Sets [KHM] Kaldheim Official Previews

[TrainmasterGT]

This is the actual Kaldheim preview thread, not a leaks thread. That can be found here.

Ironically, these spoiler cards are actually leaks, but since these are the official box art for the Kaldheim commander decks, I felt starting the official thread would be prudent. I retrieved these from a discord server, I do not think that is the original source as I saw these on instagram before then this morning.

Ranar the Ever-Watchful 2WU
Legendary Creature - Spirit Warrior (M)

Flying, vigilance
The first card you foretell each turn costs [Snow mana] to foretell.
Whenever you exile one or more cards from your hand, and/or permanents from the battlefield, create a 1/1 white Spirit creature token with flying.

2/3
This card doesn't say what Fortell does, I've heard it speculated to be:
: Exile this card from your hand. You may cast later for Foretell cost.

I do not know if that is true or not, but it would make some amount of sense.

Larhril, Blade of the Elves 2BG
Legendary Creature - Elf Noble (M)

Menace
Whenever Larhril deals combat damage to a player, create that many 1/1 green Elf Warrior creature tokens.
T, Tap ten untapped Elves you control: Each opponent loses 10 life and you gain 10 life.

2/3

I think both of these cards are probably not good enough for most cubes, but it's neat to see that elves are making a comeback as a tribal theme. Foretell seems like it could be neat, but I would have to see cards with the actual ability before making a judgement as to whether or not it is good.

 

[Velrun]

Seeing the title “Official Previews” uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh

Realizing it is the leaked cards....

Realizing it is a speculation thread..

 

[ravnic]

So, it is rumored that foretell lets you exile the card from your hand for a cost and then later cast it for ... another cost? So the first one is always and the latter varies, right? I would imagine it is hard to find numbers where you would actually want to do that. It can't be less total than the cards mana cost, else you'd just never hard cast it. But if it is too much, you would just always hard cast it. There is not much room to play.

Viking Dreadmaw
Creature - Viking Dinosaur
Foretell (You may pay and exile this from your hand. If you do, you may cast it from exile for it's foretell cost)
6/6

Let's look at this example. A foretell cost of anything less than 5 would make hard casting it no longer an option. Anything more than 5 would make foretelling it not an option, barring some corner cases like avoiding hand disruption.

Conclusion: This mechanic works differently. Maybe you're paying the foretell cost twice, once for exiling and once for casting it from exile? I don't know, it still sound clunky and lame tbh.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

So, it is rumored that foretell lets you exile the card from your hand for a cost and then later cast it for ... another cost? So the first one is always and the latter varies, right? I would imagine it is hard to find numbers where you would actually want to do that. It can't be less total than the cards mana cost, else you'd just never hard cast it. But if it is too much, you would just always hard cast it. There is not much room to play.

Viking Dreadmaw
Creature - Viking Dinosaur
Foretell (You may pay and exile this from your hand. If you do, you may cast it from exile for it's foretell cost)
6/6

Let's look at this example. A foretell cost of anything less than 5 would make hard casting it no longer an option. Anything more than 5 would make foretelling it not an option, barring some corner cases like avoiding hand disruption.

Conclusion: This mechanic works differently. Maybe you're paying the foretell cost twice, once for exiling and once for casting it from exile? I don't know, it still sound clunky and lame tbh.

It's basically morph, but card type agnostic and without the Grey Ogre body. I think your example is too straightforward. There will definitely be designs like that (just like there were with morph), but I also fully expect designs like this (if the mechanic will indeed see print as rumored):



In addition, there will undoubtedly be cards that play around with cards existing in exile, e.g.



There is much more that can be done with this mechanic than use it as a simple cost spreading mechanic.

 

[ravnic]

You get a like just for the art+flavor text

and of course you are right too. It just doesn't seem to be a particularly interesting mechanic.

Oh, and your dino has no p/t!

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Oh, and your dino has no p/t!

It's an imaginary 6/6

 

[LadyMapi]

For a second there, I misread "foretell" as "forecast", and I got kinda excited.

 

[Velrun]

Kaldheim official official previews:

Pathways lands have been spoiled. We all know what they do but now we have name, art and confirmation.

https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums...2-khm-the-last-4-mdfc-duals-mastodon-previews

I did a lazy and linked to another spoiler thread, sue me

 

[TekLazar]

Sweet we got Sagas. At first glance I wasn't too excited for this one, but the more I look at it and consider it, the more I like it. At worst 4 mana draw 2ish cards (put 2ish +1 counters on a creature you control) is pretty good. Especially in red white. I think that if it's destroyed you can still cast the cards (can anyone verify that? Not sure exactly how that works).

 

[ravnic]

Yes you can still cast those cards. if it were worded like "you may cast these cards for as long as ~ remains on the battlefield", it wouldn't, but it also would give you another turn to cast them. it feels kinda weird that chapter one synergizes with chapter two but no longer with chapter 3. Not directly, that is. It also feels weird to me to get sagas in a world we've never been to before.

 

[LadyMapi]

Oh wow, is that a non-parasitic support card for Storm?

 

[TrainmasterGT]

Oh wow, is that a non-parasitic support card for Storm?

No, it's the wrong colors and it doesn't work on the axis storm usually tries to win with (it's payoff is bigger creatures as opposed to direct damage or mill, and storm decks don't usually want creatures).

This card's main role is as a curve topper for aggressive Boros decks, where it actually can be 4 mana to draw 4 cards and put a bunch of counters on your team. I'm not sure I'm interested in this card yet, but I think it's one of the better and cooler Boros cards we have access to as of right now.

 

[LadyMapi]

It's a tribal Birthing Pod!

 

[ravnic]

Am I the only one really tired of getting tribal in every f*cking set? It tends to draft and play out pretty boring most of the time, yet people seems to love it and Maro and friends put it in every single set. Zendikar 3 had 4 tribal themes (or even 5, but party was at least innovative). Even sets like Eldraine, which were supposed to be about something else get 2 tribal themes. These numbers are not too far from "tribal sets" like Onslaught (5) or Ixalan (4).

 

[LadyMapi]

I think it's because Tribal is basically easy-mode.

 

[sigh]

Tribal is, from what I've seen, one of those mechanics that is massively popular with kitchen-table players. Which happen to be the largest play group of MTG by a wide, wide margin. So it only makes sense for WotC to oblige them.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I think Pyre of Heroes is an absolute trap in most cubes. Birthing Pod is actually relatively hard to draft around, in the sense that it poses some very real restrictions to your creature base. You want to run creatures at least up to cmc 6 to enable a decent chain, and you want to run multiples at each cmc (let's say at least 2) to ensure you can reliably chain. Most importantly, you want to play creatures that like to be chained, e.g. creatures with enter/leaves the battlefield effects, like Eternal Witness or Acidic Slime, or creatures that operate from the graveyard, like Genesis. So, Birthing Pod requires you to draft 10 to 12 creatures (depending on whether you count 1 drops or want to go beyond cmc 6), but not just any creature will do, they have to fit in a certain play pattern as well. Now imagine that all of those creatures have to be of the same tribe in addition to the requirements already mentioned! Only in the most dedicated of tribal cubes will you be able to pull that off.

 

[japahn]

Yeah Onder, I was excited at first because generic tribal payoffs is always something I'm happy to see, but then I looked at my list and... if you stick to a single tribe, this doesn't actually do much.

OTOH, I do think we shortcut too early and oversimplified Pyre of Heroes, because you don't choose the tribe as it ETBs, but each time you sac a creature you can get any that matches any of its types. So you can go Fanatical Firebrand into Kari Zev, Skyship Raider, into Aether Adept, into Master of Winds (which doesn't do that much, but it illustrates how you can chain creature types (pirate -> human -> wizard). Pretty sure that if you model drafting around it, it becomes an NP-Hard directed acyclic graph problem. You just need to go through one path in your library, so there is no need to have that much tribal density of a single tribe. Most importantly they need to leave something behind with the ETB or Dies trigger, or this is just a mana sink that burns through your library. I can see this being quite good in sacrifice decks, actually, though maybe building them this way is not worth the effort.

This is probably more of a constructed card, but it's unique enough that although I think it's a trap, I am completely unsure that it is.

 

[LadyMapi]

Clearly you just need to combine it with

 

[LadyMapi]

So, they just dropped a bunch of spoilers for the theme boosters. Most of the cards are tribal nonsense, but one card in particular caught my eye:

Sure, it needs to be enchanted or equipped, but that's a pretty fun ability if you're running Convoke or Vehicles.

 

[TrainmasterGT]

Am I the only one really tired of getting tribal in every f*cking set? It tends to draft and play out pretty boring most of the time, yet people seems to love it and Maro and friends put it in every single set. Zendikar 3 had 4 tribal themes (or even 5, but party was at least innovative). Even sets like Eldraine, which were supposed to be about something else get 2 tribal themes. These numbers are not too far from "tribal sets" like Onslaught (5) or Ixalan (4).

No. Tribal is cool, and it's not difficult to bake a tribal archetype into a set without having to make it feel parasitic. For example, in my cube, I have a Zombie Tribal sub theme in black because one of my drafters really likes zombies. Despite this, I'm only spending one slot on cards that I wouldn't normally consider playing as a support piece. I was able to make this work partially because there are a plethora of good zombies that work in discard, self mill, and other graveyard strategies I support, but mostly because I didn't have to sacrifice anything to make the deck functional. And unlike WOTC, I can't just print cards that have relevant types.

Anyway, this set looks like it's going to have a major tribal component, but mostly with tribes that haven't had much (or any) support before:

I like this card a lot. It's like a 2-drop version of Captain Lannery Storm that also acts as an odd lord. Plus, she just sometimes brings dragons into play randomly, which is cool.

Our dwarf friend is the only card of this bunch in the main draft able portion of the set, these are all only found in the set boosters, theme boosters, and (presumably) collector's boosters:

Angels are our next tribe getting real support for the first time, and I think that's neat! I don't think any of these cards tickle my fancy, but Youtful Valkyrie could prove to be playable if we see good enough support from...

...More changelings! It's good to finally get another batch of changelings of the more recent power level. Modern Horizons only had a couple with the only worthwhile one being Changeling Outcast. Most of the ones from Lorwyn block are either GRBS or Terrible, with few notable exceptions outside of Chameleon Colossus. Hopefully these new changelings are good, I'd pay money for a black 2/1 flier with changeling.

It looks like the Vikings are being represented by Berserkers, which kind of makes me sad as I was hoping for a Viking creature type. I'm not crying you're crying.

Giants are also here, but they haven't previewed any that are worth fussing over.

Elves are back too, but they're pretty similar to what we've seen before at this point.

Dwarves is actually a Vehicles and Equipments deck. This is neat. They live in a place called Axgard, which is a Perfect, Awesome, and Hilarious name all at once.

Note that none of these cards showcase any of the new mechanics. We still don't know what Foretell does, and it's possible that there is still another mechanic in the set. Kaldheim is Hilarious and Awesome. Let's hope the main set is good.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

That Skald's pretty decent!

 

[Seeker]

Dwarves being vehicle-based means that they work perfectly with Depala, Pilot Exemplar for the one person who's got that exact power level of cube.

 

[shamizy]

I'm super excited to see more changeling support here. I've had tribal cube theorycrafted for years now that I've tinkered with here and there, this set might get me to revisit it and maybe construct it sometime in 2021.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Ok, I need to actually switch to laptop to let this sink in and write a decent reply.

Wow.

Ok, so... You all know I support three color factions in my cube, and one of the Mardu cards is Kaalia, Zenith Seeker. She's a well-statted minion, but it's slightly tricky to make her etb work. Angel tribal might very well open up some decent support for me!



These are the angels I'm already running. Rampage of the Valkyries looks like a super playable Serra Angel variant, incidental tribal support is the best type of support! Definitely looking forward to potentially support Kaalia better!

Additionally, I feel like dwarves were on the cusp of being a playable tribe in Boros. Kaladesh brought us a ton of playable ones, but not quite enough to push the tribe at a tribal level. With another round of vehicle-minded dwarves, keep an eye out for a potential new subtheme on the back of...



And yeah, more changelings is great news for all cubes with a tribal component, no matter how heavy. Changeling Outcast has been a great little ninja zombie shapeshifter!