Category: Conspiracy

Deal Broker from Conspiracy – A Magic the Gathering Rare Card Review

1/30/2018

by ElspethFTW, Old School Duelist

Deal Broker is a “Draft Matters” card from Magic the Gathering's standalone Conspiracy expansion set. Unlike many of its “draft matters” counterparts, it actually has a particularly useful “looter” effect in-game. It can tap to draw a card and then discard a card, much like Merfolk Looter (the card that the “looter” effect is named after.)

For his “draft matters” ability, you draft Deal Broker face-up, and immediately after the draft, you can choose to trade one card from your pool for another card in another player’s pool from the same draft. You may accept only one of those offers.

The best part is that Deal Broker is also a 2/3 Artifact Creature for 3 colorless mana. This means he can be played in just about any deck, even outside of Conspiracy matches. This is a very interesting card that both helps you swap an unneeded card for something that may be of more use. It's a card playable in almost any draft deck and pretty neat for players of the ever-growing Cube draft format.

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Phage the Untouchable - A Magic: the Gathering Card Review

12/29/2017

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by ElspethFTW, Old School Duelist

Phage the Untouchable is remarkable for quite a number of reasons. Originally printed in Legions, Phage was reprinted in Tenth Edition. In Conspiracy, she was again reprinted, this time at mythic rare. With her latest reprint, her creature type was updated to become an Avatar Minion. Before, she was simply a Minion. It's not that relevant, but still notable.

Phage is a Legendary Creature who costs 3BBBB to cast. Obviously, this is a pretty hard card to cast if you're not in mono-Black. Also, if you cast her from anywhere besides your hand, you lose the game. For a long time this made Phage one of the very few Legendary Creatures (that isn't a flip-card from the Kamigawa block) that you couldn’t reliably play as a Commander. If you try to cast Phage the Untouchable from the Command Zone, you will automatically lose the game…. unless you have a way to Stifle her enter the battlefield ability.

Fortunately, besides cards such as Torpor Orb which cancel out enter the battlefield abilities, there is one way to actually be able to play Phage the Untouchable as a Commander. There’s a land called Command Beacon from Commander 2015. This land allows you to add your Commander to your hand from the Command Zone. While it’s a bit awkward to have this requirement, it’s better than having to play something like Torpor Orb.

Also, Phage has some real benefits once she does become cast from your hand. Whenever Phage deals combat damage to a creature, you immediately destroy that creature, and it can't be regenerated. It's a bit better than Deathtouch, very similar to the ability of Ohran Viper.

But her last ability is the reason that you have to cast her from your hand in order to play her successfully. When she deals combat damage to a player, that player loses the game.

That being said, why wouldn't you want to play her in a mono-Black Commander deck? You certainly can. However, she’s not very popular. Part of this is that reanimating her from your graveyard is out - although returning her to your hand is perfectly fine. Now that I think about it, though, 7 mana isn’t much for a mono-Black deck, and she probably SHOULD see more play than she does. There are ways to make her unblockable after all. (Hint, hint.)

One funny interaction with this card is if your opponent happens to have an effect that has to bring back Phage the Untouchable as a mandatory part of its ability. Rise of the Dark Realms, for example, must bring back all creatures from all graveyards, as does Liliana Vess' ultimate ability. Grave Betrayal, a very popular Commander Enchantment, backfires when Phage dies, killing the player with Grave Betrayal as soon as she hits their side of the board. There's a lot of tricky gimmicks you can play with Phage. So, yeah, she’s worth playing for that reason, although if you play those cards, she can backfire on you, too!

Even with Command Beacon, Phage is still pretty awkward as a Commander, which is kind of sad. Still, she's awesome for a Commander deck built around mono-Black Devotion, such as Erebos, God of the Dead or Mogis, God of Slaughter. Phage has plenty of uses and as long as you build your deck with her major drawback in mind, you could have a pretty sweet secret weapon on hand!

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Drakestown Forgotten - A Magic the Gathering Conspiracy Rare Card Review

1/27/2015

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by ElspethFTW, Old School Duelist

Drakestown Forgotten is a black Zombie creature card with a lot of Commander potential. When he enters the battlefield, he enters with X +1/+1 counters on him, where X is the number of creature cards in all graveyards. It’s essentially a Lhurgoyf, except that it only checks graveyards when it enters and its statistics don’t change based on the state of the graveyards afterwards. For a 5-drop that requires only a single Black (4B) that’s pretty decent. But it’s his second ability that truly makes him good. You may pay 2B and remove a +1/+1 counter from Drakestown Forgotten and give a target creature -1/-1 until end of turn.

In a multi-player draft format, this guy can hit the board with a fair number of counters put onto him. Also, while his removal ability is perhaps not the most efficient in the world, it is certainly usable. This was a fairly good card to draft, but this can slot in a good number of Commander decks, as well. Its ability scales particularly well in a multiplayer Commander environment.

Being a Zombie makes him a solid play in tribal decks such as Grimgrin, Corpse Born. Being able to play this card potentially for zero mana with Rooftop Storm is pretty sweet. Also, because he is based around +1/+1 counters, any Golgari deck or Ghave, Guru of Spores deck that plays around with counters could find room for this guy. There are plenty of ways to make him very big and be a useful way to pick off little utility creatures on the board.

Unfortunately, Drakestown Forgotten is a card that has been forgotten by many players now that the Conspiracy set is no longer in print. However, it’s a solid card that can still find a home in some Zombie-centered and other Commander decks.

How would you use Drakestown Forgotten?

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Deal Broker from Conspiracy – A Magic the Gathering Rare Card Review

Phage the Untouchable - A Magic: the Gathering Card Review

Drakestown Forgotten - A Magic the Gathering Conspiracy Rare Card Review

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