I went to the prerelease for the latest MTG set Kaladesh this past weekend. I’ve been to dozens of these over the last eight years and have blogged many so you know the drill.
Kaladesh is an artifact-heavy set that takes place in a sort of ‘Indian steampunk’ world. It’s a wonderful set both in design and the way it plays, with oodles of fun cards that work well with each other.
There were many players (about 40) and there were four rounds of play. As has been the trend the last year or so, the tourney was very casual and you won boosters according to your games won. In the end I won two and placed somewhere in the top third.
My deck was green and white, and when it won did so mostly due to this pair of cards:
The artifact is seriously powerful, and generated me tokens every round while pumping up my other creatures. If I got it out with a +1/+1 on a card, I usually won.
The set includes a new vehicle artifact type, but I included none in my deck. They are powerful though, and were difficult to deal with when played against me. The guy that ultimately won the tournament was lucky with his card pool and played a deck based around vehicles.
For me the measure of an MTG card – and an expansion – is in the answer to “do I want to build decks around this”? This is why Kaladesh succeeds, because it has many such cards. These two for instance…
That first one seems made for my life gain deck, and the second just cries out to be abused 🙂
So my verdict is: a great set with cards that are fun to play. Doing just that this past weekend may have been the most fun I’ve ever had at a prerelease.