At MagicCon Las Vegas, Wizards of the Coast unveiled the first glimpse of the upcoming space fantasy set, Edge of Eternities, and our first glimpse looks promising. While the vast majority of the set remains unknown, it seems only appropriate, as Magic: The Gathering fans, for us to look at the cards previewed and speculate wildly on how they'll affect Standard moving forward. Disclaimer: any predictions called out here are purely speculation. This exercise is especially challenging because we also have a banned and restricted announcement coming next Monday, June 30th, so the effective meta decks will likely be completely different by the time Edge of Eternities drops. All the same, we're going to have a great discussion and look at some fun cards, so let's get into it. Mother Flipping Shock Lands

Greetings, Janksters! Final Fantasy is upon us, and with it are a ton of new kindred mechanics, including those featuring birds. Now, I'm the kind of gamer who tried to make Kangee, Aerie Keeper work back in High School, so you can imagine my delight at being able to jam birds again in Standard. I was shocked at how well it went. Chocobos, unlike most other birds, don't fly, which means they have to operate differently from the Azorius flyers decks we've seen from birds of the past. These birds are all about landfall, and they also give Bloomburrow's birds much-needed support.

Final Fantasy is right around the corner, and the time has come to theorize about what cards are going to see play once the set hits MTG Arena. The overall power level looks in line with the standard we've come to expect for Standard sets like this, which is to say, very powerful and very fast, but which ones will stand out from the crowd and make a meaningful impact on the Standard meta? While I can’t claim to know the future, here are my predictions and explanations for five cards that just might make the cut once the set drops on June 10th. Honorable Mentions

We live in a Standard Valgavoth, Terror Eater, and Atraxa, Grand Unifier coexist, so of course graveyard junkies are going to reanimate them. While reanimating a huge threat faster than the opponent can respond is a tried-and-true Magic: the Gathering tradition, today's deck isn't focusing on that as much as you might think. Yes, the possibility of a turn four Valgavoth exists within this deck, but that's only one of many gameplans that we're going to use to move forward and climb the ladder. You could call this a midrange deck without lying, but reanimation is also a key element, so I'll stick to the reanimator label. The Core Package

Sibsig Ceremony is one of the most intriguing build-arounds we’ve seen in a while. It challenges you to build a deck with creatures, but it destroys them when they first enter the battlefield. On its face, this is a blatant contradiction, but with some clever deck building, we can benefit from the creatures dying and have a reanimation backup plan to get our win cons out of the graveyard and into the fight. The Main Event

Cascade and discover are keywords that conjure images of crashing Footfalls or Geological Appraiser dominating tournaments on the backs of combos able to power out threats far ahead of any reasonable curve or go infinite. Free-casting effects like this have been staples of various formats over the years, and can often be seen on banned and restricted lists with examples like Tibalt's Trickery sitting in the prestigious company of Channel and Demonic Tutor as one of only three cards too strong to be unrestricted in Timeless. While Tarkir: Dragonstorm isn't giving us a new card with the keyword cascade or discover on it, we're getting an uncommon that behaves similarly in Breaching Dragonstorm. The titular Dragonstorms are uncommon enchantments that give an effect upon entering and then bounce themselves when a dragon enters under your control. Breaching Dragonstorm is the red installment and its text is almost “When Breaching Dragonstorm enters, Discover 8.” Is This Good?

Blue is a powerhouse in Standard, appearing in plenty of meta lists from Dimir midrange to Azorius Control and Esper Pixie. This Town Ain't Big Enough and Stormchaser's Talent create a value engine that disrupts your opponent while creating an aggressive board state that's difficult to deal with, so it's not surprising it finds its way into a variety of decks. The one thing that's not overly popular at the moment is blue by itself, however. I set out to see if the powerful blue cards in Standard could create a viable deck without dipping into any other color, and after a few hours of tweaking and a lot of feedback from my Twitch chat, I'm pleasantly surprised by the results. The Core Engine

Tarkir: Dragonstorm will be launching on Magic: the Gathering Arena on Tuesday, April 8th, so until we get our hands on the products, jank lovers like myself and, possibly, yourself are stuck speculating on which cards will be good enough to cut it in Standard. So far, with only a few days of preview season under our belts, a few have caught my attention as powerful enough to possibly make the cut. A lot of the current meta, think of as Gruul Mice and Esper Pixie, are very tuned decks and I don't expect these to get many new toys that will be faster or more consistent than their current pieces. That said, I believe (or vainly hope) that a few new archetypes will get the support they need to step up and challenge the current meta in a fun way. Let's look at what those are. Midrange