Creatures that can return to the battlefield from the graveyard have a very good track record in competitive Magic: the Gathering and we got a new one in Aetherdrift – Afterburner Expert.
This Goblin can return to the graveyard any time you activate an Exhaust ability. Tacking on a 4/2 to any one of those abilities is quite powerful. It gets especially insane when you have multiple Experts hanging out in the graveyard. It’s also important to keep in mind the Afterburner itself will be able to Exhaust again any time it returns from the graveyard.
In this article, I’m going to assess the potential of the Expert by comparing it to similar cards from the past and looking at the current Standard metagame.
HOW DID CARDS SIMILAR TO AFTERBURNER EXPERT PERFORM?
Cauldron Familiar, Gravecrawler, and Vengevine have dominated multiple 60-card formats ever since being printed. All three of them take some set-up, just like Afterburner Expert. Cauldron Familiar needs Food, Gravecrawler needs a Zombie in play, and Vengevine needs you to cast two creature spells in a turn.
That said, I think it’s safe to say that Afterburner Expert won’t be quite as good as Cauldron Familiar, Gravecrawler, and Vengevine. They can return from the graveyard more easily. Gravecrawler only asks for a single mana, and the Familiar and Vengevine don’t ask for any additional cost to come back to the battlefield.
Because the Expert does usually ask for significant mana to come back, it’s not going to be the multi-format all-star that those two cards are. However, there is one more apt historical comparison that is very good news for Afterburner Expert – Deathmist Raptor.
Like Afterburner Expert, the Raptor asks for you to activate a specific type of ability for it to return to the battlefield. In this case, it’s Morph – which is also generally an ability you only get to use once. While both Afterburner Expert and Deathmist Raptor can bring other copies of themselves back from the graveyard, that’s not quite good enough on its own.
While they were in Standard, Deathmist Raptor and Den Protector were a frightening tandem. Both of them allowed you to recur cards from your graveyard, and the Protector also gave you a very efficient way to turn a creature face up.
This example shows us that a creature like Afterburner Expert can certainly work in Standard, but it’s going to need a powerful enabler to unlock its full potential.
THE BEST ENABLERS FOR AFTERBURNER EXPERT
Now that we’ve established that it’s important to have powerful enablers for this type of creature, let’s take a look at the Exhaust cards that might be the Den Protector for Afterburner Expert.
I think there are two main candidates: Boommobile and Draconautics Engineer. Like Den Protector, these two are good cards in their own right that have relatively cheap activated abilities.
Boommobile can use its Exhaust ability the turn it comes down to grow and ping something. That ability also scales the longer the game goes on. Getting a 4/2 back when you’re also killing something or burning your opponent is very strong.
Draconautics Engineer comes with two Exhaust abilities, giving you two bites at the apple. The first one is really cheap too! The second ability is where the real power is though, because it gives you a 4/4 Dragon token. Also getting a couple of 4/2s back when you do that sounds pretty spicy.
I think there’s some potential for a Red-Green Exhaust deck in Standard. However, there is one major hurdle that is going to keep Afterburner Expert in check.
THE BAD NEWS: CHEAP EXILE REMOVAL IS PLENTIFUL
Not everything about Afterburner Expert is amazing. Two toughness makes it incredibly vulnerable to cheap removal. Most cheap removal isn’t going to upset you, since you’re going to bring the Expert back later.
However, there are several heavily played one and two mana cards in Standard that can exile the Expert. There are so many that almost every deck in the format has access to at least one of them. Those cards deal with the problem while also giving your opponent a mana advantage.
THE GOOD NEWS: IT WILL ONLY GET BETTER FROM HERE
Exhaust is a keyword ability with the potential to become evergreen (that is, a mechanic that shows up on at least a few cards in every set) or deciduous (a mechanic that shows up regularly, but not in every single set).
In fact even before Aetherdrift, we got a couple of cards with abilities that are functionally identical to Exhaust – Mild-Mannered Librarian and Possessed Goat. The mechanic provides some really interesting design space, since you can give cards really powerful abilities when you limit them to only being used a single time.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that they decided to name this mechanic “Exhaust,” either. While it’s a word that works nicely in a vehicle set where we can assume it is referring to the gas emitted by those vehicles, it’s also a word that can mean someone is drained of their physical and/or mental energy and that certainly reflects the flavor of this ability.
If we continue to see more Exhaust cards in the future, keep your eyes open for really cheap costs, as Afterburner Expert will become far more powerful when that happens.
END STEP
What do you think? Does Afterburner Expert have legs in 60-card formats? Or is it a dud because it’s so bad against the removal in the format right now? Let me know your take over on X.
Jacob has been playing Magic for the better part of 24 years, and he especially loves playing Magic’s Limited formats. He also holds a PhD in history from the University of Oklahoma. In 2015, he started his YouTube channel, “Nizzahon Magic,” where he combines his interests with many videos covering Magic’s competitive history. When he’s not playing Magic or making Magic content, he can be found teaching college-level history courses or caring for a menagerie of pets with his wife.