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Magic: The Gathering’sdalliance with science-fiction has reached its endpoint with Edge of Eternities. We’ve left the multiverse and travelled to The Edge, a world of spaceships to crew, aliens to encounter, and star systems to discover.
And yet, despite being radically different from any Magic set before it, Edge of Eternities looks like it’s going to fit nicely into the game. There’s returning creatures and powerful new mechanics galore, which make me more than excited for its August 1 launch.
Today marks the start of the Edge of Eternities preview season, and the debut has lifted the lid on some of the mechanics and art treatments we’ll be playing with when we finally blast off to the Sothera system.
Edge Of Eternities’ Story
If you’ve not already read or listened to the Edge of Eternities story, you’re missing out. It’s set in The Edge, which is the furthest possible point in creation from the multiverse and its many planes. It’s often been described as the skin of reality, surrounding the rest of Magic’s multiverse but separated from it by the ‘Chaos Wall’.
Though The Edge is an entire universe, Edge of Eternities takes place in just one star system, Sothera. Sothera’s star has long since become a black hole (or ‘supervoid’), and much of the story is about the battle between the Mononists, who revere transmissions coming from inside every supervoid, and the Summists – a religion that seeks to reignite Sothera and turn it back into a star for the ‘greater good’.
Note: Much of Edge of Eternities’ story is separate from the ongoing events of the inner multiverse, and doesn’t really tie into the likes of Niv Mizzet’s, Jace’s or Valgavoth’s machinations. However, it does let us catch up with Tezzeret, and what he’s been up to since the Phyrexian invasion.
The Mechanics Of Edge Of Eternities
As Edge of Eternities is the furthest we’ve ever explored in Magic’s multiverse, it also features a ton of new mechanics, as well as a few returning ones.
Station
As revealed at MagicCon Vegas, Edge of Eternities is introducing Spaceships. These function similarly to Vehicles and Mounts, in that you need to tap creatures you control to “Station” them. There are a few major differences in how it works, though.
Stationing uses charge counters, and each creature you tap to station will add counters equal to its power. Once a permanent has the required number of counters, it is always online, unlike Mounts and Vehicles which only last until the end of the turn. This also means you canuse proliferateor any other way of giving yourself extra charge counters to hit the station number quicker.
For example, The Seriema has an ability when it enters to search for a legendary creature and put it into your hand. Then, once you’ve stationed it with at least seven charge counters, it becomes a 5/5 creature with flying that gives your tapped, legendary creatures indestructible.
It’s not only Spacecraft that can be stationed, though. So far, we’ve seen both lands and non-Spacecraft artifacts also be stationable, although these don’t become creatures when charged up like a Spacecraft.
Starting with Edge of Eternities, both legendary Vehicles and legendary Spacecraft can be your commander.
Warp
The current Standard rotation is full of alternate casting costs. We’ve got Adventures from Eldraine,Omens from Tarkir, and now Edge of Eternities is giving us yet another way to get things for cheap with warp.
Warp allows you to play a card for a lower warp cost, with the caveat that it only sticks around for one turn; at the next end step, it exiles itself. However, you’re able to then re-cast the card from exile for its regular cost, when it’ll now stick around a bit longer.
Though being able to play something like Starfield Vocalist for just two mana is appealing no matter what, it’s likely that second part that people will be eyeing up. Prosper andParadox playersin particular will be drooling at an easy way to cast spells from outside your hand, and the cards we’ve been shown so far are powerful enough to be worth the effort.
It’s also not like it’s difficult to keep them in play, with. A well-timed blink spell like Scrollshift or Conjurer’s Closet will scrub them of their exile clause and keep them in play as if you’ve cast them for their regular cost.
Void
Void is an ability word, meaning it ties together mechanics that are similar, but not quite identical in their execution. They all share one thing in common though: if a nonland permanent left the battlefield, or you cast a spell with warp this turn, a spell with warp will have an additional effect.
Think of it like an expanded version of Tragic Slip – that card gives -13/-13 if a creature died this turn, otherwise it only gives -1/-1. Similarly, Elegy Acolyte’s void ability will give you a 2/2 colourless Robot token, but only if you’ve met the void requirement.
This is going to be an easy mechanic to build around in constructed formats, but it could well be a powerhouse in limited, too. With warping already so powerful, having further payoffs for it through void will likely make it the one to keep an eye out for at your prerelease event.
Lander Tokens
Finally, this set is introducing a new type of artifact token. Joining the likes of Treasure, Food, and Clue tokens, we now have Lander tokens to deal with.
Lander tokens do pretty much what they say on the tin: pay two mana, tap and sacrifice the token to search for a basic land and put it into play tapped. It’s a Rampant Growth on a token, which will inevitably make it incredibly powerful.
We’ve had lots of artifact tokens come and go – remember Blood? – but Landers could have a chance of joining the big three as one we see a lot. It helps ramp and mana smoothing, and works nicely with artifact synergies, but the ability to get a basic for two mana isn’t so broken as for these to be used sparingly.
We’re even seeing this effect at common, with Galactic Wayfarer giving you a Lander on top of a 3/3 for just three mana.
The Stellar Sights Bonus Sheet
Edge of Eternities has a bonus sheet! Sort of. Like how The Brothers’ War featured artifacts, March of the Machine legendary creatures, and Wilds of Eldraine enchantments, Edge of Eternities is turning the focus to land cards.
In both Play and Collector boosters, you can expect to find some rather spicy land reprints. Cards like Mana Confluence, High Market, and Gemstone Caverns have already been confirmed, with a unique frame that moves the name to the bottom of the card for an unobstructed full-art frame.
Unless the card is already legal through other printings, Stellar Sights won’t make cards legal in Standard, Modern, or Pioneer. They will be legal in the set’s limited environment, though, meaning you’re fine to include them in your draft or sealed deck.
Unfortunately, there’s one small catch. Previous bonus sheets guaranteed one in every pack, but because lands are so powerful, and the set needs to still include its own lands, you won’t find Stellar Sights all the time in Play boosters. They’ll be similar in frequency to Final Fantasy’s Through the Ages, with one in roughly every eight Play boosters containing a Stellar Sight.
Edge Of Eternities’ Special Guests
Introduced back in 2023’s The Lost Caverns of Ixalan, Special Guests are a miniset of reprints with unique, flavourful art for the set. For Edge of Eternities, we’re getting a series of cards inspired by sci-fi pulp novel covers, not too dissimilar from Secret Lair drops with a similar style released back around Karlov Manor.
The Special Guests include some banger cards, too. Nexus of Fate and Paradox Haze are both powerful combo pieces, while Warping Wail is one of the few counterspells available to colourless decks. Meanwhile, Magus of the Moon isn’t quite a Blood Moon, but it certainly comes close.
Edge Of Eternities’ Japan Showcase
Alongside the Special Guests, the Japan Showcaqse has become a key part of each set, giving the chance for Japanese artists to offer their skills to some of the set’s biggest cards.
Unlike previous Japan Showcases, there isn’t a unifying theme for Edge of Eternities’ cards, but they’re all very interesting none the less. Anticausal Vestige is a colourless Eldrazi that can be warped to put anything to play for free, provided you have enough mana for it. Exalted Sunborn is the latest in a long line of token doublers and Starfield Vocalist does the same for enter triggers, and both can also be warped.
The Endstone will always zip you back to half of your starting life total at the end of each turn, and Mutinous Massacre is the big, filthy Rakdos board wipe of the set, with an added bonus of stealing anything that survives the carnage.
Japan Showcase cards can be found in both Play and Collector boosters, but the shattered foiling treatment will only be available in Collector boosters.
Edge Of Eternities’ Showcase Frames
Edge of Eternities is one of the most alternate art-dense sets we’ve seen in a good long while. On top of the Japan Showcase and Special Guests, we’ve also got not one, not two, not three, but four alternate showcase treatments on offer too.
Edge Of Eternities’ Commander Decks
After the bumper crops of Commander decks we had for Tarkir Dragonstorm and Final Fantasy, Edge of Eternities’ humble offering of just two feels almost quaint. That being said, some of these cards are already being eyed up for how explosively broken they could be.
For the first time ever, neither Commander deck has a legendary creature as its face commander. Instead, this set is being used to debut the big rules change for Commander, and is using legendary Spacecraft instead.
Counter Intelligence
The first of the two decks is the one that has garnered more attention. This blue, red, and white deck is all about proliferating your counters, led by Inspirit, Flagship Vessel.
Considering Spacecraft run off charge counters, having easy ways to build up counters will help them meet their Station requirements really quickly. Inspirit does it by directly putting counters on them, while backup commander Kilo, Apogee Mind does it simply by proliferating whenever it’s tapped.
Kilo is the card everybody was excited for when it was revealed at MagicCon Las Vegas last month. Throwing in cards like Pemmin’s Aura and Freed from the Real quickly enables rapidly proliferating, turning this from a silly robot piloting Spaceships into a poison counter combo piece that threatens even Atraxa.
World Shaper
The second Commander deck is World Shaper, a black/red/green deck focused on sacrificing lands for profit.
We had a similar deck last year withOutlaws of Thunder Junction, but while that one only cared about having lands in your graveyard, this one is built more specifically around the act of sacrificing them.
The Spaccraft for this deck is Hearthhull, the Worldseed. Its first ability to sacrifice a land to draw two cards and play an additional land is already frightfully powerful, helping you burn through your deck and sacrifice as many lands as you need. But then it hits the 8+ charge counters ability, and then you’re punishing your opponents whenever you sacrifice a land as well.
The alternate commander here is perhaps the least interesting of the four. Szarel, Genesis Shepherd doesn’t have a way to sacrifice lands built into it, but with the ability to play lands from your graveyard, any fetchland becomes a way to buff creatures and get landfall triggers every turn.
