Greetings fellow Gaming Knights!

It's almost time for the Kaldheim pre-release and we're sure that every one is itching for a fight after a long hibernation. It's time to pick up arms, assert draft domination, and prove thyselves worthy to your tribe and the pantheon of gods!

With that, we'll leave you with a little primer on the new mechanics if you aren't up to speed yet and hopefully give everyone, both old and new, a glimpse of what to expect on this icy battlefield! 

-Boast-


It's not boasting if it's true, and this mechanic brings asserting dominance to a whole other level! Boast effects provide a flexible way to sink mana each turn and provide constant pressure to your opponent every turn! Once you have declared the attack, you can play the boast effect at anytime during the turn, as long as the card remains on the field (cause you know, dead men tell no tales), and this opens up many different lines of play for the turn and potential rewards! Even if you didn't attack, your enemy still has to anticipate your audacious claims and weigh his/her options in advance! The only catch to this brazen ability is having to attack with the creature with boast- But in a limited vacuum, you were probably going to turn stuff sideways and go face anyway, so it all works out eh?

-Foretell-


Are you ready to set some facedown traps and let the mind games begin! The concept of foretell cards is simple, put forth a small investment of mana now and profit later in terms of tempo. And while not every card played with the foretell mechanic directly gives you a crazy tempo swing or a large payoff, they provide a good way to smoke your opponents and create lines of play that normally wouldn't exist, or just play better cards for cheaper when it suits you! Utilising the foretell mechanic also helps you set up turns where you can play multiple cards for cheap or maximise your mana efficiency, or just assist you in tiding the early game if you don't draw on curve! Flexibility is the name of the game here, and who doesn't want to send their enemies back to the ice age with a well timed "Doomskar" (or just bait the enemy into playing carefully around some random pump spell on a crappy board)?

-Snow-


Let the storm rage on, the cold never bothered me anyway. What should bother you though is that there aren't many decent snow-based effects in the set that reward you unless you high roll on the right snow lands or are the legendary prophet of the draft table, and even then those cards seem super fringe. Remember that snow lands must be drafted in your pool order to be played, and this makes the snow-based cards that much harder to get value out of. If you do find yourself in a good position to take snow-based cards in your colour (mostly blue, black, or green) or find the more generic ones like "Icebind pillar" or "Boreal outrider", do give it due consideration, but otherwise the snow just looks pretty. 

-Sagas-


We suspect Oprah planeswalked out into the vast land of Kaldheim and is giving out sagas to everyone as we've received a whopping 20 of these feats in this set! These cards tend to lend powerful effects and options to its controller and in limited, getting 3 effects from a single card is just pure value if you can make use of them! Sagas help to dictate the pace of the next 2 turns once played and can actually snowball a lead you currently have in the game, but might not be the best cards to play when behind or early due to them being multi-coloured or conditional, so find your center and play these as accents to your core strategy unless you have them fivehead big brain combo plays!

-Modal Cards-


Oh my god(and/or goddess), modal cards are back baby, and they have even more flavour than ever! The modal cards in this set pack quite a bit of punch in the form of the gods and their prized possessions, and they are pretty dang powerful! However, these cards only come in the rare or higher slots, and you shouldn't bank on getting these cards to blow your enemies out! Landing these cards in draft gives you a decent point to anchor your deck around and are generally good picks with flexibility built in for their respective colours if you have the means to fit them into your strategies!

-Overall Conclusion-


As a whole, Kaldheim seems to be pushing players to form more tribal based beat down decks for limited play. Most of the bombs in the set come in at the Mythic rarity, so don't rely on drafting a strategy around them too much. That said though, there are a decent number of powerful playable cards that synergise and make use of tribal interactions across the different creature types to snowball early and get ahead in the uncommon and rare slots which helps greatly with deck construction. Coupling this with the more beatdown/midrange and delayed gratification style of the cards in the set, it seems like focusing on building your board for the mid game, and using the inherently value-based mechanics introduced in Kaldheim to shut your opponents out of the late game will be the steadiest route to victory! Don't take our word as gospel though, as there are many ways to achieve greatness, and perhaps you can even surpass the expectations of the gods and prove yourself worthy! 

With that said, we hope that everyone is as excited as us for the upcoming set and that this small primer helps in the search for greatness along the glorious path to Valhalla this pre-release weekend! Catch y'all on the boat to Kaldheim!

-Sanctuary Gaming Team