Magic's videogame crossovers continue to not suck

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(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)

Ezio runs across a rooftop, startling birds.

Way back in 2008, the Morningtide set introduced a mechanic called Prowl. It let you play cards with the creature type Rogue for less mana if you’d damaged another player (rather than their creatures) earlier that turn. The Assassin’s Creed crossover brings Prowl back, only renamed Freerunning and with its reduced cost applied to the Assassin creature type instead. That means if I can sneak even a single point of damage past an opponents' defenses, I can bring down a whole gang of bargain bonus Brotherhood buddies immediately after.

It’s tempting to build a deck around a different theme, though. With cards like Jackdaw, Edward Kenway, Coastal Piracy, Ballad of the Black Flag, Mary Read and Anne Bonny, and Adéwalé, Breaker of Chains, you’ve got the beginnings of a pirate deck, but I could also see an every-color historical characters deck built around figures like Cleopatra, Leonardo, and Sokrates. Or a tweaked version of this Freerunning Assassin deck that’s built around Evie and Jacob Frye rather than Ezio.

The latter two characters are depicted on a couple of my favorite cards, at least in terms of the art. Evie is shown sneaking along a railing above a train station, with Jacob visible down on the platform getting into a fistfight. Jacob’s card shows the same brawl from ground level, and if you look closely beyond the smoke above him you can see Evie’s silhouette in the corner. Meanwhile, the card showing Ezio synchronizing on a rooftop lines up with a bunch of other cards to form the skyline of Rome, while some of the historical figures come in alternate versions printed in their native language.

(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)

Ezio, Altair, and Kassandra from Assassin’s Creed on Magic: The Gathering cards.

These cute touches and displays of attention to detail, as well as the frankly gorgeous art, keep me feeling positive about these videogame crossovers. While theFallout set’s Commander deckswere a personal favorite, the Assassin’s Creed cards are still fun to try out and, in the Ezio deck, tightly themed around murdering people from rooftops—which is all I want. It’s left me feeling hopeful for the upcomingFinal Fantasy crossover, since the official Final Fantasy card game is a bit of a dud.

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So far, Magic’s dips into videogame territory have worn the clothes of their new settings well enough to blend in seamlessly. Given the choice between these and the endless licensed CCGs of the late ’90s that used to rip off Magic without being nearly as good, I’d rather have more of these professionally designed and slickly produced official crossovers.

Assassin’s Creed x Magic: The Gatheringis available now.

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