The Phyrexians are back with a vengeance
Wizards of the Coast is still rolling with multiple Magic: The Gathering sets each year (for both paper Magic and digital variants like Magic: Arena), and the next set, March of the Machine, is ready to debut in April.
There are some heavy-hitting artists backing this set, including the always fantastic Magali Villeneuve: who I would consider one of the greatest artists in the history of Magic. You can get a look at some spoiler cards for March of the Machine below, as well as some full art. The full story of the set can be read here.
March of the Machine is out on April 21, 2023 in full, with pre-release events starting on April 14, and a digital release on April 18.
All the new and returning mechanics from March of the Machine set
Battle (new card type & new mechanic) – Battles are a brand new card type introduced in March of the Machine. It represents Phyrexia’s invasion of the multiverse and everyone else playing a little defense.
Each battle in March of the Machine is a transforming double-faced card:
Front Back
Casting a Battle
Battles can be cast during your main phase if the stack is empty, just like creatures, sorceries, and other non-instant spells.
Each battle enters the battlefield with a number of defense counters on it equal to its defense, found in the lower right corner of the front face. This tells you how much damage it takes to defeat a battle. Much like planeswalkers, battles can be attacked and damaged. But unlike with planeswalkers, the general idea isn’t to cast them, protect them, and hope they stick around. You’re battling to take them out.
Protecting & Attacking a Battle
A battle’s subtype provides rules for how it can be attacked. Since every battle in this set has the subtype Siege, they all play by the same rules. As a Siege battle enters the battlefield, its controller chooses an opponent to be its protector. Every player except a battle’s protector may attack it.
Only a battle’s protector may block creatures attacking it. Don’t confuse protector for controller. You’re going to attack battles that you control—the first time in Magic that you’ve been able to attack your own permanents.
Battles are susceptible to more than just combat damage, though. Some spells and abilities may specifically say that they cause damage to be dealt to battles. Also, any spell or ability that says “any target” can target a battle.
Defeating a Battle
Any damage dealt to a battle cause that many defense counters to be removed from it. When the last defense counter is removed from a Siege battle, the battle is defeated and a triggered ability triggers.
As this ability resolves, the battle’s controller exiles it then casts the back face from exile without paying its mana cost.
Backup – The forces defending their homeworlds aren’t doing so alone. Backup is a new triggered ability that allows creatures to help a friend—or even themselves—in a pinch.
Whenever a creature with backup enters the battlefield, you put that many +1/+1 counters on a target creature. If you chose another creature as the target, that creature also gets every ability of the original creature that is printed below backup until end of turn.
Incubate – Incubate is a new keyword action that allows you to create Incubator tokens.
An Incubator token is a new kind of predefined token, joining ones such as Food and Treasure. It’s also a transforming double-faced token.
An Incubator token is a colorless artifact token with “{2}: Transform this artifact.” The back face is a 0/0 colorless Phyrexian artifact creature. The instruction to incubate will include a number which indicates how many +1/+1 counters to put on the Incubator token. Those counters don’t do much while the token has its front face up, but they do a great job of keeping the Phyrexian artifact creature alive once it transforms.
Chaos Ensues – Planechase is a major feature of the Commander decks in March of the Machine. On previous plane cards, chaos abilities had the trigger condition, “Whenever you roll [CHAOS].” Starting with March of the Machine, this condition has been replaced by “whenever chaos ensues.” With respect to the planar die, nothing has changed; rolling [CHAOS] will still cause these abilities to trigger. However, now there are ways to have these abilities trigger that don’t involve the planar die at all.
March of the Machine spoiler reveals
Main set
Commander
Multiverse Legends
Promo pack cards
March of the Machine spoiler full art
