Magic Untapped takes a look back at the Norse-themed Kaldheim as Magic: The Gathering introduces a new locale to the collectible card game.
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Video Transcript:
The first Magic: The Gathering set to come out in 2021, Kaldheim is the 86th expansion in the collectible card game’s history.
Set on a new plane of the same name, it’s a top-down Norse mythology-inspired expansion – something that can easily be seen through the plane’s various gods, awe-striking creatures, wintery themes, and more.
The story was released online in five main parts as well as another five side stories, most of which were written by Magic worldbuilder Roy Graham. And, as usual, we have a summary of it all for you.
Kaya, a planeswalker and skilled mercenary assassin who has the talent of being able to switch between the realm of the living and the realm of the dead via her ability to transition herself into a ghost form, has been hired by a yet-unknown benefactor to kill a monster that has somehow found its way into Kaldheim. That monster? Vorinclex, a Phyrexian praetor whose main drive is seeing all creatures return to a primal, survival-of-the-fittest way of being. For one reason or another, he was sent to Kaldheim via a plane-transitioning portal from his home on New Phyrexia.
The praetor has a mission on Kaldheim, but to succeed he needs assistance. He enlists the assistance of a chaotic planeswalker by the name of Tibalt. Enlisted by means of being poisoned by Vorinclex, Tibalt is following the praetor’s orders in exchange for an antidote and makes mischief across the plane’s ten realms by sowing seeds of distrust amongst the plane’s humans, elves, giants, and so on.
As mentioned, Kaldheim consists of ten distinct realms. Each realm is connected via the World Tree and beings can traverse from realm to realm by way of something known as omenpaths. Furthermore, each realm is overseen by a near-immortal god.
To gain legitimacy amongst the gods, which would allow him to do his mischief, Tibalt disguised himself as Valki, the God of Lies, trapping the real Valki in chains and binding him in ice.
To further his ends, Tibalt (as Valki) slew a dwarven forgemaster and stole a blade forged from the sap of the World Tree known as the Sword of the Realms. The enchanted sword has the ability to forge omenpaths between Kaldheims realms. It also has the ability to sever those ties through a horribly destructive event known as a doomscar.
It’s as Tibalt is putting his plans into action that he runs into Kaya, whom is in pursuit of Vorinclex. Kaya is traversing through Kaldheim’s realms with the assistance of Alrund, the plane’s god of wisdom, and winds up in Gnottvold – the land of the trolls. There, she witnesses Valki (Tibalt in disguise) convince a clan of trolls that their land was soon to be invaded and that they should make a preemptive strike against the other realms if they wanted to prevent it.
Kaya, seeing the trickery, exposes the charade, but the trolls don’t seem to care much and move to attack the assassin planeswalker. Kaya fells a pair of the trolls, which causes the rest to flee. Needing a distraction to flee as well, Tibalt awakens more trolls and uses the confusion to escape to the realm of Immerstrum thanks to his stolen sword.
Meanwhile, Kaya tries to fend off the new trolls, but her blades shatter against their rock-like bodies. Thankfully, help arrives as Tyvar, an elven prince with the uncanny ability to change the matter of objects he touches into another nearby material. He uses his talent to turn the rampaging trolls back to stone.
After the scuffle, the two introduce themselves to one another. During the conversation, Kaya notices that Tyvar is wearing a charm that originates from another plane, Zendikar. Tyvar, though, thinks the place he found it to be little more than another realm of Kaldheim,
Kaya knows better and assumes that Tyvar is a planeswalker and informs him of such. The elf, though, seems less than interested as traveling to other planes means that nobody on Kaldheim would be able to witness his glorious victories there.
As for why Tyvar was there in the first place, he was suspicious of Valki as the god had recently visited the realm of his brother, the king, that war was on the horizon. A war, of course, that Tibalt was orchestrating himself.
Kaya and Tyvar make their way to Immerstrum and are immediately set upon by demon raiders. The pair dispatch the raiders and Tyvar uses his talents to forge Kaya new weapons.
The pair liberate the raiders’ longboat and sail to nearby Bloodcrag where they witness Tibalt use the Sword of the Realms to rip a doomscar between all ten of Kaldheim’s realms. They rush in to stop the devilish planeswalker, but Tibalt counterattacks with a dark cloud designed to mess with their minds. While Kaya experiences feelings of self-doubt, Tyvar’s arrogance and pride win out over the magic and continues his pursuit of Tibalt. The chaotic planeswalker, overwhelmed by the elven prince’s attack, planeswalks away, leaving his stolen sword behind.
As Kaldheim is seemingly pulling itself apart, Kaya asks Tyvar to escape the plane to safety with her. Tyvar, though, forever the hero, believes it’s best that he stay to try to defend what’s left of the realms as they are being torn asunder.
Kaya, led by self-preservation, follows Tyvar through an omenpath to Bretagard, the realms of the humans.
The leaders of the human clans are meeting to discuss how to stop possible invasions from other realms. The two planeswalkers interrupt and show that they have the Sword of the Realms, but don’t know how it can be used to stop the doomscar. Alrund, who is present at the meeting, explains to Kaya that the sword was forged for Halvar, Kaldheim’s god of battle.
Alrund calls his giant raven familiar to fly the three of them into battle towards the encroaching doomscar. On the way, they are struck down by Varragoth – a powerful demon from Immerstrum who brought ruin and devastation to the humans during a realm-spanning war in Kaldheim’s past. Kaya saves them all from certain death by extending her ghost form to her companions as they fall towards a river below.
Once safe, Tyvar runs into his brother leading an elven army towards the human settlements. He successfully convinces Harald to abandon his campaign against Bretagard before he and Kaya depart to deliver the sword to Halvar, who is guarding a nearby human settlement.
With sword in hand, Halvar begins sealing the doomscar. To succeed, though, he needs time. As Varragoth and his demon army attacks, Harald’s elves enter the frey in defense of Halvar and the humans.
Meanwhile, up in the sky, the cosmos serpent, Koma, breaks into Bretagard followed by the valkyries of Starnheim. Accompanying the valyries is Niko, a mysterious person who uses mirror-like magical shards. They join forces with Kaya and Tyvar.
As Koma slips back into the cosmos – the realm between realms – Kaya slays Varagoth and Halvar finishes sealing the doomscar. Despite the threat of the doomscar gone, the fighting continues until enough losses mount that it comes to a natural end.
In the calm after the battle, Kaya learns that the non-binary Nico hails from Theros and that they had only just made their first planeswalk and landed in Kaldheim.
Back to Vorinclex, as the battle on Bretagard was taking place, he was infiltrating the World Tree. There, he maims Esika, the god who uses the World Tree’s sap to form the Cosmos Elixir – the substance that grants Kaldheim’s gods their immortality.
As Esika lays dying, the phyrexian praetor takes a sample from the World Tree before a portal opens. Accompanying the portal’s opening is an unsettling voice welcoming the praetor back home.
And that wraps it up for the story of Kaldheim. As far as things go for the set in card form, though, there’s much more to cover.
Design for the set was led by Ethan Fleischer. Development was headed-up by Dave Humphries. Cynthia Sheppard took on the set’s art direction.
The 285-card set (405 cards, if you include variants and promos) was released in 16-card draft booster packs (that 16th card was typically a marketing card or token), 12-card set boosters designed for those who just want to crack open packs and add to their collection, Collector Boosters (where most of the snazziest cards are found), a bundle containing a spindown die, multiple booster packs, and more, and five mono-colored theme boosters. A pair of Commander decks were also released alongside the set, though the cards themselves are not part of the core Kaldheim experience.
What is core to that experience are the set’s new and returning mechanics.
First off, there’s foretell. During your turn, you may pay two generic mana and exile a card with foretell from your hand face down. You may cast it on a later turn for its foretell cost.
Then there’s boast, a mechanic that gives creatures an extra activated ability if that creature attacked a player at some point during that turn.
Four mechanics make their return in Kaldheim:
· Modal double-faced cards, similar to those seen in the previous set, Zendikar Rising. In Kaldheim, each of these cards has one of the plane’s ten gods on one side and that god’s affiliated legendary permanent on the other;
· Keyword counters, first introduced two expansions prior in Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths;
· Changeling, a characteristic-defining ability that grants the permanent all creature types, and;
· Poison counters (albeit on only a single card: Fynn, the Fangbearer)
Also, the saga enchantment subtype makes its return and, for the first time, multicolored saga cards are introduced to the game. Snow, a basic land subtype introduced in 1995’s Ice Age and fleshed out in sets like 2006’s Coldsnap and 2019’s Modern Horizons, also makes its return to the game.
Beyond the mechanics, the set has heavy typal themes with each of the plane’s ten realms not only being heavily associated with a specific creature type, but also a particular strategy as well:
· W/U Spirits (fortell control)
· W/B Angels (surge-like strategies)
· W/R Dwarves (vehicles and equipment)
· W/G Humans (token go-wide strategies)
· U/B Zombies (snow-focused midrange)
· U/R Giants (instant and sorcery synergies)
· U/G Shapeshifters (changeling strategies)
· R/B Demons and Berserkers (aggro using the boast mechanic)
· R/G Trolls (ramp)
· B/G Elves (self-mill)
Kaldheim was lucky enough to boast 13 different cycles of cards. Most notable among them are the five card cycles of:
· Foretell mythic spells, which are monocolored spells with the fortell ability;
· “Snow scaling” at rare, each of which grow stronger depending on the amount of snow mana used when casting them;
· Clan leaders, five monocolored legendary creatures that signify the leaders of the warring human clans found in the realm of Bretagard;
· Typal equipment at uncommon – each of which (for an additional cost) create a creature token of their respective type as an enters-the-battlefield trigger;
· Runes at uncommon that provide an additional ability to an enchanted creature or to an equipment card;
· Mythic gods, each being a monocolored god on one side and a legendary permanent spell of some sort on the other. (There are also seven other god cards at rare. These are also double-faced and have a legendary artifact on the backside, but they’re not technically part of any specific cycle.)
There are also a handful of ten-card cycles that include:
· Multicolored sagas at both rare and uncommon rarities,
· Realm locales, nonbasic lands that come into play tapped, can tap for a specific color of mana, and have a multicolored activated ability, and;
· Snow dual lands for all ten color pairs that come into play tapped.
In terms of individual cards of note, there are a handful in Kaldheim that deserve attention for one reason or another, such as:
· Alrund’s Epiphany, an extra-turn spell that didn’t have too much of an impact upon the Standard format until a few sets later when the card Galvanic Iteration was printed in Innistrad: Midnight Hunt which set up for a combo that saw players taking multiple extra turns while simultaneously creating an army of 1/1 bird tokens. Alrund’s Epiphany wound up becoming banned in Standard in January of 2022;
· Alrund, God of the Cosmos, which was misprinted in the latter part of the card’s ability, Wizards of the Coast failed to include the clause “revealed this way” when referring to the player putting the cards of the chosen type into their hand. The card has since been errata’d to fix the error;
· Faceless Haven, a nonbasic land that has the capability becoming a creature with the changeling ability, meaning it would have all possible creature types when animated. This was pretty innocuous until the set Dungeons & Dragons: Adventures in the Forgotten Realms released later that year, bringing with it the card The Book of Exalted Deeds which, when used with Faceless Haven, can make it nearly impossible for a player to lose the game. As such, Faceless Haven was banned in Standard alongside Alrund’s Epiphany;
· Tibalt’s Trickery, a high-risk high-reward counterspell in red that proved to be highly exploitable as players would simply counter their own cheap spells in order to cheat in more powerful and expensive cards in early. This was especially true in Magic’s Modern format as well as Magic: The Gathering – Arena’s Explorer and Historic formats where use of the cascade mechanic would all but guarantee a hit with the spell. The card soon became banned in those latter formats, and;
· Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider – a Phyrexian praetor on a non-Phyrexian plane. The card was included in the Kaldheim for story reasons and instantly became one of the strongest and most sought-after cards in the set thanks to its efficiency and high play value for the mana cost.
Promos for Kaldheim include the usual date-stamped foil rare or mythic rare cards during prerelease, a foil, alternate-art Realmwalker as the buy-a-box promo, a foil, alternate art Reflections of Littjara found in the bundle, a special Reliquary Tower as part of Magic’s bring-a-friend promotion, and a handful of possible dark-frame promo cards found in the universal promo pack that stores hand out at Friday Night Magic events.
In terms of reception, Kaldheim was met with largely positivity from players who overall seemed to love the Nordic look and feel as well as the vastness of the ten realms of the Kaldheim plane, though some players felt the set would have been better suited split into two due to that same vastness as many felt that parts of it were simply skirted over.
So, what are your thoughts on Kaldheim? Is it among your favorite Magic sets? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section.
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