Get ready to navigate through the Sothera system with our mechanics guide on Edge of Eternities!
Mechanics for Edge of Eternities came out recently, and I’m excited to run through them — let’s see what looks promising, what looks exciting, and what looks wild, as these are some cool new abilities. As a space-themed set, it makes sense that they are all flavored appropriately, with the full list being Spacecraft, Planets, Warp, Void, and Lander tokens. Let’s explore!
Spacecraft
This is a new take on Vehicles, with the twist being that instead of crewing them each turn, you permanently turn them into creatures once you’ve met the Station criteria sufficiently. What that means is you can tap a creature at sorcery speed to put Charge counters equal to its power, and once the Spacecraft has enough counters, it’s a creature permanently (well, as long as it has those counters at least). So take the Pinnacle Kill-Ship — you cast it for seven mana, blow up a creature for ten damage, and then once you’ve put seven or more Charge counters on it, you gain a 7/7 flying threat.
This seems like a fine place to explore, and I like that once you are done charging up your Spacecraft, you no longer have to worry about it. You can even chain them, by charging up one Spacecraft and then using it to charge another (and they are often fairly large too). This doesn’t strike me as a Constructed mechanic on its face, but it’s all about power level — if there’s a super-powerful Spacecraft (think Smuggler’s Copter compared to most Vehicles), it could certainly make the cut.
Planets
Market Price: $12.18
Market Price: $26.74
Planets use the same Station mechanic as Spacecraft, but start out as lands (and the Planet subtype doesn’t actually mean anything intrinsically, but all of the ones in Edge of Eternities have Station). Uthros, Titanic Godcore, for example, starts out as a tapped blue land, but once charged up to twelve, it becomes my favorite land of all time, Tolarian Academy (though it does cost a blue to activate). These lands are neat and offer some nice late-game value. Sadly, I don’t think Uthros quite makes it as the second copy of Tolarian Academy in Vintage Cube, but that’s not a big deal to most people. The cost of a tapped land isn’t huge, so I bet these all play quite nicely in Limited, with some potential for Constructed as well.
Warp
Warp is a cool mechanic, and very reminiscent of Adventure (a mechanic I enjoyed greatly). Warp is an alternative cost, where you can choose to cast a Warp card from hand by using its Warp cost instead of its mana cost. When you Warp, the permanent comes into play for a turn, and then at the end of the turn gets exiled — but it’s not gone forever. On any later turn, you can cast it from exile, at which point it just stays in play like normal. Basically, Warp lets you get the enter-the-battlefield or static ability of a card for a turn, then later you cast and get the full card. Warp creatures still can’t attack unless they have haste (like Nova Hellkite), but pretty much every Warp card has some reason you’d want it to be in play for a turn.
Warp looks quite strong to me — you get extra value out of your cards, and there are plenty of cool tricks you can do with them. For example, Warping something in and then sacrificing it sounds powerful, though note that you won’t get to recast it if you do that (since it never goes to exile). If there are some pushed Warp cards, ala Bonecrusher Giant or Brazen Borrower, there’s no reason they can’t make a big impact on Constructed. They all sound great in Limited too (especially Syr Vondam, Sunstar Exemplar as an enabler), and I look forward to getting my Warp on.
Void
Market Price: $15.55
Void is a rehash of Revolt, where it just checks to see if a nonland permanent left the battlefield or a spell was Warped to be active. It looks at all players for this, making it even easier to turn on than Revolt, which was already pretty easy. Void is going to be online a lot in Edge of Eternities Limited (especially), so evaluate Void cards with that in mind.
Lander Tokens
Landers are new tokens that essentially cast Rampant Growth, which sounds great to me. The presence of Lander tokens indicates that ramp is going to be well-supported, and they are comparable to Clues, Blood, and other such trinkets. These look super fun, and with the right price, could be sweet in Constructed. All token types have seen a lot of Constructed play, so as long as we get the Thraben Inspector or Bloodtithe Harvester equivalent, I see no reason why Landers wouldn’t make it too.
The Edge of Glory
Market Price: $91.44
Edge of Eternities looks like a fun set — these mechanics are both flavorful and sweet gameplay-wise, and I think I’m going to have a great time drafting Edge of Eternities. All of these mechanics look like they could have a Constructed impact too, especially Warp, so as we see more cards, we will get a better sense of that. Look for the Limited Set Reviews next week, and until then, stay clear of the Void.