Mirrodin is the Artifact block

[Fellfrosch]

No big surprise there, since most of us assumed as much. Anyway, it sounds really cool and the first preview is right here:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/daily/mr87

Remember, all of you in Utah, TWG is taking a little trip to the Mirrodin prerelease on September 20. Everyone is welcome.

[Prometheus]

I finally got confirmation that my request for that day off actually worked. I'm in. Artifacts ho!

[Prometheus]

I was thinking a little about the Morridin prerelease today, and the thought occurred to me that enough of us go, we might be able to take the Morridin cards we get/win (assuming we do well) and use them for a Sealed league/tournament we could carry over through the rest of the block.

It sounds fun to me.   Get everyone playing Limited Morridin decks, and allow trading within the Sealed environment so we could have good Constructed decks within the Sealed environment. If nothing else, it sounds like a great way to get a taste of Morridin.

How many boosters would we have to get/win in order to form our own little Sealed league? Three per person is the standard isn't it?

In the meantime, I'm groovin over the new storyline Legends that Wizards revealed for the Morridin block.



An efficient first-striking Legend with a solid ability thrown in? I gotta like that. Green doesn't have enough first strike anyway. Bosh is pretty cool too, though a little less managable with his high cost and artifact-sucking ability.

Anyone else think that 'amount of mana in your pool' line might be a block mechanic? It seems too odd to be alone by itself.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

It is interesting that they used "equal to" instead of language that indicates you can have more mana than the artifact cost.

[Prometheus]

Yes, that does make the ability a little bit more tricky, if that's the way it works. I somewhat suspect the equal to may mean equal to or over, but we'll leave that for Rune Horvik to explain, I guess. Either way, unless one is using a massive mana generator of some kind (Wirewood Channeler or the Urzatron lands maybe), that typically won't be much of a problem. It's easy enough to generate the right amount before you go higher in the average case.

The similarity between her ability and the recent Scourge 'equal to the converted mana cost of the highest pernament you control' theme is striking though, and it makes me suspicious that we'll see more of it in Morridin. Just kinda inside-out backwards from what Scourge did.

[Fellfrosch]

I suspect that this mechanic is unique to this particular legend--Legends don't tend to share their abilities with others very much. I can see one or two cards in the block, but nothing as big as a theme.

[Prometheus]

Likely you're right. My instincts about the contents of unreleased sets have never been very good. On the other hand, I wouldn't say so on the basis of the argument you presented.

I see a good number of  Legends that share block themes and mechanics with other Legends. The Invasion dragon legends all based their triggered abilities on colors, and both Kangee, Aerie Keeper and Verdeloth the Ancient had kicker abilities. More recently, Karona and Ixidor both concerned themselves intensely with block mechanics and themes.

[Fellfrosch]

Karona and Ixidor are related to block themes, but their personal mechanics are their own. If Ixidor could morph himself then we'd have a precedent, but since all he does is interact with morph creatures (the way Karon interacts with tribes and Glissa interacts with artifacts), it seems like the trend holds.

But enough petty squabbling. We're going to the prerelease a week from tomorrow, and I want to know who is going, who's driving, and who's riding with who. Prometheus, what time do you think we should get there and how long do you think we'll stay?

[Prometheus]

Too bad. Petty Squabbling is fun sometimes.  

As for the prerelease, the last time I showed up I got there about 10 min late, and I made it onto the sixth flight or something absurd like that. It's in my article if I goofed on the stats, but the point is the same. It's best to show up before it starts if you want to get into an early flight. If you don't want to do a second flight and don't have any time restrictions for the day, that won't matter as much. They are, however, going to be holding a Team Sealed tournament at some point during the prerelease, and that might be a blast to join as well as a normal flight. Not sure how much everyone wants to play.

Flights run quite a while, but they changed the way they ran them between Legions & Scourge, so I hesitate to guess on how long a flight will last. The two I've been in have averaged around 7-8 hours, but that's only two data points, so it doesn't mean much statistically. They vary by the number and severity of late-running matches too. I do know that the organization running the show is pretty lenient about allowing late matches to continue past the time alloted in the tournament rules, so things like that are hard to guess & that getting into an early flight helps a lot if you want to go quickly & get into a second event---typically the flight should be shorter.

How long are we going to stay? I don't know. One flight is typically enough for me, but that Team Sealed match sounds fun. Throw in some card trading time, and ... ? Beats me.

I might be able to drive. My brother has been letting me use his car again, but that can change quickly.

[Fellfrosch]

I don't think I can afford a second flight, but I would like to do some trading. And I can probably drive. And you and I are probably the only ones who read this thread.

[Prometheus]

Sounds good. Want me to help call people up to find out if they're going?

[Prometheus]

Found what appears to be a full (or nearly so) Mirrodin spoiler. Kinda hate these in a way, but, whatever...

http://www.mtgnews.com/tracing/mirrodin/

I've been analysing the commons and gamebusting uncommons to see what the environment will look like. Destruction of anything other than artifacts seems to be at a premium and green + red seem to be the only decent colors at artifact busting. I don't remember seeing any cards that suggested that keeping the opponent's artifacts around was worthwhile, so red or green is a fairly good recommendation to start with.

I also noticed that most creatures tended to be rather small, particularly on the toughness side of things, so Equipment or +1/+1 counters will likely be the way to win the ground war.

Overall, the one card I'd recommend the most (non-Rare, anyway, but we're not likely to see those Rares much) is Isochron Scepter. There's more than a dozen instants that would lock up the game in one fashion or another with that sort of repeatability, including Raise the Alarm, Annul, Electrostatic Bolt, Shrapnel Blast, and Predator's Strike among the best of 'em. If your opponent doesn't already have the game bought and they aren't playing red or green, they're most likely done for if you slap any of those combos down. Interestingly enough, I wouldn't recommend Terror for this environment. Very strange.

You've probably already heard it before, but 40-card 2-color max with 17 land minimum, and focus on the creatures.

Any other thoughts, Fell? Strategic, organizational, or otherwise? If we only want to do one flight, the importance of the departure/arrival time plummets, but I'd still recommend arriving by 10 AM at the latest, just to make sure the finish time doesn't get too awfully drawn out.

[Fellfrosch]

I'd still like to get there before 8:30, so that a) it doesn't take the entire day, and b) we have our options open if we decide to do a team flight (which I'm warming up to).

As for strategy, I've read most of that same spoiler and I agree with your analysis. Green hates artifacts, so it will destroy them very nicely, but it doesn't really gain as much by using them as the other colors do. It looks to me like the ideal deck is going to be blue/green, so you can kill the other guy's artifacts while taking maximum advantage of your own, but obviously that's going to depend on the cards we pull. And for some reason I thought that Isochron Scepter was rare, probably because it's so powerful, so thanks for pointing out that it's uncommon.

I still like red because of it's speed, and because it can blow up artifacts and use them at the same time. I also like white a lot, since they've got some incredibly efficient weenies, but that might be hard to pull together in a non-constructed deck. The color I don't really have my mind around yet is black. What's its strength in this set?

[Fellfrosch]

Ooh, how about the Neurok Spy? He's a 2/2 for 3 mana who's unblockable if your opponent controls an artifact. Given the environment, I suspect he'll be unblockable in almost every game you play at the prerelease, and with some good equipment he could be very deadly.

And he's common. I forgot to mention that.

[Fellfrosch]

Okay, I've gone through the list more thoroughly this time (my kids are asleep), and these are my conclusions.

1) Given the huge number of artifacts, especially common artifact creatures, you could build a very nice mono-color deck without sacrificing card quality.

2) Given the prevalence of Myrs and Talismans, two cycles of artifacts that give cross-color mana, you could possibly (depending on what you get) build a very stable mana base for a three color deck. I'm not saying that it's likely, just that we should keep our eyes open for the possibility.

3) Given 1 and 2 together, they kind of cancel each other out in most situations.

4) The two colors with the most immediately obvious artifact interaction, at least at the common level, are white and black. I expect that a lot of people will play these types of decks simply because they are so obvious.

5) On second glance, red has better artifact destruction than green does (in this set, at least), and it also benefits more from having artifacts in play. Green will receive obvious benefits from your equipment, of course, but it can't do things with artifacts the way the other colors can.

6) Having not played the set (obviously) I predict that black is the weakest color, followed by green, followed by white, red, and blue in a clump--I can't pick which is better or worse at this point.