Ravnica: Clue Edition goes on sale this week, and I’m pretty excited about it, not only for the nifty new cards I may want to put in my Commander decks, but also the actual Clue- (or Cluedo)-inspired gameplay that comes with it. Some of my fondest childhood memories are family gatherings at my grandparents’ house and all of the cousins (and occasional adults) playing a game of Clue. Naturally, taking my favorite game of all time – Magic: The Gathering – and layering in a Clue game makes me very happy, and I can’t wait to play it!
If you are already familiar with what Ravnica: Clue Edition is all about, you can skip ahead to the Collecting section.
The Basics
Ravnica: Clue Edition comes with 21 Evidence Cards which you use to play the Clue side of the game. You shuffle them up and randomly pick a suspect, a murder weapon, and a scene of the crime face-down and slide them into the Case File envelope. Then you remove two crime scene cards, shuffle up the remaining Evidence Cards, and deal them out to the players face down.
The game also comes with eight boosters, each containing a Jumpstart-style half deck; each player randomly takes two of the decks, shuffles them together, and uses them to play a (mostly) typical multiplayer game of Magic, with each player starting at 30 life.
You can win the game as per the normal ways you win Magic – your opponents go to zero life, or they get decked, or some other combo kill – but you can also win the game by figuring out which cards are in the Case File envelope.
Cracking the Case
Whenever you deal combat damage to a player, you get to make a suggestion with a suspect, murder weapon, and crime scene. If the player has one or more of the suggested cards, they slide one of them to you face down for you to make note of and then give it back. If you deal combat damage to more than one player, each player interacts with you, going clockwise, based off your one suggestion. At the beginning of your end step, if you haven’t made a suggestion, you can exile cards from your graveyard with total mana value of six or greater to make a suggestion as if you’d dealt combat damage to each other player. This ties nicely with the collect evidence mechanic from Murders at Karlov Manor.
Whenever you show an Evidence Card to a player, you create a Treasure token, which is a nifty game feature that helps fix your mana in case you end up with a four-color deck. And if you get eliminated from the game, you reveal all of your Evidence Cards.
If you think you’ve figured out the cards in the Case File envelope – or desperately need to make a wild guess – at the beginning of your end step, after any suggestions, you can make an Accusation to solve the murder. Then only you get to look at the Case File, and if you’re correct, you reveal the cards and win the game! If you’re wrong, put them back into the Case File and resume the game, only now you cannot win by making an Accusation. Sounds cool!
Collecting Ravnica: Clue Edition
Each of Ravnica’s guilds has two half-deck packs, for a total of twenty different packs. Since each Ravnica: Clue Edition comes with just eight packs, there’s a lot of room for randomness here. For me, it feels a little strange that there are only going to be eight of the ten guilds (at most; I suppose there could be duplicate guilds), so my plan is to pick up two copies of Ravnica: Clue Edition and hope to pull together all ten guilds for my game box. This will also give me an extra copy of all the Evidence Cards, which I’m thinking about using to build a five-color Commander deck with all the Clue token and investigate synergies I can cram in there.
I’ve picked up two boxes of Gamegenic Cube Pockets to put my guild packs in once I’ve opened the boosters. They’re designed for Cube drafting, so twenty sleeved cards is quite tight, but if I have to use them unsleeved, I’m fine with it. I’m also not yet sure whether the box the game comes in will be able to hold ten Cube Pockets in addition to all the other game pieces, but I have my fingers crossed.
I’m curious to try layering the Clue game on a normal game of Commander as well. Has anyone tried that yet? How did it go?
Okay, now I’m going to dig into the new cards from Ravnica: Clue Edition that might be fun to play in your Commander decks. Let’s investigate!
The Clue Evidence Cards
Suspects
I’m a little bit disappointed that only Senator Peacock directly relates to Clues or the investigate mechanic, which makes my plans to put them in a five-color Clue-themed deck awkward. I’m curious what the design goals were for these cards, since they aren’t used in the Clue game other than as game pieces. Senator Peacock does make for an excellent Clue card, making all your other artifacts Clues in addition to their other types, and a sweet combat-oriented trigger whenever you sacrifice a Clue.
Commander Mustard is a very aggressive commander for a Soldier deck. Apothecary White adds a nice element to a Food-centric deck, especially one that supports tokens in general with cards like Anointed Procession and Mondrak, Glory Dominus. Headliner Scarlett has a scary enters-the-battlefield effect, neutralizing one player’s blockers for the turn and letting you crash in with attackers. If Scarlett is on the battlefield during your upkeep, you get to exile the top card of your library face down, and look at it and play it this turn.
The last two feel weak. Emissary Green seems overcosted at five mana for a 3/3 that must attack before you get any benefit, either Treasures or +1/+1 counters depending on how all the players vote (you should vote security yourself to boost Emissary Green large enough to survive combat). Mastermind Plum has the coolest art of the bunch, but it’s a 2/2 creature for three mana with no evasion that needs to attack to get its trigger. Its ability to let you draw cards when you cast a spell using a Treasure for mana is nice, but it seems like he’ll be a support card in the 99 of a Treasure deck.
Locations
I think all these cards are playable in two-color decks, providing color-fixing and an excellent mana sink if you’ve got mana available to use in the later parts of the game.
Weapons
These are already available in Murders at Karlov Manor, but I think the new illustrations and frame look really cool. I think people need to think of these as Clue artifacts that are incredibly cheap to cast (and can be easily recurred with something like Salvaging Station), and just happen to also be Equipment cards that creatures can gear up with. Candlestick seems the best because of the surveil ability, with Knife the next best thanks to its first strike ability. The equip cost for Rope is a little steep, but boosting a creature’s toughness and making it blockable by only one creature might be worth it.
New Legends
There are three new legendary creatures that could be found in three of the booster packs. Amzu, Swarm’s Hunger seems like a nifty new Insect typal commander; be sure to find a spot for Insidious Roots in your Amzu deck’s 99! Lavinia, Foil to Conspiracy conveniently taps to add two colorless mana, which is enough to sacrifice Clue tokens, but you can only activate it during an opponent’s turn. Note that the colorless mana can be used for anything, so you can use it to cast spells on your opponent’s turn.
If you’ve got a Doubling Season without a home Lonis, Genetics Expert seems like the perfect place to put it, since it generates both +1/+1 counters and Clue tokens. I actually think this is a really fun build-around, since you can tap into both Clue and Detective synergies from Murders at Karlov Manor.
Other Cool New Cards
Afterlife Insurance
Afterlife Insurance seems like a fun card to have in a token deck to be able to instantly rebuild your battlefield in the face of a battlefield sweeper. Also, if you’re doing Ashnod’s Altar shenanigans, you’ll likely net a bunch of extra mana for your finishing move.
Conclave Evangelist
I’m a big fan of the myriad mechanic, and Conclave Evangelist is an excellent myriad card. This will be bonkers in a token deck if it gets going!
Corporeal Projection
Speaking of myriad, Corporeal Projection brings it to Izzet decks, and if you can pay the overload cost and have a few sweet creatures on the battlefield, things will get wild! Giving Archaeomancer or Shipwreck Dowser myriad is going to feel awesome.
Dimir Strandcatcher
Surveil is an awesome mechanic for any graveyard synergies, and Dimir Strandcatcher comes down and lets you immediately benefit from its trigger so long as you have at least one creature that can attack. As a Faerie Rogue, it can slot right into two different typal decks in addition to just a surveil-heavy deck.
Herald of Ilharg
As someone who has an Ilharg, the Raze-Boar Commander deck, it feels weird that I can’t put Herald of Ilharg into it, but the card is solid in a lot of Commander decks. If your commander includes red and green in its color identity, and costs five or more mana to cast, I’d strongly consider adding this to the 99.
Portal Manipulator
Is your deck in the market for another Portal Mage? Portal Manipulator is here for you as an upgrade for one more mana.
Resonance Technician
Copying spells are fun in the right deck, and Resonance Technician nicely does just that for no extra mana. It is limited by the number of artifacts you control, which you need to tap for its activated ability, but I think that’s an excellent design constraint to keep things from getting too degenerate.
Sludge Titan
While it doesn’t exactly live up to many of the original Titan cycle (Primeval Titan, Grave Titan), I do think Sludge Titan is better than it looks. Not only does it stock your graveyard for graveyard shenanigans, it will likely “draw” you a creature or land from among those milled when it enters the battlefield or attacks. That’s the sort of value grind I love! Plus, it’s an actual Zombie for your Zombie decks, so take that, Grave Titan!
Suppressor Skyguard
Suppressor Skyguard is a sneaky good card, forcing an opponent who wants to attack you to also attack another player too if they want to deal combat damage. It also has two relevant creature types as a Human Knight.
Unruly Krasis
I’d love Unruly Krasis for its wacky creature type alone. A Shark Octopus Lizard is a nightmare combination, and the art perfectly captures it. I love that it encourages attacking and will be particularly awesome at boosting a small flyer that an opponent will have a tough time blocking.
Vernal Sovereign
Here we have another “Titan” of sorts with Vernal Sovereign. For six mana, you’ll at a minimum get six power and toughness of creatures but split across two bodies. If you have a few other creatures already on the battlefield, that Elemental token is going to be a lot bigger, and this is another card that will be awesome in token strategies.
Which cards from Ravnica: Clue Edition are you most excited about building Commander decks around?
Talk to Me
Do me a solid and follow me on Twitter! I run polls and start conversations about Commander all the time, so get in on the fun! You can also find my LinkTree on my profile page there with links to all my content.
I’d also love it if you followed my Twitch channel TheCompleteCommander, where I do Commander, Brawl, and sometimes other Magic-related streams when I can. If you can’t join me live, the videos are available on demand for a few weeks on Twitch, but I also upload them to my YouTube channel. You can also find the lists for my paper decks over on Archidekt if you want to dig into how I put together my own decks and brews.
And lastly, I just want to say: let us love each other and stay healthy and happy.
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