To Kaladesh – and beyond!

Hey everybody!
For today’s game day blog, I thought I’d do another of these over-excited looking-to-the-future type of things, especially in light of all the Magic news that we have going on right now! I seem to have calmed down a little since my massive Magic kick over most of the summer, and have returned to Warhammer and the masses of projects I have going on there, but the recent news has once more gotten me excited for cards over plastic… well, maybe a little…

First of all, the Kaladesh stuff coming out of PAX is just awesome! The set releases on 30 September, meaning that pre-release is just three weeks away, and we’re now getting spoilers like it’s crazy! The website has a really cool interactive area for Kaladesh, including the Inventors Fair, which showcases a load of new cards, many with the new mechanics!

First of all, let’s talk about vehicles. Vehicles are artifact cards with a power/toughness rating, and the keyword Crew X, where you can tap creatures with power up to X, which turns the vehicle into a creature. The Crew value always seems to be less than the vehicle’s power, so it’s a pretty great trade-off!

Fabricate X is one of the more generic mechanics, where you get to put X +1/+1 counters onto a creature, or else create a 1/1 token card. It’s nice more for the flavour than the actual mechanic, I think…

Energy counters now have their own icon, by the way, and we’re getting a cycle of enemy dual lands that enter tapped unless you control two or fewer lands – the enemy version of the Scars of Mirrodin cycle. Finally, among all the other stuff we’ve seen, we finally get the Planeswalker Saheeli Rai spoiled, after a lot of speculation about her since the initial announcement!

I really like that she’s Izzet, and while at first I was a bit underwhelmed by her, I think that was more a reaction to the fact she won’t fit into my current blue/red deck. But that deck has until the spring rotation before it’s no longer Standard, so it’s probably time to try making a blue/red artifacts deck for her!

Saheeli isn’t the only Planeswalker we’re getting though, as MTG’s Twitter shows us a second, Vedalken walker!

Overall, I think Kaladesh is a really exciting set, and I’m looking forward to the prerelease!!

But now – it’s on to the future!

Amonkhet is the next block after Kaladesh, and looks amazing!

The desert oasis of Amonkhet forges warriors. You have trained your entire life for a chance to face the Trials of the Five Gods and join the elite ranks of the Worthy. Using your strength, speed, and cunning, overcome deadly challenges and rise above the competition to claim an honored place in the Afterlife!

I may sound like a gibbering fanboy with a lot of this, but it feels like Magic is really getting interesting now they’re doing this two-set thing, with a lot more exploration of the multiverse and seeing wildly different planes. An Ancient Egypt plane might not have been something I’ve been craving, but now that I know about it, I’m wildly excited! It’s also the plane ruled over by Nicol Bolas, the evil dragon planeswalker! Sounds also like it might be a bit like Theros but in the desert, you know?

So that’s coming 28 April 2017, followed in July by Hour of Devastation, the second set. “Unleash your Endgame” sounds pretty, well, devastating…

That set is preceded by an Archenemy release that I doubt anybody was expecting! Archenemy: Nicol Bolas involves three against one, the one being the dragon planeswalker, and while the release info says no new card content is coming, I’m hoping we’ll see plenty of thematic reprints that will still make this interesting to pick up!

We’re also getting another Modern Masters next year, a Commander Anthology, and the next duel deck is called Mind vs Might (so, looks like Jace is coming? Meh.) All in all, it’s going to be a fairly interesting next few months!!