The Ultimate Guide to Aetherdrift Draft

Sab-Sunen, Luxa Embodied | Illustration by Valera Lutfullina

Greetings planeswalkers! We’ve had about a solid week to draft Aetherdrift now, and there’s another Arena Direct (and an Arena Open) fast approaching. It’s high time for my Aetherdrift Ultimate Draft Guide, which will hopefully lead you to success.

This is a sequel to the earlier Sealed Guide, so go ahead and read that if you want max EV (though you should still find this plenty useful either way).

Introduction

Chandra, Spark Hunter | Illustration by Devin Elle Kurtz

I’m going to start this DFT Draft guide with a controversial take: I do not particularly like this set for Limited. I don’t mean to hate or be a downer (and maybe it’s just the endless Pro Tour prep blurring together), but this seems to be an MTG set with some real problems. Here’s a list I’ll expand on later:

• Color balance is very bad
• Most common cards are bad
• Vehicles are (kind of) bad
• Miserable rares (lol @ Sab-Sunen, Luxa Embodied)
• Board stalls for days
• Flooding for days (reports of “good mana sinks” were a bit too optimistic)

And so on!

This is still very much a guide to the format. Personal distaste aside, I’ve still been winning enough to feel like I have a good handle on it. In fact, I just watched a friend get 2nd in a MTGO Top 8 Draft after taking my advice! Even flawed formats like this one can still be fun too, so long as you draft with the flaws in mind.

Mechanics Revisited

Let’s go over the basics again and see if I missed anything in the Sealed Guide.

Speed and “Start Your Engines!”

All the points I made about the speed mechanic held up pretty well. Generally, there are three kinds of speed cards.

There are cards that really reward you for getting max speed and struggle otherwise (Hazoret, Godseeker, Hour of Victory, Gas Guzzler, Risen Necroregent).

Then, there’s cards that are decent even if you don’t expect to max out consistently and that may set up other more dependent speed cards (the “Surveyor” cycle, Outpace Oblivion).

Finally, some cards are weak if you aren’t maxed out and aren’t all that rewarding if you are; you’ll mostly play cards like Walking Sarcophagus, Endrider Catalyzer, and Kickoff Celebrations if you have the good payoffs.

Generally speaking with speed, the best approach is not to dabble. Either commit to playing most/all of your speed cards, or just cut them entirely. UB Artifacts is the main exception, as it can easily support a couple Mutant Surveyors just off Pactdoll Terror triggers. Also, don’t forget to play your “Start Your Engines!” creature before (freely) attacking! I’ve seen too many people (myself included) play them during the second main phase, which is instinctive but incorrect sequencing.

Exhaust

GU is a really, really good archetype (second only to BG). That’s good news for the exhaust mechanic, and RG isn’t half bad either. There’s not much to say about this one that wasn’t covered, and most of the exhaust cards in the Temur spectrum are quite strong.

Cycling

Cycling has kind of underwhelmed in Aetherdrift. Obviously, UR cares about it quite a bit, but for other decks it’s felt like more of a footnote. I appreciate that it lets you keep more 2-landers though, as it always feels nice to get there by cycling a Trip Up.

Cycling doesn’t seem to have had any real effect on land counts in this format. Most people still play 16-17, as a handful of 2-mana cyclers doesn’t swing the reticule enough to cut a land. Another thing worth noting about cycling is the disparity between 1-/2-/3-costs:

• Anything with cycling for 1 mana represents peak convenience, though none of these costs are colorless. Still, these are the best cards to play for payoffs like Marauding Mako and Monument to Endurance.
• Two mana is cheap enough that cycling matters, but also expensive enough that you can’t really “freeroll” the effect. Skipping your 2-drop to cycle puts you a little behind, which is especially bad if your opponent starts their own engines.
• Three mana is obviously the most expensive. It’s better than nothing, but expensive enough that it’s almost exclusively a late game option.

Discarding a card to draw a card also inherently isn’t free. This form of cycling is too clunky to drop below 16 lands, but you’ll also likely flood out if you end up cycling several times. This is a frequent issue in UR, as you’ll often have six or more lands in your graveyard by the end of the game.

Set Overview

And now onto the main course! Here we’ll touch on some larger concepts and examine some of my earlier complaints in detail.

Green Is Overpowered

Plain and simple, really. We’ve all seen the data, so let’s not pretend it's normal that all three of the top commons show above are green cards, with three other excellent commons following close behind. Green is just an incredibly deep color at common, and it’s supporting half the table or more! This data lines up very well with my experiences prior to it being published, so suffice to say the dominance of green is no myth.

White Is Underpowered

Conversely, white is pretty weak in this set. The main issue is that its creatures are just tiny, though it has other issues (re: vehicles). Even with something like Lightshield Parry, you’ll struggle immensely to push through double blockers. White’s common removal spells are also quite poor at removing blockers, as its best common (Ride's End) is much better in a controlling list.

Ranking the Colors

With that in mind, here’s how I’d rank the colors:

1. Green
2. Black
3. Blue
4. Red
5. White

Green is obviously the best and deepest color, and it makes for a great midrange/control base. Black cards are only slightly behind, and they also have some of the format’s best answers to fat green creatures. Blue is a bit more dicey, but it has some strong commons (Flood the Engine, Keen Buccaneer, Bounce Off). Red has two great commons (Thunderhead Gunner and Lightning Strike), but the aggro plan often struggles vs green fat. Finally, white is the king of bad filler, with just a handful of exceptions.

Vehicles Can Be a Liability

While marketed as a “Vehicles Set,” Aetherdrift pulled a fast one on us by making vehicles kind of bad! That’s not to say there are no good vehicles in the set, but rather that you can’t just “play a bunch of vehicles” and expect to win games of Magic. Vehicles inherently have severe diminishing returns, and there aren’t enough Pilot tokens to mitigate this. I’ve also found most of the vehicle payoffs (other than Road Rage) to hardly be worth the effort of playing a bunch of bad vehicles.

Because of these diminishing returns, low quality vehicles are among the weakest cards in the format. Your deck will almost always have rare/uncommon vehicles that are better than common ones like Skybox Ferry, Spotcycle Scouter, Ripclaw Wrangler, etc. The exceptions to this rule are vehicles that aren’t actually vehicles; Midnight Mangler and Veloheart Bike aren’t great cards, but at least they’re doing something else for your deck.

One last point on vehicles is the badness of vehicles is likely why green is so successful. Green doesn’t need or have vehicles to the degree other decks do, and the vehicles everyone else is playing are creatures that require other creatures just to be smaller than Migrating Ketradon!

Traffic Jams

RACERS! ARE YOU READY? START YOUR EN—
Um…. Huh.
There’s a 6/6 reach dinosaur on the track.
The race is canceled.
You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.

-Ghirapur Grand Prix announcer, probably

Jokes aside, you should expect a lot of board stalls in this format. We’re talking natural decking levels of board stalls. It won’t always work out this way of course (I only had my opponent deck once), but games are often staring contests until somebody makes a decisive move. Usually that means having the necessary removal or bounce spell for the Migrating Ketradon, Hazard of the Dunes, or other fat green monster.

And yet you can’t ignore 2-drops either! Despite the stalliness, the early game is where advantages for later in the game are created. This is particularly relevant with the speed mechanic, which can punish stumbles like nothing else. The best decks tend to have enough early drops, bombs, and plenty of removal for your opponent’s threats. Speaking of….

Removal Is Vital

We’ve had formats like Murders at Karlov Manor where Murder was a mid card, but Spin Out is certainly not mid in this format! Other than the froggy Queen of Misery, almost everything you’d need dead dies to it. The same goes for Crash and Burn, though it’s a bit less efficient and misses a handful of gigantic green threats. Given how prone the format is to stalls, making sure you kill the right thing is vital. You can’t always be patient with removal, so it’s up to your board to hold things off while you save Spin Out for that crucial threat.

Archetypes Revisited

We’ve ranked the colors, now let’s rank the archetypes:

Tier 1 (Best Decks)

BG Midrange

GU Exhaust/Midrange

Tier 2 (Good Decks)

GW Mounts

RG Exhaust

UB Artifacts

BR Speed

Tier 3 (Decent Decks)

WB Speed

UR Discard

WU Artifacts

Tier 4 (Weakest Archetype)

RW Vehicles

The gaps between tiers isn’t huge, but crossing multiple tiers does represent a vast difference in quality. Your RW decks will have to work much harder than the average BG deck to succeed. It may still be correct to be RW in your given seat, as I’m not planning to refuse “4 Cloudspire Coordinator, 3 Cloudspire Skycycle” if they’re handed to me!

BG Midrange

This is the top tier deck, pretty much, and it defines Aetherdrift‘s Week 1. Green creatures plus black removal and the single best uncommon in the set (Thundering Broodwagon) gives BG game against everyone.

Thundering Broodwagon and Migrating Ketradon combo well with Back on Track, which is excellent in this deck.

How much you care about “graveyard stuff” varies from deck to deck. Broodheart Engine, Dredger's Insight, Molt Tender, and Pothole Mole are perfect enablers for Aatchik, Emerald Radian, but not every deck will care.

BG plays fundamental MTG; you play out your guys, make attacks when you can, save your removal for your opponent’s best threats, and generally win later on. You can also push advantages nicely though if they stumble, as big creatures attack well too!

GU Exhaust

GU is all about value. Its two signposts (Skyserpent Seeker and Rangers' Aetherhive) have built-in card advantage, as do many of its other cards. This deck tends to particularly excel in board stalls, as it has the best mana sinks in the format.

Rangers' Refueler is ridiculously good! It’s okay on its own, but it creates cascading advantages with other exhaust cards.

In terms of common exhaust creatures, I’d rank them this way: Stampeding Scurryfoot > Hazard of the Dunes > Keen Buccaneer > Skystreak Engineer > Camera Launcher. None of them are unplayable (not even Camera Launcher), so try to hit a critical mass of 6+ of them for your payoffs.

Interaction is important too, with Run Over, Flood the Engine, and Bounce Off generally being the best ones.

I haven’t splashed as much as I expected to in GU, as most of the cards you’d have to play for fixing (i.e. Veloheart Bike) are actively undesirable on their own.

GW Mounts

GW Mounts occupies an interesting spot as the most successful white deck. You can build it either how it's intended (i.e. aggressive with lots of guys and mount creatures), or mostly ignore the theme. This mostly happens if you’re base green and can't find another color, as Ride's End is an incredibly good white removal spell.

Vehicles are at an all-time low in this archetype, as the mount dynamic tends to take away creatures that would be crewing vehicles. Despite this, don't forget that all your mount payoffs say vehicle, too! You should still be happy to play good vehicles here (i.e. Voyager Glidecar, Earthrumbler, etc.), but weaker vehicles are even worse here than average.

This is the best deck for Daring Mechanic, though neither it nor Lotusguard Disciple have particularly impressed me.

The best reasons to care about mounts specifically are Caradora, Heart of Alacria, Lagorin, Soul of Alacria, and Veteran Beastrider. Veteran Beastrider is also just quietly kind of busted, and it’s among the best reasons to be this archetype!

UB Artifacts

UB Artifacts is an attrition strategy that is usually built around Pactdoll Terror and Haunt the Network. Having a common for one of its best payoffs cards has led to UB being generally superior to WU, which must rely on higher rarity cards for power level.

Outside of Pactdoll Terror and Haunt the Network, the most important cards are premium removal (Spin Out, Flood the Engine), card advantage (Stock Up, Hulldrifter, etc.), and then curve filler.

Removal is especially vital as Pactdoll Terror and similar cards will do a good job gumming up the ground.

UB's approach to speed will vary from deck to deck. This can sometimes be a good home for usually bad cards like Slick Imitator, as Pactdoll Terror is excellent for maxing out consistently.

Be careful with vehicle counts! It's tempting to play more as an artifact deck, but try to limit yourself to 3-5 based on creature count. The 3rd Hulldrifter should almost never make the deck, and the 2nd is questionable as well.

BR Speed

BR is the best archetype for the start your engines mechanic by a fair bit. It has a number of excellent multicolor payoffs for speed, plus multiple good ways to ensure you are running laps consistently.

This is of course the premier archetype for speed, and it prioritizes the Surveyor cycle, so BR prioritizes speed 2-drops and the like higher than other archetypes. But despite being the speed deck, I've only been able to get away with playing one copy of the “Raceway” land cycle. 8/8/1 is a fine mana base for BR, though you could also try playing two copies if you get a Bloodfell Caves or two. Just try not to go below eight primary color sources for consistency, as the colorless payoffs aren’t worth choking on your colors.

Pactdoll Terror is decent here, though it's not as premium as it is in UB or WB. Think of it as a 3/4 filler card that runs a lap or two, rather than a true build-around. There’ll be exceptions though if you have enough naturally good artifacts.

There's no treason and sacrifice to be had in this set, which is rare to see for BR.

RG Exhaust

RG takes a faster approach to the exhaust game, as you can see from Boom Scholar. Rather than leveraging exhaust to drown your opponent in card advantage, RG seeks to create meaningful tempo from the mechanic.

Stampeding Scurryfoot and Hazard of the Dunes really go off with cost reduction, and are among the best commons for RG.

You will usually be base green, as red cards generally lacks strong exhaust payoffs. There are a couple of very notable exceptions to this though (i.e., Boommobile) which are incredibly good!

Since RG likely loses board stalls to BG/GU decks (though not always of course), this is a great shell for a copy or two of Bestow Greatness or Pedal to the Metal.

RG usually won't care about speed much, though I'd be very happy to play Loxodon Surveyor if I did. That’ll mostly come down to having certain payoffs like Hazoret, Godseeker and Burnout Bashtronaut.

UR Cycling

If UR is open and the right uncommons are flowing, it can be incredibly powerful and a blast to play. Those are two big “ifs” though, and this is definitely an archetype that will rarely get there with just commons.

All UR's best payoffs work well as signals for the archetype. This isn't limited to just multicolor stuff, as Marauding Mako, Scrounging Skyray, and even Monument to Endurance play out like Izzet gold cards!

Hitting a critical mass of cycling/discard effects is important. An ideal spread for UR is as many payoffs as possible and some removal/bombs (3-6 copies), then you can pack the rest of the deck with cards that cycle/discard and some curve filler.

One issue with UR is that most of the cycling cards are kind of bad on their own, and cycling repeatedly often floods you out. You also can't adjust your land count downwards too much, as cycling is too expensive to go below 16 (and even that will often be pushing it). Instead, there's a common you can absolutely rely on for managing floods: Thunderhead Gunner! If you can get 2-3 copies of the 5-drop shark, you’re much freer to play a higher land count. It's a great card in general, but especially impressive in UR as it powers all your engines too!

Magmakin Artillerist is mostly filler, though I’ve burned someone out with two of them already. I'd be happy to play it in this deck, but I wouldn't consider it a premium card or a reason to be UR.

Even with shark synergies, UR tends to struggle against Migrating Ketradon. Try to save your Flood the Engine and Crash and Burn for it if you can. At 6 mana, it's fairly easy to see coming.

WB Speed

WB is a grindy archetype that has played out a little better than expected. While it’s definitely outclassed pound for pound by green decks, black removal goes a long way towards letting your small guys get the job done.

Speed is very important for WB, in most cases. It's not really an aggressive deck, but a good curve with cards like Wreckage Wickerfolk is essential for turning on payoffs later.

WB's signposts are somewhat mediocre compared to the competition, but this can be an advantage as they’ll often go later than their counterparts. Black is definitely the dominant color in this archetype, as removal is essential and white cards are generally lackluster. You can occasionally start white off Ride's End or strong rares though.

This is an exceptional deck for cards like Hellish Sideswipe, Engine Rat, and Grim Bauble, which gel perfectly with the sacrifice subtheme.

Some WB decks end up caring about artifacts a fair bit, as it sits in two artifact payoff colors. Pactdoll Terror is particularly excellent in such decks as both a speed card and an artifact payoff.

WU Artifacts

WU Artifacts is a cool deck with a really high ceiling, but quite a low floor as well.

If the lane for this archetype is open, you should be tabling Voyager Quickwelders and turboing out Voyage Homes. If it isn't, you'll often struggle to just have enough artifacts, let alone any payoffs for doing so beyond Gearseeker Serpent.

Payoffs first! The path to drafting WU often starts with generically good blue artifacts (i.e., Spikeshell Harrier, Rangers' Refueler, Possession Engine) into Voyage Home or Guidelight Pathmaker. I'd also consider the good white artifact cards (i.e. Voyager Quickwelder, Voyager Glidecar) to be direct signals for this archetype. Other decks can sometimes play your white artifact payoffs (mostly RW), but they rarely get as much out of them anyways.

Another way to get into this archetype is simply to be base blue, then get Ride's End without much competition from other colors.

In terms of cheap artifacts, Guidelight Optimizer is among the better 2-drops. There's a big dip in quality after that one at common, so prioritize it.

This is the best archetype for Broadcast Rambler, by a fair bit. A mix of it and Hulldrifter is preferred to just having one, though it’s often crowded out by stronger uncommons like Spikeshell Harrier.

The best WU decks tend to be 3-5 affinity payoffs with 3-5 removal spells, and literally everything else in the deck is an artifact or bomb rare.

RW Vehicles

Despite being marketed as “the Vehicles Set,” RW Vehicles is a sad tragedy of an archetype that largely doesn’t work. The main problem with the deck is that it can’t break past fat green blockers well, and the vehicle payoffs generally don’t merit putting a bunch of vehicles in your deck.

While I clearly believe that RW is the worst archetype (by a good amount), your table may also think so. If that's the case, you could find yourself wheeling Cloudspire Coordinators, Spire Mechcycles, and the like in Pack 1. If this is happening, heavily consider moving into RW, rather than fighting to be the sixth green drafter!

Speed’s importance here varies. Both colors have a fair number of speed cards, but black tends to have the best (non-rare) payoffs. I'd probably be happy to play Leonin Surveyor either way.

I'd rank the 2-drop commons as follows: Gilded Ghoda > Prowcatcher Specialist > Leonin Surveyor > Endrider Catalyzer > Walking Sarcophagus > Interface Ace. There's not much of a gap between Ghoda and Specialist, but the rest are a fair bit worse.

One of the reasons I like Gilded Ghoda so much here is that mounts work for the same payoffs as vehicles. This also makes RW the only archetype that might play Brightfield Glider, though if you're playing that card you probably see why RW is so bad!

As for the vehicles themselves, Broadcast Rambler tends to be the preferred curve topper in this deck. The other common vehicles are quite terrible though, so you'll be relying on getting passed the right uncommons/rares to be happy with your vehicles.

Tips for the Format

This section is mostly just thoughts on cards that don’t fit anywhere else. Hopefully you find some of it useful!

You can build a little toolbox for Guardian Sunmare! Lotusguard Disciple always merits a copy: You can tutor for it after you attack to keep Sunmare safe. Flood the Engine is also particularly strong to have with it.

Sab-Sunen, Luxa Embodied is an utterly disgusting rare, of course, and it’s almost unbeatable. I say almost because there are a handful of solutions to it (mostly in blue), so it's important to know your outs:

• Bounce Off
• Spectral Interference
• Flood the Engine
• Trip Up
• Possession Engine (extremely dirty if it lives!)
• Ride's End
• Syphon Fuel (you have only a one turn window to kill it, so good luck)
• Spectacular Pileup

Another card that can kind of answer Sab-Sunen, Luxa Embodied but requires some explaining is Stall Out. Though it's generally quite a low quality playable, Stall Out has a really clever interaction with Sab-Sunen's counter ability. If you add three counters to Sab-Sunen while it’s already at an odd number of counters (i.e. it has Divination’d at least once), then it’ll be stunned for the full duration while never drawing cards! It's not an ideal answer to the Frog God (I won the game my opponent did this in), but desperate times call for desperate measures!

Speaking of answering bombs, you can get a lot of mileage from sideboarding in this Best-of-3 matches. Gastal Blockbuster, Broken Wings, Collision Course, and the like often move in and out of your 40 based on what your opponent's threats are. Gastal Blockbuster often sacrifices itself, as there aren't many Nesting Bot style creatures around for it. You should only play the card if you’re happy with a split card that’s half sorcery Shatter, half vanilla 3/2. I'll start one sometimes in Bo1, but I enjoy drafting them in Bo3 more.

A neat interaction with Gastal Blockbuster pairs it with Coalstoke Gearhulk. Sacrifice it to itself earlier, then play the Gearhulk and get it back for a second Shatter!

If your opponent chooses a target with Explosive Getaway, you can fizzle the entire sweeper with a timely Bounce Off.

Skyseer's Chariot should name common exhaust creatures or vehicles in the blind. Stampeding Scurryfoot is good to name against green decks. If you’re playing in a pod and are absolutely next level, you could try remembering the cards you passed and naming it based on those!

Riverchurn Monument is a very strong rare in this format, thanks to all the board stalls. Sometimes you’ll just want to run it out early and let it do its thing, but there’s a case for holding it if you draw it later. That keeps it safe from Gastal Blockbuster and lets you safely exhaust it ( is required).

Cryptcaller Chariot has underwhelmed a bit. I thought it would be a strong rare, but in practice black decks can barely make Zombies from it, and it runs into vehicle bloat. It’s certainly playable, but not premium.

Same goes for Lifecraft Engine, which has to be my pick for the greatest underperformer in the set. If you’re mostly one type and have lots of 2/x creatures, you should still run it, but I’ve cut it often even after picking it early.

The Raceway cycle is pretty unimportant, even for speed decks. They can occasionally let you pick up speed faster, but you should never prioritize them as Limited mana bases can only handle one colorless land.

What to Splash

This varies from deck to deck and draft to draft, but here are some single-pipped cards that are worth splashing.

Bombs

• Sab-Sunen, Luxa Embodied
• Loot, the Pathfinder (GU/UR/RG are all fine)
• Debris Beetle
• Howlsquad Heavy
• Draconautics Engineer
• Perilous Snare
• Sita Varma, Masked Racer (must be base G, as activation is GG)
• Veteran Beastrider
• Haunt the Network
• Thopter Fabricator (if you can activate it consistently)
• Chandra, Spark Hunter
• Far Fortune, End Boss
• Aatchik, Emerald Radian (must be base B)

Removal/Other Cards

• Stock Up
• Voyage Home
• Spikeshell Harrier
• Rangers' Refueler
• Ride's End
• Flood the Engine
• Crash and Burn
• Run Over

How to Splash

This is the tricky part, as Aetherdrift isn’t the friendliest set for splashing in Limited. Molt Tender is by far the best card for doing so, but it’s a contested uncommon. The common dual lands and Night Market are good, but it’s difficult to count on getting the right duals.

Veloheart Bike and Starting Column are mediocre, but acceptable if the splash merits them.

Bike has decent synergy with Run Over, while Starting Column works best in decks that at least somewhat care about speed. Both are artifacts, which can make cards like Voyage Home and Haunt the Network practical splashes too.

Other than those, you have scant few options for splashing, so don’t expect to activate Marshals' Pathcruiser often. This is chiefly a 2-color format, so I’d reserve splashing almost entirely for the cards I’ve mentioned.

Victory Lap

Elvish Refueler | Illustration by Carly Milligan

And with that, we have finally crossed the finish line! Our Aetherdrift guide cycle is now complete, so I hope that you found these all highly informative, useful, and even enjoyable to read.

Which archetypes have you been enjoying in Aetherdrift Draft formats? Which cards have you been having the most success with, and which ones have been the duds? Let me know in the comments below or over on the Draftsim Discord.

Until next time, may your P1P1 always be Sab-Sunen, Luxa Embodied.

I’ll see you in Chicago if you’re there!