Aetherdrift Set Review

Here we go! The official list here. A list you can read here. Mechanics article here. 

Maybe it's just the times I'm living in, but this set is not exciting me. 

First, there's the sheer volume of text and mechanics and stuff on everything. Little of it seems meaningful and less of it fun. Let's start with mechanics:

Start Your Engines. I saw a comment on Reddit that said this should have been called Momentum, because then it could be used in any set. Start Your Engines means that if it isn't a racing set, the mechanic cannot be used and I really like this critique. Momentum is less flavorful but more versatile-and there are perhaps more fun ways this could be explored on other planes. 

It doesn't solve the problem though: this mechanic is booooooooooooooring. Like the City's Blessing before it, the mechanic only truly becomes meaningful if you get to "max speed" but otherwise isn't worth much. It adds in a bookkeeping layer and I know that whenever I think bookkeeping, I think fun! 

It also doesn't behave in a way that feels consistent to me: you Start Your Engines only if a Start Your Engines card tells you to, but you only increase in speed if you do damage to an opponent. So once you've Started, none of the other Start cards matter. And can you increase your speed on the same turn you start your engines? It looks like you can, because the trigger is a loss of life but you can only increase your speed once a turn, and 0-1 is an increase. 

Of the 42 cards that care about speed in the set, four have interactions that do not involve Max Speed and one of those is there to reduce your opponent's Speed. 

That is not, despite what the mechanics article says, 'plenty'. 

Worse, this all feels like 'win more'. If I have a 3/3 with flying and haste, what does lifelink do for me?  

Exhaust. Boy, it sure is a good thing that nothing puts +1/+1 counters on cards in Magic, otherwise you'd really have to invest in some bookkeeping to know if you've used an Exhaust ability or not!

And no, it doesn't matter if the Exhaust abilities are good (some are!) the issue is one of clarity. As with Monstrosity and Renown, these abilities don't play well with the rest of the game. And if you've got a Loot, +1 counters don't even go on the creature so now you've got to do bookkeeping to make sure that you don't re-use the ability. 

For a set that is about racing through three worlds, this mechanic is pretty damn insular. 

Vehicles & Mounts. First of all this is a flavor fail: under what circumstances am I supposed to believe that Boomcycle and Bullwark Ox are on competitive terms in this race? 

I didn't talk about Mounts or saddling in my Outlaws of Thunder Junction set review but having played with that mechanic I can say: I don't care for it. It seems like a neat idea, because I could use a freshly summoned creature to use it, but it rarely paid off for me. 

I think this is because the payoff can't be worth the cost. If I'm tapping a creature with 3 power to attack with Caustic Bronco, that's three power I'm leaving behind that can't block for me-and that's after investing however much mana I needed to create the saddling creatures. So then I'd better do something awesome with that, right? 

But that awesome thing can't be game breaking-which is totally reasonable but makes this a cost not worth paying. Since you must Saddle or Crew as a sorcery (at least if you want to attack), any instant speed removal means you're really down-they've taken out your crewed creature AND tapped another to get a bonus. 

They've tried to mitigate that through cards like Interface Ace and Cloudspire Captain so the cost to crew is blunted, but that overlooks the other problem: if I've paid seven mana for a Valor's Flagship, why do I have to do anything else to get that to do it's job? 

Finally, this set just seems overstuffed. 

The artwork doesn't feel consistent-Full Throttle looks like a completely different thing than Spectacular Pileup. Or even Chandra, if you want: Throttle looks like something out of a funny cartoon, Pileup is just a rainbow explosion, and Chandra is referencing Akira, which is such serious business that it doesn't fit together. There's clearly supposed to be some teams (U/B has the haunted racers going) but I cannot suss out who is what beyond U/B. Everything is, sigh, coming too fast and it's all a blur.

It's also interesting to me that the Commanders decks for this set don't utilize any of these mechanics. One Exhaust card, one Vehicle (a reprint), no Mounts, no Start Your Engines. It's as though these mechanics didn't exist: instead we have zombies and energy. Maybe they've never overlapped and I just didn't notice, because the rest of the set gave me plenty to talk about. More charitably, this is a way to represent the planes of Amonket (via zombies) and Avishkar (via energy), while Muraganda gets something I do like: five vanilla legendary creatures! 

I'm serious here: I think that Terrian, Tyrox, Kalakscion, Caelorna, and Sundial are pretty neat. 

I hope it's more fun than it looks. But it doesn't feel very engaging. I'll know more after Sunday's pre-release, I suppose!