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by Kevin Hess
Why Homelands Didn't Work Homelands, one of the most easily available sets (and only slig- htly above Fallen Empires in its desirability), never got too far off of the ground with most players in spite of its heavy printing. The low movability of this set can be attributed to a few factors, which we'll examine here. Briefly described, the lack of this set's popularity is attributable to a) the general lack of useful cards in the set, b) the less-than-exciting themes and art, and c) the all too common problem of overcosting. In its basic form, Magic is a card game - deprived of all stat- uses such as rarity, value, interest, and art and flavor text, the most important parts of the card are the upper-right hand corner and the text box. As casting cost will be described later, we'll focus on the text box(and power/toughness concerns as well, while we're at it). Unfortunately, Homelands suffered greatly from nearly every single card having weak effects. One of my (least) favorite examples, Winter Sky, has an effect that doesn't really justify it even being printed:
The point of this card is basically suicidal. If the coin comes up heads, you give your opponent a one-card advantage over you, since you expended a card for the effect. If it comes up tails, you produce a weak effect that doesn't kill most creatures and barely damages a player. On top of that, the effect isn't even reliable - you may badly need the next card, and Winter Sky might give you damage instead. Or, you might need to clear a few Mtenda Lions or something, and Winter Sky gives you the card effect. The card is basically a waste of deck space, in other words - if you can't depend on your cards to function, you're better off repla- cing them with something else (which explains the low popularity of cards like Bottle of Suleiman, Mana Clash, Game of Chaos, Mijae Djinn, etc...). Other card effects give similar (non-existent) bonuses. Grandmo- ther Sengir's text reads - 1B, T: Target creature gets -1/-1 until end of turn. With her costing 4B to cast, being a Legend, and only 3/3, this makes Ghosts of the Damned seem damned useful in comparison. How'd you like to pull Granny Sengir in a pack? I mean, if you didn't need her for a set? More (nearly) useless cards include(in alphabetical order, I'm going through my set right now:). I'm being extremely generous on a lot of these cards, by the way.
This list, of course, doesn't include questionable cards like An-Havva Constable(People of the Woods is better, and they're almost use- less themselves), ALL of the minotaurs, Apocalypse Chime(what's there to get rid of? Feroz's Ban?) Broken Visage(overcosted, even though it's nice to get rid of two creatures at once), Carapace(creature enchantme- nts.. ugh), Cemetery Wall(a 0/5 non-flying wall isn't a great deal for three mana), Drudge Spell(how many creatures do you really expect to go through?), Ghost Hounds(special abilities stink, Erg Raiders are much better:), Giant Oyster(overcosted, weak special ability), Jinx(well, at least it's a cantrip..), Prophecy(use Heal instead:), Renewal(2G is a big price to pay to help against a color screw in a multicolor deck, and it doesn't help if you're screwed against green, obviously..), Serra Bestiary (use Pacifism, it's got better quotes and there aren't too many dangerous tapping abilities anyway:), etc.. The themes and art also suffered from a lack of actual, well, interestingness. Every single aspect of the creative nature of the set seemed to suffer, from the names of the people and places involved (An-Havva, Soraya, Grandmother, Irini, Daria('diarrhea! cha cha cha!') and Baki just don't seem to conjure up the images of power that Bogar- dan, Urza, Mishra, Nicol Bolas, Hammerheim, and Juzam could), to the creatures, artifacts, and spells represented by the cards themselves. (Legends gave us the mighty Abyss, Homelands gives us Mammoth Harness.. Alliances gave us Force of Will, Homelands gives us Memory Lapse.. the basic set gave us Ancestral Recall, Homelands gives us Forget.. etc.) Also, the flavor text, for the most part, stinks. Even Autumn Willow, one of the few truly useful cards in the set, has excessively lame flavor text. (When you think about it, how exactly do you plan on going about rattling her bones? She can't be touched!) The art, as well, was typically substandard - the majority of the work was dull, darkly colored, and representational of the card's function or identity only. Then again, what can you really do with a Mammoth Harness, make it neon-colored? Mike Kimble seems to have done a lot of the art in the set, and although his technique seems to have improved greatly over time(Stupor and Sandstorm from Mirage are really nice), his early work.. well, sucks. No offense, of course. Now, for the most rampant problem of the set - overcosting. Overcosting is the misappropriation of casting cost and ability cost for the effect, in this case where an ability or casting costs too much for the worth of the effect. The tri-lands are a good example. The land can be tapped for one free colorless(er, generic) mana; alternately, 1, T: gives the land's base color, and 2, T: gives your choice of the base color's friendly colors. Well, considering that the land itself produces 'free' colorless mana, the 1, T: abil- ity actually ends up costing 2, and the 2, T: ability costs 3. Here's another example, the majority of the Legends in the set(with Ihsan's Shade and Autumn Willow being notable exceptions). Irini Sengir might be worth playing with if her casting cost were BB1, or, more reasonably, B2; with the majority of the 'clone' cards discontinued, being a Legend is more of a weakness than anything else. Additionally, her low power and toughness make her generally not useful for combat; therefore, her special abilities should make up for it. However, her only special ability is the extremely weak 'all white and green enchantments cost 2 more to cast'. Hypnotic Spectre costs a full one colorle..er, generic mana less than Irini, and multiple copies may be in play. Additionally, the combination of flying -and- the random discard make them much more powerful than Irini Sengir ever could be(unless the HL design team shot themselves and the AL/IA team took over..). The same logic goes for the whole Sengir family, Rashka the Slayer, Soraya the Falconer, etc. Now while it can be argued that Hypnotic Spectre is undercosted, there's no argument against the overcosting of the aforementioned cards. Not to mention Feroz's Ban, Serra Paladin(another 2 colored and 2 generic mana 2/2 creature with useless abilities..), Mammoth Harness, etc., etc., etc.. Remember, there are good cards in every set - Antiquities is literally packed with boners, but it also gave us Strip Mine, Mishra's Factory, Mishra's Workshop, Candelabra of Tawnos, Argivian Archaeol- ogist, and of course the (apparently) overpowered Clockwork Avian. :) The Dark, though generally considered a weak set, gave us Ball Ligh- tning, a few Goblins, the indispensible Maze of Ith, Ghost Ship(a way underrated card), Scavenger Folk(which are excellent for green weenie decks), and Brothers of Fire. The much-maligned Fallen Empires gives us the white and black pump-Clerics(the Orders), Goblin Grenade, the sick and twisted Hymn to Tourach(I guess), Goblin Warrens, and, naturally, the unforgettable Orgg and Derelor. Alliances was packed with strong cards, with Pyrokinesis, Kjeldoran Outpost, Deadly Insect, Contagion, Dystopia, Lake of the Dead, Force of Will, Arcane Denial, Diminishing Returns, and others. Homelands, on the other hand, doesn't have a whole lot to recommend it, although a few cards have become tournament staples(or at least considerations). Ihsan's Shade can provide a black deck with a nearly unkillable monster, while Autumn Willow does the same thing for a green deck. Serrated Arrows can plink off multiple creatures and have been indispensible in many sideboards while HL was still T2 legal. And in my opinion, there were a lot of other cards that had potential, but never were realized - Koskun Falls along with unblockable creatures(and Winter Orb!)? Folk of An-Havva for quick defense? Labyrinth Minotaurs along with tons of counters to slow the game w-a-a-y down? Homelan- ds didn't exactly rock my world when it was released, but there were a few decent cards in it. And Didgeridoo worked like hell against counter-heavy decks if it made it safely into play... However, the problem with the above sentence, at heart, is the word 'few'. The set was mostly useless garbage, unless you were prone to making only fun decks, or a newbie(where eight mana for a 5/5 flyer isn't exorbitant). Myself, I hope the same design team isn't at work in Weatherlight, or Magic is going to experience some hard times...
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