Max SpeedMax Speed token | art by Josiah "Jo" Cameron

Starting off 2025 with more than a couple bangs, Wizards of the Coast is releasing one of their most ambitious sets yet. Aetherdrft, set code DFT, continues Magic's trend of dressing everyone up in the same goofy clothes and hats all bought from the same store.

But this time the setting truly matches the outfits as the goggles and suits are all needed for the multiplanar death race known as the Avishkar Grand Prix!

This death race (its only a death race if you die) sees us travel across Avishkar (Formerly Kaladesh) Amonkhet and Muraganda, a first for a set not about a war.

Racing across these planes are ten teams, each representing the 2-color pairs we all know and love.

Now, because we're going through soo many locals as well as a Ravnica-sized set worth of factions, we're going to be introduced to more than a couple mechanics this time around.

So lets strap in and take a look at all of the special abilities we'll be seeing.

START YOUR ENGINES!!!!

No good race has ever involved drives going anything less than Max speed! Which means we need to start our collective engines if we want to win this race.

Start your engines! is similar to the day-night mechanic from Innistrad, but don't worry, it won't involve every player needing to keep track of something soo tedious.

So to start (your engines) you play a card with Start your engines! and you pull out a reminder card to help you keep track of your speed.

You start at speed 1 no matter what and you increase in speed when an opponent loses life on your turn. Increasing your speed only happens once on your turn with a Maximum speed of 4.

So lets analyze this. We automatically start at speed 1 as soon as a Start your engines! card enters (the battlefield).

We have a maximum speed of four and we can only increase our speed once a turn no matter how much damage we do.

The ability cannot be responded to, so once that card lands it's looking for the next time your foes change their life totals.

With that in mind, we can see the fastest we can reach max speed (more on that latter) is in three turns if we cause life lose the turn we start counting.

"I SAID START"

We can cause life loss any number of ways, most often through combat damage cards with evasion or trample will almost always guarantee a speed boost.

Cards with triggered abilities on attack work just as well, but will still only increase your speed once regardless if the attack connects or not.

Cards that punish your opponents for taking actions on your turn work twice as well now. Pay a ward coast or take my combat damage, the boost god cares not!

The fact that Start your engines! is not a respond-able ability means that your opps who were leaving their fetchland cracking for your turn will net you a free speed.

There has yet to be a card that effects your speed, so nothing short of "set your speed to 0" will stop your climb to Max speed. Speaking of...

It would be wild if this guy won huh?

Max speed

Max speed gives you some pay off for breaking the Speedforce! Max speed abilities are active only if you are at speed 4 and nothing before.

This is not a triggered nor activated ability unless it's tied to one. You get to speed 4 and boom, you just get access to these abilities, much like Ascend from the original Ixalan.

Max speed abilities come in a couple different sizes from activated abilities or passive ones that are usually attached to a card that gives some sort of value up front, and then much better value later on.

While some cards are also just only good if you have the speed to unlock them, leaving you as a player with a ton of options to weigh if having to wait no less than three turns is worth it for these abilities.

The best part, however, is that you will always be at speed 4 once you reach it, even if there is no Max speed or Start your engines! card on the field, so you can stop counting once you reach it.

Exhaust

"I AM SPEED" - this guy, probably

Exhaust

You see that red button? Don't press it, NEVER PRESS THE RED BUTT- oh, jeez, ok, well... now we're exhausted!

Much like in the movies, once you hit that red button, your car/space ship actives its booster engines and moves soo fast that things break off.

Things change and can never go back to normal... until you get a new car of course! This is the vibe for the new Exhaust mechanic from Aetherdrift.

You activate an Exhaust ability just like any other activated ability in the game. You pay the cost, put the ability on the stack or whatever, resolve it and boom you're done.

Like Done Done; because now you can never use that ability again for the rest of the game with that card. Exhaust activates once and as long as that card stays on the battlefield, you won't get access to it ever again.

Unless?

This mechanic reminds me a lot of exert, a returning sub mechanic from Amonkhet where you basically keep a creature tapped for an additional turn in trade for a powerful ability. The only difference is that this lasts the whole game, not just the turn.

The best way fans have stated as a way to get around this is to more or less flicker, bounce or in some way get the exhausted card off of the field for a second and then back into play.

Once you do that, since the card is now a new object, aka its not technically the same card that was once there, you are free to use its Exhaust ability again!

Typical Magic players, the moment they try to give us just one limitation on a card everyone just wants to break through it.

Yet that is just the name of the game, and honestly I'm pretty sure Wizards knew that going into this.

All in all exhausted cards are a decent trick to try and make work, and even through the 'fake' limitation might have been broken through immediately, we still get to experience what looks like a character's ultimate move that leaves them winded afterward.

It will be fun to learn about more exhaust cards and it's interesting to see that there's a place for them to be pretty powerful since you're only going to use the ability once in most Standard cases. Unless you're specifically building a deck around the flicker mechanic.

At least he can only use this once right?...right?

Vehicles and Mounts, Mounts and Vehicles

This card is peak actually

Vehicles and Mounts are back from Kaladesh (the set) and Outlaws of Thunder Junction respectively and they have never been more iconic than here in Aetherdrift.

The crews in this race need some way to get around and they are bringing all of their custom transportation options to this Grand Prix.

With Vehicles, you'll notice that it has the same stats as a creature, a power and toughness and all that. Yet once it reaches the battlefield, it's just an artifact, heck, even when it was a card in your hand it was just an artifact.

These artifacts typically have abilities, many a call back to creatures from Magic's past, that they've stuck onto the side of these cars and ships.

In order to turn these cards into creatures however you just need to crew them, which you do by tapping any number of creatures, add their combined power, and compare it to the crew cost written on the card.

If you have equal to or more power, the artifact becomes an artifact creature and now that power and toughness actually means something.

You can activate the crew ability at any time and on any turn, which has some wide reaching effects from instant blockers that get to dodge early turn sorcery speed removal.

Or simply just needing something to tap (and later untap on your turn) your creatures to. So Kona and Rip, Spawn hunter will both absolutely love this set as will King Macar.

Vehicles follow all of the same rules as creatures when they become them, so be sure not to turn your mana-producing Vehicle into a creature on first cast and then expect to be able to tap for mana. Summoning sickness, stun counters, health hitting zero, etc. all will suddenly lead to a bad misplay.

It is also very worth noting that if a Vehicle gets to copy a creature, say with an ability to untap itself if you place a -1/-1 counter on itself, untap it.

You would be able to add infinite -1/-1 counters to the Vehicle because its power and toughness only matter when it is a creature. So combo off to your heart's content.

"Take that, Green"

Saddle and Mounts work very similarly to vehicles but were made after all the 'flaws' with vehicles were well documented.

Meaning they have stripped down the fun rather significantly. No tapping at instant speed and only on your turns is a bit of a bummer however there is one thing that Mounts have over vehicles and that is the fact that they are always a creature from the start.

Now there is no pesky crew cost when you want to swing out with your Mount!

The only thing the Mount wants to do is to rustle up some someone to saddle it so that it can attack with enhanced attack, usually in the form of an automatic "on attack" trigger. These triggers don't care what the card was saddled by, just that it was saddled.

Nothing bad happens to the neither the saddler nor the crew-er regardless of what happens to their Mounts and vehicles if they are destroyed. Perhaps they all come with really cool airbags?

You wouldn't hurt these lil guys would you?

Cycling

"Roarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr"

The final mechanic in the set is cycling, which is a returning mechanic that will probably become evergreen at some point!

This is an activated ability on a card in your hand and only your hand. You pay the cost of the cycle and then you discard the card and draw a card from the top of you deck. It's that simple!

Part of the cost to cycle is to discard the card, so your opponent cannot respond to your activation by making you get rid of that card before you discard it somehow, they can only do something before you draw the card itself.

There are also many cards in magic that trigger when you discard or even specifically cycle a card which we will certainly see some of the cards in this set.

You might even find some cycling cards have triggered abilities that activate when you cycle the very card, usually giving a lesser version of the card's regular casted ability.

This gives you added value to picking the right time and place to Cycle instead of cast that only the greatest of Magic players know how to Maximize, which is why it's one of their most beloved mechanics!

With that we have reached the end of the main mechanics in the set. Honestly, it's refreshing to see some returning mechanics that could use more design love, especially Mount and Saddle.

Adding a new side mission to the game of reaching, or attempting to prevent, maximum speed is always a novel concept and this time I don't think it will lead to nearly the same eye-rolling frustration that Initiative or Day and Night brings.

What are your favorite Aetherdrift mechanics? And how did you fare in the Avishkar death race?