Last year we had a murder mystery expansion for Magic: The Gathering, followed by a Wild West one. As the cynics put it, they were "Magic in detective hats" and "Magic in cowboy hats". Now, with the Aetherdrift set basically being themed around Speed Racer and Twisted Metal, the cynics say this is "Magic in a racing helmet," when what the people really want (for "the people" read "cranky Redditbros") is more trad fantasy.
This rings false to me. For starters, we just had Foundations, a set that went back to the game's original inspirations and in some cases the original cards, a set with plenty of dragons and angels and swords being turned into ploughshares. If it's trad fantasy you're after, you'll eat well at the Foundations table. Aetherdrift is for those who crave variety, who don't want to eat the same high fantasy meal every night of the week.
And, as someone who only got seriously into collecting Magic rather than just playing the digital versions with Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty—a fully cyberpunk set with mechs and cards like Born to Drive—the idea of magical Carmageddon doesn't seem too far out there. Magic's multiverse clearly isn't full of worlds that conveniently stopped advancing at the medieval period (New Capenna is blatantly the 1920s with demons), so bring on the Wacky Wheels, I say, and the wackier the better.
I hadn't counted on the player sat across from me having Push the Limit, a card that returns all your vehicles and mounts from the discard pile to the table, and lets them attack without crew that turn. We'd been filling his discard pile for several turns, helpfully loading bullets into a gun he then turned around and fired at the rest of us. The cards you get back with Push the Limit have to be discarded again at the end of the turn, but that one big swing wiped out one player and reduced the rest of us to our last few life points.
It didn't win him the game, though. The player sitting in the far corner had not long before played Pactdoll Terror, and then she efficiently drained everyone else's final life points by following it with a handful of artifacts in a row. I could only applaud. It was a classic tortoise-and-hare situation, with the least assuming racer crossing the finish line while everyone else had their engines betray them on the home stretch. A perfect marriage of theme and mechanics.
(Aetherdrift has a surprisingly in-depth connection to the lore as well, with narrative designer Miguel Lopez really going to town on the worldbuilding side of things.)
Aetherdrift will be out in Arena from February 11, and in paper Magic from February 14. You can find in-store events at your local participating retailer.
