The Gathering’s Newest Mechanic May Be Dead on Arrival

There will be a whopping total of six new sets coming out in 2025 for Magic: The Gathering, with an equal split of three Magic Universe expansions and three Universes Beyond releases, with the caveat that these will be Standard-legal for the first time ever. There was even a seventh set for 2025, and that’s Innistrad Remastered, which is a collection of some of the most popular and iconic cards tied to the Innistrad block in MTG and came out earlier in January. The first Standard-legal set of the year will be released in a matter of days, and it’s the ultimate TCG death race fantasy in Aetherdrift.

While Aetherdrift will be a thematic shift from many, if not all Magic: The Gathering releases so far, it will still include the classic gameplay loop the TCG is known and loved for. This is true with some exceptions, as Aetherdrift will also introduce two new mechanics to the game: Start your engines! and Exhaust. The latter is a mechanic that can only be used once per game unless the permanent that has it is blinked in and out of the battlefield, for example. Start your engines! and its Speed stat may seem fun, but there is a chance that they won’t have a lot of time in the limelight – if at all.

Related

One Magic: the Gathering UB Mechanic May Not Be Dead in The Water

Magic: The Gathering’s Universes Beyond sets typically introduce new mechanics, and a past one seems likely to return in the future.

How Magic: The Gathering’s New Aetherdrift Speed Mechanic Works

The problem with Start your engines! and Speed is that it is an inherently slow mechanic, despite the name and the set it comes out with. Start your engines! gives players a way to start stacking Speed, which is not possible unless at least one card with this ability is played. Then, Speed can be stacked up to four, at which point players are considered to be at Max Speed, triggering some abilities from Magic: The Gathering‘s Aetherdrift set. There can be other effects tied to Speed that don’t require Max Speed, too.

For example, the recently revealed The Speed Demon card makes it so that players draw X cards and lose X life at their end step where X is their Speed. At the same time, some cards benefit only from getting to Max Speed. An example of this is Mendicant Core, Guidelight, which gives players the opportunity to copy any artifact they cast if they pay one mana of any color, but this can only be used when one has Max Speed. The concept of Speed is interesting, but some Magic: The Gathering formats are not built for it.

Aetherdrift’s Start your Engines! and Speed Mechanics Are Ironically Slow

The main reason for this is that Start your engines! provides 1 Speed, and players can get 1 more Speed once on each of their turns if an opponent loses life in some way. This means that one can reach Max Speed in three turns, ideally, counting the turn that a Start your engines! card is played. However strong this may seem if combined with cards that benefit from Speed, making an opponent lose life three turns in a row may put players in a winning position already, or at least it’s likely they are not losing. In formats like Magic: The Gathering‘s Standard, this might be a deal-breaker.

20-life formats are designed in a way that makes having opponents lose life three turns in a row mean they are likely about to lose, especially against aggro or midrange decks. Control decks that can afford to hit an opponent for three turns may also be winning already, so the benefit from getting to Max Speed would be extremely minimal. This mechanic could shine in Magic: The Gathering‘s Commander format, but otherwise, it doesn’t seem like it will have that much of an impact anyway, which is a shame for a thematic mechanic like this.

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Released

September 27, 2018

ESRB

T for Teen // Blood and Gore, Mild Fantasy Violence

Developer(s)

Wizards of the Coast, Wizards Digital Games Studios

Publisher(s)

Wizards of the Coast