Ravnica: Clue Edition | art by Justine Cruz

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It Was The Magic Player With The Collector Booster Box!

There's a murder on our hands, and the only way to solve it is by discussing new cards. Hello reader, my name is Nick, and while you usually see me discussing planeswalkers and their relationship with who or what can be in the command zone for a deck, today I'm talking about Clue. I have a clue, and you should have some too, especially if you get your hands any of the cards from Ravnica: Clue Edition. Let's see if we can solve the mystery of these new cards together.

Rares

Apothecary White

Food tokens and Soldier tokens are two tastes that taste great together. While white isn't the deepest card pool for Food support, it is fantastic for tokens of all kinds. Ms. White is all about facilitating herself to the best of her ability. The floor of making one Food token and one Soldier the first turn this can attack is decently passable. Of course, any token support card in white or colorless like Anointed Procession or Academy Manufactor can cause your opponents to seek out an apothecary of their own.

Senator Peacock

The hardest-working senator of all time. This card is fantastic. She slices, she dices, and she draws cards. Blue is an excellent color for artifact support, and Senator Peacock helps solve a problem that artifact decks can often find themselves facing: how to close out the game. Turning all your artifacts into Clues gives you endless resources, and this card is excellent in the 99 or at the head of a deck. Assist the senator with an equal-minded political individual like Sai, Master Thopterist, and laws will need to be enacted to stop your value train from running down the tracks.

Mastermind Plum

Mastermind Plum is being very generous with the moniker of Mastermind. Having to exile an artifact card to make a Treasure and being required to attack is steep, with nothing on the card deterring opponents from blocking your 2/2 creature. And once you get that Treasure, it's not much better either. There are simpler ways to make Treasure and better cards to utilize those Treasures being made.

Headliner Scarlett

This is a solid card for a variety of red decks. Scarlett is a great way to guarantee damage and a small source of card advantage at the perfect time during your turn. It's not flashy, but this is a fantastic engine piece for mono-red decks or any decks including red.

Emissary Green

This card will be a lose-lose situation for anyone not controlling it as Selvala's Stampede. Giving eight Treasures or four +1/+1 counters to every creature swinging or otherwise, both options are bad for the defending players. Five mana and needing something to give it haste should keep this card in check, but Green always has the answers to a commander player's problems, so expect to see them at a table near you.

Lavinia, Foil to Conspiracy

The third version of Lavinia shares nothing with its predecessors Lavinia, Azorius Renegade and Lavinia of the Tenth besides the card being in Azorius colors. Lavinia benefits from the growing "when you cast your second spell each turn" archetype and plays well with decks looking to draw cards or cast big spells on your opponents' turns. At first glance, this card did not seem to have a home, but some The Council of Four decks might be under investigation by our detective.

Suppressor Skyguard

This card is either the best card of the set by a mile or the worst card by a mile, and I am not sure which. This will be one of the most annoying cards when its owner has everyone else at the table pointing and screaming that they're the problem. No alliance is safe, and no attack is truly profitable against you. I love this card, but I know one day I will hate it as I search for a removal spell to let me close out the game.

Herald of Ilharg

This is going to be one big pig. Entire tables will die to this card, and it'll get there much faster than anyone will expect. Dealing damage only off a spell with five CMC or higher makes you think that playing a high-curve deck is the way to go. I have other ideas. Imagine curving this card into either Nikya of the Old Ways or Xenagos, God of Revels, to explode the entire table for massive damage. I want to ramp with every tiny mana dork like Birds of Paradise, and I want every creature that puts lands directly from my deck to the battlefield like old reliable Sakura-Tribe Elder. And if this pig couldn't get any better, they gave it a trample, so if you don't win the game off of casting creatures, you can finish off whoever's left by simply going to combat.

Corporeal Projection

When a blue player holds up seven mana, they might not always overload a Cyclonic Rift. Now, they might just have every creature on their board attacking each player in possibly the most apt description of "going wide with one's board state" I've ever seen. The biggest thing holding this card back isn't printed on the card; it's how the game is currently being designed. There are more legendary creatures than ever before. Players trying to maximize Myriad strategies (see what I did there) have ways around this. My favorite for a deck using Corporeal Projection is Mirror Box, which makes all those legendary creatures and their copies hit harder when you swing for the game.

Amzu, Swarm's Hunger

Insect typal doesn't get much of anything when it comes to new cards, and while this card isn't going to define a meta-game, it can help your Insects get in for damage despite blockers and pump them up occasionally. I wish this card didn't have the "once per turn" clause when it came to putting counters on the newly created Insect, but it's pretty cool despite this.

Sludge Titan

As cool as the big pig from earlier in the review may be, this is my favorite card from the set. It's a callback to one of the best cycles of cards ever printed in Magic and the first multicolor printing. It doesn't have an effect similar to any of its Giant brethren, but being able to mill ten cards and return up to two creatures and/or lands whenever it enters the battlefield (EtB) and attacks isn't to be taken lightly.

It happens to work with Amzu even without being an Insect. I would have liked the cards to be on the battlefield rather than in my hand for this amount of mana. I imagine the designers were worried about flying too close to the burning sun that is Primeval Titan in terms of the ability to ramp with this card. Any commander in green-black who cares about milling cards entering the battlefield effects or even lands might be a home for this disgusting trip down memory lane.

Boros Strike-Captain

I know that when it comes to the typical Commander game, having as many options as possible is the preferred plan on the attacking side of combat. You might not get to cast the spells you exile with this card for free, but the right card at the right moment could be the reason you win the game or not, and this card might help you with both the right moment and the right card part of that equation. While a bit mana-intensive to use sometimes, my first thought for this card was that it was inside a Jeskai deck led by Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest. Prowess is fantastic for combat, as is the ability to give double strike, and the Strike-Captain gives you the non-creature spell for both. Staying true to two colors, pairing this with another new card, Feather, Radiant Arbiter, and an old favorite, Zada, Hedron Grinder could be more than what your opponents bargained for.

Commander Mustard

As far as the legends representing the famous characters from the Clue movie are concerned, Commander Mustard might be the strongest card out of them all. Senator Peacock is a good candidate for the strongest as you don't have to attack with the tokens (and the inherent nature of how broken artifact decks tend to be in Commander), but Mustard is a powerhouse legend. Vigilance, trample and haste are not only up there as the three best keywords, but other than swapping trample for either menace or flying, there's possibly no better combination when going on the offensive.

And in a world where you just cannot kill the table, vigilance on this card and giving it to all your other Soldiers makes dying on the crack back very unlikely. If that were all this card had to offer, I would still have high praise for it. Still, the addition of "pay 2RW" to have all you attacking Soldiers deal one direct damage each means if you don't kill the table with this card, everyone must've cast Teferi's Protection during combat. To put yourself truly over the top, sticking either a True Conviction or casting half of Deafening Clarion before combat means only an opposing army will be able to stop you.

Lonis, Genetics Expert

I've never been a fan of the Evolve mechanic. Despite that, I'm a fan of this card. What makes me a fan is how well the other two abilities on this card work together and how well they work with the previous version of this character, Lonis, Cryptozoologist.

The formula is this: Put counters on creatures to investigate and sacrifice those Clues to put more counters on your creatures. Perpetual motion is achieved with the help of a Snake Elf Detective. Well, almost. While being a genetics expert, Lonis still needs someone or something else to put counters on them for investigative purposes. Thankfully, they find themselves in Simic colors with many cards and mechanics that give +1/+1 counters. Cards like Simic Ascendancy for counters and an alternate win condition. The Adapt mechanic seen in other Simic legends like Zegana, Utopian Speaker and the Lonis, Cryptozoologist version of this card have an easy way to sacrifice multiple Clues all at once, netting you all the counters you could ever dream of.

Uncommons & Commons

Candlestick

Unlike in the board game, the Candlestick is unlikely to kill you, but it could be why someone dies. Cheap to cast and cheap to equip, it might not give the biggest of power or toughness boosts, but card selection on attacks and not on dealing damage makes it a more than passable inclusion. The bonus is a Clue that can be sacrificed to draw a card when its is no longer needed or to facilitate Clue-based strategies, making this worth looking at.

Rope

This is a fantastic Equipment on all levels. The only thing even slightly bad about this card is the equip cost of three. Thankfully, if you run this card, you must run green, so you'll have the mana to get this on a creature and go to town. +1/+2 and reach clearly show that what you put this on will be a great blocker, and that's not bad for Equipment, but Rope does so much more than provide blocking power. Making something unable to be blocked by more than one creature is enormous. It is one of three Equipment that grant this ability, the other two being Vorrac Battlehorns and Wolfrider's Saddle. Battlehorns might be the best, but Rope might be tightening its grip for a slot in many decklists.

Portal Manipulator

I have mentioned my favorite card and the strongest cards, but this card is the most fun one of the set. Portal Manipulator makes you the king or queen of the combat step. The ability to decide who's getting attacked and what's attacking them is a game changer for your side of the table. My favorite part about this card is unlike other versions of this effect that are out there, like Illusionist's Gambit or Reins of Power, the manipulator does not make the choice "all or nothing." If there's a creature, you can block so that it dies, or you can have a creature go to the graveyard for a benefit (looking at you Solemn Simulacrum). Maybe you want to take some of the hit but there's enough to send to an unsuspecting victim; you can do that too. The flexibility of this card is so cool to me and I expect to see it at many Commander tables.

Afterlife Insurance

I love an excellent way to blow out someone casting a wrath against my overwhelming board state. This card doesn't do that to the level of something like Heroic Intervention, but sometimes we have to work with what we're given. For only two mana, I can at least go from the possibility of having no creatures to having all 1/1 flyers and drawing a card, and sometimes that'll be enough. Some of the best cards in decks are often small, overlooked ones like this, cards that provide you with just a bit of insurance.

Library

The Library will act as my example card for this set's new lands. Its access to two colors isn't bad. Six mana to draw one card, however, is not good. There's one for every guild color combination, but they come in tapped, so if you need just one more dual land in your two-color deck, I would hope my deck could run one of the lands that can be sacrificed to draw a card like Waterfront District instead.

Wrapping Up The Evidence

For not a large number of cards, this set has more interesting new picks than I thought I'd find. The biggest winners seem to be decks that want to attack...and decks that want to make sure they don't get attacked. Azorius cards that let you manipulate combat. A fantastic Lord for Soldier typal. A new one-mana Equipment. Strong representation of beloved characters from the Clue franchise. These cards can all can be the missing pieces to a deckbuilder puzzle. So, did we solve the mystery? Maybe not with this article alone. If you want to see more set reviews for the Murders at Karlov Manor main set and associated Commander precon decks, check them out by our fantastic writers on EDHREC and Commander's Herald. If you want to read more things by yours truly, look for my series Myth Realized.

Read more:

Murders at Karlov Manor Set Review - Green

Nicholas Lucchesi

Player and lover of all Magic the Gathering formats. Forged in the fires of Oath of the Gatewatch expeditions. Always down to jam games with anyone and everyone. When not playing Magic I am doing something else equally, if not more nerdy.