Assassin's Creed Set Review - White

Senu, Keen-Eyed Protector by Andreia Ugrai

White | Blue | Black | Red | Green | Artifacts & Lands | Allied Colors and Shards | Enemy Colors and Wedges | Reprints | cEDH

Apollo Creed

Good evening, assassins! I'm Michael Celani, and I have never played an Assassin's Creed game or watched The Lion King. I have included a box of tomatoes to your left with which to pelt me.

Based on all the cards in this set, I've got some complete guesses on what the plot is. I'm gonna go ahead and put some bullet points here and you can tell me in the comments how close I got. Oh, and there's a set review down there somewhere. You can just skip to that if you don't care about my theorycrafting.

• All of humanity's gods are real all at once, and they're all dead
• Despite being dead, sometimes they come back and possess people
• They invented super powerful artifacts that drive the conflict
• There's basically one gigantic assassin brotherhood through all time
• They're hunting these artifacts because they are jerks
• Leonardo da Vinci did the Hindenburg

Rares

Caduceus, Staff of Hermes

Lifegain decks face an interesting problem. It's not a problem of power, or support, or strategy; it's a psychological problem. Let's say you're in a game that's been going on for a bit and you've collected a wide array of powerful Vehicles. You're about to hit-and-run away with the game, but as a shrewd player who takes responsibility for your actions, you decide against rolling a die to determine your attacks and instead take stock of the board. Your options are the enchantress player with thirty life, the I-Sure-Love-Greed player with ten, and Mr. Monopoly over here with seventy and counting in the bank. Which person are you swinging at?

When one player is breaking away with their life total compared to the rest, they're gonna get ganged up on until they're brought down to normal. It's obvious; nobody wants to be the Bolas by killing someone off early, because if any of the other players die before the Oloro pilot is dealt with, it'll be that much harder for those remaining to handle the problem. So, lifegain players draw a lot of heat, and there's only two ways for them to escape this fate: either become the victim of intense control, ruining their chances at winning the game, or gain so much life that the only plausible way to kill them anymore is via commander damage.

That brings us to Caduceus, Staff of Hermes. If lifegain players thought they were unfairly targeted before, just wait until they show off a piece of Equipment that turns anything they want into a Serra Ascendant that's really hard to kill. This thing just begs your opponents to murder you, so you'll want to pack something that makes it tougher for them to strike.

As long as you're okay with being the center of attention, then this staff is pretty great. At minimum, this is another in the very small list of Equipment that unequivocally gives a creature lifelink, which is always great in decks with things that deal tons of noncombat damage. It makes even normally inconsequential pingers, like Firebrand Archer, suddenly heal you for three every time you cast a noncreature spell, and two to equip is very generous for that keyword. Once you suit up your pinger, you should be able to stay above thirty life, or at the very least be able to recover to that point pretty consistently, letting you can swing with what would otherwise be something you'd never risk in combat for even more value. Very few creatures can scrap with a 6/6, let alone one that's indestructible and immune to damage.

Despite that, the lack of evasion and life total requirement for protection makes me more hesitant to recommend it in a Voltron scenario over something like Shadowspear, which grants both lifelink and trample at a much lower price point. The issue with Voltron decks in particular is that being unable to efficiently block is a weakness of theirs, so it's unlikely you'll be able to stay above thirty life for long enough to take advantage of it. It really incentivizes your opponents to hit you if they think they can turn off your strongest creature's protection, and speaking of protection, Caduceus, Staff of Hermes unfortunately provides indestructible instead of hexproof, which means that it doesn't stop spot removal like Path to Exile at all. You'll win every combat, sure, but Voltron decks win every combat anyway. It's not quite a wrong choice, but I think it's a clumsy one that's liable to cause more problems than it solves.

Escarpment Fortress

Check out this too-specific, two-mana value enchan-

Oh, Escarpment Fortress is a five-mana creature. That's a tough sell, especially on the most easily removed permanent type in the game. It just comes out too late for it to be effective. Compare it to Chivalric Alliance and Argent Dais, the kings of go-wide draw effects, and it's looking like a long, steep slope is what this fortress is tumbling down.

Now, to be fair, it does grant all your creatures a small power boost. That can help, but if you're in a situation where it makes a significant difference, you don't need to pay the premium price to maybe draw an additional one or two cards before everything wraps up. Heraldic Banner provides the same power boost on a mana rock for two cheaper, and if you have access to good pump spells, like Overrun or Akroma's Will, you should just cast those and end the game instead. The buff isn't even relevant in Arcades, the Strategist, since he makes creatures with defender assign combat damage equal to their toughness instead. Whoops!

Layla Hassan

Layla Hassan is perfect as the leader of my new mono-white Assassins deck, as you can include all none of them.

Okay, so she's obviously not heading up a Commander deck, but can she pledge herself to another assassin's creed? Well, there's far more legendary Assassins now than there used to be, for some reason, so you might be able to get yourself into a Loran, Disciple of History scenario, where the creatures you recur are the same type of creatures that can do the recurring. So long as you protect Layla herself, none of your Assassins (or their Equipment) will ever truly be gone. Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad is the best deck for her, since in the worst case you can exile her with a memory counter and always have access to her ability.

Senu, Keen-Eyed Protector

Huh. Bird up.

My first impression is that Senu, Keen-Eyed Protector is a very strong chump blocker, as strange as it is to say. It has vigilance and flying, so it's usually going to be able to swing in for some cheeky damage while remaining untapped. Now, a 2/1 isn't normally anything that deters a serious attack, but you can block, activate the tap ability to gain life and scry, and still no-sell your enemy's attack. All you need to bring Senu, Keen-Eyed Protector back is an unblocked attacking legendary creature, so put it in a flyers deck and watch it go to work. If you pull this trick, it'll have summoning sickness for the next turn cycle, but you can fix that with either haste or a Thousand-Year Elixir.

But that's not even the best application for Senu, Keen-Eyed Protector. Like Squee, the Immortal, Senu can take Food Chain and City of Shadows costs like a champ. It also works incredibly well with any commanders that exile creatures to power their abilities, such as Brenard, Ginger Sculptor and Myrkul, Lord of Bones. Brenard especially; the new gingerbread version can recur the original one by attacking and then activating either of its sacrifice abilities.

What Must Be Done

What Must Be Done is an unconditional historic recursion spell, which means any legendary creature, artifact, or Saga can come back. That's pretty much anything nonblack reanimator realistically wants to get, at a mana value consistent with the other cards in this genre. This on its own would be fine enough to include in your Shorikai, Genesis Engine decks, but they decided to staple this to a pretty damn good board wipe. Between this, Angel of Indemnity, and Abuelo's Awakening, we're getting spoiled for choices.

Uncommons & Commons

Distract the Guards

Three creatures for three mana is a pretty decent rate. Until now, you had to either get lucky, sacrifice those creatures later, or suck at the game real bad. Distract the Guards also happens to make three Rogues in white, which is useful for party shenanigans. This is definitely worth the asking price in both go-wide and aristocrats strategies, and if your commander is capable of hitting an opponent to reduce the cost by one, even better.

Fall of the First Civilization

Two free cards for an opponent with no other options makes Fall of the First Civilization pretty unplayable in my eyes. You also really have no control over what permanents your enemies choose to keep around in the third chapter, and three nonland permanents is enough wiggle room where I can't count on it to remove anything I actually care about. I guess it commits two crimes?

Haystack

Haystack is unequivocally the best white card for Commander in the set. It's a Vanishing without attachment issues! A card like this effectively grants all your creatures "Ward -- Discard an instant card."

It's obviously great in response to removal, but as counterintuitive as this is, I would not be afraid to main phase this ability. If your opponent really wants your creature gone, they might try to pull something like using a sorcery-speed removal spell or board wipe on it first, only to follow up your Haystack activation with an instant. Knock that wind right out of their sails by attacking with your huge Voltron commander and then phasing it out at the end of combat, or preemptively save a permanent with a powerful upkeep trigger to guarantee it makes it to your next turn. Best of all, it's only two mana to cast and two to activate. Move over, Robe of Stars!

Tax Collector

How did we not use Tax Collector as a name yet? Huh.

Well, just like real life, the Tax Collector gets more annoying the more he shows up at your doorstep. Blink him once or twice and your opponents basically end up forfeiting their next turn. Unfortunately, I think this is pretty wholly the appeal of the card, since detaining a creature is kind of bland. This dichotomy renders this card either useless or the most annoying thing in the world, and there is no in-between. Have fun, stax players.

Templar Knight

Oh boy, here we go. Those magic words, "A deck can have any number of cards named Templar Knight," has banished this card to the five dollar zone.

... well, maybe. Having five 3/1s attack is a tall order. At best you get there at turn three with some fast mana and lucky draws. It also specifies they have to be untapped and attacking creatures. That's normally fine, since they have vigilance, but it does get rid of myriad shenanigans, which makes me irrationally angry.

Your reward for this is a free legendary artifact card, which is... fine, but it's not win the game fine. You'll get Graaz, Unstoppable Juggernaut for a strong attack, or maybe Thrumming Stone, but most legendary artifacts are kind of underwhelming for the Rube Goldberg machine you have to construct. I dunno, Bolas's Citadel? Just use a tutor and cast what you want instead!

Maybe someone will crack the da Vinci code on Templar Knight, but I doubt it. Make sure you have a payoff in mind when building this deck, or you'll have wasted fifty dollars on a stack of cards that do nothing.

Battlefield Improvisation

For one more mana, you can get Ardenn, Intrepid Archaeologist, who does the important part of Battlefield Improvisation on all of your turns. On the other hand, this is a great single-use Ardenn ability at instant speed, which can be useful in, oddly enough, Ardenn decks. You can even equip your opponents' creatures!

A few interesting hits here! I really like Haystack as a general-purpose card, and Caduceus, Staff of Hermes might be fun in certain spellslinger decks. Of course, being a small set, there's not much to look at from the perspective of mono-white. You should go check out the other set reviews here and on EDHREC to figure out if you're buying packs or buying singles. See you in five hours when the next set releases!