With the release of Modern Masters 2013, Wizards of the Coast showed that they weren't afraid to try ancillary sets in booster pack form as opposed to the preconstructed iterations seen before. Now in 2014 came Conspiracy - an all-new set of cards (with some reprints) that would use booster packs and not go through Standard. This release focused on multiplayer play and messing with the draft itself, and its innovations here would go on to influence other sets such as Battlebond and Commander Legends.

Today, I want to take a look back on this now classic Magic set and talk all about the mythics in the set. The selections are surprisingly sparse, with only ten total showing up in this release. We're going to go through and rank them all! Ready, let's dive on in!

Number Ten

Pristine Angel is a pretty cool reprint, but at mythic the card felt tremendously underwhelming. It's one of those situations where it makes sense to have at mythic due to the Limited implications. Unfortunately, there isn't really a space to use it anywhere outside of Limited as it's fairly mediocre in Commander and isn't competitively viable anywhere. As such, while it's a really cool card and a neat reprint, it's far and away the worst mythic in the set.

Number Nine

With the Commander format on the rise, people were starting to pick up on which commanders were better than others. One that came up often was the powerful Arcum Dagsson from Coldsnap, as it enabled you to cheat out powerful game breaking artifacts cheaply. When players saw Muzzio, there was a fear that he might enable the same sort of shenanigans and might end up being a problem himself. As it turns out, Muzzio plays pretty underwhelmingly, and while he is neat, he's still very much on the lower end of this list because, well, there's just better options and was long before his printing.

Number Eight

Hydra Omnivore isn't necessarily the most powerful card, but at the time this was a much desired reprint. The card had steadily been creeping up in price to go up to around the $12 mark over the year prior to Conspiracym>'s release. This was mainly due to the fact that there was now a good few years between Commander 2011 and now, meaning demand was growing while supply was staying stagnant. This reprint brought its price down to earth at around $4 for a while afterwards where it's largely held ever since as people realized it was more a neat novelty rather than a must-play card.

Number Seven

Much like Hydra Omnivore and Pristine Angel, Phage the Untouchable being reprinted here was by and large not all that impactful. You can't run the card as a Commander and even outside of the command zone it's a dangerous card to play given the things that can go wrong. For all the issues with it, though, there's no denying one simple fact: Phage is one hell of an awesome card. The design is incredibly unique and it inspires players to try doing what they can to win games and take out opponents with it, regardless of how difficult it can be to pull off. In realistic terms, Phage is on the lower end of usefulness here, but it's such a unique and iconic card, it'd be a crime to put it any lower than this.

Number Six

Speaking of cool reprints, Mirari's Wake was one that had been in dire need of a reprint for sometime here. Prior to being reprinted in this set, it had only seen extremely rare reprintings in Commander's Arsenal and as a Pro Tour promo. Unlike many of the previously mentioned reprints in this set, Mirari's Wake is an extremely powerful card, allowing you to buff your creatures and generate absurd amounts of mana. I'm putting it here to let some of the other cards shine, but this was a big deal at the time for casual players everywhere - and for good reason.

Number Five

Coercive Portal is one of the sweet new designs that came with the set. The artifact utilizes the "Will of the Council" mechanic, allowing the players at the table to make a decision of allowing the controller to draw an extra card or blow up the board. In multiplayer settings, this tends to create very interesting political debates as players work on deciding the best course of action to take. Conversely, in one-on-one matches (typically involving Cube), Coercive Portal ends up being one-sided in the decision making, as you can tie up the decision process to either always give you a card or opt to destroy the board in a pinch. It's hardly the strongest card in this set, but it's an outstanding design that engenders some truly unique gameplay you won't find on many other cards.

Number Four

Pernicious Deed is another major reprint and is arguably the best one in the set outside of the much-needed reprints for Misdirection and Stifle at rare. This extremely powerful board wipe allows players to blow up exactly what they need to deal with while still leaving them with their own host of threats. The card not only sees play in spaces like Commander and Cube, but it even shows up in Legacy and sometimes Vintage - something that can't be said for Mirari's Wake. To this day it's one of the strongest board wipes around, and at the time its inclusion here was huge.

Number Three

At this point, Marchesa had yet to become the mighty ruler of Paliano, the world of Conspiracy. That didn't stop her first outing from being an absolute showstopper, though. Marchesa provided Grixis players with something new to do, and enabled all kinds of shenanigans by churning through creatures and dishing out counters. The dethrone mechanic also strongly incentivizes attacking as well, pushing games to reach their conclusion. While her later outing would go down as one of the most popular commanders in the game, Marchesa, the Black Rose is still no slouch and to this day remains one of the most popular Grixis commanders out there.

Number Two

What's funny about Scourge of the Throne is that it wasn't that big of a deal when Conspiracy first came out. After the set's release, the card hung around the $4-5 range for quite some time, but thanks to Commander, it would slowly creep up and up in demand, reaching around $35 at its peak. As it happens, the third ability makes it extremely easy to attack multiple times in a single turn, all the while making the Scourge even bigger at the same time. That's not a bad deal at 6 mana, especially if you can grant it haste! Most anywhere else, it's not very exciting, but for a format like Commander it ends up being one of the most intense things you can do.

Number One

Immediately on printing, Dack Fayden went down in history as one of the best planeswalkers of all time. That's high praise given the quality of planeswalkers in the time, but from the moment people saw this, they realized all the different kinds of nonsense you could get up to with it in Eternal formats - particularly Vintage. It's not difficult to cast Dack Fayden on turn one in a format with the Power Nine and then steal a Mox or perhaps the Blightsteel Colossus your opponent Tinkered into play last turn. Dack became an instant Commander staple and if you saw it in your Vintage Cube, it was frequently an easy pack one, pick one. To this day the greatest thief in the multiverse remains a powerful force to be respected, and is without a doubt the best mythic in Conspiracy.

Paige Smith

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