Wizards of the Coast is in the middle of spoiling a whole lot of information regarding the upcoming Magic: The Gathering fall expansion Throne of Eldraine. Centered around fairy tales and knights, there are plenty of interesting cards announced thus far.

The Royal Scions Planeswalker Card Leaks

All Three The Royal Scions Abilities

Like with other legendary planeswalkers, the MTG Royal Scions have three abilities that you can use with this card. Oddly enough, there are two different plus one loyalty abilities that the twin duo have, continuing the theme of having low costs overall for this card.

The first of these plus one abilities allow you to do the London Mulligan feature at will in the game. You can draw a card, but then you must discard a card in the process. London Mulligan is a feature that players can use at the beginning of each match they are in.

If you don’t like your starting hand, you can mulligan for a new one, but you’ll have to discard a card for each time you’ve done it in that particular match. This first ability carries that same London Mulligan feature over to the first ability that you can use to gain one loyalty point.

It is an unfortunate ability since you have to discard a card to draw a card to add to your hand. But it doesn’t end there since there is yet another plus one loyalty ability that The Royal Scions have. This plus one ability grants a nice little boost to one of your creatures.

With the second plus one ability, you can target a creature on your side of the field and give it plus two/plus zero to its stats. It will also gain the first strike. If you aren’t familiar with this mechanic, this creature will attack first so long as the enemy doesn’t have the first strike.

The creature will gain trample which allows you to deal with any remaining damage to the enemy player or planeswalker, even if another creature tries to block the attack. In all honesty, this is by far a more useful ability than the first one that has too many negatives attached to it.

Of course, like any other planeswalker, there is an ultimate ability that costs a whopping eight loyalty points. When you use this ultimate ability, what it does is allow you to draw a surprising four cards at once. Then, you can deal damage to any target on the field.

The damage that you deal will be equal to the number of cards that you will have in your hand after you draw the four cards. So, at the very base minimum, this ultimate ability will deal four damage to a target creature or player. Of course, it can only go up from there if you already have a ton of cards.

The Royal Scions Have Some Issues

The issue is the synergy between the planeswalker and its abilities. For one, its first two abilities are only able to gain one loyalty point at a time. Because of this, you have to go through at least three turns of having the MTG Royal Scions on the field before you can use the good ultimate ability.

Also, one of the three abilities – the first one – isn’t worth using for the most part unless you need a new card and hate the one you currently have. Or, if you have no creatures on the field and need to draw one. Otherwise, you should always be using the second ability to gain loyalty points.

It would be one thing if the first ability allowed you to draw a card, but since you have to discard one, it doesn’t help with the ultimate ability. This does make the first ability seem sort of useless when it comes to combining with the other two.

The only use we can see for the first ability of the twin duo is with other cards that get bonuses for the second card drawn that turn. Regardless, this is one card that tried too hard to balance between blue and red mechanics and wound up weaker in the process.

Players won’t have to wait too much longer to enjoy using The Royal Scions in their deck. The Throne of Eldraine expansion is set to launch digitally on September 26 with a tabletop physical release happening a bit later on October 4. Stay tuned for more announcements and leaks like this one.