Aetherdrift did not impress me during previews. There was something about this vehicle-heavy race-themed set that just did not connect with me. The story behind it and the new mechanics, Start Your Engines and Exhaust, did not impress me either. But, a pre-release is a pre-release and the best way to discover a new set. I hoped that my first impressions would be proven wrong.

Unusually, Noah could not make the pre-release as he was at a robotics competition all day. So, Christian and I were the only ones to head off (in fact, Noah left the house earlier).

Cracking my six packs revealed a pool that left me wondering what kind of deck I would build. A first glance revealed few clear bombs, aside from The Speed Demon. All my colours were low on creatures, especially, red and blue. Green was strong on creatures but none were absolute or even near bombs. With the heavy reliance on Vehicles and Mounts, a good pool of creatures was key in my mind. I did pull two Verges so not all was lost as I’m a firm believer that good mana is at the heart of all decks. Not that you’d believe that when I decided to go with a 16 land deck.

I ended up with an Orzhov deck (seems to be my colour pair these days) built around The Speed Demon, two Streaking Oilgorgers and flyers like Swiftwing Assailant. There was plenty of removal to hopefully keep me in the game while I built my board.

My first match of the day was against a Simic deck piloted by an actual content creator (Regular_Zach on Twitch if you’re interested). In our first game, I got to see how Exhaust could work. It proved to be a stronger mechanic than I expected, especially as it kept bringing back the pesky Afterburner Expert.

I also found my deck slow to get started (I had a feeling when I built it) and quickly went down in two games. In the second game, I got to hit Max Speed but it was too late to help me deal with a fierce opponent.

My second game was against an old neighbourhood friend of mine. I discovered in our first game that The Last Ride can be a pretty potent threat. But to be, it does need a bit of strategy and willingness to take some risks. Unfortunately, my friend misplayed it causing it to die when it became crewed. It was only upon rereading the card the next turn that we realized that rather than hitting me for 13, it should have died. We agreed to play on and that I would take the win. The match was a long drawn out but fun affair that left us with little time for our next game.

Back to The Last Ride for a moment. For a single , you get a 13/13 legendary artifact vehicle. The downside is that it will die if you crew it when your life is greater than 12. But you can still play it before that and use it for card draw while reducing your life to below 13. The lower your life, the bigger the threat. It really becomes a potent foe when your life is low. If you play with your life as a resource, it can be quite the threat but beware as it also dies easily to removal.

Unfortunately, I lost the second game in extra time and we settled for the draw.

My third game was simply ugly. In both matches, I was quickly overrun by a Boros deck built around cheap mana creatures and Start Your Engines. At Max Speed, those little creatures suddenly became bigger threats. In my first game, I could only manage two lands and that hampered my progress and quickly sealed my fate. In the second, I had the lands but my deck’s slow speed simply could not deal with the aggro tempo.

While I ended at 0-1-2 and near the bottom of the standings, Christian found his groove and went an impressive 3-0, losing none of his games! And he managed that with a Boros deck (a combination that he does not play very often).

As for Noah and his robotics competition, his team was eliminated in the first tournament round after clawing back with three straight wins after two losses in the preliminaries.

Next up for us will be the Tarkir: Dragonstorm pre-release. I’m definitely looking forward to this one.

Note: The feature image is again generated by AI.