Kaldheim - What is your take?

[Rumpy5897]

Gee, thanks for reminding me Tergrid, God of Fright and Sarulf, Realm Eater are both horribly unfun legendaries, but at least they're not nauseatingly powerful. If you want to be a griefer, you still roll out Child of Alara. Still, I hate them.

[Sinis]

... Sarulf, Realm Eater are both horribly unfun legendaries, but at least they're not nauseatingly powerful...

What makes Sarulf unfun? It just seems a bit unremarkable to me, but, I miss things.

[pokken]

... Sarulf, Realm Eater are both horribly unfun legendaries, but at least they're not nauseatingly powerful...

What makes Sarulf unfun? It just seems a bit unremarkable to me, but, I miss things.

Play pattern:

"I cast my commander. Let it survive to my upkeep and I'll exile all your stuff. Herp derp."

Sometimes it takes some setup but that's really the only thing it does.

[Rumpy5897]

"But wait, there's more! My deck's packed full of removal and Fleshbags because I gotta grow the wolf somehow! Enjoy having your stuff blown up constantly, either to grow the wolf or by the wolf!"

On the off chance I ever meet a Sarulf in the wild, every single piece of interaction I pull is going at that thing until it stays in the command zone

[pokken]

"But wait, there's more! My deck's packed full of removal and Fleshbags because I gotta grow the wolf somehow! Enjoy having your stuff blown up constantly, either to grow the wolf or by the wolf!"

On the off chance I ever meet a Sarulf in the wild, every single piece of interaction I pull is going at that thing until it stays in the command zone

Yeah it's pretty much optimally designed to act like you pulled the pin on a live grenade and set it on the table

[Sinis]

How do you guys feel about Nevinyrral or Child of Alara lol

Honestly, at least this one doesn't have a sensitive deadman's switch like Child or Nevin with a sac outlet. It strikes me as a lot more 'fair'.

[pokken]

How do you guys feel about Nevinyrral or Child of Alara lol

Honestly, at least this one doesn't have a sensitive deadman's switch like Child or Nevin with a sac outlet. It strikes me as a lot more 'fair'.

All things considered exile and destroy are very different effects.

[onering]

Yep, Pokken's right. Also, the wolf costs 3, and doesn't have to die to trigger, so it comes out early and starts exiling those early plays and running away with the game, all while not needing to leave the battlefield to work. Nev and Child on a hair trigger at least run into commander tax as a limiting factor, or need additional setup to get around it, while Sarulf just goes hard immediately and plays a proactively annoying game.

[Sinis]

Yep, Pokken's right. Also, the wolf costs 3, and doesn't have to die to trigger, so it comes out early and starts exiling those early plays and running away with the game, all while not needing to leave the battlefield to work. Nev and Child on a hair trigger at least run into commander tax as a limiting factor, or need additional setup to get around it, while Sarulf just goes hard immediately and plays a proactively annoying game.

I guess I just don't see this being the case. Players have to use fetchlands or have critters die in order to power up Sarulf, and then the player has to untap with it. I honestly don't think that's going to happen much; if people feel like their rocks or whatever are threatened, they're just going to destroy Sarulf before his turn arrives.

What's irksome about Child and Nevinyrral is that it's frequently the case that you can't do anything about it. They have a sac outlet, or you don't have the exile removal, or whatever, and it's just ready to go off, no matter what, no questions asked. All you could do is Disallow the trigger, and that's it.

For Sarulf, any removal will do, you can't use the nuke as a response, and it needs to fulfill preconditions to actually be a problem.

(Pardon this pun, but it has to be made.)

Honestly, I think y'all are crying wolf here, @pokken @Rumpy5897 @onering. I can all but guarantee that in 6 months, Sarulf will be under 100 decks on edhrec, and you will have played against one or two utter failures in your online groups or LGSs.

[pokken]

I can all but guarantee that in 6 months, Sarulf will be under 100 decks on edhrec, and you will have played against one or two utter failures in your online groups or LGSs.

I agree with that but I think it's because his play patterns suck not because he's not powerful enough

[NGW]

There's elements I like, elements I don't like. So, about the same as most sets I suppose.

I'm really not happy seeing snow make a comeback, mostly because snow continues to be all upside over non-snow with no real drawbacks at all.

I still am not a fan of MDFCs, and I say that as someone that loves transforming DFCs (I'm a big werewolf guy). It's a bit less of an issue here than they were in Zendikar because these aren't also lands. I've long been a proponent of the "mana screw/flood are an intentional part of the game and things done to try and remove it are bad for the game" train of thought.

I think they could have done a better job of capturing the viking theme, it feels almost wasted here because they just tried to do way too much. I think the whole 10 realms, 10 tribes sorta thing wasn't the right call to make for such an anticipated theme.

Niko feels out of place. Like, they put them in solely for the sake of diversity and they just don't feel like they were a part of the set. I know they had a place in some of the side story stuff on the mothership, but they just come across as very inconsequential. I also think they went about using them as a nonbinary rep a bit..on the nose, the design in particular feels very trope-y. I am not against the representation in general, WotC has done it very naturally and quite well in the past (even if they also have done it very hamfisted at other times), I just think this situation was done less than the best.

The "most metal set ever" stuff was cringe-worthy. Especially the censored swearing crap in that one article and it just felt very "hello fellow kids" with how it was handled.

Overall though there are some really cool cards in the set, many of which have made their way into several of my decks or become decks all of their own. The showcase frames are fantastic (I pulled a foil showcase Kardur and it is just drop dead gorgeous).

I loved seeing Vorinclex and the Phyrexian treatment is *chef's kiss*. It's good to have them back.

[onering]

Agreed NGW. This set had a bit too much going on without enough space to explore it. Its yet another plane that could have used more than one set to explore it. I really think they should spend two sets on each plane, but keep them drafted separately and designed as single sets.

With snow, I keep seeing people say its all upside with no drawback, and I have to disagree. The drawback to snow is needing to run a lot of basics to make it work. This means that you are either limited to a couple of colors, in which case you can maintain consistency with your mana but are pretty restricted in the number of snow payoffs you can get, or you branch out into 3+ colors to get enough payoffs and run into consistency issues. Even with more mana fixing non basics, they still ETB tapped. There just aren't enough good snow payoffs to necessitate more downsides than that. Sure, you can just make all the basics in your mono white deck snow, and then run Search for Glory, but the payoff there is gaining 3 life max. Skred remains the best "you already run a bunch of basics, just make them snow for this" card available, and Blood on the Snow gives it competition. Otherwise, your making deck building commitments to run snow payoffs, even for Ice-Fang Coatl. And Reidane also exists and is a reasonable hate bear that should show up to tax big spells, and slows down snow decks.

[RxPhantom]

After digesting Kaldheim a little more, I think its issues can be attributed to the one-set model. Ten tribes is a lot for one set, not to mention snow, a bunch of gods, and whatever else is going on. I think they should've either stayed on Kaldheim for another set, or they need to be okay with mechanical carryover between sets, even if the settings are different.

[5colorsrainbow]

After digesting Kaldheim a little more, I think its issues can be attributed to the one-set model. Ten tribes is a lot for one set, not to mention snow, a bunch of gods, and whatever else is going on. I think they should've either stayed on Kaldheim for another set, or they need to be okay with mechanical carryover between sets, even if the settings are different.

The tribal themes are at least in multiple set this year. Angels, demons, spirits, zombies and humans will all get support in Innistrad 3, they mixed giants and wizards which has been getting support with party and likely strixhaven, elves and dwarfs are most likely gonna get more in the DnD set and the shapeshifters which have a bit of their own identity but can be used in other tribal decks.

[Sinis]

The tribal themes are at least in multiple set this year. Angels, demons, spirits, zombies and humans will all get support in Innistrad 3, they mixed giants and wizards which has been getting support with party and likely strixhaven, elves and dwarfs are most likely gonna get more in the DnD set and the shapeshifters which have a bit of their own identity but can be used in other tribal decks.

I suppose Berserkers are here for a good time, not for a long time...

[5colorsrainbow]

The tribal themes are at least in multiple set this year. Angels, demons, spirits, zombies and humans will all get support in Innistrad 3, they mixed giants and wizards which has been getting support with party and likely strixhaven, elves and dwarfs are most likely gonna get more in the DnD set and the shapeshifters which have a bit of their own identity but can be used in other tribal decks.

I suppose Berserkers are here for a good time, not for a long time...

Well the other tribes likely will get some support, great thing about tribal is you just need a couple lord effects and a good number of the tribe to get it to work. We will likely get more berserkers (Innistrad vampires come to mind) I was just list the sets with (or likely with) the clear tribal support.

[BaronCappuccino]

I only have a single commander deck, and I don't play any other formats, so a set is only as good to me as the number of cards I swap in from it, and Doctor Strange couldn't find a universe in even ten million tries where my Rakdos Chainer deck doesn't want those two demons that tutor. I'm happy.

[JWK]

Personally, I like Kaldheim quite a bit. It includes a wide range of really good and interesting cards, including many that would probably have been considered chase cards of a set if they had been released only a few years ago, but which are getting almost no attention because the set includes several cards that stand so far above the rest in power level that they dominate the set. This comes on top of a couple of other sets - M21, Zendikar Rising and Commmander Legends - that are themselves so full of great cards that it's a virtual bounty of goodness. It seems like we've gotten around 200 new legends in the past year or so, plus so many other playable, great cards - including many at uncommon and even a few at common - that it's kind of hard to keep track of them. It's honestly a little overwhelming. Like a lot of Commander players, I'm suffering a bit from product fatigue, and we've got bunches of other sets that promise lots of new toys right around the corner.

I have only just started slotting Kaldheim cards into existing decks. I think I've incorporated maybe 10 cards total into my decks, but I expect there to be a whole lot more.

I haven't done much with snow yet, but I have an existing snow deck (Heidar) that will probably get a couple of toys.

I like foretell a lot and think a couple of the better foretell cards will become format staples. I hope we see more of it in the future.

Kardur, Doomscourge is probably my favorite card in the set. Except maybe it's Mystic Reflection. So many shenanigans to be had there. And look, foretell!

So far the two Kaldheim cards I've put into decks the most often are Saw It Coming (3 decks) and Kardur (2 decks). I will probably end up putitng Halvar, God of Battle // Sword of the Realms into at least 4 or 5 decks, but so far I only have one copy, which has gone into Odric.

[abel88]

i mainly just went for the pathways since i like cheap flexible land. then i went full degenerate and built tergrid.

[duducrash]

My take is "Heavy Metal aesthetic is awful and I hate it"

[JWK]

My take is "Heavy Metal aesthetic is awful and I hate it"

The "metal" aspect of the marketing for this set was truly terrible.