Last week we saw that Magicthegathering.com had a number of articles setting up the Coldsnap story, but where the conclusion of that story would be told was a bit obscure. Well, it is right here, saved for everyone who bought a Coldsnap Fatpack!
The Fatpack also contained a novel, but that novel was The Gathering Dark. I wonder what people who weren't already deep into the storyline thought of that. Coldsnap is supposed to be set 3 of the Ice Age block, so... what is a The Dark book doing here? Wasn't Homelands the set originally considered the third part of the Ice Age block that got booted by Coldsnap? Reading the book wasn't going to make things much clearer either. Yes it is billed as "Ice Age cycle - Book 1", but the main thing linking it to the rest of the cycle are the characters of Jodah and Mairsil, neither of which is in the Coldsnap story. Personally I'd have put The Eternal Ice in the bundle. Yeah, it might be weird to only include "Ice Age cycle - Book 2", but at least that story is clearly tied to Coldsnap: it tells of the end of the Ice Age, thus setting up Heidar's grievances that kick off the new story.
But enough about a book I already reviewed a million years ago. If we want a new story, we have to look at the Player's Guide booklet also included in the fatpack. As always it includes a description of new mechanics in the set, a top 10 of Coolest Coldsnap Cards (Dark Depths at number 1 checks out, but Garza Zol at 2 and Zur only at 5? Lightning Serpent at 3? Rimefeather Owl gets in, but Counterbalance, Martyr of Sands and Rite of Flame don't?) and a visual guide to the entire set. There's also an article that talks about various snow creatures in the set that meanders from talking about card design to flavor, though you're not going to get much more than "Yeti's evolved to become the stealthiest creatures in Terisiare" or "Thermopods used to just be big slugs, but when the ice came they developed an internal furnace" from it.
Unique to this edition though are a storyline overview that doesn't just do some set up before pointing you to a novel, but which includes a conclusion, and an actual story, in the form of a monologue by Heidar, written by none other than Ice Age Cycle author Jeff Grubb!
Oddly the story summary is included on page 4 and 5, and the story on page 12 to 23. But the final battle isn't included in the story, so if you go through the booklet you first get a quick summary of how the story ends, before getting a deep dive into the psyche of the main villain... which is a bit odd, so I'm going to cover the story first, and then the summary. Let's dive in!
