Wizards of the Coast revealed details, art, and a couple of card spoilers for the first MTG set of 2027: Nauctis.
They teased their new evasive mechanic ‘dive’, brought back Descent, and told us about different creature types and their color identities. But more importantly, we got to learn about MTG Nauctis’ gods.
While we only saw one at the show, Nauctis has a complete cycle of whale gods. It’s only fitting that the largest creature on earth fulfils this role in the undersea plane. Salinae, the Ocean Mother gets cheaper based on your devotion to blue and makes 1/1 fish copies of every artifact or creature you cast.
While blue, green, and white whales appear in the set proper, the red and black ones are consigned to the commander decks. Taking their place in this mythic cycle are two sinister elemental krakens. One remains unspoiled, but Tecton, Malignant Horror may be my favorite visual design from the set, a huge tentacle monster made of whale skeletons. The effect is pretty straightforward actually: you draw a card when you sacrifice anything. Seems like it’d be good with blood or treasure tokens.
Here’s what we learned about the creatures of Nauctis, and the archetypes they fill:
Seals are red and white aggro – the Nauctis equivalent of dwarves, they’re skilled crafters.
There are two kinds of sharks: shark people are blue-red pirates while bestial shark creatures are red green. Goramou of the Coral-Taken is an example of the latter. She looks terrifying, but just wants to help you ramp.
Finally, we heard about the merfolk, who are in Bant in this set, found in blue, white, and green. They are central to the story, an ancient ruling culture affected by a schism around an independent city state.
Finally, we saw Nauctis’ headliner card, which is Abyssal Lotus. It’s a much less broken take on Black Lotus, which works just like the famous Power 9 piece, but firstly it only works if there are eight or more permanents in the graveyard, and it enters tapped (boo). Still, it’s likely to be the expensive card of the set, especially the ultra-rare textless version.
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Source: Wargamer
