Following a whole year of intense Magic releases with the back-to-back eldrazi threat of Battle for Zendikar and Shadows Over Innistrad blocks, players were ready for a palette cleanser. With Kaladesh, they got just that: a bright and vibrant world full of wonder and gorgeous art. It was the advent of energy, vehicles, and many other things good and bad that all around made Kaladesh such a beloved set and an equally beloved plane. But how were the mythics? Do they stack up as well as other sets of the era? Let's dive in and get to ranking them!

As a note starting with this set and going forward, there are technically some mythics from supplemental preconstructed products. In this case, the planeswalker intro decks. I'll be omitting those from these articles as they tend to be weak and don't have a lot of historical relevance in Constructed formats, Limited, and even Commander.

Number Fifteen

I honestly can't think of a time where Cataclysmic Gearhulk has really ever done anything seriously impactful. Getting to use it as a plain old Cataclysm is solid, sure, but not being able to take out lands as well makes it feel rather lame in practice. Sweepers were just far better, and if you wanted another artifact and creature to stick around, then you'd just be losing the Gearhulk itself as well. This amounted to a neat design that simply never paid off anywhere and was fairly lambasted during its tenure in Standard.

Number Fourteen

If you were playing a Kaldadesh draft and you saw a Demon of Dark Schemes, you took it. The card was a Limited bomb thanks to both being able to wipe out opposing creatures and then get them back soon after. Unfortunately, the card suffered on the Constructed front and never found a good home anywhere else, particularly with how little energy cards even existed until the recent Universes Beyond: Fallout and Modern Horizons 3 sets. Even if we saw more energy support, by now this card has long since been outclassed and is hardly worth mentioning today.

Number Thirteen

For a little while, Combustible Gearhulk was seen as being worse than Cataclysmic Gearhulk. At least that Gearhulk did some fairly powerful things by blowing up the board, but the value just didn't seem to be anywhere with this one. That is, except for the one brief moment where it showed up in Mono-Red Sneak Attack lists as a way to finish off opponents quickly. Either they let you draw more cards, allowing you a better opportunity to go in for the kill, or they risked taking a lethal hit by making you bin an Emrakul. It's still a fairly niche bit of the format's history, but at least this card ended up being of the more useful types on the low end of the gearhulk cycle.

Number Twelve

You know Kaladesh is a set filled to the brim with mythics when I get to a card that had a fairly strong showing in Standard this early on in the list. I actually had to go back and double check to make sure that I wasn't missing anything where this should be higher, but nope, this is about right. The card had a modest showing throughout its time in Standard and shows up rarely from time to time in both Commander and Cube, though far less than many of the other offerings in this list. Still, it's hard to deny the appeal of anthem effects, particularly when they come on a creature.

Number Eleven

Rashmi never saw serious competitive play anywhere, but you know where she was an instant hit? The world of Commander, of course! Casual players love putting value on top of their value with cascade effects, and Rashmi lets them do it every turn! It doesn't go quite as deep as traditional cascade does, but the repeatable effect is so potent that she's seen tons of play both as a commander and in the 99.

Number Ten

When people read this Nissa for the first time, people were stunned. If I recall correctly, I believe some people even wondered if it was fake because of how easy to activate the ultimate was for such a powerful effect that would last the rest of the game. Nissa would go on to be a solid roleplayer in Standard and even saw some minor Legacy play thanks to the ability to untap a Gaea's Cradle in order to use it again and then follow it up with the ultimate. Great card, though not nearly as good as many others on this list.

Number Nine

When Dovin first came out, people didn't think it was going to be all that great of a card. The +1 and -1 both weren't super impactful, which made it difficult to get to the Static Orb ultimate. Of course, that was merely evaluating the card in theory. In practice, it provided a tremendous role player for the various Azorius-based control decks of the era, shutting down creatures while you controlled the game more and more using additional cards alongside it. A great card unique to the era.

Number Eight

If you read my Modern Masters 2013 mythics ranking article, you might recall how I talked about how Jugan, the Rising Star was the worst of the dragon cycle because it only granted some meager +1/+1 counters. Verdurous Gearhulk is a great way to showcase how such a design could be done well. Jugan fails because it needs to die to give the counters, making it hard to utilize effectively and as such it doesn't feel very splashy. Verdurous Gearhulk on the other hand can put all the counters on itself or divide them how you'd like across your board, making for a hugely impactful card that showed up quite a bit in the Standard of its time.

Number Seven

You're going to find me talking about control decks quite a bit in this ranking article (as seen above with Dovin Baan) and that shouldn't come as much of a shock given the Standards Kaladesh was a part of. Control decks were all over the place in a number of different forms, seeing a resurgence the archetype hadn't really experienced since Return to Ravnica Azorius builds. Metallurgic Summonings proved to be one of the many top end options available to these control decks, allowing them to turn their spells into an army of creatures to finish the opponent off. Think of it as a proto-Shark Typhoon and you can see why it was so good.

Number Six

At this point, we were still about a year or so out from Ravenous Chupacabra in Rivals of Ixalan, but that didn't necessarily matter when you had such a potent creature like this. Many people actually wrote off Noxious Gearhulk at first, noting that only getting to blow up one creature seemed pretty underwhelming. In practice, though, the combination of the creature kill and life gain both being on such a big creature proved to be incredibly powerful in Standard. Even outside of Standard, it continues to hold a legacy as a great card for both Cube and Commander alike.

Number Five

Skysovereign - or the Boat, as some call it - was a fairly playable card in a wide swath of decks during its Standard tenure. Even with a hefty up front mana cost, it was often worth having as a top deck for select aggro decks in case the games would go on long. Then, of course, there were the Vehicles decks that made great use of the card because of how smoothly it slotted into the archetype. Even now it continues having a strong home in Pioneer thanks to decks like Abzan Greasefang and Gruul Vehicles.

Number Four

Despite its placing, let's make one thing clear: few people actually like playing against Aetherworks Marvel. Either the card - and by extension the deck it's in - does nothing or kills you in the most obnoxious way possible by cheating a gigantic creature into play, which inevitably led it to being banned in Standard. Despite being a card that many players hated dealing with, many more enjoyed playing with it and the love it had in Standard quickly put it on a watch list early on in Pioneer, though thankfully its strength didn't quite translate to a ban there. Its reputation lingers, though, and it's well deserving of a high spot.

Number Three

It honestly doesn't feel all that correct to put Saheeli this high because for the most part, she hasn't seen a ton of play outside of the Constructed deck she was best known for. The limited time cloning effect and the minor damage ping just don't translate to being a tremendously impactful card. However, it's hard to not talk about Saheeli without bringing up the elephant in the room of Saheeli Cat Combo. This deck dominated Standard so hard it forced an emergency ban in the format the day after a B&R announcement stating no changes. The deck also had to be banned in Pioneer, showing just how powerful the pair was. Even if Saheeli is good nowhere else, she deserves a high spot on this aspect alone.

Number Two

It was a real hard choice for which mythic should top this list. Both of the top two cards were tremendous forces across their tenure in Standard, were extremely beloved, and continue to be favorites in multiple formats to this day. For second place, I went with Chandra. While she was a major player of Standard, her uses since have been a bit more niche, but that doesn't discount her utility in the slightest. She's one of the most iconic planeswalkers of all time and still remains extremely potent in the right place to this day.

Number One

I went back and forth on this one forever, but in the end I simply had to settle on Torrential Gearhulk for the top spot on this list. Chandra is eternally iconic, but in reality she was simply a really good piece in whatever deck she showed up in. By comparison, Torrential Gearhulk didn't just fit in with whatever lists it was in - it defined them. The various control decks of the era wouldn't have been anywhere near the same without Torrential Gearhulk to cap them off. It even made a rather large splash in Pro Tour Kaladesh, with one of the greatest finals matches ever in Carlos Romao on Jeskai Control vs. Shota Yasooka on Grixis Control. Even now, Torrential Gearhulk continues to show up in the occasional Constructed deck and is continually excellent in formats like Commander and Cube. An easy choice for number one.

Paige Smith

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