Type: Hex Power
Effect Text: Send your King to the graveyard. If your King was on the field, draw three units; if it was in your hand, draw four.
Flavor Text: "It is a far far better thing I do than I have ever done; it is a far far better rest I go to than I have ever known."
Flavor Source: Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
Artwork: Marie Antoinette on the way to her execution by François Flameng (1887)
Strategy:
Execution is useful in two main scenarios: (1) if you still have a king, but no units left, you can convert your somewhat useless king into units, or (2) you can bluff running out of units, but then obtain many new ones seemingly from nowhere. Depending on the scenario, you may want to take advantage of your King’s unique power, or simply take the extra unit by playing Execution with your King still in hand.
About the card:
This painting, by the French painter Francois Flameng, shows Marie Antoinette on her way to the guillotine October 16, 1793. She was the last queen of France before the French Revolution and the wife of King Louis XVI, who had been executed on January 21, 1793 after the monarch had been abolished. Born into the Hapsburg dynasty of Empress Maria Theresa and Emperor Francis I, she was married to Louis in 1770 at age 14 as a means to end hostilities between France and Austria. Her lavish spending and resistance to social reforms made her unpopular with the French, and she was accused of sympathizing with the Austrian empire.
The flavor text is the famous last line of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. Uttered by the character Sydney Carton as he goes to execution after trading places with another man in order to save that man and his family.
