Archenemy: Nicol Bolas

Archenemy: Nicol Bolas
[[File:{{#setmainimage:E01 logo.png}}|250px]]
Set Information
Set symbol
Symbol description	Horns and gem of Nicol Bolas
Design	Gavin Verhey (lead) Jules Robins Mel Li Melissa DeTora Matthew Danner
Development	Bryan Hawley (lead) Yoni Skolnik Jules Robins Mel Li Eli Shiffrin
Art direction	Jeremy Jarvis
Release date	June 16, 2017
Plane	Amonkhet
Themes and mechanics	Scheme Cards
Set size	260 (Four 60 card theme decks + 20 schemes)
Expansion code	E01
Archenemy sets
[[Archenemy]] [[Archenemy: Nicol Bolas]] N/A
Magic: The Gathering Chronology
[[Commander Anthology]] Archenemy: Nicol Bolas [[Hour of Devastation‎‎]]

Archenemy: Nicol Bolas is the second Magic set designed for the multiplayer Archenemy format. It was released on June 16, 2017 .

Set details

Archenemy: Nicol Bolas Opened Box

“

A battle 25,000 years in the making.

”

Unlike the first Archenemy release, which offered four villain decks with varying themes, Nicol Bolas contains decks for the opposing team. In addition to the single villain deck for its namesake, it includes three further decks, focused on members of the Gatewatch, tuned specifically for play against that villain deck. It also includes new scheme cards to be paired with the villain deck.

In Archenemy: Nicol Bolas, one player takes on the role of the elder dragon Planeswalker, Nicol Bolas. The opposing team plays as Gideon Jura, Chandra Nalaar, and Nissa Revane. Each character has a 60-card deck, containing a non-premium planeswalker card, and Nicol Bolas has an additional deck of 20 all-new oversized scheme cards. Each deck utilizes colors previously shown to be linked to their respective characters; notably, Nissa uses both blue and green, while the entire Gatewatch team lacks any black.

The product also contains 10 double-sided tokens, 4 deck boxes, 1 life tracker, and 1 rules insert. The set is sold in English only. The complete set comes in one box, as opposed to the original Archenemy, which was sold in four different game packs. It was released at an MSRP of $59.99 USD.

This product is the so-called annex set of Amonkhet. The art of the packaging and within the scenes and themes from Amonkhet, and focuses on the confrontation between the Gatewatch and Bolas in the following set, Hour of Devastation. The basic lands that are used are unique to the set, featuring pairs of new art depicting Amonkhet before and after its destruction.

Rules change

When the archenemy attacks any player or planeswalker on the opposing team, any creature a teammate of the defending player controls may be assigned as a blocker by that creature's controller. This replaces the previous blocking rules, which followed normal multiplayer blocking conventions.

Theme decks

Archenemy: Nicol Bolas has four preconstructed decks, one for Nicol Bolas and three for the members of the Gatewatch. The name cards received new art.

Theme deck name	Colors Included					Iconic card
Nicol Bolas		U	B	R		Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker
Gideon Jura	W					Gideon Jura
Chandra Nalaar				R		Chandra, Pyromaster
Nissa Revane		U			G	Nissa, Worldwaker

Tokens

The 10 double-faced tokens are:

• 1 1/1 Soldier / 1/1 Spirit with Flying
• 1 1/1 Soldier / 3/3 Beast
• 3 1/1 Soldiers / 4/4 Beasts
• 5 2/2 Zombies / 3/3 Horrors