Edge of Eternities “Set Review” from a Hammer Main

This set looks incredibly cool, and I cannot wait to see what it does. With all that said, there are a few cards that I’m looking forward to, and some others that I know people will ask me about. In an effort to help direct that conversation, let’s jump right into it with the best card we’ve seen for Hammer since Cori-Steel Cutter (so… in the last 2 sets):

Tezzeret, Cruel Captain

Tezzeret is the first 3 generic mana planeswalker ever printed, and I believe he is a bit of a doozy. There’s a lot going on with him, especially in the context of Hammer, so I’m going to break it down line by line.

First, his passive ability means that he can gain a lot of loyalty quite quickly in any deck with a bunch of cheap artifacts. Keep in mind that it doesn’t trigger on “cast”, but rather on “enter”. The most significant thing this means is that Construct tokens and any artifact you get off of Saga chapter 3 will all grant him a loyalty, which can potentially buff him quite quickly.

Untapping an artifact or creature is likely most valuable in the following situations:

1. Untap a mox to help ramp/fix our mana.

2. Untap a creature post-combat to help protect us/him.

While it’s nice to be able to put a +1/+1 counter on a construct or ornithopter, that isn’t the best value you can get off of him. Keep in mind that if you are running Sentinels, getting a counter on one can actually be quite meaningful. 

The -3 ability is EASILY the biggest reason to look at Tezz. As of writing this, there are over 360 cards that Tezz can grab in the modern format. The most notable ones for our purposes are: Hammer, Mox, Needle, Portable Hole, Spear, Mantle, Mishra’s Bauble, Ornithopter, Grafdigger’s Cage, Vexing Bauble, Graveyard hate: Soul-Guide Lantern/Tormod’s Crypt/Relic of Progenitus/Ghost Vacuum/Stone of Erech/Silent Gravestone/etc, Haywire Mite, Lavaspur Boots, Chalice of the Void, Welding Jar, Esper Sentinel, Dusk Rose Reliquary, Engineered Explosives, Phoenix Down, Walking Ballista, and maybe even Zephyr Boots.

That being said, I think it will be easy to get too cute with Tezzeret. You see this happen in a lot of decks that play Karn, the Great Creator. Their sideboards become absolute messes with 15 1-of Karn targets. The reasons that Tezz’s -3 is so good is as follows:

1. He finds key targets for our proactive plan in Hammer and Spear, and even Ornithopter/Sentinel.

2. He finds mana in Mox and Mantle.

3. He also finds hate pieces that we wanted to run anyway in Needle, Cage, Vexing Bauble, and Soul-Guide Lantern.

4. He finds removal in the form of Hole and Reliquary, which lets us go a bit lighter on that effect.

5. Finding additional spells means that while he can’t find Cutters, he is excellent at helping you keep trigger them.

This means that effectively, he is never a dead draw so long as you can cast him. I’m unsure on how many copies we should be playing, since adding multiple 3-drops is a real cost and can certainly lead to awkward spots if you’ve got 2 in your hand. Additionally, note that there are some scenarios I haven’t covered here. My goal is to focus on the bigger picture rather than every option. Additionally, when considering Tezzeret “bullets”, I recommend evaluating how impactful the card is on its own, and if you’d bother ever consider playing the card if you didn’t have access to Tezz.

Now for the ultimate. Honestly, I have no idea how good this is. 7 loyalty is a lot, but given how easy it is to pump quickly, I expect it to come into play more often than most Planeswalker ultimates, but I am still unsure on how good it is. I can certainly see the appeal of effectively turning our random cards like baubles into 3/3s, and obviously putting a few counters on a construct could be huge, but I assume this will mostly be used in strange scrappy games where you are really trying to grind. The problem there is that I’m unsure how impactful making 3/3 every turn would even be in those spots, but I’m excited to find out! Also, there is a world where we could potentially get multiple emblems, but I have no idea what those board states would look like so I won’t worry about it.

As a final point, Tezzeret is also a Planeswalker. This means that we finally have a powerful card that does NOT get swept up by Wrath of the Skies. This is huge since it means that we may actually have the ability to fight through one rather than just pray or hope to counter it on the way down.

Interesting Tools:

The Dominion Bracelet is mostly only interesting because of how cool it is. Activating it on a huge construct or a Hammered creature seems doable, but the problem is that if you have already done this, you can almost certainly win by just attacking your opponent. That being said, if in the future there are decks where combat damage won’t do the trick but a mindslaver effect will, then this is a nice tool to have access to. That said, this is largely just something cool you can do.  

Atomic Microsizer is a nice little equipment, pun fully intended. This is one that I misread a few times before really understanding what it did. Since the Microsizer can choose any target creature to turn into an unblockable 1/1, that means you can make the creature wearing the Microsizer unblockable, another attacker unblockable, or even turn an opponent’s creature into a 1/1 to make blocks bad for them. This is really interesting because if you hit a monk or construct with it, the monk doesn’t actually shrink, and the 0/0 construct actually grows by 1. This happens because the prowess triggers apply in a different layer than the one that makes them a 1/1,
While I don’t think Microsizer quite makes the cut to replace another card in the deck, I do think it’s a really interesting tool to have. Shadowspear largely does the same thing, and while both can be grabbed by Gift, SFM, and Tezz, only Spear can be grabbed by Saga. If we get to a metagame where lifelink is effectively meaningless, I would strongly consider this as a spear replacement.

Likely Traps:

While Hardlight Containment, Reroute Systems, and Focus Fire are all pretty interesting, they are a bit more limited than we need them to be in 2025 Modern, and Reroute Systems specifically is a much worse protection spell than what we already have access to. Seam Rip is strictly worse Portable Hole for our purposes so that’s a nope.

Synthesizer Labship is actually quite interesting to me, but I believe it’s a bit too inefficient for our purposes. Giving a construct +2/+2 and flying for a turn is a meaningful line of text, so I’m potentially interested in this, but likely in a different shell. All in all, a blue 1-drop that we can’t tutor for outside of Tezzeret and still gets swept is likely more interesting than good.

All in all, I'm excited to see what Tezzeret, Cruel Captain can do for us, and I hope y'all enjoy!