Aetherdrift, the first new Magic expansion of 2025, hits stores on February 14, with the Prerelease taking place the week before.
This set focuses on themes around vehicles, which made it a great fit for Greasefang, Okiba Boss decks in Pioneer, but in addition to several new vehicles - a few of which could indeed deserve a slot in Greasefang - the expansion also brought some other cards to build around, such as Radiant Lotus, or even pieces that can become staples in multiple formats, such as Ketramose, the New Dawn.
Ad
In this article, we focus on Pioneer and the main cards in the new release that might show up in the format!
White

Skyseer’s Chariot is half Anointed Peacekeeper and half Pithing Needle in a 3/3 vehicle with evasion. It doesn’t seem like the best option for white decks right now, but it deserves a mention for adding another permanent with this ability that could potentially earn maindeck slots.

Spectacular Pileup has the benefit of removing indestructible from permanents, which can matter against cards like Heroic Intervention and Selfless Spirit, and Cycling ensures that it functions as an extra cantrip in its controller’s hand. It can be worth testing as a one-of in Control lists.

Valor’s Flagship is worth testing as a one-of in Greasefang, Okiba Boss lists because it offers a way to hold off the Aggro clock while its Cycling ability allows you to enable Greasefang every turn with the same vehicle, not to mention that it creates 1/1 tokens when cycled, creating good board interaction.

Voyager Glidecar is very reminiscent of Warden of the Inner Sky, which found its way into Boros Convoke lists and some Ensoul Artifact variants.
It’s worth testing as a potential long-term threat and enabler for cards like Gleeful Demolition, but Warden is probably a better card in Boros Convoke.
Blue

Malevolent Hermit already exists in Pioneer and has never done much for the format. Perhaps some Ensoul Artifact list, or some deck who cares about having plenty of artifacts in play, will make this card find a place in Pioneer.

Memory Guardian is the first artifact creature with Artifact Affinity in Pioneer history. Without the proper support, I don't think this ability will break the Metagame, nor will this creature have much space in decks outside some combination with Repurposing Bay and Radiant Lotus or other six-mana bomb.

Mind Spring Merfolk is the least original name this card could possibly have. In current Merfolk lists, I don't think this creature has a place because the mana value of its ability is too high and using it with Kaito, Bane of Nightmares or other Ninjas is counterintuitive.
It may have a place in Simic lists with Deeproot Pilgrimage, but it still seems too slow for Pioneer.

Birthing Pod for artifacts is still a Birthing Pod for artifacts, even though players haven't found any absurd combinations with it yet. Perhaps Affinity cards like Memory Guardian or Demonic Junker are its best friends since we can skip mana costs to, for example, get to a Cityscape Leveler and later on a Portal to Phyrexia.

Waxen Shapethief is another clone for Gyruda, Doom of Depths that recycles itself if drawn during the game. It doesn't seem like the kind of card that will make this combo a contender in the Metagame, but it's a useful addition.
Ad
Black

Bloodghast is the kind of card that needs the right support to work, and that usually involves putting plenty of cards in the graveyard rapidly.
Its best friends in Pioneer will be Dredgeless Dredge with Prized Amalgam and Insidious Roots decks, but it could potentially show up in other archetypes that want to extract value from discard effects, perhaps alongside Hollow One and the like.

Demonic Junker is the second artifact with Affinity in the expansion and works as removal, in addition to being crewed by most of the format's creatures. There may be some interesting combinations of it with other cheap artifacts to reduce its cost, but its greatest utility currently seems to be, like Memory Guardian, being used with Repurposing Bay to cheat on mana costs.

The Last Ride is closer to Reckoner Bankbuster than it is to Death's Shadow, with the added value of being a threat that can win games if the opponent is careless.
Unlike the card it was inspired by, there is no point in building a deck around it, and the tradeoffs needed to make it work need to be tested - so I don't have high expectations for it in Pioneer.

Bounce decks are all the rage in Standard and Pioneer, and Momentum Breaker is the ideal card to replace Tithing Blade or Trial of Ambition in those archetypes, since it will always take away some resource from the opponent even if they don't have a permanent on the board.

Quag Feast is a divisive card: on the one hand, being a sorcery with a conditional ability takes away its potential to play in decks like Rakdos Demons and its variants. On the other hand, it's the perfect removal for archetypes that want cards in their graveyard, like Abhorrent Oculus lists, or even Greasefang, Okiba Boss variants that want a cheap interaction that helps their game plan.
Red

Red decks today don't want Count on Luck as a source of card advantage for attrition games. Its cost, however, makes it an excellent payoff for Mono Red Devotion variants, a deck that disappeared from the format around 2021, but that could have a moment in the spotlight as long as Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx remains legal in the format.

Honorable mention.
Draconautics Engineer is the cheapest enabler for Afterburner Expert and could be worth slots if the new green Goblin becomes viable in Pioneer. It's worth noting that Exhaust abilities can be copied with Agatha's Soul Cauldron.

A Flame Sweep that is never useless could be worth maindeck and/or sideboard slots if go wide archetypes with small creatures, such as the aforementioned Boros Convoke, return to the Metagame and/or become prevalent strategies, so Fuel the Flames deserves an honorable mention.

Ad
Marauding Mako is Hollow One's best friend.
Whether it's a house with multiple Cycling cards and Drannith Stinger, or with discard effects like Fear of Missing Out and Bloodtithe Harvester combined with Bloodghast and other ways to generate positive value when discarding a card, there are many ways to take advantage of Marauding Mako in Pioneer, making it one of the cards with the greatest potential to affect the Metagame and/or establish new decks in the expansion.
Green

Afterburner Expert has a “combo” if we can get plenty of copies of it into the graveyard and activate Draconautics Engineer to bring all the Experts back with their trigger, and then they gain Haste with Exhaust, totaling up to 16 damage for free.
I believe there is some way to get the most out of this card in Pioneer, but it also involves Agatha’s Soul Cauldron to increase the consistency of Exhaust’s abilities (the new Loot is a good example of excellent effects to give to other creatures), but this may be a worse combo than Izzet Phoenix and also worse than the other Cauldron decks in the format.

Thunderous Velocipede is a 5/5 for three mana that makes your creatures enter with one or more +1/+1 counters. Added to Marketback Walker, it already guarantees a positive value of an extra card for the artifact, and the interactions of both with Hardened Scales are always welcome to see if an archetype that people have been trying to make work since Pioneer was born finally flourishes and gains its spot in the competitive scene.

Webstrike Elite has a decent body for its cost, adds two devotion to green, trades with Arclight Phoenix, and its Cycling ability deals with Unholy Annex, or any other troublesome artifact or enchantment on the board. It deserves some testing in Devotion lists, but doesn't seem like a staple.
Multicolored

Brightglass Gearhulk is, in a vacuum, the most powerful card of the new cycle. In Pioneer, it draws from well-tested combinations like Sigarda’s Aid and Colossus Hammer or Witch’s Oven and Cauldron Familiar, as well as important answers such as Portable Hole, Deafening Silence, Shapers’ Sanctuary or Pithing Needle, not to mention cards with in their cost like Marketback Walker.
This card’s high flexibility is balanced by an extremely restrictive mana cost that doesn’t fit into any of the main archetypes in the current Metagame. But there is a lot of potential on it.

Coalstoke Gearhulk, or the Demigod of Revenge at home, has an ability that can be reused with Clone effects, where we cast the Gearhulk, return a clone to the board, it copies Coalstoke Gearhulk and returns another clone to: with four Clones, It sums up 20 damage with Menace and Haste straight to the opponent's face.
Ad
I currently consider this combo worse than the ones involving Trumpeting Carnosaur and Quintorius Kand, especially since the hate line against it is already quite popular in Pioneer and should become more popular with the hype around the new vehicles with Greasefang, Okiba Boss, but it is possible to do other tests with it as a complementary threat in Rakdos decks.

Debris Beetle, or Siege Renault, deserves some tests in Abzan Greasefang lists in at least one of the Esika’s Chariot slots. It doesn't put the same pressure on the board, but a Lightning Helix accompanied by a 6/6 attacker with Trample that we can reuse as another Lightning Helix the next turn is strong enough to deserve some slots - perhaps it's even better than Valor's Flagship in the role of dealing with Aggro matchups.

Ketramose, the New Dawn is a very versatile card and powerful in a dozen situations: a complementary threat for decks that rely on the graveyard and are vulnerable to Rest in Peace, a creature for Collected Company lists that interacts with Skyclave Apparition and Werefox Bodyguard to generate card advantage, or even another way to take advantage of Graveyard Trespasser, which briefly disappeared from the Metagame when Rakdos Demons became the deck to beat.
A potential staple and, on its own, it may be the most powerful card of the expansion for all competitive formats. A full review of it can be found in this article.

Loot, the Pathfinder has three activated abilities, respectively Black Lotus, Ancestral Recall and Lightning Bolt, but all with the additional cost of casting a five-mana creature.
It's not good on its own, but its abilities interact incredibly well with Agatha's Soul Cauldron in decks interested in using the artifact to generate value, since all creatures with +1/+1 counters would become sources of damage and card advantage.
This might not be a very competitive card, but it's worth the effort to evaluate where this combo might fit.

Oildeep Gearhulk is the category of card that I see with a lot of potential in Standard due to the Metagame, but that doesn't have much space in Pioneer because there are more efficient options, and its color requirements don't help make it easy to cast.
Because it makes the opponent discard cards and has a 4/4 body with a relevant ETB, it might be worth testing in the Waste Not variants with This Town Ain't Big Enough, but it seems like a win more card.

Pyrewood Gearhulk is an End-Raze Forerunners for two less mana, but swapping Trample for Menace, an ability that can be useful in go wide strategies that would use this creature to have their Craterhoof Behemoth at home, especially in Elves, who would have the challenge of adding to their list in exchange for a cheaper and technically more efficient creature to close games.
Ad

Personally, I like Riptide Gearhulk and I believe that it can deserve a slot, for example, in Niv-to-Light as something to seek with Bring to Light on certain occasions while offering a robust clock alongside cheap removals.
Other established decks in the format today are likely to have better options, especially in Control lists, since the new Gearhulk doesn't protect itself.

Rocketeer Boostbuggy is a two-mana vehicle with a decent body, easy crew cost, and mana advantage when it attacks. The similarities to Smuggler's Copter are enough to earn it an honorable mention, though I can't imagine any deck wanting this card right now.

Sab-Sunen, Luxa Embodied is a tough one to evaluate because it does a lot of good things, but it does so slowly.
On its own, it attacks as a 7/7 Trample for five mana the next turn. It then draws two cards and keeps this cycle going until his opponent deals with it - a huge challenge for a card that bypasses Anoint with Affliction, Skyclave Apparition, and Vanishing Verse.
If your deck takes the matches into the late game, it offers the best of both worlds between a hard-to-kill win condition and a constant source of card advantage, so it probably deserves a slot in Niv-to-Light and some other Goodstuff stacks with Omnath, Locus of Creation, and it's likely one of those cards that creates archetypes and deck variants (Simic Devotion, perhaps?) all on its own.

Thundering Broodwagon may deserve space in Abzan Greasefang in the slots currently held by Skysovereign, Consul Flagship since the card puts itself in the graveyard and is a definitive removal against anything with a mana value of four or less.
Personally, I prefer Skysovereign for its evasive potential and ease of casting in games where we face excessive hate, but the possibility of Thundering Broodwagon dealing with even a Leyline of the Void in the late game could guarantee it a few slots even on lists without green.

I believe that Zahur, Glory’s Past is the only card with the Start Your Engines mechanic worth considering in Pioneer because decks that normally want this type of card also look for Cauldron Familiar and Witch’s Oven, which makes it easier to reach Max Speed and start creating 2/2 tokens whenever its controller sacrifices a creature, generating many interactions with the format’s Sacrifice engine.
Artifacts

We've never had a Planeswalker Equipment before, so The Aetherspark is a pretty tough card to evaluate, but considering its mana cost and the speed at which we can extract value from it, it's possible to compare it to Unholy Annex, where it's a worse card because Annex guarantees the extra draws and also functions as a clock, while the new equipment requires a combat phase and at least one turn before it starts generating value.
Ad
On the other hand, The Aetherspark is colorless, so there's a much wider window of opportunity with it than with Unholy Annex, but we generally want to use it to draw two more cards every turn, which requires creatures attacking for five or more damage in combat, and the archetypes that can afford its mana cost and use it efficiently are the same decks that already have other, more useful sources of card advantage.

Marketback Walker doesn't impress me in Pioneer because similar effects have already appeared in the format and none of them made much of a difference, besides the current Metagame is extremely focused on mana efficiency that we can't spend a turn playing a card with the stats of half our available mana, which draws some extra cards when it dies.

Radiant Lotus is a build-around that can bring the classic “Eggs” combo to Pioneer: a famous Modern deck where players used artifacts with ETB effects that drew cards, sacrificed them to generate mana and then used spells like Second Sunrise and Faith's Reward to return them to the battlefield.
We don't have any of these mass reanimation effects in Pioneer, and we're even deprived of Open the Vaults, but cards like Brilliant Restoration can work as a way to generate positive mana with Radiant Lotus every time we sacrifice the artifacts and return them, culminating in an Aetherflux Reservoir for 50 damage.
It may not be a very competitive archetype against Aggro and not very interactive against Midranges, but Radiant Lotus is one of the best cards to try to build a deck around with Aetherdrift.
Lands

Duskmourn's allied Verges have seen play in some Pioneer lists, and there's no reason why enemy Verges can't have the same result. Their interaction with Shock Lands and Triomes makes it much easier for some lists that care more about not having untapped lands on turn 4 and onwards to access colors, so they seem like a good investment option in the medium term.
Conclusion
That's all for today!
If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment!
Thanks for reading!
— Comments0
Be the first to comment