Considering that Edge of Eternties’ spoiler season starts next week, it shouldn’t be a huge surprise that we’re beginning to get a few teasers. The story, which ends right before spoiler season begins, has been dropping a few spoiler cards along the way. Today is no different.
While we did get a new spoiler for Edge of Eternities, we wish it were a little more exciting. This common is a rather unnoteworthy repetition of an effect that’s becoming a common Limited trope.
Embrace Oblivion
Embrace Oblivion is an effect we’ve seen multiple times before. Sacrifice an artifact or creature to destroy a creature. The card does, notably, allow artifact sacrificing as an option, and does target a unique card type in Spacecraft, which could potentially push it towards seeing Pauper play. That would mean a common rarity Spacecraft has a big impact on Pauper, however, which is rather unlikely.
Upon the reveal of Embrace Oblivion, it’s becoming clear to players that this effect will likely be a common template for Limited going forward. We’ve seen the effect of paying an additional cost, usually including creature sacrifice as an option, for undercosted removal spells.
In the past few sets alone, we’ve had Worthy Cost, Final Vengeance, and Hellish Sideswipe. While they all have their own quirks, these cards are each Draft chaff and variations on the same theme. For better or worse, none of these cards are ever going to see real competitive play. That said, they’re far from useless in the grand scheme of MTG.
This, in part, is likely because of a new ‘checklist’ design that Wizards of the Coast is using for Limited formats. In a sample checklist from Mark Rosewater, this genre of card appears in the ‘common spells’ for black in the Draft Booster portion of the chart. This sort of design philosophy, on average, means that most Limited formats will feel decent, even if a little same-y.
A majority of Magic’s Limited experiences have been positive as of late, and it appears that cards like Embrace Oblivion are frequent fliers in those formats. For better or worse, that means we’re bound to see more cards like Embrace Oblivion in the near future. There’s a non-zero chance we might even get something similar in every limited-focused set from here on out.
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