Magic: The Gathering's interplanar Wacky Wheels set is good actually

Last year we had a murder mystery expansion for Magic: The Gathering, followed by a Wild West one. As the cynics put it, they were "Magic in detective hats" and "Magic in cowboy hats". Now, with the Aetherdrift set basically being themed around Speed Racer and Twisted Metal, the cynics say this is "Magic in a racing helmet," when what the people really want (for "the people" read "cranky Redditbros") is more trad fantasy.

This rings false to me. For starters, we just had Foundations, a set that went back to the game's original inspirations and in some cases the original cards, a set with plenty of dragons and angels and swords being turned into ploughshares. If it's trad fantasy you're after, you'll eat well at the Foundations table. Aetherdrift is for those who crave variety, who don't want to eat the same high fantasy meal every night of the week.

And, as someone who only got seriously into collecting Magic rather than just playing the digital versions with Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty—a fully cyberpunk set with mechs and cards like Born to Drive—the idea of magical Carmageddon doesn't seem too far out there. Magic's multiverse clearly isn't full of worlds that conveniently stopped advancing at the medieval period (New Capenna is blatantly the 1920s with demons), so bring on the Wacky Wheels, I say, and the wackier the better.

I went to a prerelease event at one of my local gaming stores, Plenty of Games in Melbourne, to take Aetherdrift for a test drive. The good thing about these prerelease events is how casual they are. While the hosts do call time so you can end your first match and play someone else, my table cheerfully ignored that and instead played a four-player game that lasted the entire evening, which felt more on-theme for a race than a series of one-on-one duels would.

Playing sealed meant opening a selection of boosters and building decks from what was available. I was tempted to build a black deck around Pactdoll Terror, a toy car piloted by a killer doll, which gives you a point of life and takes one from all your opponents when you play an artifact. There are plenty of artifact cards in Aetherdrift, mostly vehicles, but instead I decided to build a deck to test out the new speed mechanic.

When you play a card with "Start your engines!" on it you gain a speed of one, and it increases one point per turn if you damage an opponent. At max speed, which is four, various card-dependent effects trigger. My deck's Walking Sarcophagus went from a 2/1 to a 3/3 for instance, and my Aether Syphon forced everyone else to mill two cards whenever I drew one. One of the other players went for a similar tactic, Aether Syphon and all, but because I hit max speed before them I was confident I'd mill everyone else to death first.

I hadn't counted on the player sat across from me having Push the Limit, a card that returns all your vehicles and mounts from the discard pile to the table, and lets them attack without crew that turn. We'd been filling his discard pile for several turns, helpfully loading bullets into a gun he then turned around and fired at the rest of us. The cards you get back with Push the Limit have to be discarded again at the end of the turn, but that one big swing wiped out one player and reduced the rest of us to our last few life points.

It didn't win him the game, though. The player sitting in the far corner had not long before played Pactdoll Terror, and then she efficiently drained everyone else's final life points by following it with a handful of artifacts in a row. I could only applaud. It was a classic tortoise-and-hare situation, with the least assuming racer crossing the finish line while everyone else had their engines betray them on the home stretch. A perfect marriage of theme and mechanics.

(Aetherdrift has a surprisingly in-depth connection to the lore as well, with narrative designer Miguel Lopez really going to town on the worldbuilding side of things.)

Aetherdrift will be out in Arena from February 11, and in paper Magic from February 14. You can find in-store events at your local participating retailer.