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Ken wrote,”Spellbomb does one thing very well… it kills Spikeshot Goblin.” Well Ken, I hate to burst your little fantasy bubble but Pyrite Spellbomb burns every two-toughness creature. It kills both of Blue’s best commons, Neurok Spy and Somber Hoverguard. It also kills Black’s best creatures, Nim Shrieker and Pewter Golem. Pyrite Spellbomb kills Skyhunter Cub, Auriok Transfixer and all of the Myrs.

Have you noticed the pattern? Pyrite Spellbomb kills good creatures. The only downside of Pyrite Spellbomb is that it is weak versus the Green creatures in Mirrodin. It doesn’t kill Tel-Jilad Chosen, Tel-Jilad Exile or Tel-Jilad Archers, but then again Hematite Golem doesn’t do very much versus these guys either.

Many of you may be unfamiliar with Iron Man (I plan on explaining our group’s specific rules later on), so I will expose the basics here. Essentially, if a card leaves the play area for any reason, it gets ripped (or destroyed in a creative fashion). While many find this objectionable, everyone I know has a ton of commons from expansions they don’t need, so they can usually begrudgingly admit that getting rid of them in this fashion is, at least, plausible.

As with any format, however, there will be those that try and make an impression while playing, by getting rid of foils, foreign black-bordered cards, APAC lands, and even Power 9. I must admit I am one of these people.

Mirrodin Black is similar to Onslaught Blue, in that if you’re drafting it, you want to be one of two total people at the table doing so. There isn’t a whole lot of depth and quality for Black this time around.
Before I get into the coveted Pick Orders, I’d like to provide a brief, general strategy for drafting Black in Mirrodin. Black is a control color; aggressive Black decks are condemned to mediocrity. Try to remove as many threats as possible with one-for-ones and two-for-ones before gaining card superiority in the late game with spells like Skeleton Shard and Moriok Scavenger. Trade creatures early and often to squeeze the most out of your removal. A smattering of hard-to-remove creatures such as Pewter Golem will pick up the pieces.

As for where the beef is at, try twenty-five tongue-in-cheek insults for the OMC (Josh Bennett), and some old-time brotherly love.

What an interesting week it was. For starters, the French took over the site last week, with two of their biggest stars writing fresh articles or giving interviews filled with oodles of information (to some Finnish guy named… Walamies?). Adrian Sullivan returned with not one, but two different articles. The new Managing Editor brought you the State of the Union Address, examining the history of StarCityGames, and setting the tone for future of the site, and the forums were hopping on every topic imaginable, so click through each of the articles below and see how the community responded.

Loxodon Warhammer

1. A perfectly balanced card of elegant design, costed perfectly by R&D and assigned a rarity that does not, in any way, make it disruptive for Sealed Deck play. Games featuring Loxodon Warhammer are always decided by nothing but the skill of the two players involved. A fine card in all respects, and a testament to the abilities of the fine people in charge of making this game.

2. If you finish just outside of Top 8, the card that was likely responsible for 75% of your important losses.

Is it possible to get passed a fourth pick Skeleton Shard, fourth and fifth pick Betrayals of the Flesh, plus a fifth pick Plated Slagwurm and not win?

If this draft teaches you anything, it should be that choosing the right path early in the draft is incredibly important if you plan on sticking to it. Oscar chose a less-than-optimal route during the draft and then refused to switch out of it despite being given numerous opportunities. If you do happen to make a bad judgment call early in the draft and realize it, you can still salvage it by switching out later when you’re given the opportunity.

Star City is the”scrub” site.
Star City is the issues site.
There are no good players at Star City.
There are no good writers at Star City.

Oh, how times have changed.

No, you cannot get infinite turns with Power Conduit and Time Vault. Although Time Vault’s Oracle-based errata says that it has counters, and it is technically true that Power Conduit can eat any form of counter, Power Conduit can only supply”charge” or +1/+1 counters. It cannot produce Time Counters. But it can put charge counters on Magistrate’s Scepter.

When Bazaar of Wonders comes into play, it removes all graveyards from the game, and it counters any future spell having the same name as a card in play or in the graveyard. This has always been a pretty powerful card if you can break its symmetry, as it can single-handedly shut down up to three-quarters of the spells in many opponent’s decks and is particularly brutal against combo-style decks. With the invention of Flashback, Morph, and the Wish cycle from Judgement, I take it upon myself to inform you that this card is now officially”Bah-roken”!

Drafting R/B, as always, is a gamble. You can end up with some of the best decks possible in the format, with a good creature base and plenty of varied removal, or the cards might not be there and the pile in front of you contains multiple Necrogen Spellbombs and other filler. More commonly, an improperly-drafted R/B deck will end up with plenty of removal and no creatures – or, less frequently, plenty of bad creatures and little or no removal. Maintaining a balance between drafting removal first and making sure that you have enough threats can be very tricky.