I knew this plane was inevitably going to bring out the "uhm ackchually" Norse mythology geeks.
Soramaro, as in a Kamigawa name. Man this is gonna be funny.
Just a reminder: They're not copying Norse mythology 1:1, they're drawing inspiration from it. So it's perfectly fine for them to smush things together.
Just a reminder: nobody cares. We all know how Wizards operates. They go for the lowest common denominator with their sets nowadays, even in top down ones, if they pull 'inspiration' from actual real world cultures. If that weren't true, you know Kamigawa would have sold better if it just had the surface-level aspects of Japan that the average person knows instead of the more esoteric and nuanced aspects of that culture such as with Shintoism. Same with Lorwyn-Shadowmoor to an extent. As if those two blocks taught Wizards anything, the average player is very narrow minded in their understanding of anything that isn't a small yet popular reference, such as Mjolnir or Thor. Which is why they are very relunctant in putting in more than a couple cards in sets that touch on the more obscure aspects of those real world cultures.
As for the snow stuff: We've seen ten cards, out of which 8 aren't completely drenched in snow, and people are already making all these big statements how they're "let down" and Wizards "doesn't care." Fandom is a hellhole sometimes...
Oh spare me your crocodile tears about 'how bad the fandom is'. If you think it (MTG) is such a hellhole, why do you to stay in that very hellhole, aye bub?
I suppose then you are confused that all of Zendikar is not a forest based on Tazeem
First of all, if your gonna be a bad faith actor, at least get it right before you go shooting your mouth. It was Murasa, not Tazeem that players got to see with Planechase. And also the longest period we were left in dark between Zendikar and Planechase was exactly one week, as guess what happened around then? The spoiler season for Zendikar shortly after the release of Planechase. Which 11 years is a big difference from 1 week. Oh and Tazeem which you misattributed? That came from 2016, 7 years after the original Zendikar set.
More bad faith acting, and a terrible actor you are at it. Isle of Vesuva is based on, get this, an Island in Dominaria and we already saw Vesuva in 2006 of October, which is just a month shy of 3 years prior to Planechase.
Wow, are you for real? You used exactly the same stuff again like I debunked with Vesuva? Heck, with the Mirrodin example thats even older, and get this, thats 6 years ago from Planechase.
And in both instances of these bad faith actings of planes for Dominaria and Mirrodin, which we ALREADY VISITED by the way, you couldn't even have the common decency, likely due to lazyness, that you couldn't even just use something easy like Immerstrum or Feeding Grounds which depict planes WE HAVE NOT visited by the way. If you did that you would at least have a leg to stand on but instead you went for false equivalences.
I'll repeat, the Planechase cards were never supposed to be representative of the entire plane.
Meanwhile you casually ignore how I pointed out over ELEVEN YEARS we have been only shown SKYBREEN. And every opportunity they only showed SKYBREEN. Why is this so hard for you get? They could have, at any point, shown off any number of different locations with Kaldheim. But they didn't. Apparently every planeswalker we have ever known ever only visits that one specific region.
is entirely your fault, not WotC's for setting misleading expectations.
Your blaming me the player for what Wizards themselves has provided for what Kaldheim has been in snippets for the last eleven years? Wow thats hilarious, how many classes of mental gymnastics did it take for you to pull that one off?
I'm extremely aware of the nature of the different Norse realms. I specifically made my own custom set years ago (link in my sig if you want) which just so happens also did exactly what you are complaining about here and mushed the nine realms together. It makes a lot of sense to do.
Not really. Instead of fleshing out a distinct one, we are just seeing shallow worlds. And hey, Kaldheim is only one set as well, so its not like we get to see anything more of this for practically years to come except for side products like Commander 202X. You and I know that. Just like how Ikoria blew its load in one set.
Why limit the content you can draw from him in a Norse mythology set to only one of the realms?
Because you can then do the equivalent of the Shard of the Twelve Worlds in MTG with Norse mythology. Which hey do you even remember that plot point? The whole thing of a world in which there was 12 planes separated from the rest of the multiverse, but instead of 12, you could do 9. Also by having limitations of what you can depict, you can actually create more interesting worlds when working within the restrictions.
Also if your worried about snow basics overtaking normal basics, I hate to break it to you, but snow is better most of the time than a regular basic. They are basically an upgrade as you have access to more cards that care about them. And due to their flexibility, many cards that care about basics also care about snow. While there is some anti-snow cards, nobody runs them unless its specifically your local playgroup as a joke tech card.
Kaldheim Translation: Cold Home Planechase depiction: [A viking world filled with ice and snow that appears to be under a blizzard] Playerbase Expectation: [A viking world filled with ice and snow that appears to be under maybe a constant blizzard] Chandra Comic depiction: [A Viking world filled with ice and snow that appears to be under a blizzard] Duels of the Planeswalkers depiction: [A crazy viking shaman in a world filled with ice and snow.] Secret Lair depiction: [VERDANT LANDSCAPES! BRIGHT AND SUNNY CLEAR SKIES! oh and some snow. BUT ALSO WE GOT FLOATING ROCKS AND WEIRD GEOGRAPHICAL GEOMETRY]
The planechase depiction was from a specific region, to be fair. It wasn't necessarily supposed to be representative of every corner of the world, as much as any of the planechase cards from known planes aren't always particularly representative of the entire plane. Clearwater and Lavaglide pathway arts could well be from the Skybreen region, but it's not surprising the entire world isn't like that. This was announced as a top-down Norse world, not a snow world. I don't know what you were expecting.
My tongue and cheek explanation and also part 2 of how Kaldheim has always been depicted as inspired by Niflheim is my expectation.
And this is not some random out of the blue expectation by the way. From September 4th, 2009 of the original planechase till just a few days ago, so about 11-ish years, we have always been shown Kaldheim is snow and ice. Even the more recent example in late 2018 comic issue 1 done by IDW as approved by Wizards for the Chandra comic depicts Kalhdeim as a land of ice and snow. If they wanted to depict Kaldheim as anything other than just a world of perpetual winter, they had over a decade to show hints.
And to top that off you can clearly see from some they are also using Muspelheim (Translation: Wreck of the World. A world of fire and heat and chaos and fire giants) for how they are depicting certain aspects of Kaldheim in the unfortunate lens of this secret lair. There is also clear takes of Jotunheim (Giant Home), Asgard (Enclosure of the Aesir), Yggdrasil, and highly likely of Midgard (Middle Enclosure). In case you are wondering why that is an issue, this is the equivalent of smushing Serra's Realm, Phyrexia, Rath, Mercadia, Equilor, and Dominaria and saying they all on the same plane.
Saying "well it don't depict snow, so it not a snowland' then why do we have Clearwater Pathway and Lavaglide Pathway which directly contradict this exact statement? The answer is Wizards does not care they could easily have had the artist sprinkle some snow in the artworks and it would keep it consistent.
Edit: And you can't blame the players for this feeling of being letdown on their expectations either as this is something that Wizards has directly given to the players for 11 years of what Kaldheim is.
I still have hopes for this set [Kaldheim / Cold Home / World of Cold] being cool since the leaked art box art has lots of snow and the designs of those leaked figures look pretty cool.
Kaldheim Translation: Cold Home Planechase depiction: [A viking world filled with ice and snow that appears to be under a blizzard] Playerbase Expectation: [A viking world filled with ice and snow that appears to be under maybe a constant blizzard] Chandra Comic depiction: [A Viking world filled with ice and snow that appears to be under a blizzard] Duels of the Planeswalkers depiction: [A crazy viking shaman in a world filled with ice and snow.] Secret Lair depiction: [VERDANT LANDSCAPES! BRIGHT AND SUNNY CLEAR SKIES! oh and some snow. BUT ALSO WE GOT FLOATING ROCKS AND WEIRD GEOGRAPHICAL GEOMETRY]
Upvoted
Probably should also have added in that original post:
Kaldheim Planechase Inspiration: Niflheim (Translation: Mist/Fog, or Home World of Mist/Fog. A primordial world filled with ice, snow, mist, and darkness as though it were always winter.)
Meanwhile nobody mentions how the video looks like it would be right at home for the late 90s or early 2000s with MTG's old commericals.
I can't get through the video because Instagram's player sucks, there's no progress bar, the video restarts if you tab out, only option I have is pause/mute, very strange. How did this site ever get popular? Yeah, I'm impatient for slow-starting videos and want to skip to the part where they spoil cards.
Anyways, what's in the video?
Its basically old school with a mix of like 90s-early 2000s computer generated with some live action. The music also feels like it belongs from that era.
Kaldheim Translation: Cold Home Planechase depiction: [A viking world filled with ice and snow that appears to be under a blizzard] Playerbase Expectation: [A viking world filled with ice and snow that appears to be under maybe a constant blizzard] Chandra Comic depiction: [A Viking world filled with ice and snow that appears to be under a blizzard] Duels of the Planeswalkers depiction: [A crazy viking shaman in a world filled with ice and snow.] Secret Lair depiction: [VERDANT LANDSCAPES! BRIGHT AND SUNNY CLEAR SKIES! oh and some snow. BUT ALSO WE GOT FLOATING ROCKS AND WEIRD GEOGRAPHICAL GEOMETRY]
Just a quick question, did anyone else read the Gathering Storm the story where she actually killed the Obzedat?
Nah. Then again the death of the Obzedat happened back in January, the War of the Spark novel happened in April, and the Gathering Storm was a slow burn over two months (June to July) for just the Obzedat story.
God I'm sick of Kaya. For one, she is probably going to ruin the story again by killing another character. For two, she killed the obzedat! I'll never forgive her. I was very excited to get a new card for them, and it got pushed out by a subpar Kaya card. And now she is here to ruin something else...
The thing about this complaint is that it doesn't really seem relevant here.
Yes, Kaya killed established characters in her only appearances so far.
Yes, a "spirit killer" is probably going to kill spirits again this time around.
The thing about that, though, is that this is an entirely new plane for us.
There aren't going to be people who were hoping to see more cards of "Kromaun of the Hallowed Halls" or whatever because any creature she kills this time around will be entirely new and will have no pre-established fans. If anything, putting Kaya in brand new planes is the safest way to use her as it means that we don't have to worry about her bumping off an established character that people already like.
No, my comment is relevant. She is a poorly written character who simply gets put into worlds to kill people off. Sure, maybe we don't know anyone here, but she will likely kill off someone important to the story just because that's what she does. Actually, I would hope that she gets bumped off just because she is just a plot device. I'm sick of the stories revolving around planeswalkers meddling in the events of every single plane we go to and having such of the story revolve around their involvement.
It feels fake.
It's like every planeswalker shows up at just the right time in every world to see the biggest events, and then changes them. There is little to no evidence why this happens for most of the planes they visit, yet there they are: front and center and the heroes of the story.
Plus shes no Agent 47. Like yea shes basically been used as a hitman, but she doesn't really kill her primary target in a creative way either. So all we are left with is a 1-note assassin.
Like even the way she killed the council is basically no-selling it. Sure the council had it coming, but if fights are like a story, then man Obzedat's death was a snorefest. Easiest fix is just having Kaya go after the ghost council one member one at a time when they are alone like Kaya is the predator. Which creates a tension, possibly a better motive, as Kaya can't just waltz up and kill them all at once as together they are too strong, but alone they are easy pickings.
Since she just strolls in and kills them all like it were nothing, they blew their load with her in terms of potential story development. Like if she can kill the ghost council, ancient powerful ghosts who can literally create blackholes and had a warded room to keep assassins out, then where do you take her story from there? She can go kill I guess the Kaldheim equivalent of Hel or Odin or whatever who is also a ghost but it just makes her uninteresting as they have established that Kaya is more a plot device and less a character.
Every card is available for a limited time and in a limited quantity. This one is simply not sold in stores and is made in as large a quantitiy as desired unlike From the Vault or Commander Arsenal.
You --------------------------------------------------------------------------- the point of why this is controversial.
It's actually 2 cards total that really caused problems out of hundreds. True Name Nemesis did in legacy and Nexus of Fate did in standard. They obviously took a hint from Nexus and never released another exclusive BaB promo that caused problems.
If they took the hint, wouldn't we not have had a similar situation with this exact product?
People are blowing this way out of proportion and this is apparently 5 different unique cards and tokens for $50.
Didn't realize you were batting for WotC this hard. How much they paying you?
Its price per card isn't necessarily going to be any worse than lots of other exclusive product cards.
Bruh really? You for real? You going to clickity clack on your keyboard and tell me if some new exclusive card was like Uro or Oko or Lurrus (pre-nerf) levels in power but its from a Secret Lair, its just fine? Right?
They're also all legendary so far and probably not going to be played a ton other than as a commander.
So what your saying is they can print whatever dumb stuff for commander, because its commander, and nobody should really care about the format? And if causes harm to other formats, thats just collateral damage? Right?
Sheldon and the RC committe Are listening to us, taking notes and weighing options Basicly they are discussing TWD cards
and they will have something to say and will definatly be before the secret lair drops
in other words This looks like a sign TWD cards will probably be considered silver bordered In commander format
Honestly? Good.
"Oh you want this new commander that has a playstyle you like? Well why didn't you buy it in this limited window for this price? Not in your country? OOooh don't worry, you can just buy it for this marked up price from someone on ebay. Thats fine right?"
Disgusting.
your clearing not seeing what they are talking about
the point is the RC of commander are looking into it for us
man did this secret lair left a taste so sour to you it like you didn't hear what they said at all
You mean besides the fact that they are "talking it over" and how they invited people over to their discord to weigh in. And yeah the discussion around the card was mostly negative towards wizards decision and wanted it considered banned to send a message to wizards that this practice is unacceptable. Literally the chat was flying with how fast it was going.
Its not about power. Its about limited availability for a FOMO effect as Wizards has actually stepped into the ring of selling singles of brand new cards that are not reprints.
And yea I see your edit, about how they broke their promise with selling functionally unique promos. To use the fallout meme to represent the playerbase: "Nobody liked that".
Just a reminder: nobody cares. We all know how Wizards operates. They go for the lowest common denominator with their sets nowadays, even in top down ones, if they pull 'inspiration' from actual real world cultures. If that weren't true, you know Kamigawa would have sold better if it just had the surface-level aspects of Japan that the average person knows instead of the more esoteric and nuanced aspects of that culture such as with Shintoism. Same with Lorwyn-Shadowmoor to an extent. As if those two blocks taught Wizards anything, the average player is very narrow minded in their understanding of anything that isn't a small yet popular reference, such as Mjolnir or Thor. Which is why they are very relunctant in putting in more than a couple cards in sets that touch on the more obscure aspects of those real world cultures.
Oh spare me your crocodile tears about 'how bad the fandom is'. If you think it (MTG) is such a hellhole, why do you to stay in that very hellhole, aye bub?
More bad faith acting, and a terrible actor you are at it. Isle of Vesuva is based on, get this, an Island in Dominaria and we already saw Vesuva in 2006 of October, which is just a month shy of 3 years prior to Planechase.
Wow, are you for real? You used exactly the same stuff again like I debunked with Vesuva? Heck, with the Mirrodin example thats even older, and get this, thats 6 years ago from Planechase.
And in both instances of these bad faith actings of planes for Dominaria and Mirrodin, which we ALREADY VISITED by the way, you couldn't even have the common decency, likely due to lazyness, that you couldn't even just use something easy like Immerstrum or Feeding Grounds which depict planes WE HAVE NOT visited by the way. If you did that you would at least have a leg to stand on but instead you went for false equivalences.
Meanwhile you casually ignore how I pointed out over ELEVEN YEARS we have been only shown SKYBREEN. And every opportunity they only showed SKYBREEN. Why is this so hard for you get? They could have, at any point, shown off any number of different locations with Kaldheim. But they didn't. Apparently every planeswalker we have ever known ever only visits that one specific region.
Your blaming me the player for what Wizards themselves has provided for what Kaldheim has been in snippets for the last eleven years? Wow thats hilarious, how many classes of mental gymnastics did it take for you to pull that one off?
Not really. Instead of fleshing out a distinct one, we are just seeing shallow worlds. And hey, Kaldheim is only one set as well, so its not like we get to see anything more of this for practically years to come except for side products like Commander 202X. You and I know that. Just like how Ikoria blew its load in one set.
Because you can then do the equivalent of the Shard of the Twelve Worlds in MTG with Norse mythology. Which hey do you even remember that plot point? The whole thing of a world in which there was 12 planes separated from the rest of the multiverse, but instead of 12, you could do 9. Also by having limitations of what you can depict, you can actually create more interesting worlds when working within the restrictions.
Also if your worried about snow basics overtaking normal basics, I hate to break it to you, but snow is better most of the time than a regular basic. They are basically an upgrade as you have access to more cards that care about them. And due to their flexibility, many cards that care about basics also care about snow. While there is some anti-snow cards, nobody runs them unless its specifically your local playgroup as a joke tech card.
And this is not some random out of the blue expectation by the way. From September 4th, 2009 of the original planechase till just a few days ago, so about 11-ish years, we have always been shown Kaldheim is snow and ice. Even the more recent example in late 2018 comic issue 1 done by IDW as approved by Wizards for the Chandra comic depicts Kalhdeim as a land of ice and snow. If they wanted to depict Kaldheim as anything other than just a world of perpetual winter, they had over a decade to show hints.
And to top that off you can clearly see from some they are also using Muspelheim (Translation: Wreck of the World. A world of fire and heat and chaos and fire giants) for how they are depicting certain aspects of Kaldheim in the unfortunate lens of this secret lair. There is also clear takes of Jotunheim (Giant Home), Asgard (Enclosure of the Aesir), Yggdrasil, and highly likely of Midgard (Middle Enclosure). In case you are wondering why that is an issue, this is the equivalent of smushing Serra's Realm, Phyrexia, Rath, Mercadia, Equilor, and Dominaria and saying they all on the same plane.
Saying "well it don't depict snow, so it not a snowland' then why do we have Clearwater Pathway and Lavaglide Pathway which directly contradict this exact statement? The answer is Wizards does not care they could easily have had the artist sprinkle some snow in the artworks and it would keep it consistent.
Edit: And you can't blame the players for this feeling of being letdown on their expectations either as this is something that Wizards has directly given to the players for 11 years of what Kaldheim is.
Kaldheim Planechase Inspiration: Niflheim (Translation: Mist/Fog, or Home World of Mist/Fog. A primordial world filled with ice, snow, mist, and darkness as though it were always winter.)
Planechase depiction: [A viking world filled with ice and snow that appears to be under a blizzard]
Playerbase Expectation: [A viking world filled with ice and snow that appears to be under maybe a constant blizzard]
Chandra Comic depiction: [A Viking world filled with ice and snow that appears to be under a blizzard]
Duels of the Planeswalkers depiction: [A crazy viking shaman in a world filled with ice and snow.]
Secret Lair depiction: [VERDANT LANDSCAPES! BRIGHT AND SUNNY CLEAR SKIES! oh and some snow. BUT ALSO WE GOT FLOATING ROCKS AND WEIRD GEOGRAPHICAL GEOMETRY]
Like even the way she killed the council is basically no-selling it. Sure the council had it coming, but if fights are like a story, then man Obzedat's death was a snorefest. Easiest fix is just having Kaya go after the ghost council one member one at a time when they are alone like Kaya is the predator. Which creates a tension, possibly a better motive, as Kaya can't just waltz up and kill them all at once as together they are too strong, but alone they are easy pickings.
Since she just strolls in and kills them all like it were nothing, they blew their load with her in terms of potential story development. Like if she can kill the ghost council, ancient powerful ghosts who can literally create blackholes and had a warded room to keep assassins out, then where do you take her story from there? She can go kill I guess the Kaldheim equivalent of Hel or Odin or whatever who is also a ghost but it just makes her uninteresting as they have established that Kaya is more a plot device and less a character.
If they took the hint, wouldn't we not have had a similar situation with this exact product?
Didn't realize you were batting for WotC this hard. How much they paying you?
Bruh really? You for real? You going to clickity clack on your keyboard and tell me if some new exclusive card was like Uro or Oko or Lurrus (pre-nerf) levels in power but its from a Secret Lair, its just fine? Right?
So what your saying is they can print whatever dumb stuff for commander, because its commander, and nobody should really care about the format? And if causes harm to other formats, thats just collateral damage? Right?
Its not about power. Its about limited availability for a FOMO effect as Wizards has actually stepped into the ring of selling singles of brand new cards that are not reprints.
And yea I see your edit, about how they broke their promise with selling functionally unique promos. To use the fallout meme to represent the playerbase: "Nobody liked that".