White just received one of the most powerful hate cards in the color ever printed. This new hate card affects not only format-defining artifacts, but also creatures and planeswalkers.
The new card we are talking about is none other than Clarion Conqueror. Here’s the spoiler below:
Clarion Conqueror (official name translation TBD) translates to the below:
Clarion Conqueror {2}{W}
Creature — Dragon
Flying
Activated abilities of artifacts, creatures, and planeswalkers can’t be activated.
Those who dared to challenge it were silenced immediately.
3/3
For three mana, we get both an evasive beater and a way to turn off artifacts, creatures, and planeswalkers. As currently translated, it does also turn off your own permanents’ abilities, unlike other classic hatebear cards in white. However, this is the first time a card has the text, “planeswalkers’ abilities can’t be activated.” It is also aggressively costed historically.
Here’s the other Top 5 White and Colorless hate cards that have a similar effect regarding Artifacts and Creatures:
#1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence
We can see here the classic Linvala. She costs a whole extra mana for turning off only creatures. She doesn’t affect artifacts or planeswalkers.
#2 Stony Silence
Stony Silence and Null Rod are both better and worse. They’re harder to remove as enchantment/artifact and cost one less mana. What Stony Silence doesn’t do is win you the game through damage, block creatures, or stop creatures and planeswalkers. There’s also Collector Ouphe in Green, which is somewhat similar to but weaker than Clarion Conqueror.
#3 Karn, The Great Creator
Karn is pretty powerful at turning off artifacts. It’s also banned in Pioneer and restricted in Vintage. It can be attacked, though it is also harder to remove with spot removal. Like Stony Silence, it does nothing against creatures and planeswalkers on its own – other than when combined with the ever-friendly card Mycosynth Lattice.
#4 Cursed Totem
Again, no creature beatstick here, just a colorless two-mana artifact that affects creatures.
#5 Damping Matrix
This is probably the closest card that isn’t a creature we can get to Clarion Conqueror. For 3 mana we can turn off artifacts and creatures, but we don’t affect mana abilities unfortunately. Again, no ability to turn off planeswalkers either.
That’s pretty much all the White and colorless hate cards that can turn off all artifacts or creatures in play.
Clarion Conqueror is clearly a strong winner for a White tax & hatebear style deck looking for a beatstick that can punish opponents by rendering their strategies unplayable. We haven’t seen anything quite like it printed before.
Stay tuned to MTG Insider for more spoiler breakdowns, news, and more!
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