Pointed Discussion

Tricky, very tricky. This card is anywhere from You Win to Useless because it relies on your opponent's creatures.

Nothing tricky about it... toss in an Altar of Dementia and it becomes an instant speed, blue one-sided Wrath of God on your opponent's creatures. Try using it with Mycosynth Lattice and Time Sieve for even more fun... :)

its a sick sideboard card. very sick.

This + Soulblast.

Plus can save you from death for one turn. That and much more fun in multiplayer games.

i agree with scrappy have four of these in my mill deck, it and altar of dementia best combo ever. plus swing at them then sac them all. also works well with the flash back cost of cabal therapy;)

Fantastic for multiplayer:

Player A: "I'll swing at you with my big creatures because you've got no defenders"

Player B: "Okay, I'll play Reins of Power and block with Player C's even bigger creatures"

Player A: "...."

I like it. It's usefulness especially comes out when you have next to no strong creatures when compared to your opponent's swarmed field. The trick is timing.

I run this in a U/R goblin deck with dracoplasm, and goblin bombardment. Include the goblin medic combo with paradise mantle and freed from the real, then throw in Kiki-Jiki and an intruder alarm just for fun.

Wait, so what happens if you play this in the middle of combat in a 2-player game? If I'm attacking and I play it, the opponent now controls my creatures, but they're still attacking him? And I control his creatures, so he can't assign them as blockers? Is that right?

It's basically: "If you control no creatures each creature target player controls deals damage equal to it's power to it's controller."

Well this card and Brand essentially makes it "Gain control of target player's creatures." for the total cost of 2UUR. The same for Mind Control. =D

Flatten your opponent with his own creatures then proceed to feed them to your Phyrexian Dreadnought.

Ashond's altar, ooohhhhhh yeah!

Its Blue So Chances Are You Have No Creatures Totally Broken. And Holy Mackrel Its An Instant. Plus Dude Looks Like Nightcrawler

I love people who overextend and don't expect this card. I won a game of EDH because my friend overextended and played a Lord of Extinction (by this time somewhere in the area of a 60/60) when I had no creatures and was at like 6.

Main phase Reins of Power, win the game.

He was upset.

Once again Bronze Bombshell shines through.

if a creature i control has a mind control on it and i give it away with this, do i get it back right after this resolved?

This card is amazing in multiplayer. Consider that you can steal creatures from one player to block those controlled by a third player who is attacking you. You get a surprise defense that wrecks the board position of two opponents, and the guy you stole from is tapped out and vunerable to any other players who wish to attack him.

That is, of course, in addition to occasionally just blowing one opponent out of the water with an alpha strike.

Aaron’s Random Card Comment of the Day #75, 4/12/11

On its surface, this seems like a fun card to print. If two players have random representative decks and one of them has access to this card, I’m sure all sorts of interesting situations arise.

The problem is that, if you’re at all savvy at deck building, this isn’t a particularly difficult puzzle to solve. The obvious solution: Don’t play with creatures at all. In that sense the card reminds me a lot of Balance. It reads like, “Oh, you and I both are going to half to suffer the implications of me casting this,” but the truth is that decks containing the card are (likely) always built to avoid any such implications. Heck, they did it in one of the Stronghold preconstructed decks! That deck, called “The Sparkler” had Reins of Power as one of its rares, and had only two Walls and a Mogg Fanatic as its creatures. And guess what--you aren’t ever giving control of the Mogg Fanatic to your opponent. Puzzle solved.

Ok, I'm not being totally fair. You can go a couple steps further than that if you’d like, combining it with ways to sacrifice the creatures you acquire (such as Goblin Bombardment) or by giving away creatures that do bad things to your opponent (like Bronze Bombshell). You can also use it as a Fog in a pinch, although I don't know if all that many people know what happens when you swap mid-combat. In multiplayer you can take great advantage of the instant speed by swapping for an innocent bystanders creatures to block with mid-combat. But in duels the card is never going to generate the kind of chaos its textbox implies.

The card feels red to me, as red is the color of temporary theft and chaos. Perhaps a red version that swapped all the creatures controlled by two target players (even more fun in multiplayer) would feel less like a statement of false intent to me.

This card is insane in the Emperor format, or any other where the Deploy Creatures option is used. There, it effectively gets the additional wording:
"If you cast this spell during your main phase, instead target teammate gains control of all creatures target opponent controls. Tap these creatures."

And the Haste was given to Blue....why?

Ties my Control magic deck together nicely.

Well, Wizards did print Twist Allegiance as a red sorcery version of this, which feels a lot fairer. It's still an easy puzzle to solve but a lot of the madness goes away. This original version is just nuts.

I like enforcing fairness on effects like this. Perhaps something like "Exchange control of each creature you control with target creature an opponent controls until end of turn", though that doesn't address the situations when you have eight creatures and your opponent has twelve.

Player 1: "I attack with a bunch of eldrazi!!!"
Player 2: "Reigns of power"

Twist Allegiance is basically the red equivalent at sorcery speed and higher costed.

@Aaron_Forsythe:

Since this card was in the Political Puppets deck, at Commander recently my friend cast this as a pseudo-Fog, and I can tell you I was glad our shop's resident rules guru was in our game, because there aren't many instant-speed effects like this to have given me an understanding of what would happen. Unfortunately he was using it to stop a flier, and no one else had any, because switching creatures with someone else to take out both of our guys would have been a more fun use of the card.

So this is one of those cards where it can be fun in some situations, but most often probably is used the way you describe.

Also, I would totally love a Red card that swapped two player's creatures. That would encourage even more crazy fun use than this card does.

This card seems to have found a home in the "Political Puppets" Commander deck. A couple of neat things to do with this card:

- Put the Zedruu trigger (draw X cards and gain X life where X is the number of permanents you own controlled by opponents), then cast this -- Zedruu and any other creatures you own fly to an opponent's control and give you life and cards.

- If an opponent has Sheoldred, Whispering One in play, cast this after putting the Sheoldred trigger on the stack, swapping critters with the Sheoldred player. Then sack Sheoldred to satisfy Sheoldred's ability.

@ Aaron:

Basically, short-time was blue (see Ray of Command) as this had a mind-affecting flavor. Red only got "gain control" effects to symbolize the "attacks his own kind" flavor and a gain control was just a better solution than "tap it and it deals damage to it's controller".

Basically, I want black to be the main color of "gain control" effects, giving blue any type of tap effect and short "gain control" effects. Red should rather get a plain creature destruction spell than some sort of Act of Treason effects.

So I wouldn't vote for the Twist Allegiance as a proper fix of this card, but would call for Cultural Exchange to start with.

@Pauper Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure that doesn't work. X values are set in stone when the trigger goes on the stack, so giving stuff away once it's already on the stack can't change how many life and cards you get. Wish it did work that way.

@schoolmonkey: No, Pauper is correct. X is only "set in stone" on the stack if it's an X that you pay as a cost, like "pay X mana" or "discard X cards". If it's just "Do X things, where X is some number", then that's counted on resolution.

For example, an Auriok Bladewarden activation can be hosed by Diminish in response. People can up or down the amount that Batttlefield Medic will prevent by killing or making Clerics at instant speed. And so on.

I'm glad it does work that way, because Zedruu the Greathearted is an awesome card :D

This + any sac effect.

A one sided wrath that can get rid of creatures with indestructibility, shroud, protection etc.

Or if you are behind on board presence, BOOM, i think i'll get back into this game, Or win it.

This card has many applications.

I always considered this card a quick preview into the lunacy that was the Urza's Block... Not that the Rath Cycle was weak, this card just didn't feel at home there. Most of the realy strong tempest cards were on a more or less fair curve. This is one of the few cards of that era that produced degenerate effects all on its own.

(Yeah i know, survival of the fittest, recurring nightmares, oath, etc etc etc... )

This card brings back fond memories of playing The Sparkler precon deck from Stronghold. Precons were just different then - there was so much power and strategy involved, rather than just showcasing a keyword or guild/set mechanic. This deck required so much skill to play, because it was all about timing, choices, stalling, and getting to 6 mana with no acceleration so you could buyback your spells and eventually win with either this or Fanning the Flames. 2 walls and Mogg Fanatic were the only creatures in that deck, so you were counting on being able to grab all of your opponents' creatures and swinging with them on an empty board. More often than not, you were playing from behind the entire time, until finally able to stabilize the board and in full-on desperation mode, a turn or two away from losing. It showcased the fact that Magic is a game of choices - do I use my singleton Ransack to search for an answer, or do I deny my opponent their next couple of turns? Do I expend this Lightning Blast on this creature, or do I shoot my opponent and chip away at 1/5 of their life?

To wrap things up, this is a wonderful "build-around" rare, and a fitting centerpiece to what may just be the greatest precon ever made by Wizards. While it might not be as flashy or powerful as other decks, playing The Sparkler made me a better Magic player, and taught me to think critically and evaluate resources way more strategically. It made me so happy to see this card return in Commander and I just thought I'd share some of my fond memories of this card with you guys.

I used this in combination with Altar of Dementia to mill someones deck with his own creatures, good times

Looks like this is a continuance of the art on Helm of Possession.