Mirrodin Besieged - The Big EDH/Commander Review Part II -Artifacts

Ok, here's Part 2: The artifacts.

I had said there there may be more artifacts than non-artifacts but, as it turns out, there's only 10 to the pervious 14. Shucks! The same rules apply vis-a-vis the mechanic-centric cards needing to stand up by themselves. They really don't, so we'll be doing this without them.

Sword of Feast and Famine:

Let's start with the straight forward stuff first. Long gone are the days when we wet the bed over a Sword of X and Y. Let's have a look at this one: Basic 2 colour protection and +2/+2 boost. Pro-Green and Black are nice and obviously relevant in the format, maybe less so than G/U but nice nonetheless. The discard ability is a lot weaker in multiplayer Commander than in any of the 1v1 formats, it could even be a disadvantage if you're unable to remove whatever they discard. When you're moving a card from a zone they can use to another zone they can use just as easily, you always have to be careful. I'd prefer if the discard was random or chosen by you but we're stuck with the defending play choosing not to block because he really wants that Genesis in his graveyard and you're going to help him with that.

The second ability is what makes this Sword interesting and it's probably what will ultimately determine whether it will be widely used. What do you need to do before combat that you're willing to spend your mana on with the idea that you should be able to untap once you've dealt damage. The "should" is important because, if you were counting on that "untap" trigger and your attack is Mazed or Fogged, you're an unhappy bunny. Someone will find a great use for this in Commander. Until then it's a good Type 2 sideboard card against Infect decks.

Bonehoard:

Bonehoard is one of the nicer Commander cards in the set IMO. Firstly, it's rare but nothing too fancy or splashy so getting a single copy shouldn't be too hard. SSG are pre-selling them for $1.25 and there's nothing really there that suggests that they are going to rise all that much above that. You're getting an "almost" Lhurgoyf for 4 colourless mana. According to the calculation of coloured/colourless mana, it should cost us 6, but for the loss of 1 toughness, we get it at 4. That's a good deal.

We all know about Living Weapons: Equipment that CIPs attached to a 0/0. This one gives a +X/+X boost so, as long as the graveyards are stacked, it's an X/X for 4. When it dies, it doesn't: it reverts to being a normal Equipment. The initial deal on equipment was that you needed mana, the equipment card and a creature to equip it to. In that sense, it was a dead top-deck on an empty board. Bonehoard is that equipment that will always be attached to a creature so it's never a dead draw on an empty board. The rest of the Living Weapons are, frankly, disappointing but this is one that could come out huge and help your smaller guys be huge too. If ever the graveyards get exiled or shuffled back in, it sticks about ready for when they get filled back up again. Stuff dies all the time in EDH, if you are patient, it will always be a player.

Another minor advantage to this: Bribery doesn't hit it. You have a guarenteed creature in your deck that can never be pulled against you on a Bribery. You can go find it with your Fabricate and drop it into play as a monster but your opponent need to be running Acquire to do the same.

For once, I'm happy to rubber-stamp a vanilla P/T boost equipment.

Darksteel Plate:

We've see this before as the legendary Shield of Kaldra but this is the knock-off version. We've traded in the protection for Helm & Sword for a huge mana reduction. The original at 4 & 4 was really only played if you were running the remaining 2 but this will slide right into decks looking to protect their general at all costs. 3 to cast and 2 to equip, both the creature and the Plate are indestructible, it comes in all sizes from Shaggy Dog (Isamaru), through Elemental (Ashling) right up to Dragon (Insert Dragon Legend Name here).

As a direct comparison to Living Weapon equipment it still falls short at the "onto an empty board test" but realistically you want to be playing this onto your general more often than not.

Ironically the gung-ho flavour text comes from a charater that you can never equip this to: Koth. Flavour fail.

Phyrexian Revoker:
Last of the straight forward ones, Phyrexian Revoker is a Pithing Needle on legs. A 2/1 for 2 colourless is an acceptable set of stats, if a little fragile. A smaller front end and larger butt whould have been batter because, let's face it, if you fear a card enough to run this and name it, you're not going to put it into any danger.

Big differences between the master and the student, Needle said "a card" while the Revoker stipulates non-land. Needle says mana-abilities are sacrosant but the Revoker doesn't care about that. Between them they can both shut down planeswalkers, creatures and artifacts, seperatly they can handle the likes of Gilded Lotus and Maze of Ith.

Our only real concern with these two obviously good cards is where we draw the line as to the number of answers we're willing to run balanced against the threat count our deck needs to maintain. With lovely disruption cards like this, we have answers if we need them.

Mirrorworks:

In the recent Commandercast Generals Redux competition, I submitted a version of Mishra that allowed an artifact token copy of a cast artifact to come into play. He had text that exiled any existing tokens so as to avoid overly confusing boards. You got 1 token at a time.

Now R&D have come out with this monster of a card that allows you to pay 2 to make a single copy of any artifact that comes into play under your control. It doesn't go away. The board is going to be multiple different artifact token heaven.

Were they high when they made this?

Any artifact?

I'm going to plagerize Fugu from the official mtgcommander.net boards as he put it so very, very well:

I want to cast Mirrorworks, then cast Sculpting Steel as a copy of Mirrorworks, then use Mirrorworks to copy Sculpting Steel so I'll have three Mirrorworks. ...Then I'll Capsize Sculpting Steel and cast it again and copy it twice so I'll have five Mirrorworks. ...And then again, so I'll have nine! ...And then I'll cast Gilded Lotus, tap it, and copy it, and tap the copy, and copy it again, UNTIL I HAVE TEN GILDED LOTUSES! ...AND WITH MY TWELVE BLUE FLOATING I'LL CAPSIZE THE ORIGINAL GILDED LOTUS AND RECAST IT AND COPY IT NINE MORE TIMES AND CAPSIZE IT AND RECAST IT AND COPY IT NINE MORE TIMES UNTIL I HAVE ENOUGH MANA TO CAPSIZE SCULPTING STEEL AND RECAST IT AND COPY IT NINE TIMES SO I'LL HAVE NINETEEN MIRRORWORKS AND THEN........ I'll stop.

But hey, I mean, why stop there? Fugu stopped well before doing something stupid. At best, your opponent will waste 30 mins of your life trying to figure out some über combo to copy a Sol Ring (Hint: Just tap it when the copy ability is on the stack) but, at worst, it will make you wish you had a Shahrazad handy to start a sub-game with the rest of the table. Extreme cases may also require a Twincast. (Benoit, I'm looking at you!)

That all said, I'm going to play this until it gets group banned or real banned and I'm going to kill it on sight across the table from me. As a bonus I'm going to harrangue any R&D member that I meet about this because it's just stupid. I love my playgroup though so I'm going to learn how to use it first before I go sticking it randomly into a deck. I owe them that much.

Myr Welder :

Hey! Myr Welder, whatcha doing with Phyrexian Revoker's stats?

Here we go: a useful ability on a body that's not going to die when someone sneezes. What's the useful ability? I kid you not, it's the first one, not the second. Here we have an ability that any single colour can use: targetted artifact removal from graveyards. That's the ability that will mean the most in any game of Commander. It's almost irrelevant if he dies subsequently (as he will because, let's face it, "artifact" and "creature" are pretty low on the food chain in the format) because that dratted Mindslaver will be GONE! That Nev's Disk? GONE! Academy Ruins targetting Duplicant at EOT? >fizzle!< This is the "little" ability on Myr Welder, but it's the one that will mean that you can win games.

Guess what? He can also win games. Remove your Voltaic Key, remove your Soliton (whatever), machine gun your graveyards, tap, untap, draw a card, everyone draws a card, tap, untap, he gains flying, he gains trample, he returns an artifact to my hand and puts a new one into play, he taps target permanent and then untaps, tap, untap, and so on. Then he dies and you shrug because he's solved a lot of problems for you for the rest of the game. He's going to own some artifact decks so hard and we will laugh the laugh of victors (or cry like a baby because he's just dismantled my Wrexial deck).

Knowledge Pool:

This is going to be a pain.

First off, you don’t get to play anything you draw right away so if you want to resolve spell A, you need to play it (it gets exiled), trigger the Pool to play another spell from the pool and then play a second spell (it gets exiled) in order to play Spell A. Even then, I’m not sure that someone couldn’t gazump you with an instant once the “Exile that spell” trigger is on the stack. God forbid that some fool puts a counterspell on the pool so that anyone with an instant and a grudge can ruin your game.

Does needing to cast 2 spells to resolve the one you actually want remind you of any 2cc Blue flip general?

Knowledge Pool spells chaos, which is fun for some people. If your playgroup doesn’t like these overcomplicated cards where they feel they are getting scammed, this is one to avoid.

Oh, and from the FAQ, where this is the only card to have an entire page dedicated to it: X is 0 every time.

Psychosis Crawler:

The Phyrexians are really the Martians from Mars Attacks or so Psychosis Crawler would have you believe. A rare artifact creature in an artifact set, this had better be good. A */* for 5 colourless could be a great deal if you have 7 cards in hand or it could be a waste with only 1 other card in hand. Either way we don’t care really. If the fluctuating P/T is an interesting novelty, especially if you dream of growing it into a 15/15, it’s not what this card is about. It’s about winning the game: Psychosis Crawler is your win condition.

Either you set your deck up to draw a lot of cards and win slowly while controlling the table or you pair it with something that’s going to draw you a LOT of cards in one go and win right away. Something like Consecrated Sphinx and Teferi’s Puzzle Box or Memory Jar. Math time!

4-player game. You have Consecrated Sphinx & Psychosis Crawler in play along with Memory Jar. How much life will they lose when you activate the Jar?

You draw 7 cards, your opponents each draw 7 cards triggering the Sphinx which allows you to draw up to 14 per player. That’s… eh…. um…… lots? Actually, that makes 49 life loss for each opponent and you draw 49 cards, less of both if you are getting low as the Sphinx benefit is optional. If you didn’t just win, you’re doing it wrong. You can also attack with your 50/50 Crawler afterwards.

You can also replace the artifacts mentioned with any “draw 7” for a similar effect. Even if you can’t do the splashy kill, he’s incremental life loss tacked on to an effect you want to be doing anyway: drawing cards. It’s also obligatory so your opponents can’t “forget” to lose the life.

Spine of Ish Sah:

Speaking of things getting out of hand: What costs 0 and can destroy every non-shroud permanent on the battlefield?

Spine of Ish Sah, of course!

Spine also answers the question posed by Vindicate and Angel of Despair, to wit: What would a non-creature artifact version of Vindicate cost? The answer is obviously “7”.

So how do you destroy every non-shroud permanent for 0 mana? Well, I cheated a bit because it will cost some initial investment but once everything is in place, the Spine’s triggered graveyard ability makes this the cog in a nasty combo.

Spine of Ish Sah + Sculpting Steel + Krark-Clan Ironworks + 1 of Etherium Sculptor/Cloud Key/ Semblance Anvil. You play the Spine, then play the Sculpting Steel copying the Spine. Sacrifice the Sculpting Steel Copy to the Ironworks for 2 mana and it will return to your hand as the text on the Spine, copied by the Sculpting Steel, is still valid. Any of the cost reducers will then allow you to cast the Sculpting Steel for what’s in your mana pool, once again copying the Spine. Repeat until someone punches your lights out.

And, of course, Blightsteel Colossus:



Thanks to Adam for his Mirrorworks quote.