Magic Untapped takes a look back at Kaladesh, the first half of the two-set KLD block.
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Video Transcript:
Kaladesh, the 72nd expansion for Magic: The Gathering came out on Sept. 30, 2016, and brought with it not only 264 cards, but also a new plane (technically speaking) and a new chapter in the collectible card game’s Gatewatch story.
This is actually the second time Magic players had seen the plane of Kaladesh, which made its debut as one of the many locations seen in the 2015 core set, Magic Origins.
<SOT: Maro>
As for some of the details of what went on in the story of Kaladesh, we have a story summary for you…
It’s been roughly three months since the events on Innistrad that concluded with the Eldrazi titan, Emrakul, sealing herself away in the plane’s silver moon. The member of the Gatewatch – Gideon, Jace, Nissa, Chandra, and Liliana – have made Jace’s home on Ravnica into their de-facto base of operations as another planeswalker, Tamiyo, has been spreading word across the multiverse of the team and their willingness to assist with inter-planar threats.
This gets the attention of a Vedalken planeswalker named Dovin Baan who pays the Gatewatch a visit and recruits them to act as a security detail of sorts for the upcoming inventors’ fair on his home plane of Kaladesh being put on by the plane’s consulate. Baan, as it turns out, has intel that a renegade faction is planning on crashing the fair and he’s hoping they can keep that from happening.
Gideon and Jace weren’t sure how to respond to such a seemingly small request. Nissa, in her own polite way, explains to Baan that the Gatewatch isn’t hired event security. Liliana explained that the team exists to take on plane-spanning threats. As for Chandra, though, she storms off upon hearing the words Kaladesh and Consulate in the same sentence.
In short, Baan’s request was denied. As a friendly gesture, Gideon invited the vedalken planewalker to stay for dinner. During the meal, the group notice that both Liliana and Chandra are absent.
Baan, upon hearing Chandra’s name, decides to inform the rest of the Gatewatch about her, her family, and their history on Kaladesh as, when she was a young girl, Chandra used to smuggle aether for her parents, Pia and Kiran, and their inventor friends. Furthermore, the pyromancer’s talents as a mage marked her has an undesirable amongst the consulate.
At some point, while the family was in hiding in a small village outside of the main city of Ghirapur, they were hunted down by Baral, the consulate’s Chief of Compliance. Chandra’s father was slain and the only trace left of her mother was a charred shawl.
Chandra herself was taken back to the capital for sentencing but disappeared in a violent pillar of flame mere moments before her execution.
Unbeknownst to the dinner party, Liliana had talked with Chandra in private at some point before the meal, convincing her to return to Kaladesh “for old time’s sake.”
The rest of the Gatewatch quickly figure out on their own that that’s probably exactly what Chandra did. While Jace and Gideon opt to stay behind, Nissa volunteers to join Baan and travels to Kaladesh to catch up with the pyromancer.
On Kaladesh, Chandra is seeking out the leaders of the renegade group that Baan had mentioned earlier while on Ravnica. She’s hoping she can support their efforts against the consulate as revenge for what happened to her parents. Liliana, whom had accompanied Chandra, tried to convince her to just enjoy the fair and blow off some steam, but that idea went nowhere – especially after the pair noticed a shady-looking robed person making his way through the crowd.
They followed him only to finally recognize him as Tezzeret, a planeswalker, former head of a Ravnican crime syndicate, and known agent of the power-hungry dragon planeswalker, Nicol Bolas.
As it turns out, Tezzeret, whom himself has a knack for artifice, is the head judge of the inventors’ fair and has also been tracking down the leader of the renegades. And his investigations have led him to believe that the person whom he’s looking for is none other than Pia Nalaar, Chandra’s mother.
It seems that she survived the ambush that killed Kiran and found Chandra apprehended all those years ago after all.
In the years since, and with both her husband and daughter gone, Pia had dedicated her life to fighting the consulate and had been gathering others to do the same.
And now, she was standing there right before them.
It’s during this revelation that Baan and Nissa arrive along with a number of Ghirapur peacemakers. The peacemakers form a wall separating the Gatewatch members from Tezerret, Baan, and Pia.
In fury and filled with emotion, Chandra attacked. Baan instructed the peacemakers to arrest the pyromancer. Not wanting to see her daughter once again in consulate hands, Pia opts to turn herself in as the renegade leader.
In the confusion, Liliana called for her trio to flee the scene much to Chandra’s dismay.
Once safely away, Liliana travels back to Ravnica to inform Jace about Tezzeret’s presence on Kaladesh.
As for Nissa and Chandra, they’re not quite sure what to do next, but Chandra feels the need to find a way to rescue her mother now that she knows she’s alive.
As luck would have it, Chandra was recognized by Oviya Pashiri, an old friend of her parents. Offering to help, Pashiri said that while she didn’t know where the consulate were going to hold her mother, she knew how Chandra and Nissa could find out for themselves.
The trio then pay a visit to a house party going on at the place of the aetherborn socialite, Yahenni. While Yahenni wasn’t able to help very much with information on Pia’s arrest, they were able to comfort Nissa about becoming more comfortable in being in such a large city so far away from nature.
During the party, a member of Ghirapur’s law enforcement arrives saying that he’s there to apprehend a criminal who might be hiding out there. Nissa subdues the officer and Yahenni coerces from him the information that Chandra is looking for.
Now armed with information that Pia is being held at the high-security Dhund Prison under the supervision of Captain Baral himself, Pashiri leads the two planeswalkers to Ghirapur’s night market as (rumor has it) the entrance to the prison lay somewhere beneath.
At first, their search was fruitless. That is, until Nissa realizes that she’s able to feel the flow of aether in the pipes beneath the street similar to how she can sense mana leylines. Using the aether as a guide of sorts, the trio locates the prison’s entrance.
Once inside, they find a network of underground tunnels. Still using the aether as their navigational tool, Nissa thinks she can find out where in the prison Pia is being held.
Once they get to where they think she may be, though, it’s not Pia they find but Baral. He had been expecting them.
They try to make an escape and Chandra flared up her magic. Unbeknownst to them, though, is that Baral, hypocritically, is a mage himself and specializes in counter magic. He easily subdues the two planeswalkers, then locks all three of them into an air-tight cell that is slowly filling with poison.
While Chandra and Nissa could easily have planeswalked away from there, Chandra refused to leave Pashiri there to die and Nissa refused to leave Chandra.
Help would come, however, as the leonin planeswalker, Ajani Goldmane, quite literally burst onto the scene after Baral had left the trio for dead in the prison.
Word travels fast in Kaladesh and Ajani had been on the plane tracking Tezzeret and assisting the renegades. Once he learned that Pashiri, whom herself was with the renegades, had been taken captive, he went out to locate and rescue her.
Using his healing powers, Ajani expelled the poison from the trio’s lungs and the four of them escaped Dhund prison.
Once out, they found it surprisingly easy to find out exactly where Pia is as, during the time they were in their prison cell, a duel was set up between Pia and Tezzeret as the big finale for the inventors’ fair and advertisements were suddenly all over Ghirapur.
Not only was the duel supposed to symbolize the consulate defeating the renegades by taking out Pai, their supposed leader, but Tezzeret was personally hoping that, in using Pia as bait, he would be able to coax Chandra out into the open.
The plan, Tezzeret’s part of it at least, worked, though not quite how he had envisioned it as it wasn’t just Chandra who showed but, but a group of planeswalkers including Nissa and Ajani.
Tezzeret quickly found himself outmatched and fled the area.
And, at long last, Chandra is reunited with her mother.
In the meantime, the consulate puts into motion the next step of their grand scheme: confiscating all of the inventions being shown at the inventors’ fair as well as kidnapping the fair competition’s finalists.
Saheeli Rai, another planeswalker native to Kaladesh, catches up with Ajani at the arena and fills him in on what’s going on across the fair. Ajani deduces that Tezzeret is involved and is probably looking to construct something based upon the various inventions on exhibit.
Baan, finding Tezzeret’s methods to be, at best, sloppy and overproduced, tried his best to maintain order and prevent riots from erupting both inside the fairgrounds and out.
As for Tezzeret, he’s safely in the Consulate Spire. He informed Baan that, so long as he’s able to keep the peace, he can oversee all of the confiscated inventions. All of them, except for one: a matter teleporter of sorts made by the artificer and friend of Saheeli, Rashmi, that Tezzeret wanted for himself.
Baan, liking the terms set before him by Tezzeret, goes full-bore on his crackdown on the streets of Ghirapur, which leaves Tezzeret, finally, free to work towards his real goal and that of his master, Nicol Bolas.
And that’s where we’ll leave the story of Kaladesh as, after that, it goes into the next chapter: the story of Aether Revolt.
As for the Kaladesh set itself, design was co-led by Mark Rosewater and Shawn Main. Development was co-lead by Erik Lauer and Ian Duke. Jeremy Jarvis headed up art direction.
It was sold in traditional booster packs, a bundle (which replaced the “fat packs” of previous sets but were basically the same thing), a deckbuilder’s tool kit designed for more novice players, a Booster Battle Pack containing two 2016 Welcome Decks as well as a pair of Kaladesh booster packs, and a gift box.
The set also introduced Planeswalker decks, which replaced Intro Packs. Planeswalker decks were preconstructed decks that are playable right out of the box and feature a foil, deck-exclusive planeswalker card that ties into the main set. For Kaladesh, those would be the cards Chandra, Pyrogenius and Nissa, Nature’s Artisan.
Kaladesh also removed something from the game of Magic in the ligature for the Latin diphthong “Æ.” Despite it being used on Magic cards since 1994’s Legends, Wizards of the Coast decided to cease using it as, according to Wizards media person Blake Rasmussen, the ligature caused more issues than it was worth – especially in non-English translations. And, since Kaladesh featured so much aether, it would have become quite the headache.
Kaladesh also featured a bonus sheet of cards called Kaladesh Inventions. Similar to the Zendikar Expeditions two blocks before it, Inventions are premium foil cards that feature a special Kaladesh card frame. Kaladesh features 30 of these cards and all 30 of them are artifacts from across Magic’s history including new cards like Combustible Gearhulk, Modern-era cards such as Sword of Fire and Ice, and cards from way back like Mana Vault.
Flavor-wise, Kaladesh (both the set and the plane) has a very heavy focus on technology and innovation. It also takes heavy cues from Indian culture along with a sort of steampunk aesthetic.
<SOT: Maro>
In terms of themes and mechanics, Kaladesh introduces a new artifact subtype, vehicles, along with a new keyword ability to go along with them in “Crew.”
With crew, a player must tap a number of creatures with power equal to or greater than a vehicle’s crew cost. When that happens, that vehicle becomes an artifact creature until end of turn.
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Another new mechanic introduced with the set is Fabricate.
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And, finally, there’s Energy. Energy represents the aether that is an integral part of Kaladesh’s ecosystem and what powers many of the innovative devices found on the plane.
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The set features six cycles. Most notable among them are:
- Gearhulks, five mythic rare colored artifacts that each have both a keyword ability as well as an enter-the-battlefield effect;
- Puzzleknots at common, which each have an enter-the-battlefield ability that can be triggered a second time by paying a cost and sacrificing the artifact, and;
- Enemy-colored fast lands, finishing the cycle of ally-color fast lands that were introduced in Scars of Mirrodin.
Kaladesh also features a triplet cycle in the artifacts Fabrication Module, Animation Module, and Decoction Module. Each artifact has an ability that leads to the next and can loop together to make one complete process. Even the flavor text flows from one card to the next, as does the art which combines to make one continuous piece of artwork between the three cards.
And, speaking of cards, Kaladesh has a handful that are worth a mention, including:
- Aetherflux Reservoir, a popular card used still today in Commander in life gain decks that has the ability to knock opponents out of the game in one fell swoop;
- Aetherworks Marvel, a key card in the very powerful Marvel deck during Standard at the time that can fire off as early as turn four – often to win the game. The card wound up being banned in the format;
- Authority of the Consuls, which is a very good turn-one spell that can really throw off aggressive decks;
- Bomat Courier, an aggressive artifact creature that can refill one’s hand if needed. The card saw a good amount of play in various “Red Deck Wins” strategies in Standard and Pioneer;
- Chandra, Torch of Defiance, considered still today as one of the most powerful planeswalker cards ever printed. It saw heavy play in Standard at the time and still sees play across a variety of formats;
- Inventors’ Fair, a land at rare with a nice upside in artifact decks;
- Lost Legacy, a card that sees sideboard play as a way to dismantle combo decks;
- Panharmonicon, a favorite card of Mark Rosewater and the first card printed that doubles triggered abilities when they occur;
- Paradoxical Outcome, a combo piece seen in Legacy and Vintage “Paradoxical Storm” decks;
- Saheeli Rai, a planeswalker card that became part of a vicious combo when the next set, Aether Revolt, came out thanks to the card Felidar Guardian;
- Skysovereign, Consul Flagship, which saw a good amount of play in Standard and is still seen in competitive decks today from time to time;
- Smuggler’s Copter, an undercosted artifact vehicle that would finds itself banned in Standard as well as pre-emptively banned in Pioneer when that format was introduced in 2019. In 2023, the Copter was un-banned in Pioneer, and;
- Torrential Gearhulk, a win condition card that saw a good amount of play in Standard and still does in Pioneer.
In terms of promotional cards, Kaladesh’s prerelease promos were date stamped foils and could be of any rare or mythic rare in the set. Saheeli’s Artistry is the set’s launch promo. The set’s Game Day participation promo is Essence Extraction with Cultivator of Blades being the set’s Game Day Top-Eight promo. Skyship Stalker is the set’s Buy-a-Box promo.
Now, in getting back to the set Kaladesh as a whole…
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So, what are your thoughts on Kaladesh? Love it or hate it, let us know what you think in the comments.
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