Hunter's Mark is a more familiar kind of card, but a potentially very effective one. You can find out much more about the new mechanic in our exclusive interview with one of the set's designers. Each time you play a card or ability with a Venture activation – as Find the Path has – you can move forward one room in your chosen dungeon and activate its effect. The new set includes three Dungeons, each of which present a map that can be followed, with each 'room' on that map including an effect on the game. While this land-based enchantment is a nice way to ramp mana for a high-cost green deck, it also comes with another use – when played, it allows you to Venture.Īs explained in a DailyMTG tutorial video, Venture is half of an extremely Dungeons & Dragons-inspired mechanic built around a brand new card type, appropriately called Dungeons. Find the Path is perhaps the more interesting to those looking for Adventures in the Forgotten Realms' brand new mechanics.

Pre-release of the physical cards begins on July 16, with the retail launch coming July 23.Both new cards are Green spells, but have very different uses. Or they can steal the eyes, which will yield treasure and allow them to “venture into the dungeon” - a new mechanic which actually brings dungeon-delving into the original collectible card game for the first time.Īdventures in the Forgotten Realms drops this Thursday for Magic: The Gathering Arena. They can smash the idol, destroying an artifact in play, or they can lift the curse, destroying a target enchantment. You Find a Cursed Idol card shows a party stumbling upon that same statue, still wreathed in spectral flames. My favorite is a nod to the original Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook, which featured a pair of adventurers stealing the jeweled eyes from a cursed statue. But some cards pay homage to the long history of D&D’s formative publications as well. There’s cards for Drizzt Do’Urden, Tiamat the dragon queen, and for Gary Gygax’s own player character, Modenkainen. As a kicker, it also gains all the triggered abilities of the exiled cards - including the ability to buff those stats based on the number of cards in your hand.ĪFR goes to great lengths to tip its cap to some of the most important characters and events in the history of D&D. Once you’ve got the right cards in play, simply exile them all to bring forth Vecna, an 8/8 Zombie God with indestructible. The Book of Vile Darkness actually requires three MacGuffins the Eye of Vecna, the Hand of Vecna, and the Book of Vile Darkness itself.

There’s nothing like a good MacGuffin to set a D&D campaign in motion. The Goblin Warlock can only be summoned when a creature dies, via its Tragic Backstory ability - naturally. Grim Wanderer is another card that riffs on the idea of adventurers drawing pints in a tavern. Start a Brawl, the card’s alternate ability, gives every creature you control +2/+2 until the end of the turn. For just four mana you can Form a Party - by drawing the top five cards from your library and keeping any of the creatures that you find there. You Meet in a Tavern is a fun little sorcery. It’s an excellent application of a famed bit of D&D loot, and should be fun to surprise opponents with in a pinch. One of the real treasures is the Bag of Holding, which allows you to stash as many cards as you like in exile and then return them all to your hand with a flourish. That’s not the only excellent artifact card in AFR. Cards like The Deck of Many Things draw upon the larger lore of the franchise, while also throwing some randomness into the game. It wouldn’t be D&D without some dice rolling, and Magic diehards will need to upend their 20-sided spindown counters at least a few times every game. One of the best is the Rogue Class, which allows players to steal cards from their opponent and cast them as their own. Of course this isn’t really a new mechanic at all, just a reimplementation of the saga mechanic introduced with Dominaria (and later reintroduced with Theros: Beyond Death and Kaldheim). My favorite new mechanic introduced with AFR allows players to take on a class from D&D, like a fighter or a wizard.

Mtg forgotten realms cards