Intro

Aether magic has seen fringe play in the meta before the Core Set Refresh and they have gotten a few new members with it. Do the new cards have what it takes to put Aethers in the spotlight?

Strategy

Playstyle

The deck is an aggressive midrange deck that gets in chip damage with your creatures early, clears the board with removal, then closes out the game with burst damage from spells and creatures.

It plays similarly to tempo magic but you have more creatures, more burn, and have a higher curve. You have tons of burst damage from all of your creatures and spells, up to 50+ burn if you run all the burn spells.

• 6 from 2xAether Herald
• 6 from 2xDimension Looper
• 4 from 2xAncient Text
• 2 from 2xForm of Power
• 2 from 2xVow of Learning
• 12 from 2xWyrmbreath
• 12 from 2xEpiphany
• 6 from 2x Blizzard Bolt

The favor gain and card generation from your aethers give you a bit of grind potential.

There are weaknesses against things like ward forces you to GP to pop it first, healing can set back your lethal, can't target hidden creatures.

God Power

Always pick Magebolt for picking off creatures and having reach.

You don't need to dig for cards with Clear Mind and Pallas' Genius is too slow.

Mulligan

Look for the wand to draw cards or early creatures to contest the board and get in chip damage.

Keeping removal in the mull depends on the matchup.

• Against control don't keep any, they usually don't have creatures for you to remove
• 1 mana removal is a better keep against aggro decks with small creatures; less good against midrange like nature, their creatures are too big
• Starshard is good against any creature deck
• The rest of the spells are too expensive for the mull

Decklist

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The deck needs some finetuning, finding the best non-aether creatures to fill in, how much burn to run, and the right ratio of creatures to spells. Blizzard Bolt and Helpful Aetherfox go great in the deck if you have them.

It bricks a bit too much for my liking. There aren't that many cards I like to see in the mulligan. I am considering cutting Vow of Learning and Epiphany for more 1/2 drops like Shadow Scryer and Tracking Bolt.

You need to run a critical mass of aethers for their effects to be live consistently so you have to make a lot of room for them.

I'm not sure the aether payoffs are strong enough to run an aether deck over a regular tempo magic deck. You need to run a few weaker aether creatures to have enough to have your payoffs live but you could just run generally strong less restrictive cards in tempo magic.

Card Choices

Aethers

Some Aethers have Roar or Afterlife that happen only if you are holding an Aether so you need to run enough Aethers to have their effect live. A few of the Aethers have Blessed or effects involving favor so you can often get what you need from the sanctum like reach or relic removal and the blessed effect can get you lethal from the Damaging Blessing or Avaraxus Blessing.

• Planetar Acolyte: 1m 2/2 with blessed. Mostly Aether filler, the blessed is nice.
• Aether Herald: 2m 2/2, roar deal 3 damage to the opponent's god if you have an Aether in hand. Small body, the roar is more face damage. You don't generally want to play this early since the body is going to get run over.
• Miraculous Familiar: 3m 3/3 with blessed and generates a random spell when you play your first spell of the turn. You generally want to hold this until you have a spell to play with it to guarantee to get a spell.
• Planetar Sage: Vanilla 4m 4/5, afterlife to gain 9 favor if you have an Aether in hand. Another Aether filler, on-curve statline and favor generation is good.
• Archvisionist: 5m 4/5, roar add a random 1 mana magic spell if you have an Aether in hand. It's slightly small for a 5 drop but 1 mana magic spells are pretty decent to get.
• The Sky Reaver: 5m 5/5 after an aether attacks draw a card. On-curve body and a strong effect letting you draw tons of cards from your aethers. You do draw from ALL aethers attacking, so you will draw from your opponent's aethers attacking too.

Other Creatures

There is room for a few non-aether creatures to fill in the curve and round out the deck.

• Dimension Looper: 4m 3/4 deal 1 damage, or 3 damage instead if you have an Aether in hand. The biggest reason to run Aethers, a rune of fire on legs and a decent body. Looper is a Mystic even though it has a roar with aethers.
• Street Conjuror: The body is small and has a big target on its back with spell boost. Most of the time you hold this in hand until you combo it with spells.
• Demetrios, Playwright: The final draft gives you draw and damage, both things almost every magic deck wants.
• Pyramid Warden: Huge stats early. The frontline protects your other creatures so you can hit the face without worry. You hope to end the game before the afterlife is a big issue but be careful when you play it, you might lose if they get something big back late game.

Removal/Reach

The spells have you kill creatures and stay alive or can go face.

• Ancient Texts: Flexible spell, you usually use it with your GP or spell boost to kill 3hp creatures. Being able to go face too is great for getting in the last damage for lethal. Giving protected to your creature or face comes up occasionally.
• Form of Power: Cheap removal, picks off small creatures or weaken bigger ones, gets a lot better with spell boost. The damage that goes face helps wear down your opponent.
• Starshard Bolt: Efficient removal, 4 damage deals with most early creatures.
• Vow of Learning: Strong versatility, combos well with spell boost, can pick off creatures, give you the last damage for lethal, or defend your creature with protected and ward. 3 mana is a bit expensive and you don't always get the best use out of it.
• Wyrmbreath: Got a buff to 6 damage. 1 more damage might not seem like much but it's a 20% increase in damage and 1-hit kills some important creatures like Guild Enforcer and Pyramid Warden. Also having 2 more points of potential face burn will give you lethal in a few games.
• Epiphany: Deal 6 damage and draw a card. Even more burn. The card draw and extra burn help against slower control decks.

Draw

• Pallas' Wand: Crazy strong relic. You usually use it every turn and draw an extra card since you run so many cheap magic cards.

CSR New Cards

The CSR added a few new cards that would help aethers.

• Helpful Aetherfox: 3m 2/3 roar reduce a spell that costs 3 or less to 0 mana. A new aether to help keep you aether effects live. The mana reduction is a strong effect being able to play a creature and a spell early for tempo gain. Substitute one of the non-aether creatures out.
• Blizzard Bolt: 2m deal 3 damage. A rune of fire that you can main. A cheap spell that can be removal or reach. Substitute out another spell like Starshard Bolt or Vow of Learning.
• Static Aetherbug: 1m 1/1 ward, after you play a spell deal 1 damage to a random enemy character. It looks weak on paper, the 1/1 dies too easy and the random damage is small and unreliable. I don't think the effect is strong enough to justify running in this deck. Maybe it would see play in a dedicated spellslinger deck where you run a lot of cheap spells and other spells matter cards.
• Aethersnap: 3m summon 2 Static Aetherbugs. Getting 2 bugs is worth the cost of the spell but 3 mana makes it hard to play a lot of spells in the same turn.

Other Cards

Magic has a good number of other strong cards you can run but it's hard finding room for them since you need to run aethers.

• Shadow Scryer: Sticky early creature and the foresee helps smooth out early draws.
• Flying Carpet: Ward stops it from being pinged off and the 3 str trades well or gets in good face damage.
• Oni Spellsword: Less good in this deck since you don't have that many cheap cards. Giving ward is great against control decks.
• Vortimer the Volatile: Lets you get extra value out of your spells by drawing cards at the end of turn.
• Choralis Rune Moth: Got a buff to 3hp so it no longer dies to pings. Free rune at the end of your turn is great. You want to have creatures on board so this doesn't get run over in combat.
• Monolith of the Storms: Huge threat that will win you the game if it lives. 5 mana will take most of your turn to play so it is hard to play from behind when your opponent can remove it and set you back.
• Dimension Door: It draws a card and reduces that cards cost, so door replaces itself for free. It's best used to trigger effects of when you play a card/spell from Oni and Monolith.
• Tracking Bolt: Flexible removal, AOE is nice for dealing with a bunch of 1/1s.
• Crystal Rain: Got a buff to 4 mana and lost foresee 1. 2 damage AOE at 4 mana is strong, clearing out small creatures and softening bigger ones.