Magic: The Gathering's Wilds of Eldraine reveals new Role mechanic - What it is, how it works, and more

Magic: The Gathering’s Wilds of Eldraine features a new mechanic: Roles. This is a new form of Token for MTG and also works as an Aura Enchantment. It could become wildly powerful if featured in enchantment-themed decks. However, the developers made sure to find a way to limit these, to avoid creating singular creatures that are absolutely packed with these tokens. This is a very interesting new mechanic, and the developers highlighted how they worked in a recent preview.

From how they work, a few examples of these cards, and how they are limited for the sake of balance, here’s everything about the Role mechanic works in Magic: The Gathering’s Wilds of Eldraine expansion.

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Magic: The Gathering reveals new Role mechanic for Wilds of Eldraine

This new mechanic can come to life via several cards (Image via Wizards of the Coast)

The Role mechanic in Magic: The Gathering's Wilds of Eldraine is a way to enhance your creatures with Token Enchantments. These are Aura enchantments, so they can only be affixed to one character at a time. We were given a few examples of ways to create these tokens, but perhaps the best one was Syr Armont, the Redeemer.

A White/Green legendary creature, when he enters play, you create a Monster Role token and attach it to another creature you control. That sounds like it could become incredibly overpowered if you stack them on just one creature - however, that’s not possible. To balance this, the developers revealed the limitations of this new type of token.

A player can only place one Role token on a creature at a time. However, if another player, say, Commander, wanted to place one of these enchantment tokens on your creature, they can.

Each player can put one token on a specific creature after which they have to target other creatures. It’s a solid way to balance this mechanic.

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All Role tokens available in Magic: The Gathering’s Wilds of Eldraine

The reversible cards mean WOTC had to print fewer new tokens (Image via Wizards of the Coast)

As of this writing, there are five known Role tokens in Magic: The Gathering’s Wilds of Eldraine. That could increase as time goes on and more spoilers are revealed. If they do, we’ll come back and update this accordingly.

These count as enchantments, so players who are running enchantment synergy are going to find a lot of joy in them, particularly Green/White enchantment decks. Here are the current options and what they do in the game.

New mechanic tokens in MTG

• Royal: Enchanted creature gets +1/+1 and has Ward 1.
• Young Hero: Enchanted creature has “Whenever this creature attacks, if its toughness is 3 or less, put a +1/+1 counter on it.”
• Monster: Enchanted creature gets +1/+1 and trample
• Sorcerer: Enchanted creature gets +1/+1 and has “Whenever this creature attacks, scry 1.”
• Virtuous: Enchanted creature gets +1/+1 for each enchantment you control.

Several of these are useful, but the one that is clearly the most powerful is Virtuous. In an enchantment deck, this makes any of your creatures capable of becoming a force of nature like nothing else in your arsenal. It’s similar to the enchantment All That Glitters, only that counts artifacts as well.

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Magic: The Gathering’s new Role tokens offer an interesting way to power up your creatures in the Wilds of Eldraine. There will also likely be negative tokens you can place on your opponent, but time will tell on those. This new expansion drops on September 5, 2023.