Magical Thinking: Fallen Empires

Welcome back to Magical Thinking, a look back at the artwork and cards of Magic the Gathering, through the eyes of a casual player. Today we are looking at Fallen Empires.

Released in November of 1994, Fallen Empires was the fifth Magic expansion. It continues the lead up to the Ice Age with a look at the continent of Sarpadia. The encroaching climate change has caused resources to dwindle, leading to the various factions fighting among themselves. A major theme of the set was the colors warring with themselves, each color having two rival factions. I’ve talked about one of the factions in my first article, The Thrulls, which originated from this set, but they are just one small piece of the puzzle. So lets take a closer look at what else was going on in Sarpadia.

Of the five colors, I feel like White got the least interesting internal rivalry. The feud here being between two warring religious factions, the Order of Leitbur and the more zealous and vigilante-prone Farrelites. This card represents the latter.

This set had a LOT of cards with multiple different pieces of art. This card has four different versions. I picked this one to represent because…well look at it. This guy looks like a zombie. Look at that zombie right there. White isn’t supposed to have zombies this soon.

As for the effect, it’s pretty good. You can take out vital minions your opponent is trying to protect, makes it almost like you want to waste a blocker on it.

The Hand of Justice I think is the divine being both sides on the Icatian conflict ultimately serve. Not much to say about him except that mustache game is on point. Apparently the big guy isn’t above shooting some craps in between dispensing justice. He works hard and he plays hard. I can respect that.

Just a reminder that White is not just the color of knights and angels, but also bankers and tax people. If you need a loan with reasonable rates, White is the color for you.

Fun fact: Before he became a Planeswalker, Ajani worked as a stockbroker. True story. Unfortunately he kept playing with the stock ticker paper because, well, he’s a big cat isn’t he?

Despite the awesome art here, the Icatian Scout doesn’t actually fly. This is another one of those cards that has multiple arts, and while most of them are just of a normal looking person, Phil Foglio, a genius, mounted this scout on a giant bat. Which is awesome. Maybe the first strike ability is the bat picking someone up and launching them at an opponent. That could work.

If Thrulls are the big winner of Fallen Empires, then I would say the big losers are the Homarid, a race of giant lobster folk who warred with the local Merfolk tribes. Aside from a few token appearances here and there (Mostly in Time Spiral) the Homarid never came back. Which is a shame because giant lobsters are cool. Ironically Lobsters in the real world don’t die of old age, but sadly the Homarid did not stand the test of time.

Of course the downside with the Homarid is they aren’t terribly interesting to talk about. I mean there’s only so many ways you can talk about a giant lobster. But in this case it’s a giant lobster with a magic scepter. The ability refers to a bit where the Homarids would use magic to raise the water level to flood out Elven forests. Which is a pretty neat trick.

On the other end of the conflict we have the Merfolk, who also have a variety of cards in this set, all with pretty neat artwork. I specifically like this bit because the Merfolk wizard is pretty ripped, and I like the coloration of his skin and his weird hair.

I already talked about the Thrulls at length in another article, so I will be skipping them here. Instead I will focus on the Order of the Ebon Hand, the other Black faction of this set. And this thing, the Ebon Praetor. I don’t even know what is going on here. I get they are about to sacrifice that guy (Thrull?) to the Praetor. But…. why the Rabbit? Also I like the flavor here that you have to constantly feed the Praetor sacrifices to keep him bound to this world, and at the same time Thrulls (Whom are specifically designed to be sacrificed) make him stronger. Although I imagine keeping track of two different types of counters will get confusing.

I’m pretty sure these guys showed up on a Gotye music video once. Once again, this is a card with multiple variants. I picked this one because well, look at those guys. They look like extras from the Sentinel, or from Bald Mountain.

They seem to exist to funnel Black mana in a multicolored deck. That’s useful, but their low ranking becomes clear as they can’t funnel too much mana at once before being overtaxed and destroyed.

Dwarves don’t get enough love as one of Red’s main races. Everyone talks about Goblins as the main Red race. Why not Dwarves? Look at those big grumpy guys. Don’t they deserve some love too? Luckily by Throne of Eldraine Dwarves have gotten some real good cards. Hopefully that will propel them into being used more often.

Goblins were the other Red faction in Fallen Empires, alongside the Orcs. Again, this card had multiple artwork, but I liked this one for obvious reasons. At this particular juncture in Magic, Goblins were characterized as being violent, idiotic, and very luck-oriented. Everything they did was a crap shoot, but sometimes it worked out. Even if you have to sacrifice a few Goblins along the way.

A friend of mine recently sent me a ton of MTG cards, with which I used to craft a Red Goblin deck. This is one of the cards I put into it. Once again I love the flavor, that the Goblin is hand-delivering the grenade, and wont be making the return trip (at least not in one piece). I just love the facial expressions on these pieces.

And of course we can’t forget the Orcs either. Sadly Orcs don’t get the same amount of love in Magic that they do in DnD. Orcs wont really come to prominence until the Tarkir expansions, where they are front and center as one of the central races of the world. But here they kind of share the same niche as Goblins as being destructive cowardly morons. I love the flavor text for this one more than anything.

Thallids were the rival race of Elves in Fallen Empires. Like Thrulls, Thallids were magically bred creatures that turned against their masters. However the Thallids had a much worse gimmick than the Thrulls (And the Thrull gimmick was killing themselves). Thallids get spore counters each turn, and when you take three off they do something (usually making a Saproling token). It’s a very slow mechanic which usually didn’t have a payoff that was worth the wait. I mean, who wants to wait three turns for your giant fungus monster to be able to attack or block to be able to regenerate? No one, that’s who.

Poppies, poppies will make them sleep.

I feel like this one is slightly better among the effects. Since it’s 0 attack you can set it up early, and use it to save yourself during a big enemy attack turn, but its still attached to a 1 health body.

I picked this one because a Mushroom with a walking stick is adorable. Also, I think this expansion marks the debut of the Saprolings. Saprolings would continue to show up again and again as a green staple even as Thallids fell to the wayside. Later sets would implement them better. What even IS a Saproling anyway?

Not gonna lie, most of the artifacts in this set are pretty boring. So I’m talking about this one out of obligation and because it’s the most interesting one. You pay 2 mana, forego doing damage (Assuming your creature is not blocked) and then you get a token you can spend 2 mana on in order to regenerate a creature later. And you thought waiting for three spore tokens was jumping through hoops. Has anyone ever used this card? Keep in mind this was in the time before proliferate was a thing.

There are two cycles of lands that do the same thing for each color: One that stores up counters to use for mana later, and one you can tap normally, or tap and sacrifice for double mana. None of these are terribly interesting, but I included them for sake of completion.

And that’s it for Fallen Empires. I kind of regret doing my Thrull article before this one, because Thrulls are by far the most interesting part of this expansion. Everything else regarding it was just meh. Also I apologize for the lateness of this article, I kind of got distracted by the Theros Beyond Death spoilers and other things. Hopefully the next article wont take quite so long to get out. It’s going to be a good one too. Pack a scarf and a jacket, because there’s an Ice Age coming. Until then, stay magical.