Pointed Discussion

Love this art! The flavour text reflects something many of the other planeswalker characters lack- character depth and development.

I agree, gongshowninja, the art is fantastic and the flavor text is really fitting.
And Crusade isn't a bad card either :)

I'll give it a 4 for art, but I find it hard to think of a situation where this card would ever be more desirable than Honor of the Pure.

Well, there is one situation where this beats Honor of the Pure, and that'd be in twoheaded giant, if your other head is running white and neither of your opponents do

Running a standard legal, incredibly competitively viable card like Honor of the Pure would have made this duel deck even more valuable.

Elspeth is one of the only planeswalker that doesn't irritate me, character wise. The artwork for her duel deck is ridiculous. We can't rate this card low because of Honor of the Pure, and by itself this is definitely a 4.

Elspeth is so BA.

Yes, we know that honor of the pure is strictly better. Who cares? Crusade is strictly cooler and has mega nostalgia. I played with this card for years. It also spits in the face of political correctness, which is undoubtedly why they made honor of the pure in the first place. I'll take crusade any day.

The idea of even reprinting this card is for nostalgia's sake since a large majority of the cards in the Duel Decks (including Elspeth and Tezzeret themselves, now) are no longer standard or extended legal and this gives them an excuse to show off some of the older cards with updated artwork/text. Sure, Honor of the Pure is "better" because you won't be buffing up your opponents' creatures if they're playing white, but if that bothers you so much, use HotP instead and stop whining.

Just so people know, the term "strictly better" can only refer to cards that either have directly comparable text and different costs to the point where one is more optimal than the other, or where two cards have the exact same cost and one has text that makes it superior to the other, and it judges cards in a vacuum. The existence of Muraganda Pietroglyphs does not stop Ashcoat Bear from being strictly better than Grizzly Bears. If you need more examples of what the term means, look at this: http://wiki.mtgsalvation.com/article/Strictly_better

Crusade is strictly worse than Honor of the Pure. Get over it.

I liked the old art better, when you could see the burning smoke of recently sacked Constantinople.

EDIT: Something to note here. Strictly better also often needs to be qualified. The attached link defining strictly better is:
A- on a wiki, so is unreliable/not proven knowledge (I.E. i can just go edit it right now, printscreen, and forever be just as semi correct as those citing it. It's just an approximation, like a book report on a book.)
B- The statements here are not qualified like those on the wiki either. You MUST put cards in a vacuum if you want to claim "strictly better" in nearly all circumstances.


(Were this made today and not way back in Alpha) something to keep in mind is that it'd likely be made *for* multiplayer white games, heck, the flavor works best there!

Benefits over Honor of the Pure:
-Opponents can't steal it to take away your bonus. It must be bounced/destroyed/exiled
-Multiplayer shinanigans
-White destroy cards that check power certainly have synergy with this
-as well as white "doesn't untap" cards that check power level
-chroma (this card is spectacular with spring jack shepard. Get two of these out and him, get 5 2/3's and a 3/4 for a total of 8 mana)
-cards that redirect damage

Cons by comparison:
-could beef up enemies creatures
-less splashability

Restating one of my original points, run this in white weenie and even if you beef up a thoctar by 1, or some other naya creature, it's not like your +3/+3 spread among your tokens is worth all the less. Were I running white weenie, i'd take advantage of chroma, power-level checkers, and run both this AND honor of the pure. Easy Peasy.

Pop a Jihad and an Honor of the Pure in your deck and you're golden.

I have never been able to build a Knight themed deck without needing to include this card. Much like I can't make Vampire Decks without Bad Moon. Damn flavor-addiction. I wish I knew how to quit you.

Why is this card twice the price of Honor of the Pure, then?

I would run this with Jihad to see if my deck blows up ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jihad

It goes great with my Springjack Shepherd, but I would rather pay one more for Glorious Anthem so my opponents don't get any bonus.

My main reason for buying Duel Decks/Premium Decks/FtVs/Multiplayer sets is nostalgia cards like this one.

To Vorthoses, Crusade is strictly better than Honor of the Pure.

Crusade pumps enemy creatures, yes. To Vorthos, that's a bonus. You are clearly starting a Holy War, and your opponents' clerics get to get in on that. I'm running Knights with protection from your, protection from your friend, and protection from your grandma's pet dog, so that's not really a problem for me.

Crusade also costs instead of . This also is better in Vorthos' opinion, because it shows how you have to have a strong commitment to the color to get this sort of inspired. You run this in a mono-white deck, a white-centric shard or wedge deck, or a W/x classic two-color build... but you are NOT getting away with white as your off color here. You gotta mean it.

Yes, these are technically 'drawbacks'. But they are also meaningful elements of the card that make it much more evocative than HotP, which is just out-and-out blatant power creep. I understand and like the idea of the new one-sided approach to lords. Even though I can think of a cool reason why this particular card really should break the pattern and pump your opponent's creatures, most people will not want a card that does that. Fine.

I do think it's a serious mistake to lighten the color requirements on the card. Especially considering the one-sidedness factor. Honor of the Pure should cost . Not because is broken, but because it changes something that doesn't need to be changed, and the old saying 'if it's not broke, don't fix it' is something Wizards hasn't been paying enough attention to recently. Pushing some things is cool. Pushing others is not. HotP does a disservice to Crusade by existing, and Crusade didn't even need to be made better in the first place.

It's not quite as good as Honor of the Pure, but that's hardly its fault. 3.5/5

Haha one time in a casual match my opponent went first. After I had dropped a land and some other thing, he played this. I just said "Thanks, Caleb." I was running Tempered Steel. 25 damage hit his way two turns later. In essence, strictly worse than Honor of the Pure.

Prefer Honor of the Pure just because it doesn't boost your opponent's cards too.

Gets a 5/5 from me based on the artwork and flavor text alone. The effect isn't too bad either.

Flavor text gives me chills.

I don't know why everyone is comparing this to Honor of the Pure, this card was in the first set and Honor of the Pure is a remake of it, so of course it's better. You people are acting like this card just came out and and Honor of the Pure was the Original, I had this card in my White deck in 94' and I have one in my EDH deck now because I can only play one Honor of the Pure in my EDH deck.

I agree with basically everything DarthParallax said, 110%. This card has history in Magic and should have been reprinted, or at least referenced more blatantly. You can't even say the word is politically sensitive any more (Crusader of Odric).

Many games I won with this. I used with Caribou Range and Kjeldoran Outpost in order to build an army to attack and defend. The only problem was if the opponent was using white. I think they should fix all these old cards to affect only your permanents. Great with Opalescence