Now that Modern Horizons 3 preview season is officially over, you may have been hoping to enjoy a respite from new cards. At the very least, you’d hope for a break from the ridiculous volume of leaks that spilled out during it. Sadly, MTG players have no such luck. Not even a week has passed, and we’ve got another one; a leak for The Capitoline Triad, a potential new legendary creature from the upcoming Assassin’s Creed set.
Before we continue, the usual disclaimer. As a leak, this card hasn’t been officially confirmed. This means that it may very well be a fake, and not part of the Assassin’s Creed set at all. This goes double due to the incredibly low quality of the image on this one. Similar leaks have proven real before, so don’t rule it out entirely. Just don’t go speculating on any support cards without official confirmation.
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The Capitoline Triad Leak
So let’s get into the leak itself. The Capitoline Triad is a 7/7 legendary God artificer for 10 generic mana. That cost can go a lot lower, however, thanks to its ‘Those Who Came Before’ ability. This reduces its cost by one generic for each Historic card in your graveyard. If you’ve forgotten, that includes Artifacts, Sagas, and legendary cards of all types.
So far, so mediocre, but things really kick up a notch with the Triad’s second ability. This ability allows you, at instant speed, to exile Historic cards with a total mana value of 30 or more from your graveyard. If you do, you get an Emblem. While in play, this Emblem sets the base stats of your creatures to 9/9. If you’ve played Hearthstone, this may bring to mind a certain Crystal Core; one of the most powerful cards of its era.
If this is real, then it’s a fairly major deal. This will be the first ever creature, and indeed non-Planeswalker card, to create an Emblem. This is a design space that hasn’t been explored much in Magic before, and it’s pretty scary when you think about it.
Emblems can’t be interacted with, as a trade-off for how difficult they are to get. Typically, the majority of Emblems are obtained by using a Planeswalker’s ultimate ability. Should this mechanic start appearing on creatures, however, then the delicate balance could be disturbed, or perhaps destroyed.
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Boundless Potential
When considering potential homes for this new card, the first place my mind went was Affinity. This is a powerful deck across multiple formats, including Modern and Legacy. It focuses on the titular Affinity mechanic, and stacking up cheap artifacts in play to discount the high mana costs of cards like
Thought Monitor
Thought Monitor
Affinity for artifacts (This spell costs {1} less to cast for each artifact you control.)
Flying
When this creature enters, draw two cards.
and
Myr Enforcer
Myr Enforcer
Affinity for artifacts (This spell costs {1} less to cast for each artifact you control.)
.
As a deck that not only plays a lot of Historic cards, but a lot of expensive Historic cards, it seems like an ideal fit for The Capitoline Triad. You only need five or so big Affinity cards in your graveyard before you can drop this for five and get the Emblem right away.
Worryingly, this is easily achievable through normal gameplay. Should you want to get there faster, however, looting effects are always an option. Modern Horizons 3 even added
Buried Alive
Buried Alive
Search your library for up to three creature cards, put them into your graveyard, then shuffle.
to the format, which can ship your three biggest artifacts off to the graveyard when needed.
Once you’ve got the Emblem online, it synergizes beautifully with Affinity’s cheap artifact suite. Imagine a
Gingerbrute
Gingerbrute
Haste (This creature can attack and {T} as soon as it comes under your control.)
{1}: This creature can't be blocked this turn except by creatures with haste.
{2}, {T}, Sacrifice this creature: You gain 3 life.
or
Ornithopter
Ornithopter
Flying
swinging at you with a monstrous nine power. Affinity is already getting a lot of new tools in Modern Horizons 3, and with Assassin’s Creed being Modern-legal, this could be the final push the deck needs to really get there. If the leak is real, of course.
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Fact Or Fiction?
It’s difficult to gauge the authenticity of this card. As mentioned above, the image quality here is particularly bad. It’s hard to imagine a modern camera producing such poor results. That said, many of the Modern Horizons 3 leaks,
Eladamri, Korvecdal
Eladamri, Korvecdal
You may look at the top card of your library any time.
You may cast creature spells from the top of your library.
{G}, {T}, Tap two untapped creatures you control: Reveal a card from your hand or the top card of your library. If you reveal a creature card this way, put it onto the battlefield. Activate only during your turn.
in particular, were similar. So we can’t rule it out on that alone.
Another axis we can evaluate the card on is how appropriate it feels for the Assassin’s Creed set. The Capitoline Triad are, indeed, major characters in the games, appearing in several titles from Brotherhood onwards. The story of Assassin’s Creed is twisty and complicated, but a lot of it deals with history, and experiencing the lives of your ancestors through virtual simulations.
With this in mind, a Historic-matters theme would make perfect sense for the set, and by extension this card as well. Among the few cards we’ve seen so far, both
Cleopatra, Exiled Pharaoh
Cleopatra, Exiled Pharaoh
Allies — At the beginning of your end step, put a +1/+1 counter on each of up to two other target legendary creatures.
Betrayal — Whenever a legendary creature with counters on it dies, draw a card for each counter on it. You lose 2 life.
and
The Animus
The Animus
At the beginning of your end step, exile up to one target legendary creature card from a graveyard with a memory counter on it.
{T}: Until your next turn, target legendary creature you control becomes a copy of target creature card in exile with a memory counter on it. Activate only as a sorcery.
care about legendary creatures.
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci
{3}{U}{U}: Until end of turn, Thopters you control have base power and toughness X/X, where X is the number of cards in your hand.
{2}{U}, {T}: Draw a card, then discard a card. If the discarded card was an artifact card, exile it from your graveyard. If you do, create a token that's a copy of it, except it's a 0/2 Thopter artifact creature with flying in addition to its other types.
, on the other hand, cares about artifacts. Both of these are Historic card types, so there are already crumbs present to support this card’s legitimacy.
My biggest concern at this point is power level. Given how hard Affinity is being pushed already this year, a card like this feels almost like overkill. It’s easy to cast and get the Emblem from, and once that’s done it’s hard to imagine any Affinity deck losing the game. That said, big splashy Mythics often look better than they are in the warm, new-reveal glow. So don’t lose hope about the legitimacy of The Capitoline Triad leak yet.
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