I hadn’t realized Kaladesh was so close to release until my timeline got flooded with spoilers. Kaladesh looks pretty cool to me, with a vibrancy that’s been missing from the last several sets. But it’s a distraction from Conspiracy 2, which is still a relatively new set, and which I’ve only had one opportunity to draft. This is somewhat in line with my experience playing the original Conspiracy; it turns out it’s hard to get a set number of casuals together to draft a “fun” set.
But, being the incorrigible lucksack that I can be at times, despite a low number of experiences drafting Conspiracy sets, in both the original and New Coke versions I’ve managed to live the dream: I have drafted both [casthaven]Worldknit[/casthaven] and [casthaven]Sovereign’s Realm[/casthaven] decks. And they’re experiences I think more people should have.
I didn’t go into the draft intending to draft a [casthaven]Sovereign’s Realm[/casthaven] deck, and it wasn’t until the draft was over that I realized how close I had cut it. The thing about [casthaven]Sovereign’s Realm[/casthaven] decks are that you have only four slots for other conspiracies and miscellany, since you can’t pad out your deck with basic lands. If you only have 39 non-conspiracy cards in your pool, you can’t live the dream. My four cut cards ended up being [casthaven]Evolving Wilds[/casthaven], [casthaven]Traumatic Visions[/casthaven], [casthaven]Sylvan Bounty[/casthaven], and some other card that may have been [casthaven]Reviving Dose[/casthaven] or [casthaven]Lay of the Land[/casthaven]. Had I gone in on other conspiracies, I would have been stuck running that chaff or I would have had to skip out on an amazing draft experience.
My deck was tighter for getting [casthaven]Sovereign’s Realm[/casthaven] in pack two; since I hadn’t started on that path to begin with, my pack one picks started from [casthaven]Horn of Greed[/casthaven] and then tried (unsuccessfully) to keep me open. I was only really committed to white at the end of pack one, with red or blue looking to be my secondary color. And I kept to that plan even after I had pulled the uber-conspiracy, both because I wasn’t sure how it would turn out and because I had luck with [casthaven]Worldknit[/casthaven] by drafting a tight deck that happened to also be a Worldknit deck. With [casthaven]Sovereign’s Realm[/casthaven] minimizing my opening hand size, it seemed like prioritizing a decent curve and reasonable interaction would let me end up where I wanted to be.
I ended up with a pretty sweet deck, all in all:
Sovereign's Realm
Look at that curve! Four one-drops, ten two-drops, nine three-drops, nine four-drops, six five-drops, and a six-drop [casthaven]Canal Courier[/casthaven] to round out the deck. Oh, and I also had a [casthaven]Throne of the High City[/casthaven], which made it through at least three other people before making it to me. 26 creatures also helped, ensuring that I would have plenty of action to gum up the ground.
In multiplayer situations, mere endurance is often the key.
Seeing [casthaven]Horn of Greed[/casthaven] in my opening hand sure helped me to snap keep. It turns out [casthaven]Horn of Greed[/casthaven] is perfect for [casthaven]Sovereign’s Realm[/casthaven], letting you basically play a land for free every turn. I assumed the power of the card would keep me alive, since it was providing a benefit to the table, but things got dicey at a couple of points. I was super glad for my [casthaven]Divination[/casthaven]s, though, since they helped me build up my hand size again… something further assisted by the monarchy, a mechanic that is a lot of fun in multiplayer.
In the end, I came in second, killing myself via decking to avoid giving my opponent the satisfaction of killing me with all his three-butts and [casthaven]Weight Advantage[/casthaven]. That also seemed like a pretty cool deck to build and play. But with [casthaven]Sovereign’s Realm[/casthaven] being a mythic conspiracy that you can find yourself unable to play after even a single pack’s worth of conspiracy gobbling, I fear most will miss out on this great experience. That’s a shame, it’s a memory I’ll enjoy.
I’ve been idly musing about whether or not there’s a way to adapt the conspiracies for Commander, with some sort of point system governing how many you could play. If I crack that nut, I’ll let you know; the conspiracies are a lot of fun, and it’s a shame that once opened the only chance they have at seeing play again is in someone’s cube.
Jess Stirba is a wistful wanderer.