Magic: The Gathering's The Brothers' War expansion spoilers begin - Urza, Mishra's Foundry, and more

While the complete spoiler season won’t begin until later in October, Magic: The Gathering’s The Brothers’ War saw some truly interesting reveals yesterday. A teaser was held for the upcoming expansion, which will star the two artificer brothers, Urza and Mishra. Quite a few lore characters will arrive in card form for this set as well.

Many of these characters took sides between the two brothers as their war ravaged the land. Their war ultimately led to the Ice Age, which altered the world of Dominaria in ways that would take years to undo.

What can players expect from The Brothers’ War in Magic: The Gathering? Several very interesting cards have been revealed.

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Teasers for Magic: The Gathering’s next expansion, The Brothers’ War, revealed

The Brothers’ War will most likely be a very artifact-focused expansion. Considering it stars a pair of brother artificers battling one another, players can expect a number of new and returning artifacts in the set.

A particularly interesting card recently showed up, Mishra’s Foundry. This is essentially a slightly less powerful version of Mishra’s Foundry and is a colorless land that can become a creature. If you have more than one in play, you can use the others to buff the Assembly Worker creature that Mishra’s Foundry becomes.

It only costs two mana to turn it into an artifact creature, making it an incredibly valuable part of any artifact-related strategy. Thanks to this low cost, it’s quite effective in virtually any deck.

A pair of Commander decks will also be arriving in this expansion, an Esper deck built around Urza (Urza, Chief Artificer), and a Grixis deck built around Mishra (Mishra, Eminent One).

Both of these decks will feature 100 cards, all of which will have old-style borders, giving them a very retro and classic look. Old-school Magic: The Gathering fans will undoubtedly love seeing this style of card again. Fear not, though, the cards will also be available in the modern border style for those that don’t care for the old esthetics of Magic: The Gathering Cards.

While the entire decklists aren’t available yet, it has been revealed that some older cards like Skullclamp were reprinted for the Commander decks.

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Skullclamp

• Mana Value: 1
• Type: Artifact - Equipment
• Rarity: Uncommon
• Keyword: Equip - 1
• First Ability: Equipped creature gets +1/-1
• Second Ability: Whenever equipped creature dies, draw two cards

Perhaps the most important cards in these decks are the commanders, though. Urza is a Blue/White/Black legendary in Magic: The Gathering, and Mishra is a Black/Red/Blue. Urza has been confirmed to be different from his The Brothers’ War counterpart, so Mishra likely will be as well.

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Urza, Chief Artificer

• Mana Value: 3WUB
• Type: Legendary Creature - Human Artificer
• Rarity: Mythic Rare
• Keyword: Affinity for artifact creatures (This spell costs 1 less to cast for each artifact creature you control)
• Stats: 4 power, 5 toughness
• First Ability: Artifact creatures you control have menace
• Second Ability: At the beginning of your end step, create a 0/0 colorless Construct artifact creature token with “This creature gets +1/+1 for each artifact you control.”

Urza is easy to put into play, and can quickly allow you to start overrunning other players with bigger and bigger artifacts while playing control spells to keep command of the board. And then, there’s his angry brother, Mishra.

Mishra, Eminent One

• Mana Value: 2UBR
• Type: Legendary Creature - Human Artificer
• Rarity: Mythic Rare
• Stats: 5 power, 4 toughness
• First Ability: At the beginning of combat on your turn, create a token that’s a copy of the target noncreature artifact you control, except its name is Mishra’s Warform, and it’s a 4/4 Construct artifact creature, in addition to its other types. It gains haste until the end of the turn. Sacrifice it at the beginning of the next end step.

Mishra will always have an attacker ready in Magic: The Gathering, as long as he has at least 1 non-creature artifact in play. Considering the theme of this expansion, that’s going to be an incredibly easy ask for Mishra. Unfortunately, he doesn’t feel quite as strong as his brother, but that could change as we learn more about the deck he’s in.

Another interesting lore character coming to Magic: The Gathering is Queen Kayla bin-Kroog, a White/Red Human Noble. She displays great promise as a potentially powerful card for aggressive decks such as Collected Company.

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Queen Kayla bin-Kroog

• Mana Value: 1RW
• Type: Legendary Creature - Human Noble
• Rarity: Rare
• Stats: 2 power, 3 toughness
• First Ability: 4 mana, tap: Discard all cards in your hand, and draw that many again. You may choose an artifact or creature card with mana value 1 you discarded this way and the same for an artifact or creature cards with mana values 2 and 3. Return these cards to the battlefield. You may only activate this as a Sorcery.

In a Red/White aggro deck, she could likely be the tool you require to start pushing for quick victories. Only costing 3 mana, you can activate her ability the next turn and start hammering away at the other player if you have enough creatures on hand to start attacking. It’s too early to say how powerful she’ll be, but she looks quite interesting.

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Reveals for Magic: The Gathering's The Brothers’ War will begin dropping on October 27, 2022, with a release date of November 15, 2022.