Magic’s newest expansion takes us to the very brink of the Blind Eternities. The edge of it, even. A new set means new mechanics, and we’ve got some good ones. In this article we’ll talk about the mechanics and offer some thoughts on what they mean for Commander and other formats and how they’ll play.
Edge of Eternities will release to Magic: the Gathering Online and Arena on July 29th, 2025, and to the tabletop on August 1st.
New Mechanics
Spacecraft and Station
Spacecraft itself is not a new mechanic per se but rather a new subtype of artifact. Each of them can be stationed similarly to crewing a Vehicle, by tapping one of your creatures at sorcery speed. This will add a number of charge counters equal to the creatures power, and then once you exceed the indicated threshold you will get that effect. Usually this is the Spacecraft becoming a creature but not always, and this mechanic can also be found on things like the new Planet lands.
BPhillipYork: Sort of a strange combination of vehicles and level up. Sort of strange because there are a bunch of things that care about charge counters in particular, but that just gives more room to explore and more possibility for occasional cards that interact interestingly with the mechanic. As to the game play pattern of station, I think it’s a nice one, since it means you can drop one of these and then power it up and go. For Commander it’s very on brand, and meshes pretty nicely with the way Commander games often progress, since it means you drop a station and then can use your mana dorks or utility creatures to get it going. It also gives you some resilience against board clears. I really like it for commanders in particular, since it means you can generally get your commander out fairly early, and depending on the card, benefit some from having it, but it won’t eat a random Swords to Plowshares or a Lightning Bolt just because someone is getting wheeled out. Overall I think it’s a good add to the game and I hope it isn’t a one and done mechanic.
FromTheShire:Â My feelings about a space set aside, this is a pretty solid mechanic. There will be plenty of times where you have creatures just hanging out that you can tap to station, and since it doesn’t require additional mana it avoids the main pitfall of level up where you spend multiple turns of resources into something that then instantly eats removal. The change to allow Legendary artifacts as commanders at the same time makes obvious sense too, and opens up more future design space.
Saffgor: On the whole, I actually quite dislike the inflexibility of Station compared to its counterpart in Crew. I feel that, first of all, ‘spacecraft’ could have just been Vehicle again as to avoid a term which is parasitic and difficult to print outside of future UB sets, and secondly that the sorcery-speed requirement is backbreaking. Getting to play with Station in limited, it feels as though each player is just in a soft damage race to see whose evasive beater comes online first, and if someone has a faster plan not dependent on Spacecraft, they just negate the potential yours has to exist without a means to turn it on for free. There also aren’t enough Legendary Spacecraft to reinforce the potential of these cards in Commander, and I strongly feel the rare or mythic Legends cycle should have been craft, not later plot versions of our story characters.
Warp
Warp is designed to get your creatures on the battlefield sooner with the trade off that they exile at the end of the turn. Once they are exiled they are considered ‘warped’ and may be cast again for their normal mana cost during a future turn. Note that you may only warp from your hand, and the CMV of the card does not changed if it is cast this way.
BPhillipYork: This mechanic can have some very beneficial interactions. If your deck cares about creatures entering, or leaving, or casting from exile, this satisfies all of those. It also lets you get cards out of your hand if you’re planning a wheel or something like that. It’s really a strange mixture of foretell and evoke, but it works pretty well in my opinion. It also interesting seems to have a lot of cards that themselves care about entering or leaving play, which is kind of putting both sides of the trick on one card. It seems like a well thought out, generally balanced mechanic that plays well with certain kind of decks, and again, I hope it sticks around at least until the Universes Beyond: Star Trek (coming soon).
FromTheShire:Â My first comparison was to the dash mechanic, which we have certainly seen be powerful. Letting you double trigger your enters effects is really nice, and as York said there are a bunch of things that will care about specific aspects of how this works. Given that these still count as their full mana value when you cast them with warp, definitely a good thing Up the Beanstalk just ate a ban.
Saffgor: I have a hunch Warp ends up playing more like Blitz than Dash, given that the printed mana costs for these cards is generally below-rate for what you’re provided once you Warp them out. Because it’s an alternate cost as well, and only from the hand, it’s fairly limiting in terms of combo potential outside of a few fringe examples that are 1-mana versions of effects we already see as outlets (or in the case of Weftstalker Ardent, enablers with a hack to Pirate). It doesn’t tickle my brain in the same way either Dash or Blitz does, outside of exactly something like Commander Liara Portyr, who seems absolutely excellent with bringing the secondary costs of these spells down to a playable number later on.
Void
Void can be found as an alternative effect on an instant or sorcery, or as a triggered ability on a permanent. This checks to see if a nonland permanent left the battlefield or a spell was warped – this doesn’t specify it has to be one of your permanents either.
BPhillipYork: This mechanic is kind of interesting, it pairs obviously with warp. It’s fairly trivial to trigger because of Treasures, if your deck is built to do so. The issue is really what the trigger does, dropping a +1/+1 counter is pretty meaningless, and void as an ability ranges from making spells cheaper, to more impactful, to being a cost preventer if it triggers. All in all it’s perfectly fine there’s just not that many cards that have it, and only a subset of those are particularly useful. It does seem thematically very inline with Eldrazi.
FromTheShire:Â Nothing particularly noteworthy about how the mechanic is triggered, it’s just checking if certain things that already happen have happened and then giving you an effect. The nice thing is this is pretty easy to trigger and should be doing so off of things you already want to be doing like removing their creatures, sacrificing your own for value, casting spells with warp, etc, so it doesn’t require much of a build around and as such is a simple ask to include in your deck.
Saffgor: The fact they’ve realized Revolt’s core issue was the fact that fetch lands exist is very funny, and I think Void is definitely an improvement on how free Revolt is in formats with those powerful lands. Ultimately, the fact it included Warp feels a bit parasitic in its design, so I doubt we’ll see it in the future unless Modern Horizons 4 decides to bring back a few cards with each mechanic.
Lander Tokens
Lander tokens are new artifact tokens that essentially offer an instant speed, colorless Rampant Growth.
BPhillipYork: I was thinking there’s not enough predefined artifact tokens; there’s really only Treasure, Clue, Food, Blood, Gold, and a million other evergreen and deciduous token types. However, I think this token type is really pretty useful, it ramps you slightly, but slowly and requiring an investment, and the token itself is a colorless mana fixer. Really good for just making sure that people can play their Commander decks, which leads to more fun games. There’s currently only a couple of ways to get these in more than a one-shot way, and they’re a nice effectively modal spell, where you’ve got do X or create a lander token. Nice to see red get some land fixing, and not have it always be green. All in a useful kind of token that I expect to disappear after this set, but who knows.
FromTheShire:Â Yeah honestly my biggest problem with these is that they’re called Lander tokens so it’s harder to justify them being in a bunch of sets for flavor reasons. I really like these, both in green and green-less decks. If you don’t have access to green being able to get land ramp is really, really nice, and if you’re in green you should have enough mana laying around to be popping these consistently and snowballing further out of control. It’s not like they seem to care a ton about the color pie these days anyways. With the shock lands entering Standard as well, we are likely about to see another era of being able to play pretty much whatever colors you want without worrying about the mana base.
Saffgor: I am a huge fan of Landers, but specifically for colors other than Green. Black received some superb lander generation this set, as did White & Red, mostly in the form of the colorless enablers. Finally giving these colors actual land ramp is a little bit of a pie break, and I’m surprised this wasn’t mentioned more in the Mothership articles on the colors, but by that same token—it’s about damn time. Very much looking forward to playing landfall in colors that shouldn’t be able to, and brewing up something heinous.
Next Time: The Set’s Multicolor Cards
That wraps up our look at the mechanics of Edge of Eternities. We’ll be back later to look at the most noteworthy cards in the set, starting with the multicolor and colorless cards in the main set, then in the following articles we’ll cover the monocolor cards.
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