New Cards!

Those two words are really the only way to describe that sensation of joy that we feel when new cards are released—just two words, two syllables, seven letters, and one essential exclamation point. New Cards!

What are probably the best cards from the set?

Well, there’s the rub; there’s the question. When I write an article like this, should I even include conspiracies and the cogwork stuff? While I have an idea for which ones are the best, how would they compare to a card like Custodi Squire? And where does Custodi Squire compare to Enraged Revolutionary? So, we're skipping the conspiracies and clockwork coggy guys until I have played with them. We'll stick with cards you can play, feasibly, in your Constructed deck.

And there are still an awful lot of interesting cards that aren’t tied to draft tricks and conspiracies to consider.

Normally, I'll bring to you my Honorable Mention cards in a Top 10 article like this—basically the stuff that would have hit spots 13, 12, and 11. But there just aren't enough new cards to really make that matter. So for today, we are just looking at the Top 10 Cards from Conspiracy for the Kitchen Table.

Now let's take a look!

10 – Scourge of the Throne

Hellkite Charger has always been a fun Dragon because you can Relentless Assault with it. That’s always fun to rock! So imagine if you could have a free Relentless Assault in every attack with no mana required so long as you attack the player with the most life first—which, incidentally, makes the Scourge bigger for attacking the player who is really bugging you. For extra joy, attack the player with the biggest life and then untap and attack and kill his or her Planeswalker; that’s going to bug that player all game long! As long as you are not the d20 with the highest number, that's a real deal. Plus, you'll end the game more quickly, and we can move on to the next game. Yay!

9 – Coercive Portal

As most people have already pointed out, this is a 4-mana Honden of Seeing Winds. You are basically going to draw an extra card during your upkeeps. And that's certainly worth paying 4 colorless mana for. Plus, you might, occasionally, be able to blow up the world. Who doesn't want to do that? I find that, typically, when you are about to off an Oblivion Stone or a Nevinyrral's Disk effect, at least one other player wants it. Here's the issue. In a four-person game, in order to go off and blow up the world, it has to be three against one. That's very rare. It's so rare that it will almost never happen. But it's nice to think it could. Meanwhile, you are able to draw double cards and live the dream. Just don't overextend . . . 

8 – Extract from Darkness

I really enjoy just how clever this card is. Everybody mills two cards. Then, once that's done, choose a creature from any graveyard, and bring it out. The abilities have good synergy since you can Zombify something that was just milled. It also works well in milling decks as a way to mill while doing something useful. Plus, gently milling stuff is great at ending tricks like a Sensei's Divining Top on a library or tutors that put the card on top. So it has some extra uses you can squeeze out. The combination of pulling out a guy from any ’yard with some milling makes for a card that should fill a good niche in Casual Town.

7 – Treasonous Ogre

I want you to remember Treasonous Ogre. Outside of product like Commander (2015 Edition) or some such, it won't see print again easily. It has dethrone, and the exchange of life for mana is very potent. Therefore, it's an awkward duck that won't make sense in a lot of sets. Dethrone is fine, and it gives you something useful to do with the guy. But really, this is all about the Johnny/Spike–esque exchange of one resource (life) for another (mana). In Commander, with 40 life, the payment is even easier. Life-gain in multiplayer often consists of cards like Congregate, Angelic Chorus, Invincible Hymn, Kokusho, the Evening Star, and other similarly disgusting cards. Those work wonders with the multiplayer-friendly dethrone ability. Because of that, expect to see him see play in decks in which life-gain and exploding spells are both included, such as a R/W deck that runs Congregate and X-damage spells or to fuel a giant Exsanguinate in B/R that uses Kokusho-style cards. It's a nice utility to keep in the toolbox for when it’s needed.

6 – Deathreap Ritual

Who likes drawing cards? Basically everyone, right? How often do you see dying creatures in multiplayer? Quite often, right? Into this need steps Deathreap Ritual, bringing all of the card-draw styles from Golgari Rot Farms to your table. As creatures die, they will set up a nice draw trigger later on. You could easily draw one or two extra cards each round with this in play in a four- or five-player match. You can easily run cards that will abuse it, from Sakura-Tribe Elder or Bone Shredder to Attrition or Perilous Forays. This is a card that matches your love of drawing cards with your love of sacrificing things for stuff.

Not it’s time for the top five!

5 – Brago, King Eternal

Your ubiquitous Azorius legendary creature with potent abilities on a cheaper body has made its arrival known. In Commander, it obviously works with a variety of flickering strategies, with bodies such as Mulldrifter, Solemn Simulacrum, and Karmic Guide along for the ride. The ability to stack a ton of potential Flickers in one combat is downright obscene. You can reliably flicker away to do all of your fun flicker tricks en masse. Ho hum. In other news, it says here that Brago will probably see too much Commander play over the next few months, and expect to see so much of him that your throat will explode into a vomitous mass in dread of Commander night at your local game shop.

4 – Muzzio, Visionary Architect

Muzzio basically brings two things to your deck stock. First, he's a very solid addition to the many blue-oriented, artifact-love archetypes that see a ton of play at the kitchen table. It doesn't matter whether you are building sixty-card decks, hundred-card decks, or two-hundred-fifty-card decks. A lot of formats have artifact-friendly concepts, and Muzzio certainly will find a comfortable home in any of those decks that run Islands. The ability to add an artifact, for free, to the table is just really strong. Now, a secondary ability of Muzzio is to be a good Commander for such a deck. I've not run into too many mono-blue ones since people often want to run stuff from white and/or black as well. Perhaps Muzzio will change that, at least for the nonce. He certainly has the chops for it!

3 – Realm Seekers

In a very real way, this could have been the pseudo-replacement for Primeval Titan or Sylvan Primordial in your decks and hearts. All it had to do was put the lands into play. But it's not broken, so despite the fact that you can grab any land from your deck, it just heads to your hand. This prevents you from blowing out six or eight lands in a couple of turns barring anything obscene. Still, Realm Seekers is a nice little tool and beater in one. Early on, it's easily a 15/15 in a four-person game, and it’s a reliable 8/8 later. In metagames rife with Reliquary Towers and full grips, this is going to be obscenely good (because it'll be like a 30/30, and it will tutor for that Strip Mine, Dust Bowl, and/or Wasteland to destroy the Towers). Unlike Multani, Maro-Sorcerer, people cannot shrink this by playing stuff since it already used their stuffed hands to fuel itself. I like this as an adjunct to other mana tricks in green and especially rocking the aforementioned kitchen tables.

2 – Marchesa, the Black Rose

I like Marchesa so much that I've already published a Commander deck built around her! She's in the Grixis colors rocking her best Nicol Bolas or Crosis, the Purger impressions. This is, historically, a very strong color combination—able to counter, bounce, burn, steal, or kill just about anything. It rocks card-draw, discard, and more. But one of the things it historically struggles with is a lot of counter manipulation. It doesn't rock a lot of the +1/+1 counter addition and manipulation, which tend to be in the Selesnya colors. Well, now you have a legendary critter to rock the block and not only enable creatures with counters via dethrone, but also to lead them into a new era. She expands on the space that folks like Exava, Rakdos Blood Witch explored. She is a very unique Commander in a Grixis-colored world.

1 – Dack Fayden

You can have Dack ready to ultimate a full two turns earlier. Jace, Memory Adept is not able to go off until the ninth turn (if played on the fifth), while Dack can go off on the seventh. Now, add the fact that artifacts litter casual tables almost as much as Doritos do. From mana rocks to removal to card-draw to creatures, you can steal Colossus of Akros, Mind's Eye, Sol Ring, or Mindslaver. And then you have the stealing emblem of hotness. Just add a few flexible cards like Rolling Thunder to the deck that are useful anyway but that can blow someone out with Dack's ultimate. The result is the best new card from Conspiracy.

And that concludes the Top 10 cards from Conspiracy, as I see them, and their potential impact for Casual Fridays everywhere.

One of the best things this set will do is bring a whole set of great casual cards to newer players everywhere. Having a chance to crack Pernicious Deed and Exploration is downright awesome. Now add in Swords to Plowshares, Squirrel Nest, Altar of Dementia, Spiritmonger, Silent Arbiter, Mirari's Wake, Victimize, Ill-Gotten Gains, Stifle, Brainstorm, Rout, Pristine Angel, and even Edric, Spymaster of Trest. That's a lot of quality for your decks!

So crack some packs, get your draft on, and enjoy yourself! New cards, baby!

See you next week,

Abe Sargent