Mirrodin Besieged: EDH Set Review, Part 1

Alright folks, it's that time. The Mirrodin Besieged visual spoiler is up; all the cards are now publicly available to peruse and discuss, which is precisely what I mean to do. I will be discussing the cards' relevance and playability in EDH specifically, but don't blame me if I give passing mention to other formats. Yet the focus will remain solely on EDH viability.

I will discuss every rare/mythic in the set, and many of the uncommons. I will skip most of the commons, as 90% will be simply horrid in the EDH format, so to save time and eliminate redundancy I will usually only discuss a common (or even an uncommon) if I think it's playable or possibly so.

I will kick things off by discussing the Legenday creatures in the set, and looking at their potential as Generals as well as just cards in your deck.

And now... The Legends!

  Thrun, the Last Troll. This guy is pretty neat, I have to say. He's extremely difficult to get rid of once on the board, but you can't be proactive and counter him either. Basically old school Wrath and other "cannot be regenerated" sweepers will do the trick, as will Hallowed Burial, Final Judgement and a few other niche spells. Pinpoint removal is worthless, and any "wrath" without a regen clause will likely fail as well.
   A 4/4 for four mana, he's efficient and sturdy, no slouch in combat... in most formats. In EDH, he'll be a bit on the small side, but probably not totally irrelevant.
   As a general, he could certainly work out okay - the last Legend we had with "super shroud" was a pretty big hit, so Thrun could do alright. I'm not a fan of mono-color decks, but I do know this guy has some stiff competition in mono-G, so I expect him to be fairly obscure as a general, no where near as popular as Uril.
   The more common use for this guy will be just as a good mid-range guy in a counterspell-laden format. You'll often want bigger threats, but he can come down fast enough to get into the red zone before it's too clogged up. Overall, he's playable, but not a star.

   As a General, she is going to have to work extra hard to get me interested. She makes deck building an interesting puzzle, but I don’t really like generals with such a strong “build-around-me” concept, and her ability in particular I think would make a very boring deck.

   As just a card in your deck, she’s going to be worth running simply as a 3/3 with First Strike and Deathtouch. I’ve been waiting a long time for those two abilities to appear on a creature together, and in that department she certainly delivers. I don't think every B/G deck will want to run her, but she'll make the cut in some of those.

So, neither of the new Legends make much of a splash with me, but neither are they strictly horrible. Glissa might be ideal for an extremely clever "Johnny" and Thrun would make a great General in a newer, low-powered play group. 

With the next  post, we'll get into the meat of the set, and starting with the White cards.

Enjoy.