Timeless: The 10 Best Edge of Eternities Cards

Edge of Eternities is right around the corner. Magic: The Gathering's space opera set and the card game's last in-universe set of 2025 will be released on August 1st, bringing with it both Standard rotation and perhaps the biggest wave of power creep Magic Arena's Timeless format has ever faced.

Between the reprints of Magus of the Moon, Ancient Tomb, and the new Tannuk, Steadfast Second, the format has gained the tools to, along with Chrome Mox, Chalice of the Void, and the future staple Strip Mine, establish Mono Red Stompy as a viable strategy in the format.

As if that weren't enough, Strip Mine will have its first place in over 20 years where it will be legal with four copies, potentially changing the entire deckbuilding rules and Metagame's structure. It will also receive other powerful reprints like Green Sun's Zenith and Gemstone Caverns, as well as powerful new cards like Cosmogoyf, which could emerge as a viable card in Sultai Tempo lists.

In this article, we list the ten cards with the greatest potential for the Timeless format from Edge of Eternities, based on their ability to impact the metagame and enter known or new archetypes from the apex of Magic Arena's power level.

10 - Grove of the Burnwillows

Without Punishing Fire, Grove of the Burnwillows is essentially a Karplusan Forest that offers life to your opponent instead of dealing damage to you.

As irrelevant as it may seem, Edge of Eternities also features Eldrazi Temple and Ancient Tomb, which, combined with the various creatures of this type available in the format, can make these color-generating and colorless lands find a spot, with Grove of the Burnwillows being perhaps the most important available in Magic Arena, as it offers access to Sowing Mycospawn, Writhing Chrysalis and Eldrazi Linebreaker.

9 - Icetill Explorer

Strip Mine has arrived in Timeless, and there will be dozens of players considering how to. use it as a lock against their opponents. While there are options like Ramunap Excavator and Crucible of Worlds, Icetill Explorer offers Exploration along with the ability to reuse lands, allowing you to lock down your opponent more easily at the expense of costing more and being more punishing to cast if you have Ancient Tomb and other colorless sources.

Land Lock Control doesn't seem like a viable strategy in the Timeless Metagame today, but it's definitely something we can expect in Ranked queues and/or in the hands of content creators who want to make their opponents' lives more miserable.

8 - Cosmogoyf

Cosmogoyf is a card I've been thinking a lot about for Modern in a Sultai Frog/Sultai Oculus variant, and while Esper or Dimir versions are the primary homes for Psychic Frog and, sometimes, Abhorrent Oculus in Timeless, Cosmogoyf offers a new tool for the archetype that interacts with both cards while also being a response to the common graveyard hates against this matchup.

This combination also offers some necessary answers and hates for some matchups beyond Deathrite Shaman—which should be much better and perhaps necessary in a Strip Mine metagame—but it also lacks consistency when dealing with less fair matchups without the broad shell of blue creatures needed to enable Flare of Denial.

Cosmogoyf doesn't offer an instant color swap that arguably motivates Sultai Tempo over other variants, but it has enough qualities and interactions with the archetype's creatures and common hates against graveyard-based decks to be worth some testing.

7 - Green Sun's Zenith

Recently unbanned from Modern, Green Sun's Zenith now arrives in Timeless as a new toolbox centerpiece. Due to its restrictions and the absence of Dryad Arbor in the format, it's a bit difficult to imagine which archetype would specifically want it beyond Titan Field, which can fetch Primeval Titan but now suffers considerably with Strip Mine hindering cards like Field of the Dead.

While it doesn't have a direct home at this time, this spell helps bolster some archetypes around Nadu, Winged Wisdom and Sylvan Safekeeper, or players can find a Zenith list that leverages cards like Wight of the Reliquary and Icetill Explorer or even Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath and Cosmogoyf.

6 - Gemstone Caverns

Gemstone Caverns is free mana on the draw for non-interactive decks or combos that want to go off as quickly as possible and can afford to actually play lands, or in archetypes willing to ramp quickly to play more explosive cards.

In the first case, we can imagine decks like Show and Tell wanting a copy of Caverns in their lists to ensure more chances of comboing on the first or second turn on the draw, and perhaps the same logic can be applied to Storm lists, which aren't very popular but do show up occasionally.

In the more "interactive" approach, Stompy decks with Chalice of the Void or even Eldrazi are strategies that are occasionally interested in a copy of Gemstone Caverns in their lists in Modern and Legacy, giving the card another example of a potential home for Timeless.

5 - Tannuk, Steadfast Second

With Red Stompy becoming a viable archetype in Timeless starting with Edge of Eternities due to the reprints of Ancient Tomb, Strip Mine, and Magus of the Moon, we need to pay some attention to Tannuk, Steadfast Second.

Warp allows you to cast the card twice, and Tannuk works specifically with red creatures and artifacts. Unless a card has an alternative cost that must be paid by playing from hand, it also works from exile, including Fury's Evoke, granting more ways to respond to a board full of opponents' creatures, not to mention the possibility of playing it with Warp, attacking for six, exiling it, and then playing it again with Evoke, or by paying the full cost on a later turn.

This creature also makes The One Ring even more powerful: we can pay to cast the artifact, gain protection from everything, draw a card, and then, the next turn, pay to cast it from exile and gain protection again, essentially having two extra turns against the opponent.

The cost may be the biggest barrier to this card finding space, but these Stompy lists will naturally run cards like Chrome Mox and lock pieces between Strip Mine and Blood Moon with some extra consistency, which allows for higher mana values during matches. It remains to be seen whether there are better options in the four-mana slot or if there is enough space for it in the lists, though.

4 - Eldrazi Temple

Eldrazi becomes a viable strategy in Timeless with Eldrazi Temple, which, along with Ancient Tomb and Ugin's Labyrinth, offers twelve "Sol Lands" for the archetype, making it easier to cast Thought-Knot Seer on the second turn or even Sowing Mycospawn fetching a Strip Mine earlier than desired, not to mention Glaring Fleshraker or even Kozilek's Command as wincondition or removal/card draw.

It will be interesting to evaluate how this specific archetype will behave in the metagame. On the one hand, it can be extremely explosive and even benefit from Cavern of Souls to bypass Flare of Denial or Mana Drain while Kozilek's Command and Kozilek's Return function as interactions.

On the other hand, there may be games where it simply does nothing due to the presence of Strip Mine to counter the Sol Lands, not to mention the increased consistency that Blood Moon effects can have with Magus of the Moon and the same Ancient Tomb that is a benefit to the Eldrazi.

3 - Magus of the Moon

There's been a deck in Legacy for years that some refer to as Moon Stompy. It's an amalgam of lock cards like Chalice of the Void and, in other times, Trinisphere, combined with higher mana value cards that can be cast with City of Traitors and Ancient Tomb and the possibility of locking against the opponent from the first turn with Blood Moon and/or Magus of the Moon through a Sol Land and Chrome Mox / Simian Spirit Guide.

We don't have all the pieces in Timeless yet, but we have enough now for Red Stompy to be a viable archetype in the format and potentially competitive given the current Metagame and the recent additions of Edge of Eternities to the format, especially with Magus of the Moon as Blood Moon 5-8, allowing for more opportunities to lock down the opponent's mana sources from turn two onward with Ancient Tomb and/or Chrome Mox.

Add The One Ring, Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, Fury, Sundering Eruption, Strip Mine, and perhaps even lesser-played cards like Tersa Lightshatter, and you have a viable archetype very capable of putting up some results in the format.

2 - Ancient Tomb

As we already mentioned, Red Stompy and Eldrazi Stompy are two new archetypes enabled by the release of Ancient Tomb on Magic Arena. In addition to them, decks like Show and Tell might also run the new land as a means of accelerating mana and, hopefully, completing the combo a turn early, or even on the first turn when accompanied by a Chrome Mox.

Without Emrakul, the Aeons’ Torn, we need to do a bit more to win the game, even if losing the match after resolving an Atraxa, Grand Unifier on the first turn borders on absurdity. Its inclusion also changes some elements of the list, such as the reduced consistency in playing Assemble the Team and Rakshasa's Bargain or worsening Mana Drain while improving cards like Stock Up and The One Ring.

It will be interesting to see how far Ancient Tomb will go in Timeless, whether in these aforementioned archetypes or in others that want to take advantage of another fast mana source available in Magic Arena.

1 - Strip Mine

I never imagined there would be an official Magic format where players could play with four copies of Strip Mine, but here we are: the land joins Necropotence and Mana Drain as absurd cards legal in Timeless, and this one might change the entire format.

I've already written a full article about the deckbuilding implications of this card and how it changes the rules to consider when building your lists, forcing more mana efficiency and more care in how we use Fetch Lands, among other circumstances we learned in Legacy or Vintage with Wasteland — except that Strip Mine is more lethal to the mana bases.

The interpretation of your keep changes, and so do the ways you search for alternative mana sources. Deathrite Shaman has never seemed so appealing to Timeless and the format's mana values will remain low for a long time as long as we run the risk of a land blocking the ability to play cards with a mana value three or greater, or the possibility of accessing a third color in decks like Mardu Energy.

This is a staple, and it will remain so for a long time if it remains unrestricted. It will fit into almost any archetype that can support a few colorless lands—which should grow in the Metagame due to Strip Mine itself and the potential rise of Blood Moon archetypes, which might favor two-color decks with less colored mana requirements—and perhaps make or break many strategies simply by existing.

On the one hand, Strip Mine may be the worst threat the format has ever faced, but it may also present the best possible answer to some inherent problems in the current Metagame, even if that means increasing the number of non-interactive matchups between fair decks.

Adjust your list accordingly, increase your land count, or learn how to play around with this card, because the next few weeks will be very interesting times for Timeless.

That's all for today!

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment!

Thanks for reading!