Angelic Voices

I hate this card.

It's the epitome of bad design. First, it's reactionary. Crusade wasn't good enough -- even though it was! -- because it hit all white dudes. So the designers made a "fixed" Crusade that only hit your dudes. Second, it's gone overboard. It not only restricts when you get the bonus, it doubles the mana cost. A four-mana one-sided Crusade would be punishment enough (Glorious Anthem wasn't broke at three mana, f'rinstance), but making it go active under specific circumstances is a groan-inducer. Finally, look at that drawback -- if you control no nonartifact, nonwhite creatures? The person who wrote that ought to be ashamed of him or herself. It's like the guys who made "bands with others" tried their hand at "color matters" drawbacks, but didn't realize that the drawback is about as close to "color has zero relevance" as it can be. Check out the Oracle ruling on this baby:

"So, if your only creature is a white and green creature, or a red artifact creature, you would get the bonus."

That's right -- if you have Slash Panther and nothing else, Angelic Voices gives him a +1/+1 bonus. WTF doesn't even begin to describe it; I'm confident that this card is in the Top 3 Rules Headaches and Causes of Bitter Disputes from this set. All for a bad Glorious Anthem!

So, what's the fix? I think we both know what the fix is.

Mark Rosewater, et al, looked back at the history of Magic when Sixth Edition and the brand-new rules came down that created modern Magic. Among their efforts was a little set called Urza's Saga, which attempted to rewrite many classic cards; I'm convinced that it was envisioned as part of the foundation of a new age of Magic, with Urza's block as the reincarnation of Legends. (That part of me that wears tinfoil hats sometimes wonders if some of the set's design mistakes -- like Yawgmoth's Bargain and Tolarian Academy -- weren't actually mistakes, but an attempt to create a new generation of power cards.)

One of the cards the set revisited was Crusade (and its descendents, by extension). Their solution? Glorious Anthem. It's perhaps a little too streamlined next to Crusade -- just slap a colorless mana on it and it's golden, amirite? -- but has stood the test of time. It's probably the best of the crop, and the only one that doesn't look awkward on its own merits. Unlike Lightning Bolt, which could've been a natural outgrowth of Shock and Incinerate, I'd wager that the original Crusade would never have been printed if Glorious Anthem came first.