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Main » Articles » Conspiracy Take the Crown Set Review: White and Lands

Conspiracy Take the Crown Set Review: White and Lands

Abe Sargent
Posted on August 25, 2016
 Reddit

Welcome back to our set review of Conspiracy: Take the Crown, already in progress. Yesterday, we looked at both Blue and Artifacts from the set. Today it’s White and maybe a spot of Land.

White has always been my pick for the best color in multiplayer, as it can do almost anything: exile creatures in one on one or en masse, destroy artifacts and enchantments, exile anything for a while, have the best game-winning creatures, and have the best game-smashing spells. You have recursion, pro-enchantment love, and more. White does so much. Tempo, aggro, and tons more. And White’s only major issue is that it doesn’t tend to draw cards in raw numbers. That’s it.

So White rules.

Given that dynamic, I expect a lot from the White in Conspiracy: Take the Crown. I expect White to dominate and get great cards that push the table around in a variety of ways. Do the cards we see below match my (admittedly lofty) expectations? Or will White disappoint?

Let’s take a look and see

Ballot Broker — Note if you are running a deck where you are abusing cards like Brago's Representative and/or Grudge Keeper to force people to vote your way, you now have some additional tools. The sheer amount of stuff you are getting could allow you to get all Will of the Council to go your way or to get more Council’s Dilemma triggers.

Adriana’s Valor — Conspiracies are cool. The common cycle of Hidden Agenda ones with a color outlay give you another powerful option you can draft later when you have the option. Pay a White mana, and indestructible-tize your attacking creature. It only has to be the one drafted. I am really digging it as a potential option for Commander Cube, where you can make your attacking Commander indestructible for one White mana – which works for a lot of stuff.

Noble Banneret — White has some interesting draft action options. Custodi Peacekeeper gets better the more you draft, and thus is Limited to the actual Conspiracy: Take the Crown draft, and not really useful in Cube or other stuff outside of that limited role. It’s no big shakes.

I do think Noble Banneret has something interesting to offer though, and I want to try it out. It’s a great card for several things and roles, and you only need the one Banneret to make the thing worthwhile. It’s great for a draft with a guaranteed creature (like Commander Cube where you draft the Commander). And I can see it doing some damage elsewhere to pump your stuff. I like it and want to see if it has legs. But . . . 

Paliano Vanguard —  . . . It’s no Paliano Vanguard. It’s a Grizzly Bears already in progress. You can do the same draft trick you did with Noble Banneret, only here you care about creature types. Draft a Solider or Human or Cleric or whatever and reveal it, and now your Vanguard pumps them all up like a lesser version of a Glorious Anthem on a stick. And you can draft and flip some dopey creature card late that has the right intersection of creature types even though you won’t play it. Vanguard for the win.

Protector of the Crown — As I mentioned above, White doesn’t have a lot of card drawing. So a creature that’s essentially free fills some holes. Becoming the Monarch helps with that. This is a useful Veteran Bodyguard as well as a powerful card drawing tool. And I’m sure you can come up with a few ways to abuse it…

No Damage, No Chance ? Casual | Abe Sargent

This deck wants to stay alive by dropping a shield on Protector of the Crown like Shielded by Faith or using Aegis Angel and friends to give it indestructible. Both protection from stuff and indestructible play well into this ability. You can also run some useful stuff here as well. I didn’t want to just stay alive, so Commander Eesha, Beloved Chaplain, and Akroma, Angel of Wrath are here as win conditions. The first two will work well with Pariah's Shield, a useful duplication of the central conceit of the deck in equipment form. And Unquestioned Authority replaces itself, creates a powerful supplement for damage prevention by creatures as well as another unblockable annoyance.

(Note that Pariah is printed in the set as well)

That is one fun way to use Protector of the Crown. But frankly, it works well in a lot of shells. How about this one?

EarthGuard ? Casual | Abe Sargent

The goal of this deck is to win with Earthquake or Rolling Earthquake. You ramp with lands and mana rocks. Then you play a Protector of the Crown. All damage dealt to you now goes somewhere else. (And this makes it harder to steal the Monarch from you, by the by). Drop a big, lethal ‘quake. All of the damage that would go to you goes to your Protector. You stay alive, everyone else dies, and you sweep the board for good measure.

It’s a very flexible card, with a lot of ways to use and abuse it.

While those are all some good cards, none of them are in my top three. So what are those top three white cards from the set? Particularly with an eye for the casual table?

Top Three White Cards:

3. Sanctum Prelate

One of my favorite things from the Un- sets is the ability to get really cool abilities that don’t normally appear in black-border Magic. But what is legal for black-border Magic has changed over the years. We used to have a card like Look at Me, I’m R&D. That was a fun ability. But now? It’d probably be on a 2/1 first strike White creature for 3 mana. Sanctum Prelate is the next in a line of powerful cards that let you name a number and then hose your foes. Name a number, and then folks can’t play a spell of that cmc unless it’s a creature. Now we all know there are a lot of casual metagames that want a cheap mana creature like the Prelate that tosses dice at opposing plans. And yet, the fairer creature-centric stuff won’t care. It plays fair with the decks you want to play fair with, which is where I certainly want to be.

2. Custodi Soulcaller

We’re not 100% sure how Melee is going to play out; but, the fact that you can pump up a creature based on the number of folks you attack can turn this 3 mana 1/2 into a major 3/4 or 4/5 very easily. And that’s not all! You also can pull back a creature from your graveyard to the battlefield every time you swing with the Soulcallers, and can also get at least a 1-drop back. And unlike other repeatable recursion effects, this one doesn’t die, or get exiled, or anything else once it’s done. Nope! If you can swing and smash, then you can bring back something good permanently. There are a lot of interesting cards that come to mind, as well as an old forgotten trick from the Kamigawa Block days.

Take a look at one quick shell:

Calling Shirei?s Soul ? Casual | Abe Sargent

This deck wants to use Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker and Custodi Soulcaller to make a bunch of 1-power creatures return to the table over and over again. The best way to use this is to bring back low power creatures that sacrifice for an effect like Sakura-Tribe Elder or Mogg Fanatic. So let’s look at what I grabbed.

Take Benevolent Bodyguard. Make your Soulcaller unblockable by giving it protection from the right color, swing, and then recur the Bodyguard. That’s sounds like a cool trick, right? And you can sacrifice it to protect Shirei or the Soulcaller from removal as well. Sacrifice a creature to feed Carrion Feeder and grow it, while recurring the sacrificed fun. You can sacrifice multiple creatures to load up a big Shirei count and then bring them all back at once. Sacrifice Kami of False Hope to prevent all damage and recur it over and over again to keep from dying while your little junk pushes on. You have a bunch of synergy here with small drops.

Another way to build this deck might be this way:

Apostle?s Soulcaller ? Casual | Abe Sargent

This works around sacrificing the Shadowborn Apostles for various Demons that work, and then bringing them back with Soulcallers, Shireis, or Immortal Servitude. All work well! And this is just the one Shirei + Soulcaller shell! There is a lot more where that it. Lots of cards look good with it. Take Sun Titan. It recurs a 3-drop or less, and your Soulcaller is . . . well it says here it’s a 3-drop. Soul Warden. Proclamation of Rebirth. Rally the Ancestors. Reveillark. Blood Pet. Wild Cantor. Spore Frog. Rootwater Diver. Veteran Explorer. Mindlash Sliver. You get the idea.

It’s a very versatile, grinding card that works well bringing you card advantage over the long term.

In a normal set, with a normal slate of cards, Custodi Soulcaller would be the best one. But it’s not the best White card in the set. Because the best card in the set, period, happens to be White . . . 

1. Recruiter of the Guard

Holy crap. Imperial Recruiter alert. Imperial Recruiter is in my set of the five cards from Portal Three Kingdoms that most need a real non-Judge foil reprint. (Imperial Seal, Imperial Recruiter, Dong Zhou, the Tyrant, Sun Ce, Young Conquerer, and Zodiac Dragon are the rest on that list). And here we have a White Imperial Recruiter that gets 2 toughness or less rather than power. This will immediately be one of the strongest, most powerful casual creatures for every casual format ever designed. Commander? Five Color? Multiplayer? Cube? Pauper? (Just checking to see if you are paying attention). This is it. Get ready for Recruiter overload. And given its super high price on the market already, this thing is not getting missed. Now it’s a rare. That matters. But this card is no joke.

All three of those cards are strong. What about the best reprints for the color?

Top Three Reprints for White:

3. Hail of Arrows

I’ve always been a fan of Hail of Arrows, and as soon as it was printed, I tossed it into my decks to blow people out. As a fixed, and color-shifted version of Rock Slide, it’s a great combat trick that kills a lot of attackers, gives you an interesting angle to take out creatures, gives you potential card advantage, and is maximally flexible. In multiplayer, it’s a big hit, and as a White instant, it gets past a lot of the typical annoying protections, like Akroma, Angel of Wrath. The Hail Storm Begineth

2. Ghostly Prison

If you don’t like Ghostly Prison, I don’t know that you’ve ever played multiplayer. The sheer quality and power of this, and similar, effects is quite appealing. It places a break on folks coming your way with multiple creatures, often forces folks into an uncomfortable, “Do I attack or do I play stuff?” question, and usually just turns people to attacking others. The sheer potency of this card cannot be denied. And it’s been a while since we’ve seen a batch hit the streets. (In case you care, it’s also a color-shifted card, much like Hail of Arrows. It came from Propaganda).

1. Hallowed Burial

The original Terminus. Put all of the creatures back on the bottom of the library. Elegant. It works so well against most tricks. In these days of indestructible everything and junk that seeks to not be killed with various tricks and trinkets, it’s nice to have a simple, elegant, answer. All of the creatures are not coming back for a while barring a tutor, a shuffle effect, or a very long game. No graveyard shenanigans, no leaves-the-battlefield triggers, nothing. You are good to go, Idaho.

So white is really cool. But what about lands?

Like artifacts yesterday, there’s only one new card here.

Throne of the High City — Drawing cards is one of the major keys to winning Magic. This is particularly true at a multiplayer table where the game goes longer and people are outdrawing you. So having a colorless way to draw a card like Throne of the High City is pretty cool. But there are some barriers here. First of all, you have to tap a bunch of mana and sacrifice the land. You can’t use it to draw cards on someone else’s turn, in response to something, and you can’t use what you draw that turn, as you have to wait to pass the turn before you draw. Why would you want to bother with such a set of restrictions in most decks? Other than places where being the Monarch gives you some added bonuses, I just don’t see it usually. Granted it requires a little more mana and Blue to sacrifice, but I almost never run Blighted Cataract. About the place that I want this is Abe’s Deck of Happiness and Joy, but that’s a quirky 3000+ card highlander deck with all of the colors.

Now what about reprints? Are there any that really sell me?

Exotic Orchard – Ever since Exotic Orchard was printed I had a huge and immediate love for the Fellwar Stone land. Shoot, I even picked up an Exotic Orchard playmat. It’s the only one I’ve ever bought. I still use Orchards for a lot of different projects, from Commander decks to other stuff. The more foes you have, the closer this is a reliable Five Color land. It’s always played well for me, and I’m happy to welcome it back.

Most of the other lands are either common tools like Evolving Wilds or something like Rogue's Passage that is well known. But don’t miss the value of the Orchard in your decks.

Well that’s it. After all of that, I have to say that White in this set definitely lived up to its billing, with great cards that span the best the color offers and the top quality of the set. Nothing tops cards like Recruiter of the Guard. So get your Conspiracy on and draft some surprises and powerhouses from White.

Check Out the Other Conspiracy Set Reviews:

    1. Blue and Artifacts


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TAGS articles, list, casual, review, analysis, rumors & spoilers, deck list, set review, abe sargent, white, land, reprints, conspiracy: take the crown

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