Welcome to my Scars of Mirrodin strategy guide and set review! I struggled to find way to make this set review different from other set reviews. There’s just so much good information out there that I sometimes wonder if I can bring any additional insight to the table.
The best information that I can give you is the breakdown of my own trading strategy for new sets. I won’t talk about pricing and price projections,
because Ben Bleiweiss has already done an excellent job on that
in his set review
; instead, I’ll give you different information that might be interesting for traders. Let’s start with the strategy.
Over the years, I’ve developed a strategy for getting the most value out of a new set. I used to buy one case (and sometimes two) of each new set for trade stock. I’d also buy a box from my local game store — it was my way of supporting local business, and it allowed me to have new trade stuff on hand while everyone else was opening their boxes. After doing this for a couple of sets, I realized that I was left with a lot of wasted commons, uncommons and bulk rares. In the world of business, waste equates to lost profit. I was buying the waste along with the good rares, then losing profit because I couldn’t move all the commons and uncommons — and I’d end up selling the rares at bulk rate for fourteen cents each. After looking at the issue with a financial eye, I had to reevaluate this strategy of buying waste — and that’s when I changed to a new strategy.
I call my new strategy the don’t-go-broke-by-spending-hundreds-of-dollars-on-boxes-of-cardboard method. This strategy has four key points: resist, wait, acquire, and distill.
Resist
the urge to buy boxes. Instead, trade what you have in your binder for the new cards. This will be tough, because typically people want to trade for stuff from the new set. That’s why you have to make your binder as attractive as possible. Purge your collection before the release so that you have plenty of staples to tempt people. You can also take the cards that you’re not using from your Sealed pool (including your Release/Prerelease tourney promos) and put them in your trade binder. I recommend putting them on the first page. A set release is the best time to gain value, so be prepared.
Wait
to get the cards that you need. The common impulse for people who go to release tournaments is to get the cards that they need for their decks. The problem with this is that 90% of every new set will drop in price over the first month. If you trade for Scars of Mirrodin cards now and keep them, you’re going to lose value. You’ll also lose
virtual
value by not trading them for a premium. As a trader, you should avoid trading for new set stuff that you need at the prereleases.
Acquire
as much of the new set as possible. This is the tricky part. You need to trade for cards from the new set, but you need to get them cheap. It’s hard to get cards like Mox Opal, Koth of the Hammer, and Elspeth Tirel for lower than market value — unless you pay cash for them, which can be a viable strategy. Ask your trade partner to pull out the cards that they want to keep and to let you see the ones they don’t care about; this allows you work with card that are already undervalued, since the person doesn’t actually want to keep these card. Explore the pricing of these cards, compare the prices that they give with presale pricing, and take the cards that you consider a deal. Ask to see their commons and uncommons, and pull out every playable common and uncommon. Once you get some Scars of Mirrodin cards, you’ll need to execute the next step.
Distill
the value of the Scars cards that you acquired in cards that are stable in price. As I warned above, the new set will start dropping in price soon. If you pick up stable
cards
(or better yet, cards that are rising in price), now then you can pick up the Scars of Mirrodin cards that you need once the
set
has stabilized. The new cards are in the highest demand of their life cycle at the release of a set. This is the best time to get a premium on them… but the premium does mean anything if you can’t trap that value.
In order to effectively pull this maneuver off, you need to become a salesman. You need to know the set well enough to know what cards appeal to which audiences, and why.
….And
that’s
the perspective that I’m going to review the set from. Let’s start with the Audience — since without people, Magic cards are worthless.
Spike
This person usually has good stuff for trade, and a fair grasp on pricing. They’ll be looking for tournament staples, and stuff for the new decks that influential deck builders like Patrick Chapin are writing about. They don’t want to browse your binder — but if you have one of the cards that they need, then they don’t mind giving up some value to get it.
EDH
This person has been salivating over the new cards they’re going to stick into their EDH decks, and they really don’t care what they trade to get them. Typically, you get double points for having that card in foil. If you think a card will appeal to the EDH people,
always
assume that foils are better than non-foils.
Casual
There are a good amount of casual players who come out to play preleases. Their trade binders are usually treasure troves. These players don’t typically know much about pricing, nor do they really care. They often want to do one-for-one trades and tend to stick to small trades.
We have a plan. We know our audience. Let’s learn the product.
Scars of Mirrodin is exciting, it the follow up to one of the most beloved and broken sets in Magic’s history. Although we didn’t get Affinity back, we did get some other interesting mechanics.
Before I evaluate the cards on an individual level, I want to talk about the mechanics. My view on the mechanics will have a direct impact on how I feel the card will perform in the current metagame. Keep in mind these views will change with the next set, which will make things more or less viable.
Metalcraft
This is the most powerful mechanic in the set. The mechanic is backwards-compatible, which means it doesn’t need to have Scars of Mirrodin cards to be relevant; it simply needs artifacts. The mechanic makes your card undercosted, for no drawback.
Metalcraft aggro is an archetype that’s ready to rumble in Standard: Memnite, Ornithopter, and equipment make up the core of this deck. On the other hand, Metalcraft has not fully materialized as a control archetype. Since control decks won’t be playing Memnite and Ornithopter, I think that they’ll be hard-pressed to find enough artifacts to activate the mechanic. Outside of Everflowing Chalice, there aren’t any four-of artifacts that go into control decks at the moment; things like Ratchet Bomb, Chimeric Mass, Brittle Effigy, and Mox Opal will see play in control decks — but will they see enough consistent play to warrant packing your deck with metalcraft cards? I don’t think so.
Infect
This mechanic is deceptively hard to measure. I doubt that there is enough support for an infect-based aggro deck, but I do see Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon seeing play in control strategies.
This is the opposite of metalcraft in the sense that it makes your cards cost more instead of less. I’m not sure what impact infect will have on Standard, but I don’t see people getting killed with poisonous rats anytime in the near future — especially since we still have Pyroclasm.
Proliferate
This seems like the weakest mechanic in the set… but with my luck, it’s probably the most powerful. I didn’t see a lot of proliferate at the prerelease, so it’s hard to measure its power. But the cards that have proliferate don’t stand on their own, and that’s usually a bad sign.
Let’s get to the cards now! The format that I used for the review is as follows:
-
The Audience:
A card may appeal to more than one audience, but you’ll get the most value by trading it to its key audience. -
Longevity:
I talked about how the set will fall in value my longevity rating measures how long the card will be relevant. The more longevity a card has the less affected it will be to the price drop. Cards with low longevity ratings should be traded right away and ones with high ratings can be held onto without losing much value and they might even gain value. The rating is from 1 to 5, with five being a card that’s most likely to rise in value. -
Comment:
This won’t be long — just some points to help you sell the card at the trade tables.
Elspeth Tirel
Spike
4
I don’t want to state the obvious here, but Elspeth is good. You’ll probably get the most out of your Elspeth if you trade it to a Spike. They recognize the tournament staple potential, and they don’t want to get hit by the Jace, the Mind Sculptor train again.
Indomitable Archangel
EDH
2
This is a great card for the Sharuum the Hegemon Elder Dragon Highlander deck. Aside from that, there’ll be some angel collectors looking for her. For now, your audience is primarily EDH and Casual Angel collectors… but if Myr combo takes Standard by storm, this might be in some serious player’s main deck.
Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon
EDH
4
For now people are pumped about killing with poison in EDH. I expect this to see some tournament play, since it’s essentially an 8/4 for five mana.
Koth of the Hammer
Spike
5
Koth is obviously very good. It’s being hailed as the best planeswalker since Jace, the Mind Sculptor, but I’ll have to see that to believe it. In the meantime, I’ll be packing four maindecked Celestial Purges.
Liege of the Tangle
Casual
1
I was trading with a guy who told me that the Liege was the whole reason that he came to the prerelease. This is big with the casual crew, but I can’t tell you why — not because it’s a secret, just because I don’t know.
(I’m a member of the casual crew and I don’t know either — T.F.)
Venser, the Sojourner
Unknown
4
I really don’t know who the audience is for this card. This hasn’t been added to a popular deck yet, and Spikes shy away from paying a high price tag for a mythic rare that might flop. The people that I’ve seen picking these up are people who wanted them for their Cube decks. Personally, I want to build U/W Allies with this guy and Sun Titan.
Mindslaver
Spike
3
Come Friday, there will be a Mindslaver lock combo in standard via Prototype Portal. This will also see play in various other decks as a one- or two-of.
Molten-Tail Masticore
Spike
4
This is one of the first cards that Patrick Chapin stuck in
a deck idea
. Other pros in the community are already adding it builds as well. When you combine the Masticore with Squadron Hawk and Fauna Shaman, things can get out of hand.
Mox Opal
Spike
4
This will be a Vintage staple, so foils and foreign foils will be crazy expensive. I can also see this being played in Legacy — but Extended and Standard? Those are still question marks for me. (Though I lean toward “yes.”)
Platinum Emperion
Casual
1
Casual players equate winning and losing the game with life totals. They also never play Naturalize. This card is perfect for them.
Sword of Body and Mind
EDH
2
This hasn’t been talked about much for future decks. I don’t think any EDH collection is complete without a copy of each sword.
Wurmcoil Engine
Spike
3
Snatch up as many of these as you can. This was the most asked-about card at the Prerelease, as lots of people were trying to make their play set. I wonder what the price would have been if it wasn’t a Prerelease promo card.
Mythic Bulk
For every bulk card, there is someone who loves it and needs it. I recommend that you keep bulk mythics in your binder until the set rotates from Standard. My only comment on the bulk mythics is that you should trade them if you can get more than two dollars for them.
- Quicksilver Gargantuan: For that kid who’s trying to build a Clone deck.
- Geth, Lord of the Vault: You have to target something and pay exactly X. Not exactly great.
- Lux Cannon: Someone busted a win against me at the Prerelease with this, so I banished it to the bulk list.
Leonin Arbiter
Spike
4
This hate bear is in my top 5. He does an okay job when he’s shutting stuff down in Standard, but that becomes completely awesome in Legacy and Vintage. In Standard, if he lands early enough he could shut down fetchlands completely. He also makes Primeval Titan worse.
Tempered Steel
Casual
4
Spikes will play this card, but you’ll get the most value from a casual player. They salivate over things like playing four Memnites on turn 1, and then landing Mox Opal and Tempered Steel on turn 2.
Argent Sphinx
Unknown
2
This is as almost as hard to kill as a Morphling if you have metalcraft — but without it, it’s worse than Conundrum Sphinx.
Grand Architect
Unknown
5
This really hasn’t hit the ceiling that I think it’ll get to — because
I
think this is the number-one rare in the set. I will be building Standard Merfolk with this guy and Eldrazi Monument. The thing that makes him awesome is that you can tap him for value immediately when you play him… which means that he’s effectively a blue lord who costs one mana. There’s also a combo in Extended with him and Pili-Pala.
Hand of the Praetors
Casual
2
There are two things that casual players love: lords and life gain. This has one of those things going for it. If infect gets better with the next set, then you might see this at tournament tables.
Memoricide
Spike
3
It snags Vengevines in Standard, and disassembles combo decks. That makes it a sideboard card forever, but it probably won’t break the five-dollar mark.
Necrotic Ooze
Spike
3
If the interaction with Gigantomancer wasn’t breaking news, then this guy would trade better to the casual folk. He seems good, but I think he might be Oozing with hyperbole.
(Okay, that one might have been for Luis Scott-Vargas.)
Kuldotha Phoenix
Spike
2
This card isn’t as awesome as you think, but it will see Standard play. I’ve heard rumors of it going in mono red and in Neo-Dredgevine. I don’t know how either of those decks get metalcraft, but time will tell whether it’s a working strategy.
Molten Psyche
EDH
2
There’s no better way to kill that obnoxious guy with the Reliquary Tower and a billion cards in his hand.
(Assuming he doesn’t counter it — The Ferrett, who played that guy this weekend.)
Tunnel Ignus
Spike
3
It’s true that he can turn fetchlands in to Lightning Bolts to your opponent’s face… but your opponent can also chose not sacrifice the fetch land on the same turn that they played it. I see this guy as a great sideboard card against Primeval Titan decks, and against Scapeshift in Extended.
Ezuri, Renegade Leader
Casual
2
It’s another Elf lord with a flashy effect. I traded several of these away at the prerelease today.
Genesis Wave
Spike
4
It seems like this will be replacing Mind Spring in the turbo-land decks. I’ve have also heard talk about it be played in the Titan Ramp decks. The card seems strong to me.
Argentum Armor
Spike
4
Have you seen Chapin’s article on
Quest for the Holy Relic decks
? This plus Stoneforge Mystic equals awesome.
Chimeric Mass
Spike
3
Trinket Mage makes this card awesome!
Etched Champion
Spike
3
There was a lot of talk about this card at the Prerelease. It seems to be in high demand — which makes sense, since this card seems really good in metalcraft decks, especially with Tempered Steel.
Kuldotha Forgemaster
Unknown
3
At the moment, this card doesn’t get anything that ends the game in Standard. I think that’ll change before the end of the block.
Myr Battlesphere
Casual
2
This is the big finisher of choice to Timmy’s Myr deck. As such, I expect this will trade well to any casual players who are building a Myr deck.
Myr Reservoir
Casual
3
This is another card that could go in this imaginary casual Myr deck. Casual players like to play cards with themes, and this fits with that ideology.
Prototype Portal
EDH
2
This seems like it could be good in EDH, especially in the colorless builds.
Ratchet Bomb
Spike
5
This will be a cross-format all-star. You can expect to see a lot of these on the battlefield this Standard season, making this my pick for the second-best rare in the set.
Semblance Anvil
EDH
3
This is only being talked about for EDH decks at the moment, but I think it has Constructed implications. I could see it being played in a planeswalker-heavy deck. If you play this on turn 2, you can have a turn 3 Elspeth Tirel.
Bulk Rares
As I said about the mythics, people will initially want these, but they will eventually end up in the bulk box. Try to trade these cards first.
- Kemba, Kha Regent: There will be an EDH player who wants this.
- Sunblast Angel: I like this card, and everyone wants to live the dream with Gideon Jura… but it’s not going to cut the mustard value-wise, since there’s a foil Sunblast Angel in the preconstructed deck.
- True Conviction: True bulk. Next?
- Dissipation Field: I had something to say about this, but it dissipated from my mind.
-
Inexorable Tide: Add Venser, the Sojourner, Ornithopter, Memnite, and Time Reversal and you
still
have a crap-tastic deck! - Carnifex Demon: The art on this is pretty sick.
- Painful Quandary: This card is so bad that it’s painful.
- Cerebral Eruption — This card was awesome in Sealed Deck, but I don’t think it’ll make the Constructed cut.
- Hoard-Smelter Dragon: No comment.
-
Strata Scythe — This counts
all
the lands on the board with that name, not only yours. I’ll be running this in my Mono-Black EDH. - Contagion Engine: It costs too much.
- Darksteel Juggernaut: It’s like Juggernaut, but worse.
- Grindclock: You can sometimes trade this to inevitable guy who wants his Millstone deck to fire, but that doesn’t happen often.
- Livewire Lash: I traded one of these today, but it’s because I am the master.
- Mimic Vat: I feel like this card could be in a combo deck, but I don’t care enough to actually read all that text.
- Myr Propagator: Just because it says “Myr” doesn’t mean you can trade it to casual players. Even they have their standards.
- Nim Deathmantle: I want one of these for my Korlash, Heir to Blackblade EDH deck.
- Precursor Golem: I had to read this card twenty times before I actually understood it. The funniest thing I’ve heard of is to use this with Distortion Strike.
- Steel Hellkite: This is the release foil, and it’s not that great.
- Spikeshot Elder: This guy could make the Goblin deck good.
- Asceticism: This can be good in EDH.
- Engulfing Slagwurm: A big dumb monster.
- Ezuri’s Brigade: This could easily move from “bulk” to “played,” if metalcraft decks take off. Time will tell.
- Putrefax: Hasty green creatures are always good for the casual folks.
Uncommons
I’ve only listed the real standout uncommons. I was picking these up all day to trade to people later.
- Memnite: Everybody’s going to need a set of these things. I would trade them for no less than two dollars.
- Myr Galvanizer: This is essential for the Myr tribal deck and the infinite mana combo. I would stay firm at one dollar.
- Riddlesmith: I’m no Steve Menendian, but I think this card breaks Vintage. With Yawgmoth’s Will, this card just seems ridiculous. Get some foils —foreign foils, if possible. Then trade them to me.
- Trinket Mage: It’ll definitely see play. It has a track record for being awesome.
- Auriok Edgewright: If a good G/W metalcraft deck comes along, this will be in it.
- Skinrender: This guy is a great Flametongue Kavu-like kill spell.
That’s all I have for this week. Enjoy your release tournament this weekend!