June and July were exceptionally busy months on the personal front--after a long road trip to my alma mater in upstate New York, I had a 12 hour turnaround for a business trip down to Georgia for work. After the week long plant trial, I drove home (my return flight from Atlanta was cancelled) to Ohio for four days before beginning our two-week family vacation. During the vacation, I had a chance to visit my father in my home state of New Jersey before flying overseas to Denmark and Sweden for an adventurous week in Scandinavia.

I returned home, caught up on work, and suddenly realized something: Final Fantasy is already old news! My favorite content creators are already posting draft videos and podcasts covering the newest Magic set, Edge of Eternities. I can't believe how quickly this happened--it felt like the blink of an eye.

As much as I'll regret not drafting Final Fantasy as much as I would have liked (I literally drafted the format on Arena once), I'm excited to see what Edge of Eternities will deliver for a gameplay experience. Everything I've heard so far has been intriguing and positive, giving me hope that I will barely miss Final Fantasy because Edge of Eternities will be so much fun to play.

As I frequently do with any new set, I started browsing the new, exciting, and most valuable cards from the Edge of Eternities. This way, I know what cards to look out for when I inevitably crack open a few booster packs.

The Most Valuable Cards in Edge of Eternities

Per my usual approach, I will primarily focus on normal, non-foil printings in the set because these are the most common versions of the card and can be found in play boosters. After activating these filters, I find that the most expensive single for pre-order as of late July is Tezzeret, Cruel Captain.

I'm not surprised to see a Planeswalker take the top spot, preordering in the $30 range. What does surprise me is that Wizards of the Coast printed a three mana, colorless Planeswalker! Is this the easiest Planeswalker to cast of all time? Not only that, but it enters with four loyalty off the bat, and subsequent artifacts add more to Tezzeret. As for his activated abilities, it'll be interesting to see how the card plays out. I can see a world where this Planeswalker fails to impact the board quite enough to dominate a game. That being said, at just three mana, Tezzeret, Cruel Captain may be cheap enough so that incremental value over the course of a few turns may be powerful enough.

If Planeswalkers aren't your thing, then perhaps the second most valuable card in the set will strike your fancy. Check out Magic's newest angel, Exalted Sunborn.

What do you get when you cross an Exalted Angel and an Anointed Procession? You get an angel creature that preorders for $25! It'll take some planning to have Exalted Sunborn's Warp ability impact a game, because you'll need to generate tokens on the same turn you Warp it. Still, Exalted Sunborn offers combo potential while also acting as a board stabilizer when it hits the battlefield for good. I'm excited to see what Exalted Sunborn can do for Standard, especially since my favorite deck is an off-beat token deck that leverages Skrelv's Hive, Caretaker's Talent, and Elspeth, Storm Slayer.

The other two cards preordering for north of $20 are two mythic rare lands: Evendo, Waking Haven and Uthros, Titanic Godcore.

When I first saw these two planet lands, my mind immediately went to the basic lands in Unfinity, which kind of looked similar. These are much more exciting than basic lands though! Granted they enter tapped, but if you can station them sufficiently, these two lands do a decent imitation of Gaea's Cradle and Tolarian Academy, two busted lands from Urza's Saga. I can't begin to predict how these perform--they may be too slow or they may completely break Standard. Neither outcome would surprise me. I look forward to seeing them in action, either way, and it doesn't surprise me that these are two of the most valuable cards in Edge of Eternities so far.

It's worth noting that these two lands are part of a five-card cycle, one for each color. The Red, White, and Black cards in this mythic rare land cycle aren't nearly as powerful or expensive as these Green and Blue counterparts. It's worth noting that the Black one, Susur Secundi, Void Altar is the third most expensive and preselling for around $7.

Shocklands are Back?!

As I mentioned before, Unfinity is the only other set that references planets. Edge of Eternities carries some major Unfinity vibes, what with planets, robots, and spaceships. I wonder if the former influenced the latter in some way.

In addition to these commonalities, there's another major overlapping presence in both of these sets: Shocklands! That's right, both Unfinity and Edge of Eternities gave us Shockland reprints. It should come as no surprise that these are some of the most valuable rares in Magic's newest set.

These are perennially worth $8-$12 despite being reprinted so many times. I'm confident these will drop a couple bucks in price between now and one month post-release, but the reality is that these are always solid pulls from booster packs because they hold their value well. Will there come a time when WOTC prints so many Shocklands that these become worth under $5? Possibly--it would depend on the pacing of reprints compared against the rise in demand for them. Until then, you can expect to get your money's worth from a play booster should you open one of these rare lands.

A Couple More Heavy Hitters

Rounding out the top of the pile are a couple more flashy mythic rares from the set. For instance, check out the strange-looking plant wurm Ouroboroid, a four-mana creature that basically doubles in size every turn.

This creature doesn't have trample or evasion by itself, but the fact that it grows out of control so quickly has driven this card's preorder price up to around $15. I don't know how good it'll end up being (call me a skeptic), but it certainly brings mythic rare vibes.

Then there's The Endstone (sounds ominous, right?). I saw Paul Cheon play against this card in an early access draft on Arena.

At first, it seemed like this card would be unbeatable. Despite costing seven mana, I'd anticipate that this will be one of the most winningest cards in the set. I'm not sure if it has a place in Standard, but in Commander I could see some major combo potential. My guess is that's why this card is preordering around $12.

Lastly, rounding out the top of the list is another mythic rare, this time a legendary enchantment: Sothera, the Supervoid! Gosh, I love the card names in this set!

Let's break this card's abilities down one line at a time. First, whenever a creature you control dies, each opponent has to exile a creature of their own--this reminds me of a card like Grave Pact, only better because the casting cost is two Black versus three Black and exiling is better than sacrificing.

Next, at the end of your turn if a player controls no creatures (presumably because you've forced them to exile them all), you have to sacrifice this enchantment. That's a shame. What do you get for that? You put a creature card exiled with Sothera directly onto the battlefield with two additional +1/+1 counters! That's pretty strong. It'll take some creative deckbuilding and gameplay to truly optimize this card, but I can see the potential, which is why the card is preordering for around $11.

Wrapping It Up

There are definitely some bangers in Magic's newest set, Edge of Eternities. As a fan of Unfinity, I must say I'm excited about the flavor here. Some of these cards hit hard, and I suspect Limited game play will be a lot of fun. Most importantly for this article, there will also be plenty of cards worth opening in booster packs.

I covered the most valuable normal, non-foil cards in the set. Like with every other Magic set nowadays, there are also plenty of special artwork, fancy treatment versions of cards one can only open in collector boosters that are even more expensive. Here's a snapshot from TCGplayer, capturing the three most valuable out the gate:

As you can see, one can potentially open a $400+ card from a collector booster if they're lucky enough. I don't usually get this lucky, but it's worth noting there are a handful of such chase cards.

For me personally, I'll be happy just to see a Shockland or two in the bundle I'll probably buy. To see one of the mythic rares mentioned above would make me ecstatic. I'm sure there will be plenty of bulk rares in this set when the dust settles, but hopefully these new, flashy, exciting cards continue to hold some value as the set matures.

Best of luck to everyone--may all your booster packs contain mythics and Shocklands.