Edge of Eternities is here, and there’s a lot to be excited about. New mechanics like Warp and Station have intriguing play patterns that should help shape the draft environment while also impacting Constructed formats.
Warp in particular is a keyword that is easily abusable. In the first Magic Online Standard Challenge where Edge of Eternities cards were legal, one player managed to finish in ninth place with a deck heavily built around the new mechanic. If you’re a fan of generating value and cheating big creatures into play, look no further.
New Additions
At a baseline, cards that feature the Warp ability give you a couple options. You can either cast them like you normally would, or you can cast them for their Warp costs, traditionally on a discount. If you decide to Warp a creature, it will only stick around until your end step. From there, it will go to exile, and you can cast it whenever you want later.
Many cards with Warp feature some sort of enters-the-battlefield or leaves-the-battlefield trigger that pulls you ahead on resources. That way, you’ll still get a reward for Warping your creature. Take Anticausal Vestige, for example. If you cast it for four mana, at the beginning of your end step when it goes to exile, you’ll get to draw a card and put into play another permanent from your hand.
By itself, this exchange isn’t incredible. Even though you can recast Anticausal Vestige on a later turn, you’re dumping a lot of mana into it and may not add a ton to the board. However, if you can blink Anticausal Vestige before it goes into exile, you’ll not only get some sick value, you’ll also get to keep the body around long term.
This is what makes this archetype so intriguing. Both Anticausal Vestige and Quantum Riddler become incredibly appealing when you can get them into play ahead of schedule. Fortunately, there are an abundance of ways to blink them once you’ve paid their Warp costs.
Blink Effects
In total, this deck features four different playsets of cards that are capable of blinking Anticausal Vestige or Quantum Riddler in an efficient manner. Your simplest option is Splash Portal. Just play one of your cards with Warp, pay one extra mana to target it with Splash Portal, and you’re golden.
The Adventure portion of Twining Twins as well as Charming Prince fill similar roles. They require a bit more mana input but are inherently stronger cards than Splash Portal.
Finally, we have Fortune, Loyal Steed. Fortune is perhaps your best option to pair with Anticausal Vestige. If you play Fortune on turn three and it lives through the turn unscathed, you’ll be able to Warp Anticausal Vestige on turn four, use it to Saddle Fortune, and enable an attack.
At the end of combat, you then blink out Fortune and Anticausal Vestige, trigger Anticausal Vestige, and get to keep your 7/5 around. Assuming you keep attacking with Fortune in the future, it’s easy to run away with the game.
Notably, while Quantum Riddler and Anticausal Vestige are two of your best options to blink, Beza, the Bounding Spring is your ultimate trump card versus aggro. Any assertive red deck is going to struggle once Beza hits the board, since you have so many ways to blink it and continue to gain life.
Inconsistencies
This archetype is without a doubt super cool and powerful when your cards line up together. In some games, you’ll be able to Warp Quantum Riddler on turn three, draw a card, blink it out with Splash Portal, draw another card, and ride the 4/6 flier to victory. Other times, you’ll use Anticausal Vestige to put Beza into play for free and overwhelm your opponent with your massive board presence.
The main issue this build has is consistency. You only have four copies each of your two Warp creatures. If you don’t draw them or they get countered, you may end up with Splash Portal rotting in your hand. Charming Prince and Fortune are at least creatures you can play to the board, but neither is exciting if you’re not blinking out other creatures for value.
With this in mind, it might be worth trying to add some other creatures with potent triggered abilities into the mix. Even a creature as simple as Pond Prophet makes Fortune and Splash Portal more reliable sources of card advantage.
Overall, it’s neat to see the new mechanics making waves in a competitive setting. Anticausal Vestige and Quantum Riddler are very powerful, and there’s a lot of room for exploration within the blink archetype. We look forward to seeing how this deck adapts over time.
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