Attention to Detail #5
by Jordan Kronick
December 15, 2005
"Then and Now"
The past week has seen
the release of Mirage to Magic Online. As a frequent player
in the online world, it’s been pretty hard to avoid. I was
initially very excited about seeing the set again, but my
interest began to wane. I’ve been listening to months of
doomsaying about the set, prior to its release. Lots of
people believed it would be poorly received and nearly
useless. I think that those people have been quieted, but it
is certainly a more subdued time than when an entirely new
set is released. I’ve played a dozen or so Mirage booster
drafts, and I’ve added Mirage cards to my applicable decks.
There has been one common thread of nostalgia through all my
release experiences, though. Whenever I see a Mirage for the
first time online, I remember what I thought about that card
when it first fell out of a booster pack, in the misty
bygone era of Magic. Cards which I was extremely excited
about back then now seem rather dull. And some cards that I
couldn’t think of a use for back then are now on the top of
my list. Everyone goes through a slow evolution throughout
their Magic lifetime. At first we are impressed by huge
creatures and big effects, and eventually most of us begin
to understand more intricate play. Today I’m going to talk
about a few Mirage cards that I had a particular fondness or
dislike for, back in the day, and how I feel about them now.
There might even be a little strategy in here.
The first card that springs to mind when I think of Mirage
is Cadaverous Bloom. When Mirage first came out and everyone
searched through the cards for any answer to Necropotence,
the eventual answer was Bloom. It took some time, though.
Just like the offending Necro before it, the card started
out as a confusing junk rare. I remain proud that I was one
of the first people in my area to catch on. New players to
Magic have to understand that back in 1996, talk of Magic on
the internet was extremely limited. There was nowhere to get
lists of decks that were sweeping tournaments in far flung
cities, let alone countries. Eventually, deck ideas would
trickle down when one of them scored a big hit, but it was
far different than today, when all new cards are playtested
by clever deckbuilders weeks before they are even released.
When I first discovered the incredible power of the
ProsBloom deck (though it was without the Pros until Visions
came out), I swept our Friday night tournaments for three
weeks in a row, while other players struggled to find the
cards to stop me or copy me. It was a good three weeks. That
feeling rose in me again when I first heard that Mirage was
coming to Magic Online. When I got the chance to beta test
Mirage, I even put together a version of my old deck to
tinker with. However, by the time I got my digital hands on
some cards, I had little desire remaining for this deck.
What could have changed? I loved that deck more than any
Standard deck for years. It even looks like it will have a
shot at being competitive in the new Online Classic
environment. The only answer is that my playing style has
changed since then. I’m certainly still a Johnny at heart,
but I’m a particular breed. I’m the sort who likes to play
decks on the cutting edge of tech. Cadaverous Bloom has been
well and truly plumbed by players for nine years now.
There’s very little new ground left to be explored. So what
is exciting to me now? Surely there must be a reverse of the
Cadaverous Bloom situation, somewhere in Mirage.
Lion’s Eye Diamond was a joke in 1996. It took a long, long
time before it became the overpowered, restricted example of
a development mistake. When we first heard about the
Diamond, it was in a Duelist teaser article that promised “a
0-cost artifact that sacrifices for three mana”. There was a
lot of speculation on how Black Lotus could be made
reasonable. When we finally saw the result, we thought we
had our answer. Lion’s Eye Diamond looked downright awful.
I’m sure it still does to a lot of people. The best combos
for this card were years away from being printed, and it
cluttered up trade binders for a long time. With the online
release of Mirage, it was a different story. Everyone has
access to the strategy info for the Diamond, and the
interaction with the readily available Auriok Salvagers is
about as well known as tech can be. I didn’t check
immediately on the first day, but the value on the Diamond
is still right at the top among Mirage cards. Clearly
there’s a lot of excited people out there to go with the
naysayers, and I’m one of the excited ones. By the time LED
was in vogue in various decks, I’d already mostly retired
from paper Magic, so suddenly I’ve been presented with a
whole new chance to build with this card. I’ve taken the
Auriok Salvagers combo and built it into a Human Tribal Wars
deck, I’ve attempted to combine it with dredging and madness
and every other thing it can be attached to. Just goes to
show that sometimes a card that escaped your notice years
ago can come back as a strong favorite.
And then there’s the creatures. Two things excited me about
the creatures of Mirage. First of all, a lot of the
creatures have had their types changed to reflect new ways
of doing business. All those Knights are now Human Knights.
Taniwha is a Serpent. Although I haven’t seen one yet, I
hear that Shauku, Endbringer is now a Vampire! Tribal Wars
has always been one of my favorite formats on Magic Online.
It combines the increasingly large cardpool of online and
the easy searching options to make a really fun and quick
format. No longer do you have to search through your cards
one by one trying to find all the Elves or Spirits or
Crocodiles. Now you can just do a quick search. I strongly
recommend that anyone who is interested in the casual side
of Magic Online try this format if they haven’t already.
The second part of the creature type equation that excited
me was the Djinns and Efreets. I’ve longed to build a Djinn
tribal deck for a long time, but with the bulk of the online
Djinns coming from the five uncommon Invasion Djinns, it
just didn’t seem feasible. Now with Mirage, I was finally
able to throw together some of my favorite self-destructive
powerhouses and make a pretty decent deck. It’s a bit
lacking in some areas, due to my limited cardpool, but I
wanted to share it with you all. I haven’t posted a deck
list to this column before, and I wanted to give everybody a
taste of just what kind of casual decks I build.
2x Lonely Sandbar
2x Forgotten Cave
10x Island
8x Mountain
As you can see, there’s a whole lot more to Tribal Wars than
just creatures. This format is every bit as competitive and
challenging as any other. That each deck requires a minimum
of 1/3 of the cards to be creatures is a limitation which
prevents the format from being defined by some of the less
creature intensive but more powerful combo decks of Classic.
Plus, you’re not likely to find Affinity decks showing up in
Tribal, as most of the creatures in those decks don’t have
creature types!
But the fun with Mirage doesn’t stop with Tribal. Singleton
and Prismatic are the two other oddball formats which allow
pre-Invasion cards. And both of those formats have a lot to
choose from in Mirage. Although the recent appearance of
Transmute cards in Ravnica has overshadowed just about
everything else, there’s some very important cards that have
maintained a high value partially due to being indispensable
in the format. Mysical, Enlightened and Worldly Tutor each
provide quick access to many potential answers. I fully
expect that they will be banned along with the other tutors
(such as Diabolic), but for the time being we can take
advantage of four of them. Another important addition is the
Mirage fetchlands. Although they are clearly inferior next
to the Onslaught ones, they have the same effect. When
combined with the Ravnica dual lands, they help smooth the
mana base in Prismatic just when you really need it. And as
more dual lands are released through Guildpact and
Dissension, it will only get better.
As you can see from my frantic examples above, my interest
in Mirage has changed, but remained strong. I mentioned
earlier that most players go through a metamorphosis in
their play style. Most often this happens when a casual
player steps up their game and decides to try playing
tournament Magic. But sometimes the reverse is true. I think
my interest in Mirage demonstrates a situation where my
original interest in the set was all about tournaments. When
I first saw the cards, I was searching so hard for a way to
beat Necro and get those three weeks of tournament wins that
I wasn’t thinking about what fun decks I could build. I
think that Magic Online is the reason for my new love of
casual Magic. I will never grow tired of the tournament
scene, but easy deckbuilding and lots of opponents makes for
an environment where even the most dedicated Johnny can get
back to their roots and play some oddball formats with fun
old cards.
I know there’s a lot of people sitting out there that don’t
want to try playing with Mirage. Those people say that they
only play Standard or Extended and aren’t interested in
playing anything else. I urge you to reconsider. Not only is
it fun for casual play, I’ve been told that Magic Online
will be having more Classic and Tribal tournaments in the
coming months. So even your “fun” decks have a shot at
winning the big prizes.
It’s been a week of fun here on Attention to Detail.
Sometimes the details that are most important to notice are
those that affect the way you enjoy the game, and not just
how you play it.
