Stock UpStock Up | Art by Izzy

Oh, Aetherdrift. How do we begin to talk about you, even a full year after you've come out? Naturally, my first gut instinct is to answer with, "Not well."

But if there's anything good to come out of Aetherdrift beyond the lessons Wizards of the Coast has inevitably learned from this flop of a set, it could be this: This set was cheery, and that was vital following Duskmourn's story. We recently covered Duskmourn and Foundations in this series, and now, it's time to put the pedal to the metal and... I guess... Explore this one.

Aetherdrift came out on February 14th, 2025, to very critical reviews. This will remain an extremely common theme for this article, as you'll come to find. But what cards ended up as Commander must-haves? Let's explore the tracks of Avishkar, Amonkhet, and Muraganda, as we simultaneously traverse this proverbial Frankenstein's Monster of a set.

General Notes for Aetherdrift

Going into this article, I will state right away that I was not a fan of the set from the moment its themes were revealed. I can understand the need to appeal to a wide range of players, as well as the fact that, according to Magic Head Designer Mark Rosewater, some sets may not be for me. But, this set does not seem to be for a large number of players, by similar outlooks on Aetherdrift.

Another "hat set" through and through, the set was rife with tropes that seemed more at home in a racing-style video game spinoff of Magic: The Gathering than a card game expansion proper. At risk of being too critical for my own comfort, I want to say that I wanted to like this set. Truly, I gave it the old college try to endear myself to it. But there's nothing I can say beyond a couple of the objective facts that can allow me to be warm to Aetherdrift.

Aetherdrift was codenamed "Tennis," which in itself is kind of funny. I thought that there was a "Racing" codename and that maybe there was a chance that this set had it. Turns out that's not the case, according to the MTG Wiki.

The set makes heavy use of both Vehicles and Mounts in an effort to drive the point home (if you'll pardon the expression) about the set's racing themes. And believe me, there are a lot of racing themes.

The Story Behind the Set

Now that the Omenpaths are firmly open between a multitude of planes affected by the Phyrexian Invasion, interplanar commerce and competition have begun to proliferate. A council responsible for the Ghirapur Grand Prix, previously a solely Avishkari institution, decided to expand the Grand Prix to include tracks outside of their plane.

What's more, they will allow extraplanar teams to compete as well. The prize is an extraordinary artifact called The AethersparkThe Aetherspark, a device that allows its wielder to planeswalk.

Needless to say, many teams entered this competition. All we saw of this were ten teams, each representing one dual-color combination. The teams were mostly comprised of representatives from other, unknown planes of existence. An unfortunate effect that this had on the set was that those teams were largely forgettable.

For the teams that came from established planes, such as Duskmourn or Avishkar, it had a different but no less frustrating side effect. Those teams were diluted in their original purposes, and the planes involved were tarnished by this set.

Why We Were Supposed To Care

Meanwhile, Chandra Nalaar, one of the lucky few Planeswalkers who retained her spark following the aftermath of the Phyrexian Invasion, entered the race to attempt to win the Aetherspark for her established girlfriend, Nissa RevaneNissa Revane. Nissa was desparked as a result of whatever simultaneously opened the Omenpaths. Therefore, beyond traversing them manually, her lack of a Planeswalker spark caused a bit of resentment.

This was meant to be the long-enfranchised players' means of investing our care into Aetherdrift. Again, this was diluted by the way the set presented itself. There's so little in the way of actual story beats anywhere except for within the literature provided on DailyMTG.

...Okay, I will admit that the story, as written, was actually superbly fleshed out and made people care more. Players ought to read it, at least to show the disparity between card design and world design. But at the end of the day, the key takeaway was that players who cared about the cards really didn't care for the major theme.

Players did, however, really like the glimpses of Amonkhet and Muraganda in the time since the Phyrexian Invasion. And also, in the case of Amonkhet, the time since the passing of the destructive Hours perpetuated by Nicol Bolas, God-PharaohNicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh.

I won't spoil who wins, but then again, the cards did that before the story could conclude. I recommend reading the story in full if you want to know more. In the end, this is probably the best thing to come out of Aetherdrift.

Backing Up the Claims Above

In Mark Rosewater's 2025 State of Design article, he states the reasoning for the disdain towards Aetherdrift. In essence, it backs up my claims made above. To spare you an additional necessary click, I'll input Rosewater's analysis below:

Players preferred more emphasis on the planes and less on the race.
Players liked seeing the three planes. In fact, the biggest complaint regarding the creative was that not enough time was spent focused on the planes themselves. So much of the set was focused on the race, and the majority of players seemed far less interested in the race than getting a chance to explore Avishkar, Amonkhet, and Muraganda.

Having three planes and ten racing teams, many from other settings, spread things too thin.
This issue was made worse by the fact that so many cards were focused on the racers, many of which were from brand-new settings. Three planes in one set was already stretching things a bit thin, so the addition of all the racing teams muddied things even more. Most players who commented on the race teams wished that we just had race teams from the three planes we were visiting. Others said that if they had to be from other planes than the ones in the race, they should be from places we already knew, so there was less worldbuilding that had to go on in the creative elements of those cards.

The racing theme in general wasn't well received.
Aetherdrift played into a lot of the criticisms of last year's sets where the set seemed more about focusing on specific tropes than bringing a world to life. While Duskmourn: House of Horror had some complaints about the survivors and some individual card concepts, the general sense was that the plane still had a lot of space to shine. Aetherdrift was mostly about a race that not enough players cared about. There were a number of players, though, that enjoyed seeing Chandra and Nissa's story get more focus.

The set was a bit on the weak side and didn't offer a lot for constructed.
The other big problem with Aetherdrift was the major themes of the set didn't "land" in Constructed formats. The fault for this wasn't set design or play design but rather vision design. We were trying something new. Vehicles were always a support mechanic, and we tried making it a focus for a set. It turns out there's a reason certain themes work better as support. Start your engines! was also us pushing into new space, one that didn't really end up working out for constructed. I'm not sorry we tried, as part of design's job is to push into new areas and attempt things we haven't tried before. But not everything will work out and Aetherdrift ended up being, in my mind, a noble, but failed, experiment.

Honestly, I couldn't agree more with these assessments. As of right now, the only card I can think of that is being utilized in Constructed (outside of Commander) is Stock UpStock Up, which is why its art is used as this article's featured image.

Beyond Stock Up, however, pickings are bleakly slim within this set. Sure, some players were using Ketramose, the New DawnKetramose, the New Dawn in a few places, but even that's tenuous. The set really was that catastrophically bad. Imagine Homelands but without more than two usable main set cards. That's Aetherdrift in a nutshell, but it's even worse here due to the as-fan factors of the set itself.

Top Commanders of Aetherdrift

Even with its utterly abysmal levels of overall unplayability, this set had some legendary creatures that were, at least at the time, worth building around in Commander. As I normally do with the articles in this series, I will do my best to detail these commanders and the numbers they have done in the course of a year:

• The #3 most played commander in the main Aetherdrift set is Ketramose, the New DawnKetramose, the New Dawn. As mentioned above, Ketramose is played a bit elsewhere. But as far as Commander goes, he ranks #242 in overall popularity with 8,150 decks at his command.
• #2 is Captain Howler, Sea ScourgeCaptain Howler, Sea Scourge, a commander hailing from another planar location entirely. With 8,951 decks at his disposal, Captain Howler ranks at #205 in popularity on EDHREC.
• The most popular commander from the main set is Mendicant Core, GuidelightMendicant Core, Guidelight, a commander hailing from the Edge, as it were. Mendicant Core has considerably more decks in EDHREC's databases, with 12,490 handy. This puts the Guidelight at #120 in terms of popularity. This isn't a small number by any means, but it does mean that the main set completely falls short of having anything in the top 100 most popular commanders.

Speaking of popular commanders from this setting, the Commander precons for Aetherdrift did manage to yield one super-popular option in Hashaton, Scarab's FistHashaton, Scarab's Fist. In a recent article, I spoke at length about how this Esper () standout helped propel its color identity over the course of 2025.

At this time, Hashaton ranks #35 with 20,702 decks in his present arsenal. Hashaton is actually a really fun commander, even if he has absolutely nothing to do with burning rubber over asphalt.

Conclusion

Aetherdrift was, by and large, an abject disaster of a set. I expect that this was when Wizards of the Coast absolutely had to take full notice of the vitriol towards "hat sets" and then take action. While the story was honestly quite neat and the precons had some merit, there's little that can be said for the main set itself.

Hopefully Wizards can walk their talk about learning lessons from this set.

Now, I'd like to hear from all of you. I don't want to speak too much to the negative of this set, so if you think there's anything particularly good about Aetherdrift that I may have missed, I'd love to hear you sound off in the comments below! Have at it, dear readers!