Magic’s newest expansion takes us back to the plane of Avishkar, formerly known as Kaladesh, as the New Culture Collective prepares for their second annual multiplanar Ghirapur Grand Prix death race. A new set means new mechanics, and we’ve got some good ones. In this article we’ll talk about the mechanics and offer some thoughts on what they mean for Commander and other formats and how they’ll play.
New Mechanics
Speed and Start Your Engines
Speed is a new trait players can gain by starting their engines and then ramp up to a maximum of 4 by dealing combat damage. This initial speed can’t be responded to or prevented from happening, though future gains will have triggers that can be responded to. You do not have to control a permanent with this ability for the trigger to happen however. Once you have maximum speed a number of cards will unlock a new ability, though others will still care about your current speed.
TheChirurgeon: This is an interesting – and way more complicated – mechanic than most of the ones we’ve seen for tracking a new status, which tend to have less going on (mostly thinking of Ascend and Monarch). It’s worth noting that the ability to increase your speed just sticks around and isn’t tied to the permanent, so once you have that initial speed nothing can stop you from gaining more, aside from preventing damage. In that sense, the trigger here – an opponent losing life for the first time on each of your turns – isn’t a bad one since it’s already a key part of what you’ll want to do in a game. That said, taking a minimum of three turns to get to max speed is a lot, and the damage requirement is pretty hefty. My experience in bigger games of Commander is that players tend to come after you when you cause them to lose life, even small amounts, early on and so without some accelerative effects or really strong abilities to key off max speed I don’t see this having much value.
FromTheShire: Yeah I think more often than not the max speed abilities are going to be more of a nice bonus than a thing you want to build around. 3 turns isn’t forever in Commander but it’s plenty of time for the table to line up removal if what you’re doing is truly a problem. The underlying mechanic seems fine if a little annoying to track.
BPhillipYork: Speed, and particularly its execution are a pretty clear sign of the diminishing returns you’re bound to get from Magic: the Gathering as they continually push out more cards and sets, always requiring new mechanics. The set is vehicle-themed, so speed. On the face of it, it seems more complex than existing mechanics like ascension, or the monarch, or the initiative, or the ring tempts you, day/night, or various emblems.
Here’s the thing though, unless there are speed cards that care about how fast you are going, and so far I haven’t seen any, they only care about max speed, it’s either off, or on. So it’s almost exactly like day/night or really ascension in particular, in that once it’s on, it’s on, it doesn’t care about the permanent that cared about ascension or speed to get it going, and you know, it’s lame. Ascend isn’t so lame, but it was out before treasures (and clues, and food, and blood) so it’s so trivial to attain now.
Speed could’ve been pretty interesting if it like mattered, if there were “speeds” and they did things (cruise, max speed, etc..) they could cause you to draw more cards, or get more mana, or something. Instead, there’s lots of cards that care if you have max speed, and then they do more, or they can do something. So its uh, exactly like Ascend. You know, it’s on, or it’s off. Oh but it’s a vehicle set, so it’s about speed.
FromTheShire: So far we’ve seen Samut, the Driving Force and The Speed Demon care about your current speed not just max speed but it’s true that’s not a lot.
Exhaust
Exhaust is somewhat reminiscent of Exert, but instead of paying the cost of being tapped down the next turn, exhaust abilities can only be activated once per game. This can be reset if the permanent leaves the battlefield and re-enters.
TheChirurgeon: Most of these creatures are lucky to get off a single activation in most games anyways, but this gives you a lot of extra value for blink effects, and I’m always a fan of those. The payoff here is solid – you can get some big effects when you’re limiting them to once per game, and having a Braingeyser on a stick is pretty handy.
FromTheShire: The real value in this for Commander is absolutely for decks that can reset them, and there’s some pretty impressive examples. Normally blink and flicker decks tend to be Azorius, but I could see leaning into these in a Jeskai shell for haste from red since these will be summoning sick.
BPhillipYork: So Exhaust is monstrous except spelled different and can be on permanents not just creatures. Like it’s not bad but it’s not exciting.
Returning Mechanics
Vehicles
Vehicles naturally return to participate in the whacky races – these artifacts can be crewed by your creatures to become creatures themselves.
TheChirurgeon: No shocker that vehicles became evergreen. The balance on these is always tough since they need other creatures to help them go, but that’s a great use for your tokens and other soft utility creatures who otherwise can’t afford to attack. Valor’s Flagship there comes with the ability to Cycle it for some very useful crew, and it’s a nice bonus if you’re running multiple copies in Constructed.
FromTheShire: Also not a shocker to see a big focus on them in this set, given the premise. Crewing definitely leads to some cool play patterns that are normally quite fair, unless it’s in a Greasefang, Okiba Boss deck, and then it’s a menace which is frequently fun in its own way. I might wish they dialed the number slightly back in average sets but here they deserve to be the stars.
BPhillipYork: Vehicles and Mounts are fine, saddle and crew are fine, I guess. Pilot tokens that saddle better and mount better are fine, they’re thematic. Obviously they get interesting when you turn a downside into an upside, and that can make for interesting deckbuilding, for example a time creature that does something when tapped but isn’t safe attacking. Then having to mount or crew turns into an upside, and that’s neat.
Mounts and Saddle
Not everyone in the multiverse has a slick ride but that won’t stop them from participating in this opportunity for the grand prize. Instead they will saddle up their mounts and do their best to keep pace.
TheChirurgeon: Ah horses, the original cars. Bringing back Saddle is a fine way to expand the riding/racing theme without just making the set too many vehicles and not enough actual creatures. As with vehicles, your mounts can’t tap to saddle themselves but they can activate each other, leading to some conceptually fun ideas. The upside/downside is that mounts are always creatures, while Vehicles don’t share that same vulnerability.
FromTheShire: I think I personally prefer mounts to vehicles. Not that there aren’t steampunk-esque planes out there like Avishkar where they fit very well, but I tend to prefer the more traditional fantasy vibe of lower tech planes where mounts fit better. That’s purely a personal choice thing though. Gameplay wise being able to interact with them more easily since they’re creatures makes them be played a little fairer.
Cycling
Cycling allows you to discard cards to replace themselves if you don’t need them, or sometimes to get a unique effect in addition.
TheChirurgeon: Although pretty much flavorless outside of its original introduction, Cycling is just a tremendously useful ability that makes every card better. Aetherdrift brings back an added effect in cards that produce an effect when they cycle – this is great on Legendary permanents as an incentive to run multiple copies in your deck and also turns every one of them into a surprise cantrip when you just need to get another card.
FromTheShire: Cycling is hands down one of my favorite mechanics, and not just because I’m an old school Astral Slide sicko. It turns dead draws into cards, gives you neat effects, and exists outside the stack which leads to some cool tricks and engagement with the rules, and I’m here for it always.
BPhillipYork: Cycling is a good mechanic, it should be deciduous or evergreen, and I hope they made some awesome bicycle puns in a vehicle set, that would make me laugh.
TheChirurgeon: I honestly hadn’t even considered that and now it’s the only thing I want out of this set.
Next Time: The Set’s Multicolor Cards
That wraps up our look at the mechanics of Aetherdrift. We’ll be back later to look at the most noteworthy cards in the set, starting with the multicolor cards in the main set, then in the following articles we’ll cover the monocolor and colorless cards before moving on to the set’s Commander decks.
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