Wilds of Eldraine is right around the corner, with spoiler season kicking off this August 15, we have a few hints as to what to expect from the set.
Coming directly from Mark Rosewater, head game designer for Magic: The Gathering, these vague hints give players a sneak peek into some new and returning card types and mechanics in the set. While some of the tidbits Rosewater gives are a little too vague to nail down, we can take some educated guesses based on the history of Eldraine and Magic as a whole, and the numerous fairy tales that Eldraine draws inspiration from.
These guesses are just that, guesses, and I could be wildly off base with what is in the actual set, but that’s part of the fun!
New Token Type
Throne of Eldraine introduced us to Food tokens, which have since become a fun staple in several Magic sets. Rosewater notes this new token type is “done as a cohesive theme,” which doesn’t really give us much to work on.
It’s possible we get a Battle token here, as we’ve already seen tokens of every other card type in the game. More likely than not, there’s a new mechanic which introduces a special type of token, like Embalm or even Living Weapon—some sort of ability that brings a new token into play.
Adventures on New Card Types
It seems like a natural evolution of the mechanic since adventures only appeared on creatures in Throne of Eldraine and were introduced to Artifacts in Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate. We could easily see Enchantments with Adventure or even Instants and Sorceries with a bonus Adventure.
It would have been interesting to see a Planeswalker with Adventure, though that would probably be way too good. We’ve already seen Ashiok’s card from Wilds of Eldraine, but since Wizards of the Coast has moved to just one Planeswalker per set, we can rule that card type out.
An Alpha Creature Type is Big In Draft
One creature type from Magic’s first set, Limited Edition Alpha, is getting a draft archetype. A quick look at all the creatures from the set brings a couple of creature types to mind. Knights are an easy first pick, given the Arthurian take on the set.
Dwarves and Elves are possible too, since Eldraine has both living on the plane. Unicorns might be an interesting creature type to expand on and would fit into the fairy tale theme of the set. Faeries were a prominent creature type in Throne of Eldraine and we’ve already seen on legendary Faerie creature Talion, the Kindly Lord.
4-for-1 Lobotomies
While not the most common type of card in Magic, cards with Lobotomy effects tend to find their way into the sideboards of plenty of decks throughout Magic’s history. A lobotomy effect generally targets a card in a player’s hand, library, or graveyard, and removes all copies of that card from the player’s deck.
Surgical Extraction is one of the best-known examples, seeing heavy play given its potentially zero mana cost. These cards are generally black or blue-black, but occasionally pop up in green and rarely in white and red.
Bundles of Batches
This is a behind the scene term that R&D will use to describe taking in-game concepts and bundling them together into one word. For example, Historic cards are batched cards, using one term to describe three concepts (artifacts, the legendary supertype, and Sagas.)
There are only a few examples of batching in the game, with Party and Modified being the other two. It was previously revealed that for Throne of Eldraine, R&D considered using the term Mystical to collect artifacts, enchantments, and Faeries. Since Rosewater describes this new mechanic as that “batches together three items that have been in the game since Alpha but never batched before,” Mystical still has a good chance of being included.
Doubling ETB Effects
Rosewater dropped a few direct rules texts that will appear on cards, including a now familiar theme. The card text reads, “If a permanent entering the battlefield causes a triggered ability of a permanent you control to trigger, that ability triggers an additional time.”
These doubling effects have popped up on quite a few cards now, most recently with Gandalf the White and Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines. Whether or not there will be more text to this card is yet to be revealed, it may have a restriction like Gandalf’s or shut down your opponents like Elesh Norn’s.
Countin’ Graveyards
Another interesting direct rules text provided by Rosewater cares about how many Instant, Sorcery, or Adventure cards you have in the graveyard. The card’s text reads; “X is 2 plus the number of cards in your graveyard that are instant cards, sorcery cards, and/or have an Adventure.”
What you’re doing with whatever X + 2 is we don’t know, it could be to draw cards equal to that value, or even create tokens equal to that number. But this feels like a solid Izzet rare based on just that text alone.
Triple the Mana, Triple the Threat
A potentially dangerous card text is coming in Wilds of Eldraine—a card that “produces three times as much of that mana instead.” The last time we saw a card that produces three times the amount of mana, it was on Nyxbloom Ancient. It is highly unlikely we would see this enchantment creature pop up on Eldraine since it has close ties to Theros.
Since the first part of the rules text is cut off, its more likely that the card this text will belong to will be an aura like Wolfwillow Haven, which enchants a land and then adds more mana when the land it tapped.
Fairy Tale Creatures Coming to Life
10 creature types were revealed from Wilds of Eldraine, seven regular creatures and three legendary ones. Of the creatures we have, Mouse, Rabbit Unicorn, Faerie Shapeshifter, Elf Fox Knight, Giant Archer, Plant Wurm, and Elemental Raccoon. It is interesting to note that the Elf Fox Knight might be a take on Wildborn Preserver. This card depicts an Elf riding a massive Fox as a mount but was only given the Elf creature type (and Archer I suppose). This might show that Wizards is open to combining creature types in upcoming sets, much like how team-up cards in March of the Machine would depict different creature types on one card.
The legendary cards from the set are Rat Noble, Vedalken Scout, and Human Warlock Bard. We recently got some artwork that depicts a Vedalken climbing a massive beanstalk with what appears to be Little Red Riding Hood.
Confirmed Card Names
Wrapping up the blog are ten card names that are definitely going to be in the set. There’s no other information about these cards, but some of them give some hints as to what to expect.
- Candy Grapple
- Charming Scoundrel
- Food Fight
- Protective Parents
- Scream Puff
- Stroke of Midnight
- A Tale for the Ages
- Three Blind Mice
- Three Bowls of Porridge
- Up the Beanstalk
Three Blind Mice is an obvious reference to, well, the nursery rhyme Three Blind Mice. Three Bowls of Porridge is a cute reference to Flaxen Intruder // Welcome Home, and hopefully, those three bears survived this time. And Food Fight likely will have to deal with creating Food tokens and letting creatures fight it out.
Ryan Hay (he/him) has been writing about Magic: The Gathering and video games for years, and loves absolutely terrible games. Send him your bad game takes over on Twitter where he won’t stop talking about Lord of the Rings.