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Magic: The Gathering Edge of Eternities Review
Image Credit: Wizards of the Coast
Loading...This year has been an impressive year for Magic: The Gathering thus far. Even without counting the extremely fun Final Fantasy Universes Beyond set, we’ve been to the raceway, fought with (and against) dragons and now we’re heading to space.
Edge of Eternities brings more Science Fiction than fantasy to the series, taking the focus away from the Planes and Planeswalkers. Instead, we have the new Starship subtype featuring the Station mechanic. The Station mechanic, seen in both the Starships and Planet subtypes for lands, lets you tap a creature to add charge counters equal to a creature’s power to a card. The more charges you get, the card will gain new, stronger abilities.
That isn’t to say there’s no Planeswalkers at all. Tezzeret, Cruel Captain does make an appearance in the set, rewarding artifact use with an eventual emblem letting you place 3 +1/+1 counters on an artifact at the beginning of combat.
The set comes with 276 cards, with very few returning mechanics and several new mechanics. Making a return is the Landfall ability giving boosts when a land enters the field. Combined with the new Lander tokens, which can be sacrificed to put a basic land on the field tapped, and you can get some extra abilities quick.
On the new mechanic side is Warp, which lets you pay a reduce cost to cast a spell or summon a creature, with the caveat of exiling the card at the end of the step. However, you can use the card from exile later on for the normal cost of the card.
You also have Void, a mechanic that adds benefits if a nonland permanent left the battlefield or a card was warped during that turn. It doesn’t matter if the card that triggered the effect was on your side or your opponent’s side, as long as it meets the criteria the Void effect is good to go.
Overall, the Warp and Void mechanics are great to partner for some interesting deck builds, and the Station mechanic can reward pulling the heavy hitters out with some powerful Starship abilities to wreak havoc.
Edge of Eternities feature some impressive artwork on the Planet land cards. However, the art I loved to come across gave select cards a makeover to make them look like old sci-fi books. The style choice was perfect for this set, and I was definitely glad to pull a few of them just for display.
