#transmogrant's crown

[5ecardaday]

Artifact Rumble– The Brothers’ War

If you’d like to see more content like this a week early; vote in polls to determine what I make next; and get exclusive access to d100 tables, subclasses, NPC factions, and more, feel free to sign up and support me on Patr*on! (You can find the link at the top of my page.)

Some older content, this released about 2 weeks ago for my supporters, but I try not to make my newest stuff public until I’ve got new content ready to share there. This was the result of my monthly Artifact Rumble poll, a themed poll for magic items and constructs; sometimes it’s Magic: the Gathering based, but I also regularly do magic items inspired by things like DMC, GoW, Fable, Elder Scrolls, and more.

[niuttuc]

It's been a while since our last Budget Commander Sleeper, and this one isn't a recent release, though it ties in with one. In fact, it hails from all the way back in 2017, when Wizards released a set of tribal preconstructed decks for their yearly commander release. Those were infamous for the Eminence ability that adorned its face commanders, and shaping up tribal decks for years to come.

The card I'm gonna talk to you about today was made for that environment, and it's immediately obvious. Heirloom Blade is a tribal equipment, it says so right on there, it wants creatures in your deck to share a creature type!

The card is actually relatively popular in a variety of tribal decks, ones that need little excuse to run an equipment or have their tribal creatures die. We can see a similar mindset from Wizards of the Coast, that didn't miss occasions to reprint it in tribal precons across the years, in the Human deck of C20, the Rogue deck of Zendikar Rising and the Dragon deck of Forgotten Realms. This constant reprinting has, incidentally kept the card very affordable.

In the Brothers' War set, less than six months ago, WotC released Transmogrant's Crown. People were fast to identify it for what it is: a fixed Skullclamp. It's far from Skullclamp's power, but Skullclamp is a card banned in every competitive format that bans cards, so it might still be decent in decks that really want the effect. The extra downside in commander is that black mana symbol restricting the card to deck with black. That assessment is correct, Transmogrant's Crown is a very fine magic card.

You can probably see where I'm going with this. Heirloom Blade is just a mostly better Transmogrant's Crown. It costs 1 more mana to cast, but the same to equip (one mana), but it can go in any deck, and give you an extra +1/+1. +3/+1 for equip 1 is actually a whole lot of power and toughness, one that's hard to match, and one that'll incentivize your opponent to kill the equipped creature... And draw you a card.

"But!" You'll tell me, "That only works for tribal decks!" Well, I don't believe so. While it is text on the card, if your deck has a reasonable number of creatures, there should be overlap with almost every single one of them, with the race/class system of creature types having common repeats. Humans by themselves represent almost a quarter of all creatures in magic. The majority of creatures are either a human, elf, zombie, vampire, goblin, merfolk, dragon, angel, wizard, shaman, soldier, warrior... And many of them are a couple of those. Even in a non-tribal deck, a Heirloom Blade trigger will have multiple hits for 90-95% of creatures and creature tokens, just incidentally.

And that restriction is actually an upside! Because of it, Heirloom Blade will always hit a nonland when it hits, guaranteeing you a draw into more action, that can also pick up the blade!

I've tried it out and always have been impressed by it. If you're a non-tribal deck that wants anything to do with equipments, death triggers, power or anything of the sort, I encourage you to try Heirloom Blade. Depending on the deck, maybe even over skullclamp! (Though probably alongside Skullclamp in most decks.) Probably over Transmogrant's Crown too!

[googlyeyesonmagiccards]

Limited all star

[markrosewater]

Just out of curiosity, why does Transmogrant's Crown say "Equip {2} or {B}" instead of "Equip {2/B}" with a hybrid colourless?

Was it because that kind of mana counts as an extra mechanic you couldn't fit in, or was there another reason?

I assume there was a concern that it would imply more existed.