Sorry We... Put Brainwash Online Instead of These Cards (Part 9)
Today we're looking in depth at ancient Chinese history during the Three Kingdoms period from 199-276 AD as told through cardboard game pieces of no particular order. Or not, and we'll just make fun of a bunch of probably-not-playable cards!
30-29) First, let's do the real weirdoes
The weirdest part of these cards is not the fact that Shrieking Specter has 4 cocktail-drink flags stuck in his back, or that Sewers of Estark is an instant that literally gives you your own sewer rather than saying "Skulk Through Estark's Sewers" or somesuch. The weirdest part is how they were distributed... and the fact that two similar methods have just recently come back to Magic.
Shrieking Specter is from Starter 1999, which was Magic's first attempt at the "Planeswalker deck" thing they're doing right now. Where there's a bunch of new cards that are designed to be terrible, but Magic allows them in Standard so new players can bring them to FNM and learn they're terrible face-to-face after losing every game. After everyone realized how terrible having Portal dumbing down all the language was, they instead made these Starter decks for 2 years with more or less (definitely less) "normal" cards. They also did terribly. Everything back then was terrible.
Sewers of Estark, on the other hand, is a lot more like the other kind of non-booster standard card, the infamous Nexus of Fate, where you have to do the exact right thing at the exact right time to acquire them. You had to buy the first Magic novel Arena and then mail in a coupon within a certain time frame and get unlucky enough to get this card instead of the much better and more interesting card Arena. Which happened to me. (Twice.) They were all immediately proto-standard legal, just like Nexus of Fate, so if you were a collector of course you needed to track them down. The real money card was Mana Crypt but the (now-temporary) killer of these unique standard promos was Nalathni Dragon (yes, I want to trade +1/+/2 for banding? Is that... good?), which was originally only available at a single convention. That made Wizards promise never to print standard promos again until this year, when they said that it wasn't a "for-real keepsies" kind of promise, despite 20ish years of players assuming it was and talking about it as such. Oh well. Personally, if we HAVE to have standard promos (and I really hope we don't for the rest of Magic's life), I'd much rather have them be closer to Sewers of Estark than Nexus of Fate, disturbing brown trackmarks and all.
In terms of the cards, Shrieking Specter is notable for being the only "attack trigger" Specter, and also the fact that his art is totally bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S bananas.
In addition to the cocktail flags and the art director shouting "More tendrils!" in his ear, the artist decided to show us the ghost's internal organs. That's a somewhat unusual choice, though if you think about it, why DON'T we see more intestines inside ghosts? I mean, if they're both dead and transparent, you kind of SHOULD be able to see all of their gross inner bits if you squint, right? So bravo to rk post for showing us the gross truth about ghost guts. Also, it's the rare ghostly Magic creature that shoots flecks of spittle out of his mouth. What happens if you get ghost spittle on you? Can you brush it off, or does it kind of stay there incorporeally for the rest of your life?
So apparently, Estark has no sanitation until you cast this spell, and suddenly the Estarkians are like "Sweet! My toilet no longer empties directly into my basement!" This is what happens when you turn a land into an instant for some reason. There's not a single creature skulking around in the art, it's literally "Here are your magically-created sewers." Everyone in town runs to use the toilet in the 15 minute window where the sewers do exist, then hope for more terrible Magic cards tomorrow.
28-25) Next, Portal 2 dorks
I decided against giving Portal 2 it's own article, as there's nothing to say except "Why bother with spells when you've got firearms?" and I said that last time. So I had a cram a few randos in this article. After this, I promise it's all 1700 year-old Chinese history filtered through middle-aged white guys onto pieces of randomized cardboard.
Speaking of firearms, Alaborn Zealot looks ri-diculously happy that she finally got her own gun and can finally hunt ducks or goblins or whatever. This is despite the fact that she's wearing some of Magic's most flagrant "boob armor", which is allegedly very painful to wear in addition to being a highly impractical sword-funneling device aimed directly at one's heart.
With a face only a mother could love, if his mother was a Chevy from the 1930s, Cunning Giant puts the "ing" into cunning. Eight feet of chest hair later, you have a giant who has mastered the art of "hiding behind things of comparable size" as opposed to most giants, who hide behind confused rabbits and shrubbery. He's the Elon Musk of the giant world, and not just for his musky odor. Though, yes, also for that.
Festival of Trokin is the name I would totally register if I went to a team event. That's because it's the only card in Magic that's exactly the same as Peach Garden Oath, so it would totally imply that our team is as good as those guys. I mean, unless you count Alive // Well, but no one wants to be on team "Well". That's like naming your team "So-So" or "Moderately Average". Also, I'm definitely playing the team tournament dressed as the high-school-Ren-Faire guy in the front.
Sylvan Yeti is a Maro that conveniently assumes you're already losing the game. You probably don't have 5 or more cards in hand, because you're playing a bad card like this and don't know anything about card advantage, so why not have some free toughness? Also, if you've been dying to make that Harry and the Hendersons theme deck (and who hasn't ever woken up at 2 am dreaming about that) this is the card for you!
24) Abandon your posts! Flee! Flee for your lives!
On to "actual" Chinese history. I bolded the quote marks there, if you can't tell. So, two minutes of google tells me that there's no evidence that routine dam breaking was a thing back in 250 AD. I mean, were there really enough drown-army-sized dams such that generals of every P3K faction "often" let damnably dammed rivers loose as the flavor text says? Were enemy generals all dumb enough to walk their army right up to a dam, despite them using the same tactic themselves? In Magic's version of ancient China, 100% yes.
You might think that this card is terrible and a better card exists. You'd be right about the first part, but not the second. There's no other way I could find for blue to tap 2 creatures for a single mana. I mean, sure you could make your creature unblockable or something instead, but if you're still reading this article series, you're not interested in taking the easy way out.
Most importantly, is having a horse actually going to save you when a dam breaks near you, or is this card another Flame Wave? (I'm standing directly in the path of a tsunami of frickin' lava that I just summoned, but I'll be fine.) Let's find out!
FRANK KARSTEN MODE: ENGAGE
Ok, so when a large amount of water breaks out of a dam all at once, it moves at roughly 20 miles/hour initially. The average horse gallops at roughly 30 mi/h, with the top horses hitting 45 mi/hr. The average man runs at 15 mi/hr, while people like Usain Bolt can sprint at 24 mi/hour. (All thanks to googlefu.)
Conclusion: people on horseback can outrun a broken dam close to them, but you can't unless you're Usain Bolt. In which case, hey, let's play some Magic.
Myth: confirmed plausible.
Ok, that was a lot easier to figure out than I thought. I thought maybe I'd have to do one of those "A train leaves at 6 pm..." type calculations. I didn't actually need to invoke the spirit of the great Frank Karsten after all.
Random anecdote: Frank Karsten once came to a party at my house (Pro Tour: RTR) and when I gave him a glass of filtered water, he commented on how they don't ever need to filter their water in the Netherlands, they can just drink straight from the tap, because the tap water is excellent over there. I really had nothing to say in response to that except to nod sagely. True story.
HISTORY ACCORDING TO MAGIC LESSON OF THE DAY: Apparently millennia ago China had already mastered dam-building to the point where they had thousands of enormous ones and constantly rebuilding them (after three peasant villages worked for a generation to build them the first time) was no big thang.
23-22) Probably Don't Hire Any Black Creatures for Administration
According to Magic, Wei administrators were not very good at their jobs. Cao Cao, Lord of Wei (aka Cow-Cow aka double bovine) should probably look at outsourcing that stuff and stick to hiring assassins and spys and such. Corrupt Court Official is too busy macking on the ladies to do any officiating, and Cunning Advisor is plotting how to kill his boss and steal his job 24/7.
Maybe I'm being too harsh. Maybe Corrupt Court Official is a sponsor of a girl's soccer league, and those are both his daughters and they're at the end of season potluck party, and everything's totally innocent. But I kinda doubt it? I think it's more likely this is "#MeToo: The Magic Card".
Maybe Cunning Advisor has a perfectly innocent explanation for why he owns a lantern with a caricature of his heavily-eyebrowed boss' severed head? Cunning Advisor himself has eyebrows that hang 4+ inches off his head and a candle placed at exactly that height, so I doubt he made it out of the tent alive and we'll probably never know.
HISTORY ACCORDING TO MAGIC LESSON OF THE DAY: Based on how Creepo Mustache is only an official, the advisor to the lord has enough to stroke evilly, and Cao Cao, Lord of Wei has something closer to a hairshirt, the Chinese state of Wei was history's only beardtocracy.
21) Welcome to Camp "Fake-Your-Death"
It's hard to tell exactly what's going on in this picture, but based on the flavor text, here's my guess: All of the famous generals that faked their deaths are hanging out in a camp in the desert wearing black hoodies and some kind of roman/pirate bloomers so no one will recognize them. They're all staring at the city and thinking "They're going to send someone to get us for a big battle, right? It couldn't be that everyone who knows we're still alive is actually dead now, right? That's crazy talk." Maybe these are supposed to be mourners(?), but for a great general's fake funeral three cosplayers alone in a desert seems like a pretty poor procession, so I'm sticking with my theory.
How often does Magic artwork feature multiple human(oid) figures on it, and NOT A SINGLE ONE is facing the camera? Drawing a bunch of generals playing dress-up, but only from the BACK, is super weird. I can't think of another Magic art like this. But I bet I'm wrong and someone out there has an "all-backsides" Magic theme deck, because if you can imagine a theme deck there's a 100% guarantee someone has built it by now.
This is the same card as Salvage that we just got in the Treasure Chests last year. That card was initially worth 2.5 and is still worth half of that now, so if the suckers bought into it before they'll do it again! (I am absolutely one of those suckers.) I'm sure some Commander combo deck somewhere wants the extra copy.
HISTORY ACCORDING TO MAGIC LESSON OF THE DAY: Faking your death was a whole lot easier before credit cards.
20) Marshaling the Awkward Lifegain
If you're playing Rhys the Redeemed, or Prossh, Skyraider of Kher, or Trostani, Selesnya's Voice, basically any crap with lots of little tokens, this card gains hella life. Gaining the full 40 for 2 mana isn't out of the question. If you only have two creatures to tap, it's about what you'd expect for 2 mana, and if you have 3 creatures to tap, 12 life is already way above rate. However, most other lifegain spells don't leave you open to attacks from, ya know, the entire table by tapping out your own team on your turn. So it's good rate is somewhat tempered by the fact you can expect to lose a ton of life on the backswing unless you have a more complicated plan than "do nothing and gain a bajillion life".
The artist must have really fond memories of his freshmen year art class (probably infatuated with his TA) and took the vanishing point to frickin' HEART.
The soldier's feet and shields and spears and swords sit on convergence lines so sharp you could etch steel with them. I'm not sure if the general's marshaling actual troops or a quality checker at the cardboard cut-out factory who likes to play dress-up.
I should also mention this card from Portal Part Deux. It's the exact same card for one more mana.
Whether this is really your kind of art or not, the fact that they made the photocopy/shrink5%/repeat artwork above cost 1 less mana than Kaja Foglio artwork featuring a naked glowing woman and spooky woodland critters has got to be some kind of crime. I know which artwork I'd rather stare at in my hand when I ask myself "Huh. Why'd I put this in my deck again?" But Marshaling the Troops costs one less mana, so we're talking about that one today because I have integrity in my bad card countdowns. Dangit.
HISTORY ACCORDING TO MAGIC LESSON OF THE DAY: Every soldier in ancient China is exactly the same height and has the same shoe size. It's pretty convenient for army logistics, really.
19) Remove Soul's Flavor Was Too Weird, You Say
For a long time, as a blue mage, you could rip souls right out of bodies with your counterspells (and apparently the flesh usually comes along with the soul like a side of fries).
But with Magic 2010, they took a hard look at all the basic cards they'd always been using in Core sets to see if the flavor was still right. Other casualties of this purge were Grizzly Bears becoming Runeclaw Bear, Counsel of the Soratami becoming Divination, Persuasion becoming Mind Control, Terror becoming Doom Blade, etc. The classic Remove Soul was deemed to sound "too much like a black kill spell", so they renamed it to Essence Scatter. I've always thought that new name was about as generic and flavorless as calling it "Desynergize Holistic Viability". Essence Scatter doesn't actually mean anything, and they just brought back Bone to Ash's undressed skeleton flavor again, so the whole change seems kinda pointless nowadays.
Magic's always struggled with the flavor of countering creature spells. Do the creatures appear and then immediately have their skin and bones dissolve away, or is it just that some energy moves around in pretty circles like most counterspells? Neither, says Preemptive Strike. It's more like a bunch of armored guys going and hunting down random half-naked guys on the off chance that the opposing wizard has a "summon half-naked guy" card. Ok, thanks for clearing that up. If just straight up killing unarmed people is an acceptable flavor for this effect, I'd love to see the next artwork for Essence Scatter show the "scattering" of some "essential" oils on the chest of Enthralling Victor. And then I guess it's like poisoned or something? Whatever, I just want to see that.
HISTORY ACCORDING TO MAGIC LESSON OF THE DAY: When you cast a P3K card, rather than some mystically-created copy of a creature like normal Magic flavor, you actually are summoning an actual ancient Chinese soldier. Who may already have been killed by night raiders, and then you get a corpse instead. Hmm. In fact, 17 centuries later, I'd say it's a near-certainty that all the creatures in the set just summon some random bone fragments.
18) Red Hare Don't Care
Red Hare is primarily known as the horse of Lu Bu, Master-at-Arms, though he got it as a present from Dong Zhou, the Tyrant based on Li Su's recommendation (who is not Lu Su, Wu Advisor). He rode it to help Yuan Shao, the Indecisive defeat Zhang Feiyan (who is not Zhang Fei, Fierce Warrior). Then Cao Cao, Lord of Wei wins Red Hare in battle after he and Liu Bei, Lord of Shu kill Lu Bu, but then he gives it away to Guan Yu, Sainted Warrior (pictured on the card) in a failed bribe attempt. Then after Guan-o is captured and executed, the horse ends up with Sun Quan, Lord of Wu. Whew! And then Red Hare dies from sheer name exhaustion.
The most famous horse in Chinese history, and he's named after a 2-pound rabbit. It's as if Alexander the Great had named his horse "Small Marmot" instead of "Bucephalus". Just doesn't inspire the same kind of fear, you know?
But Red Hare doesn't give one horsecrap what you think of his name. He's a legendary "blood-sweating horse" that survived way more battles than any human alive today and couldn't care less if you think it's weird he's named after an adorable tiny bunny rabbit.
Hey, it's starter set staple Angelic Blessing but better, because ain't no one blocking Red Hare.
HISTORY ACCORDING TO MAGIC LESSON OF THE DAY: What, I just ran through like half of Romance of the Three Kingdoms tracing the history of a single horse. Is that not enough for you somehow?
17) THE POWER OF TAOISM COMPELS YOU (to not target this guy)
This was the first creature ever printed with what became hexproof, and Magic has somehow never again made a 2/2 hexproof for 2G. We have things like Troll Ascetic and Dungrove Elder and Sacred Wolf, which, yeah, are mostly better, but he's still the only hexproof Gray Ogre you can get.
Magic has plenty of invented religions, but in the early days a handful of real world religious references made it into Magic, mainly Unholy Strength, the already mentioned Sunstone, and some in Arabian Nights they definitely want to forget. And then we have these three Taoists. Taoist Mystic can instantly teleport 100 feet at a time, Zuo Ci, the Mocking Sage makes paintings come to life, and Taoist Hermit here floats above the ground and has his own Millennium-Falcon-style blue deflector shield.
So... is that something Taoists can do? I believe Wizards when they tell me that back then tigers existed and people rode horses and had spears and swords and stuff as depicted on every other P3K card. I've never personally met a Taoist monk, but I think I would have heard if they could do that kind of thing. You know, like TV would have mentioned "The President arrived surrounded by his Taoist monk bodyguards, who can float 3 feet in the air and have indestructible auras of harmonic Tao. That's quite remarkable, isn't it Judy?" Such are the perils of trying to craft a fantasy game based on real-ish (leaning towards "ish") world history.
HISTORY ACCORDING TO MAGIC LESSON OF THE DAY: Taoist monks are super-heroes, and Taoism is the one true religion that gives you awesome divine powers.
16) Spies Like Wu
You're hiding behind a curtain THAT DOESN'T EVEN MAKE IT TO YOUR WAIST? You're hiding behind HALF of a pink and blue curtain to spy on some guys 10 feet away?
This art just looks super wrong and awkward, but it's hard for me to pinpoint exactly what's the most off-putting. Is it the hyper-detailed and oversized face of the artist himself (probably) that he stuck at an awkward angle on the spy's vague body? Is it the giant orange-ish globes in the background with a flag sticking out that reminds of a plate of pigs-in-a-blanket complete with toothpicks? Is it the green ruffle-ly skirt that the general in the tent is wearing? Or is it the fact that this spy has the same hiding skills as a 7-month old playing peek-a-boo? I'm not quite sure, but I don't think this one's coming to a playmat near you.
No other card in Magic does what he does. He kind of has Surveil 2, except he can target opponents (good!) but he forces you to do both things (bad!). Despite having the same stealth level as Lady Gaga visiting a laser factory, he managed to convince Wizards he's sneaky enough to get the "rogue" keyword, so there's that going for him.
HISTORY ACCORDING TO MAGIC LESSON OF THE DAY: The most essential spy skill is the ability to turn your head 120 degrees so your nose is well past your shoulder. Anything else is gravy.
15) Assassins Starring Sylvester Stallone and Antonio Banderas
Yo, Adrian, check this out:
Read these two cards. Want to guess what the Oracle text for them is?
Wei Assassins: When Wei Assassins enters the battlefield, target opponent chooses a creature they control. Destroy that creature.
Predatory Nightstalker: When Predatory Nightstalker enters the battlefield, you may have target opponent sacrifice a creature.
I've complained before about how wildly inconsistently Grandma Oracle treated the Portal sets, and this is a prime example. Their wordings both have the same jumble of word mush in a slightly different order. Notably, neither mentions sacrificing but one of them gets to do that and the other gets the lame "Opponent chooses and destroys" wording they saddled Burning of Xinye with.
It's like Wizards hired two people who didn't talk to each other and kind of hated each other decide separately on the modern wordings for Portal 2 and Portal 3, and then didn't edit or compare them in any way before uploading them to Gatherer. And now it's 13 years later. I just can't understand how these cards, which are clearly meant to be identical and written near-identically and came out 11 months apart, got such completely different Oracle text. I imagine it was the rules manager at the time who rewrote both of them, so I'm forced to conclude that he has split personalities and one of them likes being super pedantic and one of them likes making things simple and probably puppies and warm hugs. Is there seriously no way to fix this? Or am I just the only person in the world it super bothers?
HISTORY ACCORDING TO MAGIC LESSON OF THE DAY: The fronds of giant ferns are a great place to hide for an ambush. Looking at this card and the last one, it seems hiding was just generally way easier in ancient China, and kids would be lost for days playing hide and seek in their parent's bedroom.
14) Heeeeeeeeeeere's Yuan-y!
Indecisiveness is a really terrible thing to be famous for. If I had a choice between my tombstone saying "Caliban the Indecisive" or "Caliban the Small-Dog-Kicker", I'd want people to think "well, at least he committed to it." Being famous throughout world history for being indecisive is the same level as being famous for streaking naked across a field hockey game televised on ESPN-8 ("The Ocho").
On the less indecisive side, historically Yuan Shao led the slaughter of 2,000 palace eunuchs after they cut off his buddy's head. Reading Chinese history, it sounds like people took almost any excuse to kill a palace eunuch, so it didn't take much decisive action from Yuan to get the ball rolling. And you know, on the list of things that make one act decisively, "friend decapitation" is definitely up there.
Apparently he earned his unfortunate moniker as a general, where he wouldn't commit to big battles, but rather sent small groups of troops to "harass" the enemy's force, who would all be killed by the larger enemy force, and then repeat it again the next day until his initially larger army was entirely gone. He found the battlefield, so I'd still take him over General Jarkeld any day, but maybe they should form a book club or something.
He along with buddy Huang Zhong, Shu General are the only two cards in Magic with "can't be blocked by more than one creature" that aren't mono-green. Wizards just somehow forgot what color this ability is supposed to be for this one set in all of Magic's history. And I have absolutely no idea how that's supposed to represent "indecisiveness" anyway. Did they let the market research people design this set via beer pong?
HISTORY ACCORDING TO MAGIC LESSON OF THE DAY: Sometimes dying in obscurity and having the tides of history erase any trace of your existence maybe is a good thing.
13) Zhang Liao, Terrible Magic Card
Ok, I got almost nothing for this guy. He's got the specter ability but is missing a teeny weeny component all the others have... EVASION. If he just had horsemanship he'd be a semi-reasonable card, but apparently a horse once stomped on his sandcastle when he was a kid or something. "I'm sure that by turn 6 no one will be able to block my 3/3!" you scream into the walls of the asylum you live at where Magic cards are considered "too pointy". Good luck with that.
So instead, let's talk about the 16 P3K Legends that were missing at the beginning of last year. Here they are in alphabetical order. I'll note the ones that made it online last year with a *.
* Cao Ren, Wei Commander
* Huang Zhong, Shu General
* Lady Sun
* Lady Zhurong, Warrior Queen
* Lu Su, Wu Advisor
* Ma Chao, Western Warrior
* Pang Tong, "Young Phoenix"
* Sima Yi, Wei Field Marshal
* Xun Yu, Wei Advisor
Yuan Shao, the Indecisive
Zhang He, Wei General
Zhang Liao, Hero of Hefei
Zhao Zilong, Tiger General
Zhou Yu, Chief Commander
Zhuge Jin, Wu Strategist
* Zuo Ci, the Mocking Sage
Someone at Wizards decided to bring the P3K legends online last year (yeah!) and then asked which ones were people's favorites that they should bring online first, and everyone just sort of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . So yeah, they just went with alphabetical order, except for Zuo Ci. Someone at Wizards seriously, seriously loves the Taoists.
HISTORY ACCORDING TO MAGIC LESSON OF THE DAY: In ancient warfare, if you could ride a horse into battle, you know, you probably should consider it. Even if horses were mean to you one time.
12) Maximum Underwhelm, Go!
Ugh, his ability is so booooooring and pointless. He's a dude named "Tiger General", and his amazing ability is to block slightly better? This is seriously the ability you give your LEGENDARY UNBLOCKABLE creature? Among a lot of terrible P3K legends, he always stood out to me as having the least possible thought and effort put into his design. Made me think "boy, they really phoned this one in" from the dog race track. Or "boy, they really faxed this one in" from the Cancun resort hotel. Or "boy, they really cocktail napkined this one in" from the 24/7 discotheque. Or "boy, they really lawyer noted this one in" from the federal prison.
I might have an issue where I think the life of a Magic designer is more interesting than it really is.
HISTORY ACCORDING TO MAGIC LESSON OF THE DAY: I already kind of knew that Liu Bei, Lord of Shu was the Batman of ancient China. According to this guy's flavor text, Chinese Batman's son Liu Shan is conveniently the Robin of ancient China since he gets kidnapped every week and a hero has to rescue him. Also, according to wikipedia, Liu Shan was "commonly perceived as incapable, even mentally handicapped" so that sort of fits too. I watched a lot of Super Friends recently. For work.
11) The Big Fellah
Zhou Yu is the largest human in Magic's entire history, and probably always will be.
He laughs at runner-ups Greven and Surrak's measly combined 12 power and toughness. He's got the full 16! HE GOES TO 16!
Surrak, you think killing cave bears is cool? Here's an incomplete list of the 7/7 creatures Zhou Yu, Chief Commander has beaten up.
Zhou Yu once leg-wrestled Magic's version of Cthulhu into submission. And it extends infinitely throughout the entire multiverse! And it doesn't even have legs!
Zhou Yu once knocked down Nicol Bolas' stack of books in the hallway at school. Next thing you know, Nicol Bolas has transformed from a book-loving nerd dragon into the greatest threat the multiverse has ever seen. That was all Zhou Yu! Nicol Bolas' centuries-in-the-making plan is to use his Lazotep army to perfectly recreate his high school and then use his restored planeswalker powers to summon Zhou Yu across planes, and then knock HIS books out of HIS hand. You heard it here first.
This dragon just ate the WHOLE WORLD with his weird extra mouth he has on an extra tail that's sticking out of his wing(?), but Zhou Yu just gave him a swirly in the locker room. Using a toilet that no longer exists in a locker room that no longer exists, but even that can't stop Zhou Yu.
Zhou Yu once dragged Chromium through a car wash because he thought it was funny. And yes, he paid extra for the undercarriage wash.
You see that glowing spot on Griselbrand's forehead. That's from all the noogies that Zhou Yu gave him, right between the horns. So many noogies that part of his forehead spontaneously combusted. Zhou Yu does feel a little bad about that one.
Basically, Zhou Yu is kind of a jerk, but he's OUR awesome jerk. He's the Chuck Norris of ancient China, and I'm sad we don't have him online yet.
HISTORY ACCORDING TO MAGIC LESSON OF THE DAY: Want to take a guess who won this whole Three Kingdoms thing? Yeah, the blue Wu were the last kingdom standing. With Zhou Yu, Chief Commander leading them, how could they possibly lose? In history, just like in Magic, blue always wins.
Alright, thanks for sticking around for another 5000 word marathon, which is like 5 times the size of the average article on Goldfish, yet comes with 1/100th the amount of useful information. See you next time to wrap up the Portal sets!
