A Short Retort re: Mirage Blue

Ah, Maligned Mirage Blue. No one likes you. Well, no one that writes likes you, apparently.

“One thing that’s for sure in this set is that Blue really got the shaft and I’d recommend avoiding it unless you open Mist Dragon or some other bomb.” Nick Eisel, 12/21/05, Star City Games

“Blue’s decidedly average in this set.” William Spaniel, Londes.com, 12/2/05

“Tip number 2: Avoid Blue.” Bennie Smith, 12/15/05, magicthegathering.com

I responded to Nick thusly:

“Nick, you are simply ignorant if you honestly believe that blue is the worst color in Mirage draft. Just thought I’d let you know.

G.L.



Becker“

To which BDM and I giggled like little kids, delighting in thinking we knew something no one else knew, and happy to have been able to succinctly express exasperation with Nick.

Of course, I neglected the fact that the forum denizens loathe letting a comment go unless such comment is praise, or is accompanied by a dissertation as to why the comment is not praise. Example:

“[R]rather than just telling Nick (and those of us who agree with him) that he is ignorant, could you please take at least one step toward enlightening us? Or maybe your post contains some information that cannot be gleaned by the ignorant…” Sethg, SCG forums.

OK, the reason I typically post in the forums (on the rare occasion that I do so) is that I don’t really want to take the time to actually write an article, partially because I am inherently lazy and mostly inert, and partially because I fight against the urge to educate my potential opponents for the sake of trying to look smart for a brief time until such same opponents beat me senseless with what I just I tried to teach them.

Donnie Gallitz taught me that. I had written some exhaustive drafting guide to turn in to Mindripper or The Dojo or something, and sent it to all my good Magic playing friends for thoughts, comments and revisions. I had heard from everyone – Long, Rank, Flores, Bill Macey, a couple guys from Florida, the Richmond Deck lab – everyone except Donnie, and revised the article based on their suggestions, tips, draft preferences, etc.. I called Donnie and asked him if he had time to read and respond, since I really wanted his comments. Donnie said “yeah, I just emailed you.” I asked him what he thought and he replied “just read the email. That’s what I think.”

Donnie’s email?

To: [email protected]

From: [gallitzemail]

Re: Draft article

Never educate your opponent.

That’s it. The article? Into the dumper. Donnie was right, from a pro perspective. Why would I want to tell people how to best take money from me? Because I was stupid.

So, why would I tell you about Mirage Blue? Well, I guess in part because most of you won’t believe me, or if you do believe me, you will all try to draft it at once and it will suck and then you won’t believe me. The other part? I guess I am still stupid, so with nods and apologies to Donnie, and knowing that this will, at worst, cost me only packs on MODO rather than placing at a Mirage-based Pro Tour or Grand Prix, here are my thoughts, for that narrow category of you that might be interested:

I like Mirage Blue.

I draft Blue in Mirage something like 80% of the time, and love it. I simply don’t understand how, after praising Red (which is unanimously, and correctly, thought to be the best Mirage color) to the heavens and saying how much people like semi-efficient Green men (which are fine, if unexciting to me), everyone seems to wrap up with how crappy Blue is.

Now, it’s true that if everyone starts drafting Blue in Mirage at the same time, it will suck. It can’t support four drafters like splashable Red cards or Green or even White can (not that I am claiming White is good or bad). But currently, drafting Blue is easy and fruitful in Mirage. Why don’t you like Blue? What’s not to like? In the common slot you have the following good cards:

Ray of Command

Azimet Drake

Teferi’s Drake (the “Blue Hammer”)

Sandbar Crocodile

Kukemessa Serpent

Thirst

Merfolk Seer

Dream Cache

Boomerang

Power Sink

That’s four solid guys, including two flyers and a man more efficient than any of Red’s four-drops. The Croc is bigger than anything else, and the Seer is highly underrated. You have the second best common in the set in Ray of Command (the Dream Wrecker), a removal spell that is arguably better than Pacifism in the mid game (in that it taps the man, preventing, say, pinging by guildmages and whatnot), one of the only card drawing spells in the set (and a pretty good one at that) and a reasonable counterspell.

To be perfectly fair, both Reality Ripple and Lapse are fine includes (I usually run one Ripple), and back in the day, Jolt was an asskicker, since tapped guys didn’t deal combat damage. But now, with the stack, Jolt is crap.

Lets compare this to, say, Black.

Black has Gravebane Zombie and one of the good Guildmages, a pair of frozen shades, a bunch of animals that die to at least four other commons, a couple of grey ogres, two removal in Banish and Enfeeblement, and a decent recovery cantrip in Bone Harvest. Better than Blue? I honestly don’t think that it is.

How about White, the Other Color everyone hates. White is also not bad. Two common flankers, two common flyers (one with banding!) and Pacifism are a decent baseline, it adds Noble Elephant (“Peanuts”) who is savagely underrated and a potentially good defender in Wall of Resistance. White’s decent commons are rounded out with Ward of Lights and either Alarum (which actually kills something) or Ritual of Steel (which essentially cycles). Is White better than Blue? Again, I have to answer that it is not.

Okay, let’s try a toughie here. We can all agree Red is better than everything else, but how about Green, all you aspiring Wakefields?

Giant Mantis (not a spider…….)

Granger Guildmage

Jungle Wurm

Gibbering Hyenas

Wild Elephant

Armor of Thorns

Stalking Tiger

Jorael’s Centaur

Quirion Elf

Crash of Rhinos

Wall of Roots

Rampant Growth

So what do we have. A bunch of efficient men. Check. Seems standard for Green. Tricks? Just the Armor really, which seems substandard. Well, okay, Seedling Charm, I suppose, but most people don’t play’em. Why is Green so darned exciting? Let’s stack up commons and see how the colors compare (here are most of ’em):

It seems like Blue and Green are in the ballpark. Yeah, I know that Wild Elephant is there every turn, and the Blue Hammer is there only every other turn, but hey, the ‘Phant don’t fly. There’s a reason 2/2 flyers cost four and 2/2 ground guys cost two.

Also, Green naturally has more men, so I had to try to match up relative usefulness cards, but a lot of these matchups are close, but I believe favor Blue. Ray is so far better than any Green common that I don’t think it can be balanced out by the presence of a coupe of efficient dorks. That being said, Blue doesn’t have anything like a Granger Guildmage, who is a dangerous and useful early mid and late game critter. You can, of course, run into the Torch problem (people snatching the Ray to splash), which could leave you less advantaged on this list; it seems odd to think that because Green doesn’t have any commons worth splashing that the color is more consistently draftable than if it had a power common, but that seems to be true.

So, is Blue the worst? I think it’s likely the second or third best color, behind Red and competing with Green. Sure, you have to take what’s coming to ya, and look for synergies, but at least for me, Blue seems to be there pretty consistently, and U/R is probably my favorite color combination, as opposed to the otherwise popular R/G. I guess it’s accurate to say that I am almost always U/R or U/X/r, pretty much always playing the Torch, Charm, Incinerate, Flare etc.

So I urge you to reconsider Blue as a powerful color in Mirage. Or don’t, because you will make drafting much harder for me. Yeah. Forget what I just said about Blue. It was just a load of crap. You should definitely take that Gibbering Hyena. Yeah. Hyena. That’s the ticket.