The Gathering’s Lead Designer on Aetherdrift Talks Balance Challenges With Vehicle Cards

Most modern Magic: The Gathering sets try to break the mold in some shape or form, be it from a gameplay point of view or in terms of themes and setting. Bloomburrow offered a refreshing perspective thanks to its many critters and tribes, for example, whereas Foundations provided a series of staple cards for the game to maintain for at least five years in Standard, adding mechanical variety more than mechanical depth. In contrast, Magic: The Gathering‘s Aetherdrift set is the ultimate death race fantasy for a trading card game, which comes with a fair set of challenges in terms of design due to its massive number of vehicles, among other things.

Aetherdrift was directed in terms of design by Yoni Skolnik, who talked to Game Rant about the process of creating vehicle cards for this race-themed set and what sorts of challenges came with it. Vehicles can be quite tricky to make because the card archetype hasn’t seen a lot of success since its inception, and it abides by some gameplay rules that are unique to it, such as Crew. Magic: The Gathering‘s new Start your engines! and Exhaust mechanics all tie into the set’s speed theme, and it’s something that Aetherdrift vehicles had to tackle in their own way as well.

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How Magic: The Gathering’s Aetherdrift Makes Vehicles More Interesting

Because Aetherdrift was supposed to have the highest number of vehicles in any Magic: The Gathering expansion ever, Skolnik explained that the goal was to test the limits of this card type. This wasn’t feasible without some regulations and restrictions though, as Wizards of the Coast’s balance team was reportedly concerned about the power and crew numbers on each vehicle. For example, Skolnik mentioned how Mulldrifter became Hulldrifter in Magic: The Gathering‘s Aetherdrift, and how it was given 3 power instead of 2 like the original card in order to allow it to end games.

This is because vehicles needed to be more varied and interesting than past iterations since they were meant to be front and center, so designing vehicles to do more than Crewing was a good place to start. The end result includes some really good vehicles, such as Lumbering Worldwagon, Thopter Fabricator, and Boommobile, all with their own unique effects that make them much more valuable for deckbuilding. For example, Lumbering Worldwagon can easily find its way in MTG Commander decks with ramp cards, as it can ramp on its own and then become a very powerful attacker as well.

How Aetherdrift’s Vehicles Were Designed For MTG’s Limited Format

As Skolnik mentioned, their intent was also to make vehicles good in drafts, which was one of the challenges with the card archetype. Their goal was to strike the perfect balance between vehicles being either too slow or too fast and how aggressive they could be. This is why cards like Possession Engine become extremely valuable in Limited, as their benefits far outweigh their cost, in this case, gaining control of an opposing Creature for 5 CMC. At the same time, Aetherdrift added some great Brawl cards to MTG.

An example is the Brightglass Gearhulk, continuing the line of Gearhulk vehicles from Avishkar, the plane formerly called Kaladesh. This card can then make for a great combo with Voyager Glidecar, a 1 White vehicle that can become quite powerful the more Creatures one has in play. This goes to show that the potential of vehicles is huge with a pool of 41 cards from Aetherdrift alone, and future Magic: The Gathering sets can continue Skolnik’s vision to keep making vehicles ever more compelling to put in a deck. Whether this happens remains to be seen, but Skolnik’s description of the design process for Aetherdrift vehicles is quite fascinating.

Magic: The Gathering

Original Release Date

August 5, 1993

Designer

Richard Garfield

Player Count

2+

Age Recommendation

13+