This post was originally submitted to me earlier this month and has sat in my queue waiting me to publish it. Though we know the name of the next sword to be 'Sword of War and Peace' we don't know what it does yet, so this post still has an excellent examination into that. My apologies to the author for the long delay in publishing -- Trick

By: Tyler Pugliese

So you're just minding your own business, walking the planes of the multiverse, looking for a late night mana fix. Then you feel a strange, antagonizing power. A tingling wave of anxiety and curiosity washes over you as you analyze the radiating aura. You realize it's a fellow master of the planes, announcing a challenge. You accept, as an experienced mage, you know you have the upper hand, you even let your opponent begin the duel.

He begins with an unassumingly pale blacksmith, a vaguely humanoid being, one that is content in its meditative forging. You cast a spell of your own, confident in your ability to dispatch this menace. Then your foe summons a meager raptor. A bird, just a solitary bird. That's apparently part of a group. There's more! More birds than you've ever imagined, cawing and flapping around you! Then they pick up deadly weapons, provided patiently by the smith. Blades as colorful as they are wicked. You barely have time to concentrate as the birds assault you in force. Tearing at your body with weapons rather than talons, and soon you forget your magical knowledge and the birds have summoned more allies. This time, it's wolves instead of more birds! Before you know what happened, you're on the ground, dying in an alley, with multiple injuries from hawks, swords and wolves. You wonder where you went wrong.

By now, everyone's aware of these gruesome stories. Planeswalkers looking like extras in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. ‘Caw-Blade' is the biggest new hit in Standard, and it's constantly being improved to handle the reactive metagame. However, that's not what I'm going to talk about, I'm here to talk about their next fowl weapon, the anticipated Red-White Sword.

S-Words of Anger and Anticipation

If you don't know anything about the colors Red and White, they don't like creatures very much. They especially don't like large creatures intent on ruining their day, which is why they have some of the most efficient spot removal ever printed by Wizards: Lightning Bolt, Swords to Plowshares, Path to Exile, Incinerate, etc. The list is impossibly long. So, it goes without saying that the protection is phenomenal. Even without any abilities, a sword that just said:

Sword of Burn Ointment and Unexilable Weapons

Equipped creature gets +2/+2 and has protection from red and white.

Would be extremely playable in Legacy, saving you from rogue red decks, and the most efficient removal spell ever printed, not to mention any Bant/Junk/Green & Taxes decks/Goblins decks. So this sword is highly anticipated given the recent success of Caw-Blade Sword-Based decks in Standard. You thought Stoneforge Mystic was expensive before? Wait until you can tutor up a card that says: Equipped Creature makes Boros reach for their sideboard. This card will be playable in almost every format, not to mention pretty fantastic against metalcraft decks in Scars limited.

So let's get down to this badboy, and find out what it will do. From what we have seen of the previous Swords, two distinct characteristics stand out. Each of the swords' abilities stem from its color of protection, and are generally 1-2 mana effects, and we know that abilities are never repeated. Considering the other swords, let's think about their abilities in generic card form:

Sword of Light and Shadow: Disentomb and Healing Salve

Sword of Fire and Ice: Shock and Whispers of the Muse

Sword of Body and Mind: Grizzly Bear and Glimpse the Unthinkable

Sword of Feast and Famine: Pain and Nature's Will

Obviously the abilities have gotten a tad more dramatic for the Standard environment post Mirrodin/Darksteel/Fifth Dawn, even though the consensus still has the Sword of Fire and Ice as the best. So, given that the new sword will be Protection from Red and White, we know that Wizards will be focusing on 1-2 Mana abilities for Red and White.

Going through a list of all of these cards, two clear attributes stand out. White hates enchantments and these Red and White cards are not very good ‘Sword Abilities'. What I mean is that many of these cards which affect creatures/board state before combat or after combat, and only for the turn. Many of these cards' effects are brief. Notice how many of these red cards are temporary buffs to power, or how many white spells give protection until end of turn. Both of these abilities would be horrible on a Sword. Swords need to feel monumental, and they need to feel like they give you two free spells if your opponent declines to block your creature. With that constraint in mind, let's look at abilities that do work well for each color:

Red

Winds of Change: Far from being direct Card Advantage, many cool interactions could work with this repeated effect but you want to be able to play cards in your hand. This could be powerful in Legacy or Commander, but it would be almost as dangerous to play in Limited.

Rite of Flame: Rituals would work oddly with the mana pool emptying, but Wizards could get it to work. The real question is, would you really want to?

Shattering Spree: Hmm, destroy an artifact? In an artifact block? No, surely that would be too good. Wizards would never print something like that…

White

Flicker: One of Rosewater's favorite mechanics (and mine too). This could be very powerful yet have great interactions with the current environment. Reset my Jace, the Mind Sculptor after you hit him down to one. Use Stoneforge Mystic to tutor up a new Sword. Get another permanent back with Sun Titan. Unfortunately, it would probably have to be one of your permanents, given that it would not make much difference to exile a permanent an opponent controls after you've attacked. This also might be unlikely as they've branded this ability Blue as well as White.

Moment of Silence: Now this would be nasty, especially in a race with Bladed Hawks. Being able to neuter your opponent's Sword triggers while swinging with your own would make quite a potent threat. However, I could see it being incredibly frustrating and degenerate on an unblockable creature who suddenly has protection from the most prevelent removal covers.

Entangling Trap: Like the other white abilities, tapping before attacks doesn't make sense. However, if the creature/permanent doesn't untap during your opponent's next untap step, then the ability is actually viable. It's less dominating than a Moment of Silence trigger, but it might have to be permanent rather than creature to really shine.

Demystify: Simple as that. Boom, destroy your enchantment. It's basic, it's iconic white and it's worthy of a sword ability.

Looking at these abilities, I think the answer is pretty obvious:

Sword of Subgames and Subgames

Equipped Creature gets +2/+2 and has protection from red and white.

Whenever equipped creature deals combat damage to a player, untap all creatures that attacked this turn and all players play a MAGIC subgame, using their libraries as their decks. Each player who doesn't win the subgame loses half his or her life, rounded up. After this main phase, there is an additional combat phase followed by an additional main phase.

Equip

Here's my serious suggestion:

Sword of Ruin and Purity

Equipped Creature gets +2/+2 and has protection from red and white.

Whenever equipped creature deals combat damage to a player, you may destroy target artifact and destroy target enchantment.

Equip

Say what? That's right. Artifact destruction on a sword in an artifact block. I know what you're thinking: Wizards will never print that, it's too good! Too good as in, untap all of your lands too good? Too good as in give you a potential two turn clock in limited too good? Too good as in kill your dude and draw a card too good? Please. Think about it this way, when the Sword of Fire and Ice was released in Darksteel, it came with seventy-one other creatures. At the end of the block when the format was Mirrodin/Darksteel/5^th Dawn, do you know how many creatures where in that block? 268. How many of them could be killed with a shock? Around 140, or more than half.

Compare this to Scars of Mirrodin Block. How many of the cards in SoM were artifacts? 88/249. How many of the cards in MBS are artifacts? 46/155. Both of these ratios are about a third. Despite the ambiguity of the last set, I believe we can expect the same number of artifact cards relative to the entire set in Mirrodin Pure/New Phyrexia. So, in Darksteel, Wizards felt comfortable printing a Sword that could kill over half of the cards in the block. In Scars, it would be around a third, not counting enchantments.

Implications

Think about this card in the recent standard environment. Being able to destroy one of your opponent's swords? Disastrous. Having a bastion against Boros? Worth it. It also protects you from Gideon, Koth, and Hawks, while keeping them off of their own equipment.

In Limited, swords are always good, but this one is a shatter on legs. It would be almost as devastating as Massacre Wurm, possibly even more so. It would certainly be powerful, but probably no more degenerate than milling someone for a third of their deck.

In Extended, it would probably have the least reach. Protection from Blue or Black is far more prevalent with the Fae threat, but there are many more juicy enchantments and artifacts lingering from the Shards/Lorwyn block. Imagine being able to swing and kill a Bitterblossom or Oblivion Ring?

In Legacy, the implications are already understood, despite the lack of swords in the metagame so far. The protection is powerful, but Green and Blue are much bigger threats. Yet being able to destroy Counterbalance and forcing them to hide top would be a pretty devastating blow.

In other formats, the impact is less ambiguous, the R/W Sword will go straight into my cube, even if it tells me that all my creatures get +0/+1 and haste. In EDH, being able to destroy someone's Sol Ring AND Phyrexian Arena seems pretty fantastic, but Swords don't really last long in such a wrath filled format.

Even if these aren't the abilities of the R/W Sword, it's obviously going to be a contender. As I've stated before, the protection is almost perfect. Equip this to a black creature (or better yet, a black artifact creature), and you've got an unstoppable death machine.