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Aetherdrift has finally been fully spoiled, and with the upcoming prerelease starting February 7th, let's take a look at what's up in the new set! As usual, I will show you each of its color pairs for Limited, but not in this article, because here I will focus on the mechanics and keywords you will encounter. Aetherdrift is a racing competition between 10 teams and takes place across three planes. This is beautifully reflected not only in the design of the cards but also in their abilities and keywords, which we can divide into three groups, perfectly in line with the key elements of the set:

Every time a new set comes out, there always seems to be a mechanic we are excited for, but maybe it doesn't pan out to be as powerful as we thought. Sometimes we think it will be good in constructed, and it ends up only being good in draft. There are other times when it is a sleeper, and we may have overlooked it when we were predicting what might be good. When we examine set design, sometimes we can also see the clear intent for the mechanics to be good in both the limited and constructed environments, and there are cards with power levels for each different environment. One might be watered down a bit to be more limited-friendly, and another might be that overpowered card that you need to be a bomb in constructed. There are a few ways to go about it, and we do what we can to identify which mechanics we should be mindful of in constructed, particularly in Standard, where the new cards affect the format more than other constructed formats. What we will do today is look at the mechanics that are prevalent with the new cards. There are some that are familiar mechanics, and I will still go over those. There are a couple of new ones that I think are quite interesting, and I have opinions on. Let's check out these mechanics, and give them some ratings! Exhaust You guys can tell that I am pretty excited about this one. The deck that I made for exhaust seems like it will run pretty smoothly. I believe that Exhaust is a mechanic that has cards that are intended for limited, and cards that are intended for constructed, and that the mechanic will be useful in both environments. One of the reasons that I believe it can be so good in draft is that you can almost consider the ability to act as another card later on in the game. You could have no cards in hand, but if you have two exhaust creatures, it is almost like you have two cards in hand that can make something happen. I'm excited for the mechanic, and I'm excited to draft the set and see if I can get a good bit of Exhaust cards going. I think it will be relevant in constructed because of the crazy value that you can get from some of the rares, and because there is one that allows for graveyard recursion.

Whenever I see the word "Zombie" in a new set, I always like to revisit the archetype a bit in order to see if anything could be good. I decided to raise these zombies from the dead due to some cards that I saw from Aetherdrift, and I thought that we could at least make a deck that is fun, and who knows, it may be competitive too. We have received decent support lately with cards like Gisa, The Hellraiser. Although she isn't a zombie herself, she creates them every turn, and acts as a lord for them. Not to mention, the ward cost on her makes it so that she adequately fills out the top end of our list. She will help us immensely with swarming the board with skeletons, and efficiently rebuilding after board wipes. There are also going to be some ways to play our zombies from the graveyard, whether it be re-casting or embalming. Since we have the opportunity to raise our dead, we have to give it a shot. There is too much flavor that entices me. This will be my mono black list for the new set, as I think this is the best mono black deck to showcase as many new cards as possible. Any other mono black deck would likely just be adding one or two cards into an already good mono black deck, so I wanted to give you as much as I can with the new cards showcase. Without further ado, let's check out the deck! As you can see, we have plenty of lords in the deck. We are going to make these vanilla zombies huge, both to use as infinite blockers, and to have a threatening attack. We also brought back Unstoppable Slasher for some extra fun, and to guarantee that we have alternate win conditions when needed. In typical zombie fashion, we also don't mind getting rid of some of our creatures if it produces extra value for us. We can get rid of one of our zombies to deal with any problematic creature with Final Vengeance. I chose this over Eaten Alive because it allows us to sacrifice enchantments too, and there are some useful enchantments that support our zombies, so that could prove useful too. There are new cards in the deck, so let's take a look at those. Aetherdrift Zombie Support Cards

Gruul is an archetype that is usually reserved for the aggro decks in Standard. I'm sure that you guys have had enough of that, so I will spare you another Gruul Aggro list that you only play because the deck is good. We are trying something new with this one, and we are taking advantage of the Exhaust mechanic from the new set. It is something that remains to be seen if it is a constructed-playable mechanic, or something that is better suited for limited. I believe that I am pushing the limits of its capabilities here, and that we can do some pretty cool stuff with the deck. One thing that I am excited about is that the deck features a TON of new cards. It will be really difficult for anyone in Early Access to say that this deck didn't showcase any new cards - the creatures and vehicles are almost all exclusively new! We are looking to reduce the activated costs of abilities within the deck, and then get crazy value from it that overwhelms the board. If we play our cards right, we can do some activated abilities for next to nothing, and gain a strong advantage from it. We can possibly also have a Fireball finish if we play our cards right. This deck does a little bit of everything, and I am excited to try it out. Allow me to present to you: Gruul Exhaust! There are some staple cards that we include when we have activated abilities of creatures. One card that forces its way into the deck is Agatha's Soul Cauldron. It is too powerful not to include. We have a couple of ways to mill our cards, and the meta is pretty removal-heavy. We should have enough ways to get things into our graveyard, and if we don't we simply add one or two more Hedge Shredders to mill more cards. With the Exhaust ability, you sadly can only activate it once, BUT we are going to put multiple instances of said abilities on one creature, thus making it much more palatable. We also will reduce the cost of all exhaust abilities with one of the new cards to be shown later, and with Agatha of the Vile Cauldron. I was surprised to see this card - I did not know that it came out with the Soul Cauldron itself. We have seen the Cauldron so much, but we haven't seen a ton of the actual Agatha Creature. The deck has a few removal spells, but some of our vehicles also have a way to do direct damage, so we don't need to include as many as we normally would. We kept it pretty simple on the lands due to the demanding mana values in some of our cards, and because the deck is a little faster. There are multiple cards that have two pips of each of the colors represented, so we do not want to stall when it comes to having the right mana. Although I have a bunch of new cards from the set in this deck, I will showcase to you five of the ones I think are the most impactful. Relevant New Cards

Aetherdrift is right around the corner, and I know I'm excited to get my hands on the new cards. I know the wildcard grind on Arena can be hard, though, so I want to focus on some commons and uncommons that I think will work well in Standard and give you an opportunity to enjoy some of that new set feeling without breaking your wildcard bank. Nesting Bot Start your engines! It is a mechanic that requires you to establish it early, so any deck that wants it will want lands or one-drops with the ability. Nesting Bot gives you that while also having a death trigger that nets you a fresh creature. It's very similar to Crawling Chorus or Infestation Sage, which are both perfectly good turn one plays, but it can also be hit by Gleeful Demolition. This uncommon checks a ton of boxes for a very low price.

We are coming to the end of spoiler season, and we are ramping up for early access for Aetherdrift. Almost all of the cards have been revealed, so Magic players are dashing to find the new deck that will work for them. This is an exciting time for creators as well, because it is our chance to make predictions on what the most impactful cards will be. We can straight up make a prediction, we can come out with a top 5 or 10, or we can theory craft new decks. I'm going to be dropping a few decks over the next couple of days that I think will be really fun to play in Standard, and that I will be playing in early access for Aetherdrift! Here is a look at the first deck I made that is an Orzhov Sacrifice Combo Deck! This new Orzhov Creation looks to take advantage of a lot of low-mana high-value creatures. We have multiple different sacrifice outlets, and a couple of different ways to interact with our graveyard. Most of the creatures are two mana value or lower, so we can even use a card from Foundations to bring them all back at once! We will draw a ton of cards, drain our opponent's life total, and have tons of blockers for the various aggro decks that we may come across. We can even punish the opponent for killing our creatures. The deck also features 23 lands due to the fact that our curve is pretty low, and we can operate pretty well with two or three mana. You might be wondering: "OK, so what is actually new about the deck?" We are looking to take advantage of the Start Your Engines mechanic that has been brought to us in this set. If you are unfamiliar with how that works, you can read my most recent article for a deep dive! For now, let's take a look at some relevant new cards from the set! Relevant New Cards

Aetherdrift has finally been fully spoiled, and with the upcoming prerelease starting February 7th, let's take a look at what's up in the new set! As usual, I will show you each of its color pairs for Limited, but not in this article, because here I will focus on the mechanics and keywords you will encounter. Aetherdrift is a racing competition between 10 teams and takes place across three planes. This is beautifully reflected not only in the design of the cards but also in their abilities and keywords, which we can divide into three groups, perfectly in line with the key elements of the set: