In case you haven’t heard, Magic: The Gathering is getting a Dungeons & Dragons themed set next month. Exploring one of the most popular D&D settings, The Forgotten Realms, the aptly named Adventures in the Forgotten Realms allows players to stuff some of the most popular fantasy characters and monsters in gaming history into their decks. That’s right, you can start attacking your opponent with the likes of Drizzt Do’Urden or conjure up Lolth the Spider Queen. 

Of course, alongside these big names Magic: The Gathering sets need new mechanics that fit the setting too. In Adventures in the Forgotten Realms, players can traverse dungeons with an all new mechanic. While it may not replicate the experience of moving through a tabletop environment with your friends, moving through these little card dungeons confers a bunch of benefits and can be built around with numerous cards in the set. Take an extensive look at how the mechanic works here.

You have access to all three dungeons in the set at any time, as they are not cards that go into your deck.As you work your way through dungeons, each room or area you move into conveys various rewards. How do you do it? Every time you play a card with the “venture into the dungeon” text, you can move one space along. Not only do cards allow you to push through the dungeons and find their assorted treasures along the way, but other certain cards only activate when you’ve completed a dungeon. It’s inevitable that deck archetypes will exist focused on speeding through dungeons to take advantage of that bonus, and others will come into focus that spend more time finishing longer dungeon runs to take advantage of the significant rewards along the way.

As always, it will be interesting to see how dungeon crawling mechanics make their way into the metagame, and I can’t wait to draft up some adventures when Adventures in the Forgotten Realms hits Magic: The Gathering Arena on July 8. Check out more details on the dungeon mechanic on the official site here. Are you planning on heading into this possibly most nerdy crossover of all time? Let us know in the comments!