Scars of Mirrodin Release

Yesterday, I attended the Scars of Mirrodin release and played in two different events: a sealed limited format, and a draft. Both of them were interesting, and I played the same basic deck in both, but had some interesting results that I hadn't anticipated at all. Most of what I'm saying here applies primarily to Limited, so take all of it with that lens in mind. These aren't designed to be super-combo decks, but rather just solid play that'll get you a 2/3 win against other Limited stuff.

My first pack had a Hand of the Praetors in it. I was pretty much decided at that point that I was going to be building an Infect deck, and I knew that G/B infect was – if not the ideal constructed deck for the set – then at least a decent setup. Looking through the cards that I managed to get in the packs, I realized that there were actually two very competitive setups here. I had Green/Black Infect, and Red/White control. A nice set of equipment rounded out either of the options, and I honestly wasn't sure for a while. Eventually, I went with the infect deck, just because playing a standard control deck with creature destruction didn't appeal to me as much as “Aggro him into the ground”.

It played well. Very well. Aside from being severely land screwed in some of the playtests (no land in hand 1, 6 lands in hand 2 and 3, then 1 hand in hand 4. What the fuck?) once I actually got into some real games it balanced out and acquitted itself very nicely. Some stars come to mind.

Darksteel Axe goes into my infect hall of fame for being a cheap, awesome equip that drastically increases the strength of your aggro. It's cheap enough to throw down early, and adding an extra 2 poison counters per attack is an almost insurmountable advantage. Play these.

Another MVP of the evening was Tainted Strike. Without the card pool available in constructed, I couldn't quite fill the entire deck with Infect creatures, and there was a distinct lack of major hitting power. Throwing in a couple of huge beatsticks helped round it out, and when a 5/3 trample comes knocking in a poison deck, quite a few people let it go by, expecting that the kill will be by poison damage, not conventional. Tainted strike granting +1/+0 and infect for one black can really surprise someone when the 5/3 trample drops 6 poison counters on your face. My first kill actually involved that 5/3 trample, with a Bladed Battlegrar (+4/-1) and Tainted Strike to deal a crippling one-shot to the head.

So, into the actual rounds. I lost the first to the guy who won the whole Sealed. He pulled a Sword of Body and Mind out on turn 3 and proceeded to mill me into the ground with it. This was not pretty. Second round, he basically did the same thing. Both games, I was deprived of blockers by Arc Trail, which is the single best removal spell I've seen in ages. You'd be shocked how many times you can kill two creatures for two mana.

Second round was against someone who dropped shortly thereafter. He was playing mono-blue and managed to defend the attacks for a while, until I use a Slylok Replica to kill his tumble magnet and disable metalcraft on his Velkidan Centarch. He went down to infect damage both times.

Third round I got a bye, which I'm more than happy to accept.

Fourth round was against Vinny, a friend of mine. We ended up having a brutal battle in which proliferate really came through for me. I was running two contagion clasps, thinking that I could use them as cheap artifacts for metalcraft, and maybe take out an early blocker with one, but late game, they really came through with the proliferate, and killed quite a few creatures off – plus pulling out a good number of poison counters. I had him on 9 poison and 5 life. He made the choice between being proliferated to death, or being rolled by a Myr Battlesphere. He made the correct choice. Probably the most fun round I played that day.

Top 4 split packs, and I was more than happy to take them, the playmat, and the Wurmcoil Engine prize.

For the draft, I did much the same. No Hand of the Praetors, but I did get a Putrifax. Unfortunately, it was single elimination and I ran into a crazy U/W control deck that managed to tap down all my attackers until he grindclocked my deck away. Shameful, but true. I don't think that the draft deck was significantly weaker than the sealed one, but admittedly, 4 people at the 8 man draft table did end up going infect, which probably hurt our respective card pools. All four infect decks lost in round 1, which probably makes it a little dangerous to pick in that format. Granted, that's also an issue with picking any significant mechanic in Draft, so normal rules apply.

Overall, I found Scars to be extremely fun to play sealed, and slightly less fun playing Draft. That may have been a function of our draft being single elimination, but either way, I like the set. It's thematically very coherent, and I thing that the Phyrexia/Mirran conflict is going to be a lot of fun to play. I look forward to messing around in this block for quite some time.