So the three planes that got represented as scenery in this set are Avishkar (imagine if those sets were actually named this), Amonkhet (you see the problem?) and Muraganda (not Ixalan, so I can’t just say the half of the Bolas Arc haha)
One is literally the original home of the Vehicle, one is about Ancient Egypt, and the last one is prehistoric land so old creatures are vanilla. Yeah, the last two you probably wouldn’t associate with racing. Or maybe just me, I always think you need both the land for the racing tracks and the technological people for the racing skills to have a racing scene. But turns out, maybe not, the latter can just travel to a former or formers as we can do it with omenpaths. Complicated way of saying my predictions were Kaladesh, Neon Kamigawa and Kylem from Battlebond. I kinda see it now, NotC staff would probably find that sets a horribly boring precedent for plane mixes, like they would only be able to mix planes of too similar themes to make a set, which at that point kinda halfway defeats the whole point of mixing planes.
Also to note, this was the year before I got exposed to Magic cards, I started seeing (not playing) them at Ixalan, and somehow didn’t like LCI that much.
Allegedly a very lesbian place, well just at [[!Scrapper Champion]] and you’d totally understand why. But well, most of yall know it for Chandra.
Fun fact, Energy was originally thought of to be in Mirrodin. But no, that would adds so much to the brokenness of that block, so just settle to charge counters for the time being. And then it took 13 years, but the thing is NotC barely learnt. Maybe also because this Gatewatch era was when both art diversity and power took a deep dive downwards and suddenly anything slightly above curve is just broken. That’s the thing with energy right, just take one little above curve piece and everything gets more from it. Also the fact that the artifacts in this set are still predominantly colorless, there’s just a Gearhulk cycle that’s colored. Honestly making artifacts colored from this set on would have been a very good distinction point from Mirrodin.
Also fun fact Kaladesh could have had a version of lessons but with artifacts. Or the fact that it being technology themed meant that Unstable got delayed.
Probably best known for that hideous invocations frame. And they tried to sanitize it in MOM only to still fail miserably.
The theme of this sandy place is a lot of graveyard mechanics. One of them is cycling, it weren’t as broken as in Ikoria draft but it gave way to a dual land cycle NotC still don’t finish to this day, and instead they chose to make Triomes. Another is aftermath, which got its hideous but interesting to think about frame (also for its off-colorness) because this was back when NotC didn’t want to make 6 of the 8 standard sets all have DFCs. Another is embalm and eternalize, they’re like disturb but SFC plus a token instead of a DFC. Speaking about outdated things, exert, which nowadays you can do just with a stun counter. Gosh knows what else is there, seems too convoluted and doesn’t amount to that much to me.
Lore wise it frankly needed to exist for the story arc more than anything because sandy yellow fits Nicol Bolas the yellow looking Grixis dragon. They tried to do good by making the Gatewatch lose, frankly would have been great to leave it at that and have them die /s, you’ll see in this set now.
MaRo has probably said something like this: a lot of these planes with these funny premises, they really captivate people for some weird reasons, unfortunately what they don’t know is the cruel reality of making an entire set with that premise in mind would suck, so deal with it, just have those few cool cards.
You know I kinda don’t have the biggest affinity for these prehistoric ideas for sets, you know anywhere with Dinosaurs and too much plants and too little civilization. I care about Ixalan and Ikoria as much as their commitment to multicolored factions, safe to say. So to see this place finally gets a third (mentally) of a set is surprising to me. But I guess lorewise it may be logical, why bother building the race tracks in Thunder Junction when there’s another unexplored plane full of free land?
Anyhow where’s Xerex?
I think I may know the name of the Equipment set now, it’s Aetherdrip.
As design lore has pointed, this set is about Vehicles. Or better seen now, things that creatures can hop on, by being convoked and adding its power. Which is to say the Mounts from Thunder Junction did came back. What is so good design about these?
Well Vehicles, it basically is a way to get much more efficient bodies at lower mana costs, at the cost of needing another creature to do the crewing. Which is a cost for hands that are horrible, but if you can curve out with a creature every turn that wouldn’t otherwise be used to attacking, well now they got a use. Just watch out for White’s tapped creatures removal if you really want to keep the value engines around. It also means the Vehicles can dodge creature removal in enemy turns because by then they aren’t creatures anymore. Another big innovation Vehicles has going for themselves is the templating, they just spell out their stats, their combat keywords, their attack clauses out clearly like a normal creature, so if they get animated through other means they keep all of these things. Unlike the manlands or keyrunes of the worlds needing entire paragraphs to spell out what they’ll be animated as, granted the volume of them is far less. Also they got a wood and metal reinforcement frame to be darker than the usual artifact metal frame, and the stat boxes is all brown.