Coveted Falcon – Murders at Karlov Manor
Date Reviewed: February 12, 2024
Ratings:
Constructed: 3.00
Casual: 3.25
Limited: 3.63
Multiplayer: 3.38
Commander [EDH]: 3.68
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
The Maltese Falcon is definitely iconic, but it’s also going to be a hundred years old surprisingly soon (just a few years if you go by the novel). So you have to wonder why Murders at Karlov Manor needed more than one reference to it. This reference is probably the one that’s getting the most attention, seeing as it has surprisingly many dimensions to its gameplay. It works as a straight-up countermeasure to stealing effects, and as a one-card combo for a few turns of card-drawing. In casual formats, there might be a deck based around giving your opponent old cards with severe drawbacks when you turn the Falcon face-up – we haven’t gotten many candidates of that type recently, but I’m in favor of anything that gives Steel Golem gameplay beyond “lol I counter everything and win”.
Constructed: 3
Casual: 3.5
Limited: 3.5
Multiplayer: 3.5
Commander [EDH]: 3.5
B I R D
Coveted Falcon is…interesting, and it really rides and dies by its self-contained interaction. Giving an opponent your Things is sometimes a bit dangerous, but this does replace them with card draw for each thing you donate, and it even has the ability to get them back. It’s pretty good at getting them back, thanks to evasion, so there’s some interesting prospects through, say, donating away Clues, detrimental things, or just things that do Nothing. Or, maybe, cloaked/disguised cards your opponents can’t flip over easily; that’s also a pretty fun way to take things.
The overall investment is five mana, and you’ll probably want to draw at least two cards to make this feel like a good return. In a pinch, the Coveted Falcon can pass itself off to replace itself with a card, which might make for some weird shenanigans. I think this is going to be an interesting puzzle piece; whether or not it fits somewhere is a question I don’t quite have an answer to yet, but there’s certainly cause for optimism.
Constructed: 3
Casual: 3
Limited: 3.75 (probably a lot riskier to pass things over, but it has promise)
Multiplayer: 3.25
Commander [EDH]: 3.75
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