Fallen Empires || Crack-A-Pack - Aug 27, 2024
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- Опубліковано 5 лют 2025
- Someone's gotta open these packs eventually and that someone is Graham. Today's pack is from Fallen Empires.
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Fun thing about Orcish Spy. He’s gotten a good bit of use as of Outlaws of Thunder Junction because he was errata’d to be an outlaw (a rogue I believe to be specific) and he commits a crime everytime he looks at someone’s deck.
the goal of the zealot is to "force" a block. the opponent have a birds of paradise that they would like to keep. you attack with the zealot, at the end of the turn, the birds is dead, through chump block or the effect.
I think it's an interesting mechanic, specially paired with combat tricks
It’s certainly one of the more playable cards…
Also keeps them from attacking with their X/3s. They need to leave them back to block.
It also forces a player to keep attackers back to block, you don't hit with your wind drake if this guy can swing on the return and kill it.
And white: noted color of tapping things
That vocal effect on Graham reading the text made it utterly unintelligible sadly
yeah, a bit too much echo or reverb on that
I'm glad it wasn't just me, I was like "wow my audio processing issues are really bad today".
The crackling too, uuugh.
So, it perfectly matches the text he had to read.
I thought it might be my headphones, but yeah, no. Came down to post this.
The point of the Farrel's Zealot is to kill evasive creatures or utility creatures that the opponent doesn't want to block with. If they're running an aggressive board with stuff that's trying to kill you, you just blow it up if it's 3 or less toughness.
It's still not GOOD, mind, but it's got specific use-case in blowing up flyers and mana dorks and other stuff that doesn't normally get involved in combat.
The aura that gives the same effect is better (and great in multiplayer for politics)
True, I killed an Archeologist once that way. You also have Farrel’s Mantle in the same set. People used to use that in combination with Sengir Vampire.
Ya, it's more about forcing your opponent to block than anything else.
It's not good, but it's a tiny bit better than if it didn't have the text on it which makes it better than about half of the cards in the set.
If your opponent has a tapped 5/3 and you have Farrel's Zealot then they're probably unhappy. It's a powerful counter to the Juggernaut meta.
You're probably both unhappy. You're playing with Fallen Empires cards. ;-)
Full disclosure - I opened tons of FEM back in the day.
Kai-RUHR-jen
It's from the Ancient Greek "kheirourgós" - kheír, meaning “hand” and "érgon" meaning "work".
And in Dutch and Afrikaans, "chirurg" means surgeon. So it's a handy Dutch Goblin surgeon. Neat.
You pronounce it surgeon, but it’s old spelling with roots in French. In French it’s eveb written the same.
I thought it was "chi" as in Chimera. So a Chimera surgeon. A Chirurgeon. Still Greek though I guess.
If Homarids have a million fans, then I'm one of them.
If Homarids have one fan, then I'm THAT ONE.
If Homarids have no fans, that means I'm dead.
TAKE MY HOMARIDS OUT OF MY COLD DEAD CLAWS WOTC. YOU CAN TAKE MY CEPHALIDS, BUT I WILL NOT GO DOWN QUIETLY IF YOU TAKE MY HOMARIDS
Homarid Spawning Bed is a great card 👊
Yay Lobster people!
If Homarids have onlyfans, than I'm happy for them but I'm not into that
I love when they put the effect over his voice when he reads the pack descriptions. I can't even understand half of what he says cuz of the ecco lol
That dolphin, always making too much noise so we can't hear what other people are saying.
Flying carpet and the Zealot is the only way, Graham.
Early MTG was a puzzle, and not every card in FE was worth trying, even back then.
Don’t forget Goblin Kites 🪁 😂
There are a few things to keep in mind about Fallen Empires, first it was considered a bad set and early enough to remind players that they didn't include lands like a normal booster.
As to the "use" for Ferrel's Zealot, less situational but more super edge cases. The first use was in multiplayer, you would attack into someone completely open to kill another players creature.
And the second use was combining it with the Ward cycle. From Alpha to Fourth Edition there was a full set of color wards white mana players could use to give protection from the corresponding color. So a dirty white player would often have Wards and Circles of Protection in their sideboards to shutdown players based off of their mana base.
That said, FE wasn't nearly as bad as Homelands. It was the first 'kindred'/'typal' set, and there's plenty of playable-at-the-time cards in it. The reason FE is infamous is not card quality - it's full of bad cards, sure, but so were the Dark and Legends and Antiquities. It's the fact that it was when Wizards actually printed enough to meet orders, and most stores ordered more cases than they wanted because they'd never actually get the number they ordered. This resulted in FE being way, WAY overprinted.
@@aliasisudonomo Honestly I enjoyed this set far too much, as I constantly tried to make thallids work for me. (it never did)
The main thing was there wasn't much in the set that was a stand out amazing. It came out not long after Legends(with big boys for the time) and the Dark(fun spells and artifacts). And heck we were not that far out from beta and Arabian nights when balance was still being worked on.
I still adore Fallen Empires and that will never be taken from me! Thrulls, Saprolings, and Homarids forever!
I swear the Fallen Empires pack flavor text is the single most read flavor text on this channel
Excellent, as always. Thank you!
3:33 According to the MtG Wiki, Banding/Bands with can be used while blocking, if at least one blocker has it. Then the defending player assigns the blocking order instead of the attacker.
It's actually much better than that. The player with the band assigns damage. So if you blocked a 6/6 with 6 1/2s in a band you could choose for none of them to die.
Honestly, banding is awesome and nonintuitive and I love it. I run Adventurers Guildhouse in my MonoG Legends edh deck and I'm never disappointed that it doesn't tap for mana... until it does when I or someone else plays Yavimaya or Urborg and then I'm ecstatic!
Yep, you can block in one huge band. It’s nuts!
The Farrel's zealot could hit a tapped creature maybe? I'm not so sure if that really helps it from being totally awful but that is still a thing it could do.
I mean, if if they attack you with their 3/3, you get to kill it on the crack back with your 2/2 (and even keep your 2/2). You can also use it to kill utility creatures like Llanowar Elves that they wouldn’t otherwise want involved in combat at all
It works in commander
Came here to see all of the people telling Graham how zealot can be useful. Happy to see lots of those.
Ah yes, brings me back to a weekend afternoon in a crowded card shop that has long since gone out of business. You could practically hear the crowd of folks shredding packs and mentally deflating at how weak and feelsbad this set was at the time. Lots of people came in and were asking to cancel preorders as word spread. Guy who ran the shop said a lot of people placed reserve orders and never paid, which had never ever happened before for any Magic, ever.
Whenever someone says , "This is killing Magic!" I always remember the window of Type II, Fallen Empires, Chronicles, and Homelands and think...."Yeah, but Magic can survive pretty much anything, lol."
Gotta say though, watching the pack crack here was good for the nostalgic bump.
I loved the flavor for the set of Fallen Empires, bought so much as a kid.
Fallen Empires packs: still more exciting than Aftermath boosters
How? Aftermath had cool story moments and some neat designs.
Farrel’s Zealot can kill an X/3 that cannot block for some reason (tapped already or can’t block in general)… it’s still bad, but it can, technically, do a thing…
:)
Step 1: Buy case of Fallen Empires.
Step 2: Draft it.
Step 3: Enjoy mono black draft.
The only thing I can think of with Ferrel's Zealot is flunging with other, bigger threats, and then using the three damage to force a trade if your bigger threats get profitably blocked. But it falls really inside "don't play bad cards"
Not really relevant to the Zealot specifically but this discourse reminded me that this was when dealing damage used the stack.
@@LadyLunarSatineI’ll do you one better: Fallen Empires was actually BEFORE combat damage used the stack. Because there was no such thing as the stack.
I think that rolled out in Sixth Edition.
I think "Chirurgeon" would be pronounced kai-rur-gin because, judging from the art, they're a surgeon who makes chimera.
There’s a “Delif’s Cow Tools” joke in there somewhere, I just know it
Just noticed "Delif" is an anagram of "Field." Which is where you find cows, of course.
I think that's what the homarid is holding.
Similar to Joven's Tools, surely.
There's a demon that's suddenly very interested in this channel...
Great to see you open one of these! What a beautiful set ❤
Btw, you had uncommon 1, 2 and 3. I believe an uncommon 1 is comparable to a rare.
An option with the zealot is a way to get rid of something big.
If you have a 5/5 and the zealot, while your opponent has an 8/8. Let's say your opponent is at 5 life. They have to block the 5/5. You can then have zealot not deal combat damage and you are able to kill the 8/8
I think Graham also provided the vocals for Altered Beast. "Wise fwom your Gwabe!" , also with a mouthful of ham.
Fun fact: Delif's Cone is named after the same person that Feldon's Cane was (originally) named after. (I may have been reading MTG Wiki's vanity card page a few days before this video came out)
Also, apparently the "chi" in "chirurgeon" is meant to be pronounced like the greek letter, so "kai-rurgeon".
@@Haights this was what I thought as well, because of the word chiropractor
"You gain it's power in life" is a great bit of rules text just because I wish it was in this real life of mine; that I gain the power of my creatures
You should make a video going over all keywords with Graham's thoughts. CONTENT!
You can even make shorts out of it.
Crack a keyword!
I think you've about sussed the Zealot - they're never not going to block if they can but you might be able to hit an aggro creature that's already tapped. Doesn't have a "defending player controls" clause so might be neat with multiplayer
A few neat ones in there. I highly recommend finding the Fallen Empires constructed group on social media and trying it out. The set is super fun when in a more limited setting. And, as the cost of those cards indidcated, SUPER cheap to enter. It's a lot of fun.
There were no basic lands in the Fallen Empires set. (There were some early storage lands, but no basics.) So you really kinda needed other MtG product to play Fallen Empires. This was back when you needed to open your basics in your randomized product, so if your starter pack didn't come with enough of the right color, well sucks to suck.
Farrel's Zealot actually seems cracked in multiplayer! You convince someone to let them attack you so you can kill another player's creature.
Art featured in Goblin Chirurgeon; Jedit Ojanen (Legends) or Natural Selection (LEA), Uthden Troll (LEA) and Llanowar Elves (LEA). Happy to help 😂
I think you're being SLIGHTLY unfair to Ferrel's Zealot. Don't get me wrong, you're pretty much spot on about how difficult it is to get it to go off, and that does reduce it a LOT. But it is a repeatable ability to snipe opponents creatures, in white, for only four mana, that you could just use to hit them in the face. But if your opponent was playing a goblins deck, and had that Goblin Chirurj- Courg- Seurge-... Goblin Doctor, I wouldn't mind having that tool in the deck. Put it in a blue white or green white deck from the time and I could see it being useful.
The Zealot could be useful if your opponent only has one creature and you attack with two and the extra power is enough to finish off their blocker. Like if you attack with a 4/4 and the Zealot and they have a 7/7. They block the 4/4 because it's the more dangerous creature on your board. The Zealot then goes unblocked but the extra 3 power it adds to your 4/4 is enough to get rid of their 7/7. You lose your 4/4 but with the boost it trades for the 7/7 and you still have a viable blocker on the board. Which is about as edge case as you can get.
The fact that I started with this set and continued playing for like, five years is bonkers.
Man, I really want to put together a set of decks built around the empires that fell for this set and send them in for a paper fight now. Shouldn’t be too expensive…
I think the "You must have magic the gathering to play" just means "this isn't a whole game, purchasing one booster isn't enough for playing the game"
Pretty sure I remember that "You must have magic the gathering to play" meant "there's no basic lands in this pack, and you'll probably need those to play." (Even if that technically isn't true.)
I believe at the time "Magic: the Gathering" referred to the core set.
As someone who really only played Magic during the unlimited/revised days, you couldn't play magic without buying probably several starter boxes and then a bunch of boosters. For one thing, if you didn't buy a starter box, you'd have no conception of what the rules to the game were and you'd have no other way to find out other than to get a rule book from someone else who had bought several starter boxes. Not to mention having no land to speak of. You definitely couldn't play an expansion set without buying the "Magic: The Gathering" set, as the starter/boosters didn't have any other name or edition at the time.
Many effects in that meta made a creature UNBLOCKABLE, _but_ , the creature had to be 2 or less power.
Also, good 1st pick IF ALREADY IN B. If not, I take the Skirmishers ; they muck combat math REAL good.
12:00 It bolts a creature that can't block. Like an exhausted Homarid.
I don't even play Magic anymore. I just watch these to see Graham slowly go mad.
I like Zealot for goofy Commander play. "Let my Zealot through and kill our opponent's creature."
That's exactly what I was thinking. It seems like a decent political creature in multiplayer. Not great, it can only do 3 damage, but still decent.
The mantle is better, since it's an aura, isn't double white, and can deal much more damage, but yeah it's very fun.
Farrel Zealot: You tap their creature and then they can't block. Then you kill their creature. It also discourages them from attacking you as they need to block the Zealot.
I liked the warning you needed to have Magic already. It's pre the days of all information a click away online.
"Could you band on blocks?" Kind of. Banding is sort of two abilities, you can attack "as a band" and all that entails, but also when blocking, if any creature blocking has Banding, you (the defender) divide the combat damage of the creature being blocked instead of the attacker. Banding is absurdly complex for how short and old of a keyword it is.
You just know Gavin is fast tracking Delif into a set now
Just give him an enters trigger of creating tokens of the entire shape set.
Dear LRR viewers, if you're looking to crack this set for value, don't bother. Only one card (Rainbow Vale, $9.96) even breaks the $4 mark, even with most of the set's rares residing on the Reserved List. But if you're looking for cool cards from 30 years ago, regardless of how niche and underpowered they may be, it might be worth your while. In particular this was the set that introduced Thallids, one of my personal favorite archetypes, and a couple cards still hold up surprisingly well.
Elvish Farmer and Conch Horn also hold some value, right?
@@TimmytheSorcerer About $3 apiece. Given that packs of Fallen Empires tend to run about $9, I'd say it isn't worth it.
The Zealot can be quite effective in a multi-player game. Just get an opponent to agree not to block it, and you can shoot down most of the utility creatures in the format. Note that the target creature DOES NOT have to be controlled by the defending creature.
Delifs cone is a cherrieo so it does have a use. Also if you wernt playing in this era.. the average player didn't have moxen, Ancestral recall..etc.. this was it. Fallen empires and chronicles, lucky for ice age and bulk 3rd and 4th. Let me tell you, magic was different, it was a slog fest.
7:30 don’t know that the arm is from, but the body is almost certainly from Jedit Ojanen
Uthden Troll?
The body is from the bird person on Natural Order.
@@admanios Natural Order was first printed after Fallen Empires. Also, what Natural Order art has a bird person, much less one with tiger stripes?
@@poiri pardon me. I meant Natural Selection.
@@admanios that makes more sense than Jedit Ojanen, not only being closer in looks but also being from Alpha like Llanowar Elves and Uthden Troll are.
The efficacy of the Zealot is most likely explained in the Rulings on the card (i.e. The ability resolves during declare blockers step, it doesn't have to target a creature that the defender controls).
So you could swing on an empty board in a multiplayer game to kill an annoying 3 toughness creature a DIFFERENT opponent controls.
I think the Farrel's Zealot works with more than one of them in situations where one can't be blocked, and you use the unblocked one to kill the blocking creature. Because of the wording as a trigger that happens on the end of blocks, it goes off before damage, so there's potential of killing a blocking creature.
Basically, I think it's a card that does well with other copies of itself?
Zealot sounds lovely as a political tool in Commander, "Let me attack you with my Zealot (and deal no damage) and I will deal 3 damage to that other player's creature engine."
In case you're wondering, no, Colin Farrell has not played a priest yet, as far as I'm aware.
Regarding the Zealot, keep in mind there were a lot of effects that reduce the dealt damage. Back then I remember a lot of creatures narrowly defeated by a little power boost or saved by a little damage prevention. Dealing more damage made this a more reliable effect. Your opponent would also want to block this if they had multiple creatures and they could sacrifice one of them to keep the other, denying you the choice who to bolt. And then there's also If your opponent was low or out of cards they want to not block and tacke the damage but this kind of forces a block. When you think of tricks and Auras this 2/2 could become powerful enough to outshine the 3 damage effect. It's basically a weird added choice with VERY narrow and specific advantages.
Can we tone it down a lil bit with the effects? I straight up can't understand him anymore at this point. A little is funny, but please don't overdo it
woah woah woah, "not as good mana symbol" ?! I loved that weird little white mana symbol !
If you have 2 of those Zealots attacking into an x/5 and nothing else, it better watch out!
The secret tech is using Delif's Cone to get extra value off of Farrel's Zealot.
I remember in like 98 my local comic shop still had FE boosters for $1.99. I once picked up two for the sake of collecting from as many sets as I could; all I remember is getting an Elven Lyre. Yeah. Memories.
Man, I opened so many packs of Fallen Empires when it came out and I just kept thinking "theres gotta be good cards in one of these packs"
Off the top of my head, Zealot can kill a tapped creature when attacking past it.
Delif's teapot 2 mana artifact {t} Sacrifice Delif's teapot, Delif's tea leaves and Delif's hot water make a tea token (It’s an artifact with “{T}, Sacrifice this artifact: Target creature become base power and toughness 99 and gains flying, haste, trample, double strike, deathtouch, indestuctable, hexproof, shroud, protection from everything and whenever this creature attacks destroy target player") I think this is a perfectly balanced representation of tea
Back in the day Skirmishers were a punch with a soldier deck, as you could attack with them and a bunch of other small stuff and lose little to nothing.
Zealot is fun in Commander. Make a deal with an opponent, they don't block, and Zealot sends 3 damage to take out another opponent's creature that's 3 toughness or less 😂
Graham giving Zordon vibes with the voice effect
Homarid Warrior is most of Morphling, that's a control finisher right there
Farrel's Zealot exists to give your Dwarven Warriors job security, perhaps
Delightful as always!
Give your Farrel's Zealot evasion and you have a Lightning Bolting machine
The combination of a not-particularly-focused art style as well as weird-as-hell card design in combination with a generally-known-to-be-bad set make for a perfect storm of wacky.
The only version of Farrel's Zealot I've seen before today is the Richard Kane Ferguson one.
Unless I am missing something, The Zealot let's you bolt a bird if someone chooses to not block with their mana dork. OR other valuable engine piece that they would not want to chump block with.
I imagine the Zealot encouraging the opponent to block it can be using to bait combat tricks. You might also be attacking with other creatures your opponent wants to block too. Still not good, but I can imagine scenarios that aren't too rare.
I looked up the Zealot to see what type it got changed to (it's Human) and one of the alt arts is a guy absolutely covered in knives.
I actually once bought an MTG comic of Ebay and it came with one of those boosters.
delif is well on his way to completing the verity encounter from salvation's edge
You needed magic to play I think because FE had no basic lands in it
Okay, "Happy pride?" got me good. Also: Chirurgeon is pronounced like "Kai-rur-gen" (kī-ˈrər-jən)
Farrel's zealot takes a flight like a champ
Next time (if there is one) that LRR gets to work on an un-set, I expect to see "Delif's Teapot" as a card :P
Farrel's Zealot is great! I want to get that for making deals in Commander!
Based on the flavour text, Orcish Spy should be a goblin.
Ahh yes, the set where you see what happens when you let your story and art people be the leads on card design.
Actually, due to a technicality, the plural of "deep spawn" is "deeps spawnses"
ring ring ring ring ring ring ring it's delifs cone
I'm not saying Homelands is a low power set, but Didgeridoo is the most expensive card on it, at just under $25. And it's on the reserved list.
5:34 No, no. Delif needs a sphere, a cube, and a pyramid (the cone is a fine substitute).
For Ultima 7 reasons.
oh yes! Back to my childhood.
I guess the Zealot can blow up your opponents tapped Lanowar Elves, denying them a mana source?
I hope you guys get to unwrap some Urza's Saga stuff soon. I went looking through the opened set list and didn't see any.
Back when this was the current set. It was a dark time in magic. All we coyod find localy was ice age and this for a long...long time.
If you have two Zealots, and they have one 2/3, the timing of the trigger is before combat damage, so both your unblocked and your blocked Zealot live. Would have been perhaps more interesting if the set had combat tricks
I mean, give the zealot evasion and you have a free lightning bolt each turn, seems good
Delif's Cone was a vanity card related to Feldon's Cane
Ferrel's Zealot could see some niche use in a Political Commander deck.
Council of Four - Humans maybe...?
Gives you repeatable lightning bolts in white if you have a trusting friend.
Orcish spy goes hard actually
Just imagine using it to make sure your opponent never gets their land drop lmao
It says put them back in the same order. it's not Fatesealing them.
Oldschool tap symbol is my favorite