It’s the Commander preview week on Daily MTG! That means that almost every day will be previewing two new legendary creatures, and every day will have at least one. Therefore, I’ll be doing my best to craft a world around each of them. Don’t expect a full write-up, certainly not on the scale of Iroas, Aquas or Tyranix, but I’ll do as much as my immediate inspiration will give me.
In most ways, Tariel is a classic MTG Angel - big flier with vigilance. However, her colors are strange (White/Black/Red) and she has a crazy reanimation ability that can only taget opponents. Her flavor text shines a little light on it:
“After death you face paradise, damnation, or Tariel.”
-Priest’s Teaching
Well, Tariel is clearly an important part of the dominant religion on this world, occupying a role reminiscent of the angel of death. Of course, this isn’t a kind religion; the placement of Tariel in that quote indicates that she is considered to be a worse option than damnation. There is one more quote that could shed some light on her character, and this one is attributed to her directly:
“Body and spirit are sworn enemies. They will take any excuse to be rid of each other.”
Yeah, she’s not nice. With that in mind, a black and white, good vs. evil conflict doesn’t seem to fit her. Instead, it’s more of a lesser evil situation. There is an eternal war on her world, with the dead rising to continue the fight. I imagine those opposing her utilize necromancy, for the nice parallels and to deprive her of warriors to reanimate.
First, I’d like to say that I love pretty much everything about this guy. I mean, he has a T-rex arm! He’s clearly channeling BW Megatron - it’s even the correct arm.
In any case, I think there already exists an ideal world for it: Muraganda. This plane has only been mentioned on three cards (Imperiosaur, Muraganda Petroglyphs and Feeding Grounds) but it appears to be a prehistoric world that is focused on big creatures that don’t have abilities. In this case, the Mimeoplasm is some sort of unique freak of nature, existing only to consume and grow. The fact that it can only eat dead things when it enters the battlefield indicates that it has to continue to consume stuff to stay alive, which means it probably is natural; mana can’t sustain it on its own. And of course, it can only consume dead flesh, so it has evolved to become huge so it can kill things and make them edible!
The rules insert for the mimeoplasm deck confirms the muraganda theory, and gives names of tribes of the plane and their view of him, the most info so far about a very highly anticipated plane to visit.
ReplyDeleteI saw that! I'm unreasonably proud that I was right.
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