Extra Turns: The Best 28 Time Walks in Magic Ranked

Last updated on February 18, 2025

Time Walk | Illustration by Chris Rahn

Extra turn spells might be some of the most hated effects in Commander since they impact the sociality of the game by letting one player play more Magic than the others, on top of being busted. But they have a time and place.

Extra turns give combo decks the breathing room necessary to go off and aggressive decks a push towards ending the game. If your deck lags behind the rest of the pod, these spells could be just what you need to force yourself over the finish line.

Let’s check out the best extra turn spells in Magic!

What Are Extra Turn Cards in Magic?

Temporal Trespass | Illustration by Clint Cearley

Extra turn spells provide one of the strongest effects in the game: You get an extra turn. For the low, low cost of one card, you get to attack again, draw a card, and use all of your mana a second time, plus get a crack at additional upkeep/end step triggered abilities and all that good stuff.

These are a predominantly blue effect; while all colors but white have at least one extra turn spell, the majority of these effects and most of the best ones are from blue cards. This list was ranked for Commander, though you might want to avoid casting too many of these lest your pod eject you.

Honorable Mentions: Time Walk, Time Vault, and Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

This trifecta of extra turn spells are among the strongest in the game, which has led to their bans in Commander, albeit for different reasons. I couldn't rank them in good conscience, but they still deserve recognition for their accomplishments.

Time Vault might be the best combo piece in the game, going infinite with the kitchen sink.

Emrakul, the Aeons Torn rarely gets cast for its full price, but when you cheat it out, the combination of an extra turn and annihilator finishes most games.

Time Walk is simply, in my humble opinion, the strongest Explore variant ever printed. Oh, and the best card in the game due to its low mana value and high impact.

#28. Regenerations Restored

Though devastatingly slow, Regenerations Restored earns points for its low mana value. With cards that move counters around like Scholar of New Horizons or Goldberry, River-Daughter, you could even speed things up for a faster extra turn.

#27. Wanderwine Prophets + Notorious Throng

Wanderwine Prophets and Notorious Throng suffer the same setback: You’ll never play them outside of their respective typal strategies. That said, both are excellent support cards within their archetype and worth considering, especially since typal decks tend to be aggressive, thus putting the extra turn to good use.

#26. Temporal Extortion

Browbeat cards have a track record of being mediocre since your opponents simply choose the mode that hurts them the least. Temporal Extortion’s no exception, but both modes turn games in your favor, plus this black sorcery’s the only mono-black extra turn spell.

#25. Lighthouse Chronologist

Lighthouse Chronologist takes a week or two to get going, but blue has access to plenty of proliferate cards to speed things along. You get so many extra turns off this blue creature that reaching the final level might as well win the game, assuming your fragile creature survives.

#24. Ugin’s Nexus

If your deck cares about sacrificing artifacts, Ugin's Nexus gives you all the turns you could desire while keeping your opponents relatively honest. The best turns involve copying this legendary artifact with Echo Storm or a similar effect, though you'll have to get rid of any copies that still remain, since Ugin's Nexus would make you skip over all your hard-earned turns if you keep a copy in play.

#23. Stitch in Time

At the very least, Stitch in Time’s always fun to resolve. The upside of a heavily discounted extra turn doesn’t quite make up for the potentially wasted card, but this does good work in decks that manipulate coin flips or can copy it several times over to increase the odds of getting at least one turn out of it.

#22. Rise of the Eldrazi

While Rise of the Eldrazi’s inarguably one of the highest-impact cards on the list, that daunting mana cost restricts it heavily; finding the means to cast this takes a lot of effort and likely a cheaty effect like Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge.

#21. Lost Isle Calling

You need to be pretty intentional about putting Lost Isle Calling into your deck. The average deck doesn’t scry often enough to make this a meaningful card, but the combination of scrying and proliferating could pull this together for slower decks. Refilling your hand and getting an extra turn provides plenty of gas to turn a slow game in your favor.

#20. Savor the Moment

At a glance, Savor the Moment seems unplayable. But that’s hardly the case! You just need to play a strategy that doesn’t care about attacking or casting spells on the extra turn.

Two archetypes that leap to mind are superfriends decks, which want the extra turn to activate planeswalkers, and enchantress decks built around shrines and sagas that just want extra upkeep and main phase triggers.

#19. Timesifter

Timesifter slots nicely into all manner of green decks and anything battlecruiser-adjacent that focuses on playing the biggest, most bombastic spells at the table, but the risks of doling out extra turns to your opponents can’t be ignored, especially since any player who wins the extra turn gets a flashy spell to play.

#18. Ichormoon Gauntlet

Ichormoon Gauntlet wins all the style points but never quite hits the peak of functionality that I want. Twelve loyalty is so much, even with all your planeswalkers proliferating, and picking them off to take the extra turns weakens your board since your superfriends deck ostensibly wants those extra turns to activate its planeswalkers again. Sometimes you get sweet plays where you take three or four extra turns, but I generally find it works better as a proliferation engine than an extra turn spell.

#17. Time Stretch

While Time Stretch does the thing, it’s also remarkably expensive. I could get behind this blue sorcery with a deck built around cheating out big spells, but it probably doesn’t cut it elsewhere.

#16. Seedtime

Running Seedtime comes down to your meta. If your LGS has few to no consistent blue players, you don’t want it. But if you can’t cast a spell without hearing “in response,” this green instant might be just the ace you need up your sleeve.

#15. Medomai the Ageless

Medomai the Ageless gives UW decks in mid- to low-power Cubes a decent aerial threat that dominates games while being eminently interactable. If you turn your gaze to Commander, you can set up a few infinite loops right out of the command zone.

#14. Teferi, Master of Time

I typically avoid planeswalker ults on lists like this because achieving them is incredibly inconsistent, but Teferi, Master of Time’s static ability makes it much more reliable than most and all the card filtering helps sculpt the perfect hand for those two extra turns.

#13. Timestream Navigator

Timestream Navigator sets up infinite combos with Riptide Laboratory and a handful of other cards, but it also boasts the unique status of an extra turn spell stapled to a creature. A few ways to exploit this include creature tutors like Recruiter of the Guard and ability doublers like Illusionist's Bracers and Strionic Resonator.

#12. Alchemist’s Gambit

I’m a huge fan of Alchemist's Gambit as long as you maintain the philosophy that it’s a 7-mana cleave spell that costs 3 on rare occasions. If you want that cheap-but-high-stakes extra turn spell, you have better options.

#11. Sage of Hours

Sage of Hours works best with Ezuri, Claw of Progress for a sleek infinite turn combo, but it only takes a counter doubler or two, a little proliferation, and a card like Innkeeper's Talent to produce a similar effect. This might be the best +1/+1 counter payoff in Commander; at the very least, it makes the shortlist.

#10. Plea for Power

Plea for Power won’t always generate an extra turn, but the “downside” of drawing three cards for strikes me as pretty fair. You get a solid effect at a reasonable cost either way.

#9. Karn’s Temporal Sundering

Karn's Temporal Sundering might be my favorite extra turn spell for Cube. The tempo play puts the player casting it well ahead, but the restrictions of legendary sorceries makes this a build-around rather than a straight value card.

#8. Nexus of Fate

Being a blue instant has astounding implications for Nexus of Fate. Survivors of that turbulent Standard era know the value of pairing it with Wilderness Reclamation, or Seedborn Muse in Commander. But simply getting to hold up countermagic and still have the chance to cast such a high-impact spell makes this quite strong, especially since you might get to do it again.

#7. Temporal Trespass

I don’t want to play Temporal Trespass if I’m not dedicated to filling the graveyard, but boy does it work there! A discounted extra turn spell—that is, one that costs less than 5 mana—always does work.

#6. Alrund’s Epiphany

Another extra turn spell that warped Standard (which indicates how powerful these effects can be!), Alrund's Epiphany plays nicely with token decks since they’re aggressive enough to leverage the extra turn and it comes with a couple Bird tokens. Foretell lets you dabble with cast-from-exile synergies, making this blue sorcery a pretty thematic extra turn spell in a variety of decks.

#5. Temporal Mastery

Temporal Mastery distinguishes itself with that nifty Time Walk impression should a miracle come your way. Or you could use Sensei's Divining Top and Personal Tutor to make your own miracles. Seven mana up front’s a little high, but reasonable considering this spell’s ceiling.

#4. Magistrate’s Scepter

I might be a little high on Magistrate's Scepter, but it seems broken in Simic+ (+) decks. A little proliferation, a counter doubler or two, and you would only need to activate this artifact once or twice to keep a steady stream of extra turns going.

#3. Expropriate

A frequent flyer on the list of the saltiest cards in EDH, Expropriate might be the extra turn spell in the format. It’s certainly the boogeyman on this list, and you can’t blame it. This is the original villainous choice card with no good options for your opponents.

#2. Time Warp and Friends

I always think of Time Warp as the standard extra turn spell, though you have some other 5-mana options in Temporal Manipulation and Capture of Jingzhou.

There are two big reasons to run these cards: Firstly, 5 mana’s the going rate for an extra turn with no strings attached. More importantly, these cards don’t exile themselves upon resolution like modern extra turn spells do, which means all the Regrowth effects and Snapcaster Mage variants you can justify stuffing in your deck become much stronger.

#1. Final Fortune + Last Chance + Warrior’s Oath

Two mana for an extra turn is an insane rate. You’d have to be crazy to print that with no downsides, but red has you covered with the trifecta of Final Fortune, Last Chance, and Warrior's Oath, which are functionally the same card (though Last Chance has the superior art with that borderless reprint in Dominaria Remastered).

It’s a lovely expression of red’s passionate, all-in-or-nothing approach to Magic. While losing the game sounds like a pretty big downside, you can easily avoid it by just winning in the extra turn; these pair nicely with combo decks for that reason. They also result in a delayed trigger that does the killing, which you can avoid with stifles or end-the-turn cards like Sundial of the Infinite.

Best Extra Turn Payoffs

The absolute best way to exploit extra turns is with an aggressive deck that uses the extra turn to make big attacks. Bria, Riptide Rogue and Adrix and Nev, Twincasters are two commanders that leverage these effects well as they apply loads of pressure with their wide board states.

Extra turn spells also work well in decks that only do things once a turn and want to squeeze out more triggers. For example, superfriends decks get to activate their planeswalkers and bring them closer to ulting, a shrine deck gets those juicy upkeep triggers, and so on.

More directly, ways to copy or recur extra turn spells are useful. Forking a Time Warp gives you a pretty significant advantage; you can also recur them with Regrowth effects if they don’t exile themselves. Cards like Tamiyo, Collector of Tales and Eternal Witness are particularly useful in this regard as they easily become accomplices to infinite combos.

Can You Copy Extra Turn Spells?

You can! It’s one of the best exploits of the mechanic.

Can You Stack Extra Turns? How Does it Work?

Yes! If you stack multiple extra turns, perhaps by copying a Time Warp or something, you’ll take them in sequence. If you copy Time Warp twice, you’ll take a total of two additional turns.

How Do Extra Turns Work in Multiplayer?

When a player takes an extra turn in a multiplayer game, the extra turn occurs, then regular turn order resumes. For example, players A, B, C, and D are playing a game, in that turn order.

If player B casts Nexus of Fate on player C’s end step, then player C’s turn ends and player B’s extra turn begins. They’ll play it, then pass; because turn order resumes, it’ll be player D’s turn (sorcery-speed extra turns are far simpler since player B would just take two or three turns before passing to player C).

Why Is Time Walk Banned in Commander?

Time Walk is simply too strong. There’s not much else to say about it; a Power Nine card would warp games around itself with how easily you can copy, recur, and recast it. This deserves its ban.

How Do You Stop Extra Turn Spells?

The simplest way would be countering them; these effects are fairly expensive and generally sorcery speed, so cards like Swan Song and Counterspell are perfect answers.

If you really want to stick it to that one Lier, Disciple of the Drowned player, there are a handful of cards that prevent your opponents from taking extra turns:

• Gerrard's Hourglass Pendant
• Stranglehold
• Trouble in Pairs
• Ugin's Nexus

Of these effects, Gerrard's Hourglass Pendant and Trouble in Pairs stand out as desirable effects for the average EDH deck.

Wrap Up

Time Warp (Mystical Archive) | Illustration by Dominik Mayer

Extra turn spells have a bad rap in Commander because they can reduce a multiplayer game into a round of solitaire, but they’re a fundamental part of blue’s color identity and, when played in the right shell, one of its best finishers.

Do you like extra turns in Commander? How would you exploit Time Walk? Let me know in the comments below or on the Draftsim Discord!

Stay safe, and thanks for reading!