Aetherdrift, the first premier set of 2025, is now just over a month away. If you’re a fan of vehicles, racing, and MTG, you’ll soon be very happy. So far, only a few spoilers have been revealed, but, it seems we have a good lead about two new reprints appearing in the set. One of these reprints is hardly anything to write home about, but the other is a bit alarming.
While Wizards hasn’t confirmed anything yet, the leak of this reprint is surprisingly official. During the latest Magic Story Podcast episode, Wizards revealed a bunch of art, and card names, from Aetherdrift. While most of these names don’t mean anything to us yet, reprints are an entirely different story.
Notably, there’s a non-zero chance that Wizards just made a mistake when putting together the images for this podcast episode. Sure, these cards may show up with the Aetherdrift set code (DFT), but there’s still wiggle room for error. Ultimately, we’ll only know if these reprints are the real deal when the set’s spoiler season starts in earnest.
Should you want to wait until January 21st, when previews start properly, consider this your spoiler warning. Given the evidence, we’ll be treating these reprints as confirmed and talking about them as such. Sadly, while new reprints sound all well and good, these confirmed cards each have their own set of issues…
Two New Reprints
So long as the art in the latest Magic Story Podcast is accurate, we’re soon getting reprints of Call for Unity and Attune with Aether. During the podcast, the art for both of these cards was shown, alongside their names, and the Aetherdrift set code. This seems to all but confirm their appearance in the racing-inspired set.
Despite seeming very cut and dry, it’s entirely possible Wizards just slipped up, as we mentioned. This possibility was also pointed out by users on Reddit, who even noted this has happened before. In the Building Worlds video for Dominaria United, Wizards incorrectly attributed Board the Weatherlight and Weatherlight itself to the set. Once spoiler season rolled around, it turned out that neither of these cards was actually in the set.
With this in mind, these reprints technically aren’t as confirmed as you might first think. This is hardly the worst thing in the world. Call from Unity is far from competitively viable and is also far from expensive. While disappointing, it’s hardly surprising that an MTG set will have some disappointing draft chaff that’s useless outside of Limited, even in the rare slot.
Beyond just being financially disappointing, it’s a shame that both these cards seemingly aren’t getting new art. Call for Unity may be fitting, given the changes that have happened to Avishkar (formerly Kaladesh), but new art could have showcased the plane’s changes. Hopefully, the set’s story will help showcase this detail more than well enough, but it nonetheless would have been a nice touch.
A Poor Choice
As briefly mentioned, Call for Unity isn’t that good in the grand scheme of MTG. Because of this, players were quick to share their disappointment on Reddit. One player called the card “garbage,” while another stated that they wouldn’t play the card even at three mana, let alone five.
The problem with Call for Unity is that it does absolutely nothing to enhance your first round of attacks. Even if you have ways to trigger Revolt every turn, it takes a while before Call for Unity accrues enough counters to make the card intriguing.
Compare this to other five-mana creature buffs that are popular in Commander, such as Coat of Arms of Cathar’s Crusade. Coat of Arms usually enables a big attack right away. Cathar’s Crusade at least has the potential to put a bunch of +1/+1 counters on your creatures at once if you can follow up with some token production.
A Concerning Decision
While the problem with Call for Unity is that it’s simply a mediocre card, Attune with Aether has a completely different area of concern. Attune with Aether may not look like much more than Lay of the Land, but the card was problematic enough to earn itself a ban from Standard in 2018.
This has less to do with Attune with Aether being a busted card in a vacuum and more to do with how insanely powerful the Energy mechanic is. Temur Energy was an incredibly oppressive archetype in Standard roughly seven years ago, mainly because accumulating Energy was too easy.
Both Attune with Aether and Rogue Refiner provided Temur players with ways to generate Energy at low opportunity cost. Attune fixes your mana early, while Rogue Refiner replaces itself by drawing a card when it enters. From there, though, your Energy payoffs, ranging from Whirler Virtuoso to Bristling Hydra, were trivial to enable.
As one player stated, Energy was busted and should never appear in Standard again. Regardless of what Energy payoffs get printed in Standard, it seems very strange that Wizards would decide to print a previously banned Standard card back into the format years later.
This only heightens suspicions that this could be an error. Many players have suggested that these cards could be part of the Aetherdrift Commander Precons instead and that the wrong set symbol was used in the video by mistake. A Temur Energy Commander deck has been confirmed as one of the Aetherdrift Precons, and Attune would be a decent inclusion there.
Meanwhile, the other revealed Precon is an Esper deck with a description that says “burn through cards” and “grow your Mummy army” on the box. Burning through cards could help trigger revolt, and Call for Unity would in turn grow your Mummies.
At the end of the day, if Attune with Aether is reprinted into Standard, we sure hope Wizards has done their due diligence when it comes to designing other Energy cards. For now, we’ll just have to wait and see how things shake out.