Susurian DirgecraftSusurian Dirgecraft | Art by Mark Poole

Thank you to the kind folks at EDHREC for hosting a friendly game of point/counterpoint between myself and Sikora. In this round, I'll be presenting some arguments as to why the new Station mechanic, introduced recently in Edge of Eternities, should be activated at sorcery speed (as the rules intend) rather than at instant speed (a blasphemous notion that flies in the face of the will of God).

In fact, through the points I'll present, I'll prove that this is more than a case of just "should." Station must be enacted at sorcery speed. It wouldn't make sense any other way.

Please, join me and consider the following...

What Is Station?

No, really, what is the Station mechanic meant to evoke? Well, we have some clues. One thing we can look at when dissecting this mechanic is the fact that most artifacts with Stationmost artifacts with Station have effects that activate as they enter the battlefieldactivate as they enter the battlefield.

Their mere presence has an effect on the board state.

"Well, of course," you might say, "if they don't do anything until you station them, then they're artifacts that don't do anything the turn you play them." And that is true. But that's also true of most creatures in Magic. It's also true of most Vehicles, whose crew costs function very similarly to station.

So what is it that makes these Station artifacts change the game just by showing up? To answer that, I'd like to quickly ask, "Is that a moon?"

That's no moon. It's an Entropic BattlecruiserEntropic Battlecruiser.

Across sci-fi media, giant, imposing spaceships have always captured the imagination. It's literally the opening shot of the very first Star Wars. It gets the audience excited for the sci-fi adventure we're about to go on. And the climax of that movie? Luke blowing up The Death Star, the biggest, most imposing space station there ever was.

That's the drama that a station artifact is meant to evoke. It's the immediate threat of something massive and powerful which, if left to its own devices, could power up to the point where there's simply no stopping it from enacting its terrible destruction upon whatever unwitting target it chooses (which, based on this description, Krenko, Mob BossKrenko, Mob Boss is arguably a space station; congrats, Krenko).

The other hint Wizards of the Coast provides us as to what they're going for with this mechanic is in the fact that it can only be activated at sorcery speed.

"What gives?" You might say, soldiering on from how wrong you just were five paragraphs before, "Nearly every other tap ability can be done at instant speed, so why not station?"

Because the design team over at Wizards knows that it is the anticipation of these weapons which makes them so great. In Independence Day, do the UFOs suddenly open up and spit a laser right through the White House? No! They take their time. They power up just slowly enough for the people dancing on that rooftop in LA to look up and think "Oh, actually, this might be bad."

In pop culture, the power of these great weapons doesn't come from their efficiency. It comes from the fact that you can watch every second of them charging up and still be destroyed in the blast.

By the way, I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge my other favorite part of this mechanic. Why do you think they have you tap your creatures as you work towards the cumulative charge counters required to power your Spacecraft? Because tapping those creatures is meant to symbolize the dozens of 1970s buttons and levers which must be pushed and pulled for something like the Death Star to target and fire upon the rebel base.

Think about it: To activate station you literally turn them like dials on a big space station weapons console. Truly, it's one of the most satisfyingly tactile Magic: The Gathering mechanics since tearing up Chaos OrbChaos Orb.

Have some fun with it, even. If you're tapping creatures to activate station, count up like you're in mission control: "Activating station 4, 7, 8, 9, and 10. Station is online." And if anybody in your pod makes fun of you, well, you've found your first target.

Sorcery Speed Is Good for Counterplay

Let's say you're a few turns into a friendly game of Commander and your opponent drops The Eternity ElevatorThe Eternity Elevator onto the field. As they read you the 20+ ability, don't the hairs on the back of your neck start to stand up a little bit? You start to ask yourself, "What could they possibly be planning to do with 20+ mana? Well, certainly nothing good. Hmm. How can I deal with this?"

That's fun tension! That's great game design! The presentation of an imposing threat that must be answered is exciting on both sides of the playmat.

As an opponent, it immediately has you surveying your hand, your board, the looks on your other opponents' faces, and anything else that may help you solve the puzzle that's been placed in front of you. And even if you can't deal with the station card itself, perhaps you can remove some of the station fodder on your opponent's side of the board just long enough to draw into an answer or simply knock them out of the game.

Now, imagine instead that over that time you've stalled, searched, and finally drawn into your grand response. You go to cast it, only to have your opponent say, "In response, I tapped those creatures 35 minutes ago".

That's perhaps a bit dramatic, but have you ever played a board wipe on somebody with a sacrifice outlet? Have you ever had to take seven Makeshift MunitionsMakeshift Munitions triggers while you hold your Blasphemous ActBlasphemous Act limply in the middle of the table?

It's like hitting the button to detonate the C4 you put in your enemy's secret base, only to have them run out and kick you seven times in the shin before it goes off.

So many things in Magic these days can be done in half measures or tapped for some value on their way to the graveyard. Sometimes it can be nice to have something that simply works or doesn't.

The Station Mechanic Carries the Torch for Planeswalkers

You know what else would come out, present a big potential threat, and have to build up over several turns before unleashing their full potential? That's right, planeswalkers. Planeswalkers have certainly had their time in the sun, but they've spent even more time in the shade.

It seems to me like they tended to thrive over in Standard more than Commander (the sorcery speed restriction isn't so punishing when you only have to wait through one opponent's turn to activate it again, rather than three), but seeing how fast and bonkers Standard has been for a while now, they simply don't have the immediate effect required to be playable in that format. And in Commander, the singleton restriction makes it very hard to build around a planeswalker in the 99.

And so few have both the power to pose a legitimate threat and the ability to survive retaliation from the other players.

Honestly, that sucks. For not just planeswalkers, but for Magic as a media property. As a new player, I'm told that the characters on these planeswalker cards are supposed to be people I care about. I see the names and likenesses of Ajani and Liliana and Jace all over cards across Magic's history. And each time I do, I think, "Wow, they seem very cool. I wonder who they are." And then I don't see them again for months and I forget all about them.

Even Chandra NalaarChandra Nalaar, my favorite planeswalker (I cut my teeth on monored in Core Set 2020, so she was the first "big deal" I became aware of in Magic's lore), I know practically nothing about. I know that she does an excellent Akira slide, but that's about it.*

So maybe, in hope beyond hope, station cards can test the waters for new ways that planeswalkers can become relevant in Magic again. And maybe there's something even beyond planeswalkers this could lead to which I'm not yet able to see. If you'd told me a year ago that there would be a new mechanic that rolls Vehicles and planeswalkers into one, I'd never begin to imagine something akin to station cards.

Honestly, I'd probably just assume that RalRal accidentally got Turbo Teened. So I think it's a fantastic sign that the Magic designers are once again playing in what has historically been a very important space for this game. Because, as we've seen countless time in the history of Magic, experimentationexperimentation leads to innovationinnovation.

*Look, I'll do my whole article about being a new player and interacting with lore another day, but I remember even looking up stuff about the lore of Aetherdrift because I love fast vrooms, and to this day I have no clue who won the race.

To see Sikora's counter-argument, head here, and read about why station being sorcery speed ruined the mechanic.

More Edge: