This might be my favorite card in Conspiracy:
Take the Crown. Yeah, the stuff about becoming
the monarch and the added gameplay dimension
that comes from it is cool. Yeah, the stuff that
interacts with the draft process is innovative
design. But Subterranean Tremors has basically
all my favorite things: an Earthquake variant,
different modes which also scale, and a gigantic
lizard. Between all those things, it's sure to
be a staple in casual decks and formats like
Commander from day one, and I'd be tempted to
look at it even in Vintage with all that fast
mana (just be careful about granulating your own
Moxes).
This is basically Earthquake, minus hitting
players. But with other modes that make it neat.
For small values of X, this is basically a
small-scale board wipe. It can help you take out
ground forces rather efficiently, leaving flying
creatures (like majestic, swooping dragons)
untouched. Once X gets to 4, this is basically a
Shatterstorm stapled to a burn spell, which is a
very good rate of return. (It even takes out
flying artifact creatures!) It's maybe less
awesome if you have artifacts on board, but this
isn't too hard to build around to take advantage
of it to make it more one-sided.
Of course, when X hits 8 or more, you get a cute
little lizard token on resolution. An 8/8
Lizard, to be precise. Except in very corner
cases, the Subterranean Tremors resolution will
be enough to obliterate your opponents’ forces,
allowing you to smash face with impunity with
your large lizard.
In Limited, this is absurd, especially since it
only asks for one red mana. It's maybe too
awkward to appear in Constructed, but red EDH
decks that aren't artifact-heavy will quite like
this. (And there's always Darksteel Forge for
the artifact-heavy decks…)
