#Aetherdrift

[stormtide-leviathan]

Flavorfully:

I love the idea of a set doing a briefer return to multiple planes at a time, and I love the idea of a multiplanar race. Putting these together into one set works great, since they're very similar ideas. Specifically, the evolution of the amonkhet and (now) avishkar lore, as well as the introduction of a lot of worldbuilding for muraganda, was awesome. All of that worldbuilding was incredible.

I also love the teams giving us looks at planes that we don't know anything about as well as worlds like duskmourn and kylem that we *do* know about, and seeing how they're interacting with the multiverse.

I think the campy tone was a lot of fun, and the prize of the aetherspark makes for a great justification for any character there being involved.

However, I think it was just doing too much.

3 planes, plus 10 teams only 2 of which are from those three planes, plus a race is just too much for one set. As much as I like the teams showing off other worlds, I think it would have made more sense for at least most of the teams being from those three planes; it gives you more room to develop them all, so that they aren't competing for space as much. And I think it'd be very cool to see multiple teams from the same plane competing; it lets you show off different factions in the world, rather than presenting a world as a unified whole.

Mechanically:

The vehicles and mounts theme is great, I love it. I like a set that takes an element of normal magic and pushes it to the extreme. And the mechanical overlap between mounts here and mounts in OTJ works well.

Cycling was a lot of fun; I liked the mix of cycling and discard matters (though it was weird *not* seeing that much associated with amonkhet, given it explicitly did that last time we were there)

Start your engines! is a cool mechanic but i think a more generic name related to speed would have made more sense. Even within this set, not all of the racers are using engines.

Exhaust was great, no notes. I'd love to see it become deciduous, especially any time a card has a "activate only once" restriction anyway, as happens on occasion.

Feedback on Aetherdrift

I’m about to write this year’s “State of Design” article, and I’m interested on your feedback of Aetherdrift. What did you like? What did you not like? Tell me all your thoughts. I’d love to hear examples and details.

[mtg-talk]

Chandra Just Living Life and Having Fun 💖

[xantchaslegacy]

[gay-little-izzet]

Drawing my faves in parasite themed fits so they can hijack bug motorcycles

(Jace’s look is Alcon Blue, my favorite butterfly, and Vraska is Ophiocordyceps—probably familiar to any fans of nature documentaries or zombie media)

[jaebird88]

It’s the goddamned blue shell from Mario Kart.

I’m fucking done.

[littjara-mirrorlake]

I wanted to wait until all the Muraganda legendaries were previewed so I could admire them all in one post, and I'm not disappointed in the least!!

I love the glimpses at Muraganda's worldbuilding we get through these paragraphs of flavor text, from the politics of the sapient civilizations to the geography, biology, and even ancient history of Muraganda's land. I can't wait to visit this plane again, hopefully on its own, and dig into all that these legendaries hint at.

[sylvan-librarian]

Can I talk about how happy Nissa looks here? Look at her! I don’t think she’s ever been portrayed as happier in official art before. Even when she’s happy, the artists usually just give a her a content smile, like in Attune with Aether and Nissa, Resurgent Animist:

But now! Nissa is finally, ecstatically happy! This is a great marriage of both art and story, as K. Arsenault Rivera’s Aetherdrift stories also show this. And for a brutal, one-two punch, look at the flavor text for this newest card:

I’m actually dead

[thatdesusa]

MTG paying homage to a classic in Aetherdrift

[naganeka-of-zuretta]

They turn the defect in to pair of greaves 😭

[mtglore]

Aetherdrift | Like No Other Beast

A strange beast from another world threatens the plane of Muraganda. Mighty Khrad meets its challenge with blade in hand.

[jayconian]

Valgavoth Kart

Part of why the Harrower of Souls was first bound to The House of Horror was because he was even more terrifying on the roads.

At first I made this because Valgavoth going karting sounded like a silly sketch idea, but now a Magic the Gathering go-kart racing game unironically sounds like it would be fun.

[stormtide-leviathan]

Loved the sets mechanics. Rooms are awesome delirium and eerie are fun (basically) returning mechanics that play well together, survival is unexciting but fine. Manifest dread is probably the best face down mechanic you've ever done, I love it. And impending is awesome; It's so good it makes me sad it wasn't used as a bigger part of the set really.

The flavor is also (mostly) great. The idea of the entire plane being consumed by a haunted house possessed by a demon *rocks* and I like the more modern feel. The only issue is the survivors- most of them seemed to have lived a normal enough 80s suburban american teenager life- with cheerleaders and track stars and popular meangirls and such- which makes sense for the trope space you're drawing from but doesn't make sense for the world they're living in. I think it really detracts from the idea of "the whole plane is a haunted house" to have these pockets of normalcy that those survivors presumably come from.

Feedback on Duskmourn: House of Horrors

I’m about to write this year’s “State of Design” article, and I’m interested on your feedback of Duskmourn: House of Horrors. What did you like? What did you not like? Tell me all your thoughts. I’d love to hear examples and details.

[mtg-talk]

With the printing of Transit Mage in Aetherdrift, we now have a complete cycle! Trinket Mage searches for mana value 1 or less, Treasure Mage searches for 6 or more, and Tribute, Trophy, and Transit anything in between!

[xantchaslegacy]

*sad trumpet noises*

[gay-little-izzet]

The real question is which planeswalker do y’all want to see get hit by a car

[incorrect-mtg]

Can you imagine if Samut is one of the racers in Aetherdrift, but she doesn't actually pilots any vehicles? Just runs real fast and is able to keep up like SAMUT GO NYOOOOOOM