©2017 Wizards of the Coast LLC in the USA & other countries. Illustration by Sam Burley.

©2017 Wizards of the Coast LLC in the USA & other countries. Illustration by Chase Stone.

©2017 Wizards of the Coast LLC in the USA & other countries. Illustration by Titus Lunter.

©2017 Wizards of the Coast LLC in the USA & other countries. Illustration by Greg Opalinski.

©2017 Wizards of the Coast LLC in the USA & other countries. Illustration by Grzegorz Rutkowski.

©2017 Wizards of the Coast LLC in the USA & other countries. Illustration by Chris Rallis.

©2017 Wizards of the Coast LLC in the USA & other countries. Illustration by Wesley Burt.

©2017 Wizards of the Coast LLC in the USA & other countries. Illustration by Greg Opalinski.

©2017 Wizards of the Coast LLC in the USA & other countries. Illustration by Chase Stone.

©2017 Wizards of the Coast LLC in the USA & other countries. Illustration by Sidharth Chaturvedi.

©2017 Wizards of the Coast LLC in the USA & other countries. Illustration by Yeong-Hao Han.

©2017 Wizards of the Coast LLC in the USA & other countries. Illustration by Tyler Jacobson.

©2017 Wizards of the Coast LLC in the USA & other countries. Illustration by Sara Winters.

©2017 Wizards of the Coast LLC in the USA & other countries. Illustration by Svetlin Velinov.

©2017 Wizards of the Coast LLC in the USA & other countries. Illustration by Chris Rallis.

©2017 Wizards of the Coast LLC in the USA & other countries. Illustration by Chris Rallis.

Magic: The Gathering dives into classic Egyptian mythology in Amonkhet, its second expansion set of the year after Aether Revolt. The new set is released today, April 28, and you're strongly encouraged to go along to your local game store (or open up Magic Online) and give it a whirl.

Of course, if you want to read about the set before you spend some money, we've got you covered as well. We've been playing with the new cards for a couple of weeks—here's our review.

The world of Amonkhet looks awfully like Egypt...

Magic takes place in a series of originally-created worlds, but often these worlds are inspired by real-life cultures and myths. In some cases the influences are subtle—Kaladesh’s Indian motifs, for example—but in others, the source material strongly shines through, such as in Theros, a 2013/14 block that pulled from Greek mythology.

Amonkhet is explicitly based on Egyptian mythology, and from glancing at a few opened booster packs, many of the classic tropes jump out from the art. There’s a bunch of giant stone sphinx-like monuments, animal-headed wizards, and even some revered cats, all far higher quality than you might expect from small card frames. Modern Magic has a well-deserved reputation for a great level of polish in its art, and Amonkhet is no exception.

The real joy, though, is the sinister undercurrent slowly revealed through looking at the full set, especially the flavour text—the sentence or two of italics at the bottom of some cards (see right). Open a pack or two and there’s no clear narrative, but the feel of the world is one of glorious combat training within a clean, peaceful city. Several hastily-torn-apart booster packs later, hints abound at the sinister purpose of the training, the imminent return of the world’s draconic “god”, and the steep price of failing the ominous combat trials.

It’s continuing a trend for Magic sets over the last few years, but it bears repeating: the game’s creators have done well to provide a rich, multi-level story considering the limited medium they have to work with. For most players, the feel of the world is well communicated through what’s on the cards, and there’s resources available online on the Magic website if you want to read more lore. Conversely, if you only care about reading enough rules text to smash your opponents, you’ll still find that the distinctive art helps with recognizing and memorizing cards.

The mechanics

As the first expansion of a new block, Amonkhet is full of original mechanics, but also features a returning favourite that hasn’t been seen since Alara way back in 2009: Cycling. The main mechanics allow you to mummify your creatures with Embalm, push them to work harder with Exert, and Aftermath, giving some spells a follow-up extra spell to cast later in the game. There’s also some unnamed themes that use counters, specifically “bricks” that build up monuments and “-1/-1” tokens that shrink creatures permanently.

Embalm is all-in on the “Egyptian mummy” trope, appearing not just on a bunch of humanoids, but on cats, sphinxes, and even a hydra—when something dies on Amonkhet, it’s probably getting wrapped in spooky, undeadifying bandages. Gameplay wise, Embalm allows you to revive a creature that has the Embalm ability, but only a single time, and often at increased cost. Embalm is fun, but not so prominent that it makes games feel slow, as it’s restricted to a few colours. It can be frustrating when your opponent has a particularly strong card with two lives, but this isn’t out of line with strong Magic cards in general.

Exert continues the theme of getting more out of your minions. When you attack with a creature with Exert, you can choose to get a little extra bonus—often the creature getting beefier for the upcoming combat—but it won’t be available to use next turn. This is often worth the tradeoff for getting in a good attack, and Exert creatures are satisfying enough to use that the drawback doesn’t feel frustrating.

Aftermath lies somewhere between split cards and flashback, dividing a card (literally!) into two spells—one of which can be cast normally, one of which can only be cast from the graveyard (Magic’s discard pile). Since spells normally go into the graveyard after they’re cast, this means the cards generally function as a one-two punch, and many have synergy between the two modes on purpose. With the split card frame (modified slightly), Aftermath cards are functional but not particularly good-looking, especially in the context of some of Magic’s recent smash hits in the aesthetic department (double-faced cards, full-art lands, the Masterpiece series). The mechanic itself is fun to play with, though—having the option to use the pieces individually or together adds more interesting decisions to the games.

The last named mechanic is simple but great: Cycling lets you discard a card from your hand and draw another one. This costs a bit of mana, but means you end up with dead cards in your hand a lot less often. Cards with Cycling make up a good chunk of the set—almost a sixth—which noticeably smooths out the play experience. It also introduces a tense element of choice: do I trade in my great late-game play to get more resources now, or hold it and risk being defeated before I can use it?

As well as these keywords, there’s a few other themes running through the set, helping to add to its depth. The most prominent are the five Gods of Amonkhet: animal-headed, indestructible creatures that will only come to your aid if specific conditions (which line up with their colour’s typical strategies) are met. All five Gods have an ability that helps to meet the condition, meaning they rarely end up useless on your board. Existing Magic players may remember God cards from Theros block, and this new cycle suffers a little in comparison; the new Gods have decent art and powerful abilities, but no unique frame, and lack some of the novel impact the second time around.

Many spells and creatures make use of -1/-1 counters—that is, minus one power and toughness. While you often use these counters to blight your opponent’s creatures, there are plenty of cards that put these counters on your own creatures as well. In Magic, damage is temporary, wearing off each turn, so these counters represent a much more potent injury. There are also a few cards that feature “brick counters,” used to track progress on building monuments to your (or your God’s) glory, but unfortunately most are pretty weak, which sours what could have otherwise been a cool little on-theme addition.

In general, though, these counters add some good decision space to gameplay, and aren’t hard to keep track of thanks to another handy feature of Amonkhet booster packs: perforated token cards that should give players an easy surplus of the needed -1/-1 and brick counters (plus some handy Exerted and Embalmed reminder tokens).

We’ve praised Magic's publisher Wizards of the Coast for bumping up the token count in packs before, and Amonkhet really shows off both how much design space it opens up, and the flavour it can add. Tracking which creatures have been mummified or shrunk is still a little inelegant (especially when comparing to digital card games), but it does help to reduce confusion about the board state, and tokens showing various mummified creatures really help press home the creepy side of the set’s aesthetic.

The support for these various mechanics is woven throughout the set. There are cards which care about hand size, encouraging players to cycle away uncastable cards instead of holding them; lots of way to interact with the graveyard (since cycled spells end up there); and many cards that interact cleverly with counters. There’s also interesting ways that this set combines with its predecessors—for example, cards referencing “counters” being able to influence energy counters and +1/+1 counters from Kaladesh.