Magic Just Revealed 19 New Cards From 2027’s First Set — Including a $30 Reprint With Stunning Art

Published Nov 13, 2026, 2:00 PM EST Nauctis: The Sunken Realm got a proper introduction at MagicCon: Atlanta Nauctis: The Sunken Realm got a proper introduction at MagicCon: Atlanta Image: Wizards of the Coast Magic: The Gathering is heading underwater, and we’ve just gotten a closer look at what’s lurking in the depths of a new plane called Nauctis. During Friday’s preview panel at MagicCon: Atlanta, Wizards of the Coast revealed 19 cards from Nauctis: The Sunken Realm (including different art variants), the upcoming set that introduces an ocean plane to Magic’s Multiverse. Launching on Feb. 5, 2027, the set trades typical fantasy settings like Dominaria or Ikoria for sprawling underwater cities and aquatic creatures, with greater dangers waiting farther below the surface. Announced at MagicCon: Amsterdam in July, Nauctis is the first in-universe set after Reality Fracture, which ended a three-year storyline culminating in the powerful mind-mage Jace Beleren trying to overwrite the multiverse with his own, superior Echoverse. Thankfully, Jace was defeated and the multiverse returned to normal. That means Nauctis is poised to kick off a brand-new story arc for the game and introduce a new villain into the narrative. The set's official description follows: Nauctis: The Sunken Realm introduces players to Nauctis, Magic’s take on an undersea plane. The set features merfolk, seals, homarids, and other aquatic creatures, along with deities who rule over the currents. As tensions bubble between two warring kingdoms, a group of unlikely heroes must rise to the occasion – or their home will be swallowed up by the seas. Adventures await under the water, and players will come face-to-face with fearsome creatures that dwell far, far from the surface. Image: Wizards of the Coast Also revealed at the time was the somewhat obvious detail that Nauctis won't feature any creatures with the Flying ability, but will replace that with other evasive mechanics. And notably, Nauctis will be the first set where Booster Packs and Collector Booster Packs will have a slim chance of being God Packs chock-full of ultra-rare cards. Friday’s presentation offered a clearer picture of that world. Here are 19 new cards shown during the panel, including one high-value reprint. One of the mythic rares from the set is Abyssal Lotus, a play on Magic's iconic Black Lotus. This 0-cost artifact that enters tapped with Descend 8 (a mechanic from The Lost Caverns of Ixalan that makes a lot of sense for a set that's entirely underwater). Whenever a permanent card is put into your graveyard from any zone, you put one Descend counter on it. Once you reach eight, you can tap to exile Abyssal Lotus and add three mana of any one color. This also requires you to have eight or more permanent cards in your graveyard. Then there's Calmwater Mentor, which costs four mana (two colorless and two white) for a 3/2 seal monk. When it enters the battlefield, Calmwater Mentor allows you to search your library for up to two creature cards with power 2 or less, reveal them, and put them into your hand. White is often the color that likes to build up an army of smaller creatures, so Calmwater Mentor is likely to find a place in plenty of decks. One of Nauctis' real early powerhouse cards appears to be Salinae, the Ocean Mother, which already seems like it'll become a staple in all sorts of blue decks. Salinae is a whale god with a base cost of eight mana (six colorless and two blue), but it costs X less to cast where X is your devotion to blue. It's a 5/7 with trample, and whenever you cast an artifact or creature spell, you copy it as a 1/1 fish creature. That's a powerful effect for artifacts and creatures, even legendaries, that have Enter The Battlefield (ETB) effects. So, in a mono-blue deck, you can very easily wind up paying only two mana for this card, which then copies subsequent cards you play. Another big, expensive creature that can be cast for a reduced cost is Tecton, Malignant Ruin. With "Fathomless Descent," this 5/5 elemental kraken with menace and deathtouch costs one less to cast for each permanent card in your graveyard. Whenever you sacrifice another permanent, you draw a card. At a glance, Tecton seems like a rather powerful Commander for a mono-black aristocrats deck focused on sacrificing your nontoken creatures. If you keep your graveyard full of permanents, you can potentially even bypass the potential Commander tax.. One of the lands revealed for Nauctis is Shimmering Citadel, a relatively straightforward white-blue tap land with an Exhaust tap ability that costs five mana (three colorless, one white, and one blue) that lets you draw two cards and gain one life. Doing so puts a depletion counter on this land, which means it doesn't untap for one turn. Perhaps the most disturbing card reveal from the preview is a Gruul (red-green) shark called Goramou the Coral-Taken. Goramou brings back the Blood token mechanic from 2021's Innistrad: Crimson Vow. Upon entering, Goramou creates a Blood token which is an artifact that, for a cost of one colorless mana, can tap to have you discard a card and sacrifice the token to draw a card. Goramou also has an ability that allows you to exile the cards you discard and then put them onto the battlefield tapped at the beginning of the next end step. That's a huge ability that could make for an interesting build-around Commander or even just a valuable resource in the 99 for a red-green Commander deck focused on discard. Image: Wizards of the Coast The flashiest reveal at MagicCon: Atlanta's preview panel is a Crucible of Worlds reprint. Its effect is simple: for three colorless mana, this artifact lets you play lands from your graveyard. Though there have been quite a few reprints of this card in the past, the huge impact that its effect has on a number of strategies has kept its price around $30 or higher. The speaker of the flavor text, Alya Corolean, says that Kiora told her that the entire world "is a bubble suspended in some dark and unforgiving ocean." Is she referring to all of Nauctis or just one civilization within it? Either way, Nauctis is starting to sound a bit terrifying. Nauctis: The Sunken Realm launches Feb. 5, 2027.