This weekend, Magic: the Gathering’s latest set, Edge of Eternities, will unleash the might of the Sothera System. Luckily, I got a chance to test it out early on Magic Arena. While Wizards of the Coast’s early access event included Sealed, Draft, and even Standard format, I mostly played Sealed to get a taste of what MTG players will experience during the weekend of July 25-27.
Usually, when the prerelease of a new MTG set is approaching, I go over the amazing Limited guides that the ChannelFireball pro players make available at TGCplayer.com. While these are an incredibly useful tool, they evaluate cards in a vacuum (but with decades of combined pro insight), and nothing beats the hands-on experience.
Here is what I found out after playing a few hours of Edge of Eternities Sealed. Strap up your seatbelts and fire up your warp engines.
MTG Edge of Eternities plays differently from recent Limited formats
The first surprise I had was after finishing my first Sealed deck run, when I realized only an hour had passed.
I wasn’t playing a particularly aggro deck, but all the games flew by pretty quickly. After a few more hours, I realized that Edge of Eternities Sealed is a lot less of a grind compared to recent sets such as Final Fantasy, Tarkir: Dragonstorm, and Aetherdrift. While some colors make use of your graveyard effectively, there are no mechanics that let you play spells twice, such as Flashback or Harmonize. These mechanics usually also help mitigate flooding (the dreadful experience of drawing too many lands), but there is nothing like that in Edge of Eternities.
Edge of Eternity’s mechanics all play to the board, and controlling the board is key to success. Crucial decisions during a match will often involve whether it’s better to crack a Lander token to ramp or add something to the board, or if you want to tap your creatures to Station your Spacecrafts and Planets, potentially exposing yourself to a big attack. Another thing to keep in mind is the presence of Void, a mechanic similar to Revolt, which triggers when a nonland permanent leaves the battlefield or a spell is Warped. Many cards have powerful Void abilities, which makes blocking quite hard in this format. Watch out for suspicious attacks that may trigger a Tragic Trajectory or Voidforged Titan played after combat.
Warp deserves a special mention because I was quite impressed by this mechanic. In my experience, it works essentially as Adventure from the Eldraine sets, as long as the creature has an enter the battlefield effect. Veterans will remember how powerful Adventure cards are in Limited, providing two cards in one, so getting good Warp cards will increase the power and stability of a deck.
What colors and decks are good in Edge of Eternities Sealed?
I didn’t have the time to play all potential color combinations and decks in Edge of Eternities Sealed, but I did get to try a few. Here is my first Sealed experiment, a Black-White deck that splashed Blue for Singularity Rupture. (Spoiler: I never drew it.)
Image: Wizards of the Coast via Polygon
I ended up 4-3 and, in hindsight, this was probably not the best I could get out of my pool. I focused on playing as many removal spells as possible, but I was susceptible to flooding and I often find myself relying on topdecks. Perhaps going heavier Blue would have been better, as it seems to be the only color that allows you to draw cards reliably (along with Black). I really wanted to try out Sothera, the Supervoid, as I was curious about its performance on the table, but again, never drew it. To no one’s surprise, Anticausal Vestige is really, really good. Here is my rares pool:
Image: Wizards of the Coast via Polygon
For my second Sealed, I opened a pool that looked much weaker to me, but in reality I was simply not looking at it in the right way (hindsight, what a blessing!) I started with Blue-White, lost a game, went to Blue-Black splashing White, lost a game, then finally switched to Red-Green splashing White. I was obsessed with the fact that I only opened three removal spells, and all in the same color (you guessed it, White,) but the best colors in my pool were Red and Green, so I went for a Lander ramp deck. Once I landed (pun intended) on that, I won five games in a row, before succumbing to the strongest thing in Limited since the dawn of Magic: an uncontested flyer.
Image: Wizards of the Coast via Polygon
Not sure if there is a lesson to learn here besides “play your best colors.” What really swayed me at the beginning were the two Astelli Reclaimers… because I read the card wrong. (Shame! Shame!) I will have to disagree with LSV in his set review here, the limitation of “non-creature, non-land permanent” makes this quite bad for a rare. How many enchantments and non-creature artifacts can you have in your deck? Sure, it works with Spacrafts, but unless White is one of your strong colors, don’t go out of your way to play this.
My final Sealed pool was, in my opinion, the worst I opened. My rares included three lands and two unplayable cards (Infinitye Guideline Station and Cosmogoyf.) I was basically forced to play Blue-Black but with no real top curve besides one Mouth of the Storm. I was proved wrong and the deck went quite well (4-0 at the time of writing). I really felt the difference in being able to draw cards consistently, and, along with removal, it compensated for my creatures not being the best and not having any bombs.
Image: Wizards of the Coast via Polygon
I also had time to play one Draft, and I went 7-2, so it’s worth sharing. I drafted Red-Green ramp again, splashing black for Zero Point Ballad and the absurdity that is Mutinous Massacre. Paired with my good results with my second Sealed deck, this makes this color combination my favorite one in Edge of Eternities Limited. (For now. I’m also eager to try White-Green and Green-Black.) The fact that Lander tokens are the only way to fix mana in the format really makes this deck shine, in my opinion. You can draft a solid ramp/Landfall deck and also have the privilege of splashing any bombs you happen upon, plus removal if needed.
Image: Wizards of the Coast via Polygon
Tips and tricks for the Edge of Eternities prerelease
Here are a few things to keep in mind before you head to the store or to MTGA this weekend.
- Focus Fire is really good. A one-mana removal spell that kills almost as long as you play creatures, which is something you want to do anyway, and also works in the first two turns if you have nothing on the board. This is one of those format-warping commons, and it will make attacking and blocking against White a pain. If your opponent has one White mana open, expect to be Fired upon.
- Terrapact Intimidator is the new Fact or Fiction. If your opponent is playing Red, expect to spend their second turn thinking about what option to choose from this card. In general, if you have a cheap removal spell in hand, it’s fine to give it the two +1/+1 counters; otherwise, go for the Lander tokens. Speaking of which…
- Lander tokens are better than they look. This mechanic seemed a little slow to me during spoiler seasons, but it plays a very important role in the format. It’s the only source of fixing (besides Gene Pollinator, another deceptively good card) and it’s also a mana sink of sorts. (I know, ramping is not the best thing to do when you already have a lot of mana, but it’s better than nothing, and it also lowers your chances of drawing more lands.) Besides, these are artifacts, and there are plenty of ways to leverage them in other ways in the set.
- Survey Mechan is your best friend. I just love this card. A Hexproof flyer that you can play in any deck is already good in a format with plenty of ways to put +1/+1 counters on creatures, but its activated ability is simply amazing. Even if you play straight two colors, it won’t be hard to get to eight lands, and it’s well worth spending eight mana to draw three cards, gain life, and potentially kill a creature. Treasure this little guy if you see it!
- Remember that your Warped creatures will go away! The fact that creatures cast with Warp stick on the board until end of turn may trick you into forgetting they will be exiled, especially in Arena or in clustered board states. So don’t make the mistake of thinking you have an extra blocker when you don’t. (Been there.)
- Warped creatures can Station. This is a given, but a common use of creatures with Warp will be to put them on the board to be tapped for the Station ability of a Spacecraft or Planet.
- Mutinous Massacre! This card is bonkers. It requires minimum setup, and it’s very hard not to win a game on the turn you cast it. If you open it in your pool, try to play it.
I hope these impressions will be useful, and enjoy your Edge of Eternities prerelease! I can’t wait to dive fully into another Magic set… wait, what’s that? Spoilers for Marvel’s Spider-Man are already here?
Source link
