Wizards of the Coast has given us our best look yet at the final three Magic: The Gathering releases of 2023, with extended previews for Wilds of Eldraine, The Lost Caverns of Ixalan, and Universes Beyond: Doctor Who.
Revealed at the MagicCon Barcelona preview panel, hosted by head designer Mark Rosewater, senior designer Gavin Verhey, and senior art director Ovidio Cartagena, we saw new cards, art treatments, and even a whole new, enchantment-themed bonus sheet for Eldraine.
Wilds Of Eldraine
The biggest of the three previews was for the next Standard-legal set, Wilds of Eldraine. Taking us back to the fairy tale land of Eldraine in the aftermath of the Phyrexian invasion, this set ventures beyond the Arthurian courts and leans far more heavily into the fantastical, fairy tale themes the first set did so well.
Following the Phyrexian invasion, Eldraine has been beset by the Wicked Slumber, a curse that is putting everybody to sleep. This makes it the perfect playground for a nightmare-manipulating Planeswalker. Ashiok, Wicked Manipulator is this set’s only new Planeswalker card, as Rosewater confirmed in the panel that, following the great desparking of March of the Machine: The Aftermath, Planeswalkers are much, much rarer and will be limited to just one per set.
Former Planeswalkers Will and Rowan Kenrith make an appearance, though, as legendary creatures. We haven’t seen their cards, but it was said that the two will fundamentally disagree on the way to help Eldraine out of this crisis, and a rift between them will form.
Though we weren’t shown any new mechanics, returning Eldraine staples were revealed. Adventures are confirmed to be coming back, and for the first time will be found on multi-colour cards. Adventures proved to be a terrifically powerful part of Throne of Eldraine, and the expansion into more than one colour will allow for a wider range of effects.
Food is also making a comeback. Debuting in Throne of Eldraine, Wilds of Eldraine will allow you to use Food in different ways, with a particular focus on being more aggressive with it. In particular, we were shown the almost Un-set-like Tough Cookie, which can be eaten like a Food token, or turn Food into another attacker if you need it.
One of the most interesting aspects of Wilds of Eldraine is its limited environment. Like most sets, it revolves around two ten-colour archetypes. However, those archetypes will be themed around specific fairy tales. We don’t know all ten, but a fair few of them were confirmed:
- White/Blue: The Snow Queen
- Blue/Black: Sleeping Beauty
- Red/Green: Little Red Riding Hood
- White/Black: Snow White
- Black/Green: Hansel And Gretel
- Green/Blue: Jack And The Beanstalk
Finally, exclusively for the limited environment, Wilds of Eldraine has a new bonus sheet. Much like Strixhaven and instants and sorceries, The Brothers’ War and artifacts, and March of the Machine and legendary creatures before it, Wilds of Eldraine will feature reprints of famous enchantments as part of the Enchanting Tales subset.
Every booster pack will include at least one enchantment reprint, which includes all-timers like Smothering Tithe, Doubling Season, Rhystic Study, and Necropotence. They’ll be legal when drafting or playing in sealed, as well as legal in any formats they’re already currently legal in, but they won’t be part of the main Standard set.
Wilds of Eldraine launches on September 8. Our next look at it will be the debut at the start of its preview season, on August 15.
Universes Beyond: Doctor Who
Hot on the feels of Warhammer 40,000 and Lord of the Rings, Magic’s next big crossover is with the British TV legend, Doctor Who. Taking the form of four Commander decks, this crossover borrows from almost all of Doctor Who’s 60 years to bring characters and places from both the classic and modern series.
MagicCon Barcelona showed off all four deck’s face commanders, as well as a few extra goodies.
Blast From The Past
The first deck is a white/blue/green deck focused on the classic series. Featuring the first eight Doctors, it’s helmed by Tom Baker’s The Fourth Doctor, and his companion Sarah Jane Smith.
Fitting for the classic theme, this deck is alla bout Historic spells (artifacts, legendary creatures, and Saga enchantments). Playing Historic spells will get you both Food and Clue tokens, giving it a bit of a gadget-y token artifacts theme as well.
Numerous companions throughout the decks will have the new Doctor’s Companion mechanic, which is another new take on Partner that allows you to pair up a companion with any of the Doctors. This means you could throw Yazmin Khan in with the Second Doctor, or stick more canon-friendly and have Sarah Jane with the Fourth.
Each Doctor will have a Saga card based on one of their iconic episodes. So far from this deck, we’ve only seen the Fourth Doctor’s, the mono-green City of Death that copies tokens for a whopping five turns.
Timey-Wimey
Focusing on the War, Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Doctors, Timey-Wimey is a white/blue/red deck plays with a mechanic Commander precons have never really explored before: suspend. Led by The Tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler, this deck uses time counters, suspended cards, and a new Time Travel mechanic to add or remove time counters as you see fit.
We were also shown the backup commander, The Face of Boe. This one is a much simpler take on suspend, but being able to pay the suspend cost to play a card straight away could make it an incredibly powerful one none-the-less.
We saw two of the Sagas found in this deck. The first was the Ninth Doctor’s The Parting Of The Ways, while the second is the Eleventh Doctor’s Saga, based on his debut episode, The Eleventh Hour.
It’s impressive how closely it follows these follow their episodes’ stories, with Parting Of The Ways time travelling twice to represent Rose being sent back to her own time by The Doctor, and The Eleventh Hour making a copy of a creature, but calling it Prisoner Zero.
Paradox Power
Based on the Twelfth and Thirteenth Doctors, Paradox Power is a blue/red/green deck all about playing cards from anywhere other than your hand. The commanders for this deck are The Thirteenth Doctor, which gets stronger and untaps creatures the more you cast from outside your hand, and Yasmin Khan, which provides an easy way to get cards to play.
For the Thirteenth Doctor’s Saga, it was of course going to be her 2022 mini-series, Flux. This one feels a bit less flavourful than the others, simply doing more of what the deck wants to do instead of trying to represent any particular point from the story.
Fortunately, The Foretold Soldier makes up for the lack of flavour, by having the Foretold from Mummy on the Orient Express actually make use of Magic’s Foretell mechanic to have it blip in and out of exile.
Masters Of Evil
The final deck is a blue/black/red deck focused on The Doctor’s villains. All of the show’s most famous baddies are here, but only Davros is evil enough to lead the entire deck. Davros plays with Dalek tokens, and plays up the deck’s theme of “villainous choices” – choices your opponents will have to make that will harm them no matter what, such as letting you draw a card or being forced to discard one themselves.
The backup commander is by far the best incarnation of The Master, Michelle Gomez’s Missy from the Twelfth Doctor’s era. While Davros is very Dalek-heavy, Missy instead commands armies of Cybermen, reflecting her plot to convert the dead of planet earth into Cybermen in Dark Water and Death in Heaven.
Conveniently, this story is Missy’s Saga. Death In Heaven lets you turn all creatures in your opponents’ graveyards into face-down Cybermen creatures, with a nice little package of graveyard hate and a huge burst of creature entering-the-battlefield triggers.
Planechase
Each deck will include a deck of exclusive Planechase cards – a modifier for the game that adds a higher level of random chance by having you move from location to location.
Only one for each deck was shown off in Barcelona, with locations like Badwolf Bay, Gallifrey’s Tardis Bay, The Doctor’s Tomb on Trenzalore, and a phenomenon card chronicaling companion Clara Oswald’s death on the London Trap Street in Face the Raven.
Showcase Frames And Booster Fun
We saw Doctor Who’s Tardis showcase frame a few weeks ago, however Barcelona gave us a better look at more than just the Tenth Doctor. We saw showcase treatments for The Fourth and Thirteenth Doctors, Yasmin Khan, Rose Tyler, Sarah Jane Smith, Davros, Missy, and, as a special surprise, River Song.
It was also revealed that Collector boosters will have a chance to include serialised versions of each of the Doctors, which includes a serial code on the card to identify it as a one-off printing. Each Doctor will have 500 copies plus their official number – meaning the Tenth Doctor will have 510, the Sixth will have 506, and so on.
Universes Beyond: Doctor Who launches on October 13. We’ll be seeing the full decklists, including each deck’s 50 brand new cards, starting October 3.
The Lost Caverns Of Ixalan
The final set of the year will take us back to the Mesoamerican world of Ixalan. However, Lost Caverns Of Ixalan is going deep beneath the surface, as the denizens of Ixalan discover their world is hollow. Within the core, a whole new civilisation is discovered, leading to diplomacy, war, and new encounters between pirates, dinosaurs, merfolk, humans, and a people who command “Cosmium” for their magical abilities.
This set is different from our last trip to Ixalan, largely doing away with the typal focus. Instead, it appears to be a more story-centric set showing this first contact and the battle over the energy source at the core of Ixalan.
We don’t know a whole lot about The Lost Caverns Of Ixalan yet, however it has been confirmed that Huatli is back, but has unfortunately lost her Planeswalker spark.
We’ll also be seeing Ixalan’s Gods for the first time, with two – Ojer Axonil, Deepest Might; and Ojer Kaslem – shown off to play up Mesoamerican folklore’s stories of shapeshifting deities. Angels will also be appearing in Ixalan for the first time, being long sealed away in the underground world.
We weren’t shown any cards, or even products for the Lost Caverns of Ixalan. We’ve also not been given any dates for the set, which is currently rumoured to be launching in either November or December.