Magic: The Gathering head designer Mark Rosewater shed some light on the next MTG set, Dominaria United, ahead of its preview season. On August 15, Rosewater shared a sizeable list of “tiny hints of things to come” on the set’s September 9 release date. Among this list (which we’ll dissect in some more detail shortly) were these two titbits – poison and one popular planeswalker card are officially making a Standard comeback.
For those who may not remember poison, this is a mechanic that, once you’ve gained ten poison counters, causes you to immediately lose the game. Rosewater has only teased “a card that grants poison”, so it’s not clear how prevalent the mechanic will be in Dominaria United. We could be looking at a select few individual cards, or we could be facing a widespread poison revival – only time will tell.
In addition, Rosewater has promised “a popular planeswalker card gets a reprint” in Dominaria United. Plenty of MTG fans online have already speculated this may mean the return of Liliana of the Veil or Teferi, Hero of Dominaria.
The popular prediction we’d put our money on is Karn Liberated. Karn’s an original member of the Weatherlight crew, and Rosewater promised three of these would be in Dominaria United. Karn Liberated also has the potential to wipe out poison counters with a loyalty ability that restarts the game.
Along with the three original Weatherlight crew members, Rosewater says “a character players have been requesting get a card for years finally gets one” in this set. He adds we can also expect a new evergreen counter, a blue card with the board-wiping “destroy all creatures” ability, and a five-mana creature that can be a 10/10.
But that’s not all – Rosewater also says to expect a new Lotus artifact, the return of “an ability word that didn’t start as an ability word”, and a “rare cycle of +1/+1 granting lords”.
The blog post also shared some rules text to expect in the set. These rules are:
- “As long as enchanted creature is legendary”
- “You may exile an instant or sorcery card with mana value X or less from among them.”
- “Exile each nonland permanent with mana value 2 or less”
- “Enchantment creatures you control have”
- “If X is 3 or less”
- “For each opponent who doesn’t, that player loses 2 life and you draw a card.”
- “Instant or sorcery card with mana value 1 or 2”
- “Pay any amount of mana.”
- “Vehicles you control have crew 1.”
- “Where X is the number of legendary creatures you control.”
Finally, Rosewater says the following creatures will appear in Dominaria United:
- Creature – Dryad Warrior
- Creature – Phyrexian Horse
- Creature – Elf Archer (in red)
- Creature – Lhurgoyf
- Creature – Human Kor Soldier
- Legendary Creature – Elemental Demon
- Legendary Creature – Frog Beast
- Legendary Creature – Elf Artificer
- Legendary Creature – Viashino Warlock
- Legendary Creature – Phyrexian Merfolk Wizard
Rosewater clarifies in his blog post he’s only giving us “partial information”, so there’s plenty left to speculate about before the Dominaria United release date. You can keep up to date with Dominaria in our linked guide, and you can take a look at the other MTG sets in order here on Wargamer, too.