Shark People MTG Aetherdrift Ketramose
31, Jan, 25

Top 5 MTG Aetherdrift Best Cards

It may come as a shock to some, but MTG Aetherdrift spoiler season is now over. With prerelease being a week away, it’s worth looking at what the strongest cards in Aetherdrift appear to be. If you want to try these cards for yourself, prerelease will be the first opportunity to try and assemble your playset.

In this article, we’ll specifically be looking at cards that appear in the core set, so nothing from the constructed Commander decks. Since this is the case, this list, while considering Commander, will care more about the card’s applications in constructed formats. Additionally, we won’t be considering reprints for this ranking, but some very strong ones are appearing in this set.

Honorable Mention | Radiant Lotus

Radiant Lotus is a very difficult card to assess. Since Black Lotus in Alpha became Magic’s crown jewel, multiple iterations of the iconic Lotus effect have been printed over the years. These cards have a history of either being broken or terrible, and Radiant Lotus looks like an even more extreme version of that rule.

Radiant Lotus has absolutely absurd amounts of potential, but the card seems difficult to use. If you can build a deck around the card, all you should need to do is get Radiant Lotus in play to win the game on the spot. Since you need lots of sacrificeable artifacts in order to do this, it may be a more difficult thing to accomplish than it looks.

That said, cards that make tons of mana on impact have a history of getting banned in MTG formats. As a result, players are split on whether or not this card is broken. Since this card should either be #1 on the list, or not even worth mentioning, we decided to include it as an honorable mention. Notably, in Murders at Karlov Manor, we included Leyline of the Guildpact as an honorable mention for the same reason, and that card completely blew Modern apart on impact.

5 | Marketback Walker

Personally, I’m not too excited for Marketback Walker, but some MTG players think that the card could impact formats as old as Vintage, so it definitely deserves inclusion. Similar to Walking Ballista, Marketback Walker enters with counters equal to half the mana you pour into it and can gain additional counters for four mana. Unlike Walking Ballista, Marketback Walker cannot shoot things down. All it does is draw cards when it dies.

While Marketback Walker does have the potential to draw tons of cards, and it can grow infinitely big, exiling the artifact creature completely omits any value it could create. Funnily enough, this could go very well with Radiant Lotus in a Standard combo deck.

While Marketback Walker will undeniably make an appearance in Commander and has the potential to appear in literally any legal MTG format, only time will tell if it lives up to its expectations.

4 | Brightglass Gearhulk

I will admit, I am rather biased about Brightglass Gearhulk, but the card has the ingredients to succeed in Standard, Commander, and beyond. Some careful deckbuilding is needed, but tutoring for a one-drop creature, enchantment or artifact is an incredibly flexible ability, and can generally find the perfect silver bullet so long as you include it.

Thanks to X-drop creatures, even the one-mana requirement is a bit misleading. Brightglass Gearhulk is, essentially, a body that can refill your hand, which can create entire creature-focused archetypes. Whether you need a massive body or the perfect answer to your opponent’s strategy, Brightglass Gearhulk can find it. This is undoubtedly the best Gearhulk in MTG Aetherdrift, and could even see play beyond Standard in archetypes like Niv to Light in Pioneer.

3 | Loot, the Pathfinder

Loot the Pathfinder MTG

Loot, the Pathfinder is one step away from being broken. It may not look like it, considering that the card is five mana and you can only use each of his abilities once, but it is incredibly easy to ignore Exhaust with some clever deckbuilding.

Agatha’s Soul Cauldron is absolutely terrifying when used with Loot. Exiling Loot under the Cauldron can give his Exhaust abilities to any of your creatures with +1/+1 counters on it. Doing this also only costs two mana, which is quite powerful for Standard’s terms.

Because Loot can generate mana, there’s also the potential for the card to go infinite alongside a Flicker package. Flickering, or Blinking Loot resets its Exhaust abilities, allowing them to be used again. If Loot’s mana ability can create infinite mana, Loot will become a win condition by throwing endless Lightning Bolts at players’ heads.

Haste, Vigilance, and Double Strike are also a really big deal. This allows Loot to attack immediately and activate Exhaust abilities on the same turn. All in all, Loot could be a major roleplayer in Standard.

2 | The Enemy Colored Verges

The cycle of Verge Lands is being finished off in Aetherspark after getting started in Duskmourn! These were a huge hit in multiple competitive formats, so putting the rest of the cycle high on this list is a no-brainer. These lands will always be able to produce one color of mana, and unlocking the other color of mana is relatively trivial. All you need is a basic land type for one of the colors that the Verge cares about.

As strong as these lands seem, they see significantly less play in older formats. That’s because, outside of Fetching, lands with basic land types can become surprisingly scarce, basically making these function as a basic land. Regardless, Verges are amazing additions to Standard, Commander, and even Pioneer.

1 | Ketramose, the New Dawn

Of the few MTG Gods that appear in Aetherdrift, Ketramose seems to be the best. This God cares about exiling cards. Considering that exiling things is pretty easy to do nowadays, Ketramose can easily turn into a card advantage engine. Once you hit the required threshold of cards in exile, Ketramose also becomes a very difficult-to-handle creature that can help recur some of the life loss caused by his card advantage.

Between Delve and exile-based removal like Soul Partition, Ketramose has a shot in Standard and Pioneer. Even Modern is a possibility, as Ketramose could fit perfectly into the new Orzhov Sewers archetype. Between Phelia, Ephemerate, and Flickerwisp, the archetype is exiling a lot of permanents. That said, Ketramose could be too slow for Modern, and cannot be tutored by Recruiter of the Guard, so its viability is certainly dubious.

Even if Ketramose, the New Dawn doesn’t see Modern play, any deck that can exile cards somewhat frequently will want this card. Ketramose can easily bury opponents in card advantage, and an exile-based deck should have no issue making this God become a creature.

We wouldn’t be surprised if Ketramose ends up being the breakout card from MTG Aetherdrift.

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