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Moxonomy

Crusade

EnchantmentWhite manaWhite mana

The original tribal lord, printed before "lord" was a design pattern Wizards consciously named. The construction is the bluntest possible version of the idea: a static anthem keyed to a color rather than a creature type, costing two white mana, with no body attached and no clause to soften the symmetry. Every white creature on the battlefield gets the bonus, including an opponent's, a quirk the card simply accepted in an era when mirror matches and shared-color games were assumed to be part of the texture. The lineage that descends from it is enormous: Honor of the Pure kept the same mana value while easing the color requirement to a single white pip, narrowing the anthem to your own creatures in the process; Glorious Anthem swapped to a fully generic anthem; and every creature-type lord from Lord of Atlantis forward inherited the +1/+1 anthem shape while attaching it to a body. Crusade itself was eventually retired from reprint rotation for flavor reasons rather than power ones, the religious-war framing becoming untenable for a game that wanted broader cultural reach. What it leaves behind is the template: the anthem as a deckbuilding tax that pays itself back once the board has three relevant creatures on it, a math problem every white weenie deck since has been built to solve.

Crusade (ced)
CED · #17rare
Oracle Text

Rules text

White creatures get +1/+1.
Legalities

Format Status

Standard
N/A
Pioneer
N/A
Modern
N/A
Legacy
Banned
Vintage
Banned
Commander
Banned
Pauper
N/A
Brawl
N/A
Historic
N/A
Alchemy
N/A
Timeless
N/A
Standard Brawl
N/A
More formats
Old School
N/A
Premodern
Legal
PreDH
Banned
Pauper Commander
N/A
Oathbreaker
Banned
Gladiator
N/A
Penny Dreadful
N/A
Duel Commander
Banned
Future Standard
N/A
COMPETITIVEBRAWL
N/A
TLR
N/A
Printings elsewhere

Other printings

15 sets
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