I began covering Magic: The Gathering previews for their various expansion sets all the way back in 2019 My first officially-covered set was Throne of Eldraine, so you can absolutely imagine how it feels to be going back at last. Wizards of the Coast has officially begun the preview season for Wilds of Eldraine, their return to the fantasy world bearing the same name. And with that, of course we will look over what has been shown so far!
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What’s New For Magic: The Gathering In Wilds Of Eldraine
Magic: The Gathering‘s story has received some new plot devices. For starters, the Phyrexian War has finally ended, with all other planes of existence coming out on top. However, this is not without severe repercussions for many of those planes, Eldraine included. You see, in order to shield the plane from the Phyrexian corruption, a curse was placed on Eldraine causing everyone there to sleep endlessly. Known as the “Wicked Slumber”, it continues to linger on Eldraine, afflicting many of its inhabitants.
Regarding the effects of the Wicked Slumber in the cards, there isn’t much offered just yet, but DailyMTG has been doling out stories from the setting for about a week now. Nevertheless, there are plenty of cards we can show you from the previews given:
While witches vie for control of the plane. However, it is worth noting that the scions of the Kenrith royal bloodline (all but deceased), the de-sparked twin Planeswalkers Will and Rowan, have their own issues to sort out.
Meanwhile, in terms of the game’s mechanics, we are treated with new enchantment tokens of various roles, quite literally:
Roles are most certainly always Auras, meaning they are functionally most useful with something to attach to. Furthermore, they’re always tokens, meaning they’ll be just as useful as other enchantments or artifacts for the purposes of Bargain:
Bargain is effectively an optional additional cost to cast a spell. When you sacrifice a permanent as part of the bargain ability, you will get additional benefits to the spell. It works similarly to Kicker in that manner.
So, with the new things out of the way, here are some returning mechanics and other such things for Wilds of Eldraine!
Magic: The Gathering‘s Returning Mechanics For Wilds
The two arguably most exciting returning mechanics in this Magic: The Gathering set are Food tokens and Adventure! We will not put much pretense to these mechanics, and rather, will opt to just show you some of the cooler cards we’ve seen:
Additionally, we will also see a Mystical Archive-style slot in packs specifically for select enchantment cards, like these:
Finally, one of the last returning concepts to come back to Magic: The Gathering packs is the concept of draft archetypes. In Wilds of Eldraine, each two-color draft archetype will center slightly around a traditional fairy tale reimagined by the set’s designers.
As for why a Vedalken is seen in Eldraine, the storyline is promised to unfold further and explain this sort of phenomenon in more depth than we could at this time! Nevertheless, we have one more set of things to show you.
Wilds of Eldraine Commander Face Cards
With the release of Wilds of Eldraine, there will be two preconstructed Commander decks released as well. One is a blue-black Faerie Typal deck, and the other is a green-white deck centered around buffing creatures. Without further ado, here are each of the face commanders as well as their alternates!
Things Are Getting Wilds For Magic: The Gathering
With so many interesting cards designed for the game, it’s a wonder that we will see so many more over the next three foreseeable years of the game’s future! But for now, we are excited for Wilds of Eldraine as the next set to come out for Magic: The Gathering. Are you excited as well?
