First look at Edge of Eternities
- Mike Sigrist
- 4 days ago
- 6 min read
Even though I'm still enjoying Final Fantasy, there's another set primed for release. Edge of Eternities preview season has begun. While the set's space theme doesn't resonate with me as much as Final Fantasy, it's at least new and interesting in the world of MTG.
Let's take a look at some of the previewed cards from outer space.
Tezzeret, Cruel Captain is the cheapest colorless planeswalker we've seen. Tezzeret's static ability to gain loyalty when an artifact enters makes you want to play it as quickly as possible and then immediately dump your hand. Vintage, specifically Vintage Cube, is the best fit, where cards like Mana Crypt and Mana Vault exist. This is one of the few cards from recent years that I have to try in Vintage Cube.
Outside of that, maybe it could be in a Modern Affinity deck. Especially with Mox Opal unbanned, Tezzeret could have an impact, but I'm doubtful if it doesn't have a serious engine to enable.
This card offers many opportunities for casual play. However, I don't think there's enough support for a card like this in Standard or Pioneer, but it has some potential beyond these formats.
Consult the Star Charts is the best impulse effect I've seen to date. Often, when you're casting a card like this on turn two, it's because you're looking for lands or occasionally a removal spell. While this won't get you as deep as impulse would that early, it has a massive upside of looking at more cards as the game develops and eventually just becomes a Dig Through Time for four mana. Once the game drags on long enough, you can start chaining them while sculpting a perfect hand.
Consult is also the kind of card selection that heavily favors control or combo control decks, rather than decks like Phoenix or Izzet Prowess. Those decks favor one-mana cantrips and support archetypes that are playing longer, slower games, which I think is great.
In the past, a card like this would always see play and be one of the most played cards in several cases. It will likely see play in those kinds of decks, but it's unlikely to see play in a deck like Dimir Midrange or Izzet Prowess in Standard.
Consult the Stars Charts is an incredible addition to Magic. It has the potential to see play in Standard and Pioneer and maybe even beyond that in some cases.
Uthros, Titantic Godcore is what we call a fixed Tolarian Academy.
This introduces us to a new set mechanic called station. Stations are places you can dock your crew by tapping them to add their power in counters to the station and unlock an ability. In this case, once you've tapped twelve power worth of creatures, your planet becomes activated and turns into a Tolarian Academy.
Your first question may be, if I have twelve power in creatures, why am I not just attacking? We can tap summoning sick creatures with these stations. Play a 3/3, tap it for three counter, untap, and attack on your next turn.
As a Limited player, I won't like this mechanic because it incentivizes players to not block, which may create a much faster-paced game. That's not necessarily true, as it cuts both ways. Sometimes, we'll be racing to get our station online rather than attacking because it will impact the game in a more favorable way.
Regardless, the concept is interesting, but sadly, this land cycle will likely be mostly unplayed in competitive play because they enter tapped. In 2025. lands coming into play tapped on any turn other than turn one is far too punishing.
Ultimately, I think all of these cool lands will be largely unplayed unless one is previewed with a unique and extremely powerful ability.
Nova Hellkite introduces us to warp, another new mechanic in the set. Warp is a cool concept similar to adventure.
Looking at Nova Hellkite, the play pattern with this card will be to warp it on turn three, hoping to kill an opponent's one-toughness creature, attack for four, and exile the creature. Then, on turn five, we cast it again, hoping to kill another small creature, but this time, it will stay in play permanently.
As cool as it is, I don't think Nova Hellkite will see tons of Standard play because it's a lot of mana to achieve the play pattern I just laid out. However, you can just cast it for five mana, and it plays something like a weaker Glorybringer. That's too underpowered for today's game.
Warp gives us a lot of interesting wiggle room for card design, and I'm curious to see how far it's pushed. Generally, any form of cost reduction like this has led to something accidentally breaking in an Eternal format, so I'm interested to see if anything like that comes out as previews roll out.
Bear in mind that not all warp creatures will have haste like Nova Hellkite, so they don't all get to attack. Most of them will likely just have some effect they provide temporarily until you pay their full mana cost.
This is an extremely cool mechanic that provides a lot of player choice and adds a way to spend additional mana on cards, making it harder to run out of things to do. While Nova Hellkite would have seen play in some periods of Standard, I doubt that is true anymore. It's still an interesting card that, if perhaps things got more midrange with a lot of one-toughness creatures, you could see it pop up as a counter, but I don't see that being the case.
I wanted to take a quick peek at Umbral Collar Zealot since we normally don't get such efficient sacrifice outlets these days. We especially don't get those sacrifices outlets as repeatable effects. We have essentially this same card as a one-mana 1/1 in Viscera Seer, which saw tons of play, but it could sacrifice itself and scryed rather than surveilled.
Surveil on this card is huge since it could be put to use with a card like Bloodghast, which could fuel the graveyard repeatedly or create some kind of chain that puts stuff into the graveyard to come back out. I could see that doing something powerful in Eternal formats, but even in Standard, we have Sephiroth that will play nicely with Umbral Collar Zealot.
Umbral Collar Zealot's stat line is also incredible, as this card may have seen play as a 2/2. We haven't had a nice sacrifice deck in Standard in a few years, so it will be interesting to see if a combination of rotation and Umbral Collar Zealot will give us the right power level to play competitively in Standard.
I could see Umbral Collar Zealot being played in any format as some form of combo and potentially used in more fair ways in both Pioneer and Standard. This is quite the uncommon here.
Cosmogrand Zenith looks quite powerful. While it's not on the same level as Cori-Steel Cutter, like I've seen some comparisons, it's still strong and will look even better in some cases.
You want Cosmogrand at the top of your curve in a low-to-the-ground deck. Cosmogrand Zenith may feel like you want to load your deck up with creatures to push the ability to put counters on all your creatures, but more likely you want this card in a deck full of cantrips and cheap instants so you can trigger it on your and your opponent's turns.
Cosmogrand wants you to play a lot of one-mana spells so you can play and trigger it in the same turn. It will demand an answer from your opponent unless they can ignore it by enabling a faster game plan, but they won't always be correct in that assessment because Cosmogrand can close the game quickly. If you're able to cast and trigger it on your own turn, and then chain two more spells on your opponent's turn, untap, and do it again, then you're already attacking for 11 damage. While that's not realistic on early turns, it becomes more realistic as the game develops with proper planning.
I can't see Cosmogrand not having some immediate impact on Standard when it's printed, especially after rotation. It's not the kind of card I'm excited about because it dumps out power and toughness and forces your opponent to kill it or it takes over the game. In many cases, it will feel bad when it eats a removal spell and provides little to no value, but in other cases, it's going to take over the game on its own.
This is an extremely strong card, not quite the power level of Cori-Steel Cutter, but it's still strong enough to raise some eyebrows, and it's likely the strongest card I've seen so far.
Edge of Eternities looks interesting so far and potentially really powerful. I'm hopeful it's as fun to play as Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy is one of my favorite sets, if not my favorite set, of all time. I'm hoping Edge of Eternities can keep that momentum. I was skeptical when I heard the set theme, but so far it looks interesting and hard to predict without playing the new mechanics since they're fairly unique, which I love.
We'll continue exploring outer space in the weeks to come as more Edge of Eternities previews are revealed.
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