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Place for general discussion of Mirrodin spoilers as revealed on mtg.com (anyone who reads Starcity, use *another* wiki page, please).
(Note that the [mtgnews spoiler] is now complete, although discussion of that should also take place elsewhere).

Mirrodin is a 306 card (large) expansion, which prereleases on Sep 20-1 and goes out on Oct 2nd; the expansion symbol is a rather funky looking sword.

AlexChurchill was trying to avoid finding anything out about this expansion until the prerelease, hence this page.  He knows that at least one other ToothyWikizen is avoiding anything until the Sneak Previews on Saturday 27th, though, so has put his prerelease tournament report on this page for the moment.

Backstory [here].

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This SpoilerSpace has been brought to you by the Dept. of Redundancy Department. Thankyou.



Mechanics



Imprint



I (SF) think this reads as "When ~this~ comes into play, choose a creature card in your hand and remove it from the game."

Well, that's potentially very weird (and exceptionally cool) indeed. Customize your artifacts. I forsee an extension of the tribal theme from OBC to Onslaught/Mirrodin? standard as a result, though, as it's odds-on the best creature cards in standard will come from the creature block (Onslaught) not the artifact block (Mirrodin). Still, it looks pretty cool in T1 casual, as well....

It's not restricted to removing cards in hand from the game. See Brian David-Marshall's preview card for Wednesday which removes lands in play.

Equipment



The new card type! Equipment cards are "local artifacts". Similar in function to cards like MTG: Tawnos's Weaponry, an equipment card is brought into play normally, then it equips a creature by paying the equip cost.

Better than local enchantments because they don't go away when the creature does, not to mention not needing coloured mana. These could see quite a bit of play. StuartFraser likes them.

Entwine



Take two of the cool things from Invasion block (Kicker and some of the best modal spells ever) and, well, entwine them. Entwine cards are modal spells, or alternatively, pay the entwine cost to do all of the modal spells simultaneously. These are potentially incredibly useful utility spells; almost all of them will probably be playable in limited, and I can see some of them seeing constructed play as well. Ought to be fun.

Affinity


"Affinity for <X>" : "This card costs 1 less for each <X> you control". (The "you control" may be default - "Affinity for creatures your opponent(s) control" might be plausible for later sets).

Creature types


Vedalken
Human

Cards



[Soul Foundry]



Wow. Wowwowwowwowwowwowwowwowwow. That's just so incredibly cool. I want four of them. Then I'll try and work out what to do with them. --SF

Some suggestions from the mtg.com message boards for "what would be incredibly cool to imprint on Soul Foundry":

MTG: Meddling Mage
MTG: Mystic Snake
MTG: Clone
Magnificent.
MTG: Plague Rats
Evil.
MTG: Timberwatch Elf
Why not MTG: Heedless One? Uses one extra mana, and less flexible in defence, but awesome in attack.
No, you've missed the point. The reason that MTG: Timberwatch Elf is the best green common since MTG: Wild Mongrel is that you can use the ability of every one to pump a single creature - preferably one with an evasion ability, or trample. If you want to imprint an Avatar, the MTG: Plague Rats above are better. --SF
Heedless One has trample.

MTG: Birds of Paradise

Other really cool things about this card: It produces the tokens at instant speed. So you could, having imprinted an MTG: Lowland Basilisk, wait for your opponent to declare an attack, then create a Basilisk during the declare blockers step. --SF

PeterTaylor suggests:
MTG: Avalanche Riders
MTG: Bone Shredder
MTG: Cackling Fiend
MTG: Dakmor Ghoul (starting to look at a Zombie/Foundry? deck - although not even Extended-legal)
MTG: Flametongue Kavu
MTG: Ghitu Slinger (the Kavu's better, but this is still useful in the declare blockers step)
MTG: Goblin Pyromancer (provided you have a way of sac'ing it)
MTG: Ironshell Beetle
MTG: Laquatus's Champion
MTG: Man-o'-War
MTG: Mogg Bombers
MTG: Multani's Acolyte (cantrip blocker)
MTG: Nantuko Tracer
MTG: Nightscape Battlemage
MTG: Phyrexian Driver (not stunning, but you could probably build a deck around it...)
MTG: Ravenous Rats (especially evil. if your opponent's hand is empty, you can make an instant speed token at the end of their draw step, locking them out of being able to keep any non-instant cards they draw...)
MTG: Scrivener
MTG: Shrieking Mogg (MTG: Royal Assassin is back in 8th...)
MTG: Sleeper Agent
MTG: Stern Proctor (meta-gaming slightly - plus the ability to bounce your own Foundry if you draw something even better)
MTG: Talas Explorer or MTG: Telepathic Spies (with lots of discard)
MTG: Thornscape Battlemage (again, meta-gaming)
MTG: Uktabi Orangutan (and again)
MTG: Verdeloth the Ancient
MTG: Verduran Emissary (why do the artifact-destroying 187s come at the end of the alphabet?)
MTG: Wall of Blossoms
MTG: Whirlpool Drake (now there's a combo to build a deck around)

and notes that another cool thing is that it uses converted mana cost - so you can play creatures which are "off-colour" for your deck.

Just to ask a silly question - why is that artifact not brown?
WizardsOfTheCoast changed the card face for the release of 8th Edition/10th Anniversary; amongst the changes was to move artifacts from a brown background to a silver one; supposedly to enhance the colour contrast with lands (also, because it made more sense. Most metals are a silvery colour, after all). As ever, this was regarded as the EndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt by "purists", whilst most people shrugged and carried on playing magic.

It occurred to StuartFraser that, although the Foundry is incredibly cool, in fact it's only the best artifact since [the last one] printed...
That presumably wasn't supposed to show me the back of a card? -- Senji
No. I've sorted the syntax out now so it actually gives the picture it was supposed to.--SF
There are artifacts in 8th, you know. Quite a few of them.
They're all reprints, so they don't count. I mean, CounterSpell was printed in Mercadian Masques, but it's obviously a card that you'd refer to as being from Alpha, not Masques. --SF, who doesn't believe in cards that don't have a storyline attached.
There are also three artifacts in Scourge: MTG: Ark of Blight, MTG: Proteus Machine and MTG: Stabilizer.

[One Dozen Eyes]


Meh. Playable in Limited, maybe.

Very playable in limited; somewhat outclassed by MTG: Decree of Justice in constructed, but hey, it's only an uncommon! Not, I think, the "Wing Shards" of Entwine spells. --SF
Looks like fun to me....

[Loxodon Warhammer]


Cool.

Interesting. I'm still trying to work out whether I think this is better than MTG: Rancor or not. Opinions, people? --SF
Complicated. If you rephrase Rancor as "Artifact - Equipment. Cost: 0. Equip: G. Equipped creature has +2/+0 and trample" (not _quite_ the same, but close unless MTG: Control Magic is involved), then you're playing off an additional 3 cost and an equip cost of 3 vs G against an extra point of power and MTG: Spirit Link, which itself costs W. I'd give the Warhammer a slight edge, mainly because it's a WG card in colourless. --PeterTaylor
I'm going to get 4 of those... It's even better then MTG: Armadillo Cloak, and I loved the cloak. -ColinLeung

[Extraplanar Lens]


Also cool.

Designed for mono-colour decks; MBC will probably play it once it rotates in. I think in general mono-colour is being pushed quite heavily by Wizards right now *sigh*; looks like all the best decks in the new standard will be mono-with-a-sprinkling-of-artifacts.
To be fair, the two-colour lands in Onslaught were generally acknowledged as pretty good, and they reprinted some other two-colour lands in 8th.
Yes, and fetchlands have proven a great boon to the Extended and T1 card pools. But there's no use in them if all the best decks are mono-colour, as they are in OBC, and as, looking at the Lens, they might well be in Standard. It's where tribal gets you... --SF

[Vedalken Archmage]


Spike might play it in Limited, and Jonny can certainly have fun with it.

Enchantress for artifacts...well, Enchantress decks made something of a splash in constructed last time around, but blue really isn't very good in standard right now, so it'll probably have a limited impact. Very likely quite strong in limited, though. --SF

[Artifact lands]


Are they strictly better than basic lands or not? PeterTaylor's not quite sure - probably depends a lot on the metagame.

[Worldslayer]


An asymmetric board-clearer in artifact! And, provided you can get your damage through, it's not only cheaper than MTG: Akroma's Vengeance and MTG: Decree of Annihilation, but also repeatable. The only down-side is that if you need a board-clearer, you may have difficulty getting your damage through. I'd judge this a very strong Limited card and expect to see it in tournament Constructed.

[Confusion In The Ranks]


Raaay! Very, very cool indeed. Transforms a multiplayer board from something approaching order to complete and utter chaos. StuartFraser now wants to play five-player musical chairs chaos with four of these in one of the decks. MuHaHaHa....

No, seriously, this is a great casual card, almost certainly the worst limited card in the set, and probably not playable in constructed.

[Hmm....]

[Glissa Sunseeker]


3/2 first strike for 4 isn't bad. The only thing I don't like about this card is the word "equal" - replacing "equal to" with "no greater than" would make for less subtlety with massive mana generation, and subtlety is hardly a green thing.

[Bosh, Iron Golem]


In the Mirrodin meta-game, could be jolly good. 8 for a 6/7 trample is pretty good anyway, and if you combine that with the ability to turn that artifact of yours which is about to be destroyed into a missile, it works nicely in a red (or, for the mana, perhaps RG) artifact deck.

[Isochron Scepter]


And I thought Soul Foundry was mad.

What does he mean, no good instants in Onslaught block? MTG: Hunting Pack on a Scepter seems insane enough to me. Gosh, and the Scepter's not even rare.
StuartFraser notes that he is not a mathmo, but has yet to work out how a casting cost of 5GG fits with the casting cost restriction of "2 or less". Isochron Scepter is good, but not great in standard. It is utterly broken in extended (Imprint MTG: Counterspell, of course).
No, don't. Imprint MTG: Memory Lapse, and collapse in fits of either giggles or evil laughter. --SF again.
Hadn't noticed the casting cost restriction. I wondered why they'd print something that broken. And I'm not the only one, as Brian David-Marshall admits in his preview of Thoughtcast.

Should be possible to build an evil deck around this and some of the restricted instants - some of [the] [restricted] [tutors] and MTG: Ancestral Recall perhaps? I'm thinking blue/something for MTG: Cunning Wish to fetch your one instance from the sideboard, and the recall goes with tutors nicely, so... Probably blue/black, wishing initially for a MTG: Vampiric Tutor. Black also allows graveyard tricks (e.g. MTG: Withered Wretch to make a card wishable, or MTG: Morality Shift, which works nicely enough with tutors), so maybe a deck built almost entirely around instants, with graveyard tricks to reuse them. Actually, for graveyard tricks, MTG: Feldon's Cane isn't currently banned or restricted. Blue/white artifact/instant is certainly a plausible alternative to blue/black.

Some of the most fun ideas AlexChurchill has seen to imprint on an [Isochron Scepter]:  There's obvious huge denial possibilities with MTG: Counterspell, MTG: Orim's Chant, etc.  One of the most fun denial ideas is MTG: Stifle (build a deck full of triggered drawbacks, and use it on your opponent the rest of the time), although StuartFraser's idea of MTG: Memory Lapse is rather evil-giggle-worthy too.  MTG: Brain Freeze: either your opponent plays no spells or they get milled for at least 6 cards.  Imprinting MTG: Shelter is better than MTG: Mother of Runes[Raise the Alarm] which I used myself in the prerelease (see below).  MTG: Entomb for reanimatey goodness or graveyard tricks.  (To avoid being unfun AC would love to imprint Entomb, and then use it with MTG: Nomad Mythmaker :D )  MTG: Predict gives you some neat card drawing and half a millstone.  MTG: Fire/Ice gives you the choice each turn of some insane MTG: Icy Manipulator + MTG: Jayemdae Tome combo for 60% less mana, or just 2 points of damage anywhere you like.  And it might be OTT, but MTG: Seedborn Muse is quite nice to have out when you've got a Scepter around.  MTG: Words of Wisdom takes things the other direction, for the multiplayer pigeon factor: a Howling Mine that's extra-friendly to you.
Oh, and people have pointed out a very nasty first-turn lock with [Isochron Scepter], [[Chrome Mox], any land, and any one of MTG: Boomerang, MTG: Hoodwink or MTG: Stand/Deliver.  (Yes, you can imprint Stand and then copy Deliver.)  Better have your 1-mana artifact destruction handy, yup.

[Thoughtcast]


Well, the guy previewing it reckons it's so good he's going to draft blue "for the forseeable future" - and he's presumably seen the rest of the set. I think his strong expectations of getting one in his pre-release sealed deck are perhaps exaggerated, even though it is a common.

Limited powerhouse, and definitely playable in T1 Neo-Academy, where it's better than anything save MTG: Ancestral Recall, quite possibly. It'll depend on the strength of Mirrodin's artifacts overall as to how good it is in Standard; but every possibility for it to be quite playable. --SF

[Psychogenic Probe]


Hey! Someone's been nicking flavour from Asimov et al. A stunningly wacky card.
MuHaHaHa....this card should have been printed in Nemesis - sideboard against Rebels. As it is, it makes Vegetation and landcycling rather more awkward. Interesting, to say the least, especially in light of...
Cool.  I used to use MTG: Ankh of Mishra; it went well in my Rats deck... -- Senji

[Solemn Simulacrum]



Which, but for the previous card, would have been a powerhouse in Slide....and looks pretty good in any form of control deck. Not incredibly exciting but strong; a very spikish card.
(It's from Jens Thoren, the last MTG Invitational winner).
Bah. PeterTaylor was looking forward to a good Elf Wizard for a bi-tribal Draw/Go? deck.
Elves in draw-go? Huh? How does that work? --SF
Elves = mana is roughly the idea.
Hmmmm... The Slide I run just doesn't have enough in the way of basic land to make this worthwhile (2, as targets for forestcyclers, I think) - but I am using land recursion as my mechanic. I've seen a B/W/R build that uses Oversold Cemetary and cycling creatures as it's base - that could afford to run fewer cycling lands, and take off that way. (It has the problem that recursion is limited to number of Cemetarys, rather than to Cartographers*Turns as in my deck, but I don't think that is so serious. Had I 3-4 Oversold Cemetarys, I'd give it a go, I think). It's a really quite nice card for limited, though - filling turn 3 (after a turn 2 Myr) rather well. (In a deck 1/3 land, 1/3 mana acceleration and combat tricks, and 1/3 fat).

[Auriok Steelshaper]


Just about managed not to spell that as Auroik. Not that I think he's an oik, of course.

The first Human we've seen, I believe, and looks pretty strong.

Oh, and does anyone think the results of last week's poll indicate that there may be a tendency towards playing blue and black at the pre-releases? --PeterTaylor, aiming to do some serious meta-gaming this time around.

The team format looks quite fun... -- Senji

[Mindslaver]



Well, he did say it was going to be cooler than Soul Foundry. I thought...how? But...but...but...well, it is! This is just plain funky in any format. No, seriously.
I'm not sure how strong the card actually is (I mean, it does need 6 mana to play) outside of limited and multiplayer, but, who cares? *general being-at-a-loss-for-words-ness*

Oh, did I mention that MTG: Tolarian Academy is now even more insane than it was before? --SF

Eat your heart out, MTG: Word of Command.

[Fireshrieker]



Ooh. A double-striking MTG: Raven Guild Master is a scary prospect indeed. He's wrong to claim a combo with the MTG: Haunted Cadaver, though, unless he can see a way to sacrifice it twice.

[Arc-Slogger]


Well enough priced to fit into my Beast deck, and it's certainly a feature. I am correct, am I not, in believing that if your library is empty the cost is reduced to R? Probably a Spike card, with appeal to Timmy and possibly to Jonny.
No. If your library has less than ten cards in it you are unable to play the cost of the ability and thus cannot use it. All costs must be paid for an activity to work. If the card was worded "<tap><R>: Remove the top ten cards of your library from the game. Arc-Slogger deals 2 damage to target creature or player", you would be right.

[Shrapnel Blast]


Uncommon, pretty good. Certainly the Foundry/Scepter?/Simulacrum?/Blast? combo would be scary once set up.

[Lightning Coils]


Since the image is messed up, text from mtgnews spoiler:
Lightning Coils 3
Artifact (Rare)
Whenever a nontoken creature you control is put into a graveyard from play, put a charge counter on Lightning Coils. At the beginning of your upkeep, if Lightning Coils has five or more charge counters on it, remove all of them from it and put that many 3/1 red Elemental creature tokens with haste into play. Remove them from the game at end of turn.

Wacky, probably not a Spike card, but Jonny should have fun.

[Scythe of the Wretched]


Similar ability to the Soul Collector, but you can put it on any creature. Fits nicely into my Soul Collector deck, which also features some Tims to finish off creatures she's damaged. And, as pointed out in the article, an excellent combo piece.

[Triskelion]


Also pretty cool, also a combo piece, would fit well into a Spike deck.

[Crystal Shard]


Repeatable bounce - pretty useful. Shame it can only bounce creatures, though.


And that's it for the previews: set prereleased tomorrow, and complete spoilers have been circulating for a couple of days.

[Power Conduit]


OMG?, they've printed giant fan.



ChrisHowlett - Let me at this set, please! Oh, fie on the inability to attend the prerelease!
I probably can't go to the prerelease either, and I can forsee that much of my money will be spent on this set. So I propose a draft when term starts. -ColinLeung
Seconded. This looks too groovy to miss out on. --CH
That's it, I'm selling my soul to go to the pre-release. The MTG: Promise of Power Mirrodin brings is just too tempting. -ColinLeung

AlexChurchill's prerelease report


With apologies and sympathy to those of you who couldn't make it.  Let's run some Mirrodin Limited in Cambridge when you get back.

Well, having done pretty well at avoiding any hint about anything Mirrodin-related beyond rumours of "the artifact set",  it was jolly cool cracking open the first booster and going "Oh my goodness!" And having that repeatedly over the course of the day when I see new things - or reprints especially.  Playing against my third round opponent: "Oh, they've brought MTG: Icy back?"  In my second pack of the first booster draft: "Wow, MTG: Atog's back! Makes sense...!"  Playing against the third round girl opponent again: "What the *heck* is that Scepter?!  And you're putting some kind of MTG: Twiddle twist with Entwine into it... oookayyy... So yes, you would indeed be able to pay 1 to untap the Scepter while tapping one of my attackers."  The fact that I had to be explaining the timing rules to her just added surreality to it :)

But, you know, I think on balance it's actually *more* fun to have the anticipation building up gradually.  Either release at WotC's pace or at MTGNews's.  It was cool to have such a surprise factor again, and I don't regret it, but I don't think I'll do it again next year.

So, yes.  Myself and PeterTaylor played in the 4-round 32-person flights, and then in two booster drafts after that.  Neither he nor I won anything from the first flight, despite me getting a wonderful 3-artifact combo to let me build my own MTG: Visara the Dreadful: putting one of my two Viridian Longbows on
the same creature as a Sword of Kaldra works quite well, it would seem. Putting it on an MTG: Ornithopter just adds insult to injury ;) ;)  I ended up going 2-2, 6 points.  With everyone who got 9 points or more getting 8 boosters.  Ah well.

In booster draft I thought I'd have done amazingly, what with drafting a red-green deck with 2 MTG: Shatter, 2 Deconstruct, 4 Predator's Spite, some burn, and a range of thoroughly decent creatures... but somehow it all went wrong, and I was knocked out in the second round (winning 2 boosters).  Peter went out first round of that draft, unfortunately.

However, he did demonstrate quite some savvy when we decided to stay around for another booster draft... He reckoned one particular colour had been hugely underdrafted in the first draft, and so drafted it in the second one.  And did very well out of it.  I thought my draft was going really quite badly until in the *third* booster I got an Isochron Scepter of my own.  To go with my Terror and two copies of Raise the Alarm.  And I proceeded to, um, end up facing Peter in the final, pretty much on the basis of that Scepter, either being some insane double-speed MTG: Kjeldoran Outpost, or my second "tap-to-destroy-a-creature" effect of the day (after my "build-your-own-Visaranithopter" earlier).  My semi-final opponent died with about 4 nonblack nonartifact creatures held uselessly in hand.  (The assorted artifact creatures he played having been either MTG: Arrested, destroyed with Altar's Light, or just traded with some of my little Myr which came back thanks to my Skeleton Shard.)

Peter and I agreed to split the 5/3 winnings 4/4 before starting.  And then had a great fun match, right down to the wire.  In the third game he got out that rather strong "you can't lose" Platinum Angel: so despite me having a Granite Shard (in a black-white deck) and a Viridian Longbow, even when I Timmed him down to 0 life he still didn't die.  And a 4/4 Angel is a bit big to Tim.  I also had the Skeleton Shard, at least two Myr, about three 1/1 Soldier tokens, and a Moriok Scavenger.  I ended up killing the Angel by an elaborate scheme, key to which were three of my creatures, all 7 of my lands, and most vital of all, my MTG: Chromatic Sphere.  (Left as an ExerciseForTheReader...)  That was a fun match.
The [official Wizards spoiler] may be of use if you're going to try to figure this out
(PeterTaylor) Alex's _two_ artifact recursion cards stood him in good stead, but his MTG: Dead-Iron Sledge on a flying cat was also effective in stopping me attacking with a rather large MTG: Broodstar (excellent card).

I've just looked at the Mirrodin [precon deck lists], and been rather startled to see that two of them are near-identical in concept to the two Mirrodin-only decks I built on Monday night - one white cat weenies with Equipment (although I hope "Opposable Paws" is a better name than "Little Bashers"), and one blue-black affinity, Myr and Nim deck.  Mine was going to be U/R until I reckoned the Nym fliers would be better than the little red Spellbombs (yay, MTG: Seal of Fire is back with cycling!).  I do very much like the idea in one of the precons of using Pentavus with Disciple of the Vault.  "2: Target opponent loses one life. Chump block up to one target creature even if it flies.  Use only 4 times per declare blockers step." sounds quite good...


A thought occurs. White has the Auriok, Blue the Neurok, Black the Moriok, Red the Vulshok. Are we going to see a race of Green humans with a name ending in -ok?
If so, they'll be printed in Fifth Dawn. Don't hold your breath.

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