Everything Revealed In Magic: The Gathering's Wilds Of Eldraine Debut

Quick Links

• Story

• Mechanics

• Art Treatments

• Enchanting Tales

• Commander Decks

In 2019, Magic: The Gathering’s Throne of Eldraine broke new ground. The game had just moved on from its latest multi-planar threat in the War of the Spark, and decided the perfect palate-cleanser was the charming world of Eldraine. Inspired by fairy tales and Arthurian legend, it was the perfect way to unwind after a year of very story-heavy event sets, and though its power level is infamously far too high, it’s often fondly remembered for the whimsy it brought to the table.

RELATED: Everything Revealed For 2024 At Magic: The Gathering's Gen Con 2023 Panel

Just four years after Eldraine debuted, we’re headed back there in the latest set, Wilds of Eldraine. It’s also simultaneously trying to cool off after the Phyrexian invasion, while also setting up for the next multi-year arc that will run until 2026. With Food, bargaining, a new enchantment token, and 10 flavourful draft archetypes to play with, will our return to Eldraine be a fairy tale? Here’s everything revealed in the set’s debut event.

Story

As mentioned, Wilds of Eldraine picks up after Phyrexia’s invasion of the multiverse was repelled in March of the Machine. The old king and queen of Eldraine are dead, and most of the plane has fallen into a deep sleep.

The Wicked Slumber spreads throughout the world, leading new character Kellen on a quest to find the source of it, put an end to the curse, and also discover who his father really is. Meanwhile, former planeswalkers Will and Rowan Kenrith, the children of the old king, are at odds on how to rebuild Eldraine. While Will wants to go about it diplomatically, Rowan clashes with her brother in her pursuit of power to save Eldraine by force.

The set also sets up some of what we’ll be seeing in the next year. Though not directly in the set, Oko plays a huge part in its story, and we already know we’ll be seeing him in Outlaws Of Thunder Junction early next year. Ashiok also makes an appearance, putting their nightmare-bending powers to good use on the sleeping citizens of Eldraine.

You can read the full story for Wilds of Eldraine on the official MTG site.

Mechanics

Throne of Eldraine was a weird set. It had some all-timer mechanics like Adventures and Food tokens, but then it also introduced the since all-but-abandoned adamant keyword. Fortunately, Wilds is leaning more into what worked with Eldraine, and fully abandoning the forced mono-colour theme.

Returning Mechanic: Adventures

The first returning mechanic from Throne of Eldraine are Adventures. Adventures are cards that have two spells on them: you can cast the Adventure spell first, then put the card into exile, before casting the second bit of it from exile for its regular casting cost.

Adventures were a massive success, and have since returned in sets like Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate. Wilds of Eldraine is shaking things up by having multi-coloured Adventures, which should encourage you to splash into more colours when playing limited.

We’re also seeing Adventures on legendary creatures for the very first time. This adds a really interesting element to the Commander format in particular, as the only other instant or sorcery we’ve seen in the command zone before is Awaken the Blood Avatar, the back face of Strixhaven’s Extus, Oriq Overlord.

Returning Mechanic: Food

It’s funny to imagine there was an MTG before Food tokens became so ubiquitous, but it was actually Throne of Eldraine that introduced them. Joining the likes of Treasure and Clue tokens, Food can be sacrificed to gain an extra bit of life.

Wilds of Eldraine is hoping to take Food tokens further, and offer up different ways to use them aside from just gaining life. We’ll also be seeing more nontoken Food creatures, with Syr Ginger and Tough Cookie already revealed.

Considering we just saw Food be a major theme of Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth, maybe Wilds of Eldraine’s new additions will help power up those Hobbit decks even further?

New Mechanic: Bargain

One way to use all those Food tokens is with the first new mechanic of Wilds of Eldraine, bargain. Bargain is a variation on the tried-and-tested kicker, allowing you to pay an additional cost for a bigger effect.

Bargain’s cost is the same every time: you can sacrifice an artifact, enchantment, or token. If you do, you’ve ‘bargained’ the spell, and it’ll pack an extra punch. Then again, Beseech the Mirror allows you to search your deck for a card with mana value four or less (like Sheoldred, The Apocalypse) and cast it for free if you bargained, so maybe "an extra punch" is slightly underselling how powerful this mechanic can be.

It’s not even a difficult cost to pay, thanks to how prevalent Food, Roles, and other tokens are in Wilds of Eldraine. Expect some cards with bargain to become big parts of the next three years of Standard.

New Mechanic: Roles

Enchantment decks are going to love the new Role tokens. The first new enchantment tokens since Kaldheim’s Shards, Roles are preset Aura tokens that can enchant not just your creatures, but also your opponents’.

You can only put one Role on a creature. If you try to put another on, the original will go to your graveyard (and then be removed from the game, like all other tokens). However, multiple players can put Roles on the same creature, which could introduce some interesting plays.

Don’t let the upside-down tokens fool you, this isn’t a flip mechanic like we saw in the original Kamigawa sets. It is merely a way to fit more than one Role on a token card, as you’ll likely be putting lots of them on creatures in a go-wide strategy, or passing the negative Roles around the table.

New Mechanic: Celebration

The final core mechanic of Wilds of Eldraine is an ability word that counts how many permanents enter the battlefield under your control in a turn. For instance, Ash, Party Crasher will get a +1/+1 counter on it whenever it attacks, but only if you’ve put two permanents down this turn.

It sounds like an extra hoop to jump through, but with how easy it is to get permanents into play in this set, it could be a limited all-star. Drop a Role and a Food in one turn, and you’re ready for to party.

Art Treatments

It wouldn’t be a modern Magic: The Gathering set without lots of different alternate art styles to collect.

The first are full-art lands, which can be found in any booster pack. Inspired by storybooks, they have an almost shadow puppet theatre-y look to them, with strong sillohuettes and layered textures that make them some of the most visually striking lands we’ve had in a while.

Wilds is also bringing back Throne of Eldraine’s art noueveau-style storybook frames for cards with Adventure. So far, the only one of these we’ve seen in full is Cruel Somnophage.

But we were also treated to the art for Virtue of Knowledge, a new blue enter-trigger-doubler like Panharmonicon that is sure to be one of the big pulls in this set, and Decadent Dragon, which shows off a more modern storybook style reminiscent of Quentin Blake, which is a really nice development for the whimsy of Eldraine.

Enchanting Tales

Revealed back at the MagicCon Barcelona preview panel, the Enchanting Tales bonus sheet is a mini set of 63 reprints of powerful and popular enchantments from Magic’s history.

Every booster pack (Draft, Set, and Collector) will include at least one Enchanting Tales reprint, and they’ll be legal in Wilds’ limited and draft format. However, much like Strixhaven’s Mystical Archive, the Brother’s War’s Retro Frame Artifacts, and March of the Machine’s Multiverse Legends, they won’t be legal in Standard unless the card already was.

We’ve only seen a handful of these so far, but with cards like Doubling Season, Smothering Tithe, and Rhystic Study up for grabs, it’s going to make Wilds of Eldraine’s limited formats a much more powerful place. There are even 20 exclusive Japanese alt-arts, found in Japanese packs and Collector boosters – my personal favourite is the Smothering Tithe, which features a lady doing the classic Ojou-sama laugh we all make when playing a Tithe.

Commander Decks

Wilds of Eldraine is only coming with two preconstructed Commander decks – the first set this year to do so since Phyrexia: All Will Be One back in February.

The first deck is the green/white Virtue and Valor. Playing heavily into Wilds’ new Role tokens, it’s the midpoint between an Enchantress and a Go-Wide deck led by Ellivere of the Wild Court. She can make Virtuous Role tokens that scale the more enchantments you control, which is terrifying, and even helps refill your hand just by dealing damage.

The second deck is a bit less set-centric, and is instead a good ol’ fashioned Typal deck. As the name suggests, Fae Dominion is focused on the blue/black Faeries of Eldraine. Getting Faeries into play and killing them off for profit are the aim of the game with this deck’s commander, Tegwyll, Duke of Splendor. The deck even includes a new version of go-to Faerie commander Alela, with Alela, Cunning Conqueror making losing your Faeries not all that bad thanks to lots of lovely card draw.

Each deck comes in a new style of packaging that’s debuting in the set. They do away with a lot of the cardboard waste older Commander decks had, and no longer have that unnecessary plastic window to see the face commander.

NEXT: TCG Release Dates 2023