Mirrodin Besieged EDH Set Review: Part 2

Time for Part 2 of my EDH set review of MBS. We'll do the colored spells starting with White.

A damn fine Knight, 3/1 Battle cry for 1W is a bargain. Still not good enough for EDH, as this guy basically just attacks and that's all. He's to small to be a relevant threat in EDH, which is a common problem with most White creatures in this block.

Removal is removal, so I’m obliged to give this common a passing reference at least. But just to be clear: this is bad removal. These kind of tempo effects are pretty lackluster in EDH, where games are typically much slower already. Also, 5 mana removal should usually be of the "Wrath" variety.

 This is a reprint, which I usually don’t go into in these reviews, but this is one I expect to see some play. And I do think it’s playable. Two mana is not a bad cost to destroy something like Sword of Fire and Ice or Citanul Flute – you’d be happy if it did only that most of the time. So, the life-gain aspect is just added value. But would I trade the ability to hit Enchantments for some incidental life gain? Probably not, unless I had a Sharuum deck in my meta.

 Another common I feel warrants mention, because it does have an appealing effect, at first glance. Still, I think it’s a bit weak for most EDH decks, and I wouldn’t consider this even for my Sharuum decks – there are simply better options available.

This one has a very high “wow” factor, which makes it hard to rate objectively. It’s probably not EDH-worthy, but it is a possible strategy to run this along with a handful of other Battle-cry creatures in a token deck to make alpha strikes a bit easier. Not entirely unplayable, perhaps, but for the most part it would seem out of place in EDH.














I’m not a big fan or Journey to Nowhere or O-Ring in EDH – removal that dies to other removal is usually pretty bad, and can come back to bite you in the ass later on. This guy is both MORE fragile, and LESS versatile, so he seems downright terrible to me. You should have no trouble finding something better. That said, if you don’t play him as removal, instead abusing him as a repeatable “blink” for your own ETBF-effect Artifacts, he might be okay… if you can find a way to do so.









Nice! It's too bad White Weenie isn't actually a viable strategy in EDH, or this guy might be an all-star. But, such is not the case, and this guy is just too damn small to make an impact.

Finally, our first real bomb of the set! Let’s get the negatives out of the way first. I hate that this makes a Horror token. I guess in context of the Mirrodin set and storyline it makes sense, but taken on it’s own it’s just a flavor nightmare. I’d rather they saved this for a set were they could just make the token and Avatar token or something. Or if they’d made this a black Sorcery, that’d be okay. But that’s nitpicking, isn’t it?

Another issue is that it only counts creatures actually killed by this card, so if your opponent has a sac outlet – say, Dimir House Guard or something – they can just sac all their men in response to considerably shrink your resulting Horror token.

Still, in EDH it’s often possible to follow up a Wrath effect with a creature in the same turn. This just packs it all into one card – it clears the board AND helps you rebuild. For six mana, it’s not a bad investment, and if you can still drop another creature, that puts you in a very enviable position. One of the best EDH cards in the set, for sure.



Okay, by itself, this thing is a 4/4 Flying Lifelinker. Not bad, but for six mana including a heavy triple White investment, you kinda want more, don’t you? Compare this to Baneslayer and it just looks downright horrid. Maybe that’s not fair, though – many cards look bad next to BSA. Okay, compare it to bargain-bin all-star Battlegrace Angel – it still looks pretty bad, doesn’t it?













IT’S CATURDAY! POST SOME FUCKING CATS!

A fine card in it's own right, this will be played more for the fact that it makes kitties than anything else. Custom-made lolcat tokens will be the next big thing, I assume.