Edge of Eternities Spoiler Review – Week 1

Hey all. Edge of Eternities spoiler season is here, and Magic is going to space! Along with some beautiful artwork, we have seen a lot of sweet cards as well.

Edge of Eternities is extra exciting, because it is the set that will trigger rotation in both Standard and Alchemy, which means the cards we discuss today have a higher chance of making an impact in those formats as other powerful cards and decks leave due to rotation.

Today, I’ll talk about a some of the cards that have caught my eye so far. These cards aren’t guaranteed to be players in Standard or Alchemy, but I think they have something going on and I’ll be keeping an eye on them while deckbuilding once the whole set is revealed.

With that said, lets dive in to some sweet new cards!

Cosmogrand Zenith

Casting my second spell gives me tokens? Where have I seen this before? Obviously this card is not Cori-Steel Cutter for many reasons, but I think that it has potential to be a pay off for a go-wide deck, or a spell slinger deck.

The power of this card will be on turn four, or three if you have a free spell such as a plotted spell, where you can drop it, and immediately cast a one mana spell and get two tokens. Even if they remove it right away you still get some value and have a board left over.

You’ll mostly be making tokens the first two or three times with Cosmogrand Zenith, but once the time is right you can pump up the jam on your whole team. It also grows itself with this ability so it can become more and more scary.

This card brings the army and grows the army to finish the game off, making it an engine and finisher all in on. This is the type of card that can easily become a format staple, so I’ve got my eye on it and I’m excited to deck build with it.

Scout for Survivors

Scout for Survivors is an interesting sideboard card for white aggro decks. While Red and Izzet aggro has dominated Standard for the past few months, both of those decks took bans and maybe it is time for Mono-White aggro to rise up to take their place.

With Temporary Lockdownrotating, a lot of slower decks are going to be actually killing your creatures, so getting back a one mana and two mana creature (or three one mana creatures) and buffing them up is going to be a big swing in board presence, demanding a sweeper or some other answer from the opponent.

Scout for Survivors could be to slow, but I will be considering it for the sideboard of any white aggro decks I build.

Annul

Annul is just a solid sideboard option. Funny that they print it after banning a powerful artifact, but all Annul would have done was made Izzet Prowess mirror matches more silly. Regardless, if another powerful artifact or enchantment is giving you trouble, consider Annul for the sideboard.

Consult the Star Charts

Consult the Star Charts is quite powerful. At four mana, if you kick it, you get to look at the top four and take two. That’s Memory Deluge, a former Standard staple. Now this doesn’t have flashback for extra value, but it can look at more cards as the game goes on.

There could even be times later in the game where you don’t kick because you are looking for a specific card and need the mana to cast it, making this card more akin to Pillage the Bog.

Blue is eating good these days when it comes to card advantage. Stock Up is already a powerful card, and once you add in Consult the Star Charts you have a ton of options in all stages of the game to find the cards you need.

Archenemy’s Charm

Our mega cycle of mono-color charms continues. We got Archmage's Charm in Modern Horizons a long time ago, and Archdruid's Charm in Murders at Karlov Manor. Some day we will get a white and red version as well I hope.

Archenemy’s Charm is solid. With these charms you are usually paying one extra mana for the flexibility of having three options. What I mean is that most of these modes would cost two mana on their own, so you are paying one extra just to have the choice.

In a mono-black deck this card is pretty nice. Exile removal is very powerful, returning two creatures to your hand is fine value, and buffing up a creature and giving it lifelink can swing a race against an aggro deck.

There aren’t many decks that this type of card can go in to, due to its triple black mana cost, but I think we have pieces for mono-black decks in both Standard and Alchemy, so I expect Archenemy’s Charm to be a player in the format.

Timeline Culler

Timeline Culler is a nice recursive threat akin to Bloodghast, in that it can just keep coming back over and over again. A 2/2 haste for two mana is fine, but the real power in this card comes from the ability to cast it from your graveyard for one mana and two life.

How warp works is at the end of turn it will go to exile where you can then cast it again for its regular mana cost. So when you cast it from the graveyard you only get one attack before it exiles, but if you have the mana you can cast it the next turn and keep the pressure on.

The nice thing is this card can block, unlike Bloodghast, so you can block, then start to recur it. Now this card is a lot better when you are the one putting on pressure, but at least it can try to slow the opponent down in a pinch.

I’m liking the look of Mono-Black in post rotation Standard and Alchemy, and I’ll talk about that more in the next card.

Sunset Saboteur

Sunset Saboteur is a very powerful threat, with a very real drawback. A 4/1 menace with ward-discard a card, for just two mana is great. It is going to easily get in a couple of hits, especially if you have removal to keep hitting with menace, or it is going to draw a removal spell and get you a two-for-one.

While its downside is very real, black decks are known for having more than a little bit of removal up their sleeve. If your opponent has just one creature you can of course just get rid of it, but if they do have two creatures, you can attack, put the counter on the creature you plan to kill, and then cast a removal spell before blockers, thus avoiding the downside and letting your menace creature connect.

If you don’t have favorable attacks, you can also use Sunset Saboteur to crew vehicles, or add counters to spacecraft.

I think it is easy to look at the downside of this card and shrug your shoulders and say the card is a non-starter, but I think this card is going to be a very powerful option for black aggro decks.

Umbral Collar Zealot

Umbral Collar Zealot is a powerful sacrifice outlet, and with Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER and other sacrifice payoffs sticking around through rotation, the time could be right for a powerful sacrifice deck to come together.

Of course, in Standard we will still have Bartolome del Presidio as a free sacrifice outlet, but he is two colors and legendary. Umbral Collar Zealot lets just explore a mono black sacrifice deck or a Rakdos sacrifice deck, or just gives us more free sacrifice outlets in an Orzhov build.

I am excited to build a few different versions of sacrifice decks and make Umbral Collar Zealot and Sephiorth into best friends.

Weapons Manufacturing

Weapons Manufacturing is a powerful engine card, but it does require a bit of deck building to unlock its potential.

First of all, you need to be playing a high density of cheap nontoken artifacts to start creating our stockpile of munition tokens. Munition tokens are a great finisher, letting us hit the opponent directly, but can also take out creatures when we are behind on board.

Second, munitions have no inherent way to sacrifice or leave the battlefield, so we need to have ways to sacrifice artifacts in our deck. There are a few ways to do this off the top of my head.

One example is the card we just discussed, Umbral Collar Zealot, which can sacrifice all of our munitions for free, giving us a way to shoot down our opponent. Another option is Pitiless Carnage, which can sacrifice all of our munition tokens and if that doesn’t end the game we will at least have a new hand of cards to try to keep the engine going.

Another option is Legion Extruder, which can turn our munitions into 3/3 golems.

So I’m not sure exactly what a Weapons Manufacturing deck will look like, but I know that if you can get it going it is a very powerful engine worth building around.

Eusocial Engineering

Eusocial Engineering is, on its face, a worse version of Felidar Retreat. It cost one more mana, and can’t pump up the jam. However, I think it is worth shouting out because of the warp cost letting you make a couple of tokens early.

My vision with this is to use it on turn three, warp it in for two mana, and then play a Fabled Passage or other fetch land, to get two tokens out of the deal. It will then warp out to be cast on a later turn, but our two 2/2 robots get to hold down the fort while we build to our grander game plan.

It may not be worth it, but I love playing Felidar Retreat decks, so I’ll definitely be trying to make Eusocial Engineering work.

Frenzied Baloth

Wizards heard that Green wasn’t seeing much play in Standard, and they are trying to fix it with Frenzied Baloth. This card just has so much text, and every time you think it can’t have more text, it just keeps going.

A 3/2 trample, haste for two mana is pretty good. It will trade a lot, but it can usually come down and get in a hit or two before that happens. It also can’t be countered, and makes it so your other creatures can’t be countered. Oh and if for some reason your opponent was trying to prevent combat damage that can’t happen either.

Mono-Green aggro has honestly been on the edge of playable for a long time, and if they keep printing powerful cards like Frenzied Baloth, then it may just get there.

Biotech Specialist

Biotech Specialist introduces us to lander tokens, which are artifact tokens you can pay 2 to sacrifice and find a basic land into play tapped. So it comes with a bit of value, but the real reason to think about this card is the second line of text, that ask you to sacrifice artifacts for two damage at the opponent’s face.

I actually think that Biotech Specialist and Weapons Manufacturing (discussed above) go into different decks, because Biotech Specialist works best with tokens, and Weapons Manufacturing ask for nontoken artifacts to be in your deck.

I imagine running Biotech Specialist alongside cards like Sentinel of the Nameless City, and other cards that incidentally create artifact tokens that can be sacrificed for cheap to start pinging the opponent down.

There are a lot of food token payoffs and enablers in Wilds of Eldraine, so I expect there to be a lot of great options for this deck, and I look forward to trying it out.

Cosmogoyf

I’m a bit of a Magic boomer, since I started playing the game in 2010, and Modern was my first competitive format, so if you put Goyf into a card I am going to love it right away.

Cosmogoyf is a cool card, asking you to exile cards from your graveyard to grow in size. There are a lot of ways to do this, including simple ways like Ghost Vacuum, or collecting evidence for cards like Analyze the Pollen, or using cards like Qarsi Revenant and their renew ability to grow the Cosmogoyf and give it some evasion.

I’m looking forward to trying to build some sort of Golgari self-mill deck, and if you are feeling ambitious, maybe even an Abzan build that includes Ketramose, the New Dawn to draw cards as you exile cards from your graveyard.

Ragost, Deft Gastronaut

Ragost, Deft Gastronaut also wants us to sacrifice artifacts, and I think that he slots in to a deck with Biotech Specialist quite nicely. With both in play you can sacrifice an artifact to deal 5 damage to the opponent.

He also makes your artifacts into food, so you can gain life in a pinch, and if you do you get to unpta Ragost at end of turn to throw another artifact at the opponent’s face.

Ragost could also play well in the Weapons Manufacturing build of artifact sacrifice, so I think that deck building with all of these cards is going to be a fun but challening puzzle, as finding the best build of the deck is going to take a lot of trial and error, and testing.

But I love deck building, so I am really looking forward to the challenge of building these decks!

Tannuk, Memorial Ensign

Every set I try to build landfall ping, with Iridescent Vinelasher, and every set they bait me into building it again by giving us a new card for the archetype. Now, we have Iridescent Vinelasher, Sabotender, and Tannuk, Memorial Ensign, all asking us to play lands, to ping our opponent down.

So, once again, I will be building some version of this deck and seeing if it works. Tannuk is a nice addition to the deck because it gives us some card advantage when we use a fetch land or other effect to put a second land into play.

Although likely a bit clunky at three mana and legendary, I think Tannuk is a worthy inclusion in the deck.

Shocklands

Five shocklands return in Edge of Eternities! Shocklands are awesome dual lands, giving you the flexibilty of being untapped when you need them to be or tapped when you don’t, and they work great with the verge lands.

I’m sad we only have five here, but I hope they print the other five as soon as possible to round out the cycle.

Until then, Simic, Orzhov, Boros, Gruul, and Dimir decks are going to have great mana in Standard and Alchemy, so expect those formats to be ever so slightly tilted toward those colors until we get the other five in a future set.

Wrapping Up

This were just some of the awesome cards that we have seen so far. I can’t wait to see the rest of the cards from the set, so I’ll be back next week to talk about more cards, and after that I’ll be breaking down the various decks that I brewed using them.

I hope you are as excited for Edge of Eternities and for rotation in Standard and Alchemy as I am! The set looks sweet so far and rotation is always the most fun time to play. Until next time, best of luck in all of your matches.