Take The Crown Playthrough

If you can't get eight players to draft, screw it, do four. That's what I say.

So we did. And this is what it looked like.

I ended up with a R/B deck that had a lot of removal but not a lot of win conditions. My plan was to patiently wait as other players represented threats, and then step in after one or if I was lucky, two players had been eliminated.

And it almost worked. First, because as it turns out, Sangromancer is an absolute house in multiplayer. Holy cow that card is good. The first time I cast it, Noah stole it from me with Desertion (a card I passed to him because 'who plays countermagic in multiplayer?') and proceeded to go from 6 life to 27 life.

After Matt destroyed the Sangromancer, I was able to use Raise Dead and re-play Sangromancer, which took me from 7 life to 22 before being killed again, I believe this time by Caitlin.

While I didn't see anything too bonkers from my opponents in terms of card selection, the decks were varied and things got interesting specifically because of the Monarch mechanic. Attacking became very important because of the extra cards.

Matt had it worked out though, putting a Pariah on my Havengul Vampire.  As the Vampire got bigger and bigger, Matt had time to add in a Ghostly Posession on top of it all! At one point I had a 17/17 vampire that couldn't do anything for me and left Matt comfortably in the position of Monarch.

But.

As the game wore on the extra card draw became detrimental to Matt, who saw his library run down to nothing and couldn't find an answer for the board. The aggressive nature of being the Monarch had a price and eventually it got paid.

Which is very cool, because multiplayer games often struggle due to people turtling up. They get laggy and boring, with nobody wanting to take any risks. The extra card draw is worth getting for a little while but multiplayer draft games means that A) It's harder to capitalize on those extra draws and B) if it goes on long enough the reward becomes a bad thing.

First test of Take The Crown: Approved.

Take The Crown: Online Review

Man, this is too much fun.

Goblin Racketeer: I went with a fair rating and that's because a 4/2 for 4 mana isn't bad and I don't know how to rate Goad as a mechanic yet. The art was decent but after that, nothing else stands out about this card.

Orchard Elemental: Green boarder + green art = that's boring. Plus, the damn thing looks like it's in a European palatial grounds, not an orchard. I did like the flavor text but the card itself is poor. Six mana for a benefit that your opponents control is not good. If you get a vanilla 8/8, that's bad. If you get a 2/2 and gain 12 life, that's marginally better but this is assuming that there are still 4 players in the game when the card enters the battlefield! The odds of you getting a much worse scenario is much higher.

Skyline Despot: Red skies in a red card. It's also pretty muddied, as things go: the foreground of the head is OK but it washes out rapidly and the background of the card is tinted red enough that you can't even make out the flame coming from the dragon! But I rated the card good, because a 5/5 flier goes a long way towards keeping you the Monarch and allowing you to get more dragons every turn.

Regicide: I don't see how this is anything but excellent. One mana to destroy 3/5ths of the creatures in the game as an instant? Yeah, that's going to be superb.

Palace Jailer: The artwork's kinda boring here, isn't it? It isn't bad but it's not telling much of a story, either. Unfortunately, this is just a bad card overall, too. It's a flavor win, to be sure: a creature being jailed until the political whims shift, oh that's marvelous. But it's that flavor win that makes it such a weak card, too, because you're never going to keep a creature you removed off the table.

Illusionary Informant: Blue art + Blue card.... I like the name though and I like the way the mechanic executes. The stats aren't bad, either so I gave it a fair rating. I'd take this card for sure.

Echoing Boon: What's going on in that scene? Rats riding goblins? It's goofy and I like it, even if I can't see how it relates to the name of the card, which is marginal. But it's a fair card, doing some potentially gamebreaking stuff...if you draw the card you name. Which knocks it down to marginal overall.

Menagerie Liberator: I mean...that dude has a green jacket on. Why? Because it's a green card? That's just nonsense. I do like the leading of the charge that's depicted, though: fair. Name is excellent though. In the end, I rated it fair: the potential to be a 6/5 trampler is cool, but even if it's just a 4/3, that doesn't suck for 4 mana.

Capital Punishment: I think this card is great all the way down. Six mana to eliminate at least 3 creatures or ensure at least 3 cards are discarded and it only improves from there? That's fantastic.

Leovold, Emissary of Trest: Another great card. I dinged the name to "good" because it's solid but rote, in the Magic naming scheme. Everything else about this card I love. I know other people are thinking "Commander" but as always I'm thinking "Sixty card deck...?"

Arcane Savant: Meh to the art again but...that ability has the potential to be game breaking. Yes, you need to get lucky and/or plan (or both). Or maybe you just want to cast Murder and get a 3/3 for five mana. That's just fine too. Excellent stuff.

Recruiter of the Guard: The art here feels dynamic and have some different color schemes so I like that. I'm downgrading the name because of the ability: Guardians should have high toughness, don't you think? Why recruit weaklings? Some solid flavor text though (which also plays nicely into the ability) and, well, the card itself is fantastic.

Assemble the Rank and Vile: Jesus, let's just go all goth on this one...if I wanted to look at Juggalo group photos I'd do that. I really like the name but...it's really only good if you can get multiple copies of a creature in your deck and in an 8 person draft, my experience has been that this is not very common. Or at least, not copies of creatures you want to put in the deck. Marginal rating.

Messenger Jays: I think this is a bit of a sleeper card. Getting a really big flier isn't anything to sniff at, and that's most likely what you'll get but if you don't, drawing cards never sucks. For 5 mana, I'm rating this excellent. It's entirely possible to hit 5 mana with 4 players in the game but even if there's only 2, 3/2 + a card or 4/3 fliers for 5 are totally reasonable.

Incendiary Dissent: Why is the background building pink? WHY? I really like the name but, as with Assemble the Rank and Vile, I don't see it being anything more than a marginal card.

All in all, I think this is a pretty good set. What I'm starting to notice is that I am having some serious objections to the monotony of the art, in regards to the color scheme. This objection is holding over from set to set, and I think I'm going to keep making it until things change. 

You Best Not Miss

So the new Conspiracy full spoiler is out, Take The Crown and you know what they say about comin' after the king...

First things first: I think this is the biggest risk that WotC has taken in years. The reprints of Show & Tell, Inquisition of Kozilek and Berserk alone show a genuine if tentative willingness to address the rising costs of popular cards in the Legacy and Modern formats. Add in Serum Visions, Burning Wish and even Birds of Paradise-which I've never heard anyone complain about-and the evidence points to Wizards being willing to introduce some necessary cards into the available pool.

While I can't agree with everything said by SaffronOlive, (notably, I think reprints in Standard are fine and people just like to complain) I am certainly on board with the notion that Take The Crown represents a genuine step forward. It is not be the step WotC ought to take, because there are still some big issues revolving around the reprint policy and the shunning of younger or more impoverished players, not to mention the flat out gouging of consumers that was Eternal Masters/Modern Masters 2. But Take the Crown is at least pointed in the right direction.

Now, looking at the rest of the set:

I think the Monarch idea is an interesting one and allows for some rapidly shifting power dynamics in multiplayer. That's a good thing and the implementation doesn't appear to be overpowered.

White is so clearly the bees knees in this set it's hard to overstate it. And this comes down to two cards: Recruiter of the Guard and Sanctum Prelate. Even reprints like Berserk and Show & Tell haven't gotten as much attention as those two cards and with good reason. Nothing I'm seeing in this set has the same level of impact on Legacy.

In draft? Well, that's a horse of a different color. It looks like a whole lot of OK.

Blue's cards seem overcosted to me-at least for draft. Making sure you hit 4+ mana is going to be important but even if you do, what's the payoff? Probably a solid support color and Desertion is always an interesting card for multiplayer. The shiny shiny that is Show & Tell doesn't really distract me from the fact that there doesn't seem to be a lot to do.

Black provides some interesting stuff: first, the Archdemon of Paliano, as difficult as it may be to use in draft, in Constructed offers a 5/4 flier for four with zero drawback in black. This is better than Mindwrack Demon. That could make it a contender for a finisher in a lot of decks. Even in draft, if it's a pack 1 pick, the drawback is really zero. After that, there is a lot of removal here; Murder and Death Wind are at common, Infest at uncommon; if you can get it to work, Black should go a long way for you.

Red gets a bit weird; I really like Grenzo but Subterranean Tremors feels out of place. It doesn't fit thematically (there are only 10 artifacts in the set) but as a solitary flavor win, I dig it. What remains to be seen is how mechanics like Goad work in practice. It's a weird political mechanic for multiplayer and I suppose that fits in with Red's general themes. I'm just not sure how strong it is. The removal isn't as awesome as Black's but it looks like there's enough to keep you in the game.

I don't have much in Green to get excited about. Sevala is the nuts and of course Berserk's reprinting is cool but it's just 'make more mana than you to win' and feels pretty linear.

The artifacts are a pretty sorry bunch, with only Spy Kit doing something unusual but even that oddity doesn't have much payoff. Sure, there's the bridge to the Conspiracies and "note" cards but the advantage seems so incremental for four mana. I can't get excited about Platinum Angel and would rather have seen Platinum Emperion. The lands do a little better, having more obvious functionality but it's a cold day before anyone is hyped about Dread Statuary.

The Conspiracy tactics have an interesting new slant to them, requiring colored mana to offer more variety. Nothing groundbreaking but at least there's some room in that mechanic to breathe which makes me hopeful for Conspiracy 3: Revolution (or whatever they call it).

Lastly, of the six new multicolored cards, only three really catch my eye: Leovold, Kaya, and Daretti II. The reprints aren't terribly exciting, if reasonably curated for multiplayer but I'm glad to see Dragonlair Spider, since that card was only really available in the Planechase set.