February 03 2021

Why we're excited for... Kaldheim!

The new Magic: the Gathering set is dropping in-store THIS WEEK, Prerelease sealed events are running from Friday to Sunday in-store, and we're excited! Kaldheim is a frigid, snowy plane full of elves, vikings, angels, and gods, that has fallen afoul of the planeswalker Tibalt's deception, giving this trickster access to a mighty weapon capable of opening portals to other planes. But that's not the only reason we're excited, heres a few more:

New Mechanics

A new Magic set means always new mechanics, and while Boast (an ability you can activate after it's owner has attacked and only once on each turn) is an ok addition to the multiverse, the real winner mechanically here is Foretell.

Foretell allows you to exile a card facedown (so only you can look at it) on your turn for two generic mana. Then, on any later turn, you can cast it from exile. With Magic's R&D playing around with exile recently (see Throne of Eldraine's Adventure mechanic), Foretell has really knocked it out of the park when it comes to flavourful and interesting mechanics. A lot of Foretell cards have a reduced cost if cast after being foretold, so you can set up some strong turns by just Foretelling your different spells over a few turns, before unleashing them all on your opponent.

It Oozes Flavour (but no oozes... unless you count the Changelings)

If there is one thing that Magic knocks out of the park this set, it's the flavour. Kaldheim borrows deeply from Norse lore.

There are a myriad of gods (Twelve in fact, the most of any single Magic set) like Toralf/Thor and his hammer, or Alrund/Odin and his raven.

There's Bezerkers who BOAST of their mighty attacks.

There's SAGAs, the enchantment type originally seen in Dominaria that tell of legendary stories as they move through their stages.

And the Flavour also extends to the colour-pairings seen in this set, particularly with the Angels. Viking lore speaks of the Valkyrie, heavenly angels sent by the gods to guide heroes into Valhalla upon their death in battle. And the Angels of Kaldheim have BLACK, Magic's colour of death, woven into their design. It's a phenomenal pairing of classic lore and game mechanics.

Solid (albeit a only a few) tribal cards for commander

While there aren't a lot of general tribal support in the set outside of the creature types present on Kaldheim, those few general support cards are amazing to include in your Commander decks!

Firstly, there's Maskwood Nexus, a card that turns all of your creatures, on and off the field, into a Creature Type of your choice... and it's COLORLESS! That's right, it can go in any deck.

In the colours though, there's Reflections of Littjara in Blue that copies any spells you cast of a chosen Creature Type, doubling the creatures you create, and Crippling Fear in Black, that gives a decent debuff to any creature not matching your chosen type.

There's also a multitude of Angel and Legendary Creature support so keep an eye out for these cards if you run any of these decks at your Commander table.