Magic "Archenemy" released

Just wanted to post my observations on Magic the Gathering's new offering, “Archenemy.”

The game format introduces a new card set called the “Scheme” deck. Each of the four themed sets comes with 20 oversized cards. These are not unique but actually a semi-random collection built to best suit the theme of the pre-constructed 60-card play deck that comes with the set. Each card, similar to the Planechase cards triggers at the start of the Archenemy's turn (specifically, sandwiched between the draw step and the first main phase) to give him/her an edge against a team of opponents working together.

Here's an image of a typical Archenemy card:What you are looking at is a single-use “scheme” (it will be replaced next turn). But as you can see when it triggers, its effects will help the Archenemy immensely. It will certainly put a damper on Lilliana Vess, for example.

I chose this to card to make a point: the Archenemy is not all-powerful. In my play-tests on Friday night, we learned a couple of lessons. The first lesson off the bat was this: the wrong scheme at the wrong time can be a disaster. This very card for example, while extremely powerful late in the game, is completely useless when it is drawn early. We had several situations when the Archenemies schemes were simply wasted because there were no valid targets on the battlefield at the time, reducing the Archenemy to a normal solitary player facing a team of players alone.
Another observation we made was that the games are geared towards at most 4 on 1 but no more than that. The fact remains that the Archenemy starts with 40 life points while the team players start with the usual 20. This means the schemes are meant to give just enough boost to the Archenemy that they should be able to deal 60 or 80 life damage and have a reasonable chance for winning.

Finally, I want to remark that any alternate variations suggested by Wizards of the Coast simply don't work without some amount of customization. Most of the schemes are focussed on handling multiple opponents and some even causing dissension between them in particular. So variations like combining Emperor with Archenemies, don't work too well with those if you are a small team playing a single opposing team.

Okay, I lied. There's actually one last observation. Wizards has managed yet again to package an under-powered pre-constructed deck with their sets. Just something to keep in mind if you want to hold a “Magic Party” like I did: everyone should play with other out-of-the-box “virgin” decks. Or else everyone play customized theme decks including the Archenemy player.