Hi kids! Today we're going to cover the remainder of Mirrodin Besieged. Mostly this will be Artifacts, but will also cover the lands/multicolor portion, which is like 3 cards... well, let's get started.
We'll start with the elephant in the room. I'll just be blunt and say it: this guy isn't going to live up to the hype. Yes, he's and indestrcutible one-hit-kill machine. He'll be played and he'll be good... but he won't be Emrakul. Even Red can effectively deal with this guy now, thanks to Into the Core.
That all said, he is quite a potent threat, so I do expect him to be quite good in any deck that can reasonably expect to cast him, or cheat him out somehow. Mono-G ramp now has an acceptable replacement for Emrakul.
Oh, one other thing... if you DO play this guy, beware of Bribery or Acquire. Mwah ha ha!
So this is effectively a colorless Lhurgoyf that can just move to a new creature. Seems nice... but how good is Lhurgoyf in EDH? Not very, at least in my experience. I rate this one as unplayable.
This cute little guy could find a home in Kemba decks, or any other deck that specifically goes for the Equipment Voltron strategy. Other than that, he's pretty useless for most decks.
This thing is so weird. It causes life loss and Poison effects, which just seems redundant. The mill aspect is virtually worthless too, for EDH. This can help an Infect deck push through their Poison on a stalled board, but I'm not sure they'd want to spend so much mana to do it.
I'll take my Greaves over this any day. This does have it's own appeal, but I find that most targeted removal in my metagame is of the RFG variety. For that reason I prefer Shroud over Indestructible.
I do expect people to play this, and I'm not necessarily saying it's wrong to do so. I wouldn't, is all.
This card has such an awesome and fun effect, I want to put it in every deck just to see what wackiness can occur. However, since it works for everyone, it can blow up in your face pretty easily. I would strongly suggest that you relegate this to group hug, chaos and other deck types where winning is not that important. There are probably ways to mitigate the symmetry to your benefit, but I don’t really care about such applications. I’m just interested in seeing this thing create mind-raping rules nightmares.
I'm pretty sure I didn't ask for a "fixed" Disciple of the Vault. But whoever DID ask for such a thing is probably pretty disappointed in this card.
This is awkward… it’s only going to be playable against artifact decks, but as an artifact itself, it will just die to your mass-artifact-removal (which, if you are running this kind of tech against Sharuum or whatever, you’re obviously running Shatterstorm effects too). That MIGHT kill them on the spot, but it probably won’t and then you don’t have THIS anymore, so… yeah. Awkward.
A Minion Reflector for Artifacts and a nice, easy way to break the Singleton rule of EDH, this isn’t a terrible card by any means. However, Minion Reflector is much less narrow and hasn’t seen a great deal of play in EDH. It has its fans, sure, and this will definitely find some avid supporters as well. Having two of something IS usually better than having one of it, after all. I do have to wonder how much this and Prototype Portal will compete for a slot...
Cute. If there is in fact a Myr Tribal deck out there in EDH-land, this is a must-run. I haven’t seen one yet, though.
They must have really been proud of Necrotic Ooze to print essentially the same card in the very next set… except this one is pretty lame in comparison. You’ll get an in-depth comparison of the two later, but for now, I’ll just say that this is pretty bad, in my opinion.
This isn’t terrible or terrific. Infect decks will probably be able to play this and be satisfied with it; it does kill in two hits, after all. Not too appealing elsewhere, though.
You’d think that a Pithing Needle that could attack and block would be an improvement over the original, right? WRONG. This guy is much worse than the Needle, precisely because he’s a creature. That just makes him SO much more fragile. He’ll die to incidental board sweepers all the time, and his combat stats are hardly significant in EDH. The correct way to look at this guy is “a Pithing Needle that is much easier for your opponents to get rid of”.
Hmm, not bad… It is best in a deck that already seeks to abuse Niv-Mizzet as it provides some redundancy in effect, and you’re obviously already running lots of card-draw. It’s playable enough, if: A) your deck draws a ton of extra cards, and B) artifact hate isn’t too rampant in your metagame. I like it, possibly more than I should, and I kinda hope to see this showing up in some decklists.
Oh good lord. Undoubtedly there are many folks out there who will squeal with delight to see this card printed… I am not among them. Obviously, if you haven’t guessed by now, I’m generally not a big fan of any card that makes Sharuum/Dagsson decks even more broken (but have little to no use outside those archetypes).
Yet another card in this set with AMAZING art, but a mediocre ability. If you are trying to enable metalcraft, this isn't a terrible choice, but overall it just makes whatever creature you Equip it to susceptible to even more removal. That's basically NEVER going to be worth a measly +1/+1 bonus to me. Shame, I was looking forward to collecting foils of this one for all my decks...
Darksteel Ingot is better. It costs 1 more mana, but you get unlimited use AND Indestructibility out of the deal. Heck, Coalition Relic and even the Ravnica Signets are more appealing. I can’t imagine being desperate enough for mana-fixers to give this a second thought.
WTF? This thing is wonky. Master Transmuter and Venser, the Sojouner both immediately spring to mind… This could be played in decks that can abuse it, but it’s far too clunky to use elsewhere, though I suppose it could be a (overcosted) Vindicate for mono-U decks. It’s a nice outside-the-box design, and outside-the-box deck builders should enjoy this.
Man, I just don’t get it… so far the new Swords are rather unexciting and fail to live up to the standard set by Sword of Fire and Ice and Sword of Light and Shadow… and these new ones are MYTHIC for crying out loud! If anything, you’d expect them to be better than the originals. But no, WotC is dropping the ball big time with these. And as disappointing as it is, it may just be a blessing in disguise. SoFI and SoLS are so damn ubiquitous it’s actually kind of nice not having to agonize over which pair of Swords to run… or just imagine trying to find three cards to cut to run all five Swords. This particular Sword, though, is at least playable in EDH, whereas Body and Mind was patently terrible in the format. The “green half” is pretty good, actually – Bear Umbra is getting played, after all. In fact, certain decks will play it just for that ability alone. But the “black half” is rather weak and boring. It should have at least been “at random”. Oh well.
With the name Titan Forge, you’d expect it to make 6/6’s. I’ll take 9/9’s any day, though. I don’t really think this is playable, except just as a fun card that will very occasionally do awesome things. I do realize there are ways to speed up the process (Doubling Season in particular seems amusing), but even with help, it’s still an artifact that makes artifact creatures – very fragile and will usually just get blown up before you get a single token out of it. I will probably try to use this in my Sharuum deck anyway, though, just for the fun-factor if nothing else.
This is a fun card. I don’t know how good it is, really, but it seems pretty neat. It’s almost like a Buyback creature – you can play it, and then let it bounce back to your hand, netting the tokens in the process. Then you just hang on to it until someone kills all your tokens, and start the process all over again. I definitely think it’s playable, but it seems a bit under the curve for most decks. You should almost certainly be able to find something better for its slot, but it is conceivable that there are a few decks out there that really want just this sort of ability.
And the last few cards of the set, then we're done!
And, the Planeswalker we all knew was coming… Tezzeret 2.0. On one hand, he does seem more powerful than his previous incarnation. On the other, he’s just kinda boring… he basically just does the same thing as Tezzie 1.0 but in slightly different ways. Which makes sense… but it’s just tough to get excited about it. It is worth noting that 4 mana seems to be the magic number for Planeswalkers – all the best ones cost four. His Ultimate is pretty easy to pull off compared to most others, and it can outright kill a person on the spot fairly easily. All in all, he’s definitely playable, but not very interesting.
Yeah… pretty sure not too many people are going to want to play this, which such a steep downside. It could find a home in group hug of course, (as does nearly any card that might help you opponents more than yourself). Perhaps aggressive goblin or token decks could conceivably make use of this. Even that seems like a big if.
A very good land, and one that Skithyrix decks will be quite happy to run. Any deck with a modicum of Infect will be happy to supplement that strategy with this card. It could even pop up in Rafiq decks - even with just Putrefax and this, you have a reasonable chance at Poisoning you opponent to death fairly easily.
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