Quest for the Rail Yard Part 2

The second of a three part podcast from me (Brian David-Marshall) and Mike Flores. In Mike’s continued quest to find acoustically challenged sites to record podcasts he set up this session inside Grand Central Station rather than travel to the new but slightly less conveniently located Top8Magic.com offices. Over the course of the three podcasts we discussed Mike’s States performance, mused about a couple of new decks, and dropped the recorder on the floor.

Here is one of the deck’s Mike ended up building after there were recorded:

Infect.dec

4 Corpse Cur
4 Hand of the Praetors
4 Ichor Rats
1 Liliana Vess
4 Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon
2 Sorin Markov
4 Contagion Clasp
2 Contagion Engine
4 Everflowing Chalice
2 Mind Sludge
1 Nihil Spellbomb
4 Sign in Blood
20 Swamp
4 Tectonic Edge
Sideboard:
2 Consume the Meek
4 Consuming Vapors
4 Memoricide
2 Mind Sludge
3 Nihil Spellbomb

Seth Burn is a long-time Magic columnist — you may remember him as the resident Used Deck Salesman when TCGPlayer.com was known as Brainburst — a fixture of the NY Magic community, and known for his annual NFL previews on various Magic sites throughout the years. He felt the siren’s call of the set review for the soon to be released Scars of Mirrodon and we are happy to present it here at Top8Magic.

Hi there. If you know who I am you are probably only weeks away from receiving your first social security check (if you’re American). I felt like writing a set review so please enjoy! I’ll start with the artifacts as they are the root of the set. I won’t be reviewing all the cards, but rest assured if I don’t mention a card I don’t really care about its existence, at least as far as Constructed is concerned. Anyway, here we go:

Scars of Mirrodin:

Artifacts

Argentum Armor

If I play it entirely fairly it costs 12 mana. White has ways of cheating that, but I doubt they are worth it. +6/+6 and destroying a permanent are nice, but they aren’t that nice. On the plus side it is pretty powerful in limited. * Addendum: I was wrong. White can massively cheat with Quest for the Holy Relic. Read the rest of this entry »

Picking at Scars Part 4

Mike Flores and I sat down to discuss our exclusive preview card, Painsmith, from the soon-to-be-released Scars of Mirrodin. We did manage to talk about this intriguing little two-drop but of course the conversation meandered and we covered a bunch of other cards that have been spoiled thus far. The topic of an old vs. young battle of the Pro Tour All Stars also came up and Koth the Hammer may have been mentioned once or twice in passing as well.

Picking at Scars Part 3

Mike Flores and I sat down to discuss our exclusive preview card, Painsmith, from the soon-to-be-released Scars of Mirrodin. We did manage to talk about this intriguing little two-drop but of course the conversation meandered and we covered a bunch of other cards that have been spoiled thus far. The topic of an old vs. young battle of the Pro Tour All Stars also came up and Koth the Hammer may have been mentioned once or twice in passing as well.

Picking at Scars Part 2

Mike Flores and I sat down to discuss our exclusive preview card, Painsmith, from the soon-to-be-released Scars of Mirrodin. We did manage to talk about this intriguing little two-drop but of course the conversation meandered and we covered a bunch of other cards that have been spoiled thus far. The topic of an old vs. young battle of the Pro Tour All Stars also came up and Koth the Hammer may have been mentioned once or twice in passing as well.

Picking the Scars Part 1

Mike Flores and I sat down to discuss our exclusive preview card, Painsmith, from the soon-to-be-released Scars of Mirrodin. We did manage to talk about this intriguing little two-drop but of course the conversation meandered and we covered a bunch of other cards that have been spoiled thus far. The topic of an old vs. young battle of the Pro Tour All Stars also came up and Koth the Hammer may have been mentioned once or twice in passing as well.

Mike and I will have a four part podcast going up over the weekend where we discuss this card and a handful of the other cards that have been officially previewed thus far (*cough*Koth*cough*) but I wanted you to get a look at Painsmith in the meanwhile.

This is going to be a brutal card in Limited with any one-drop Infect creatures that might be lurking, unspoiled thus far, in the new set. With Infect the Painsmith will be crafting far more than two damage if the enhanced creature gets through. Keep in mind that dealing in poison counters is effectively dealing double damage to a player — this is not The Sliver Kids kind of poison counters. +2/+0 represents 20% of a players life total when dealt in poison and that is not even counting the base damage that the creature is doing — and it is not accounting for playing more than one artifact in a turn.

For Constructed… I am not so sure about this one although she can do some filthy stuff in a black-green deck that also has Carapace Forger and Ezuri’s Brigade — especially the latter. You can hold back your artifacts, play them out to turn on the Metalcraft of the Brigade and attack for 10 or even 12 points of tramply, deathtouchy goodness. If you can just find a way to bounce and replay your Memnites over and over again you can create a lethal attack out of nowhere but I will be content to use this guy as a Rancor-ish effect that keeps dealing and dealing as long as I can play artifacts.

Tune in over the weekend to get MichaelJ’s take on this card and a handful of the others.