The underworld set
Theros Beyond Death is Magic's second visit to its Greek-myth plane, and it is built around the underworld rather than the surface. That gives the set one job mechanically: make the graveyard a place you come back from.
Escape is how it does it. A spell with escape can be cast from your graveyard for a second cost, which always includes exiling other cards from that graveyard. Every card you mill or discard is fuel, so the resource that usually means a card is gone becomes a currency.
The gods are the other half. They are indestructible enchantment creatures that are only creatures while your devotion to their color is high enough, which makes a permanent that opponents cannot answer and you cannot always attack with.
Themes
Escape
Cast the spell from your graveyard for its escape cost, which includes exiling a number of other cards from your graveyard. A card that already did its job becomes a second spell, and the cards you lost along the way pay for it.
Devotion
Your devotion to a color counts the colored mana symbols in the costs of permanents you control, not the permanents themselves. A single card with two symbols is worth two, which is why the set's gods reward a heavily committed color rather than a wide board.
Constellation
Triggers whenever an enchantment enters the battlefield under your control. Back from the original Theros, and it reads any enchantment, so a Saga, an Aura or a god all set it off.
Sagas
Enchantments that advance a chapter on each of your turns and do something bigger at the end. They are enchantments, so they feed both devotion and constellation, which is why they are here rather than in the set that invented them.
Where You Can Play It
Theros Beyond Death shipped under a single code and has left Standard, which is the only format it left.
Not Standard-legal. Standard only ever holds the last few years of sets, so everything this old has long since left it. These cards are still playable in Pioneer, Modern, Legacy, Vintage and Commander. Commons from any set are Pauper-legal; that isn't listed per set here.
Limited
A full ten-pair format, and one where the graveyard is a shared resource rather than a dumping ground. Escape means filling your own graveyard is a plan, and it means an opponent's graveyard is worth paying attention to.
All ten two-color pairs
Full ten-pair format
Escape concentrates in black and green, devotion rewards the mono-heavy decks that a two-color format usually punishes, and enchantments matter across the white and blue end.
FAQ
No. Standard only holds the last few years of sets, so a 2020 release left it long ago. THB cards are still legal in Pioneer, Modern, Legacy, Vintage and Commander.
A spell with escape can be cast from your graveyard for its escape cost, which always includes exiling a number of other cards from your graveyard. The cards you have already lost are what pay for it, so milling and discarding become fuel rather than waste.
Your devotion to a color counts the colored mana symbols in the mana costs of permanents you control, not the permanents themselves. A card costing two black mana is worth two, which is why devotion rewards a heavily committed color rather than a wide board.
Each god is an indestructible enchantment creature that is only a creature while your devotion to its color is at least the number printed on it. Below that it is still on the battlefield doing its job, it just cannot attack or block.
Any enchantment entering the battlefield under your control, including a Saga, an Aura or a god. That breadth is why the set puts so many enchantments at common.
No. It shipped Planeswalker Decks rather than Commander precons, so the set's legends have to be built around from scratch.
All card names, art, and mechanics belong to Wizards of the Coast. Theros Beyond Death released on Jan 24, 2020; details reflect the set as published. Sources: Wizards of the Coast set pages and release notes, Draftsim, Untapped.gg.
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