Ultra Rare and Horrid Land Destruction Combo Set to Wreck in EOE Limited

Last updated on July 17, 2025

Strip Mine | Illustration by Howard Lyon

There's some number of old school players out there who saw the Strip Mine reprint on the Stellar Sights bonus sheet and shuddered. After all, can you truly call yourself a Magic player if you've never been locked out of the game with a Strip Mine combo?

If that's you, and you're searching for your initiation into true no-lands-in-play Magic playerdom, Edge of Eternities just might have something in store for you. The tools are there, but the probability is… unlikely.

Strip Mine Combos in Limited?

Step one is the simple part of the combo: Open Strip Mine in Edge of Eternities Limited. No big deal. You know, one of 15 mythics on a 45-card bonus sheet with a single slot in one out of every eight Play boosters.

Hmm, maybe this combo won't be so simple to assemble after all. Land destruction naysayers, relax for a moment.

Ok, but assume you did open a Strip Mine, what's step two? Well, it involves this mainset rare, Icetill Explorer. Yes, the combo involves a rare and a bonus sheet mythic. Again: Calm. Down.

But since we're in Magical Christmas Land, just imagine for a second you have Strip Mine and Icetill Explorer in your deck. All you really have to do is draw them together, wait a few turns, and chances are your opponent won't be able to play Magic for the rest of the game.

It's pretty straightforward: Strip Mine pops a land your opponent controls, and Icetill Explorer lets you replay Strip Mine from your graveyard. Even better, you can destroy two lands per turn, with no restrictions, since the insect scout gives you an extra land drop each turn.

With no ramp to initiate the loop faster, you can start doing this as early as turn 4, since you can play your fourth land, drop the Explorer, immediately play Strip Mine as your second land, and get to work on the opponent's manabase. Even better, you can mill over the Strip Mine with Icetill's landfall ability and then play it out of the graveyard.

Notably there's also Dust Bowl on the bonus sheet. This one's a little harder to set up and only targets nonbasic lands, so it's more of a nuisance and less of a hard lock. Dust Bowl wasn't relevant in Outlaws of Thunder Junction, and it likely won't be here, either. Seriously, chill out people, your lands will be fine. Maybe.

Slim Chances

Icetill Explorer | Illustration by Warren Mahy

Cool combo and all, but what are the chances players will be able to assemble the two cards in a single Draft? Not impossible, but don't expect to ever actually pull this off.

2.5% of Edge of Eternities Play boosters include a mythic rare Stellar Sights card. There are 15 total mythics on the bonus sheet. That puts you at roughly 0.17% to open specifically Strip Mine. Now add in the odds of opening Icetill Explorer in the same event (there's a 1.34% chance of opening any specific rare in EOE). Safe to say that's probably not happening.

However, Play boosters often have multiple rares, and there's always the chance of someone passing one of the requisite cards to you, so maybe there's a shot at someone somewhere being able to pull this off. And the fact that it's not regularly achievable is probably a good thing for the Limited format and the mental fortitude of Magic players in general.

This whole combo is more in line with the speculation on omens from Tarkir: Dragonstorm. There was some worry that games would end in a stalemate since omens shuffle themselves back into the library, but that never really came about in the average game. Similarly, no one's really going to Strip Mine lock you at your EOE prerelease unless they're extremely lucky. Though you might just start sweating if you see that Icetill Explorer hit the board.