Summary
Epic spells are a special kind of spell fromMagic: The Gathering’sSaviors of Kamigawa set released in 2005. Despite how old the mechanic is, there has only been one cycle of cards with epic, one for each color for a total of five. There is a very low likelihood of epic returning, but the release of Duskmourn: House Of Horror has renewed interest in the mechanic.
An epic spell is one that, when cast, prevents you from playing spells the rest of the game, and you instead copy the epic spell at the start of each of your upkeep. All epic spells are sorceries and cost a minimum of six mana to cast.
4Neverending Torment
Neverending Mill
Neverending Torment has the potential to get rid of every important card in your opponent’s library. Since you still draw with epic spells despite being unable to cast anything, you will often have a full hand of cards. This increases the “X” for Neverending Torment, giving you more cards you can exile from libraries.
If your opponent is playing a combo deck or one that relies on specific spells you can cut their access to these cards off. This helps to stabilize you and take away the worry of your opponent having a way to win the game. In 60-card formats, if you are able to control the battlefield with other cards, you can even win through mill by exiling your opponent’s library quickly and only in just a few turns.
Neverending Torment is ultimately the weakest of the cycle because you’re often better off justplaying regular mill cards. By the time you can cast Neverending Torment, it’s too late in the game to have an impact, and your opponent is likely too far ahead on the battlefield for it to matter.
3Undying Flames
Burning So Bright
Undying Flames has the potentialto do a ton of burn damageevery time your upkeep comes around. The burn damage is dependent on what nonland card you reveal with Undying Flames' effect, so you generally want to build your deck with spells that have a high mana value.
Unfortunately, with Undying Flames since you need a deck with high mana values, you are going to be left very open during the early stages of the game. Since it can target creatures as well as players, you may use Undying Flame to slowly get rid of all the creatures on your opponent’s battlefield.
With Undying Flames, you can quickly burn out your opponent’s life totals and win with just a few uses of Undying Flames. What makes it weaker than other epic spells is how specific your deck has to be built in order to actually ensure you can close games out once you cast Undying Flames.
2Endless Swarm
Endless Snakes
If you like making a ton of tokens every turn, Endless Swarm is the perfect card for that. Since you aren’t casting spells, you have very little need to play lands so you can keep all the cards you draw in your hand. Thisgives you more 1/1 Snake tokensevery upkeep when Endless Swarm is cast. If you have ways to give yourself no hand size limit, the number can get even greater to flood the battlefield.
There is a lot of token support in Magic, including token doublers (and sometimes even triplers). When these effects are stacked with Endless Swarm, you’ll make a giant swarm of Snakes that can easily start overrunning your opponents.
While other epic spells force you into a defenseless position, Endless Swarm helps to set up your offenses and defenses to help attack or block to start affecting the gamestate in more impactful ways.
Steal Your Opponent’s Cards
Eternal Dominion takes a lot of mana to cast, but you are rewarded with one of the best epic effects available in Magic. While you can’t cast spells due to the epic ability, Eternal Dominion lets you take any permanent from an opponent’s library and put it on the battlefield on your side, so you can use it for your own benefit.
This is especially useful due to the epic ability, as you can take cards from opponents that help to push your board state further or set up defenses that you otherwise wouldn’t have access to. Eternal Dominion can cut off your opponent’s key cards to their decks, and, if the game lasts long enough, youcan use their win conditions as your own.
Since Eternal Dominion puts the card directly onto the battlefield, that means it cannot be countered (although the Eternal Dominion copy still can be). It forces your opponent into to an early choice, and if they don’t counter Eternal Dominion, can snowball into a victory for yourself.
1Enduring Ideal
Epic Enchantment Tutor
It’s hard to call any epic spell other than Enduring Ideal the best epic card, as Enduring Ideal was the only one that saw proper competitive success, achieving a fourth place finish at Worlds back in 2006. That decklist utilizesForm of the Dragonwhich would deal five damage to a creature or player, and prevent creatures without flying from attacking you and slowly winning the game with burn damage.
Enduring Ideal has come a long way since its competitive glory days, as there have beenplenty more fantastic enchantmentsyou can bring out to the battlefield. If you need protection, there are a lot of stall cards. If you want to get aggressive, there are a lot of cards that create tokens. Enduring Ideal lets you play a toolbox enchantment deck that lets you fetch out whatever enchantment you need depending on what you’re playing against.
Once you have enough mana to cast Enduring Ideal, there’s a high likelihood you may start running away with the game. It’s a card that’s only gotten better as the years go by and more powerful enchantment cards are released into the game to give you even more options.
Magic: The Gathering
Created by Richard Garfield in 1993, Magic: The Gathering (MTG) has become one of the biggest tabletop collectible card games in the world. Taking on the role of a Planeswalker, players build decks of cards and do battle with other players. In excess of 100 additional sets have added new cards to the library, while the brand has expanded into video games, comics, and more.
