New Amonkhet Cards, Mechanics, and More Details Officially Revealed

Wizards of the Coast just revealed some fascinating details for Magic: The Gathering's next set, Amonkhet, including the promo cards, the punch card, new mechanics, an Embalm token, the Game Day playmat, and the Welcome Decks for new players. The announcement confirms the previously leaked cards as well as the mechanics that were revealed.

First off, the promos:

Here's the Buy-a-box promo for Amonkhet:

This confirms the return of the Cycling mechanic.

Now, here's something that uses Brick counters. Apparently, you get cool bonus abilities when you get enough Brick counters. The set will probably have more cards that will produce and/or utilize these new counters.

And here are the two cards you can get on Game Day. You get the Glorybringer if you make it Top 8.

Now, check out this punch card:

As you can see, there's a couple of new mechanics called Embalmed and Exert. Wizards posted a sneak peak of the mechanics article, and you can read the explanation for both new mechanics below:

EMBALM

Embalm is an activated ability you can activate if the creature card with embalm is in your graveyard. Notably you're not casting the card from the graveyard, so things that counter spells won't work against the embalm ability. The original creature spell can be countered, of course, but that just puts the card in the graveyard. I think you see where this is headed.

To activate an embalm ability, simply pay the embalm cost and exile the card. You do this any time you could cast a sorcery, meaning during your main phase when nothing else is happening. When the ability resolves, you create a token copy of the card, but as you'd expect, going through the process of mummification causes some changes. It's got that whole undead thing going on, so it's a Zombie in addition to whatever creature types it used to have. You'll find lots of ways to take advantage of its new Zombiehood, I'm sure. And now that it's all service, all the time and doesn't care about whatever it was it cared about while alive, it's white instead of whatever color it used to be. One more minor change is that it doesn't have the mana cost the card has.

Each card with Embalm will get their own token for their Embalmed versions:

EXERT:

Exert allows creatures to give a little more effort to produce unusually good results.

You make the decision whether to exert a creature as you declare it as an attacker. If you choose to have it exert, an ability will trigger and grant you some bonus. As a trade-off, the creature won't untap during your next turn. It's tired. Needs a nap. Attack more later.

You don't have to exert the creature as it attacks. If you don't, no ability will trigger, and it will untap normal during your next turn. Note that as you declare attackers is the only time you can have it exert. You can't wait until later in the turn and then exert it. When your next untap step rolls around, if the creature you exerted is untapped, nothing happens and the exertion cost you nothing. Maybe you found a different way to untap it, or maybe you gave it vigilance. You are clever!

That's a simple mechanic that gives players more oppportunities to make decisions.

Here's the Game Day playmat:

In addition to the

Amonkhet

details, Wizards of the Coast also announced a new event to help welcome new players to the game. The event on Saturday April 15 will have stores encourage casual fun for new players and League-style Standard play with a participation promo reward. There will be learn-to-play sessions, and players who bring a friend will receive a promo card and new players will get a Welcome Deck, which will consist of 30 cards. The Welcome Decks include cards with simple mechanics, and they will remind you of cards from core sets back in the day. You can see the list of cards in the Welcome Decks in

Wizards' website

.

Expect to see more

Amonkhet

previews in the upcoming weeks. Epicstream will keep you updated about them.

Amonkhet,

the first set of the

Amonkhet

block, will be released on April 28. Prerelease events will take place on April 22-23, 2017.