Aetherdrift (DFT) Limited Review — Black

Note: This article was translated from Chinese by AI and may contain errors. Read the original Chinese version.

Aetherdrift (DFT) has its prerelease events on February 7, 2025, and officially releases a week later on February 14, 2025. Want to know more about how each card rates in Limited, with recommendations? Then check out this series of DFT Limited reviews!

• For the mechanics, see this article: Aetherdrift Mechanics Explained

Rating Scale

5.0: Always take it; gives you a near-winning advantage
4.5: Always take it if you’re in the right colors; gives you a huge advantage
4.0: First-pick quality; excellent synergy with the archetype’s theme, and can be the deciding card for splashing, switching colors, or entering a color pair
3.5: Top uncommons and commons of the set, plus other strong cards; good synergy with the archetype’s theme, and a key card for entering a color pair
3.0: Important cards for an archetype’s theme, plus other above-average cards; you’ll want them in your final deck
2.5: Average, usually a decent curve filler
2.0 to 1.0: Below average; you generally prefer not to play them, and can use them as filler if necessary, but not too many
0.5 to 0.0: Unplayable; basically never play it, it will only help you lose

Card Ratings

Rating: 0.5
Comment: A 4-mana Lobotomy effect is clunky, and its payoff ceiling in Limited is very low. It’s basically a sideboard card; consider bringing it in only when you see the opponent has a bomb you can’t deal with any other way.

PS: “Lobotomy” is a nickname for effects that search a player’s hand, library, and graveyard for cards with the same name and exile them. The name comes from the grandfather of this kind of effect, Lobotomy.

Rating: 2.5
Comment: Middle-of-the-road reanimation. Because of cycling in this set, the problem of an empty graveyard is easier to relieve, but there are only 7 cycling creatures/Vehicles in this set that cost 5 or more, so it’s actually not easy to cycle your way to a reanimation target without losing mana or tempo.

Rating: 2.5
Comment: If it comes down on time in the early game, it’s a fairly good tempo-producing beater, but once the game reaches the midgame it’s probably an ornament that can’t get through and can’t block. Equipment is also quite scarce in this set, so it’s hard to use equipment to turn it into a breakthrough threat that doesn’t fear dying. Also, there are only 3 sources in this set that keep feeding on your teammates for sacrifice, plus a few scattered one-shot sacrifices, so it’s hard to run it as sacrifice fodder.

Rating: 3.0
Comment: On top of generating card advantage, it has a decent body and a convenient crew 1. Since what it recovers is whatever you pick from the graveyard after milling your library, as long as it comes down when the graveyard already has something in it, you don’t need to worry about it whiffing.

Rating: 2.0
Comment: Even after the 2-mana reduction there’s no advantage. By the time your graveyard is stacked enough to reduce the cost by 3 or more, you’re probably no longer short on mana. Consider it only if you’re truly in a cycling/discard theme and are very short on core engine pieces.

Rating: 3.5
Comment: The body itself is decently capable in combat, and as long as you discard any one card you come out ahead. There are 28 cycling cards in this set, plus some scattered discard sources, so discarding a card once or twice shouldn’t be hard to achieve. It performs very strongly in a dedicated cycling-theme build, but awkwardly most of the supporting pieces for cycling are in the red-blue color pair.

Rating: 5.0
Comment: As long as it stays on the battlefield, its power in creature-combat resource trading is near invincible.

Rating: 2.5
Comment: An ability that boosts power for crew or saddle. The number of cards in this set that benefit from this ability is 11 of the 41 Vehicles and 3 of the 13 Mounts. It’s better than nothing, but the actual impact isn’t big. Still, being able to recover itself over and over is pretty annoying when the game is stalled.

Rating: 3.5
Comment: In this half-artifact environment, reducing the cost by 2 shouldn’t be hard, and a threat that comes with its own removal is pretty good. It also pairs with the creatures above that crawl back from the graveyard to strengthen itself. But note that this guy’s removal can’t directly destroy Vehicles.

Rating: 3.0
Comment: A 1-mana deathtouch creature has always been an annoying presence on defense, and if the game really drags into a stalemate it becomes a finisher.

Rating: 3.0
Comment: If you build a faster aggro deck, a 1-mana 2/1 counts as a top-tier beater, and it’s also a rare sacrifice source in this set. Although it only works once you reach max speed and this set has no sacrifice theme, turning the opponent’s removal into a card loss, or forcing the opponent to spend removal on a 1-drop first, is pretty annoying.

Rating: 2.0
Comment: The body itself doesn’t make the grade. The share of artifacts and enchantments among this set’s noncreature cards happens to be particularly high, and even removal may not be instant speed, so this guy coming in is quite likely just a vanilla creature that loses on body.

Rating: 5.0
Comment: Black’s Enduring Curiosity. Once you start hitting the opponent, they probably can’t keep up with this resource snowball, and you can even attack the depth of their library along the way.

Rating: 3.0
Comment: As 1-mana removal, its range leaves nothing to complain about. Being an artifact itself allows many follow-up uses, and even at its worst you can still surveil for a bit to improve later consistency.

Rating: 2.5
Comment: A passably usable curve-filler creature.

Rating: 2.5
Comment: Removal with great range that can also easily lose you cards. You can play it, but don’t overdo it.

Rating: 2.5
Comment: Although it loses on body if you view it as a 3-mana 2/2 creature, it has a long-term card-advantage payoff afterward, so it’s usable enough, and its priority goes up if your deck has a clear big bomb.

Rating: 3.0
Comment: Creatures and artifacts make up a very high share of the decks in this set, and most key cards are within this card’s range. It also has its own cycling, so you don’t worry about it becoming a dead card when topdecking in the late game.

Rating: 2.5
Comment: 7 power for 3 mana looks sturdy, but the opponent can just call a Grizzly Bears to trade with it. Of course, conversely this guy can also easily trade up with the opponent on defense.

Rating: 3.5
Comment: Although 2 life isn’t a small cost, card advantage is more precious in Limited, and the card itself can easily become a super-sturdy threat. As long as you plan your life total spending correctly and don’t kill yourself, it’s a powerful resource engine plus threat.

Rating: 2.0
Comment: There are 29 creatures with 1 toughness in this set, so the dead-card rate is surprisingly not that high, but overall the range is still too short. Occasionally you might make do with it as a combat trick, and the 1-mana cycling rescues its rating a bit.

Rating: 2.5
Comment: A plain protection spell and combat trick. Since this set has a relatively high share of sorcery-speed removal, the problem of getting responded to and losing two cards at once is smaller.

Rating: 2.5
Comment: Sacrifice-based removal is comparatively less usable in Limited, but it’s still 2-mana removal, and its bigger value is as a source of 2-mana engine starters.

Rating: 2.5
Comment: The base body is a bit weak, but it’s itself a mana sink, which makes up for this problem to some extent, and its chance to earn cards back later is quite practical.

Rating: 3.0
Comment: The body is passably usable and the type is right. As long as it stands there, it has a chance to keep freeloading life differential, which is annoying.

Rating: 3.0
Comment: Call it 2-mana clean removal, but controlling its range is a bit subtle. It performs more consistently when you have more self-mill or cycling cards.

Rating: 3.0
Comment: A decent-bodied threat with built-in discard.

Rating: 3.5
Comment: After max speed it can dominate the game all by itself. When you play it, put in more low-cost engine-starter cards so it can start building the board earlier.

Rating: 3.0
Comment: In the past you drew cards by paying your own life; this time it drags the opponent into the water as well.

Rating: 3.0
Comment: The cost is clunky. Coming in, it might dominate the game right away or might have no clear point; it depends on both sides’ creature makeup. In any case, the floor is that you cycle it away so it doesn’t become a dead card.

Rating: 3.5
Comment: A super-powerful threat plus resource engine, but because the pay-life-to-draw trigger is mandatory, be careful not to kill yourself with it.

Rating: 3.0
Comment: Murder is crying itself to sleep in the bathroom.

Rating: 2.5
Comment: With max speed it’s a damage source with strong life-differential earning ability; without max speed it’s a bit iffy.

Rating: 2.0
Comment: Its range isn’t as good as the 3-mana Murder upgrade above. Gaining 2 life isn’t worth spending 2 more mana, so it’s a last resort when you’re really short on removal.

Rating: 3.0
Comment: In this set it’s fairly easy to find fodder on the battlefield that’s good to eat. When your life total is healthy enough, you can also swap some weaker creatures or artifacts for this guy, and its 4/3 trading ability is excellent enough.

Rating: 2.5
Comment: A hard-to-kill flyer plus artifact creature that can also surveil to adjust the top of your library. A practical 2-mana curve play.

Rating: 2.5
Comment: It will probably have a hard time surviving if you use it to take part in combat, but its trading ability is strong enough, and its recurring 1-mana surveil 1 helps a lot with long-game consistency.

Conclusion

The biggest difference between a Vehicle environment and a regular set is the difference in sorcery/instant timing for creature removal cards (players who experienced the Kaladesh environment should feel this deeply). Although in general we all want removal to be instant speed, sorcery speed isn’t a big problem as long as the cost and range are efficient enough. In a Vehicle environment, though, things are completely different: sorcery-speed removal may never even see a Vehicle at the time it becomes a creature. So when picking removal in this set, whether it can remove a Vehicle that has become a creature in time is an important dividing line. On that point black in this set does a pretty good job, as many sorcery-speed removal spells remember to include Vehicles in their range.