-Havva is a green 1/1 creature that gets +0/+2 when it blocks; Dwarven Traders is a red 1/1 creature.

Scott’s Picks

• Death Speakers and Aysen Bureaucrats

These are two of my favorite cards, because of their elegance and simplicity. Death Speakers is a 1/1 creature with protection from black, and Aysen Bureaucrats has the ability to tap a target creature whose power is no greater than 2—government red tape in action.

• Samite Alchemist

Samite alchemy is a profession that evolved from the first Samite Healers, who survived the climactic battle between the Ancients and the Tolgath six centuries ago. The Samite Alchemists continued the traditional healing practices, eventually moving from the Healers’ spiritual approach to a more scientific one. The Alchemist can tap to prevent up to 4 damage to a creature you control, but the creature does not untap as normal during your next untap phase.

• Anaba Minotaurs

The Anaba Minotaurs are a curious group, isolationist and wanting to keep their mountain home secret from outsiders. Occasionally, one of the Anaba, usually a young Minotaur seeking adventure, will leave this home to go out and explore the world. Many of these roamers end up in Koskun Keep and are quickly corrupted by the greed, wealth, and politics of that den of villainy. Some become pit-fighters, others personal bodyguards to merchants, Goblin families, or even Eron the Relentless (if they can pass his deadly entrance exams). The main reason they’re designated “Bodyguards” instead of “Minotaurs” on the summon line of their cards is that in revoking their ancestral heritage, they lost touch with their true selves and no longer gain strength or wisdom from the spells of their Minotaur kin.

• Retribution

According to rumor, this spell represents one of Eron the Relentless’s many severe disciplinary practices. It’s said that once, Eron was so displeased with a pair of his lieutenants that he had them brought in by Anaba Bodyguards and laid out on the chopping block, while a pair of their loved ones was dragged in to watch their execution. Just before the axe was to fall, Eron asked the doomed soldiers to choose: watch their loved ones be tortured first and be beheaded themselves afterwards, or be tortured and disfigured and then watch their loved ones given over to Eron’s best executioner. While no one really knows if the tale is true, it is common knowledge that Eron’s version of justice is a little skewed. Of course, that’s probably because he’s been assassinated at least two dozen times over the course of his kingship and is no longer quite as forgiving as he was in the first years of his rule.

• Hungry Mist

This is a ravenous creature from the depths of the Great Wood near An-Havva. Many of the people who I[ive near the forest’s edge keep their children indoors after dark, for more than a few families have lost loved ones to these predatory creatures. Sunlight or a bonfire will keep Hungry Mist away, but a lantern or torch attracts them in droves. This beastie is a 6/2 creature for two green mana and two colorless, with an upkeep cost of two green mana.

• Labyrinth Minotaurs

These monsters are not easy to find, and then they’re usually guarding the treasure troves of wizards and planeswalkers. They don’t age, don’t sleep, and generally enjoy conversing with (and then eating) only those who are trying to thread their mazes. They go to great pains to create mazes and traps to fool and injure the unwary and take pleasure in sealing adventurers in a dead end and listening to their desperate pleas for release. Whether they are sorcerous experiments or creatures left behind by the Tolgath is still uncertain, but when they are found, they are best avoided and left alone.

• Sea Trolls

These hungry, undersea creatures eat a lot of things that live in the sea, but they enjoy nothing more than consuming Merfolk whenever they can catch them. Sea Trolls will usually be found just on the outskirts of a Merfolk settlement and will prey on the sentries and remote villages until the Merfolk gather together a force large enough to drive them away. Strong, cunning, and able to travel both above and below.the surface of the sea, Sea Trolls are as much a menace to sailors as to Merfolk.

• Black Carriage

The Black Carriage is Baron Sengir’s personal vehicle, used primarily to travel along the roads and bridges of his Barony. He often picks a villager to act as his driver, and at the end of the ride, the Rind and caring Baron feeds the unlucky villager to the carnivorous steeds that pull his Carriage, as reward for their good labor.

• “Tri-Lands”

Tri-lands are lands that change colorless mana into three different kinds of mana, and four-color which enables three- and four-color decks to be created without much difficulty. However, these lands are affected by Primal Order, so they’re no. safer than dual lands or your Mazes of Ith against the ravages of the Autumn Willow. Although these lands aren’t fantastic for speed, they do provide versatility and allow for a number of deck concepts to be useful that are otherwise too unwieldy or unbalanced.