Spoiler season for March of the Machines has begun and with it comes brand new mechanics to Magic the Gathering. This set brings in some new mechanics, a new card type, and a fun twist on some the notable and fan favorite characters from the world of Magic and brings some of them together. Now I won’t be going over every single new card spoiled but, I am going to make sure you are filled in on what is new coming with March of the Machines.
“Tag-Team” Cards
With March of the Machines, we are seeing Wizards of the Coast take characters from their own respective sets and combine them together to make a new card that plays off their original card. For example, we have Errant and Giada. Now from the original cards we have Flash from Errant, Street Artist and we have Flying from Giada, Font of Hope. Both of these cards are from Streets of New Capenna. The abilities with Errant and Giada are that they let you look at the top of your library at any time and let you cast spells with flash or flying from the top of your library. I feel this is going to be more of a fun Commander versus something in Standard or the other 60 card formats but, it is possible someone out there can find a way to break this really fun looking card.
Another example to show that I feel will see some play in Standard is Zimone and Dina. This card is based off of Zimone, Quandrix Prodigy and Dina, Soul Steeper from the Strixhaven set. This card looks beyond fun that takes similar properties from the original cards and making this a pretty powerful card. To start, it’s a 3/4 for 3 mana giving us immediate value with the increased toughness and decent power. What is nice about this card is that for the cost of sacrificing a creature, you get to draw a card, put a land card from your hand into the battlefield tapped and if you control eight or more lands, you can repeat that process again. Not to mention, once you draw your second card that turn, you’re draining your opponent for two life. I think this will be a fun card in standard and I am going to enjoy trying to make it work.
Praetor Transform Cards
While these are not essentially new, I feel they deserve mention since they are powerful cards that can just keep coming back. March of the Machines have brought out new copies of the five Praetors of Phyrexia. Each of them are very powerful and have the ability to transform to a very powerful Enchantment – Saga card that is just as powerful if not more. I won’t dive too deep but, I would say take a look at the cards and see why they are going to be a lot of fun when this set releases.
Battle – Siege Cards
The next new aspect of March of the Machines is the Battle – Siege cards. These cards are a brand-new card type and are interesting to interact with. Let’s dive in using Invasion of New Phyrexia as an example. You would cast this card from a Blue, White, and X amount of mana of your choice. When it enters the battlefield, you will choose an opponent to defend it. It will then be given defense counters equal to the number on the bottom right-hand corner. For this example, its six counters. You would then do the ability it has which will allow you to create X 2/2 white and blue Knight creature tokens with Vigilance. When there are no more defense counters left on the Battle card, you will exile it and then cast the card transformed, which in this case would be Teferi Akosa of Zhalfir. These will be interesting to see how people use them especially since we have a lot of proliferate abilities that can help prolong letting your opponent from transforming them.
Incubate
The last new mechanic they are bringing with March of the Machines is Incubate. With Incubate you are essentially making an Incubator artifact token that has +1/+1 equal to how much you are allowed to Incubate for. You can then pay two mana to transform the Incubator token to a 0/0 Phyrexian artifact creature that will have the +1/+1 counters that was on the Incubator token, giving you a creature that can be pretty big depending on the number of counters on it. A couple of examples for this would be Glissa, Herald of Predation and Sunfall. With Glissa, one of choice you can make at the beginning of combat is to Incubate 2 twice. You would make two Incubator tokens with two +1/+1 counters on them. With Sunfall, you will exile all creatures and then Incubate X where X is the number of creatures exiled this way. This has the potential of giving you a very big creature and can be something that can end the game for you. It seems like an interesting mechanic that I am waiting to see how it can be abused but, as of right now, I feel like there will be some Incubate cards that will be worth it, like Sunfall, and most of the others maybe not so much.
Wrap – Up
March of the Machines is set to be a fun and exciting set that has a lot of potential and is continuing the positive trend of Wizards of the Coast producing great sets. I hope you all have a lot of fun with this set!
