I Was The Director Of Photography On This Project As Well As The Editor. If You Enjoy John Wick And The

tw: body horror, blood

vin and human

Trans clue memory unlocked:

My whole 7th grade had to learn how to Swing dance. We all had opposite gendered partners to dance with, and kept the same partner as each Gym Class went by. The girls got these sweet coloured poodle print skirts to wear during the dance routines. I was jealous of them. I loved the poodle skirts. I didn't understand why I enjoyed them so much because wearing them was for girls, so they weren't for me. Clearly.

Fun fact: the skitarii are so radioactive that every organic lifeform that they "save" will end up dying of terrible cancers sometime later!

I'm still new to Warhammer 40k, and I have gotten attached to two unit types that seem to be very prone to death (kriegers and skitarii), and I'm not sure if it's just coincidence and I have the tastes of a factually inaccurate lemming, or if it is so that everyone in the 40k universe is very prone to dying.

VTM character concepts that I am compelled to share as they have completely taken over my brain: Part 2, Electric Boogaloo!

So since my last VTM character concept post BLEW UP and my brain is once again back on its bullshit, here are some more ideas! As usual, feel free to use these to your heart’s content! I’d love to hear about your characters too, so feel free to message me about them! Now, on to the main event: 1. A Malkavian researcher obsessed with statistics who hunts down “statistical outliers” in order to make sure their data is “pure and untampered with.”

2. A Ventrue who has created an up and coming adult toy empire (pun fully intended). They currently are in the midst of a fierce battle with the local Setites over who can cash in on the pleasure business the most.

3. A Brujah who was a successful athlete pre-embrace. Unable to participate in their sport and driven by extreme bitterness and jealousy, they now strive to turn the public against this particular as a whole by ghouling athletes and ordering them to discover, leak, and in some cases create, scandals. All the while, they rage against the sport they once loved under the thin disguise of false activism. 4. A dance instructor and head of a renowned academy known for producing performers who constantly seem to be breaking the limits of what the human body can do, much to the delight of audiences. What these audiences (and many newer students) don’t know is that this instructor is a Tzimisce and the performers have been carefully tweaked and trained during “private lessons” using a combination of Dominate and Vicissitude. Additionally, the Tzimisce is in search of a prospective childe worthy of being their dance partner, and has been carefully monitoring select students. 5. A Gangrel cryptozoologist who aims to be able to eventually master Protean to the point where they can turn into mythical beasts.  6. A Gangrel veterinarian who was embraced after attempting to transport what they thought was an injured dog to their hospital, only for it to have actually been their hurt and very annoyed future sire. 7. A fledgling Baali abandoned after their embrace who thinks they are just some weird Caitiff. 8. A Banu Haqim who was traumatized after they were almost diablerized by a Sabbat vamp. Thoroughly disgusted by the practice, they now hunt diablerists, all the while attempting to ignore the cravings and habits of their bloodline. 9. A Hecata “fixer” who makes their living by disposing of bodies, whether turning them to ashes through the use of Oblivion or by adding them to their collection of undead servants. I’m a little tired, so these are all I have for now, though I plan on dreaming up some more. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy these!

New budget Commander cards: Lost Caverns of Ixalan: White

You know these by now, we’ll go color by color, mixing main set and commander set. Reprints can be included if they brought the price down under our bar or are otherwise notable. All the cards presented here are under $2 at time of writing. Cards will be evaluated as part of the 99, not as commanders.

Let's start with three cards for the price of one, three one-drops to keep your curve lean and clean, with useful effects in some decks. Helping Hand is solid recursive value but will need specific decks that are running a toolbox of cheap creatures.

The reliquary is a very serviceable removal if your deck will reliably have stuff to throw away to cast it, adding Ward to an O-Ring makes it a bit less likely for it to be removed. Being a one-mana artifact also means you can find it, a removal for any creature or artifact, off of a Trinket Mage if you need to, which could be clutch.

The Gnome will basically shield you from early aggression then be cashed in as a cantrip later, particularly in decks that can sac it themself. With a reliquary, for example!

I don't know how long this will stay in the budget, but Karnstructs are strong. This represents two artifacts by itself, can be blinked or reused, and even without a board it's not hard to flip it with a few equipments or artifacts lying around and start pumping out more Karnstructs every turn. Consider it in token decks, in artifact decks, in artifact token decks...

Abuelo's Awakening is not great reanimation in any form, but four mana to bring back any powerful enchantment or artifact is pretty much the cheapest we've seen this effect... Just don't be banking on that artifact or enchantment surviving too long. And you need to know what you want to be doing to be playing this, it won't just go in any deck.

A sun titan for 4 is an interesting offer, and one that will do work in pretty much any deck. We're not replacing Sun Titan here (nor Guardian Scalelord) though, Coven requires you to have at least three creatures around, which makes this significantly worse at redeploying after a board wipe and will be much more of a feels bad when you just don't have coven when you need it, and attacking with a 3/3 on the ground can be tricky to trigger it later. I'll stick to my existing options for the time being, but if I ever run a deck that wants 4 different Sun Titan effects and has plenty of creatures, this likely would make the cut.

This is a good removal. White has a plethora of good options for removal, but have another here that's both versatile and efficient, your middle-point between a Swords to Plowshares and a Generous Gift on versatility vs cost.

Grasp of Fate on a body for just one more mana! Of course, that means it'll die much more easily, but that's why the activated ability is there to munch on things... Which will end up costing you a lot more than four mana to get rid of stuff permanently. If your pod can expect a creature to survive a turn cycle though, might still have some places to play this, particularly if you can hold up mana and threaten munching on stuff at instant speed if they point something in your foragers' direction.

This is a two-mana mana rock for artifact decks, that also happens to loop artifacts once or twice. Play it in all your artifact decks with white. Exiling your own stuff means you're less likely to go infinite with it than the average artifact, but if it merely brings back your other infinite pieces while also being a rock, it's good enough.

If you want your board wipes to be artifacts, you now have one more option in white. With a lot of artifact support pieces being creatures with low power (did you know all the Urzas have power 2 or less?), and you picking for all players, this should allow you to keep your best cheap enabler while leaving the opponents with hopefully less impactful dorks. Beyond that, the flip side is a pretty great windborn muse: who would skip their turn of casting spells just to attack you? And you get a 5/3 flier, which isn't too shabby either.

It's a new flying Pridemate, and one with quite an upside when your opponent finally removes her or wipes the board. Beyond the classic souls' attendant style decks, she will also make her way into aristocrat decks, where every blood artist turns every creature sacrificed before her into more creatures when you run out, allowing relatively easy aristocrat combo wins.

Reanimating every turn is nice when you start on the first turn, though the six mana are pretty steep here, you'll want to make sure what you're reanimating is impactful every turn. A card for angels, dragons, demons and such, but in those decks, the top of your curve tends to be filled with creatures of that type, so you might not find room for this.

I had a really poor depressing moment the other day. I was in such a poor state that for the first time in my life I decided, while sober, that I need to get drunk and high to deal with what I was feeling. My friends passed me while I was on the way to get some drinks at the convenience store. They saw me, for the first time in a really long time, dressed like a boy. And a really gross, depressed, visibly distraught boy.

It was kind of humiliating for me. I put so much effort into my appearance for them, but I didn't have the energy to do it that day and they just happened to see me at the lowest I have been in a very long time. It feels so embarassing. I'm gonna see them tomorrow. I just fuckin know I'm gonna spend at least an hour and a half stressing about my look for the event we're going to. I feel so humiliated.

Imperial Fists Praetor

by Ivan Klimenko

Today's budget commander sleeper is one that was already featured in our series on Wilds of Eldraine, but I feel like this is the most underrated card in the set for commander, so it gets a standalone post, this card should see play beyond decks that want tapping effects.

In limited, the crown is excellent by virtue of being a tapper. Having something that removes an attacker from combat every turn at instant speed and isn't easy to remove as an artifact is stellar there. You almost never want to cash it in for card draw because it's doing its tapping job.

In commander, this dynamic flips on its head. Tapping one thing is a nice upside on the card, will keep you alive sometimes, but not something you'd use a slot in most decks for. However, the sacrifice ability scales with the number of players, it takes into account the tapped creatures of every opponent. This is really good. For a total of six mana, payable in installments, on the typical board, you should be able to draw reliably what, three to six cards? Given that the tapping is free on your turn, you can even tap an additional creature before cracking it, netting you an extra card, and if you wait before cracking it, you can pay 1 to tap a creature at end step then crack it on your turn for card draw.

Now, is it the best card draw ever? No, but as far as mass card draw effect, this beats almost everything in red and white, and a good bunch of Black's too. And you incidentally get a tapping effect while you wait on your big card draw spell, which is quite an upside.

If you want a mass card draw effect to refuel your hand outside of blue (and green), at mid-power tables that often have a lot of creatures running around, take another look at this card. It's relatively easy to deploy early and cash in later, or in the late game just cast as a mass card draw spell.

Oh, and it's a 3-drop, which means sun titan, Sevinne's Reclamation and Goblin Engineer are all able to grab it back for more card draw if you want to. It's currently under half a dollar, the set has only been out for a month, and I already got three copies that all found homes in decks that wanted one among my collection

My rendition of Raven/621 and their Ayre. Mech Raziel to build from his colors.

(I love Cybergoths and Blame! So that was my inspo here hehe. Just a bit of this and that.)

Urskan

Image by Steve Ellis, © Wizards of the Coast. Accessed at the Frostburn Art Gallery here

[Despite being a well-read kid, I somehow never even heard of His Dark Materials until I was a senior in high school, and didn’t know about the panserbjorn until publicity for The Golden Compass movie geared up a few years later. So when I first read Frostburn, I thought, “armored polar bears? What a weird and novel idea!” I’m onto your game, WotC.

The original urskan was a strongly overpowered CR 5–I bumped them to CR 7 and still had to tone down their offensive capabilities. No more powerful charge, no more rend. I also got rid of their cold subtype, because not every arctic monster needs it.]

Urskan CR 7 Magical Beast This white bear has a gleam of intelligence in its eyes, and a suit of armor on its body.

The urskan are a species of sapient, semi-aquatic bears. Due to their love of heavy armor, they are sometimes referred to as “armored bears” or even “tank bears” by outsiders. Although they resemble polar bears closely, they also have a notable feature of pandas. All urskans possess a mobile sesamoid bone in their wrist, acting like a thumb to help them grip objects. Although their grip is not as fine as a human’s—urskan writing implements more closely resemble fitted bracers than a pen—it is good enough for them to hold tools and weapons.

Urskans typically hunt in the water for seals, whales and large fish, and do so unarmored. Their armor is donned for territorial battles, displays and clashes with other polar powers such as frost giants. Their claws are exceedingly sharp, but many urskans wield hammers, picks or other dual-purpose weapons as well.

An urskan stands ten feet tall when it rears on its hind legs, but they typically walk on all fours. They get along well with dwarves, and are somewhat distrusting of humans. An urskan’s lifespan is short by humanoid standards—one that survives into its fifties is seen as ancient.

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