Magic: The Gathering Aetherdrift review ⏤ No first-place trophy, but still a solid finish

We kick off our six Standard sets of 2025 with Aetherdrift. Since sets have had themes lately, this is the “racing” set. Thematically, Aetherdrift covers a potentially deadly race across three different Magic: The Gathering planes all now connected by Omenpaths. This is different, as sets tend to focus on a single plane. I’m happy to catch up with Avishkar and Amonkhet, as both of these planes struggled with internal events even before the Phyrexians invaded. The third plane, Muraganda, is essentially brand new. Even with the racing theme, I’m all for anything that expands the multiverse of Magic. There’s a lot to take in with Aetherdrift, as the concept of speeding through everything seems to permeate the set. While I’m not sure it works for the better, I can say it’s thematic. So, let’s buckle up and see what Aetherdrift has to offer.

Mechanics - Push the Limit

Aetherdrift introduces two new mechanics: Speed and Exhaust. Speed is a new ability introduced into the game when a card with “Start your engines!” is played. At that point, your Speed becomes one, and from there, you can increase your Speed by one if an opponent loses life during your turn. However, you may trigger this ability only once per turn. Once you increase your Speed to four, you are at “Max speed,” and there are a ton of cards in Aetherdrift that have additional effects if you are at Max speed.

Exhaust is the second new mechanic that appears as an activated ability on cards. A single exhaust ability can only be used once per game. Exhaust abilities are particularly powerful, which is why they come with such a huge restriction. While there are ways around the “use only once” clause, you won’t encounter many of these workarounds (flicker, blink, etc) within the set.

As Aetherdrift is a vehicle-focused set, Crew makes a return. Artifact vehicles can be crewed to turn them into a creature until the end of turn. You do this by tapping creatures with total power equal to or higher than the crew cost. Vehicles aren’t the most intuitive mechanic, and there are some common stumbling blocks around them, but most of these are just learning the timing of when you should be crewing your vehicles.

The last few mechanics that make a return are Saddle and Cycling. Saddle is similar to Crew, but it grants the creature additional abilities. Cycling is found all across Aetherdrift as a discard and draw outlet and can even be used to interesting effect if you draft an entire deck around Cycling.

Pros - Plow Through

Thematically, Aetherdrift covers a multiplanar race that Avishkar is hosting through itself, Amonkhet, and Muraganda. Ten separate teams from all over the multiverse have entered the race for various reasons, hoping to win The Aetherspark. A literal bottled planeswalker spark. I was surprised to discover that I liked the thematics of Aetherdrift as I came into the set with a hesitant outlook. Did you know that the ten draft archetypes for Aetherdrift are also the ten racing teams? I didn’t for a long time, and when I did find out, I thought it was a great bit of design and theme mixed together. Aetherdrift has those small morsels of design brilliance in it, I just wish there was more of it.

Aetherdrift covers so many places, people, and things that it feels like we just whizz by everything. We’re getting to see bits of three different planes, with new and returning characters, but since it’s all in one set, we rush through it all. Aetherdrift is jam-packed with theme between the races and settings, but of all the sets I’ve played, I want this one to breathe more. I would have liked to see an entire set for each plane. The Guidelight Voyagers have quickly become my new favorite things in Magic as they’re true blue (and white) robots, and I’m keen to learn more about them. There just isn’t much to learn about right now.

The rest of Aetherdrift is pretty great. Cycling being so prominent is thematically amusing, but this means that if you’ve invested in those cards, you’re also able to dig for answers or use the cards that have cycling payoffs. Saddle doesn’t seem to come up as much as most of the time. It’s not worth spending your creatures for the Saddle ability, but it being there doesn’t hurt as extra options. The vehicle-centered gameplay is fun. It’s a specific play style within Magic that adds a nice bit of extra thought into the draft, deck construction, and gameplay. You have to remember that vehicles (generally) aren’t creatures, and take that into account as you approach the game. Overall, I like the mechanical design of Aetherdrift, but when it comes back around as an available draft, I can’t say that I’ll immediately play it more. I would see what else is on offer at that moment, as there are so many great sets, and Aetherdrift is just good.

Cons - Spectacular Pileup

My main criticisms of Aetherdrift come from the two new mechanics which each stumble in different ways. The Speed mechanic works well as a gameplay incentive to push damage on your opponent. Its name just doesn’t match how the mechanic ends up playing out. Speed isn’t a race between you and your opponent, nor is it something you fight over like the Initiative, as it’s just a number you want to increase for card abilities. Also, it’s kind of slow, needing a minimum of three turns for you to reach max Speed. Mechanically, I like Speed as it rewards you for playing the game and attacking your opponent; it just doesn’t match its theme. When you’ve got a racing set and Speed as a mechanic, I don’t know what I expected, but this wasn't it.

On the other hand, Exhaust is the opposite. I like Exhaust thematically, but not as much mechanically. An ability you can only activate once? Yeah, that does sound exhausting. My issue with the mechanic is that you need to track it for the rest of the game. There is no built-in way to track whether or not you’ve used an Exhaust ability meaning that players will have to use workarounds. Tilt the card, take off a sleeve, put a “What is that counter?” on it, etc. Some of the creatures place +1/+1 counters on themself when exhausted, but that isn’t a reliable way to know the ability has been used. This isn’t an unsolvable problem, just one that makes tracking the game state a little harder.

Last, I have to address that with Aetherdrift Play Booster boxes have been reduced to 30 packs per box. I haven’t noticed any kind of price reduction with this reduction in boosters. We have MSRP per pack but not per booster box. While not a usual concern of players, boxes having 36 packs was important for stores as it provided them the number needed to run drafts and offer prize support. Reducing the number of packs just makes it a little harder for drafts at your local store and offers you a little less.

Artwork - The Last Ride

I talked about the theming, but as usual, the artwork across Aetherdrift is fantastic. The racing theme doesn’t do anything for me, but I have to admit the artwork drew me into the set in a way I wasn’t expecting. The diverse artwork among the ten racing teams does an amazing job of communicating what they are about. There are, once again, too many art variants, but I ended up admiring some of them. In particular, the Revved Up frames, the Rude Rider frames, and the Borderless frames are just gorgeous. There are Japan Showcase frames and Fractured Foils in this style. The other unique variants for Aetherdrift are the Graffiti Giants and the First Place Foils style. These are fine, but through Aetherdrift I learned I’m not that big a fan of the color yellow.