The Kaladesh Express!

Wow, is Kaladesh impressive or what? From the flavor and story, to the artwork, to the cards themselves… it feels like all the wheels of Wizards of the Coast’s Magic factory are humming along quite nicely. There are so many cards I can’t wait to get my hands on for Standard, for Modern, and of course for Commander! This week I thought I’d go over some of the cards that have struck my fancy and see what you think too.

Master Stroke

Like everyone else, I swooned when I saw the Kaladesh Inventions, now formally part of what’s being called the Masterpiece Series. While very few of us have seen what they look like in person where the foil finish can really pop, the entire presentation is stunning. Of course it didn’t take long to come back down to reality—with the odds of opening one of these cards being one out of every four booster boxes, the chances of us mere mortal player collectors getting our mitts on these are relatively low. The upside is that the big players in the market are likely going to open a lot more boxes of product in order to acquire these lucrative pieces of cardboard. So that means the prices on singles in the set are going to be less than they otherwise would, which should translate to a few more dollars in our pocket to dedicate to non-Magical things – or a few more Magical things.

In the meantime, it’ll sure be exciting when one of these gets opened at your local gameshop, and even more exciting if you’re the one opening it. What I find neat is that a lot of these are at least playable in Commander, if not flat-out Commander staples:

I’ll be very curious to see if Commander players who open one of these hang on to it to bling out one of their decks or if they can’t resist the siren call of selling it off for cash to buy a whole slew of other cards for their decks. That new Mana Crypt is incredible, but $100 or more in store credit is $100 or more in store credit! What would you do if you cracked one open?

When Fate Reforged came out, Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest seemed like a cool legendary creature to build a Commander deck around, something a bit different from the creature-heavy decks I usually enjoy. Since the advent of prowess, though, Wizards has taken the whole theme of “noncreature spells” matter – and instant or sorcery spells in particular – and pushed it really hard, to the point that I want to rebuild my original Shu Yun deck and stuff goodies like Metallurgic Summonings in it. Just think of what you could do by casting Reiterate with buyback with Mana Geyser on the stack and then finishing up with a Burst of Speed!

Speaking of a retooled Shu Yun deck, this card probably fits right in there, though more broadly Aetherflux Reservoir slots nicely into any Commander deck with at least a modicum of lifegain. When you start at 40 life, you only need ten more to prime the Reservoir for use.

I think a lot of people are looking at this as something you’d only want to play in dedicated lifegain decks, something you’d activate from the lofty perch of 200 or more life and proceed to mow down your opponents one by one. That’s certainly the safe bet, but I’d argue that you can get a lot more mileage from Aetherflux Reservoir if you embrace the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction.

Once you get to 50 or more life, make it clear that you’re perfectly happy to either eliminate yourself or go down to a precariously low life total if anyone who has 50 or less life messes with you. Practice your “I just might be crazy enough” big-eyed look, and if someone thinks you’re bluffing, prove them wrong. Sure, you’ll lose a couple of games, but you won’t be losing alone and you’ll be letting everyone know that you really are crazy enough.

Watching multiple opponents with lifetotals lower than 50 squirm, trying to figure how to deal with your Aetherflux Reservoir and not be the one you take down with you is going to be both fun and strategic.

It might be easy to let your eyes drift right on past Ovalchase Daredevil when perusing the previews for goodies, but on second look this card reminds me of Squee, Goblin Nabob. While Squee doesn’t need anything extra to keep coming back to your hand, Ovalchase Daredevil can potentially trigger multiple times, and if you can discard it for profit, you can go nuts. Sliversmith and Intruder Alarm would be kinda cute with this, no?

I’m really enjoying the Energy mechanic and especially like the idea of using it alongside proliferate cards. I’ll be very curious to see if they’re going to push the idea hard enough to make a dent in tournament formats or whether it’s going to mostly be for Limited and maybe some fun casual decks. What I really like about Harnessed Lightning is how it’s got a secret second mode outside of being a burn spell for creatures—it can also just be an instant-speed “ritual” for Energy. That gives it utility even against creatureless decks, so long as you’ve got other cards that care about Energy.

Kaladesh has a lot of cool artifacts that fit together in a variety of ways, but I find these three to be particularly interesting since they can potentially generate a ton of Energy backed with the right combination of cards in Commander. I’m particularly excited to see what shenanigans I can cook up with Aetherworks Marvel! How about you?

If there’s one thing Commander fans did not need, it was another mana rock at three mana. However, this one is really, really good in any deck where at the very least your Commander has power of three or more. A 5/5 creature isn’t something to be ignored, even around the Commander table.

Oh how the mighty have fallen! There was a time when Recall was restricted in Vintage and banned in Legacy, though it came off those lists over ten years ago. As a long-time green mage who suffered many years in the bleak wilderness of the Blue Gets Everything era of Magic, it gives me great pleasure to see this strict upgrade in green – no discards needed! Yes, sometimes a card that discards is a feature, not a bug, but I think the vast majority of time this is just pure gravy. I will concede that the Brian Snoddy artwork on Recall is some of the best ever. Wildest Dreams is basically a scalable Restock, a card I’ve never actually played in Commander. Does the flexibility help it make the cut? What do you think?

Incoming Dwarf Rant

While I’m super-stoked about many of the new cards in Kaladesh, there is something I’m teetering on being very upset about, but before I continue let me provide some context. I am a huge fan of Dwarves and have been since I read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings circa 1980. I started playing Dungeons & Dragons shortly thereafter and played many, many badass Dwarf characters over the years. I loved their gruff and tough nature, and when Magic came along and so obviously adopted many fantasy tropes, I was eager to see some really cool Dwarf cards. What did I get? Dwarven Demolition Team and Dwarven Warriors. Warriors? A 1/1 for three mana that taps to make a small creature unblockable—that’s Magic’s idea of a Dwarven Warrior?

It hasn’t gotten much better over the years. Prior to Kaladesh, here’s Magic’s version of a Dwarf “lord.”

Contrast that to the “lords” given to Elves over the years.

And that’s not even including the hordes of just actually insanely good Elf cards printed over the years, making the tribe a force to be reckoned with across all the tournament formats.

To make matters worse, Peter Jackson decided to pile on insults to Dwarf fans when he brought Gimli and Legolas to the big screen in his Lord of the Rings movies. In the books Gimli and Legolas were both warriors of similar skill, if vastly different styles. In the movies, Gimli is a tough warrior — and has John Rhys-Davies’s magnificent voice — but he doesn’t hold a candle to Legolas, whom Jackson basically made a demigod of fighting.

I mean, come on!

I’ll give him credit; he redeemed himself with the Dwarves from The Hobbit movies who were each very tough hombres with distinct styles.

When Kaladesh previewed Depala, Pilot Exemplar, I had high, high hopes that maybe Kaladesh would be Magic’s version of Jackson’s The Hobbit Dwarf Redemption.

Now this was a fantastic Dwarf lord worthy of the name! Good size to mana ratio and chock-full of great text. We’ve got card advantage and even toss in Vehicles for good measure! Of course, how good her triggered ability is mostly scales based on how many good Dwarf and Vehicle cards there are in Kaladesh and future sets. Surely there’s got to be some good Dwarf cards in Kaladesh?

Aerial Responder is promising, but then these other two… are all Dwarf cards going to be three mana? Oh, wait, there’s a one-mana Dwarf:

When I first looked at Toolcraft Exemplar, I thought it showed some promise as an aggressive one-mana 3/2 creature so long as you controlled an artifact. And it was cool sometimes that it could gain first strike. But then I realized that it’s only getting that +2/+1 bonus at the beginning of combat on your turn… if you control an artifact. Otherwise it’s a vanilla 1/1 unless Depala shows up to provide a little boost. That was mildly disappointing, though I could see some utility with Toolcraft Exemplar powering up Vehicles that have Crew 3 during your own attack step. Then they revealed Inventor’s Apprentice, who starts off with a bigger toughness and gets a power and toughness boost as a static effect when you control an artifact.

I mean, just look at the two of them side by side! One is rare; one is uncommon. One is called “Exemplar” and the other is called “Apprentice.” One is a Dwarf with a glorious beard, and one is a teenaged Human. One is slightly better when everything goes perfectly, but it seems obvious the other is just flat-out better most of the time.

I suppose I should be happy that Inventor’s Apprentice isn’t an Elf…

I’ve got my eye on you, Wizards! There are only so many Changelings we can stuff into a Depala deck…

Legends of the Fair

I’ll end on an up note—there are some really cool legendary creatures in Kaladesh just begging to have sweet Commander decks built around them! Besides Depala, here are the others revealed as of this writing:

I already riffed on Depala above. Kambal, Consul of Allocation looks like quite the potent regulator card to punish people who push shenanigans too hard. How about Rashmi, Eternities Crafter—Simic finally got a playable Commander! Oh wait…

Padeem is going to probably spawn some pretty gross artifact decks, but what’s particularly cool is the probable return of Myr Enforcer to the Commander table. Gonti, Lord of Luxury is just serious good times plundering cards out of your opponents’ decks. I like that Gonti makes opponents not want it to die; when you cast it again, you get to plunder again.

Pia Nalaar is fairly low on the power scale, but I could see some fun casual decks built around her, probably starting with Ashnod’s Transmogrant so she can give herself Firebreathing.

Oviya Pashiri is really cool but seems to occupy the same sort of space as Rhys the Redeemed while losing out on the second color.

I will often pick a previewed legendary creature to build a Commander deck around prior to the full set being released but so many of these look like they’re going to play great with Kaladesh cards that I wanted to wait until more cards are revealed. I’ll be back next week with a sweet Commander deck built around one of these. Which one would you like to see me build around first? What other cards from Kaladesh have you stoked to play them?

New to Commander?

If you’re just curious about the format, building your first deck, or trying to take your Commander deck up a notch, here are some handy links:

Commander Primer Part 1
(Why play Commander? Rules Overview, Picking your Commander)
Commander Primer Part 2
(Mana Requirements, Randomness, Card Advantage)
Commander Primer Part 3
(Power vs. Synergy, Griefing, Staples, Building a Doran Deck)
Commander Starter Kits 1
(kick start your allied two-color decks for $25)
Commander Starter Kits 2
(kick start your enemy two-color decks for $25)
Commander Starter Kits 3
(kick start your shard three-color decks for $25)