While Aetherdrift’s worldbuilding stream last Tuesday was great for the Vorthos’ in the community, it was frustratingly tight-lipped in every other respect. Multiple set features, like promos and Box-Toppers, were announced without any examples. Clearly there are plenty of secrets worth keeping in this set. Unfortunately for Wizards, an online retailer has let some of these slip early. A rogue product page has revealed the contents of the Aetherdrift Box-Toppers, which include the first gold-bordered cards Magic has seen in years. For long-time fans of the game, this is a bigger deal than it sounds.
Gold-Bordered Cards In Aetherdrift?!
The leak in question came via European online TCG store Bazaar of Magic. A product page for Aetherdrift was recently added to its site, containing a full summary of the Box-Topper contents for the set. Note that this doesn’t include specific cards, but it does cover all the different groups of cards the Toppers draw from.
First of all, each Aetherdrift Box-Topper will contain two cards. This is an immediate departure from Box-Toppers of the past, which have typically only included one card. Granted, one card in Aetherdrift’s case is always a Basic Land, but the point remains. Said land, according to the Bazaar of Magic page, can either be a regular one from the main set or one with “exclusive artwork.” In either case, the land will feature a “First-Place Foil layer” and a “shiny golden border.”
The fact that Aetherdrift will feature gold-bordered cards is a big deal for reasons we’ll get into shortly. The Basic Land is also far from the most exciting thing you’ll find in your Box-Topper. The other card could be a lot of different things. According to the leak, it could be any regular rare or mythic from the set, any Showcase rare or mythic, any Aetherdrift Special Guest, or any of the eight “Grafitti Giants.”
There’s a lot to unpack here. Most Box-Toppers we’ve seen in the past have included cards from a very small possible pool. The fact that Aetherdrift’s could have almost anything from the set changes the game. The Grafitti Giants also sound very intriguing indeed. My guess is that this is a unique Showcase style reserved for the set’s new Gearhulks, but we’ll have to wait and see.
Treasures Of The Past
The greatly expanded possibilities of Box-Toppers in Aetherdrift are certainly exciting, but not quite as exciting as the presence of new gold-bordered cards. If you’re a relatively new player, you may have seen white or silver borders before, but gold ones hail from a fairly remote point in Magic history.
Back in 1993, gold borders made their first appearance in the Collector’s Edition Beta set. This was a somewhat unique product, even by today’s standards. It was a complete reprinting of the Beta set, but with a new card back. The card back featured a gold border, meaning the treatment is not legal for sanctioned play. The recent, much-maligned 30th-anniversary set used a similar idea. It reprinted iconic cards, but with a gold-bordered back that made them illegal in tournaments.
The more interesting application of gold borders came with the 1996 Pro Tour Collector Set. This was a collection of the eight best decks from Magic’s first Pro Tour. The original lists were reprinted in full for the most part, but with gold borders on both the front and back this time. These cards also featured signatures from the players who piloted them, also in gold, on the front.
This idea proved popular enough to inspire an annual product. From 1997 to 2004, a new set of World Championship Decks was released each year. These followed the same model as the Pro Tour Collector Set: gold-bordered versions of winning decks with player signatures. Unfortunately, come 2005, demand for these gold-bordered products dried up. Cards that couldn’t be run in actual events weren’t as appealing after Magic ramped up its lineup to include Fat Packs and the like.
Needless Nostalgia?
With that history in mind, Aetherdrift’s new take on gold borders is a bit of a paradigm shift. It would be completely unreasonable for these cards not to be tournament legal, so we can only assume that we’ll be getting our first-ever fully-playable gold-bordered cards soon. The fact that the First-Place Foil treatment, which includes the gold border, is mentioned for multiple other products in the Aetherdrift lineup lends credence to this assumption.
This fact alone sets these cards apart from the other returning frames we’ve seen in Magic recently. The Retro Frame is the most prolific example, appearing in every Remastered set and several others. Mystery Booster 2 also saw the return of white borders and the Future Sight Frame, but it’s not an isolated example. These borders are all fairly explicitly aimed at nostalgic older players and, more often than not, find their marks. That’s not to say these frames have no value, far from it. Just that nostalgia is clearly the main motivator behind them.
These new gold borders, by contrast, have more going for them. They’re actually going to enable an entirely new play experience: gold borders in tournament Magic. They’re also calling back to a much more niche part of Magic history, so the nostalgia element is clearly not a crutch here. The idea of gold tying into a first-place trophy makes perfect thematic sense for Aetherdrift, too.
Overall, I’m excited about the return of gold-bordered cards. It’s a significant change from the usual Showcase styles in a set. For those who like to bling out their decks, Aetherdrift will be a true must-buy.
