Well it’s that time, right? Right! We have the full spoiler up for Kaladesh and everyone who is anyone is sifting through trying to find greatness. Trying to uncover hidden gems.

While many formats will need some time with new cards to see how they hack out, for the most part, new cards in casual town and multiplayer are going up against existing cards. That makes them much easier to predict.

Now there always seems to be some card or mechanic that will need real play-testing, and energy certainly qualifies. But everything else is good to go! So let’s get our steampunk Indian style over at the Kaladesh, and count down my top 10 casual cards from the set.

10. Foundry Inspector

Foundry Inspector has a lot to offer a potential artifact heavy deck. As a 3-drop, it comes down early enough to have its cost reduction actually matter. With a land drop every turn, and no acceleration, you can cast a 5-drop artifact on turn four. But what if you led with a mana artifact or have some other acceleration? You can drop stuff quickly. And the more artifacts you want to play in a turn, the better it gets. Check it out with a card like Memory Jar for a new set of 7 cards you want to dump quickly to see the sort of shenanigans you can get from this. Plus, don’t forget that the Inspector is a strong 3/2 for 3 mana. It attacks fast and powerfully.

9. Padeem, Consul of Innovation

I like my artifacts to stay in play. Historically one of the great weaknesses of artifact creatures is that they die to every color. Black destroys target creature. Green, Red, and White destroy target artifact. Blue steals creatures. Red can burn. White can exile creatures. You get the idea. Artifact creatures are weaker. But, as most of them can be played in any deck, they have some level of flexibility as well. Padeem brings me some protection. You can’t target my artifacts, including my creatures. Sorry. Go away now. Stop looking at my Sol Ring! Or my Lightning Greaves! Or my Steel Hellkite! Look elsewhere! And now my artifact creatures are better too, without either weakness in play. No to Murder and Into the Core. If you played in the age of the first Mirrodin Block, then you know how commonly played Leonin Abunas was in the day. Well, get ready for the Era of Padeem, Consul of Not Touching My Stuff. And I get to draw some cards too!

8. Gonti, Lord of Luxury

Did you know that Gonti has the precise same casting cost as Nekrataal? It’s true! Now Nekrataal is a creature I still play in my decks. 2/1 first strike, and will kill a creature (usually) on arrival. It can’t hit everything, there is a subset of creatures immune to our Assassin’s charms, but it works. And I still run it in a lot of my decks. Nekrataal works. Now for the same mana, you get this 2/3 deathtouch. It’s been long established that deathtouch can keep folks from blocking with bigger creatures or fear swinging your way with good stuff. It has an impact on the board greater than the 2/1 first strike of Nekrataal, so on the board, Gonti is the better force. Now they both have an enters-the-battlefield effect as well. Gonti will basically reverse Impulse an enemy. Exile one card. The rest go on the bottom. Now you can cast that exiled card whenever you like, and use mana of any color to play it as well. You know what? That’s pretty good card advantage. You’ll always get something. Now sure, like Nekrataal, there might be times when you really wanted to get a better class of card, but you’ll always get something you can run. Free cards! Gonti is Good.

7. Dovin Baan

Not every Planeswalker deserves to be in my Top 10 list. How good are they generally? Do they require an overly specific build? Take Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast as good example. He’s cheap and very good in the right shell. But he only made my Top Ten for Conspiracy: Take the Throne because the new cards in the set where so few in number while many of those were intended for draft only that we had just a few leftovers. Had he been in Kaladesh, you would not see him on my list. But Dovin Baan on the other hand is fine. The +1 will drop the power of a potential beater and it can’t use any cool abilities either. (Great at stopping a Commander who’s small or is played for activated abilities such as Roon of the Hidden Realm). You can also drop a loyalty to both gain some life and draw a card. The anti-Phyrexian Arena. And there’s a nasty emblem at the end if you ultimate Dovin up. Although I’m not that interested. I just want to draw a little cards, gain a little life, and pretty much get down tonight.

6. Aetherflux Reservoir

I like to kill people. I like to win games. But I really like to do so magnificently. Take yesterday’s deck when I ran this with a bunch of zero drop artifact creatures and used Paradoxical Outcome to bounce them, play them again with new zero drop cards we drew, and keep it going to build a giant count of cards played in order to kill everyone at the table with the Reservoir! Forget storm, this thing kills people with style and flair. Do it right! Gain a metric ton of life, and then peel 50 life off at a time to shoot others for 50. Sounds like fun to me!

5. Refurbish

The various White-centric abilities to bring back a dead artifact invariably put it into the hand and not the battlefield. And yes, Refurbish is just a Zombify for artifacts. But this card gives White mages a tool that they have never really had before. Barring mass recursion to the battlefield by effects such as Roar of Reclamation, or the rare other form, this is new. Plus it’s an uncommon, so you can pick them up quite cheaply for your many artifact recursion needs!

4. Rashmi, Eternities Crafter

I have to admit that I’m really of two minds about Rashmi. I feel like it’s in the wrong colors. Shouldn’t she be a crazy Izzet card? Play a spell of any sort! Was it the first spell you played this turn? Okay great! What was it? Creature! Instant! Planeswalker! Artifact! Enchantment! We don’t care! Flip over the top card, and if it’s a lower casting cost, then you can play it for free! (If not, or if you don’t want to play it yet because you are waiting for a better time, then you draw it instead). Sort of like a one-time cascade. Maybe you’ll hit, and maybe you won’t! The chaos of that effect is very, very Red to me. And yet, we have Green, not Red, here. Not. Red. I’m still unsure of the flavor, but it certainly is a good effect, and one that gives value to every card that will come down the pike. Control it with Sylvan Library or Soothsaying, both of which are in color. And don’t forget Mirri's Guile either.

3. Chandra, Torch of Defiance:

“Hello Chandra lovers! Welcome back the Chandra Games, already in progress. So contestant, what will you choose next?”

“Thanks Abe! We’ll take, ‘Best Chandra Variant’ for $500!”

“All right contestant! The answer is, ‘She has four abilities, one of which either does that Red-draw thing or shoots everyone for two damage, another that makes mana, and a third which shoots down creatures of some size. All of which are really powerful, and two of which increase her loyalty to keep her in the game!”

“Okay Abe, I think I’ve got it. The question is, ‘Who is Chandra, Torch of Defiance?’

“That’s right contestant! You’ve won. Come on down and collect your Pyro-Prize!”

2. Gearhulk Cycle (Noxious Gearhulk et all)

All of the Gearhulks are good for multiplayer, Commander, or kitchen table Magic. Bring some friends over and smash them with a Gearhulk. They are the next in the line of Titans (like Grave Titan) and Primordials (like Sepulchral Primordial). Even some of the Soul cycle was really good (Soul of Innistrad and Soul of New Phyrexia are both winners). This is the next hotness. And each does something very compelling:

Noxious Gearhulk — Combines a Nekrataal ability (which can work on killing any creature) with a body of size and smashery. Menace, 5 power, and gaining some life? That’s a pretty good package.

Combustible Gearhulk — This is my second favorite. It will almost always draw you three card on arrival. In a multiplayer game, I’d rather let you draw three cards that take a hit of who knows how much life. This is particularly true outside of Commander where I start with 20 life. I don’t want to risk attention or death by taking damage from this thing.

Cataclysmic Gearhulk — You all know how much I like a good sweeper at the kitchen table. It takes scare of unsightly messes. But this one needs to be planned for in the right deck, and it’s homes are smaller. In order to really get it, you need to understand that your foes are going to each keep their most powerful creature. Unless they have a go-wide strategy with a token of small creatures or small token creatures, this is more of a speed bump.

Torrential Gearhulk — I’m not impressed, but it works. You get a free spell on arrival from your graveyards. A new spell is not bad! But there are other, better, ways to get a similar ability. And this one is only a 5/6 with no evasive abilities. What makes it good though in the flash, so you can flash this big body to block or smash someone who dares to attack you, or to flesh out and play that spell from your graveyard in response to something unsightly. That’s good stuff.

Verdurous Gearhulk — Another big beater in Green. It can be an 8/8 trampler for 5 mana or a 4/4 trampler and give some counters out, or what have you. Meh. None of my decks are crying out for this. But it still beats and serves and can work well with +1/+1 counter themes like Doubling Season or Hardened Scales. It has some value there.

1. Insidious Will

Utility. Ever since we had Deflection printed in Ice Age, and Fork effects moved to Blue with Twincast and other cards, we’ve had a major question from Blue players. Should I run a counter? A Deflection variant like Misdirection? A Twincast? In what numbers? Well now you have pure utility from Insidious Will. You can run them all. Now it’s not a double card like Wild Ricochet from Red, that’s both a Fork and a Deflection at the same time. That would be overegging the control pudding. But you can choose the mode that best suits your need at the time. It’s like a Blue instant Charm. Counter? Copy? Redirect? This is like flexibility is its purest, untainted form. This is the card I am going to use as an example of pure flexibility and options in the game. Insidious Will. Are you ready?

And there we are! Cards that came close included Fumigate and Madcap Experiment. So what was missing from my list? What did you like? What are you most exited to pull during the prerelease fun times?

Let’s kick it Kaladesh style