Conspiracy (CNS): The MTG Draft Set Guide
Before Conspiracy, a booster draft was always a 1v1 or team affair. In 2014, Wizards of the Coast flipped that assumption entirely: what if the draft itself was part of the game? What if the cards you picked in secret shaped the rules before a single land was played?
That's the premise of Conspiracy (CNS), released in June 2014 - a 210-card set (197 cards in the main set) designed from the ground up for multiplayer booster draft. It introduced a brand-new card type, a new draft variant, and a genuinely novel way to think about limited play. It wasn't built for Standard or Modern. It wasn't built for your local FNM eight-man pod. It was built for a group of friends sitting around a table, doing something Magic had never quite done before.
What is Conspiracy?
Conspiracy is a supplemental Magic: The Gathering set released in June 2014 with the set code CNS. It is not part of any Standard-legal block and was never intended for constructed play. Instead, it was designed exclusively for a new limited format: Conspiracy Draft.
In Conspiracy Draft, players draft together - typically six to eight people - and then play a free-for-all multiplayer game using the decks they just built. The twist is that certain cards, most notably the set's namesake card type, never go into your deck at all. They go into a separate zone before the game starts and quietly warp reality from there.
Conspiracy was followed by a second set in the series, Conspiracy: Take the Crown (CN2), released in 2016.
Themes and mechanics
The Conspiracy card type
The headline mechanic of CNS is the Conspiracy card type itself - and it's unlike anything else in Magic.
Conspiracy cards are not permanents. They can't be cast. They can't be included in your deck. Instead, at the start of a game - before decks are even shuffled - each player may place any number of conspiracy cards from their sideboard into the command zone, where they sit for the entire game and do their work.
Rules note: As long as a conspiracy card is face up in the command zone, its static and triggered abilities are active. A face-down conspiracy has no characteristics at all - it's a blank slate in the zone until revealed.
The mechanical consequence of this is that the draft itself becomes a strategic layer. You're not just picking the best creatures and removal spells. You're picking cards that will alter the fundamental rules of the game you're about to play, and you're doing it in secret.
Hidden agenda
Some conspiracy cards have the keyword ability hidden agenda. These cards enter the command zone face down, and as you put them there, you secretly name a card. When the conspiracy is eventually revealed - or if you choose to reveal it - its ability applies to every card with that name you control.
This creates genuine mind games during the draft itself. If you're picking up a conspiracy that cares about a specific card name, you're probably also picking up copies of that card. And nobody else knows.
Rules note: You may look at your own face-down conspiracy cards at any time. You cannot look at your opponents'.
Draft-matters design
Beyond the Conspiracy card type, CNS is full of cards with abilities that trigger during the draft - before the game even begins. Effects that fire when you draft a card, abilities that count how many cards of a type you've picked, and mechanics that reward you for passing or taking specific cards all appear in the set.
This "draft-matters" design space was essentially new territory for Magic. The draft pod itself becomes a game within a game, with its own decisions and hidden information.
Multiplayer-focused mechanics
Because CNS is built for free-for-all play, it leans into multiplayer mechanics throughout the main card set:
- Voting - cards that ask every player at the table to vote on an outcome, then resolve based on the tally
- Will of the council - a specific subtype of voting mechanic where the majority vote determines which of two effects happens
- Melee - a keyword that rewards attacking multiple opponents
- Reprint staples chosen specifically because they play well in multiplayer games
The voting mechanic in particular encourages table politics. Do you vote for the option that helps you, or the one that keeps a specific threat in check? Do you broker a deal with another player before the vote resolves? These are questions that don't exist in a 1v1 game, and CNS is built to make them interesting.
Limited and Draft
How Conspiracy Draft works
A typical Conspiracy Draft pod runs with six to eight players. Each player opens three packs and drafts normally - pick a card, pass the pack, repeat. The key differences from a regular draft are:
- Conspiracy cards drafted go to your sideboard, not your pile of potential deck cards
- Some cards may have effects that happen during the pick itself
- After the draft, players build their decks (typically 40 cards, as in any limited format) and place conspiracy cards into the command zone
- Players then play a free-for-all multiplayer game, often with the last player standing winning - though pods can agree on other win conditions
Because it's multiplayer, threat assessment is different from 1v1 limited. Being archenemy (the most powerful-looking player at the table) is dangerous. Diplomacy, threat perception, and timing your moves relative to the whole table matter as much as raw card quality.
Draft strategy
In CNS draft, conspiracy cards can meaningfully warp game plans, and picking them early when you can still build around them is generally correct. A hidden agenda conspiracy naming a card you then pick four copies of is a genuine strategic axis - but committing to that line early, in secret, while your opponents don't know what you're doing, is both the appeal and the challenge.
Multiplayer limited also rewards removal and interaction differently than 1v1. Cards that affect all opponents, permanents that generate ongoing value over a long game, and effects that scale with the number of players at the table all go up in value compared to a typical draft format.
Lore and setting
Conspiracy is set on Fiora, a plane defined by political intrigue, noble houses, and shadowy power struggles - a setting that perfectly mirrors the behind-the-scenes maneuvering of the draft format itself.
The central location is Paliano, the High City, a place where assassination, deal-making, and hidden agendas are the currency of power. The set's story involves a tournament organised as cover for something far more dangerous, with various factions scheming against each other beneath the surface of what looks like a formal competition.
The flavour text throughout CNS leans heavily into themes of secrets, loyalty, betrayal, and the gap between public appearances and private motives - all of which map elegantly onto a format where half the cards at the table are face down and no one knows exactly what anyone else picked.
Notable cards and impact
Because CNS was not legal in Standard and was explicitly a supplemental product, its impact on constructed formats comes primarily through reprints. The set included a number of powerful cards that were meaningful inclusions for Legacy, Vintage, and Commander players at the time of release.
The more lasting impact, though, is the Conspiracy card type and the Conspiracy Draft format itself. CNS proved that the booster draft structure could support mechanics that operate during the draft - a design space that had barely been touched before. It also demonstrated that multiplayer limited could be a rich, distinct experience rather than just a variant of 1v1 draft.
Set legacy
Conspiracy holds a genuinely special place in Magic's history. It's not often that a set introduces an entirely new card type, a new game zone interaction, and a new way to play limited all at once - and makes all three feel cohesive rather than gimmicky.
The hidden agenda mechanic, in particular, is one of my favourite pieces of game design in Magic's history. The idea that information asymmetry during a draft becomes a strategic resource is clever at a structural level that goes beyond individual card power.
The format also aged well as a casual experience. A Conspiracy Draft night with a group of friends is a genuinely different kind of Magic evening - longer, louder, more political, and more memorable than a typical draft. The 2016 follow-up, Conspiracy: Take the Crown (CN2), expanded on the same foundation with additional mechanics and further developed Fiora's story.
Format check: Conspiracy cards (the card type) are legal only in limited play, specifically the Conspiracy Draft variant. They are not legal in any constructed format. Some individual card reprints from CNS may be legal in various constructed formats - check the specific card's legality on Scryfall or the official format pages.
For a set that was never meant to touch a tournament floor, Conspiracy left a surprisingly deep footprint. ✨
