Magic: The Gathering finally jumps away from grim, alien-infested worlds in the last set of 2016: Kaladesh, a new world full of inspired, steampunky inventors with a vivid colour scheme. We got our hands on the new set a couple of weeks ahead of the official release; here’s our take on what it adds to the ever-growing Magic universe.

The setting

The last year has been a dark one for Magic’s story. Even without looking at any of the cards from this new set, the packaging and promotional material makes a tone shift very clear; colour, celebration, and creation jump out at you immediately. This is a drastic change to the mise en scène of the past year, but Magic happily accommodates this without it ever being jarring; embracing different worlds is part of the appeal of the evolving game.

There’s plenty of depth to the world of Kaladesh, rather than just being a simple inventors' world. The designers have blended classic steampunk elements (protruding, brutal machinery) with fantasy tropes (elves, gremlins, and the first Magic dwarves in just under a decade). The result is something much brighter than many steampunk settings, but there are elements hinting at struggle below the bright surface, stopping things from lapsing into the saccharine or cliché.

©2016 Wizards of the Coast LLC in the USA & other countries. Illustration by Adam Paquette.

©2016 Wizards of the Coast LLC in the USA & other countries. Illustration by Magali Villeneuve.

©2016 Wizards of the Coast LLC in the USA & other countries. Illustration by Clint Cearley.

©2016 Wizards of the Coast LLC in the USA & other countries. Illustration by Cliff Childs.

©2016 Wizards of the Coast LLC in the USA & other countries. Illustration by Volkan Baga.

“©2016 Wizards of the Coast LLC in the USA & other countries. Illustration by Adam Paquette.

©2016 Wizards of the Coast LLC in the USA & other countries. Illustration by Adam Paquette.

©2016 Wizards of the Coast LLC in the USA & other countries. Illustration by Jakub Kasper.

©2016 Wizards of the Coast LLC in the USA & other countries. Illustration by Tyler Jacobson.

©2016 Wizards of the Coast LLC in the USA & other countries. Illustration by Johan Boden.

2016 Wizards of the Coast / Tyler Jacobson

©2016 Wizards of the Coast LLC in the USA & other countries. Illustration by Kev Walker.

©2016 Wizards of the Coast LLC in the USA & other countries. Illustration by Clint Cearley.

©2016 Wizards of the Coast LLC in the USA & other countries. Illustration by William Murai.

©2016 Wizards of the Coast LLC in the USA & other countries. Illustration by Daarken.

©2016 Wizards of the Coast LLC in the USA & other countries. Illustration by Jaime Jones.

©2016 Wizards of the Coast LLC in the USA & other countries. Illustration by Kirsten Zirngibl.



©2016 Wizards of the Coast LLC in the USA & other countries. Illustration by Tyler Jacobson.

The feel of the world is well communicated through art—the art being as beautiful as any of the modern expansions in recent memory—and the flavour text on some cards does a great job of fleshing out the world with little details. There’s even some cute little touches in the prerelease pack this time 'round, including a little gear-decorated treasure box for your dice and counters, and a papercraft build-your-own-little-flying-machine kit (that sadly doesn’t fly).

Conversely, as each card only has a small amount of text, and booster packs are in a random order, one of the problems that has always plagued Magic is the difficulty of communicating the full narrative of the set. To help address this, a new “Story Spotlight” marker appears on five cards in Kaladesh that depict some of the major events, each with a link to a website with short stories that Wizards of the Coast have been publishing in the lead-up to the set's release. This should be welcomed by players who want to dive deeper into the story and might pique the interest of those who haven’t had a look at the new stories, whilst being unobtrusive for those who are happy skipping it.

There’s also some tension around just how much story is trying to squeeze into this set. Alongside explaining what the world of Kaladesh is, the designers are also trying to communicate the storyline of what's happening there right now and also character development for the Gatewatch—a group of planeswalkers whose members are often the main characters in recent Magic sets. The result is just a hint of clutter; the feeling that some of the flavour texts are heavy-handed in trying to get some of these story points across instead of sticking to drawing on a reader’s imagination through the hinting style that is done so well elsewhere.

Kaladesh mechanics

Moving from the aesthetics to the mechanics of the set, we see several new keywords, as well as a few more subtle themes. Fabricate, Vehicles (that need to be Crewed), and Energy all play directly on the themes of mechanical invention, with more clever interactions than might jump out at first glance.

Fabricate creatures let you make a choice when you play them: you can either opt to beef up their base stats, or they can bring along some mechanised friends for the ride. These friends are artifact-flavoured, so there’s often more to the decision than just how you want to spread out your power. Generally in modern Magic, there’s an advantage to spreading out your resources, so many of the Fabricate cards offer an incentive to choose the other way, which leads to more meaningful choices, and in turn, better gameplay.

Fabricate is the workhorse of the set, providing an easy-to-understand mechanic on many common cards, enabling artifact synergies, but not increasing on-board complexity.

Vehicles aren’t as straightforward as Fabricate, but using them is worth it once you realise you can smash your opponent with giant trains. Vehicles cards aren’t creatures until some of your other creatures Crew them, making them have a real extra cost for getting up and running but rewarding you by having amazing power relative to their mana cost. Vehicles are good fun, as playing with giant creatures is one of the more simple, satisfying bits of Magic, but there are also the tools in the set to combat these on-the-rails strategies so they don’t become overbearing.

Creatures that have hopped in a vehicle aren’t at risk from the combat themselves, so the counters to Vehicles don’t feel too painful either. There are a few rules oddities that might catch out new players (for example, a vehicle can be the crew for another, larger vehicle), but once these are learnt, they’re not demanding constant attention from a player, so they’re a good place for the set to put its complexity.

Energy is the last named mechanic, denoted by a new symbol on cards— —similar to the existing mana symbols. There are some big differences between mana and energy, but nevertheless it feels very natural to start gaining and spending it if you're already familiar with Magic's spellcasting system. The main difference is that energy lasts past the end of a turn, allowing you to stockpile it, hopefully building up to something big and splashy later. In fact, it’s more common for energy to ebb and flow through a game rather than build up to one peak, but it’s enjoyable in this role as a second resource to manage on top of your mana.

There’s a conscious design decision that’s very apparent as you look through the energy cards—almost all of them both generate and spend energy, which is a fine choice for two major reasons. First, it means it’s hard to have those feel-bad moments where you have one half of the puzzle without the other. Second, it means you don’t feel forced to build an “energy deck," but can pick and choose which cards you like, including when you’re mixing the Kaladesh cards into an existing collection. Overall, energy is a fun little puzzle to work through, both in deckbuilding and play. It's not quite as complex as Madness/Delirium from the previous blocks, but it doesn’t really suffer for that.

The last major theme reflects the plethora of inventions and mechanical wonders on Kaladesh: artifact cards. Whilst most Magic sets have a few rings, trinkets, and maybe even a few animated swords, Kaladesh has a much higher proportion, from wondrous factories to tiny metal familiars. There are also other cards that encourage you to play lots of artifacts, such as effects that only turn on if you have three artifacts in play or that give your artifact creatures a power boost.

Overall, the focus on artifacts is clearly there as a theme without dominating every part of the set, which is something the revisited Mirrodin block suffered from a few years back. It’s a good example of how a theme doesn’t need to be an expressly named mechanic in order to be important to the set.

Inventions

The last thing to mention about the set is also the one that least directly affects the play experience. Just as the Battle for Zendikar block featured Expeditions, Kaladesh features a new all-foil, all-weather, full-art super-set called Inventions. There is roughly one Invention per 144 booster packs of Kaladesh.

Showcasing amazing artifacts from across Magic’s history—some of which are far too powerful to be printed in the style of game that Wizards wants today—Inventions are mostly designed to be tempting collectors' items for certain players who are specifically looking for certain old, rare, or expensive cards.

There are some questions around how the presence of this new kind of super-rare card will affect Magic’s thriving secondary market, but based on Zendikar Expeditions, we're expecting Inventions to actually lower the cost of the other singles in the set. This is the perfect premium model: appealing, unique, but doesn't affect the cost of competitive play.

Listing image by 2016 Wizards of the Coast / Tyler Jacobson