On Thursday, September 15, Magic: The Gathering creator Wizards of the Coast revealed the full Necron Dynasties decklist, the third deck from the MTG Warhammer 40k crossover to be shown off so far. A mono-black deck focused on artifacts and graveyard shenanigans, Necron Dynasties has 42 new cards in total, and each card in the deck, from reprints right down to basic lands, has art and flavour text to fit its Necron theme.
Necron Dynasties features the Unearth mechanic, an old keyword that lets you bring a creature back to life and give it haste, exiling it at the end of turn. That’s by no means the only resurrection effect in the deck, however. There are plenty of cards like Lychguard and Trazyn the Infinite that encourage you to put things into your graveyard and take them out again.
The other string to this deck’s bow is building up an artifact-powered army, and cards like Cryptothrall and Biotransference are on hand to help to boost up all your artifacts. Obviously the robotic Necrons had to all be artifact creatures. That really helps to swell the enormous artifact count of this deck – as Necron Dynasties has 28 Necron artifact creature cards, and a whopping 49 artifacts in total. In fact, besides lands, there are only 15 non-artifact cards in Necron Dynasties.
Necron Dynasties stands out for being the only monocolour Warhammer 40k MTG deck. The advantage of this is, whereas each other (three-colour) deck has only two possible commanders, any of the five legendary creatures in the Necron deck could lead it.
When all we had to go off was the face commanders, Necron Dynasties looked a bit disappointing, with Szarekh, The Silent King’s self-mill not seeming all that exciting. Now the full card list is here, it’s a pleasant surprise. Necron Dynasties is less flashy than the other decks shown so far. It doesn’t have the giant hulking creatures that Tyranid Swarm boasts, nor the crazy Cascade antics of The Ruinous Powers deck, but it looks to be a tightly synergistic, powerful Commander deck all the same.
The full decklist for Necron Dynasties was revealed by the Command Zone on Thursday. You can find all three decks revealed so far on the official Magic website, though this lacks images for all the new cards.
WotC is revealing one deck each day. The Tyranids scuttled in on Tuesday, The Ruinous Powers made their mark on Wednesday, and the Necrons awoke on Thursday. That just leaves the Imperium factions deck, Forces of the Imperium, which should be out later today, on PleasantKenobi’s YouTube channel.
For further details, including release dates, more previews, and info on the Warhammer Secret Lairs, try out Warhammer 40k MTG crossover guide.