Essence Fungus is Mr Morgan-Mar's second pre-release card.

It's a fungus! It absorbs your essence!

Face it, fungi are cool. Your typical fungus may be no more use than as an inert blocker, unable to inflict damage back, but remember how a fungus feeds. It absorbs nutrients from everything it touches. This one also absorbs the abilities of anything it touches. So as long as it doesn't die in combat, it only gets bigger and stronger.

Yes, the power and toughness of creatures it blocks or is blocked by get permanently added on to its current power and toughness (they don't replace it, and it doesn't wear off at end of turn). So it can grow without limit. And it also absorbs any special abilities of those creatures too. So pretty soon your Essence Fungus might be Flying, Trampling, Regenerating, and have the ability to ping people. The nastier the critters it fights, the nastier it gets.

The best way to fight an Essence Fungus is to pack creatures with drawbacks, like Skulking Ghost, Serendib Efreet, or the old favourite Lord of the Pit. Oh dear.

It's expensive, but it'll cause your fungus-fearing foes a whole lot of trouble...

Loki's second pre-release card is a white-black creature called Spectral Sentinel. She's part of a cycle of Sentinel cards in Loki's set. Each Sentinel applies some effect to "creatures with no abilities".

The germ of the idea for the Sentinel cycle was to make even a Pearled Unicorn a useful card to put into a deck. Pearled Unicorn is a good example of the kind of card Magic players love to diss. It costs how much? And you don't even get any ability for it? Players rightly want more for their mana. But what if you did get some powerful effect when it's played in combination with a few Sentinels on the table already? That suddenly makes it interesting to construct a deck where half the creatures are Sentinels and the other half have no abilities at all.

Each Sentinel applies some rules to such ability-less creatures, but never actually gives any of those creatures an ability. (If one of those creatures gains an ability, it would no longer qualify for the Sentinel bonus.)

Let's look at Spectral Sentinel more closely, since she's one of the more complicated examples of the Sentinel mechanic. Most of the other Sentinels specify a new rule or effect on the Sentinel card itself, but Spectral Sentinel applies Aura effects to the other creatures. The Aura must be attached to the Spectral Sentinel herself. Importantly, wherever an Aura gives an ability, that ability isn't transferred to any other creatures.

So what Auras can be used with this effect? Go back and look at Loki's Day 1 pre-release card, Indoctrination. It's an Aura that doesn't give the enchanted creatures any ability, it just pumps those creatures. This is a prime example of the kind of Aura you want to play on Spectral Sentinel. Suddenly all your ability-less creatures get +2/+2 for a cost of just ! If you pay more mana you can actually attach Indoctrination to some of those creatures too, for a +4/+4 bonus! Not bad at all.

What then is an "ability", and how do we define whether an Aura "gives an ability" or not? This may be cause for argument during play, but my general guidelines are this: when an Aura uses the words "gains", "has" and "having" that typically refers to abilities, but "gets" does not. For example, an Aura which says "enchanted creature gains trample and gets +1/+1" will be partially shared by Spectral Sentinel; the "gets +1/+1" will apply to other creatures, but "gains trample" won't.

Some enchantments don't give a creature an ability, but simply trigger some effect when the creature does something, for example when it does combat damage to a player. In those cases, depending on how the Aura is written, the effect may belong to the Aura, not the creature, in which case the effect may be shared. Abilities include the established keywords such as trample, but even a nameless ping effect can be an ability. Modern Auras tend to put abilities in quotes to make it clear that the enchanted creature gains that ability, as if that text were written on the creature itself, for example if the enchanted creature gains ": Regenerate". Such abilities clearly wouldn't be shared by Spectral Sentinel. Furthermore, if such an ability-conferring Aura was directly attached to a previously ability-less creature, it would gain an ability, and no longer share in any Sentinel bonus. We'll have to deal with other more complicated cases as they arise.

How can Sentinels be abused? Nuisance Engine springs to mind, or indeed any kind of reusable token creature generator. Watchwolf is another good example. The draft probably won't feature enough ability-less creatures, or indeed Sentinels, to make this mechanic broken, but it'd be interesting to see someone make good use of their effects, alone or in combination.

The artwork is by one of my favourite fantasy artists, Jessica Galbreth. I believe this use of her art is in accordance with her usage guidelines.

Lastly, why is this card white/black? Each Sentinel effect tries to tie in somehow to the colour combination used in the card. In this case, creature enchantments seemed most appropriate for a white/black card, since white has a lot of classic creature enchantments like Holy Strength, Empyrial Armor and Spirit Link, and so does black, with Cloak of Confusion, Feast of the Unicorn, Gaze of Pain, Thrull Retainer, and Unholy Strength. You could even use the effect offensively against an opponent who has ability-less creatures, by playing Weakness or other negative Auras on Spectral Sentinel.

"Regnoc, the Elder Stone" is Mr McLeish's first preview card for the draft, and it's unusual. It's a land and a creature!

The power level of this card went through a few incarnations. A land-droppable creature is hard to compare to any existing card. On the one hand, it's free (Ornithopter) and uncounterable (Scragnoth, among others). On the other hand, it slows down your mana if you play it when you still have mana-giving land in your hand. Even if Regnoc was mana-giving itself (working title "Llandowar Elves"), it would be slowed down more than basic land by summoning sickness, and would be vulnerable to damage.

Regnoc's purpose in life, especially if you see him in your opening hand, is to present you with a dilemma. (Or - if the glass is half full - a choice.) You can drop him on turn one or two as a very effective road block; but you'll be a turn behind on mana. Or you can keep him until you've played all the land you want; but with every turn that you keep him in your hand, his effectiveness drops in the face of bigger creatures, flying, and combat tricks.

Mr Shellshear reportedly loves zombies. Which might explain the following offering from him.

Infectious Zombie is a reasonably efficient 1/1, capable of taking down a 2 toughness creature with its terrible gnashing teeth and rending claws. But heaven help any creature that survives such an attack. It will quickly become one of the living dead itself, seeking nothing better than to rend the flesh of the living!

Sadly, zombies are pretty obedient, so your opponent's infected creature doesn't go out of control and kill all of his other creatures. That would be broken, boys and girls. No, it's just a little bit weaker - and infectious. Ready to infect your creatures! So be sure to run creatures with toughness greater than 2, 'cause you surely want to fulfill this beautiful dream of a world filled with zombies, right? The best way to avoid the tit-for-tat of zombification is, of course, to only run zombies yourself. Oh, and to equip it with a Viridian Longbow, for maximum infection: most creatures are unhappy to receive not only a point of damage but a -1/-1 counter as well. And, y'know, become the living dead.

Ben Carr's set, according to him, has a common theme of "stupidity". But I disagree, from the appearance of his first preview card, Mana Link. Words like "powerful" and "dangerous" spring to mind.

This card seems to be the close cousin of Mana Flare, Mana Cache and particularly Manabarbs. For a cost of only three mana, you can cause your opponent - or yourself - some serious mana burn. It's a classic red effect.