At long last, the spoiler season for Aetherdrift has begun with a bang. As usual, this all started with the set’s Debut Livestream, in which Wizards unveiled a boatload of new cards. Between the newly revealed main set and Commander cards, it seems there’s already tons to look forward to. This is especially true for the new racing-inspired mechanics that Aetherdrift is bringing to MTG.
Unsurprisingly, given Aetherdrift’s aesthetics, the set’s mechanics are all themed around going fast. Hopefully, this should make for an incredibly fun and flavorful Limited environment if nothing else. Thankfully, it seems Aetherdrift won’t stop there, as one of the set’s two new mechanics could become a familiar face looking forward.
Start Your Engines!
Rather aptly, to kick off the new mechanics in Aetherdrift, we have Start Your Engines! As the handy dandy player aid showcases, this mechanic revolves around dealing damage to an opponent to increase your speed. This can be done either via combat damage, burn spells, or even abilities. Importantly, you can only increase your speed once per turn, no matter how many opponents you damage.
Before you can increase your speed, you’ll obviously have to start your engine first. To do this, you’ll need to play one of the many cards in the set with the Start Your Engines mechanic. Once you’ve done this, the mechanic will be in play for the rest of the game much like Day/Night. From what we’ve been told, there won’t be any cards that will reduce your speed in Aetherdrift.
Unsurprisingly, while flavorful, Start Your Engines isn’t just about going fast for the sake of it. Upon reaching a speed of 4, you’ll achieve Max Speed, which significantly upgrades many cards. Mendicant Core, Guidelight, for example, allows you to cheaply copy your artifact spells, once you reach Max Speed.
Given the strength of Max Speed abilities, which Muraganda Raceway also demonstrates, you’ll want to go fast as quickly as possible. Sadly, the once-per-turn clause of gaining speed will limit this somewhat, but speed is nonetheless imperative. After all, the faster you hit a speed of 4, the sooner you’ll have access to all the extra Max Speed abilities.
According to Wizards, there will be some cards that care about speeds of less than four, but those aren’t too common. Currently, it’s unclear if there will be any cards that can artificially increase your speed, or if dealing damage is the only option. We’ll just have to see what Aetherdrift’s spoiler season reveals.
Exhaust
From a flavor perspective, Exhaust is essentially the MTG equivalent of nitrous. Sure, having it in your car can give you a huge boost of power and speed, but you might blow up your engine. As such, without some fancy trickery, like a full engine rebuild, you can only get away with using it once. Exhaust is the exact same thing… ish.
At its core, Exhaust allows you to use a powerful ability only once. As Loot, the Pathfinder showcases, you can get some absolutely nuts abilities using this mechanic. This new Loot is essentially two Power Nine cards, and a Lightning Bolt rolled into one. The fact you get a decent body on top of all this makes them seem insane.
Notably, while the Exhaust reminder text specifies “Only once,” you can break this ability. Since MTG cards are forgetful by design you can bounce or flicker cards with Exhaust to replay their abilities.
While we haven’t seen a great many cards with Exhaust yet, this mechanic has huge potential. Not only can it spice up otherwise boring pieces of draft chaff, but it can deliver explosive results in the right deck. Sadly, this potential may mean that Wizards has to be careful when creating new Exhaust cards since they are abusable.
That being said, if either of the new Aetherdrift mechanics is going to return, we’d expect to see Exhaust again. Not only does it have far broader flavor freedom, but there are boundless possibilities for it. We could even see this mechanic being deciduous going forward if Wizards really wanted to do that.
Returning Favorites
As always, Aetherdrift isn’t just made of fancy new mechanics as there are plenty of old returning favorites too. Given the set’s themes, there are no prizes for guessing that both Vehicles and Mounts will feature heavily. Given the recent reveal that Mounts, or Saddle, was originally designed for Aetherdrift, it’s no surprise it has returned.
On top of these mechanics, which will have you tapping creatures all over the place, Cycling is also a sub-theme. While it’s unlikely that we’ll be getting many Cycling matters cards, the mechanic’s return is nonetheless welcome. After all, this mechanic should help to make decks more consistent, especially in Limited matches.
Overall, the new mechanics in Aetherdrift are hardly the most wild or innovative, but they’re nonetheless interesting. Exhaust, especially, has huge potential should Wizards want to lean into it. Despite the potential, however, it’s worth noting that both these mechanics have the potential to confuse players.
Thankfully, to help mitigate this issue, there is the Start Your Engines player aid token which should help track things. Sadly, it seems that Exhaust has no such token, from what we’ve seen at least, so you’ll have to track these manually. While this shouldn’t be too hard for cards like Sita Varma, Masked Racer, Loot’s multitude of abilities could get difficult.
Ultimately, while the new mechanics in Aetherdrift both seem interesting if a touch complex, we’ve yet to see how they play. Hopefully, once these new cards and mechanics are in players’ hands, there won’t be anything to worry about. Whether or not that will happen, however, remains to be seen. We’ll just have to wait for Aetherdrift’s release date, which is on February 14th.