Why on Earth did I ever think that this was going to be a good idea? Anyway, we start off this week with a card that I should have gotten last week, pushing our total for this week up to 27 new cards to review. I can’t think of anything else to say except let’s get to it.



Ocellus, Hit the Books

Novelty: This text is coming to us straight off of Tempest Shadow & Grubber from last, without modification, and it’s not really bringing anything new to the colour since that card was in Purple too. It’s an okay point that the card allows Purple to be more removal-focused while joined with other colours but even so I’m not impressed.

Impact: It seems clear to me that the 4-req is there to explicitly bar BRB from using the card (since that deck always was Mane’ing Pink). Given that, it would fall to the Purple version of the deck to pick Ocellus up, and it might have. This card would certainly have been a help.

Flavour: Since sending to top of deck is the hardest form of Friend removal that Purple has access to, it can get associated with the toughest punishment that the colour can dish out: detention, extra homework, yada yada yada. So that’s okay, even if it feels a little off coming from earnest Ocellus here.

Rockhoof, Pillar of Strength

Novelty: Rockhoof’s primary Novelty score comes from his position as one of the few cards in the game that properly plays slowly. Taken together, after a few turns this card is usually 4 Power, and easily enough 8. But that takes time, and there haven’t been very many cards at all in the game that reach stupendous value like that only eventually.

Impact: Unfortunately, Rockhoof falls to the same Problem as did Star Swirl. Only maybe even a little worse, since at least the opponent was incentivized to get rid of Star Swirl before any of his triggers happen. The opponent might not feel like Rockhoof has to be dealt with until 2 or 3 turns down the line. Notably, of course, he’s only costing you 1, which helps, but ultimately the card would be unlikely to have much of an impact on the board.

Flavour: As I’ve said, I’ve felt pretty good about Flavour on nearly all of these Pillar cards, with the singular exception of the somewhat staid art choices. Similar to Flash before, can we not have just a touch more action to look at? But yeah, just like Star Swirl was Super Purple, say hello to Super Orange!

Mage Meadowbrook, Pillar of Healing

Novelty: Has there ever been a card that hated Troublemakers this much? You could maybe make an argument for Fire When Ready, but besides that, no. The opposing Resource sweep was done before in Rest in Pieces, but combining effects is always pushing the envelope, especially when you combine really powerful effects like this card does. And attaches a Friend to boot.

Impact: Given that the card almost single-hoofedly destroys the deck that ended up winning this past Continental’s, I naturally have a hard time seeing how it could ended up not making a splash in last set. Even if Yellow already has a ton of cards doing this, as I said above, combining effects is super powerful.

Flavour: Is this Super Yellow? Well, we’re taking two things that the colour is good at, turning them both up to eleven and combining them together, so I’d say that qualifies. Plus, yay, Meadowbrook isn’t just standing there! See, this is all that I’m asking for. Surely Flash and Rockhoof could have got something more like this.

Berry Punch, Party Preparations

Novelty: Based on how I dealt with Meadowbrook above, I feel like I should start giving a little more Novelty weight to cards that combine previous effects than I have so far. Since that really a design decision that pushes both of them. Here, we have the draw effect from the DJ Mane, in addition to CG Shining Armour’s Power philosophy. That’s enough to at least earn us something.

Impact: It’s always hard to gauge which cards could have dredged up colours that were seeing use in the old days. In this case, though, Pink/Orange actually did do a thing in SB, though admittedly only right at the end. I have a feeling this card would at least have been in the running for that sort of deck, so it deserves some respect.

Flavour: When evaluating this category, I’ve found it easier to start at 5 and think about things I don’t like rather than trying to go the other way. Because it’s worth remembering that Flavour shouldn’t be a hard category to get a 5 in. In this case, it’s a little tough to imagine Berry Punch as a solid, dependable character with lots of Power to rely on, but again it matters based on how much a party you’re ready to start. That’s something I can get behind.

Ember, Dragon Lord

Novelty: “Just another Orange Diligent Friend” was an example that I specifically had in mind for things that would score low on Novelty when I was dreaming up this series. Ember does manage to save herself at least, with the ability to provide some level of protection from frightening. She’s also good for providing a “lock without a key” like Distracting Cheerer did before. This card asks for you to have some other source of counters if you want to get max value out of it.

Impact: While Orange has done a lot of protection from frightening before, I’m struggling to think of a meta where it was really, truly, relevant. It’s never been useless, but it’s never really been useful enough to make it an objective worth playing toward either.

Flavour: The flavour text on this one wraps the whole card up into a neat little package, which providing its own cherry on top of everything. The Dragons as a whole I’ve felt to be well-designed from a Flavour standpoint this whole set: capable of working together under the guidance of a tenacious, intimidating leader. What they accomplish with that work, though, is their own problem to solve.

Greta, Cruising Along

Novelty: As many before me have pointed out, Lyra 3.0 here isn’t exactly breaking new ground in terms of what she’s trying to accomplish for the game. Surely I understand why such a card needed to exist, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

Impact: What with the amount of pressure that aggro was under last set, Blue would have surely appreciated another early play to rely on by Turn 2. Especially as this one could guarantee a confront on something, whether the opponent’s TT or your own Problem. So Scootaloo would have appreciated this a lot. Enough to warrant its inclusion, I’d expect.

Flavour: The thing that gets to me about this card is the necessary “drag” effect, i.e. moving something along with it entering play. I get the concept of Greta as on her way, with movement present in the card a fair amount, but to be honest I’ve never really got why any in the “Lyra” series got to move something else.

Friendship U

Novelty: This is the first tri-colour Song that I’ve had to put through this process, and as with all first-time things, it was hard. Eventually, for this category I decided to look at what each effect did, and Pink’s contribution of retiring a random is a pretty interesting one. It’s probably weak compared to the others (unless you can engineer a Poppy point with it, heh), but at least it’s new. Add that to the tri-colour +1 and we’re in an okay spot.

Impact: For an instant I was tempted to say here that tri-colour just didn’t work in SB, a meta where even two colours was often enough a liability. But Pink could do it, which at least gives cards like this a shot, and its Blue and White abilities are worth enough for a look.

Flavour: For the Flavour, I was honestly drawing a big blank here. Songs by their nature are often hard to connect in terms of Flavour, since generally three effects loosely related to the contributing colours are grouped in, as certainly seemed to be the case here. Add on to that Songs usually want to do three different things, and it’s often hard to tie the whole package together and make it feel united.

Reliving History

Novelty: This card is really cool. It took us all a few moments after its reveal to fully grasp all the ways in which that’s true, but such a simple statement of text enables a lot of ways to use it. While that’s kind of captured by Impact, there might need to be a fourth category to cover cards like this, perhaps something like “Elegance”, evaluated based on enabling as much stuff as possible with simple text. Thoughts for the future. Anyway, the card superficially resembles Stand Still! as well as Inspiration Manifestation, but comes away smelling fresh regardless.

Impact: As above, for enabling all of the cool tricks that this card does, it’s hard to imagine not finding it somewhere. The only reason this isn’t ranked higher is that White needed a lot more than just a fancy trick card to become something special. Bugle’s deck might have included this card as a counter-confront tool, but other than that there just weren’t that many decks to take it.

Flavour: In terms of the concept of literally reliving history by sending something back to where it was before, everything here works out. Even in spite of the idea maybe being a little Purple, with time travel and all that, tying it to Rarity and Sweetie with the art and text works great to make the colour work. The only issue, as is often the case on these Harmony cards, is making that scaling work. What to additional Unicorns have to do with any of this?

Mistmane, Pillar of Beauty

Novelty: Unusually for a card with a high rating, there isn’t all that much to say here. The card is novel. It comes out of left field, but rather than leaving destruction like Fireworks, it leaves thought. What is the best way to use an effect like this? Many will ask that question. Some, maybe, will find the answer.

Impact: I agonized a long time over this. Mistmane is so unique that I imagine her Impact would be the same on virtually any meta, which means that this score is unavoidably a projection on FF in addition to a reflection on SB. Provoking an explosion of speculation as she inevitably will, she can’t be lower than a 3. The only question left is how good the decks that she creates would end up being. And while I’m not willing to give her every concession, I can’t give her a 3 either.

Flavour: The card nails the Flavour, encapsulating this idea of a cycle of rebirth and renewal so well. How the card flows from hand to board to discard pile and back, earning you benefits along the way. Embrace the cycle, do not fight it. It’s good. A fitting capstone to the cycle that it’s completing.

Silverstream, Student of Friendship

Novelty: Taking a look back through the full list of cards, I was surprised by how many Problem deck interactions Pink actually has already. This card’s text borrows directly from Music in the Treetops, and comes very close to both the Cheese Sandwich UR and the Party Favour UR. Silverstream isn’t really innovating on either of them, though, except for her low req.

Impact: For the same reason, this is an effect class that Pink has had access to for a long time already, and at comparable costs too. I don’t think there’s ever been enough “Problem deck matters” cards to make this sort of thing desirable.

Flavour: Why exactly is Pink able to interact with the Problem deck? Inside the concept of the game, interacting with the Problem deck is really like being able to see the future coming before it happens, which is actually fine. Pinkie Sense is an idea, after all, though it’s weird that that’s never been explicitly elaborated in a Pink card. Either way, Silverstream isn’t even tapping into that, so I don’t know.

Caldera, Explosive Personality

Novelty: As I mentioned when I first spoiled this card, Caldera offers a third take on the idea of repeatable frighten, costing more than the free one that Midnight gave us, and less than the somewhat risky one you can get from Staff of Sacanas. Exploring that space is good, especially while fitting into the Dragon tribe and potentially pulling them in a slightly new direction. Plus, using the ready instead of the exhaust as the trigger is totally new, and enables the card to go in cool directions if its getting exhausted to some other ability.

Impact: This card’s primary value, I should think, would be in that repeatable frighten, which is not a terrible ability by any standard. While the predominant Orange/Purple of Chaos Control was never going to give up its Stick, it likes what this card can do and is in the right colours. It could have found its way to trying the card out a bit.

Flavour: Like so many of Harmony-tagged cards, the basic foundation of the card is great, incorporating the title and the flavour text into the idea of a dragon who stands as a pretty intimidating fellow. But try as I did, I couldn’t think of a good reason why, when he collects himself after having scared somepony, that would then offer some encouragement to a fellow Dragon. So a middle-of-the-road score then.

Starlight Glimmer, Great and Powerful Assistant

Novelty: Pulling things out of the discard pile temporarily to banish them later is admittedly old hat for these colours, but Starlight does do something new in tying her ability to a novel trigger. In doing so, she creates a situation where that particular ability, normally associated indelibly with control, might get included in aggro instead.

Impact: Unlike, say, griffons, dragons and changelings, the card corpus was full up on Unicorns already, and indeed most of the Unicorns that I’m now looking at to go into Unicorn aggro are old cards. So it’s safe to say that Starlight might have been able to pull a deck or two together in her time, though without the new Trixie it’s harder to say if she would have seen any success.

Flavour: Honestly, I feel like Hithroc should be really pleased with how this set has gone. While there hasn’t been that much Trixie herself, there’s been a lot of “Trixie-fication”, as I would say. Unicorns are getting emphasized for their adeptness at using spells to perform little tricks, and Starlight here is no different. She’s ready and willing to help every unicorn unlock their inner Trixie by giving them some magic to play around with.

Rainbow Dash & Fluttershy, Chillax

Novelty: Yellow has been specializing in these global +1 boosts for a while now, and perhaps the most surprising thing for me is that they haven’t worked out yet. How much is it going to take? Still, this card’s reliance on Pegasi is fresh for it, and reaps those natural points from doing Harmony.

Impact: Surely this dam’s got to burst at some point. We’re right around the point where our Pegasus tokens could be entering at around 4-5 Power after all. This card would be enough to make it work, I think, even if it would take more support (like we’ve got in this set!) to take it to the next level.

Flavour: I have a really hard attaching Swift to a card so clearly lackadaisical in its approach, yet at the same time RD and Fluttershy here are doing it right. An encouragement to get enough rest is exactly the thing that those energetic, enthusiastic Pegasi need to follow, and it will no doubt serve them well.

Tymbal, Talk It Out

Novelty: Adding new cards that score points to the game is simultaneously the most dangerous and also the most necessary experimentation that can happen within the game. Precedent has set the standard that winning almost always an alternative source of points, so adding another in a measured manner like this must be applauded. And doing so in a way that firmly nudges Changelings along is possibly even more important. I’ve lamented before that I couldn’t tell the direction of the Changeling tribe, but now I see. This card is the tribe’s direction, and it’s a worthy one to pursue.

Impact: As a card that scores points, I’ll go out on a limb and say that this card would have seen play in SB even with the dearth of changelings that set had. Thorax Mane would have dragged together as many of them as he could and given it a shot. And who knows, it might have actually worked.

Flavour: This card is possibly my favourite flavour yet. Yellow and White, for the soothing help and for a changeling who knows how to accessorize. Low power, for his own non-threatening nature. Calming is a nice touch too. Plus, for once the Harmony text makes perfect sense too. You’re getting a point because you’re actively working to solve problems before they get unmanageable, and a Feeling Forum isn’t a forum unless at least two changelings show up. It actually all fits.

Gabby, Express Delivery

Novelty: I perhaps ought to give a little more consideration on Novelty for all of the Dragon, Griffon and Changeling Harmony cards, since by their nature they’re pushing archetypes that have to be completely new. In Gabby’s case, she gets extra points for throwing Agile onto a fairly substantial body, and synergizing it well with her own ability.

Impact: One reason to support the above assertion is that due to the fact that Dragons, Griffons and Changelings were more spice than strategy before, most of their Harmony cards now are doomed to low Impact ratings, because you’re a total bomb like Tymbal you’re not going to suddenly incarnate a deck around yourself. Gabby suffers that fate just as well as any griffon has before her.

Flavour: I talked in the last post about how the Griffon tribe functions around the idea not of quite working together, but of having each griffon be individually better instead. Each griffon costs less, or gets to frighten a thing, or draws you a card when it moves, etc. Since this keeps playing into that idea, it’s good. Plus the rest of the stats all seem to line up okay, and the Agile makes plenty of sense for a youth like Gabby.

Applejack & Pinkie Pie, Backdrop Builders

Novelty: We’ve had a couple of cards that start faceoffs when they enter before, that couple being Gilda and SR Maud. But neither of those had anywhere near the same payoff as this one. This has the potential to draw a lot of cards, and I think it necessitates experimentation, which is what new cards should always do.

Impact: As I mentioned for the other Pink/Orange card, we only have to look for eminently_sensible’s Continentals deck to ask if it would have taken something like this. Maybe it would have. Probably it wouldn’t have. And would this card have coalesced a new deck around itself? I don’t think so, though it’s still exciting enough to give me pause. I can’t give it a 2, so I guess it’s a 3.

Flavour: So the thing is that Gilda and Maud both had confrontations worked into their concepts. So too for the Showdowns and the old multi-showdowns. This card kinda does, right there in the art, but it’s self-contained. We’re not challenging the opponent just because there’s conflict inherent in the card. Moreover, again the scaling with earth ponies is a little tricky to walk.

The EEA Council, Strict Guidelines

Novelty: The thing that I love about cards like these, at least as far as this series is concerned, is that they’re so easy to write about. This card’s effect is totally new and completely unexpected. Check.

Impact: This card impacts basically every deck from prior metas, to some greater or lesser degree. The only reason it’s not a five is due to the (small) chance that everyone just ignores it because they can’t build a good enough deck around it. But even then, all decks have to be aware that it exists.

Flavour: This card makes perfect sense, with the staid, stolid council unwilling to put up with any funny business. And, even better, them being so imperious that they’ll enforce those rules on everyone, not just the opponent. In some Un-set, I wouldn’t be surprised if Neighsay enforced his rules on the games adjacent to yours as well.

Pegasus Chariot

Novelty: While essentially doing nothing that hasn’t been done before, Pegasus Chariot gets high marks for rolling everything up into a Resource and presenting such a compelling value engine. It’s a deceptively simple card, but it does everything, and because of that it’s very versatile. Both Blue and Purple like what they’re seeing here.

Impact: It doesn’t matter if you’re primarily moving your stuff or the opponent’s stuff, the card is just as good. That allows this card to fit just fine into two wildly different play styles, and that helps its Impact immensely. Like I said, basically any Purple/Blue deck would need to look.

Flavour: For the “Elegance” rating that I mentioned earlier, this card is off the charts. Both Blue and Purple wrapped up in a single ability, presented as a single sentence. What is there to say? It’s a chariot that moves stuff. Plus you’ve got the pegasi too, so you don’t have to supply a driver; just pay them what they’re due.

Professor Fossil, Chipping Away

Novelty: On the other hand, sometimes you get a softball going totally the other direction. Vanilla entry? Boring.

Impact: I repeat: Vanilla entry? Boring.

Flavour: This one, though, I did have to think about. I wanted to be very careful if I was going to consider giving the card an all-around 1, after all. Such vanilla cards have to exist after all, and Flavour is their saving-grace category. But 4-Power, especially in Orange, comes almost exclusively down to either physical strength, or the results of cooperation, neither of which is in much evidence here. Is “having strong opinions” enough to warrant that designation? No.

Sphinx, Grinning Riddler

Novelty: These guessing type mechanics are nothing new to the game, but they’ve been infrequently enough in the past that it’s useful to have some more to play around with. Especially in a form like this, where it’s not hard to imagine the card’s effect going off every so often. Plus it’s the first time something like this has had such a significant effect, as opposed to just gaining some AT from Magic Arena.

Impact: The problem naturally, is that in SB the Troublemaker choices were relatively set in stone, and the meta really lacked any way to increase the Sphinx’s effectiveness. This card was never going to dislodge Mimics or Grubber from their spots, so it’s hard to imagine a world where it saw much of any play.

Flavour: The card fits the bill for what it’s trying to do though. Like the Sphinx of old, it asks a question, and if you get it right it steps aside. Good stuff. It’s also very nice that if your opponent has Somnambula, this card actually does nothing. Since you have to indicate which card you chose, and your opponent can see your hand. But that’s great from a design perspective.

We’re Friendship Bound

Novelty: At least with tri-colour cards I now have something of a rubric to mark against. The random discard is pretty new, as we had a little of it way back in the day, but not much at all these days. Moving opposing characters is nothing special, nor is getting through Troublemakers though. (Flutter Pirate was basically an Event already.) So Tri-colour +1 plus the Orange thing makes 3.

Impact: Moving three opposing characters or getting through Troublemakers are great abilities, though, as is the random discards when attached to a simple Event. Honestly I’d have marked this card higher if being tri-colour hadn’t been as much of a liability in the past.

Flavour: As I said, for Friendship U, it’s almost an expectation that these tri-colour Songs should be a bit of a mess in terms of Flavour. We’re taking three effects that emulate their colour, and which do fundamentally different things in order to make the Song versatile, and it’s incredibly hard to get something coherent out of that. Consider this 2 almost as a placeholder in that respect.

Somnambula’s Blindfold

Novelty: Ooh, a perfect score! That’s nice, since it usually means I don’t have to write all that much. The Novelty here is easy enough to grasp, as I can’t remember seeing text like that anywhere before. Such an effect, especially expressed as an all-powerful can’t, is quite a powerful one, and well worth seeing around.

Impact: Similarly, last set there was a whole lot of discard pile interaction going on, and a whole pile of deck search going on too. Maybe this is a good time to point out that this card turns off Meticulous?? Yeah, that’s pretty Impactful.

Flavour: As Somnambula’s artifact, the Blindfold forces both players to play blind, to understand that no matter how hard they try, they’re not going to impact their futures or reach back into their pasts to find answers. There is only the now, and the only course of action is to pick a direction and believe it’s the right one.

Mistmane’s Flower

Novelty: As many people better-versed in the CG corpus than I were quick to point out, this is very close to what Fake Crystal Heart did back in the day. But as only the second card ever to implement this ability, and for doing it in a slightly novel way, it’s got to get some recognition. Core could use something like this, for all the weirdness it enables.

Impact: The card clearly has been designed to be a lot better than Fake Crystal Heart for what it does, enough so that it’s going to get some interest no matter where it goes. Is it enough interest to make it actually good. Well, there definitely are enough Resources out there to be worth stealing, that’s for sure.

Flavour: Since we don’t have the full flavour text on this one, I don’t have to evaluate it! Because Flavour is all about the whole package, and we don’t have the whole package. But for what it’s worth, the rest of the card looks good, fitting nicely into Mistmane’s whole cycle of renewal thing.

Defend the Hive

Novelty: This is a pretty simple, straightforward Event, even if we include the whole Harmony Changeling text. To some extent, it can win some plaudits just for being so simple and elegant. Just like with Chariot, simplicity can often open the door to the real shenanigans.

Impact: Thorax adores this card, and though he wasn’t all over the place last set, he sure was knocking on the door. He just needed to get a wing in somewhere, and surely he would have been all over the place. I’d be willing to bet that this card would have been good enough to make some more people see him.

Flavour: I am surprised, though, to see the very simple Immediate-speed move-a-thing Event be in Yellow of all colours. The Changeling add-on is fine, but the vanilla Event is plainly Blue, and that hurts the Flavour a good deal. It’s one of those cards that I can see the intention behind pretty clearly, which is a shame here, because it doesn’t change the facts.

Spike, Fight and Flight

Novelty: In essence, this card functions a lot like an Ember with Diligent, except of course that he only goes in one faceoff per turn. Since his potential payoff is a lot more, then that’s just fine with me. Plus he brings that ability into the proper fold of the Dragon colours.

Impact: When I first saw this card, my first thought was: “This is why the Dragon deck doesn’t have to splash for Ember, huh?” My second was: “I’m probably still going to splash for Ember though.” Now none of that is to hate on Spike. This low Impact rating is simply a point of recognizing that Chaos Control wasn’t about to take him, and like so many of these new cards, Spike isn’t hitting anything special nor is he going to forge a new deck all on his own. Don’t worry, Spike, you’ll have a place in FF if I have anything to say about it.

Flavour: Spike’s growing up! And so he’s becoming more like a dragon, starting some fights and getting in on them. He’s smart enough to pick his battles, but also not tenacious enough yet to get in on too many of them. Just like Ember, though, he’s a noble dragon, so he’ll only end up on the wrong side of the fight sometimes. I know I’m looking forward to having Spike and Nightmare Moon team up to scare off some ponies.

Old Money, Particular Socialite

Novelty: Our text here comes to us direct from A Petite Sneeze, only without the inflated cost and with the added sweetener of that “enters play” ability. That’s a dramatic realignment from its former incarnation, and stands poised to usher in some real fun times.

Impact: Is this the most powerful “enters play” ability we’ve ever had on a Friend. It’s in the running, I’d say. There’s a deck shaping up already that looks to get away with murder thanks to this card, and most of it is pre-FF. Suddenly some cards like Starlight Glimmer, Magic Instructor are looking pretty essential. But I’m not quite ready to say that it’s going to kill everything yet.

Flavour: Well, here we’ve got a very exacting planner indeed. Meticulous 2 is reserved for the ponies who really obsess over the details, and Old Money here likes it just so. Moreover, if you step out of line, she won’t just show you the door. She will end you. But political and social connections can only get a pony so far. Banishing Troublemakers is a little much.

Yona, Friendship or Else

Novelty: A quick look through the archives reveals that Persistent, while a rarity among Yellow Friends, isn’t an unknown. The same goes for Swift, which is a little more common among Yellow. The big kicker here though is that bounce text. For what is I think the first time, the strongest removal in Yellow is being done in a repeatable manner. I know of a deck or two that will like that.

Impact: So Bedtime has been lurking in the shadows for a long time now, played only by a couple of true aficionados. I don’t expect that Yona is going to suddenly bring that thing into the spotlight, but she certainly helps. It’s good that she can find a place there, since I’m not sure if the aggro Yellow can find a spot for her. Maybe it could, but Yellow was very fast in those days, and might not have appreciated a tempo card like this one as much.

Flavour: Yona knows what she wants, and she’s not going to stop until she gets it. Again, bounce is Yellow’s super removal, so if you want a repeatable version of it, you better put it on someone bound and determined to see their way through. Yona even kinda’ deserves the Swift, being a quick stepper when the situation demands it. Not all bad at all.

Well, as to what I’ll do for this when the whole set comes out, we’re going to have to see. I could see myself maybe extending it out as we go over the rest of the set, to avoid having to do dozens of cards in one week ever again. Stay tuned for updates on that.