This 20 cards set is divided between 9 monocolored cards, 9 multicolored cards and 2 colorless cards. Sounds like they’re ripe for color imbalances.
In Red, there’s Chandra, which surely needs a lot of introduction, surely. What can I say other than the fact that out of the 41 red planeswalker cards that exist (counting one half of a MDFC as one), Chandra is 21 of them, so tipping over the half mark, and all of the other red planeswalkers are now either dead, desparked, Koth or are characters that can exist due to their set being special cases. I mean well, this set has Avishkar in it so a lot of people definitely wants to see a Chandra, but given how she got a card in literally the last set and actually the two reprint sets in between, something in me definitely says we could have done something else. But look, this Chandra now creates and crews Vehicles now, and she has a whole story to get the spark for Nissa etc etc. Who am I to say just design a new character that fits the race suit better?
Then in Blue, there’s Mu Yanling (I had an excess g tying that without looking up, honestly could mess the Y to J too if I have look up even less), which came about from the era when NotC made Chinese Magic cards, then she got a new card in the second last core set, which coincidentally had three Chandras in it, it has to adds up somehow. Personally I found this woman to looks more pleasant than Chandra but well, still not like that much more deserving of not being desparked. Also she isn’t part of any of the factions, that’s fun.
Getting ahead of myself, let’s go down to the rares, there’s a total of 4 desparks, 3 draftable and 1 in the precon.
In White, there’s Bastri, this character they designed for M21 that they never went on to reuse until now. Personally, he definitely pass the “yay we don’t have to splatter Ajani on everything now” test, but any other test for an interesting character he fails. Even the cards don’t fair terribly well, they create small tokens and buffs them, wow surprise it’s mono white back in those dark times when they didn’t draw cards.
In Red again, there’s Daretti, Magic’s rep for disabled people. His first two cards were both in pretty weird places, first one in the only set of monocolored Commander precons even to this day (well technically there would be a mono black UB deck), then the second one in the second and last Conspiracy set. You see, NotC totally know mono red characters that would fit in the race more, oh wait he more deals with artifacts in general so.
In Green, there’s Nissa of the Avishkar precon. You already know she’s desparked through what is like the only good card in Aftermath, and now she’s back probably because Chandra’s here too. Through not in the draft set because it doesn’t have Energy so has to be in the precons. Which mean if you found it took 11 years for Magali to touch this character only for her to come out this weird, you have no alternatives!
In all three of those colors, which we got a break of for like 2 Standard sets and 2 reprint sets in total, wow how long, we got Amonkhet’s other rep, Samut. Another character you also already known was desparked in Aftermath, through that card was just Gruul and you probably know it from that time Arena built Aftermath Brawl decks. Frankly her whole thing is running fast but personally I never see it just looking at her. I guess in Amonkhet you can only really get clothes that tolerable, especially in the Bolas days.
In conclusion, where’s the black planeswalker, desparked or not? Where’s Darviel? /s
2010s’ core sets had quite a few tries with making a cycle of big mythic monocolored things that represented their colors. It started with M11’s Titans cycle, 6 mana 6/6 Giants that have a keyword and a “titan trigger”, combining both an arrive and attack triggers. Then it returns in M15 with Souls of different planes, 6 mana 6/6 Avatars that ask big mana for big activated ability, including a last dip in the graveyard. The last try we’re concerned about are the Cavailers, 5 mana Elemental Knights with a keyword, an arrive trigger and a death trigger, these things really do max out their text boxes in the way we know Magic cards do now.
Kaladesh was in the middle of those last two tries, back when core sets don’t exist anymore. So it want to take on this tradition with its artifacts. Which made for the Gearhulks, 5-6 mana colored artifact creatures with a keyword and a really long arrives effect. While don’t provide value engines, I commend them for at least pioneering the colored artifact outside of Esper, something Kaladesh should have done more to be less broken (well technically Energy was the main culprit but still).
As much as people seems to like these monocolor Titans, expansion to dual colors have seen few and far between. Did you know that Theros Beyond Death instead of having Uro and Kroxa would have a full nonlegendary cycle of escaping Titans? Maybe that world wouldn’t have Simic running as rampant, just maybe. Until now, we finally give a proper try. Knowing other cards that will be made, let’s have these in allied colors, frankly who knows when the enemy pairs will be completed. But hey, at least it’s closer to completion than Theros’.
While the monocolored Gearhulks had three or more syllables for their one adjective, the new Gearhulks use just two syllables for their adjective, each syllable obviously corresponds to one of their colors. Probably the most obvious one is Pryeheart (which goes forward), next is probably Oildeep (which goes backward), then you got the much more confusing trio of Brightglass, Riptide and Coalheart. Each have two different keywords, each corresponds to a different color, and menace got used on both the reds, and save for the WU one being written on two different lines, the keywords leans backwards in color order weirdly enough, yeah that’s what alphabetical order does to you, through V is before M in RG’s case.
The arrive abilities on these are still pretty long, but somehow three of the five still managed to have flavor texts on them, so I guess there’s progress, after all the originals didn’t have it. These are one united abilities that somehow used both colors’ strengths so we ain’t splitting them to make enemy versions just yet. Not to equal degree through, especially with the two blue members, mono blue can already tuck any nonland really, and mono black certainly can do worse than Thoughtsieze, through who am I to say you actually see Vedallion Clique in this.
Original Amonkhet was the first try at Gods after Theros proven they’re a good idea. These undercosted unkillable creatures that ask for some love to get on attacking just resonated way more than to just wave off like “planeswalkers are our gods”. Not having room for 15 whole Gods like Theros, they settled on just 8. Five monocolored in the big set, and three in the small set making up Grixis. Because Bolas is Grixis and will go in this plane and kill most of the gods. Save for Hazoret, which means WAR would have to design a new non-zombie Boar for the red slot and it started to feel like every set with Gods going forward would have something just as irritating cyclewise (often in form of a sixth loose God) So now what’s the solution to rebuild this plane?
You could design a new monocolored cycle, but considering the above Gearhulks, that would eat like half the mythic slots in total, this ain’t M20, that can’t be justified. You could add colors to Hazoret, make her anything from two colored to the five colored god, but well outside of MOM when did any god gained colors? And here comes NotC’s solution: There’s 4 colors missing, which divided handily into 2 pairs, so let’s have 2 dual colored gods. Hopefully they don’t conflict with the 3 Grixis gods.