Sets Kaldheim Charade

[TrainmasterGT]

I'm not up on recent lore or stories, but what exactly is boring about Kaya? Especially since you say she is a cool character design?

She's just a very generic overconfident character who doesn't ever grow or learn. She supposedly has some moral values that cause her to fight, but in the stories I've read of her she just feels like a random assassin character. I think the reason why she kills ghosts is because she doesn't want bad people to live forever, which is a fine character motivation, if a little generic.

Kaya has a lot of good cards, and she looks cool. She's just not an interesting person yet. She needs a story that lets us understand who she is beyond: "pay me and I kill ghosts unless you're also a bad person." I think she has a lot of potential to be a good character, it's just that no one at WOTC has actually used her in an interesting way. Right now, she's just like a plumber who fixes Ghosts instead of leaky pipes.

 

[sigh]

So you don't like her because her story is young and not well fleshed out? an almost inevitability with a product like MTG where the story is smeared over lots of little chunks. Other characters have several years on her for getting over growing pains.

If that's the case, her getting more screen time is pretty much the only way she'll develop more depth, as you state ("she needs a story that lets us understand who she is...."). This would mean Kaldheim is cause for celebration that she might gain some new polish, rather than a sigh of disappointment.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

So you don't like her because her story is young and not well fleshed out? an almost inevitability with a product like MTG where the story is smeared over lots of little chunks. Other characters have several years on her for getting over growing pains.

If that's the case, her getting more screen time is pretty much the only way she'll develop more depth, as you state ("she needs a story that lets us understand who she is...."). This would mean Kaldheim is cause for celebration that she might gain some new polish, rather than a sigh of disappointment.

I never said I was disappointed- I literally said that I'd like to see her have a story where she gets fleshed out more. In fact, my exact words were:

Hopefully she get's the "Jace in Ixalan" treatment where they tell a story where we can have a deep dive into her character. Jace was extremely unlikable before he went on that journey of self-discovery, but now he's a pretty stand-up guy. I'd like to see the same for Kaya.

Kaya has been in the story for almost half a decade now and they really haven't done anything to make her an interesting person. Now that she's part of the main cast, I want them to do something to make her an enjoyable character to read rather than just "generic White-aligned hero #12." I'm not confident they will be able to pull it off given the poor direction of the story in the last year and a half or so. The Zendikar Rising short stories were pretty good, so the creative might be able to make it work.

 

[sigh]

Fair enough.

 

[Zoss]

Right now, she's just like a plumber who fixes Ghosts instead of leaky pipes.

Hey, Magic: the Ghostbustering could be a lot of fun. But yeah, she's no Bill Murray--it would take a lot of work to make her fun enough for that sort of character to really shine.

 

[Velrun]

I personally really liked Kaya during Conspiracy 2: Take the Crown

I didn’t follow her story on Ravnica because all Ravnica stories are bland in my opinion. The biggest issue I have is with planeswalkers in general:
1. They are all over the place
2. Since 2007 they have been in every Standard legal set
3. They too often show up on a stranger plane and almost instantly become one of the most important characters on the whole plane. They gain power on that new plane like no other.

I am not sure if that issue is also relevant to Kaya.

It feels nice to have a little quiet between sets and spoilers. We need to cherish this time because we don’t have it often.

 

[Velrun]

We have the first visuals of Kaldheim

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articl...ing-secret-lair-ultimate-edition-2-2020-12-03

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

Interesting that it doesn't seem to be all snowy all the time! (We do have snow free at lest half of the year up here in the north!)

 

[Velrun]

Interesting that it doesn't seem to be all snowy all the time! (We do have snow free at lest half of the year up here in the north!)

You’re Swedish, right?
I’m Danish.

We have Snow between 20 and 25 days per year according to the World Climate Guide.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

Brad found:

Spoiler: Supposedly these were pulled in a CMR pack

There's also:

Spoiler

They also supposedly opened:

Which is a real card.

I think both of these leaks might be fake. The first snow leak which prompted me to create this thread was probably fake given how Oko isn't appearing on Kaldheim (unless WOTC just didn't tell us about him), throwing the validity of the other two cards into question. This set seems like a weird place to bring in the Phyrexians, and since the other snow cards were fake, it might make sense this one is fake as well. The only thing that saves this leak so far is that I couldn't find that picture of Vorniclex on the internet (and that is certainly him), meaning that there is a higher likelihood these are real. The "Phyrexian" creature type appearing in a tribal set might also make sense. I'm just not sold on snow since every previous snow leak has proved to be either fake or the result of a blurry photo.

The second set of leaks maybe could be real because they were allegedly opened with a card confirmed to be in the set, but I'm not holding my breath. The templating they used for the Boast mechanic looks weird. It looks like the sort of thing that would normally be an Ability word (Landfall, Threshold, Constellation, etc), but it's templated like a Keyword Ability (Flying, Flashback, Madness, etc). I don't think a confirmed card being in with the bunch saves the leak's reputation, as it wouldn't be hard to fake an existing card if one could already create original fakes of this quality.

I might be completely wrong here, but I don't have time to build on these ideas right now.

 

[LadyMapi]

I think the second set of cards feels more likely

Phyrexian has never been used as a type before, and if this was a Snow set I think they would have included that in the initial set of spoilers. It's not impossible, it'd just be weird if they were real.

On the other hand... Arni's templating looks pretty normal to me. The only bit that's questionable is that they included the "Boast" trigger as reminder text instead of actual text. I kinda hope the Saga is real, honestly - my hope is that they'll print one Saga for each color pair.

 

[shamizy]

These feel pretty real. I would have thought the first set was fake with the Snow Sorcery, but that Vorinclex is pretty convincing. New art by Daarken that looks on brand and never before seen, the name of the card plays into the sets themes, and the number crunch looks about right. 2nd set seems legit to me with the real card alongside the others.

 

[Velrun]

Uff

How did Vorinclex plane travel from New Phyrexia? If these had been low quality pictures it would be so tempting to shout fake And if these are real does it mean we’ll never see Kaldheim for what it was pre-Phyrexianized?

Arni and Saga looks very legit!

 

[Velrun]

Also if Vorinclex is real..

I feel like we’ve been robbed of a great surprise planned by Wizards of the Coast by this spoiler. Almost on the scale of Kozilek on Zendikar.

 

[shamizy]

My guess is that there's some equivalent to the Bifrost in Kaldheim. Or maybe that sword from the trailer with Tibalt?

I feel like Vorinclex somehow ended up there either by accident or in the middle of Tibalt sowing chaos and it's going to set off whatever the Kaldheim equivalent of Ragnarok would be.

 

[Peter LaCara]

Two of Maro's Kaldheim preview clues suggest to me that these are real:

"the introduction of a creature type that players have been wanting for years"
and
"a card that allows you to kill someone with poison"

Also, chapter 3 of that WG saga is apparently what Populate was in playtesting, and it turned out to be bah-roken, so I have high hopes for that card.

 

[Velrun]

 

[ravnic]

The holo foil stamp in this is ... tiny. I call it fake.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

View attachment 3504

This Elesh Norn is a fake, the three big giveaways are the paragraph spacing (which is too wide), the "foil stamp" (which is janky), and the art, which was created by an artist known as Zyralynn//Malena Santos and not Daarken.

 

[Velrun]

Yeah probably. I also think it’s fake.

 

[LadyMapi]

So here's the thing - pretty much every set printed over the last couple of years has had some level of leaks. In some cases, those leaks have been stupidly massive.

It would make sense that Wizards would start setting up fake leaks. While printing out a new set takes a lot of lead time, printing a few cards probably wouldn't (they could get them included in a test sheet). And we know they have the technology to be very selective with the cards that they put into each pack. So it would not be very hard for them to make a few cards and seed them in some boxed sets. Then someone unboxes the cards, runs onto the internet to share their find... and WotC either says that they're fake, or just straight-up doesn't include them in the set.

The end result? Any leak would be way more suspect, regardless of the card quality. And, on top of that, there'd be a new "hidden" incentive to buy boxed product.

I'm 90% sure that WotC isn't doing this, but...

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I'm 90% sure that WotC isn't doing this, but...

But you're saying they should from a capitalist point of view? Printing one offs is fairly expensive, even for them, I believe, plus you're creating ridiculously expensive cards on the secondary market. Now, they say they don't care about the secondary market, but every choice they make (e.g. what cards to reprint at what rarity) points towards the official stance being absolute horse shit, so I think they wouldn't do this unless some higher ups at Ca$hbro force them to.

 

[shamizy]

I could totally see them doing that at some point when they're hurting, but like Onder said it seems like the juice isn't worth the squeeze right now. Any major leaks we've gotten like this are usually just printing errors or someone fucking up in the distribution pipeline. The Kozilek reveal back in OGW, CMDR Legends leak of Jeska and Tevesh walker cards, this Vorinclex, etc. I also don't think they need to build any hidden incentive nowadays. They've experimented with via Masterpieces and the like to promote that chase feel, but right now I think they've settled in with their various blinged out versions of cards and it has worked. People are more than willing to pay that premium to have a rare version of a card.

If you're a competitive player then Magic is pretty bad right now across multiple formats, but if you're primarily playing casual like EDH or building your own Cube, you have so many choices for cards at great price point that you just didn't have access to in the past. Like it's insane how cheap foils for regular set rares and mythics have fallen to in recent sets with the collector editions sopping up the whale bucks. I think for Zendikar 3 I spent only like $7 spread across 4-5 foil cards? Sure, the big Standard chase card would still probably be the pricey pick-up, but everything else just seems to fall by the wayside as far as pricing goes.

 

[LadyMapi]

I'm just saying that I wouldn't be surprised if they did that. The thing is that they wouldn't be printing one-offs - they probably requisition test sheets, and it wouldn't be terribly tricky to ask for some "fake" cards. The only really expensive part would be getting the art commissioned, but they probably have at least some unused art that they could use. For all we know they were going to have a Vorinclex card in Modern Horizons, and they ended up cutting it really late.

As for the secondary market... while I agree that they're lying when they say that they don't care, I think that they only really care when the market sets a cost that they kinda have to meet. To use the Fetchland secret lair as an example, they would have been throwing away money if they had sold it for any less than they did. I don't think they care about creating ridiculously expensive cards, because that drives sales. Then later on when they're making Modern Horizons 3, they can print that Vorinclex ("oh, it was a real card, but we cut it last minute!") and charge top dollar.

---

Again, I don't think they're doing this, because it'd be ridiculously scummy and would absolutely shred any good will they've created in the past if it came to light... but hey, if people are swapping conspiracy theories about these cards, why not throw another one on top?

 

[Onderzeeboot]

but hey, if people are swapping conspiracy theories about these cards, why not throw another one on top?

Because conspiracy theories are generally not helpful, and often actively harmful.