Conspiracy: Take the Crown has only begun to widely circulate, with players exploring all that this drafting-focused set has to offer. Yet thanks to a surprising spoiler season, full of unforeseen reprints and a bevy of eye-catching new cards, the set has generated quite a bit of buzz leading up to its release.

This is the second Conspiracy set to be created, both of which were designed as stand-alone sets. Wizards over recent years has taken to releasing a summer supplement aimed at causal players, which, while sometimes hit or miss, the effort has always been appreciated by the kitchen table community. Whether it was the ‘one versus all’ nature of Archenemy, the environment-matters nature of Planechase, or Conspiracy itself, WotC (rightly) felt that there was a vast casual audience being under-served.

Putting out an extra set for people to buy every year doesn’t hurt their bottom line either.

The purpose focus of both Conspiracy sets undoubtedly rests on drafting and then playing those decks in multiplayer free-for-all games. This gives the set a distinct and original flavor apart from Limited, bolstered heavily by a number of cards included in packs that only function during a draft. The result is that you’re able to draft this set and enjoy it as such, but there’s also plenty of cards that will be holding your attention long after the draft is over.

In a somewhat ironic twist, however, it’s the non-drafting part of the set that’s garnering so much attention. One reason are a bevy of surprising sough-after reprints for Modern and even Legacy players, dispersed across all rarities. Wizards had been trying for quite some time to come up with a way of reprinting powerful staples for these tournament formats without putting them in normal sets (and therefore them being Standard-playable), and they sort of stumbled across their answer, perhaps even accidentally, in the original Commander precons.

By exploring this idea, they were able to create new cards and reprints while completely circumventing their Standard problem – even in products where tournaments weren’t the focus. Hence Legacy-capable cards in EDH sets. Once they realized their experiments worked, albeit not without some bumps (looking at you True-Name Nemesis), they invested heavily on the idea with the first Modern Masters. Following that came the first Conspiracy with an admittedly lighter touch, likely because Modern Masters was only a year old.

Conspiracy 2 pulled no punches in this regard. From Berserk and Show and Tell down to Serum Visions, in many ways Conspiracy 2 is offering a better per-pack value than Modern Masters 2015 and a better volume of cards for your money than Eternal Masters on average. Thanks to it being a full print run and having standard pack prices, this has set caught the attention of many Eternal players (and indeed all of us) a little by surprise.

The other reason Conspiracy has been so interesting its slate of new new cards, many of which are going to find fast homes among the casual and Commander crowds – and a couple even with Legacy players. It’s for those cards why we’re here today.

Continuing the trend of looking at a set for reasons other than its principal purpose, we’re going to inspect Conspiracy’s new cards and look at the top ten most versatile cards for the Commander format. It certainly wasn’t easy, and there are plenty not listed that will surely find their way into EDH decks. In this case, the focus is on which cards can be utilized in the most situations and deck styles more so than those that are simply the most powerful or most valuable.

Let’s get to it!

Next: Commander Cards 10-6