If you get all 3 out (in turn 4 or 5, with a bit of luck), pay 4 and tap them to get each turn:
- Gain control of target creature.
-Deal 3 damage to target player.
-Put five 1/1 soldier tokens on the battlefield.
Is that worth the 3 turns and the 3 cards you used in your combo, plus the 4 mana you have to pay every turn to get it moving? I don't know, I'm probably never going to play a deck based on these either way.
Posted By:
Lash_of_Dragonbreath
(7/8/2011 8:27:53 PM)
Scepter of Empires Throne of Empires ... I actually like the concept of specific cards working together.
Posted By:
HuntedWumpusMustDie
(7/11/2011 11:52:30 AM)
This card saved my bacon in draft. It's a good way to deal with creatures you can't otherwise do anything about, and it's a way to break out of Ice Cages and kill illusions without wasting real removal.
Posted By:
Gelzo
(7/11/2011 2:47:35 AM)
Lol @Zerof89. Honestly, you really think this hasn't been done before? Look at Urborg Panther and Helm of Kaldra before you start rambling nonsense.
Won me a couple of matches at the prerelease, and I think it's fair to say that this card is really strong in limited. If Tumbling Magnet is strong enough for tournament play, then having a repeatable ability to tap creatures has to be good.
Of the Empires cycle, this is probably my favorite card. Throne of Empires is "ok", but because it can only create a single 1/1 at a time (assuming you haven't put the set together), it's more or less inferior to Jade Mage because you won't be able to overwhelm your opponents with tokens anytime soon.
Posted By:
GrimjawxRULES
(7/11/2011 4:42:09 AM)
@sonorhC: These certainly won't get more playable than the Kaldra set, since you won't get any Stonehewer Giants or Stoneforge Mystics for these.
I really like Wizards idea of a new "thron" concept, but these are a bit underwhelming.
Maybe it's actually just the Crown's huge activation cost that bugs me (it seemingly got more expensive to nerv the empowered ability a bit).
But i don't want to put four of these into a deck if i'm not going to activate two of these in a turn.
Actually, i don't even want to put a single one of these into my deck...
If the activation cost would have been 
only, i would have had more fun building a deck around that. An artificial Master Decoy doesn't sound that wrong if we get a one-drop version of it in M12 as well, does it?
Posted By:
Mode
(7/12/2011 4:42:43 PM)
Courtesy links: Scepter of Empires Throne of Empires
I dunno... The fact that these aren't legendary might make them a little more playable than the Kaldra set, but you'd really need to build around them. And on the other hand, there are less options for tutoring up non-equipment artifacts, too.
Posted By:
sonorhC
(7/8/2011 9:06:37 AM)
Good luck, empires decks. You are gonna need it.
Posted By:
TheSwarm
(7/7/2011 9:59:18 PM)
I actually really love the art on the Empire cards, but the mechanics are just... no.
This isn't like the Urzatron, which you can add a piece to every turn, for free. Never mind that, if you only had, for instance, two Power Plants and one Mine on the field, you can still tap for three mana. With Empires, if you have two Crown's on the field and nothing else, you still have to pay 6 CMC to get the abilities to fire.
I'm not saying that the payoff with Empire's isn't fantastic, because it is, just that the reward isn't worth the twelve spots in your deck that it requires.
Posted By:
EvilCartographer
(7/21/2011 6:21:34 AM)
I like this group. I have no idea how to effectively use them, but I like them.
Posted By:
Tigerguy786
(7/7/2011 5:45:09 PM)
Make sure you also run all of these Empire artifacts with your Urza's power plant, Urza's mine, and Urza's tower
Posted By:
DlCK
(7/8/2011 3:01:52 PM)