Here begins a review of the illustrations and composition of the new cards

City of Gugs, only the 15th Yog Location, is my favorite in the pack. Blackmoor Estate probably remains the most potent Yog Location. Bent Pyramid and Mine on Yuggoth are other beauties.

Clover Club Regular looks terrific! Carlo Bocchio has illustrated 27cards so far. He started out in Masks with the Adorations and has had all along the way many other similarly less interesting cards. High water changes began with Forgotten Cities Professor Hermann Mulder, an awesome card. His characters have since morphed into something sallow and warped and horrid. Beginning with Tragic Celebrity (ruined) to Cafeteria lady (loathsome) and Fugitive Scientist (wildly insane), with Old Lazy Eyes (wack job), Coach Norm (Alfred E. Newman), and Blackball Jim (manic) on the way. Visually, Clover Club Regular is almost as cool as Those Without Faces, an all time LCG great.

That double post was strange. Sorry about that.

The Enchanted Wood is another beauty of a card, a rich location, almost like a magic card, but an H.P. original. Illustrator Jason Caffoe is new - Twilight Gate and the Rays of Dawn from Dreamlands AP1 his first. Neither were all that amazing. Enchanted Wood's dark greens and rust and the impressionistic forest floor really work. Unreleased but spoiled Dark Quagmire also by Caffoe is also great, different but similar.

From wikipedia - The Enchanted Wood is a fictional place in H. P. Lovecraft's Dream Cycle and is located in the Dreamlands. Its main inhabitants are the zoogs. A unique, haunted tree grows in this forest whose seed originally came from the moon. This tree's sap can be fermented to create a potent drink. A stone trapdoor in these woods leads to the top of the Tower of Koth and from there into the kingdom of the Gugs in the Underworld. However, because of a curse of the Great Ones, no Gug may exit through this portal.

Caffoe also illustrates The Seventy Steps (no, not the Seven Hundred Steps - same story, different steps). The Seventy Steps, Of Light Slumber is colorful, mystical, welcoming, etherial, romantic, soft, and moody with a brittle streetlamp, all distinctly dreamlands. A little empty though, but great.

All the artwork is good. A few other cards are also great, but have been seen. Felicia Cano has been with us from the very beginning and regularly, now 27 cards. She has some real classics, like Professor of Archeology. I respect her treatment of the Zoogs, but I feel differently about their treatment or tone so far. Eating the fingers and stowed in a backpack, I can see it suit others' taste.

The MU cards are both dogs. I know that sounds harsh. But I've long lamented the wasted opportunity to excite and make imaginative MU cards. Admittedly, there are some of the more amazing looking cards in MU, tomes and libraries and librarians included, and awesome looking events. I am sick and tired of desks and paper and lamps. If a beautiful Library of the Dreamlands emerges, I'll laud it then. But there have just not been enough Strange Visitors, Secret Research, Yian, Thomas Olney, the Hall School, Sleeping Pills, Pagan Hall. Well, that's actually a nice list.

Make that twenty-six cards for Cano.

Something is up with the new Shub characters. All the way back to the first Asylum Packs Shub has had many identities. AP1 The suicidal Dreamlands Messenger avoiding tentacles did nothing for me. AP2 Basil Elton the card was fine, but the photo of melville and digitized lighthouse killed it. AP3 Displaced Cthonian was an all time great. It's absolutely perfect. AP4 Lavinia disappointed me, again a cool card, a favorite, a strong ability, Cost 2 terror. Linda Tso surely never read the Dunwich Horror. And that background wall like a mythos detective card is weak. It's just a lost opportunity. They eventually got Sentinel Hill and the Horror right. Neither Wilbur did his horrible midrift justice. Both Wilbur cards were actually very weak renditions considering how favorably the cards were seen. So Lavinia image pfewey.

AP5 Antarctic Yeti is great, a nod to non-H.P. lore, fits the antarctic mission, fits shub as an independant monster, looks a little too he-man but is fierce and great and ferocious. Extends Shub, but doesn't further its classic denizens. You know, the Dholes, Cthonians, Mi-go, Mothers, Polyps, Dark Young, Spawns, and Ancient Guardians.

AP6 Nyogtha the Sentient Void and Ghoul Worshiper are both great Shub ancient one and monster, linked by his worship of Nyogtha. Perfect. Are these AP6 Ancient Ones playable? More worrisome, the Ghoul might become a problem for me.

AP6 Dark Druid is a fine monster. cultist. and he's in the woods with the Dark Young and Mothers.

APJulia1 Grim Wraith is weaker, a Julia storyline girl with teddy bear getting night oozed. Memorable card, but whatever. Julia2 Mind Eater is the type of Shub I acknowledge as a sub genre but don't usually like portrayed - the twisted poor fated human. Gibbering Soul and Ghoulish Thrill Seeker begin a trend of graveyard shub that I think we might be stuck in.

Dimensional Worm is an ok Displaced Cthonian. Insect Swarm comes back like a weaker Tomb Herd or Black Wind. Nice but almost.

The Binding Worm is a very nice example of the twisted poor fated human genre.

Now we have two Ghouls in a row - Twilight Cannibal and Ghoul Spawn. They're both vicious and weird - the one bloody and hanging on a shed, the other a descriptive charicature climbing out of the ground. Anyway, a Dhole is due and hopefully too a surprise from my list above. Ghouls are dreamlandsy by wrote, but hopefully won't remain in the cemetaries of Aylesbury and Dunwich. Dreamlands Shub is wide open, but may just mostly be Ghoulish. Gugs and Zoogs round out the theme monsters, but hope for more variation.