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Pojo's Magic The Gathering Card of the Day


Image from Wizards.com

Rings of Brightearth
10th Edition


Reviewed September 28, 2007

Constructed: 2.55
Casual: 3.90
Limited: 2.00

Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale
1 being the worst.  3 ... average.  
5 is the highest rating

Click here to see all our 
Card of the Day Reviews 


Jeff Zandi

 7 Time Pro Tour Veteran

Player since 1994

Level II DCI Judge

Member of the Texas Guildmages

Rings of Brighthearth

This card comes with a pretty good pedigree. The last card I played that was a little like this one, Mirari, was plenty good in its day. Rings of Brighthearth might be better, while its usefulness is more narrow than Mirari, Rings copies activated abilities where Mirari copied actual spells.

Nevertheless, Rings sounds like an interesting card that could easily see several different constructed decks built around its cheap cost to play and use. Rings is not really a card that is likely to be abusive in limited play. I think a card like this just waters down your booster draft and sealed decks.

CONSTRUCTED: 3.5
CASUAL: 3.5
LIMITED: 2.0

BMoor

Rings of Brighthearth

I won't go into how many awesome activated abilities there are for this to copy. I'll let you find them, or wait for a Rings of Brighthearth deck to show up in my Garage. For now, I'll just say, it's a powerful weapon in the right deck.

Constructed- 3
Casual- 4
Limited- 2

Aethereal

Friday - Rings of Brighthearth

Hmm, a Mirari for activated abilities. This is cheaper than Mirari both to play and use, but I'm not sure where it'll fit in. There aren't a lot of activated abilities that this would work well with in the normal decks; this is much more suited to a combo deck, where it might be amusing to copy effects like Ambassador Laquatus or something. I think this will be a popular casual card, but probably not tournament worthy.

In limited, if you have a killer activated ability, this might be worth playing, but I probably wouldn't bother.

Constructed - 2
Casual - 4
Limited - 2

David Fanany

Player since 1995

Rings of Brighthearth

The most obvious use for the Rings of Brighthearth in constructed play is to get more bang for your (huge) investment out of Urza's Factory or Icy Manipulator. It's difficult to predict what exactly this card will do without seeing what else is in Lorwyn, but it seems likely that a combo deck will be made with this somewhere. In casual play, this card likes Mishra's Factory and Millstone. I doubt the Rings are worth playing in limited. They don't attack, they don't block, and they don't remove creatures.

Constructed: 2/5
Casual: 4/5
Limited: 1/5

Arcane
Rings of Brighthearth

Constructed: Mirari for activated abilities has a great potential to be very abused. If you don’t believe me pull up Gatherer and do a search for “:” and you’ll see the huge list of devastating creatures, artifacts, lands, etc. that all have great effects that could get really out of hand by just adding a pair of colorless mana to them. While I can’t think of any cards that will get ridiculously broken when replicated, I’m sure it won’t take long for someone else to. Easiest thing I can think of off the top of my head: cycling. Turn a few more mana into a lot of extra cards and overpower your opponent with card advantage.

Casual/Multi: As if there weren’t going to be enough activated abilities abused in constructed, casual opens up the door to some potentially downright ridiculous effects to copy and spread around. Trying to shove someone out the Door to Nothingness or take over their turn with Mindsalver? Pay the extra 2 mana and do it to someone else as well. The effects just snowball from there. The Johnny in me quivers with anticipation. Obviously the card isn’t going to do anything on its own, but being an artifact means that it can go everywhere and everywhere and will bring along a great effect with it.

Limited: Odds are that no matter what color you play you should be able to get some good use out of this. White cards that tap to deal damage to attacking or blocking creatures, black destroy effects, red damage, green token generation or blue mill. Don’t forget that you can copy any effect, including the new planeswalkers. I have giddy dreams of copying the effect of Jace Beleran to mill out 40 cards of my opponent’s deck in one go. A safe bet to grab, and very easy to use and easy on the mana.

Constructed: 3
Casual: 4
Limited: 3.5
The Missing Linc

-Balding for just over 5 years
-Playing MTG for just over 10

Rings of Brighthearth

So far, I think this is my favorite card of the set.  It will take a particular deck with great synergy to break this card.  Immediately, a Life from the Loam/ Seizmic Assualt deck seems just right.  Assualt for extra, cycle lands for extra, dredge for extra.  This works great with sac lands, terramorphic (get two lands), that blue creature that gets you two lands for a discard (now you get four).  The list of possiblities is fantastic.  The trouble again will be in constructed, you must have so many cards with synergy to validate putting this into your deck.  This will be fun with Plainswalkers as well.  Just simple fun fun fun.  Double your pleasure.  Too bad it only doubles the pleasure.  Remember it can only be used upon the activation of an ability.  It cannot be retriggered by a copied ability.

Constructed: 4 (if the right deck comes out)
Casual: 5
Limited: 4

Thanks,
The Missing Linc
Necro
nomikron

MTG Rules Advisor
Rings of Brighthearth:

I'm really trying to find a use for this card, but failing. I suppose that it's mainly just there for the new planeswalker cards (which can be a valid reason for playing this card). I doubt its usefulness in limited, mainly because it's a niche card. I could see it being useful in constructed, for some decks.

Constructed: 2.5/5
Casual: 3/5
Limited: 1/5
PsychoAnime

#1 Magic Noob in Canada since 2002
Rings of Brighthearth

I can't think of any ability that you would like to copy enough such that you would include this in a deck. You could copy a Martyr of Sands ability to double the life gain or Terramorphic Expanse to get another land, but that just seems so unnecessary to me.

The problem with this card is if you're copying an inexpensive ability, you could just play it again anyway. If you're copying an expensive ability, well, those are usually bad.

Constructed: 1/5
Casual: 2/5
Limited: 1/5
Meb9000 9/28

Rings of Brighthearth

Thought a bit unimaginative, this new Artifact can make a lot of powerful combos happen. There is a myriad of fun abilities one can copy with this card. Grandeur creatures are my personal favorite. Discard one legend, get 2x the powerful effect. Korlash or Tarox Bladewing seem especially fun. Transmute and Transfigure, any Cycling, and even Forecast effects can be duplicated with this card. It will be up the Johnnies of the world to figure this card out, so we will wait and see for this one.

Constructed: 3/5
Limited: 1/5

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