Start your engines! How speed and max speed work
Start your engines! gives you speed 1, and your speed goes up once per turn when an opponent loses life on your turn. At 4 you hit max speed. Here are the exact rules and the edge cases.
In this article
Start your engines! came with Aetherdrift in February 2025. It gives every player who uses it a speed between 1 and 4, and a lot of Aetherdrift cards get much stronger once that speed hits 4.
The rules
Rule 702.179 of the Comprehensive Rules covers start your engines! The parts that matter at the table:
- Getting speed. If you control a permanent with start your engines! and you have no speed, your speed becomes 1. This happens as a state-based action, so it’s immediate.
- No speed by default. Players don’t have speed until something gives it to them. Without it, effects that check your speed treat it as 0.
- Raising it. Once you have speed, you get this ability:
Whenever one or more opponents lose life during your turn, if your speed is less than 4, your speed increases by 1. This ability triggers only once each turn.
- Max speed. You have max speed when your speed is 4 (rule 702.179e).
How speed goes up
The trigger has three conditions, and all three have to be true:
- It’s your turn. Life loss on an opponent’s turn doesn’t count.
- An opponent loses life. Combat damage, a burn spell, a drain effect: anything that makes them lose life works.
- Your speed is below 4. At 4 the trigger stops.
It only happens once per turn, no matter how many opponents lose life or how often. So the fastest you can get from 1 to 4 with the trigger alone is three of your turns.
Infect damage is the exception people miss. It gives poison counters instead of making the player lose life, so it doesn’t raise your speed. See our guide to poison counters.
Speed never goes down
Nothing in these rules lowers your speed. It doesn’t drop at the end of the turn, and it stays even if the card that gave it to you dies. The trigger that raises it is attached to you, not to the card.
What max speed does
Many Aetherdrift cards have an ability written as “Max speed — [ability].” It’s turned off until your speed is 4, then stays on (rule 702.178a). Some examples:
- Muraganda Raceway. A land that taps for
, or at max speed. - Starting Column. A mana rock that, at max speed, can be sacrificed to draw two and discard one.
- Racers' Scoreboard. Draw two, discard one when it enters. At max speed your spells cost
less. - Vnwxt, Verbose Host. At max speed, every draw becomes two.
- Mendicant Core, Guidelight. At max speed you can pay to copy each artifact spell you cast.
Not every card cares about max speed. The Speed Demon uses the number itself: at the beginning of your end step you draw cards and lose life equal to your speed.
Speed in Commander
In multiplayer, any one opponent losing life on your turn is enough. You don’t need to hit everyone, and hitting three opponents still only raises your speed once. A single 1/1 that gets through or a small drain every turn is all it takes to reach max speed in three turns.
Speed isn’t a counter
Speed is a value a player has, like a life total. It isn’t a counter, so proliferate can’t touch it, and effects that move or remove counters don’t affect it either.
Keeping track at the table
Speed is easy to forget because it only changes on your own turn and only once. People either forget to raise it or raise it twice in one turn. A die with the current speed on top, next to your life total, solves most of it.
Lotus has a speed counter you can turn on for each player. It stops at 4, so the table can see when someone hits max speed.
