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 cards, and we’re kicking off our review with the multicolor cards that serve as signposts to let you know what direction each color pair is trying to build in plus some colorless accoutrements.
Aetherdrift will release to Magic: the Gathering Online and Arena on February 11th, 2025, and to the tabletop on February 14th.
Last time we covered the mechanics, and this time as usual we won’t be looking at everything, but what we will be looking at we’ll be looking at primarily but not exclusively with an eye for Commander play.
Mendicant Core, Guidelight
Marcy: Affinity is back bab–okay well not really. This is a probably a solid beater though, hampered only by it’s toughness, but I really think the power of this card rests less in it beating face and more in the copying ability, which is fairly easy to reach assuming it doesn’t die.
Loxi:Â As a commander, this is a really solid option for an aggressive value based artifact creature strategy, as copying things for 1 mana is pretty insane on a body this cheap. The thing to remember is that your speed will stick around even if this goes, so once this gets rolling it’s really hard to get it to stop. Jam some ways to make sure this gets to cruising speed fast and you’ll leave everyone in the dust.
As a card, I think this is a solid piece for pretty much any artifact decks that focus more on aggressive play and can get their speed up early rather than control focused decks. Special props to Shorikai, Genesis Engine who does pretty unethical things with this as well, since copying your vehicles will get out of hand very fast.
BPhillipYork:Â So that’s a fairly obnoxious max speed when you get there; until then it’s just kind of a beater, potentially really big beater if you dump a lot of artifacts, but this just seems like one of those cards that isn’t really going to do much of anything. It seems like it’s liable to get taken out to prevent you from getting to the copy ability, though if it’s your commander then you can recast it if needed repeatedly and its low base casting cost and artifact focus should help you overcome commander tax.
FromTheShire:Â Right out of the gate, I have to say that I think people are going to underestimate just how quickly and reliably they will be able to hit max speed in 60 card formats and be surprised once they have the cards in hand. Even discounting the speed lands, one and two drop cards like this can instantly jump you to 2 on turn 2 by entering and then dealing any damage. The next turn is a bit of a dead zone merely getting to 3, but then the following turn you can deal a damage to reach max speed and then activate your ability.
With that out of the way, Mendicant is a solid Cranial Plating-esque beater, though without built in evasion that’s not quite as impressive. Doubling up your spells for only 1 mean this is absolutely going to have people trying to make it work however, and without a once per turn restriction this can get nuts fast.
Riptide Gearhulk
Marcy: Five mana soft-removal with prowess in non-red that double strikes is… quite the card, really. A lot of interesting design decisions here. I like the dual mana cost from both colors as it feels kind of on flavor, and even in a 1 on 1 format setting, the removal is good, especially if you can flicker it.
Loxi:Â This is an absolutely fantastic beatstick creature for spellslinger decks. Do not sleep on the raw power someone can have with both Double Strike and Prowess, as this can hit for a pretty crazy amount of damage with a small amount of effort. It’s effect on entry is also solid, giving you a good way to tuck a few problems back into other players’ decks for later. All in all, it’s a really good one and honestly I think it’s one of the best Gearhulks even compared to the originals, even though it has somewhat low base stats. I think this will come out in a variety of decks all including artifacts, spellslinger, and blink strategies.
BPhillipYork:Â That’s a fairly aggressive ability for 5 mana. It’s a lot of colored mana but it’s also in flicker colors, so some really unpleasant things are possible with just repeatedly having this leave and enter play and dumping all of your opponents board state to their library.
FromTheShire:Â Do you want a Luminate Primordial style flicker target that may make your friends hate you even more? Try making sure they’re only going to draw the same three cards for the rest of the game. Love it.
Voyage Home
Marcy: AFFINITY IS BACK BABY!
Loxi:Â Using traditional magic “card draw value” metrics, this has to at least have it’s cost reduced by two to be on-rate, and anything more than that is pretty solid value. That being said, it’s still stuck at sorcery speed, so I expect this will be less favored by decks that want to play more at instant speed and find a better home in decks that don’t mind gassing up on their own turn. It’s not bad at all if you have a lot of artifacts – the potential dream of the 2-mana draw 3 is definitely not unreasonable.
BPhillipYork:Â Well, affinity for artifacts has never been broken before so I’m sure it’s fine.
FromTheShire:Â Cost reducers like this are very powerful, and in a game increasingly full of Treasures and Clues I expect to see it cast for 2 pretty frequently. The card draw would already be great, and then it has some life gain tacked on as icing.
Haunt the Network
Marcy: My initial thought is that this could, ostensibly, end a game, but it feels a little clunky for it to work. That doesn’t mean I don’t expect people trying to use it for that, and I am people.
Loxi:Â It’s not the absolute worst effect but I really don’t often want to pay 5 mana for all this. 2/2 of stats plus a single target life drain is a bit rough, but I think this might be really solid for limited if you can get a good Dimir color pool.
BPhillipYork:Â Is this a vehicles and cyberpunk set again? Anyway, this seems pretty mediocre unless you have truly absurd numbers of artifacts, which with Treasures and Clues and such running around isn’t hard to get to, in which case you could pretty easily just kill someone with this.
FromTheShire:Â This feels a little bit like it might lack a home, depending on the success of Dimir or Esper artifacts/ Vehicles. In Commander being single target is a big drawback. In 60 card it’s possible this curves into being like a 2 of finisher to push that final damage through.
Oildeep Gearhulk
Marcy: 4 mana? Holy powercreep Batman. This card isn’t ‘win the game’ but it certainly is powerful and annoying, because it is fairly cheap (although the lack of colorless mana cost does make it land restrictive), protects itself just enough to be annoying, and has a solid body with a good ETB effect.
Loxi:Â These effects can often be really powerful in many constructed formats, but commander is often not one of those. It can still be really clutch to fish a key card out of someone’s hand, but it’s not always the type of single-minded focus you want to have with many players threatening you at a table. It has great keywords and a really good rate, so I expect to see this see play in limited and other constructed formats for sure, but I think in commander it’s likely going to be a bit more niche.
BPhillipYork:Â This seems super strong in 4-of; in commander it’s fine, but basically just a protected beater which is pretty meh.
Winter, Cursed Rider
Marcy: This feels a little like a ‘hail mary’ removal spell to try and get out of a situation in which things are not going well, but the rest of the card effects are quite interesting to make Winter possibly worth keeping in an artifact heavy deck. There’s a lot going on here for 2 mana, but the one that stuck out to me is that while the Exhaust ability is only once, it has no restriction other than having, well, 4 mana and an untapped Winter, meaning you can use it in reaction to your opponent doing something, which makes getting rid of Winter a priority.
Loxi:Â Well, this is an annoying amount of stuff on a 2-drop. Board protection and a built in potentially one-sided board wipe is pretty terrifying stuff, but funny enough it relies on things being in your graveyard while also protecting things from going there. If you play something where you’ll be putting artifacts in the graveyard of your own volition, it can have some play for sure.
BPhillipYork:Â A -X/-X board clear is super powerful and tough to deal with; exiling a bunch of artifacts from your yard as a cost is kind of rough though. Generally if you are milling you want things there. Other than that this gives you a lot of protection vs removal, but 2 life isn’t enough to really move the needle vs critical targets.
Coalstoke Gearhulk
Marcy: What I like about the new gearhulk set is that they have tried to make them powerful, while also trying to avoid making them immensely meta defining like the previous set of them were (at least in some cases). That said, this one certainly feels like it has some very solid longevity the others in the set so far don’t, because this type of stealing a creature for temporary reanimation can be used in numerous ways for creative game ending plays. And since it says ‘when this creature enters’, assuming you have some way of flickering it, you could trigger it multiple times. You could even get multiple copies and then something really strong and end the game (probably don’t do that one, but it’d be funny!).
Loxi: This one is pretty terrifying, getting to steal a creature from a graveyard for a turn can be pretty potent in itself, but doing it while also buffing it with a bunch of extra keywords is even scarier. The CMV limit of 4 means you can’t get any really nuts stuff, but in a lot of cases there are still going to be plenty of solid options for this by the time it hits the board. Ideally I think this can find a good home in reanimator decks, although I’d say the body on this one is only whelming compared to some of the others; you’re mostly playing this for a burst reanimation that leaves some extra stats as a bonus.
BPhillipYork:Â So this is a whole cycle of gearhulks; I get it now. I mean I don’t know, exactly what is a gearhulk? Anyway reanimating something is nice, for 5 mana if it’s something you really need to reanimate once I guess that’s a good deal. There’s ways to get around finality but not that many, it’s a strong value play.
Far Fortune, End Boss
Marcy: So more or less you get her down, start gaining speed, and go from swinging for 4 with an extra 1 unstoppable damage to 2 unstoppable damage, and then 4 becomes 5 (not accounting for anything else dealing damage on the field). Oddly, Winter seems more impactful, but Far Fortune certainly seems like a card that requires an answer or you lose quickly.
Loxi: Tor Wauki the Younger will have a field day here, or vice-versa if you prefer this as the commander. I don’t think it outdoes Ghyrson Starn, Kelermorph for the true pinger deck or some of the other mono-red options for true burn tactics, but it does provide a nice boost to pretty much all of your damage instances just for playing Magic.
BPhillipYork:Â Well this is super solid for just beating down; it’s what red black is about and max speed gets you just more damage. On the other hand it’s like, a slow moving threat that gets slightly more threatening later.
Gastal Thrillseeker
Marcy: Kind of reminds me of Bloodghast in a really roundabout way, but basically early on it helps you gain speed, and later when it shows up it becomes a thing you have to worry about swinging when it lands and possibly killing something you wanted to protect.
Loxi:Â I don’t expect to see this in commander, but it’s a pretty solid limited piece to get your speed ticking early and still provide a pretty scary trading threat later on.
BPhillipYork:Â This just doesn’t move the dial for me.
FromTheShire:Â This card is a banger and I expect to see it a bunch. Lizard aggro has fallen down the ladder a little bit recently but at one point was arguably the top deck in Standard, and this is a great aggro piece. It has a built in ability to get your speed to 2 with its enters trigger, things like Hired Claw and Iridescent Vinelasher ensure you will get to speed 3 the next turn even if they have blockers, and then to 4 with the pre-combat ping so this immediately gains deathtouch. The haste is also a nice payoff when you draw it late game.
Pyrewood Gearhulk
Marcy: Of the gearhulks in the set, this one is maybe the least interesting to me. If you run a ‘go wide’ style deck, this could certainly be the final piece needed, but it is also the most expensive of the hulks (granted, green often has no issue with ramping, but that’s beside the point). If it gave trample, now…
Loxi:Â While it doesn’t have the raw “win the game” power of other overrun effects, it’s on a massive body that still lets you keep you defenses up and pretty much guarantee you get some damage in with a reasonably sized board. It’s alright, it’s a really safe option for these types of effects when you know you need to start cracking heads but can’t quite pull of a win.
BPhillipYork:Â Oh a really big gearhulk that provides a buff, but doesn’t itself get haste, so it’s a multi-color less useful Craterhoof Behemoth. If it costs 6 mana that’s in the territory where that should really be pushing you to win the game or set up your win. This will deal a bunch of damage, probably, but they’ll be able to block some of it.
FromTheShire:Â I think this still absolutely can close out a game, y’all are sleeping on the Menace here. Vigilance is also super underrated for if you only can maim rather than kill them. The lack of haste is a bummer though yeah.
Redshift, Rocketeer Chief
Marcy: I think what keeps this from being broken is that Redshift doesn’t grow naturally, but you would likely want to grow him to get a bigger discount if possible, which makes him more versatile and more potentially dangerous. The Exhaust effect is really nice too, assuming you can cast it, which seems like Redshift wants you to build around his ability a bit more than the other pilots did so far.
Loxi:Â This is the big Timmy card of the set, huh. Make it have crazy power, free cast all your permanents with it’s active effect, profit. Even after you exhaust it, you can just have a crazy amount of mana to use on abilities. Obviously you’ll need enough actual active abilities to use with this to make it worthwhile to juice up, but there is definitely some potential here.
BPhillipYork:Â That art is intense at least. Like Mountain Dew Code Red intense. Adding mana is nice, it’s pretty pushed stats wise, but if you can get it a permanent buff that would be really intense. Get an untapping option going with it, which wouldn’t be that hard, and then you could generate infinite mana and then put all your permanents onto the field. If you have the cards in hand to win the game if they hit the board, then that’s a decent game plan.
Rocketeer Boostbuggy
Marcy: I find the Exhaust ability here the most interesting part of the card. The ability is really good in that it makes mana, but turning it into full-fledged creature that no longer requires Crew and gets a boost is a really interesting little change that gives the card a little more eventual flexibility.
Loxi:Â Crew 1 vehicles are inherently pretty decent because pretty much anything and their grandparents can pilot this, so it makes it have a bit more use as a short term value piece to make some Treasures, get some chip damage, and maybe trade out favorably in the future. Exhausting to make it a little bigger and a real creature isn’t bad either. I think if you happen to be shooting for Gruul artifacts or Treasures, it’s not a terrible way to make some tokens while coming out swinging.
BPhillipYork:Â Well Treasures are nice, 2 for a 3/2 that makes Treasures are fine, and paying 3 to make it a 4/3 and just keep hammering away is fine. Really only playable if you need Treasures for something, or are trying to set yourself up to take endless combats and need mana generation from it.
Brightglass Gearhulk
Marcy: Deck thinning is always good, and while it doesn’t let you get anything expensive, there’s a lot of good cards at 1 mana that fit into these categories, plus you get a 4/4 with first strike.
Loxi:Â Now this does require a bit of building around to make it really shine, but there are a whole lot of really potent options you can nab here. Sigarda’s Aid in equipment plus an equipment or utility creature can be really powerful, and you don’t lose a lot from playing this and just getting a few value pieces since it’s packing a pretty solid body. It doesn’t need much; as long as you know your deck will often have some good grabs, this can be a lot stapled on one card.
It can get Sol Ring too, if you feel like truly embracing the Sonic memes of this set.
BPhillipYork:Â Well this is potentially a solid tutor, Esper Sentinel and Sol Ring and Mystic Remora all come in for that, which is good. Also Rule of Law variant Deafening Silence and Land Tax, so yes, this is a potentially really good card to just tutor out 2 value cards, or else if you have some kind of combo this will work with that’ll do too. Or even just get 2 mana dorks.
Caradora, Heart of Alacria
Marcy: Pretty solid tutor and continued counter pumping through the secondary ability on the card. While I just said that Brightglass Hulk is good for tutoring, Caradora is possibly a better tutor, although both cards serve different purposes (and, arguable, you could maybe run both).
Loxi:Â The tutor is really cool since it lets you fish for the real win condition vehicles like Parhelion II while also providing the ever-useful counter bonus that we’ve seen on a lot of popular cards for +1/+1 counter strategies. The only downside is that not every deck will realistically have both of these synergies at once, and I think she miiight not quite be worth it if you aren’t making use of both parts at once. Adding counters to mounts and vehicles thus far seems somewhat parasitic to this set, so we’ll have to see how those cards shake out first.
BPhillipYork:Â Well that’s fine assuming you have a vehicle you really want, or a mount. I guess that big plow is good. For vehicle centric decks probably useful (or mount centric). Otherwise kind of meh.
Lagorin, Soul of Alacria
Marcy: Obviously the card you might grab with Caradora due to the in-lore synergy (they’re on each other’s art), and the one that makes the most sense in terms of how to take advantage of Caradora’s second ability faster.
Loxi:Â Speaking of, this is a decent way to get counters on your mounts and vehicles. It’s cheap so you can start getting those counters early, but make sure you’ve got another mount or two out to actually get full value here. Note it can target itself with this.
BPhillipYork:Â This is solid enough, handing out two +1/+1s is a lot to be handing out, obviously you want them on that cute dog so you blow up artifacts. Other than that though it’s just a pretty solid ramping thing, for 2 mana you still get a 1/1 flyer which is no Flying Men, but let’s be real, this isn’t a blue card.
Veteran Beastrider
Marcy: The ability to untap all of your creatures at the end of your turn really is what makes this card attractive, even if you don’t run 4 of it.
Loxi:Â Untapping creatures is quite good, as we’ve seen from many decks that love running mana dorks. I don’t think this replaces any existing effects of the type, but it’s sometimes nice to have redundancy as well as budget alternatives to this sort of thing. It’s also got two potentially synergistic typings that could make it a stand-out choice, especially for Human decks.
BPhillipYork:Â Well that’s solid; can use to untap dorks and do funny things, also untap Tims to blow things up.
Dune Drifter
Marcy: The fact that this is a reanimation spell more than it is anything else is what makes this card so fascinating to me; you can get either artifact or creature, and the scalable nature of this card is also really cool. You can grab something you ‘need’ or plan on something you ‘want’. I guess you can also use it as a 3/3, but I feel like if that’s what you’re doing, this card is being wasted.
Loxi:Â Ignoring the vehicle body, it’s not a bad recursion piece that leaves a vehicle behind. If you have other ways to recur vehicles or artifacts to your hand, this can be a decent enough way to get a few things back from your graveyard while keeping some nice synergy with a vehicle strategy. I’m looking at you, Greasefang, Okiba Boss (although this isn’t a great target for Greasefang directly since you don’t want X=0).
BPhillipYork:Â I like the idea of X just equaling 0 over and over with Greasefang, Okiba Boss. This is solid for both mill and Greasefang.
Ketramose, the New Dawn
Marcy: Suddenly Gods returned also in this set, and so we have the return of ‘can’t do X or Y until’ effects that activate the gods. This is an odd card ability because your ‘reward’ for making things go away via exile is to draw cards but also lose life, meaning that you probably don’t want to go too crazy with this and potentially kill yourself, but also it encourages you to find ways to get rid of things to take advantage of your scary God card and draw a bunch of cards.
Loxi:Â We’re back to the God style of Amonkhet, and this one has a really easy activation clause. I will say that drawing extra cards is always nice and it’s real easy to do here, but realistically this is just a very good body that draws an extra card for you each turn. It’s not really a big build-around card but it’s got fantastic value.
BPhillipYork:Â I like how much this incentivizes you to just run really nasty exile effects and blow things up and then turn this guy into beatstick. All that said, a 4/4 with menace and lifelink isn’t actually that scary. In some kind of Esper, flicker, do whatever deck this gets fairly feels-bad. So it’s solid. Also can just be nasty with exile graveyard effects, leading to lots of card draw. Drawing 10 off a Bojuka Bog would be something.
FromTheShire:Â It’s actually one or more, so a big packet at once like Bog will only trigger once. What you actually want is a bunch of individual ways to exile one thing at a time, which is still possible but definitely more work. Still a great value engine though.
Zahur, Glory’s Past
Marcy: I think this is mostly for the sacrifice engine and little else. Of the 4 ‘drivers’ we’ve seen in this set, this one is kind of whatever to me except for a deck that needs/wants free sacrifice.
Loxi:Â Free sacrifice engines are always solid, even if they’re timing restricted. This is also a fantastic way to get a simple aristocrats engine going off a single card. I think this is a solid option for a more sacrifice-focused Zombie deck or any generic aristocrats deck that wants to sacrifice creatures and loop them back with recursion rather than just kill off tokens.
BPhillipYork:Â Making Zombies whenever you sacrifice (or die in any case) is potentially really huge, a catalyst to get a combo into net positive territory every time you do it. WB for a 3/2 with that sacrifice built in and the max speed is something else. And cheap enough that you can get out it super quickly to actually get to max speed.
Boosted Sloop
Marcy: This sure is a card that exists. I suppose I can at least say that it does exactly what you think it should do at this color combination and mana cost!
Loxi:Â It’s definitely a vehicle, the art is great. I think it’s ace for limited but eh for commander.
BPhillipYork:Â Just a solid 3/3 evasion that causes you to get card selection.
FromTheShire:Â It’s not Looter Scooter (Smuggler’s Copter) but the effect is still great.
Captain Howler, Sea Scourge
Marcy: I find this card a little confusing because unlike some of the other cards, this one doesn’t have a direct way to take advantage of its own trigger, so maybe this one is actually worse than the self-sacrifice engine. Some sort of at least basic looting effect would have been good, but without it you need some other way to discard cards to then get the buff, and Howler has no way to take advantage of the buff themselves (no evasion), so maybe you want to target something else? Kind of sucks.
Loxi:Â I don’t hate this card, but it competes with Brallin and Shabraz really harshly for this sort of archetype, and while this favors a wider board it has the potential to get stuffed really hard by an instant speed sweep. I like the idea of a high risk/high reward playstyle but this might end in some rough moments.
BPhillipYork:Â What is this shark pirate thing even about. Anyway with all the draw/discard effects available to red and some in blue, this deck kind of builds itself. I’ll probably plan it out and write an article about it.
Fearless Swashbuckler
Marcy: Like the above vehicle, this sure is a card that exists! I think it has some good use for vehicle based decks obviously, but the thing that sticks out here is that this card seems to have the the other half of Captain Howler’s ability, which is… stupid.
BPhillipYork:Â So like, would the shark pirates want to predate on the, uh fish pirates? Or is that, like what is the logic there. Anyway this thing is fine, it’s kind of weird if you crew a ship with Pirates its ability won’t go off, which I find kind of frustrating.
Aatchik, Emerald Radian
Marcy: So self-milling artifacts into your graveyard and then dropping Aatchik, and then having a sacrifice outlet is sort Aristocrats, right?
Loxi:Â Â This is a solid option for Insects, both as a commander and as a tech piece in one of the many commander options this archetype has gotten recently. It doesn’t do anything new and revolutionary, but it does both provide gas for your main strategy as well as a win condition all in one go. A bit expensive, but a well rounded option for insect-ristocrats.
BPhillipYork:Â So I guess Green and Black insect whatever is becoming a thing, the original slate of insects were pretty boring but we’re starting to get all these mill / yard / lifeloss synergies, which are really adding up. Though 6 mana is a lot of mana, you use green ramp, fill you yard, play the insect druids, then one of the things that returns everything then it dies, good game.
Broodheart Engine
Marcy: I don’t really see a value to this card other than just what it says it does, which is fine, but is also just kind of… whatever.
Loxi:Â I often run a lot of cards that just help to mill yourself down when you’re playing a dredge deck, and I don’t think this is the worst compared to things like Perpetual Timepiece. I do think you have to be leaning a bit more into the reanimator side to make this worth it, since the surveil may not matter as much to decks that basically play their graveyard like their hand anyway.
BPhillipYork:Â Too expensive really; even if you are returning something huge you’re 2 mana in then 4 mana to return. Main value is probably just the repeating mill, but even that is pretty slow.
Debris Beetle
Marcy: I feel like they missed a chance to make this card a lot funnier by giving it deathtouch or toxic, but honestly this just a card. The 3 life is… fine? I guess.
Loxi:Â This one’s a bit mediocre unless you’re looking for a big ol’ body to whack things with.
BPhillipYork:Â That’s like a huge artifact creatures for 4 that make a hell of a beater, in 4-of, but this is not really relevant in commander.
FromTheShire:Â The return of Siege Rhino dominance? Probably not, but we’ve seen how powerful this effect can be, and the body here is a definite threat as well. The life gain can be really impactful in the current aggro meta too.
Cloudspire Coordinator
Marcy: So in theory this does something for you when it enters in scrying, then also likely allows you to crew something 3 or less, and after that can print you pilots to crew up your vehicles/mounts, but it also has *1* toughness, which feels like a great way to have this card explode by some random incidental damage before it ever does much more than maybe print you a token once. Assuming it doesn’t explode, though, this is great to fuel vehicles with in limited formats.
Loxi:Â As mentioned above, Shorokai is pretty scary for a variety of reasons, their Pilot tokens being one of them. Getting access to them in red can be handy just as a way to make sure your vehicles are always crewed up so your other creatures can smack things with their own hands. It’s nothing absolutely busted, but its going to get some solid value and has a really low opportunity cost.
BPhillipYork:Â Okay, so anytime you cast a vehicle you can get another pilot. Obviously if you dump out five vehicles that’s five pilots, but how are you going to do that, reasonably? Maybe with a bunch of flicker effects you could pull that off, which would be kind of something, but there are so many more powerful things to do with flicker.
Explosive Getaway
Marcy: Really expensive for what it does, which is flicker something. Yes, I know it also does 4 damage to each creature, but you really aren’t playing it for that; there are far more effective removal spells in White that are less expensive.
BPhillipYork:Â I like this card. I don’t think it’s like, good, but I like it. It has style.
FromTheShire:Â Save your best thing and potentially sweep the board in Standard? It makes sense in theory, though I will not be surprised if this doesn’t get there since 4 damage doesn’t actually guarantee killing a lot of threats, and the aggro decks you’re trying to stabilize against have lots of hasty things to just immediately resume punching you.
Kolodin, Triumph Caster
Marcy: Now this card is pretty great for Vehicle/Mounts, although I think it is very funny that MtG has progressed to a point where 2 different keywords do essentially the same thing but in slightly different ways, so this card has to include them both. Really great for decks that want to play a lot of both of them, though.
Loxi:Â This gives a real sense of inevitability to Vehicles that the archetype can lack. Having the power to just overwhelm players in raw stats is very real, even at a power level above “battlecruiser commander.” I don’t know if I want this as a commander over some of the other options we’ve seen, but if you’re in the colors and playing vehicles I think you often want to jam this guy.
BPhillipYork:Â So you could get sort of abusive with this, dumping things out and then flickering them. It’s okay, and certainly dumping out cheap vehicles and getting to attack with them right away seems nice, but in the end it’s just not that good.
Sab-Sunen, Luxa Embodied
Marcy: I’m going to be honest the only thing I want to know about this card is why does a giant frog have breasts?
Loxi:Â I absolutely adore this mechanical design: if you have ways to put individual counters on this reliably, you can try to manipulate it in a way that you’re always drawing 2 extra cards at the start of every turn. It’s a scary enough body that you’ll threaten commander damage just by having this on board, and when you want to let some damage fly you can just flip an extra counter on to let it attack again. It’s still just “value card that gets big and draws cards” when you boil it down, but man it’s a cool way of doing it.
BPhillipYork:Â So effectively this is a draw a card every other turn, which is fine, but if you can manipulate counters then suddenly it’s draw 2 cards a turn, which is pretty nice. Other than that it’s a weird medium beater.
Sita Varma, Masked Racer
Marcy: As far as exhaust abilities are concerned, I suppose this one is very much the ‘Hail Mary’ of them that we’ve seen so far: you aren’t going to use this for very little reason, but there are some ways you could potentially use this to prevent your creatures from dying to damage, or also to avoid getting blown out in a bad attack/defense. That said, seems pretty telegraphed, and Sita seems very weak to removal.
Loxi:Â This has a really high ceiling, but the floor is also pretty high. I think this is worse than Biomass Mutation in most cases because of how much more you have to pay for this effect, so unless you care about the body/it being a creature for any reason, I’m pretty meh on this.
BPhillipYork:Â Well this is an obvious game ender, put out a bunch of 1/1s, pump this thing for a few +1/+1s and then suddenly all your 1/1s are 5/5s and attacking. Doesn’t tap or anything, so you can drop it and go Pretty much just a wincon in a 2/3 2 mana package.
Samut, the Driving Force
Marcy: Oh hey, it’s Samut. Welcome back buddy. Wow, this is really expensive. The majority of value for this card seems to come from you already having max speed, or close to max speed, by the time Samut hits the table, and at 6 mana across three colors, that likely is your ‘end the game’ attempt turn for an aggro deck.
Loxi:Â Just a tad too expensive for my liking if you play this without any way to build speed before this hits the board, but if you’re already maxed out it can be pretty potent. Reducing all of the cost of your noncreature spells by 4 can let you do some dumb things with artifacts and equipment (see Sram, Senior Edificer for more), and I’m curious to see if people get creative with this one.
BPhillipYork:Â That’s fun, and could enable taking lots of combats (or turns but no blue) but casting “extra combat” spells for 4 mana less would be really easy to get a lot of combats in. 6 is a lot of mana, so you’d really want to get your engines started sooner and then just have this roll out to get the bonus.
Loot, the Pathfinder
Marcy: I really like this use of exhaust, and in some weird way makes Loot feel like some sort of pseudo-Planeswalker, in that it has 3 bespoke abilities that you can choose to utilize whenever best suits your needs, and also becomes something your opponent(s) probably try to get rid of before you can get real value out of it. I like the choices too.
BPhillipYork:Â Oh, right this was the MacGuffin for Thunder Junction or whatever. Well this is, I mean it’s fine, too expensive but kind of neat. If you can flicker this thing it gets a lot more exciting, and there’s various ways to do that.Iit has haste out of the box, so generally you’d want to draw a lot of cards, but with some kind of repeatable flicker effect could also be used to generate infinite mana.
FromTheShire:Â Yeah this is wildly breakable.
Mimeoplasm, Revered One
Marcy: Oh hey Mimeoplasm, how you doing? This is a very, very watered down version of The Mimeoplasm, but still very strong given the right circumstances; you’re still able to eat your graveyard and make copies of what it eats, and have to pay a lot more mana to get abilities to from said cards to activate.
Loxi:Â Yeah this is cool as hell for non-commander formats but I feel like the original Mimeoplasm might be better for commander specifically. This is more flexible but I think the original just works a bit smoother for getting a powerful creature right on the board.
BPhillipYork:Â I don’t really know, like this is an ooze that came back even oozier? Seems good for like “real Magic”, for Commander it’s just maybe. Even if you simply X = 1 and cast it for 4 to get at something you milled you then have to turn around and pay 2 to turn it into whatever you want, and that’s 6 mana, which is just too much. It is literally eating dinosaurs too, so +3/+3 seems not really big enough.
Lifecraft Engine
Marcy: A vehicle banner is a really neat idea; I like the idea of including this in typal decks, and is fairly easy to slot into most decks for that purpose as the mana cost is reasonable.
BPhillipYork:Â Yeah, wow. This has a lot of potential for combos having nothing to do with vehicles or crewing or anything. Making everything an Elf, or a Goblin, or a Merfolk or something can allow you to do some really abusive things, so this card will be showing up as a utility piece forever. It is only creatures you control, which is an important limiter.
FromTheShire:Â A weird way to get a universal Lord effect but I dig it.
Marketback Walker
Marcy: Hangerback Walker! That’s a cute callback. And frankly, while it isn’t as potentially terrifying as Hangerback was, this still has a pretty solid use case reason to include; at the very least, you are getting cards off of it’s death.
BPhillipYork:Â This seems fine, if you have a lot of colorless mana, you can turn 2 into a card draw potentially, once you’re ready to sacrifice it. You could do something pretty gross with the Ozolith or other things that let you keep counters, and repeatedly bringing this back. That seems like the strongest use case.
Monument to Endurance
Marcy: If you have some ability to safely discard cards each turn, this is great. If not, it’s bad. It also prevents itself from taking over the game by limiting you to once per turn, otherwise pitching your entire hand and killing your opponent(s) is very funny.
Loxi:Â I’m super partial to cards that benefit from you discarding things, and pretty much all of these options are solid. Any cantrip/wheel deck will love this, but special props to things like Chainer, Nighmare Adept that can really just use this to always have gas ready.
BPhillipYork:Â Wow. This is bonkers IMO. Pretty easy to cycle cards various ways to get these effects, 3 colorless mana makes this a huge utility piece that will be showing up again and again.
Radiant Lotus
Marcy: Six mana initially makes this seem a little overcosted, but the ability it provides is kind of horrifying, and I expect to hear about people finding ways to generate awful combos with this thing.
BPhillipYork:Â This feels like they are trying to print a bad Lotus, but converting Treasures or Clues or Food into a huge amount of mana is potentially really big.
FromTheShire:Â With how many ways decks make even incidental artifact tokens these days, this thing would be nuts even if it sacrificed itself, which it very much doesn’t. Alpha level threat if it hits the table.
The Aetherspark
Marcy: I find this card more interesting for the implication of what it means to Magic’s ‘universe’ than anything else, but I also think it’s kind of a neat card. The fact that it grows from attacking but also protects itself while being attached to a creature is really fascinating, since your opponents very likely don’t want you to get to -10, but also… what are you doing at -10? I suppose that’s what I’m curious to see. I mean sure, -5 is 2 cards, which is always good.
Loxi:Â Alright, my least favorite case for things being bad is always the old “dies to removal” argument, but seriously this actually just gets blasted by a whole lot of removal and pretty much needs to be attached to something to make sure it doesn’t get beaten down. It can be really solid if you can keep it going, but I fear it’s (ironically, for this set) a bit too slow to get things done before it gets whacked.
BPhillipYork:Â So, uh, this seems mostly useless and occasionally really strong. If you can get it rolling then you could be generating 10 mana every turn, or taking infinite turns. Also, like, this really just reminds me of transformers in a not positive way.
Pilot Lands
Marcy: Country Roads, take me home, to the place I belong, West Virginia-
BPhillipYork:Â It’s okay. I wouldn’t play it.
FromTheShire:Â I think these are bad but that people are going to try playing them a bunch. Going down a land for the effect is unlikely to be worth it until the late game, and even then if you want your land to be able to crew something just play a regular creature land that doesn’t have to sacrifice itself.
Enemy Color Verge Lands
Marcy: Just rounding out the color wheel on dual filters from the last few sets, and little else.
Loxi:Â These are seriously some solid land options for players that play a decent chunk of basics and I expect these to be staples in budget decks if their price stays reasonable, love to see it.
BPhillipYork:Â Good, enters untapped conditional dual land.
Amonkhet Raceway
Marcy: Since you could arguably play this or the below land on turn 1 or 2, this really means that gaining speed is far, far easier than it seems at first, and that decks that will care about speed will find ways to get to 4 very quickly.
Loxi:Â Yeah I’m with Marcy here, this is really good on the first few turns of the game so your cards that benefit off having Max Speed can just already be ready to rumble. It’s not too high of an opportunity cost to play this, so I’d definitely run this if your commander/ a lot of cards in your deck utilize that mechanic.
BPhillipYork:Â This is fine, especially if your need to get your speed out, really that’s the most important thing. Like sure, haste later is nice.
FromTheShire:Â Remember up top where I said leaving the lands aside speed would be easier than people think? Yeah this is one of said lands, further upping your chances of getting the ball rolling early. If you really want to you can use this to slam a Gingerbrute which can allow you to hit max speed on turn 3. I think turn 4 will be much more common and probably the better build but the possibility at least exists. Haste is really great as a payoff too.
Muraganda Raceway
Marcy: Unlike the above card which provides an ability (and haste is often a scary one), this one just gives you one extra mana, and that’s still pretty good, if not amazing.
Loxi:Â Ditto for above, but I genuinely think this card is incredible outside of decks where you care about your speed. It does require you to be aggressive enough to make people lose life, but a land that just comes down early and eventually ramps you for…playing Magic? Yeah, sign me up.
BPhillipYork:Â Oh good another bad way to generate 2 colorless mana that will get massively overplayed. At least this is nowhere near as bad as Temple of the False God, which is probably the most overplayed card in Commander (in a bad way. If you’re reading this, and I know you are, then take it out of your deck).
Next Time: The Set’s White, Blue, and Black Cards
That wraps up our look at the multicolor and colorless cards of Aetherdrift. Join us next time as we begin reviewing the monocolor cards, picking out our favorites, and talking about the future build-arounds.
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