Scepter of Empires

One of three artifacts built to be assembled, and the payoff piece of the regalia trio. Tapped alone, it pings for a single point: an almost insulting rate, slow and small, an effect that would never justify a deck slot on its own. The whole design rests on the conditional. Bring Crown of Empires and Throne of Empires to the table, and the same tap launches three damage every turn, a repeatable burn engine that closes games over a few turns. It is a regalia set, an explicit experiment in rewarding players for collecting and resolving a themed group: the Throne taps a creature, the Crown steals one, and the Scepter does the killing. The structural problem the cycle had to solve was variance. Three specific artifacts in one deck is a tall order, so each piece had to function, however feebly, in isolation while paying out dramatically when united. The Scepter sits at the bottom of that bargain, the least useful alone and the most useful assembled, which is exactly why it serves as the regalia's win condition. The design lineage here is the old Urzatron blueprint of three lands that scale when grouped, transplanted onto artifacts and a damage clock rather than a mana count.