On Thursday, Magic: The Gathering publisher Wizards of the Coast gave us our first proper glimpse of the upcoming Streets of New Capenna set. Lands, an enchantment card, and a ton of artwork from the noir-style set were shown in previews on the Weekly MTG Twitch stream at 2pm PST yesterday. With only one non-land card shown, there was just enough to keep fans going until Streets of New Capenna’s official spoiler season gets rolling on April 7.
First to appear were the full art basic land cards, which all lean heavily into the art deco style of the set – they are very Metropolis. These of course give us a chance to properly examine the urban setting of Streets of New Capenna for the first time, and we can see towering skyscrapers, a lot of angular architecture and gold panelling, and many statues of sword-wielding angels (but still no actual angels, hmm). The Plains depict airships and trains, giving a sense of the level of technology to expect in the set.
After that was a cycle of five Triomes (three-colour lands), one for each mafia family in Streets of New Capenna. Each is named after the currently somewhat mysterious leaders of the families and shows a location tied to the relevant gang, from offices to dens of iniquity. Each one comes into play tapped and can be Cycled for three mana.
There are three different art versions of each of these Triomes, the regular one, a borderless treatment, and a skyscraper version with a more art deco look. The symbols of the families, which were also revealed in the stream, feature in pretty much every piece. They’re really hiding in plain sight, these criminal gangs.
Finally, we saw our first proper spell from Streets of New Capenna: Broker’s Ascendancy. A card from the Brokers (who are essentially demonic lawyers), it’s an enchantment costing one Green, one White and one Blue mana. It has the effect of placing +1/+1 counters on each of your creatures every turn, as well as boosting your planeswalkers.
It seems certain that there’ll be ‘Ascendancy’ enchantments for each of the five families. The card name makes a reference to the cycle of ‘Ascendancies’ from 2014’s Khans of Tarkir, another wedge set centred on three-colour faction.
In what was, perhaps, the most unusual reveal of the whole stream, a ‘Golden Age’ version of the card was also previewed. This features the same artwork, but recreated in an eye-catching, cubist style. Even with all the experiments with art genres Magic: the Gathering has done in the past few years, this one certainly stands out.
Streets of New Capenna is releasing on April 29. For more information on the Magic: the Gathering set, including the lowdown on the five mafia families, and everything else we learned from Thursday’s stream, check out our Streets of New Capenna guide.
Source: Wargamer
