In case you were jonesing for my usual metagame analysis in this space, here it is:

Bant Company is an effective Magic: the Gathering deck.

All right — next topic!

While we don't have the full Kaladesh spoilers right now, we do have all the mechanics spoiled, as well as several of their marquee cards. That, plus a couple related topics, are enough to talk about interesting new things instead of tell you more about Bant Company.

Topic 1: Kaladesh Rap

When the other judge at my local game store found out I've been learning a Japanese rap song in advance of Next Music from Tokyo (seriously, if you're anywhere near Vancouver, Toronto, or Montreal in October, go to this — there's nothing like it), he hoped I would write a rap about Kaladesh.

So I did. Here it is. You thought Incendiary Flow was just a card name . . . 

Topic 2: Creating Create

Starting with Kaladesh, we will be creating tokens rather than putting them onto the battlefield. This is a minor change in many ways, but it's a major change to me, for one reason:

I suggested that change two years ago to the Wizards R&D templating team.

Now, that was awhile back, ideas can develop in several ways, and I had no part in any decision making. There's no official person credited with the change on this one, so it definitely isn't me. But I did officially make the case for it. Here's how my small part of it went down.

I maintain a database of my card collection, including shorthand rules text so I can build decks without having to go through piles of cards all the time. I'm always looking to save space by shortening easily-understood concepts that won't be confused with something else. Along the way, I found "put a token onto the battlefield" cumbersome, substituting "make a token" as the shortest version I knew.

When I was a Wizards contractor for nine months of 2014, I found out that Wizards, like many companies, has some internal wikis to discuss ideas, and the templating team has one. It's not like I had any clout to make my ideas happen, but for something as space-saving as token making was, it was now or never to float the idea, so I made a full case for "create" as a word for making tokens on the templating wiki. I didn't follow up with anyone on it; I just left it there and moved on to my current job a couple months later.

I assumed that enough time had passed for the idea to have received a pocket veto or not been considered at all. So when the Rise from the Tides promo came out and Twitter started talking about the change, I was stunned and elated, given that Wizards is using the idea in exactly the way I argued for.

So while no rules have changed, a lot of space has opened up on cards to discuss harder concepts. Token-making cards no longer have to be much longer than other cards. Plus, like how returning to spells being "cast" meant that "play" had one fewer meaning, the word "put" now has one fewer meaning, so you can search Gatherer for "put" and get more focused results. That's got to be worth something.

Topic 3: Fabricate

So far, we've only seen fabricate in Green and White, which makes sense as primary colors of token creation and +1/+1 counters. Fabricate is all upside: either the fabricate creature gets larger, or it comes with an army. That sounds playable in the abstract, but the cards we've seen so far are priced in acknowledgement of that benefit. Angel of Invention is a five-mana mythic rare that is sometimes a 2/1. That's not usually the kind of card that sees play unless it has massive upside. It definitely does — a 2/1 that comes with two 2/2s and pumps your team has plenty to offer — so the question is where the downside comes in.

And the clearest downside is damage-based and toughness-based sweepers. Languish is leaving Standard, but Radiant Flames and Flaying Tendrils are still around, and Incendiary Sabotage looks highly playable as an instant speed sweeper, even if it has an additional cost of sacrificing an artifact. So how I expect fabricate cards to play out is that they'll normally go wide except against decks with the sweepers I just mentioned, in which case the +1/+1 counter option will make more sense.

That's where we run into a problem — as of when I type this, they haven't spoiled a fabricate card that can survive the sweepers. Always Watching, the heft behind a lot of recent go-wide decks, doesn't pump tokens, so it's unlikely to help. If there's a fabricate card that can get to at least 4 toughness when it isn't making tokens, then I expect that card to see a lot of Standard play, but until then, it's dicey. Then again, fabricating for tokens is very good against Reflector Mage, so if the format develops (or stays, I guess) along an axis where beating Reflector Mage is important, that might be enough to make fabricate cards worth it.

Topic 4: Energy

Fellow multiplayer enthusiast and writing veteran Abe Sargent can't find the energy to appreciate energy. I agree with him that energy makes Magic fiddly, and too many fiddly things will make a bad game experience. We've also had way more of them recently — in the last 12 months, we've had experience counters (which Abe doesn't even mention), the monarch, and now energy, whereas before there were just emblems and poison counters as objects that could belong to players. I've written before that too much fiddling with counters, tokens, and the like can get you targeted by taking up more than your share of the collective time in a multiplayer game. There's a danger of that with energy, just like there is with other stuff.

Do I think energy brings things too far in the fiddly realm? Not necessarily. The main reasons I think that: first, it's like open mana except that fewer cards make it; second, it's easier to look at a die on an energy thing than continually update information like cards in a hand or graveyard (which, in terms of time taken up every game, might as well be fiddly); and third, it looks like decks with energy will be the only ones who need to keep track. In a dedicated energy deck, there might be a bit to consider, but otherwise it will be down to the individual cards' strengths to make any decks, just like few decks outside maybe a Queen Marchesa Commander deck will be monarch-focused.

That puts energy roughly in the same spot as investigate, where cards that are independently good at generating and using it will make all sorts of decks but a deck built around the mechanic might not do much. If there are a couple cards that are already good in an archetype, then the fact they use energy will only help, as it increases deck synergy; but that might be more happy coincidence, particularly in the tournament world, than anything else. Tireless Tracker is the poster child for investigate because it has things to do with the Clues and is already a good body; Ongoing Investigation isn't the poster child for investigate because there isn't enough support for Investigate.dec.

As far as casual goes, to the extent there's energy.dec, it probably looks like charge counter.dec; everything's fiddly, but it's also all on the board. In tournaments, it's more like Tireless Tracker than that, and I don't see too many cards yet that scream "I make energy and am independently playable." (To be fair, few things in the universe scream full sentences like that.) Voltaic Brawler looks like one; Harnessed Lightning is another. Past that, I don't know. Lathnu Hellion's energy seems more likely to fuel other energy shenanigans than its own, like letting Harnessed Lightning deal more damage. For the Hellion, Hell's Thunder seems like a reasonable comparison as a cheap hasty and temporary creature with added value. That's not game-breaking, and energy is more visible on average than a creature that can be unearthed.

So I don't think energy is too fiddly, but I also think we won't see that many decks with loads of energy going around. In Standard, it gives added strategic depth to Red in a way it rarely gets, so that could be nice — the least fiddly color in Magic gets a thing.

And as a reminder from the beloved Splinter:

Topic 5: Vehicles

Now Vehicles . . . they're something else entirely. They generally requires creatures to be worth anything, but unlike the majority of creatures that will crew them, they dodge sorcery-speed creature removal. The latter has been enough to make all kinds of cards good, from Treetop Village to Rakdos Keyrune. But what kind of things do Vehicles, as a group, want in order to be good in Standard?

A world without instant kill spells. Weirdly, Vehicles are highly susceptible to Murder. Unlicensed Disintegration makes more sense flavor-wise, but both cards do the same important thing — severely punish the tempo of anyone who tapped creatures to crew a vehicle. On the flipside, Vehicles are extraordinarily good against the usual suite of tempo instants, like Chilling Grasp. If an opponent has left up mana that looks suspiciously like Chilling Grasp, attacking with non-Vehicles is the right plan because the opponent would prefer to tap the Vehicles instead. If the opponent decides to tap the non-Vehicles, then there's a chance to respond by using those creatures to crew a Vehicle. So it's a lose-lose situation for that group of spells.

A deck with all spot removal, which is good against Vehicles, will be bad against fabricate-heavy decks, so a successful board control deck in the new Standard will need a thorough mix of sweepers and spot removal, similar to the current W/B Control lists.

Trample/a lack of tokens. Several Vehicles have trample and flying, and that will be all kinds of important in decks that want them. It's already a risk facing token decks to tap any of your creatures for a benefit, trample and flying are usually good enough reasons in those circumstances. But as noted above, Vehicle decks kind of want token decks to exist in the metagame so that opponents pack less spot removal. There's a tension between what Vehicles need in the metagame and what decks they want to face. Even worse, a deck with a good source of flying tokens can block the flying Vehicles for quite some time. Haunted Dead sees play in the Prized Amalgam decks; the Spirit token it creates might increase in relevance if flying Vehicles are all over the place.

For these reasons, don't be surprised if Demolition Stomper turns out to be one of the best Vehicles for Standard. It doesn't have trample or flying, but it can't be blocked by creatures with two or less power, and a 10/7 requires several bodies in order to kill it. If U/W Spirits remains a deck in the new Standard, it might have major problems dealing with Demolition Stomper. It's not as flashy as Skysovereign, Consul Flagship, and Crew 5 might be too high a cost, but Demolition Stomper has exactly the kind of ability needed in the metagame Vehicles help make.

Vigilant creatures. Fellow multiplayer enthusiast and writing veteran Bruce Richard (I have multiple fellows) wrote about the value of vigilance this week. He was speaking generally, but as someone who has a treasured Masako the Humorless/Glare of Subdual 60-card deck, the value of vigilance in a deck that also wants to tap creatures can't be overstated. It's unclear at this point what kind of creatures go in a crew — if you built around Vehicles but you also built around good creatures, why wouldn't you just attack with the good creatures? But, like inspired creatures (which aren't in Standard), vigilant creatures (which are in Standard) have natural synergy with Vehicles. Aerial Responder, Cataclysmic Gearhulk, and the aforementioned Angel of Invention all have vigilance and are independently playable. In a stalled board state, they can attack while being open to crew a Vehicle for blocking. That's a lot of value from already good creatures, and I can see any of them becoming important to a Vehicle deck. Cataclysmic Gearhulk looks particularly strong, as it can keep a Vehicle around and then immediately crew it.

Conclusion

A metagame without Collected Company and with energy and Vehicles has a whole lot to think about, and getting a full read is impossible at this point. But judging by the cards with new mechanics and what they want to go with and against, Standard's about to look very different, not only from the current Standard but from the last several Standards. Here's hoping for a wide-open format where no single card gets reviled. Sure, that never happens, but I might as well hope for it.