The new block for Magic was just recently announced, and things are looking a little bit more positive than they did in Eldritch Moon. Kaladesh is from Chandra Nalaar’s plane, and as such, is full of fire-powered, innovative contraptions. The art and lore here seems decidedly upbeat, hopeful, and wondrous, which is good, because all those emerging tentacles were getting me down.
Eldritch Moon had even more tentacles and misplaced body parts than that weird shop I wandered into in Tokyo. It, and the last few blocks, were all about titanic tentacle monsters slowly eating up the plane of Zendikar, which would eventually leave it barren, just like the wastes these monsters call upon for mana.
Kaladesh takes an entirely different tone, and Wizards has wasted no time in emerging this block. Here’s are some of the new rules you can expect:
Vehicles
As you can see in the above video, vehicles are artifacts until they’re piloted, at which point they become artifact creatures until the end of your turn. Multiple creatures can pilot a vehicle, and even other vehicles can pilot a vehicle. It’s kind of like a temporary piece of equipment — though the crew needs to have total power greater than the vehicle specifies to be able to use it. Some creatures will be named as “pilots”, and will have further benefits for combining with vehicles.
Energy
Certain abilities will accumulate energy counters while playing, and you can use these to trigger other abilities. These seem to function a little bit like clues, in that they aren’t connected to the entity that gave it to you. Killing one doesn’t remove the other. But instead of having to pay two mana to draw a card, you can just use these as a kind of persistent mana to power specified abilities. Some cards will act as mini planeswalkers, slowly giving you energy and also giving you ways to spend it, but you can choose to spend the energy elsewhere if you wish.
Fabricate
Similar to some cards already in play, Fabricate formalises the idea of choosing between putting a +1/+1 counter on the creature you just summoned, or putting a 1/1 artifact creature token on the battlefield. It’s just a little bit of flexibility that lets you opt for bigger creatures or multiple smaller ones.
Kaladesh will be entering its prerelease phase September 24th.
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