Edge of Eternities, the new and exciting mainline expansion for Magic: The Gathering, has been out for less than a week and it’s already solidified itself as my favourite set in a long time.
Taking the adventure into space is a pretty significant leap for MtG’s core storytelling, but it’s paid off in stellar spades – especially if the whole sci-fi thing happens to tickle your cosmic pickle. Bold new stories, stunning art and heavily thematic mechanics makes this whole thing feel important in a way that only comes around once in a blue (mana) moon in contemporary Magic.
Galaxy Quest
As already discussed in my earlier preview, there’s a whole lot to dive into here for story-heads, especially those with a proclivity for Science Fiction (or “Science Fantasy” as it’s portrayed here). Author Seth Dickinson (The Traitor Baru Cormorant, Subnautica 2) has penned more than 80,000 words across 11 episodes and five side stories, making it some of the longest fictions in MtG history.
I’m yet to finish reading everything, but going between ripping packs, playing games and reading prose I can say that this is easily the most invested I’ve been in a Magic: The Gathering story. Dickinson flits between styles and perspectives with agility, regularly returning to a staccato form where the bulk of the character work is simply the narrator saying the quiet parts out loud on their behalf. It’s as alien as it is comfortable to read, and I’m kicking myself for not having explored the storytelling in this franchise more deeply before.
I would highly recommend reading through the episodes yourself on the official website, if only because there’s a bit of a choose-your-own-adventure element to it that’s very welcome for sickos like myself, but if you’re not keen on that there’s also an excellent official audio version available on the MtG YouTube channel with top-notch narration by Jesse Innocalla.
Ship to Sure Victory
Edge of Eternities launches with just two pre-configured retail Commander Decks, both tri-colour and both rocking new Legendary Artifact – Spacecraft cards as their commanders. Yep, spacecraft commanders!
I was provided the World Shaper deck for my coverage purposes, a black-red-green number that features Hearthhull, the Worldseed as its commander. Right off the bat, I can tell you – this deck is incredibly fun.
World Shaper is, as the name might imply, all about terraforming worlds in the name of progress. This a thematic tie to the prevalence of Eumidians, an insectoid species that seeks to colonise new worlds and re-engineer them to prosper, both in the Edge of Eternities lore and in this deck.
The name of the game in World Shaper is to very quickly play, sacrifice and resettle land cards, reaping a variety of triggered benefits along the way. It’s filthy with ridiculous plays, many of which have the capacity to wipe more than just your own lands and permanents, making it a great counter to decks with a lot of ramp while maximising your own mana and enjoying the benefits of recursion and Landfall.
If you, like me, are a semi-casual MtG player with a spark of an interest in deckbuilding, World Shaper will set that spark into a roaring blaze. There’s so much synergy here, and so many paths to victory that I naturally discovered through just diving in and playing with it. I’ve never felt simultaneously so competent at the game and so faced with the realisation that I actually know nothing. That’s the good shit, right there.
While I haven’t had the chance to use it myself, Counter Intelligence seems equally exciting both for chill players looking to bring an effective precon to their next friendly game night, and for veterans excited at the idea of upgrading and readying it for serious play.
The deck’s name is a potentially misdirecting pun, redefining the “Counter” part in Counter Intelligence to highlight the fact you’ll be Scrooge McDuck-style swimming in actual counters. In doing so, it makes great use of the Spacecraft artifact subtype and Station abilities, which rely on Charge Counters to build up to their most devastating effects.
Counter Intelligence’s featured Commander, for example, is the Inspirit, Flagship Vessel card. When first played it’s essentially a bit of nothing, a floating, unmoored chunk of metal with all the lights switched off and not a sniff of life, but once the Charge Counters start rolling in you’ll see it hum to life and ready its formidable defenses.
With at least one counter, Inspirit, Flagship Vessel starts to generate its own counters to use in-house or on other artifacts, and with eight or more attached it becomes a 5/5 flyer with hexproof and indestructible benefits to all of your other artifacts. Combined with the deck’s cover star, Kilo, Apogee Mind, which duplicates already-applied counters en masse, that’s a fast path to a dominating battlefield.
Both of these decks feature a heap of exciting reprints, too, making them decent value for collectors, traders and deckbuilders beyond their existing configuration. I do still think that World Shaper has more potential for casual Commander play and amateur deck crafting, but both are easily some of the most exciting precon Commander Decks we’ve had in ages.
I’ve gone over the new abilities and keywords in Edge of Eternities in my earlier preview, so we’ll skip to the good bit – this expansion features some banger mechanics.
You’ve already gleaned a little of how the Station abilities work in the decks above, but it really is the linchpin in the strategic wheel here. Cards that can Station are thrilling on both sides of the table, whether you’re working to amass riches of counters or desperately trying to stop a spacecraft in its tracks before it can turn the tides of a battle with military might, resources, or both.
I’m keen to play around with Warp and Void a little more, a symbiotic pair of abilities that sees creatures cycle in and out of the battlefield at lightspeed, dropping fun buffs to sorcery effects and other triggers that I’m sure players are already completely breaking in their deckbuilding efforts.
I think I’m most fond of how much attention Lands have gotten here, a no-brainer when we’re talking about the vastness of space and the many diverse worlds contained within. World Shaper is a great example of this, but between Landfall returning, the new Lander tokens and some emergent strategies there’s a lot for land fans to get excited about.
A Black Hole for My Wallet
Unfortunately for anyone already struggling to keep up with their hobbies financially, Edge of Eternities is easily just as fun to buy and collect as it is to play.
The biggest boon to this whole endeavour is, of course, the new intergalactic setting that brings with it whole new art styles, card decoration and treatments, along with sci-fi twists on established ideas. The “Science Fantasy” aesthetic here is one steeped in retrofuturism and modern space opera, but does as Magic the Gathering will and manages to blend in a ton of other influences from solarpunk to high fantasy, cosmic horror and anime.
The stand-outs for me are simply all the depictions of space itself, whether it’s views out into strange celestial bodies or galactic phenomena like black holes. The team has picked an incredible array of artists to depict these worlds and wonders, to the point that I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited by even the most mundane of pulls – just to see what fantastic art could be found on each one.
And then when a more elusive pull does occur and you score any one of the plethora of specially-treated cards in the set, the wow factor becomes frankly gravitational. I won’t spend time going over each and every one here, and I probably don’t need to say much about the headliner and sole “Singularity Foil” card in the set, Sothera, the Supervoid, but let’s take a look at the treatments that really stood out.
Special Guests
Yeah, so these are hands-down about the coolest thing that the MtG art team has cooked up in ages. The game’s featured Special Guests treatments before, and typically in stellar style, but nothing like in Edge of Eternities. These cards play on the aesthetic of old sci-fi pulp novels, reimaging their subjects as vintage book covers to great effect.
As you can see, one of the most striking and interesting choices here was to integrate the actual card information into the faux cover art, allowing the designs to take just about the full real estate of the card and creating some truly fun visuals without terribly hampering functionality. I’ve managed to pull a paltry one (1) of these so far, Magus of the Moon, and I love it:
Viewport Lands
As if my love for Lands hasn’t already been sated by my new favourite Commander Deck, there are some gorgeous land card treatments in Edge of Eternities. The standouts for me begin with Borderless Viewport Lands, which make inspired use of the visual bounds of a trading card to create these incredible windows out into otherworldly environments – literally as if the card holder is looking through the viewport window of a ship or station.
Surreal Space Cards
Trippy, unreal cosmic horror interpretations of main set cards? You had me at literally any of that. Edge of Eternities’ Surreal Space cards are blessed with some of my favourite Magic art of all time, the kind of art that makes these little factory-printed pieces of cardboard feel like treasures. Just look at the regular Nova Hellkite up against the Surreal Space version:
And god forbid I ever pull a Devastating Onslaught or Rust Harvester in foil:
Japan Showcase Cards
There’s never really been a bad time for Japan Showcase cards in a new Magic set, but in a sci-fi adjacent release? Get around ’em. These pieces, commissioned from Japan-based artists, riff on a number of styles of sci-fi manga and anime, from unmistakably classic to a little more modern.
What’s neat about these is that, while Japanese collectors will find all of the cards in local stores printed in their national language, English Collector Boosters can either contain Japan Showcase cards in English or Japanese!
Final (Frontier) Thoughts
I’m viscerally aware that an existing penchant for many flavours of science fiction/science fantasy has meant that I approached this particular set with a particular affection, but even so Edge of Eternities has turned out to be my favourite Magic: The Gathering release in a long time. And they just did a bloody Final Fantasy set!
Crucially, the fresh setting has allowed the teams all across the production of this set the chance to really push theming and imagine new and old ideas in ways that make every aspect of Magic – collection, construction, competition – truly sing.
It is, I fear, out of this world.
Review kit for Magic: The Gathering – Edge of Eternities supplied by the publisher
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