On top of all the stellar main set spoilers, we’re also getting to see a lot of the Edge of Eternities Stellar Sights Bonus Sheet cards right now. After its initial reveal, players were pretty hyped for this sheet. This is the first Bonus Sheet we’ve had since Thunder Junction’s Breaking News, after all. On top of that it’s focused on lands, typically one of the most high-value card types in Magic: The Gathering. Unfortunately, Stellar Sights has made a less-than-stellar first impression.
So far, the majority of the cards we’ve seen revealed for the sheet have been, effectively, bulk. There’s very little value in here, either financially or gameplay-wise. Today saw seven new cards were revealed for the sheet by IGN, and unfortunately, the trend seems to be continuing. Either Wizards is keeping all the good lands for later, or Stellar Sights is going down in history as one of the weakest Bonus Sheets we’ve ever seen.
A Bad Look For The Edge Of Eternities Bonus Sheet
The seven new cards revealed for the Edge of Eternities Stellar Sights Bonus Sheet today are really indicative of the sheet as a whole. While there are a couple of decent cards in there, the rest are about as bad as it can get.
Take Cascading Cataracts, for instance. This is an interesting design, an Indestructible land that can filter five mana at once, but it’s also barely played anywhere. Budget five-color Commander decks sometimes run it, which has pushed the price up to a whopping $1.
Incredibly, this is actually a better hit than some of the other reveals today. Contested War Zone is a $0.30 card that only sees use in ‘gift’ Commander decks like Zedruu. Power Depot is slightly better at $0.43, but it’s still incredibly niche. Some Artifacts-Matter decks want it, but the majority do not.
Interestingly, there also seems to be a bit of a Deserts sub-theme going on in Stellar Sights. Given the recent success of Dune, this does make sense. Today’s reveal gave us both Scavenger Grounds and Endless Sands.
Scavenger Grounds is actually pretty solid, all things considered. It’s an untapped, colorless alternative to Bojuka Bog if you want graveyard hate in a land slot, and as such, it sees a good amount of Commander play. Thanks to plentiful reprints, it’s not a very valuable card as it sells for around $0.24 on the low end.
Endless Sands is interesting, but ultimately too inefficient to earn a slot outside of decks that specifically care about lands or Deserts. This is a $0.26 card, which means it edges out Scavenger Grounds in terms of price if not quality.
Diamonds In The Rough
All five of the above cards can be had for just over $2, which doesn’t paint a particularly rosy picture of the Edge of Eternities Stellar Sights Bonus Sheet. Thankfully, today’s reveals do have a couple of better hits among them.
Inventors’ Fair is the big one here, to use a loose definition of the term. This is a pretty excellent land for artifact-centric decks, providing passive lifegain as well as an artifact tutor effect. Getting to grab any artifact you want at instant speed is well worth running, and sacrificing, a colorless land. Fair sees most of its play in Commander, where tutors are king. It also plays a role in Vintage Shops decks, as a way to search up your key artifacts when you need them.
The card has only seen one real printing in Kaladesh, and minor reprints on The List and in Secret Lair. As a result, copies will run you around $10. Not incredible, but much better than the above.
The other solid hit from today’s reveals is Petrified Field. This is a bit of a weird one, being a colorless land that can also sacrifice itself to recur a land from your graveyard. Even more interestingly, it’s a card with only one real, non-List printing, back in 2001’s Odyssey. It’s fairly obscure, but it does occasionally see play in Vintage Dredge, as well as some lands-matter Commander decks. Right now, copies will set you back around $4.20. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t be exciting, but in the context of the other duds we got today, it’s positively sparkling.
Sticking The Landing?
“Inventors Fair is sweet but man it really feels like the lands in the bonus sheet are 95% garbage. It’s a shame because the art is so good.”
Chowdahhh, via r/magicTCG
The Stellar Sights reveals so far have been confusing, to say the least. If you’re trying to get players hyped about a new Bonus Sheet, frontloading all the bulk rares seems like a bad way to go about it. Heck, the first card spoiled for the sheet was Mutavault, which isn’t awful, but it’s hardly a pack-seller either.
The Stellar Sights Bonus Sheet will have 45 cards in total. This means that the 16 we’ve seen so far make up around a quarter of it. There’s still a chance for Wizards to turn things around, in other words. Right now, it’s very much possible that Wizards is saving the best for last, and keeping all of the real juice for next week.
The possibilities here are pretty exciting. ‘Lands’ is a vague enough theme that it could encapsulate some of the best Magic cards of all time. Ancient Tomb is one that a lot of players are hoping to see, even now that it’s on the Commander Game Changers list. Eye of Ugin would also be a nice financial hit, and a thematic fit given the presence of Eldrazi in the set. There’s enough room left that we could even see some full cycles return. We got the enemy Fetchlands as Special Guests in Tarkir: Dragonstorm, so maybe we’ll get the allied ones here.
Only time will tell if things get better for Stellar Sights or not. Hopefully, they do; if things continue as they are, we could be looking at a monumental low for Bonus Sheets as a whole.
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