Hello awesome folks! I hope that your day is going super mega well! Today we are doing my final look at the Top Ten cards from the recent set of Murders at Karlov Manor for kitchen table formats like Commander, Highlander, multiplayer, Five Color, Peasant/Pauper and Type Four. I've done this twice before with Top Tens with three Honorable Mentions and this my third one! We'll knock one more Honorable Mention to get to an even Top 40.

Honorable Mention #1. (#40. Overall) - Fae Flight

My favorite Aura from this set is Fae Flight! This has flash, so you can use it as a combat trick. Then you give it hexproof to protect from targeted removal so you can flash and save your precious attacker, and then it gets flying and a boost to power. I love this on a beefy grounded dork that someone is attacking over on a weaker flying frame you can kill out of nowhere and keep to punch high. Then this sticks around! Then this is awesome in Aura, Enchantment, Voltron decks like Zur the Enchanter, or Aggro, Flying matters or other places too.

Honorable Mention #2. (#39. Overall) - Flourishing Bloom-Kin

This two drop morph/megamorph/disguise with size equal to your Forest count is next! When you flip it for five mana you can Cultivate for Forests (not basics). Nasty! You ramp, put one into your hand, and grow this thing's size. Normally Forest sized things back in the day would be weak, but in the era of many duels including one cycle from this set and Tri-Lands and more? Plus, Yavimaya makes this size equal to your land count. Today, this is pretty strong in decks with a bunch of duals to grab and make strong with the ability and create a powerful beater out of nowhere!

Honorable Mention #3 (#38 Overall) - Blood Spatter Analysis

Hello enchantment fans! I have your two drop Rakdos drop that will shoot a dork on ETB for three! That early is most dorks to kill. Then as dorks die you get to mill a card. Note that does not read "yours" or "nontoken" it's all of them, including the one you just slew. Then when it gets to five, you sac this and get a free Raise Dead. Recursion, removal, and self-milling all work well to make this worth the cost in those decks. Rakdos has loads of good removal or sacrifice matters decks to build around so from Damnation to Barter in Blood to Goblin Bombardment, you should easily net the death triggers. I also like this in midrange decks that pack 1:1 removal like Bedevil to really make that rock roll.

Honorable Mention #4. (#37. Overall) - Demand Answers

Our highest scoring red common is this two cost instant! Your two mana will draw you two cards, like Village Rites, for the sacrifice of an artifact in this case. Or if you just need the cards or don't have an artifact, you can instead discard one so it's card flow either way, 2 for 2. But it's flexible how it works, and unlike Rites, it can still be played with a naked battlefield. I adore it. It's also common for Pauper/Peasant.

#10. (#36 Overall) - The Pride of Hull Clade

Everyone's favorite melting pot legendary dork! This costs Green, but has a blue activated ability so it's Simic stuff. This has a massive price of 11 mana, but it has a powerful cost reduction of your total toughness of your stuff so this is the Ghalta of toughness matters. It will never be less than one, and with a 2/15 body, that's strong. It has defender though. Creatures with high toughness are way cheaper than high powers. Then your activation target removes defender, pumps by a power, and let's you draw equal to the toughness for that dork's toughness. That's a nasty usefulness of stuff. You could draw 15 with this and with 3 power it's Access Tunnel-able.

#9. (#35 Overall) - Fugitive Codebreaker

This two drop 2/1 haste prowess is next! It has disguise and when you turn it up, you discard and draw three, and your cost is a massive 6, but reduced for your spent and milled instant/sorcery count. Great way to toss this in Spellslinger builds, but I just love this on its own, without disguise as a hasted beater with prowess on curve at two mana in aggro decks. It's great value all up and down the casing cost at two, three, and six.

#8. (#34. Overall) - Homicide Investigator

I both love and loathe this card. I love it since it's a two drop 2/2 on curve Bear with an ability. Nice! Then I loathe it since it makes a Clue when something else dies, but there are so many breaks! You have to spend mana to draw the card. It's just once. It has be yours that dies. It cannot be a token. That's just so many breaks on one dork! But, she's on curve already, and cheap so she hits back here on my third list, but I do have feelings for this Human Detective!

#7. (#33. Overall) - Essence of Antiquity

In terms of subtlety, this is one of my favorite new additions to the multiplayer game! How so? Well, it's a five artifact dork drop 1/10. Then it has disguise on the third turn, reveal on turn 3/4 and untap and give your stuff hexproof for the turn and untap them too. Or, you could just drop it when you need a good blocker, but that's just one less mana then the morph and reveal total, so that seems the better bet. And then no one is going to target or care about a 1/10 unless you are in a deck with toughness dealing damage like Doran. It's sort of like beloved Indomitable Ancients that blocks loads, survives many damage based sweepers, sucks up tons of damage from an attacker or trampler, and can just really do good things for you! This also meets two my key criteria to succeed in Advanced Multiplayer Strategies in Density of Creatures (Advanced Multiplayer Strategies #2: The Density of Creatures | Article by Abe Sargent (coolstuffinc.com)) and You Can't Win Until You Don't Lose (Advanced Multiplayer Theory #4: You Can?t Win Until You Don?t Lose | Article by Abe Sargent (coolstuffinc.com)). It's ideal as a disguise for the former since no one will know what you have and run even better there.

#6. (#32. Overall) - Reenact the Crime

Let's turn now to this hard to cast four cost instant! This will exile one thing that just arrived at a graveyard (any graveyard, not just yours), but not lands. You get a free copy of it! Nasty! So, if you copied that Tidings, draw four. If it was a Krosan Grip or Chaos Warp, handle that issue! Mass removal? Counter? And that's just spells! What about artifacts like mana rocks, or dorks like Mulldrifter , or planeswalkers like Elspeth, Sun's Champion or enchantments like Rhystic Study? And since this is an instant, you can exile in response to a targeted recursion spell like Dread Return, or after a Mindslaver was used and before it comes back with their Academy Ruins.

#5. (#31. Overall) - Assemble the Players

Our final Top Five in our final list begins with this white two cost pair! The former is an enchantment you can drop early and then look at your library's top card until answered. That, alone, is massively good in any format and deck since you'll know when to crack that fetch land, scry or surveil, when to cast that cantrip to respond to a problem with the right answer like Swords to Plowshares and more. And then add on to that the ability to get a cast from your library with a 2-power dork. Sure, it's just once a turn, and sure, you have to spend the mana but that counts everything from in color Karmic Guide to E Witness and so on. See how strong that fun thang can be? I hope so too! Then the latter is a sorcery that will recur a three cost or fewer dork to your battlefield with a flying counter. See how nasty that can be together. From Hate Bears to Aggro to midrange, to scrying there are many places where you can run this duo together!

#4. (#30. Overall) - Proft's Eidetic Memory

Let's move from one two drop Azorius enchantment to another! This legendary is a cantrip that ETBs on arrival, and then you don't discard with hand size, so a cantrippable Spellbook for two more mana is very strong everywhere, and great in enchantment bews with blinking or in Zur stuff again. Then in your combat you can get a free permanent boost to a dork like your Commander in the form of +1/+1 counters equal to your difference in cards draw if you drew at least two cards this turn, so it impacts the battlefield quite easily and does great stuff.

#3. (#29. Overall) - Tomik, Wielder of Law

Our penultimate scoring legendary card, Commander, and gold card is next! This three drop Orzhov with affinity for planeswalkers to drop the Command tax after killing it, and then with a strong 2/4 flying and vigilance body to block attacks on your planeswalkers while also swinging over bodies to deal damage. Then when someone attacks you or your precious planeswalkers with two or more dorks, they lose three and you draw that sweet card, so they probably won't care about the life loss in 40 life formats like Commander, but giving away cards is rough, so they are likely to attack elsewhere with smaller stuff or just one bigger dork your way. See why Tomik made my list?

#2. (#28. Overall) - Forensic Gadgeteer

Everyone's favorite new Artificer has arrived! Artifacts are the most popular Archetype in Commander and other kitchen table stuff. With this three drop 2/3 dork out, you can turn your casts into Clues! And there are no breaks here like once per turn. You just have to spend the mana to crack it open! Converting one cast into two artifacts is great, and this is a cast trigger so your cannot do ETB Tricks like blink, but if countered you'll still make the Clue. And then your artifacts have their activation costs dropped by one but not fewer than one. So your Clue cracking will only cost one not two! And in an artifact heavy deck you'll make tons of Clues and reduce tons of costs. Artifact fans are loving this new addition!

#1. (#27. Overall) - Rakdos, Patron of Chaos

Our final top leader is this six drop beefy win-con 6/6 with flying and trample so it's hard to shut him down and can win the Commander Damage quite ably! Then in your EOT your targeted foe can either sac two things that aren't lands or tokens so actual proper cards or you draw two. No matter what is chosen, you be up 2:1 on the turn you cast him, and with protection over a few turns, that card advantage will pile up massively. I feel like most at the multiplayer table would prefer to have you draw two than sacrifice two in their deck that they built around and spent mana casting. Me too. So you're likely to draw two a lot. Just protect him with stuff like Lightning Greaves or Malakir Rebirth to save him.

There we go! I hope you enjoyed this!