Verify what? That the Abomination is an Elf Ball? It's a pretty well known term of any elf deck but the Abomination seems to be both a literal and mechanical version of the term.
Elf Lich's are interesting to me cause the primary draw most spellcasters have to Lichdom is Immortality, which is less appealing to elves cause of there lifespan anyway. In a sense, Elf Liches are more scary cause they didn't do it for fear of death, but almost EXCLUSIVELY a lust for power
Sense these Llanowar Horror is supposed to be a ancient horror from the past I wish they had a throw back to the old Llanowar design by having some of the elves having Mohawk and their weird Goggles in some of the eyes.
I agree, that lore behind it as well as it's flavor text is sooo coooll!! I recently make a Golgari Reanimation deck, so I'm super ready (I really like similar cards like Splinterfright or Revenant)!!
7:55 I thought "Cried" meant more "cried out" as in yelling, rather than crying out of sadness. The Dead want you to join them. 8:20 "intimidate" is the current any-color version of fear. Menace is more because it has enough legs and arms that if you don't send out a lot of dudes to stop it, it can punch through.
Definitely gonna build this! And I am soooo putting my original Elves of Deep Shadow from The Dark into that deck. Great video as always, but this one was a perfect 10 !!! "They are aberrations who have turned on everything we hold sacred. Let them be cast out." - Ailheen, Speaker of the Council
oh man, llanowar dead, that brings back memories... i started playing magic when invasion and core set VI came out... apocalypse came shortly after. nice to see that again.
This was my favorite video you've ever done! You talked about 2 of my favorite cards in magic and my new commander was the whole topic. So happy you threw in talking about the Underrealm Lich. Its such an interesting card and I'm glad to hear to discuss them. Keep it up.
This things what would happen if the deadites from the evil dead films encountered the alien from john carpenter's " The Thing" with a healthy splash of the human centipede thrown in. What a horrifying masterpiece. Need to work something like this in d&d.
I love the idea of a mage that made himself a phylactery that stores energy to control death magic and still be able to have control of the living or life enery too. And i believe that liches are also of noble blood ie. kings and noble ancestors, but i could be wrong.
Ngl this would make a great flavor based commander deck. Because you can exolain it in a way that removes the flavor quibble you had if it's the commander.
Llanowar horror isn’t necessarily a flavour fail. What if when he’s on the field he has already started to devour the elves you put into play. But the process is not instantaneous and the rest of your elves are still capable of free will and somewhat independent action as they’re slowly being consumed.
Yeah it makes perfect sense to me. The elves aren’t fighting for the abomination, they are fighting for you, the planeswalker. They don’t know your evil intentions until you summon your secret weapon and start feeding them to it for power
Actually i can think of one thing that does make it a flavour fail. It doesnt have some form of protection where you can exile elves to give it idestructable as you take out random elves making up its body instead of the creature as a whole.
Yeah, was pretty happy to see that, wanted to make a spooky deck for some time and this is perfect. I will play this with (mostly) spooky elves only and some horrors and spooky changelings sprinkled in
I wish it was a mythic (you will see why) and had "all elves you control have :tap to add green to your mana pool" and " exile any number of elf creatures from your graveyard to add that many black to your mana pool" this would totally work flavorfully and with the stupid FIRE philosophy too
I think the Lich's cloak looks like a combination of mushrooms and flesh. Which would make sense, since he is essentially harvesting the living and the dead in the deep underground. And the new card looks ridiculous. I can't wait to add it to a deck.
So a fix for your quibble would be instead of the card saying elves on the field it still says the part about the graveyard but it also has. Champion elf x, where x is any number of elves you choose to exile elf abomination gets +1/+1 for each elf exiled in this way. These exiled elves are returned to the battlefield when the abomination leaves the battlefield.
Great idea for a unglued card "Elfish Juicero" elf artifact when it comes into play remove any number of elves you control from the game and place under card. Tap add X green mana
Easy fix on the flavor fail: instead of simply your elves in play contributing towards p/t, those elves should be tapped to contribute. The card will then read “p/t each equal to the amount of tapped elves you control plus the amount of elves in your graveyard”. My only other two cents on the vid: no mention of my girl, Elves of Deep Shadow? I know she’s not a zombie, but still, an elf that taps for black.
I like things dealing with “The Brothers War” and Dominaria. Not that I don’t like post mending lore, it just I started playing with my little brother during Tempest is all. Favorite realms though are Shandalar with the concept of a traveling mana rich plane. Lorwyn also and it way of dealing with cataclysmic events with what seems to be locking it magnetic poles in place. Which realistically speaking had been a major bane to intellectual development on our world resetting high technological species to hunters and gathers.
Underrealm Lich is one of my favorite cards. He plays perfectly with Muldrotha and Gitrog. Then I throw in Mesmeric Orb plus Gaea's Blessing. So much fun
I can't wait to enchant my Abomination of Llanowar with Rancor; this thing reminds me of a rat king, ugh. WOTC really missed out on giving Abomination of Llanowar Partner LOL :P
Hi purp, I havent watched any of your vids in awhile (though still hanging out in streams) and I gotta say, for an uncommon, this is actually a decent commander, and one i would consider building! Nice video and really nice to listen to! Already got me some Commander Legends, and am very excited to see what i pull! Definitely going to backtrack over your last few videos to enjoy the card lore! Keep up the awesome work!
Kinda love that I’m most excited for 3 uncommon commanders rather than the mythics. Araumi, Hamza and Nymris are the 3 main commanders in most excited for. Sakashima is cool too, but that’s not in my build list right now...
Abomination of Llanawar should be: 2 Generic 1 black 1 green Legendary Elf Horror 1/1 -Vigilance Menace -Abonination of Llanarwar gets +1/+1 for each elf in your graveyard. -At the beginning of your upkeep sacrifice another elf creature that you control and draw a card. If you can't, lose two life.
I need the sick animar. That'll at least hold it off for a little while then I can use other creatures to help empower my Animar so that it can finally lay this hard to rest.
But Mike, is Abomination of Llanowar drawing strength from living elves really that much of a flavor fail? On of the strongest themes with elves is the way they draw strength from each other, making the sum of an elf community much more than it's parts. As one until death, one could say? But that's it: The abomination isn't truly dead --and it continues drawing from the communal well in a way few horror novel could describe. It's cancer on a level that is hard to comprehend at first.
@@sketchasaurrex4087 Not sure exactly what you're asking about, but they replaced intimidate for the same reason they replaced Fear: It did very strange things to the meta when some cards were unreasonably more powerful against every color *except* one color, as opposed to color-hosing cards like Mystical Dispute that are effective in every game, but particularly good against one color. As for the other thing you could be asking for, it's just the Transitive Property. If a = b, and b = c, then a = c. As for why Menace is the new Intimidate, they occupy the same design space: this creature is SCARY so it's harder to block. Hope this helps!
Love the flavor, it's a nice card but would've been even better if it it's ability was around assimilating the power of each creature it defeated in combat.
Lichs should be legendary. There really is no reason for them not to be. I mean, they are an immense necromantic power house. I find hard to believe that there would be so many out there to a point that they aren't unique.
I don't like the mechanic. It makes sense at the first glance but makes less sense the more you think about it. I hate this kind of design. It should exile Elves from play and graveyard and return them to graveyard when it dies.
The Lhurgoyf is... a lhurgoyf, which is a kind of creature native to Dominaria's frigid north. During the Ice Age it migrated all across the plane, attacking Hans. The Abomination does not have the Lhurgoyf creature type, thus is unlikely to be the Lhurgoyf.
I'm not a huge lore guy, I don't care. I just want to know what the card does and this is trash. I guess, for 3 mana, it is ok. But you need a boardstate for this to be really scary. it does have menace, so they have to have at least 2 to block it. but over all, a very "meh!" card.
![Abomination of Llanowar | Elf Tribal - The Brewery [S05E06]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/dlppKMFv7Fg/mqdefault.jpg)
This guy is the epitome of the player slang 'Elf Ball'! XD
you're going to have to tell me where, I'd like to verify that
Verify what? That the Abomination is an Elf Ball? It's a pretty well known term of any elf deck but the Abomination seems to be both a literal and mechanical version of the term.
Elf Lich's are interesting to me cause the primary draw most spellcasters have to Lichdom is Immortality, which is less appealing to elves cause of there lifespan anyway. In a sense, Elf Liches are more scary cause they didn't do it for fear of death, but almost EXCLUSIVELY a lust for power
That is an amazing point actually, elves don't have the same drive to escape their mortality due to their extreme lifespans.
Sense these Llanowar Horror is supposed to be a ancient horror from the past I wish they had a throw back to the old Llanowar design by having some of the elves having Mohawk and their weird Goggles in some of the eyes.
That would be cool to see all the designs over the years of Llanowar Elves assimilated into the horror ball.
I agree, that lore behind it as well as it's flavor text is sooo coooll!! I recently make a Golgari Reanimation deck, so I'm super ready (I really like similar cards like Splinterfright or Revenant)!!
7:55 I thought "Cried" meant more "cried out" as in yelling, rather than crying out of sadness. The Dead want you to join them.
8:20 "intimidate" is the current any-color version of fear. Menace is more because it has enough legs and arms that if you don't send out a lot of dudes to stop it, it can punch through.
No they discontinued the use of intimidate, menace is the new fear.
@@TheMagicHistorian Shame, I really like Intimidate
Definitely gonna build this! And I am soooo putting my original Elves of Deep Shadow from The Dark into that deck. Great video as always, but this one was a perfect 10 !!!
"They are aberrations who have turned on everything we hold sacred. Let them be cast out." - Ailheen, Speaker of the Council
oh man, llanowar dead, that brings back memories...
i started playing magic when invasion and core set VI came out... apocalypse came shortly after.
nice to see that again.
IPA was my favorite part of magic. Nothing else ever like it.
It has been established that the golgari grow whatever they need from fungus - including clothes. So that cape is (was) indeed living.
This was my favorite video you've ever done! You talked about 2 of my favorite cards in magic and my new commander was the whole topic. So happy you threw in talking about the Underrealm Lich. Its such an interesting card and I'm glad to hear to discuss them. Keep it up.
I get a strong fungus feeling from that Lich's cloak, rather than skin. That fits in with the Golgari flavor, too.
Him and Vraska have the same fashion sense
Golgari is all about mushrooms
Your content is so wholesome and educational. My dude, please keep enjoying these luxury cardboard rectangles with us!!
4:18 Well, the Abomination should have tapped for mana equal to the number of Elves in your field + grave.
And you loose that much life
This things what would happen if the deadites from the evil dead films encountered the alien from john carpenter's " The Thing" with a healthy splash of the human centipede thrown in. What a horrifying masterpiece. Need to work something like this in d&d.
It’s literally an Elf Ball
I love the idea of a mage that made himself a phylactery that stores energy to control death magic and still be able to have control of the living or life enery too. And i believe that liches are also of noble blood ie. kings and noble ancestors, but i could be wrong.
Forgotten Realms has good aligned liches.
I wanted to tell you that your positive coverage while not being as popular is so good. Love you man
Ngl this would make a great flavor based commander deck.
Because you can exolain it in a way that removes the flavor quibble you had if it's the commander.
Your lore knowledge is impressive and your enthusiasm for this card is just all kinds of awesome
This is why I subscribed to this channel.
Thanks for the in depth analysis 👍
💖 lots of love, purp.
Llanowar horror isn’t necessarily a flavour fail.
What if when he’s on the field he has already started to devour the elves you put into play. But the process is not instantaneous and the rest of your elves are still capable of free will and somewhat independent action as they’re slowly being consumed.
The Flavor make it like a Anti-Elf card. Like you put this on the field if your having problems with elf tribes deck.
Makes sense. The flavor of the card says the new bodies are screaming run!
Yeah it makes perfect sense to me. The elves aren’t fighting for the abomination, they are fighting for you, the planeswalker. They don’t know your evil intentions until you summon your secret weapon and start feeding them to it for power
Actually i can think of one thing that does make it a flavour fail. It doesnt have some form of protection where you can exile elves to give it idestructable as you take out random elves making up its body instead of the creature as a whole.
@@micheal5973 May be a bit OP with that. IT not going to put much of a dent on it sense Elves are know for putting out lots of elves token.
I built a commander deck around Abomination of Llanowar and it’s fun as hell. If you like elf ball, 10/10 would recommend
That card is amazing! I'm going to disassemble my all green Elf commander deck and add this guy for sure
Ditto. I’m just debating about using horror as the commander or the new black and green elf partners.
Yeah, was pretty happy to see that, wanted to make a spooky deck for some time and this is perfect. I will play this with (mostly) spooky elves only and some horrors and spooky changelings sprinkled in
I wish it was a mythic (you will see why) and had "all elves you control have :tap to add green to your mana pool" and " exile any number of elf creatures from your graveyard to add that many black to your mana pool" this would totally work flavorfully and with the stupid FIRE philosophy too
I think the Lich's cloak looks like a combination of mushrooms and flesh. Which would make sense, since he is essentially harvesting the living and the dead in the deep underground. And the new card looks ridiculous. I can't wait to add it to a deck.
Maybe add "sacrifice an elf at the end of your turn" would make the horror more lore friendly?
I literally slammed that play button on this video because ever since I saw this card I wanted to know its lore.
So a fix for your quibble would be instead of the card saying elves on the field it still says the part about the graveyard but it also has.
Champion elf x, where x is any number of elves you choose to exile elf abomination gets +1/+1 for each elf exiled in this way. These exiled elves are returned to the battlefield when the abomination leaves the battlefield.
Great idea for a unglued card "Elfish Juicero" elf artifact when it comes into play remove any number of elves you control from the game and place under card. Tap add X green mana
I think the abomination's power grow because of the fear of those elves.
The more elfes fear them, the more power it has.
A lot of the Golgari of that set wear fungus and broad leaves as clothing, The lich’s cloak reminds me of looking through a translucent fern frond.
The cloak has always made me think of the wings of a moth
Easy fix on the flavor fail: instead of simply your elves in play contributing towards p/t, those elves should be tapped to contribute. The card will then read “p/t each equal to the amount of tapped elves you control plus the amount of elves in your graveyard”.
My only other two cents on the vid: no mention of my girl, Elves of Deep Shadow? I know she’s not a zombie, but still, an elf that taps for black.
I like things dealing with “The Brothers War” and Dominaria. Not that I don’t like post mending lore, it just I started playing with my little brother during Tempest is all. Favorite realms though are Shandalar with the concept of a traveling mana rich plane. Lorwyn also and it way of dealing with cataclysmic events with what seems to be locking it magnetic poles in place. Which realistically speaking had been a major bane to intellectual development on our world resetting high technological species to hunters and gathers.
he *poked it a little* lool ^^
Imagine if it had something like “Mutate onto an elf”
5th? Wow, This card ba a beast! ps: my only graded card is a PSA10 alpha Llanowar Elf :-)
Underrealm Lich is one of my favorite cards. He plays perfectly with Muldrotha and Gitrog. Then I throw in Mesmeric Orb plus Gaea's Blessing. So much fun
Solitaire
I can't wait to enchant my Abomination of Llanowar with Rancor; this thing reminds me of a rat king, ugh.
WOTC really missed out on giving Abomination of Llanowar Partner LOL :P
Hi purp, I havent watched any of your vids in awhile (though still hanging out in streams) and I gotta say, for an uncommon, this is actually a decent commander, and one i would consider building! Nice video and really nice to listen to! Already got me some Commander Legends, and am very excited to see what i pull! Definitely going to backtrack over your last few videos to enjoy the card lore! Keep up the awesome work!
Kinda love that I’m most excited for 3 uncommon commanders rather than the mythics.
Araumi, Hamza and Nymris are the 3 main commanders in most excited for. Sakashima is cool too, but that’s not in my build list right now...
The Magic Historian: This guy is just so flavorful! *goes on about the horror tropes used in its creation*
Everyone else: Hehe it's an elfball.
Well now I gotta make a Gogari Elfball EDH and this an auto include.
Elf rock is back. Plague lord will raise again. Hail Phyrexia.
It’s alright
I just wish it would've had nearly the same mechanics, but with a white spin and spirits rather than black and horror.
Abomination of Llanawar should be:
2 Generic 1 black 1 green
Legendary Elf Horror
1/1
-Vigilance Menace
-Abonination of Llanarwar gets +1/+1 for each elf in your graveyard.
-At the beginning of your upkeep sacrifice another elf creature that you control and draw a card. If you can't, lose two life.
i can't get enough of these videos. they are funny as well as entertaining. thank you for all the hard work :)
I need the sick animar. That'll at least hold it off for a little while then I can use other creatures to help empower my Animar so that it can finally lay this hard to rest.
How you described black mana made me sad, I got into magic around Kamigawa and Toshiro Umezawa is my dude, always thought he was a good guy 🥺
He is
Dayum, didn't know WotC also had a crossover with The Last Of Us 2
Great content. Love your approach.
The elf in Play are the Alive part of this
I think the underrealm litch’s cape is supposed to be made out of fungus
But Mike, is Abomination of Llanowar drawing strength from living elves really that much of a flavor fail? On of the strongest themes with elves is the way they draw strength from each other, making the sum of an elf community much more than it's parts. As one until death, one could say? But that's it: The abomination isn't truly dead --and it continues drawing from the communal well in a way few horror novel could describe. It's cancer on a level that is hard to comprehend at first.
They should bring this to MTG Netflix adaptation.
Could the dark force that drew the elves in and created the abomination be the Dark Heart of the Wood?
Man I wish I respected flavour as much as I respect power lol I would enjoy this game a lot more
Intimidate is the new Fear
Menace requires 2 minimum blockers
I think elves in play tie into the living it absorbs.
That Lich is awesome.
Nah they shelved intimidate and do not user it any longer. Menace is the new fear.
@@TheMagicHistorian they shelved Intimidate? It worked more like Fear than Menace.
@@sketchasaurrex4087 Intimidate was the new Fear. Menace is the new Intimidate. Therefore, Menace is the new Fear.
@@Darchias weird, why?
@@sketchasaurrex4087 Not sure exactly what you're asking about, but they replaced intimidate for the same reason they replaced Fear: It did very strange things to the meta when some cards were unreasonably more powerful against every color *except* one color, as opposed to color-hosing cards like Mystical Dispute that are effective in every game, but particularly good against one color.
As for the other thing you could be asking for, it's just the Transitive Property. If a = b, and b = c, then a = c.
As for why Menace is the new Intimidate, they occupy the same design space: this creature is SCARY so it's harder to block.
Hope this helps!
Great topic on this video. Great flavor.
Damn this card is just so good.
Love the flavor, it's a nice card but would've been even better if it it's ability was around assimilating the power of each creature it defeated in combat.
I'm really digging the shirt of today. XD
I am a big fan of the Hat!
Solve the flavor quibble with some banding
I wanted to correct you about the living elves being drawn in term of gameplay but, hopefuly (😂) you did.
Nath of the Gilt Leaf approves
omg i just realized that Magic Historian and you have the same initials
Lichs should be legendary. There really is no reason for them not to be. I mean, they are an immense necromantic power house. I find hard to believe that there would be so many out there to a point that they aren't unique.
It’s an Elfenkönig
Great vid. Thx m8👍
Seems very homunculus from Fullmetal.
Cool outfit, man!
That felt like a long intro
Perfect!
Many Heads!!! HA! Mke is funny!
Sweet
this card is literally a ball of elves FROM LANOWAR that does not tap for mana...ZZZ
I don't like the mechanic. It makes sense at the first glance but makes less sense the more you think about it. I hate this kind of design. It should exile Elves from play and graveyard and return them to graveyard when it dies.
Isn't this the Lhurgoyf? Arch. Hans. Run!!!
Run!! Screamed by saffi right?
The Lhurgoyf is... a lhurgoyf, which is a kind of creature native to Dominaria's frigid north. During the Ice Age it migrated all across the plane, attacking Hans. The Abomination does not have the Lhurgoyf creature type, thus is unlikely to be the Lhurgoyf.
Backlog
I'm not a huge lore guy, I don't care. I just want to know what the card does and this is trash. I guess, for 3 mana, it is ok. But you need a boardstate for this to be really scary. it does have menace, so they have to have at least 2 to block it. but over all, a very "meh!" card.
y6yyyyyyyyyyyyooooooooooo
Second!
First!
🤣what happened to selling channel lol.. get a real job