Quick personal review, warning: I've been distanced from the game for quite a while, my analysis skills might have gotten rusty. I'm only doing this review on a whim for fun and for select cards. My (dust-collecting) decks are mostly aged even before they collected dust, so I mostly look at the power-cards of sets nowadays (which means rares and mythics mostly). Another note, as none of decks really align with the tribes or Snow, I just glance and skip through them, even if they have great synergies, I'm reviewing more for myself than actually creating general content.
Divine Gambit - Best card ever created, 10/10, would abolish the Reserved List by itself. Okay, just kidding, I missed the rant boat for this card by a country mile and I'm just here to give my two cents (obviously I'm not getting this for anything), there should have been a CMC-cap on the permanent placed,
Skyclave Apparition-style. With the Apparition it was obvious the 4/4 token came first, so they capped the removal range to 4, but apparently when it comes to the inverse (downsides) they just say "Emrakul is fine".
Doomskar - I feel like this section will be the "foretell" review as well, and it helps the first one on the list numerically is an impactful one. In a vacuum I would say "sure, paying 2 first and 3 later" is nice, but at the end of the day it's still a 5-mana vanilla creature wipe. As foretold, my decks are already aged with value utility on resolution, so I daresay generally the convenience of foretelling doesn't outweigh all the value I packed in my decks already, even on a boardwipe. That being said I could see a potential future in my
Yorion, since the gimmick of the deck blinking in-and-out for "extra-turns" during end-steps could work the the mechanic, but at the end of the day it isn't exactly revolutionary (and well with times IRL as it is now I wouldn't go out and experiment with a whole bulk of cards which aren't revolutionary tier).
Glorious Protector - Gotta admit I was excited for one second thinking it was another
Restoration Angel/
Felidar Guardian until I saw it wasn't. The whole Yorion cycle works on the fact the exiles come back on their own (and trigger an exile when they ETB) so to need an external trigger is just too much work on an aged deck.
Starnheim Courser - well if I already run
Etherium Sculptor,
Jhoira's Familiar and
Cloud Key I probably should give this a look. It'll like take over the Familiar but then again affecting Legendaries is nice in the format.
Mystic Reflection - Might have glanced too quickly the first time round, but on reflection it's actually a pretty swell card. I could throw it into
Grimgrin just so I could turn 2/2 zombie tokens into threats, or turn threats into 2/2 zombies. It's incredibly flexible and I like it but I feel so detached/aged that I probably won't feel hurt if I couldn't get a copy to toy around with at the moment.
Reflections of Littjara - I want to like it for zombies, but it also feels like a 5-mana do-nothing because it's the kind of card people tend to immediately take for as a threat and as a result it endangers you more than you can utilize it.
Burning-Rune Demon -
Rune-Scarred Demon has fallen largely out of favor (to the point I can't straight up replace it with this because it's not there to be replaced), but with the amount of recursion, I'll state the pretty obvious that this is the better Demon a lot of times. Problem for me it still faces the same issues, it's better but it's not that much better to overcome the reasons Rune-Scarred fell out in the first place. It'll find its way back in the same way its predecessor did on occasion I suppose.
Crippling Fear - On surface it looks like an far-inferior wipe even in Zombies, but then again it could be the difference of downsizing enemy boards enough that actually beating through with Zombies is a slightly more viable plan. Like Mystic Reflection I won't mind toying around with it but I won't feel any pain if I can't get one either.
Draugr Necromancer - On the surface this looks pretty powerful and revolutionary and I should Snow my Zombie deck for it, but in the larger picture I don't really like the other zombies or UB snow cards in the set so much so it becomes a case of pretty much doing that for this one card (that's going to be taken for a threat) and it becomes not-worth-it. Funny enough my
Karador already runs 3 Snow Basics just for
Field of the Dead so it could be a utility card there, but even then it's just a flexible fringe bonus.
Haunting Voyage - Not a lot to say, but big fun for zombies is the same way Mystic Reflection and Crippling Fear is.
Rise of the Dread Marn -
Fresh Meat for Zombies (although it doesn't replace already-there zombie tokens). If I throw in all those fun-foretell cards for Zombies this might make it, but otherwise this is rather meh.
Varragoth, Bloodsky Sire - Powerful, yes, but nonbo with
Alesha. Funny a card brought in attacking isn't considered to have attacked at all even after dealing combat damage/after the phase because that status all hinges on a declaration, but them's the rules.
Craven Hulk - Nothing about playability here, it's just my favorite single-card-flavor of the set.
Fearless Pup gets a quick honorably mention here as well, but Giant Coward reigns over the puppers.
Goldspan Dragon - I run
Gadrak, the Crown-Scourge in
Ryusei (and man is that deck just naturally swelling in dragons despite me not actively making it tribal because a lot of tribal support like
Dragonkin Berserker don't synergize with Ryusei's explosions well) and the synergy is pretty good there.
Vault Robber - I would have been excited for this in Ryusei if the "dies trigger" change didn't happen, but it did, so this robber is left dry.
Esika's Chariot - I do have a creature card-less
Freyalise deck that makes me always pay more attention to noncreature green cards. 4 mana for 2 tokens and a vehicle that can create more tokens does seem pretty utility.
In Search of Greatness - I never got hold of a
Mirri's Guile, I might just make do with this.
Toski, Bearer of Secrets - I mean it's technically 1-mana in
Animar for essentially an indestructible draw engine of sorts. Even if I can't pay 1, it does trigger Animar and it's a walking engine of recovery after wipes as well. That's a lot of utility packed into a forest rat.
Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider - 2 mana
Doubling Season in Animar (I had to put DS into Freyalise and I never liked the idea of DS in Animar anyway). Animar just breaks anything that makes it into the creature form, that sounds about right.
Kaya the Inexorable - I really like the ultimate (
Debtors' Knell is my "iconic" representation of the format, even if I don't actually play the card) in Karador and the plus is fine (not overwhelming in a deck already focused on reanimation), but that deck doesn't run DS (or Vorinclex) and I suspect Kaya would just be a target of all kinds in the end. But then again, she demands the same attention Knell did and if she succeeds that's unremovable "Knell" as far I'm concerned, so it's mighty tempting.
Niko Aris - Very high synergy with Yorion, pretty much protected every other turn due to deck design, then provides a way constantly ensure I can recast Yorion. Sure it's a hefty 5 mana per "my turn" as opposed to just using
Conjurer's Closet, but there aren't a lot of redundancies for if u want to retain some permanents across some phases and Niko provides some flexibility, although at a hefty cost (technically that's Yorion's own fault though). I can always just draw cards if I don't need the redundancy anyway.
Maskwood Nexus - Well I ran
Arcane Adaptation for the longest time in
Horde just to cover some cards, then during the great Commander Legends "revamp" I had Horde share the deck with
Najeela. I can hear all my creature type problems so solved that I'm considering putting
Reaper King in the deck for fun now. (FYI that deck is not a
Morophon-type of deck, it was a land-animation deck that tried to staple on elementals but kept slipping off it in several directions).
The World Tree - At first I wasn't completely sold for land
Chromatic Lantern for even Horde (it does CIPT and doesn't ramp), but looking back at Maskwood Nexus, I might just toss it in.
Alrund, God of the Cosmos // Hakka, Whispering Raven - Pretty swell in Animar, can act as early cast (that self-bounces) and then as a beatstick draw-engine of sorts. Not overly powerful (as all the gods in the set are, honestly), but what he lacks in utility power he has utility range to make up for.
Toralf, God of Fury // Toralf's Hammer - I don't care about the hammer, but "supertrample" in Animar sounds like the trample made into politics I never knew I wanted.
Kolvori, God of Kinship // The Ringhart Crest - Karador is legendary-matters, so a 2-cost rock on-theme on one side and a "weaker"
Captain Sisay on the other sounds like a compromise I could settle with.
Hengegate Pathway // Mistgate Pathway - I only run this in my 2C decks and I only have 2 2C decks (Azorius and Dimir).
That about settles it for my personal card review on Kaldheim, made by me for me, but occasionally some do find this useful so I do post this if I have the time and mood to do so.