Category: Card Games

Introduction

Kaldheim is the first set of 2021, taking inspiration from Norse Mythology and Viking Folklore to create their major themes. As such backstory is rich in different types of creatures, Kaldheim is a tribal set with ten different tribes, each corresponding to their own colour pair.

Whilst people may not be able to gather currently to play in a prerelease tournament, the boxes are still on sale for people to add them to their collection or to take part in virtual prereleases. The one I bought was acquired from the UK retailer Troll Trader Cards (not sponsored, just a fan).

So, I decided to record what I opened this time and try build a deck out of it. Will I have built a deck worthy of the top prize? Or am I doomed to enter the Milkshake Bracket once more?

Set Mechanics & Quick Review

• Returning – Tribal Mechanics: Pretty straightforward, different creature types have bonuses based on other creatures of the same type being in play. Tribes are humans, spirits, zombies, demons, trolls, giants, angels, elves, dwarves, and changelings (all creature types simultaneously)
• Returning – Snow Mana: Mana produced by a Snow permanent can be used to pay for other Snow cards or activate abilities requiring Snow mana
• Returning – Modal Double-Faced Cards: Double-sided cards that can be played as one side or the other from the hand, cannot shift during play
• New – Foretell: Think of it like Morph for all sorts of cards. Foretell cards are exiled from hand by paying two mana, and then can be played for a “Foretell” cost later on, sometimes having additional benefits if a card was foretold
• New – Boast: An ability that can be activated once per turn and can only be used after a creature has attacked (note: attacked, meaning this can be used in response during combat)

Being the first fully tribal set since Ixalan block, Wizards of the Coast had a lot to learn from the missteps that set made. (Rosalia’s note: this sentence hurts to write because as much as it is true, this is the set that I got into Magic on, and gave me my favourite tribe of Merfolk. I’m sorry Ixalan T_T)

In my opinion Kaldheim learns from these mistakes and sets up a standalone tribal set on a par with Lorwyn block. Each tribe being assigned to a colour pair allows for less hoarding of one particular tribe during a draft, and the additional of changelings in Simic provides more versatility to change path and/or shore up a struggling tribal deck.

Whilst I appreciate the inclusion of God cards from a Commander perspective, there are some strange design choices around their inclusion. This is especially highlighted in the card “”Forging the Tyrite Sword”, which I find strange for being a card that references a specific card by name. Designs like this in draft are fun to chase after, in theory, but ultimately dilute the pool of usable cards.

Speaking from the commander perspective entirely, there are some amazing legendary creatures in this set, especially at the uncommon level. Whilst it does lead to some power creep in certain areas, having more good legendary cards at uncommon grants more accessibility into commander and expands the potential for budget decks.

Promo Card

Taking inspiration from Yggdrasil itself, the World Tree is a pretty nice card to open as a foil promo. It gives a surprising amount of versatility in a draft environment mainly for the middle ability, as it provides an unconditional mana fixing solution after the sixth land. The last ability is unlikely to see much use, more for the steep activation cost as opposed to the actual effect.

Pack 1

Two major potential bombs right off the bat in the first pack. Both Eskia’s Chariot and Maja, Bretagard Protector are very powerful cards in a limited environment. Maja’s cost holds her back from being massively impactful but both cards ability to constantly generate additional value gives heavy indication towards building Green/White.

Pack 2

Pack 2 brings further indicators towards a green deck. Masked Vandal is a good cheap creature with the additional benefit of potentially removing an opponent’s threat, and Path of the World Tree is a decent pick considering this deck has the actual World Tree and can activate the last ability after a period of time.

Pack 3

Broken Wings is a great piece of green removal to find in Pack 3, especially as it offer more versatility than a Plummet or Naturalise would in the same setting. The Golgari modal double-faced land provides an out into expanding into said colour pair with a great piece of fixing.

Pack 4

In Search of Greatness is… an interesting card in a draft environment. With a focus on low mana creatures it could provide some rapid and aggressive tactics in the right deck, but it would require a very specific sort of deck. Usher of the Fallen is a great aggro pick for a potential green/white deck, being a cheap creature that can be used to generate more value.

Pack 5

Giant Ox and Colossal Plow in the same pack? And a fantastic white rare bomb? That settles it, this is going to be a green/white deck. The Giant Ox and Colossal Plow combo may not even be that good, but the fact they came in the same pack seems almost like a sign for me.

Pack 6

And finally, we finish off with two decent white evasion cards but not a whole lot else. Battlefield Raptor is a great early game card to start putting pressure on an opponent (similar in a way to Healer’s Hawk from Ravnica Allegiance), and Goldmaw Champion can use it’s Boast ability during combat to potentially remove a powerful blocker.

Deck Building

For this deck build, I’ll be running through the BREAD acronym to go through how I built my theoretical prerelease deck. BREAD stands for:

• Bombs – Powerful cards, usually at rare, that make an impact the turn they are played
• Removal – Cards that are able to get rid of an opponent’s permanent without much fuss
• Evasion – Flying, trample, unblockable. Anything that gets past an opponent’s defenses and to their life
• Aggro – Cheap, effective creatures that can be played on curve and start putting pressure on an opponent’s life total
• Duds – Usable cards, but definitely not the first choice. Normally used to fill up a deck near the end.

B – Bombs

Sigrid and Eskia’s Chariot are definitely my most powerful cards here, with Sigrid being a removal bomb with First Strike and a relevant protection ability in this set, and Eskia’s creating more value as time goes on. Clarion Spirit and Maja are less potent, but the amount of value each can generate in addition to the anthem effect of Maja can lead to extremely powerful boards.

R – Removal

Bound in Gold is your expected Pacifism type card in a set, with the very relevant point of it being unable to crew vehicles or activated abilities, completely locking a creature down. The potency of Broken Wings has already been discussed, but Struggle for Skemfar is a Hunt the Weak with a potential discount if it is able to be foretold.

E – Evasion

Sigrid appears again for her First Strike and protection ability, but aside from the cards discussed during pack opening there is very little else. Goldmaw Champion can tap something down but this cannot be used on an opponent’s turn due to the limitations of boast, and Battlefield Raptor is a good early start but can be quickly outpaced.

A – Aggro

It is not a good combo, but Giant Ox and Colossal Plow is something I want to run in this deck, and Ox is a decent early game creature that can hold up as a blocker for a good part of the early-mid game. Story Seeker is the best card here, as a two mana 2/2 with a very good keyword ability, Lifelink providing a bit of longevity as it attacks or blocks.

D – Dregs, Duds, or Da Rest

As we come to the final five cards, we find some usable cards but nothing entirely great. Path to the World Tree provides some function due to the fixing The World Tree provides. Ravenous Lindwurm is a decent stat body with a reasonable ability, but it is no Colossal Dreadmaw. And finally Arachnoform can be used to enhance a strong blocker like Giant Ox, or to give a bit more aggression/pressure on Battlefield Raptor.

Final Deck Evaluation

This is… not a great deck honestly. There is a handful of good cards that would provide an impact on the field when played but there is very little in the way of solid core cards to provide a decent early game to give way to those cards. If this was in a four round prerelease tournament at my FLGS I reckon I would go 1-3, not exactly Milkshake Bracket territory but still far from how I have placed before. Let us see what my consolation prize packs would have been then:

Prize Pack 1

Prize Pack 2

End Step

This was honestly a really fun project to try undertake, though it was slightly rushed due to having a day delay on receiving the prerelease kit, so, apologies for the messy photos (taken on a not great phone) and for some of the analysis probably not being entirely logical.

This was done as a way to get the prerelease experience I have almost gone a year without now (if any of my MtG friends are reading this, know I miss you greatly right now) at home, and to create a more unique piece of MtG content on my site. It was a bit disappointing to find no mythic rares in both kit and prize packs, though I reckon that foil Snow Covered Island is worth quite a bit to the right person.

(NB: Originally uploaded to https://geekoutuk.com/2019/11/08/my-magic-the-gathering-commander-pet-cards/)

As is evidenced by an article on this very site, and to anyone who is near me for even the shortest amount of time, my favourite way to play Magic: the Gathering is in the Commander format.

I’ve already talked about it before, but I’ll quickly recap the rules:

• Legendary Creature(s) or Legendary Planeswalker(s) as your “Commander”
• 99 card singleton (one copy of each card) deck (You can have duplicate basic lands)
• 40 life starting life
• Being dealt 21 points of combat damage by a single commander is an automatic loss
• Traditionally played multiplayer but is viable in 1v1

Over the two years I’ve been enjoying Magic both casually and competitively, I was slowly drawn away from the draft and Standard play I’d been participating in and moved into the format I keep brewing decks for today.

And, as with most players who brew multiple decks, cards start to show up where you don’t include them because they’re the top tier of the format, or a must-include in your chosen colours; you include them because you like them.

These are often referred to as “pet cards”, cards which tend to be incredibly personal to a player for various reasons. Pet cards can be powerful, generally and in the right scenario, but sometimes they can be a card you appreciate for the art, a card that holds significant emotional value to you, or pure, unfiltered, long shot jank.

Here are just a few of the cards I consider my pet cards:

Camaraderie

From the start, Camaraderie has a steep hill to climb. Requiring 6 mana total to cast and two of it being different colours, the card should have a potent effect that goes a way to affect the board state in an impactful way.

But it doesn’t, well, not massively so.

For a start, without creatures on your side of the field; the card is dead in your hand until you develop a board back up meaning it’s not really a card you can play in response to a board wipe. The buff to your creatures is also fairly inconsequential, as a one turn only minor buff isn’t going to do much, unless you have a serious go-wide strategy going on.

So why do I like it?

It just feels right to me, for one reason or another. Despite its flaws whenever I’m building a deck which includes Green and White and I start to consider what sort of card draw I’m going to need, my mind usually drifts over towards including Camaraderie before anything else.

I currently use it in my +1/+1 counter synergy deck and my token generation deck. In the former it fits right in with the greedy strategy I run with; I aim to get a good selection of big creatures on my board which fuels my card draw spells, allowing me to bring things to an end.

In the latter, it has the potential to be bonkers.

My token generation deck focuses on creating lots of smaller token creatures to achieve a “death by a thousand cuts” style of victory. But life gain, combined with the nuke that is Aetherflux Reservoir, has had some showings.

Given 1 or 2 turns of carefully cultivating the correct quantity of tokens; Camraderie goes from “decent draw spell” to “drawing three times the maximum hand size”, which, yes, I do have to discard most of it because I don’t run cards that make me ignore hand size, but that then gives me something that can be just as important as card advantage: card selection. The ability to choose which cards are going to be best suited going forward.

Simic Ascendancy

As explained by Joel right here; you don’t necessarily have to deplete your opponent’s life total to gain victory. 25 of these alternate victory cards currently exist in the game and all of them offer a more elaborate route to victory.

Simic Ascendancy is one of the more straight forward alternate victory cards, simply requiring for 20 +1/+1 counters to be placed on your creatures and to reach your next upkeep step. This counter can be accelerated through the mechanic Proliferate, which not only lets you add extra counters onto creatures; it also lets you add counters directly onto Ascendancy itself.

Ascendancy is one of the few alternate victory cards that are able to fuel its own win condition. Many of them are static effects that will trigger when the condition is met, but the activated ability on the card allows for self-sufficient victory provided you have creatures.

The major downside to Ascendancy (and other such cards)? No in-built protection. Without an ability such as Shroud or Hexproof to prevent removal spells from targeting it; Ascendancy is often left in a vulnerable position where turns worth of hard work can be undone within the constraints of a single phase.

However, this downside has not stopped me from including it in every list which contains Blue and Green. Part of this is due to me owning a full playset (4 copies) of a promotional foil version of the card which adds a bit of flair to my decks, but also because of how easily it can slot into a deck.

Even in decks where the main focus is drawn away from +1/+1 counters or proliferation it can become a silent threat on the table, slowly ticking over as turns go by until finally, when it becomes noticed by the rest of the table; it’s far too late.

Deathsprout

For a start, that goddamn art. Seb McKinnon consistently creates gorgeous pieces for Magic and this is no exception.

Green and Black is a colour pair in Magic that is considered an “enemy” pair, in that the philosophies they represent are opposite. Green is the colour of life and its continuance, black is the colour of death and its inevitable nature. Whilst these are opposing views, together they form the belief that life ends in one form but can be reborn in another.

This fact is referenced in the flavour text, attributed to Vraska, a prominent figure within the Golgari Swarm on Ravnica, a guild populated heavily by necromancers and one that subscribes heavily to the idea that both life and death are one large cycle.

Flavour reasons aside, why I love this card? Utility.

Comparing it to an existing card at a slightly lower mana cost, Murder, shows what Deathsprout adds to it. Both are instant-speed, single-target removal spells, but for one extra green mana you can fetch a basic land from your deck. Adding in what it would cost for fetching a basic at instant speed (Natural Connection), we can see that Deathsprout, in one card and for 4 total mana, gives us what otherwise would take two cards and a total of 6 mana. It’s rather efficient and I love it for that.

End Step

These are just a few of the cards which I always feel like slipping in whenever I build a Commander deck. Of course, I always have more to share, and perhaps I will one day. Have you got any cards that are must-includes in the decks you build? Are you the type of person who can’t go without a certain counter-spell? Let me know in the comments.

(NB: Originally posted to https://geekoutuk.com/2019/07/22/dubious-double-a-magic-the-gathering-discussion/)

(Foreword: Thanks to Joel for hearing me out on this idea one night and helping develop it. These theoretical card designs were created using mtg.design)

Ever since their introduction in the original Innistrad block; double-faced cards have remained a very popular mechanic in Magic: the Gathering. To date, we have got:

• Creatures that become different creatures
• Creatures that become lands
• Creatures that become Planeswalkers
• Creatures that become enchantments
• Lands that become creatures
• Enchantments that become lands
• Enchantments that become creatures
• Artifacts that become creatures
• Artifacts that become lands
• Artifacts that become different artifacts
• Planeswalkers that become different Planeswalkers
• And even a sorcery that becomes a creature

The penultimate entry is one for discussion today, because I want to test the idea of a Planeswalker that can become not-a-Planeswalker.

Thematically, a Planeswalker is an individual who is gifted with a “Planeswalker spark”, an innate ability that allows them to travel between planes. Within the story there have also been instances of Planeswalkers giving up their spark to achieve various goals, so, a Planeswalker card that becomes something else can work in game.

I’m going to work with an example that happened in the story itself, the ascension of Xenagos to Nyx.

Xenagos, Scorned Satyr

Gods in Theros are born and sustained by the belief of their followers. Xenagos ascended in the aftermath of a large celebration (or Revel, to be accurate), and more revellers joined in as time went on. Using this we can have the plus ability on our theoretical Xenagos create token creatures to reflect the Revel growing larger.

The obvious choice here would Satyrs, but creatures of all forms joined in the Revel, so the potential ability could read as:

+1: Create a red and green 2/2 Satyr with haste, a green 3/3 Centaur with trample, or a 1/1 red Human with “{R}: This creature gets +1/0 until end of turn” at random.

As the Revel goes on, Xenagos’ power grows, and he gains more followers. And as more individuals join, the likelihood of something (and/or someone) getting broken is going up. Thankfully, the card “Destructive Revelry” gives us a pretty good idea of what this looks like, Planeswalker abilities have been known to mimic spells before, which gives us a minus ability:

-2: Destroy target artifact or enchantment. Xenagos, Scorned Reveler deals 2 damage to that permanent’s controller.

Finally, we need to have a way of transforming Xenagos. His ascension happened when the Revel reached a critical mass of followers, so we need to be able to represent this in an ability which should also interact with the plus ability.

0: If you control ten or more red and/or green creatures, transform Xenagos, Scorned Satyr

With all abilities lined up, we can now figure out what the mana cost and starting loyalty should be, though personally I feel keeping to original Xenagos’ layout of 2 generic mana, a red mana and a green mana with a starting loyalty of 3 works pretty well. The flip ability doesn’t require loyalty counters so they are purely there for survivability and using the minus ability every so often.

(Present Rosalia notes: I like how I unintentionally designed “Outlaws’ Merriment” before it was officially revealed for Eldraine. I know sets are often designed years in advance, it’s just kind of funny to me)

Xenagos, Usurper of Nyx

Having now taken his place amongst the pantheon; Xenagos has gone from Planeswalker to a more fitting “Legendary Enchantment Creature – God”.

As is expected, his first line of text is “Indestructible”. All Gods in Magic have some way of sticking around or surviving removal effects, and the most straight forward one works here.

With already existing Theros gods, they use a mechanic called “Devotion” (the amount of colour mana symbols on cards totalled together) to determine whether a God counts as a creature. However, the previous side of Xenagos has been pumping out creature tokens, which have no coloured mana symbols on them meaning no progress towards devotion.

To maintain the flavour of Gods needing a pre-condition to counting as a creature and making it so the mechanics of the previous side interact, a new mechanic can be proposed:

“Following: Your Following count is equal to the number of creatures in the specified colours”

So, the second line of text on our new Xenagos can read:

“As long as your Following to red and green is less than ten, Xenagos isn’t a creature”

This allows Xenagos to act as a creature from the get-go, as he had already gathered a required Following in order to ascend. Now he needs to have an ability that interacts with the heavily populated board state, and manifests the ideal of the Great Revel.

“At the beginning of your end step, create a red and green Eidolon enchantment creature token if five or more creatures dealt combat damage to a player. It has “This creature’s power and toughness are equal to the number of creatures you control.”

An ability like this gives an ever-increasing payoff to a go-wide strategy, which reflects the rituals that Xenagos performed during his ascension, bringing Nyxborn entities into the mortal realm.

And, as with Scorned Satyr, I’m keeping this Xenagos in line with his existing counterpart by making his power and toughness 6/5.

So, that’s my proposal for a Planeswalker that has the potential to flip into something else. It’s most definitely unbalanced and requires refinement, but as a dubious design, it fits the title quite nicely. Please feel free to give any feedback, both mechanically and flavour-wise on how the cards turned out.