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Abyssal Lotus
Abyssal Lotus is a zero-mana artifact that enters tapped. To activate its mana ability, you tap and exile it to add three mana of any one color. You can only do so if your graveyard contains eight or more permanent cards.
It’s one of six cards revealed at MagicCon 2026 in Atlanta for Nauctis: The Sunken Realm, the first Magic: The Gathering set of 2027. The setting is the undersea plane of Nauctis, home to submerged cities, coral-covered creatures, and enormous monsters. The initial preview suggests Descend and Exhaust will play a substantial role, with several cards rewarding you for filling your graveyard or putting lands back to work. Nerdist’s preview writer welcomes the return of big monsters.
Abyssal Lotus’s restriction makes the graveyard part of the setup, not just a place for spent cards. Nerdist’s writer sees a potentially nasty card here, though they consider its usefulness more situational than that of other Lotus cards.
Iris Compiet’s borderless artwork depicts a deep-sea, flower-like creature releasing what looks like lightning amid coral and seaweed. It’s a strange take on a Lotus, and one of the borderless illustrations the preview praises as beautiful.
Calmwater Mentor
Calmwater Mentor is a Seal Monk costing two generic and two white mana. When it enters, you may search your library for up to two creature cards with power 2 or less, put them into your hand, then shuffle. The search is optional, and the creatures go to your hand, not directly onto the battlefield.
The preview writer finds the mentor theme a good fit for an ability that gathers two smaller creatures. They also see a strong Bloomburrow resemblance and call the character cute. Cory Godbey’s illustration depicts a bipedal seal carrying a katana underwater, surrounded by seaweed and coral.
Goramou the Coral-Taken
Goramou the Coral-Taken heads in a decidedly less cuddly direction. This legendary Shark costs one generic, one red, and one green mana, placing it in Gruul colors. When Goramou enters, you create a Blood token.
Its other ability triggers whenever you discard one or more land cards. You may exile one of those lands from your graveyard; if you do, it returns to the battlefield tapped at a later specified point. The supplied card-text transcription cuts off after “at the beginning of the next,” so the complete timing isn’t established.
Chuck Grieb’s illustration shows a shark almost entirely covered in coral. Nerdist’s writer calls Goramou ugly but extremely cool, and suggests it could fit a land-discard deck reminiscent of the World Shaper preconstructed deck from Edge of Eternities. That’s a suggested deckbuilding connection, not a confirmed list.
Crucible of Worlds
Crucible of Worlds returns as a three-mana colorless artifact with a straightforward ability: you may play lands from your graveyard. The preview writer considers it, alongside Goramou, a potentially crucial part of a land-sacrifice deck.
The reprint may also be the writer’s visual favorite of the reveal. Chris Seaman’s borderless illustration places a luminous city of natural-looking structures inside an almost gelatinous bubble, surrounded by green bubbles and a faint glow.
Attributed to Alya Corolean, the flavor text describes Kiora’s account of their world as a bubble suspended in a dark, unforgetting ocean. It asks whether other bubbles exist, then closes with the question the preview singles out: “Do their people struggle and laugh like we do?”
For the writer, that suggests the ocean serves as a metaphor for space, an interpretation they welcome while still enthusiastic about the Star Trek Magic set. The artwork gives that reading a concrete image: a whole inhabited world enclosed within a bubble, with darkness beyond it.
Shimmering Citadel
Shimmering Citadel is an Azorius land that provides blue and white mana. Its Exhaust ability costs three generic, one white, and one blue mana, plus tapping the land. You draw two cards, gain 1 life, and put a depletion counter on Shimmering Citadel.
The preview calls that ability handy and describes this as the reveal’s most overtly Atlantis-like card. Tosu Solano’s artwork depicts a faintly glowing underwater city, with soft light that the writer particularly appreciates.
Tecton, Malignant Ruin
Tecton, Malignant Ruin is an eight-mana black legendary Elemental Kraken with menace and deathtouch. Its Fathomless descent ability reduces its casting cost by one generic mana for each permanent card in your graveyard. Once it’s on the battlefield, you draw a card whenever you sacrifice another permanent.
Loic Canavaggia’s illustration depicts an enormous black creature made largely of mouths and tentacles, with something resembling lava bleeding from its body. Its flavor text reads, “…but in the darkest depths another power hungers back.”
The preview writer welcomes the grotesque design, describing its appeal as that of a giant squid mostly made of mouths and tentacles. Their deckbuilding suspicion is just as specific: Tecton could suit a land-sacrifice strategy, where sacrificing another permanent would also trigger its card draw.
