In The Brothers War, Magic: The Gathering sets aside the Plains Walk and instead time-walks (open in new tab) to its first storyline.

Dating back to the early days of Magic: The Gathering, Magic: The Gathering broke all kinds of new ground and invented the collectible card game. The idea of dueling planeswalking wizards was already pretty fanciful, but with Magic's second expansion, Antiquities (open in new tab) - released in March 1994 - the Wizards of the Coast team gave the new set a story stepped up their game by giving them a story to tell. The brothers Urza and Mishra, each a powerful wizard, were fighting over possession of two powerful stones, and the first appearance of the Phyrexians was imminent as a result of their actions.

A new climactic showdown with the evil-bodied Phyrexians is set in the recent set The Dominaria Union, with the upcoming sets All Will Be One and March of the Machines, Magic's longest It's time to revisit the origins of a story that has endured.

Get your first chance to step back in time to "The Brothers War" with a pre-release weekend beginning November 11, prior to the full release on November 18. The full version will also be available in Magic: The Gathering Arena on November 15, with early access for digital cardboard enthusiasts on November 10.

At the end of a twisted betrayal in the Dominaria Coalition, Teferi (open in new tab) and his allies Kaya and Saheeli are desperate to find a way to defeat the cockroach-like diabolical nature of the Phyrexians. In their search for a solution, they decide to create a time anchor. This device will allow Teferi to peer into Dominaria's past for clues as to how Urza defeated the Phyrexians during his battle with his fallen brother Mishra.

The Brothers' War takes us deep into the lives of Mishra, Urza, Ashnod, Taunos, and those around them. Teferi follows the brothers from their youth and the division of the Power Stone that empowered them and sparked the conflict, to the Phyrexian Praetor Gyx and his fall to Mishra, and the turbulent conclusion of the Brothers' War.

Teferi going back in time to discover how Urza destroyed the world with the Gorgothian Silex (open in new tab) definitely creates a Red Alert atmosphere.

There aren't many new mechanisms, but the Power Stone mechanism, first revealed in Khan, the Living Legacy (opens in new tab), which creates artifact tokens that can be tapped to fuel activated abilities or to cast artifacts, is back in a big way! The Karn mechanism is back in a big way. The Karn was initially correctly rated as one of the weaker planeswalker cards, but his power level could be enhanced by the flood of new cards that create or rely on Powerstone tokens. Most of the strength of this mechanism depends on how good the cards it appears on are.

On the more certain side, the new "prototype" mechanism will allow us to play cheaper versions of creatures with smaller power and toughness. From spells with multiple modes (opens in new tab) to creatures once considered the best for their flexibility (opens in new tab), giving a single card a variety of options has produced some of the most powerful and format-defining cards. Phyrexian Fleshgorger is already a powerful example, and it is easy to imagine the prototype mechanism leaning even more heavily once the other cards of the "Brothers War" are released.

The main returning mechanism is "Unearth," which can temporarily reanimate permanents from its own graveyard; the "Unearth" mechanism has not been used much in Magic since the Plains of Alara, and has great power in an aggressive creature-based strategy It has the potential to bring a lot of power in an aggressive creature-based strategy. The opportunity to recycle one's creatures for additional damage can give an advantage to decks that increase their value over a longer game, or to decks that deal the last few points of damage to the fastest decks through waves of removal spells.

Although low in degree, the rare "fusion" mechanism also makes a return in The Brothers War, where two cards can be combined to form a more powerful card. While this is a tricky mechanism and did not yield very good results, some cards, such as "Argos, Sanctuary of Nature" and "Titania, Voice of Gaia," have low mana costs and are suitable for inclusion in a deck.

With the reintroduction of the retro border, which applies to 63 different artifacts from Magic's history, in "The Brothers War," Magic is literally bringing back an old favorite. You can get one of these artifacts in every pack, as they are included in every set, draft, and collector's booster. In addition, these retro artifacts can appear as schematics, a new art depicting the artifact's blueprint. Perhaps the coolest thing about the return of retroframes is that they will work in conjunction with the "Brothers War" Commander. Of course, both Mishra and Urza's Commander decks will be completely retroframed, with all 99 cards being buffets of old-school frames.

In addition to this, Magic is stealing old ideas from the realm of sports cards and late-night shopping channel collector's plates; Schematic showcase cards sometimes appear as serial prints in collectible boosters, and the Schematic showcase cards are sometimes used as a "showcase" card in the collector booster. This means that each of the 63 different schematic artifacts has a serial number of 500 cards (31,500 total). While there is nothing special about the mechanics of serial numbered cards, they are a popular collector's item and will undoubtedly fetch high prices on the secondary market.

In addition to the wide variety of options, tie-in cards like the Dracula cards released in "The Crimson Oath" will also be available. Transformers that match the giant robots of the Brothers War storyline will creep into sets and collector booster packs. There are 15 different cards in this subset, all mythic rarity and mechanically unique. Also sprinkled throughout the collector boosters are "Shattered Glass" versions of Transformers from an alternate universe, which are mechanically identical to the regular versions, but feature different art and frames.

As always, you can expect the pesky black borders to disappear again, as extended art and borderless cards will also appear.

"The Brothers War" will also feature the usual avatars and cosmetics, but something far more important is coming in the form of a new Golden Booster. You will get one Golden Booster for every 10 boosters, regardless of whether they were purchased with Gems or Gold.

What is so special about the Golden Booster is that it contains six Rare or Mythic Rares from the current Standard environment and none from Alchemy. Here is a more specific breakdown of what is in each Golden Booster:

While this does not bring as massive a change to Arena's economy as many would like, it is good to see the amount of rares and mythics that can be acquired through normal play increase.