Magic: The Gathering – Edge of Eternities Preview

It’s been a month since Magic players were able to dive into the realms of Final Fantasy and its casts of memorable characters, but now it is time to look at the stars and prepare to blast off with the trading card game’s next set, Edge of Eternities. IGN recently had a chance to check out some new cards and get a breakdown of the set’s new mechanics players will get to play around with when the set launches on August 1 (preorders are available now).

Edge of Eternities Important Dates:

• July 18: Full Card Image Gallery
• July 25-31: Edge of Eternities Prerelease Events
• July 29: MTG Arena Release Date
• Aug. 1: Worldwide Tabletop Release

From spaceships to alien races, this new release marks a drastic departure from the more high-fantasy aesthetic that Magic is known for, but at its core, this is still very much a Magic: The Gathering set. One thing the team wants to make very clear is that Edge of Eternities is science fantasy, not science fiction, which means you can expect to see both flying space whales and spaceships.

As it is still early days in the spoiler cycle, Wizards is still keeping a vast majority of the set’s contents under wraps, but we do have confirmations that some of Magic’s scariest creatures will be making their appearance around the Blind Eternities. Once again, Eldrazi, residents of the Blind Eternities, will be causing havoc for players with the reveal of ‘Anticausal Vestige’. For six mana reads “When this card leaves the battlefield, draw a card, then you may put a permanent card with mana value less than or equal to the number of lands you control from your hand onto the battlefield tapped” with Warp 4 (more on Warp in a moment). More exciting, however (and I admit I am partially biased towards this next one because I love them and have decks of them), it looks like Slivers are making their return! We got to see a new alternate showcase art version of the Sliver Overlord, and the narrative that Wizards has been releasing for the set also implies the return of these fury-enducing creatures, which I can’t wait for. After all, being a hivemind and all, what good would only a single Sliver do?

Edge of Eternities also sees reprints of the highly requested and sought-after Shock Lands – special dual-colored lands. These lands will allow you to tap for one of two colors of mana, and while similar cards normally come in tapped, by taking a little damage, Shock Lands will enter untapped, meaning you can use them right away!

Compared to some of the more recent sets, Edge of Eternities takes it easy with only four new mechanics – Void, Warp, Station, and Lander Tokens. Station was first revealed during MagicCon Vegas and is similar to Crewing vehicles, whereby tapping creatures grants a benefit; however, Station has some important differences. Firstly, tapping creatures to Station something can only be done on your turn at sorcery speed, doing so will put a counter on that card based on the total power of the creatures you tapped, and once a threshold is met, the card will gain access to new abilities. While we have seen examples of Starships that include the Station mechanic, Wizards has now revealed a new land type, planets, that will also benefit from this mechanic. Each of the five main colors will feature their own speciality planet that when stationed will have some pretty powerful effects, such as blue’s ‘Uthros, Titanic Godcore’ that by default will tap for a single blue but when its Station 12+ requirement is met, for a Blue and tapping Uthros will add a blue mana for each artifact you control.

Next up is Warp, an alternate casting option for the cards with it. By casting a card for its Warp cost, which looks to be less than its normal casting cost, it will enter the battlefield and then get exiled on the next end step. The twist with these cards is that they can then be cast at a later time for their normal cost from exile. From what it looks like, many of these cards with Warp will have “when they enter” trigger effects, allowing you to take advantage of that effect twice. However, being able to play these cards from exile is only available if they are sent to exile due to paying the Warp effect, so if another card exiles them instead, they are gone for good and can’t be played.

Paired with Warp, Void provides players with new options to enhance the effects of the cards it appears on. By playing a card with Void after a non-land permanent has left the battlefield or a card has been played for its Warp cost (referred to as spell warped), then the Void card’s effect will be strengthened. I’m intrigued by the sort of synergistic opportunities that may arise between various Warp and Void cards.

Lastly, there are the Lander tokens that are being introduced in this latest set. By paying two colorless mana and sacrificing the token, you can search your library for a basic land and put it into play tapped. Right off the bat, I can already see how cards that generate these Lander tokens will prove to be powerful additions to any Landfall deck, and coming off of Final Fantasy, cards like ‘Tifa Lockhart’ whose power doubles whenever a land comes into play will be able to easily take advantage of the additional lands dropping in. For even more utility, if you are playing a deck with ‘Wandering Minstrel’, this would make the lands that the Lander tokens bring out, come out untapped instead of tapped, letting you use them right away! Talk about mana ramp!

Outside of the mechanic like Warp, with cards like the newly revealed Cosmogoyf (“This creature’s power is equal to the number of cards you own in exile and its toughness is equal to that number plus 1”) and Sothera, The Supervoid (“Whenever a creature you control dies, each opponent chooses a creature they control and exiles it. At the beginning of your end step, if a player controls no creatures, sacrifice Sothera, then put a creature card exiled with it onto the battlefield under your control with two additional +1/+1 counters on it”) gives me the sense that Wizards is aiming to make your exile zone into a resource all of its own. If that ends up being the case, cards with Flashback or something like Agatha’s Soul Cauldron that let you exile cards from graveyards could easily make a card like Cosmogoyf super scary. We will have to see how much they lean into messing around with exile (hopefully, there won’t be too many “exiled this way” cards so you have to keep track of what cards get exiled with what).

Edge of Eternities continues to push Magic: The Gathering into new dimensions with this space fantasy adventure. Who knows what other mysteries lie in wait out near the Blind Eternities and what horrors await players? This peak at the set has given us a taste of starting to concoct new deck ideas, and over the next month, more and more will be revealed. In the meantime, be sure to enjoy the amazing cards from the recent Final Fantasy set, including keeping your eyes open for the cards everyone seems to want and are chasing after. For a full look at what the rest of the year of Magic is looking like, check out our full release schedule, and for fans of Secret Lair, including the upcoming Sonic The Hedgehog drop, check out our breakdown of every drop so far this year.

Scott White is a freelance contributor to IGN, assisting with tabletop games and guide coverage. Follow him on X/Twitter or Bluesky.