It’s often easy to take some of Magic: The Gathering’s best format metas for granted while they’re around. In retrospect, plenty of people loved Khans of Tarkir’s mana fixing during its time in Standard, but at the time there were often complaints about the cost of fetchlands and the amount of game actions they introduce - and Mantis Rider, remember that one? As we’re heading into Aetherdrift, it feels like Standard’s in a similarly healthy place, with multiple viable top decks and plenty of new support that could catapult contenders or previously impossible strategies to the top.
Not all cards are created equal, however, and there are some clear standouts in Aetherdrift that should be able to make an impact on Standard. Here’s our list of the top 10 Aetherdrift cards for Standard.
10) Bloodghast
A blast from the past is Bloodghast, a 2/1 sometimes-hasty creature that can consistently recur itself from the graveyard with landfall triggers. Aggressive decks love this kind of effect and usually have no issue knocking an opponent’s life total to 10 or lower, where Bloodghast turns each land drop into a must-block threat lest they slowly get chipped down by hasty vampire spirits.
9) Voyage Home
This is one of many Aetherdrift cards that have broader format considerations - Mox Opal being unbanned in Modern means anything with Affinity is worth a flier - but don’t overlook its Standard potential, either. Voyage Home slots nicely into UW tempo decks that have plenty of leftover tokens from Siren Stormtamer and Novice Inspector to turn on its cost reduction, and might be the gas-up those decks need to compete in longer, drawn-out games.
Look, I don’t know how to feel about the Start your engines! mechanic either. Your guess is as good as mine for how viable that’s going to be in Standard, but if it is powerful, Hazoret could be a card that gets obnoxious quickly. A 5/3 indestructible haste creature that comes online after repeatedly dropping an opponent’s life total in the color Red should turn heads, even if it ends up not having the impact it could.
Keeping on theme with cards that will really test whether an Aetherdrift mechanic is good enough for constructed play, Afterburner Expert asks the question “what if copied the homework of Bloodghast and just changed it a little?” While they’re obviously different cards, the idea behind their power levels are the same - they pay you off for doing what your deck wanted to be doing anyways. If exhaust is a viable strategy, expect to see a ton of Afterburner Expert, especially since one in play can trigger the others in the graveyard.
6) Transit Mage
Going a little off-script here - I think the previous cards are obviously powerful, while this one has mostly been discussed in Commander - I think Transit Mage has serious sleeper potential. While a 3 mana 2/2 in today’s Standard is laughably bad stats-wise, consistency and tutoring effects are as powerful as they’ve always been, and Transit Mage grabs many of the new Gearhulks - and The Aetherspark, which may or may not be totally bonkers, depending on who you ask. It’s definitely something to keep an eye on, and I’ve been burned by underrating tutor effects before.
Allow me to echo a popular social media sentiment when it comes to Magic: The Gathering card design lately - why does this card do so much? For 2 green mana, you get a 3/3 with reach. Not a bad stopgap against some tempo-ish flying threats. But when that’s not relevant, you can also cycle the card for XGG, and destroy an artifact or enchantment of X mana value while doing it. This feels very much like a “not overtly powerful, but so good it goes in every green deck” kind of design, since it can be an early clock against control, an answer to problematic permanents later, or just a cycler to help make land drops or reinforce a mulligan.
Another Start your engines! card that seems quite strong - Momentum Breaker is a guaranteed impact to an opponent’s board or hand, and slots perfectly into the UB bounce deck that has gained so much traction in Standard recently. Recurring its effect is where it really shines, and in a pinch, it can gain some life and change the math on racing.
A one mana discard effect is almost always going to be playable, whether it be main or sideboard. Intimidation Tactics does away with needing to decide between the two thanks to cycling, which fixes potential dead draws later in the game while topdecking into another shot at a relevant card. It’s also not a bad discard effect in its own right, exiling an artifact or creature in a format where graveyard recursion (see: #10 and #7 on this list alone) could be a defining feature.
I had to reread this card a few times. Where was the downside? That you need to play cycling effects when Aetherdrift introduces a slew of viable ones? That it costs a whopping 3 mana to put into play? I suppose if I really think about it, it’s vulnerable to a form of removal - artifact hate - that will be as popular in Standard post-Aetherdrift as it will have been in some time. But that’s not enough to stop this kind of value engine in my eyes, and I could see control-style decks having a field day with minimal win conditions and a bunch of cyclers that do the job well enough when needed but also function to draw 2 cards or slowly drain an opponent when the game is finally bogged down enough.
1) The New Verge Lands - Bleachbone Verge, Riverpyre Verge, Wastewood Verge, Sunbillow Verge, and Willowrush Verge
Look, sometimes you have to be boring and pick the new rare cycle of Standard lands, especially when they’re proven commodities in the Verge lands. These are excellent manabase fixers and will be at the core of dual-color strategies as long as they’re in Standard, and they’ll be ubiquitous for that reason. What’s more powerful than a huge metagame share, right?
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