Mirrodin Besieged

The final stretch towards the release of the newest Magic the Gathering expansion is on its way. Across the country this weekend, pre-release events took place at various card shops. Given that my weekend starts in the wee hours of Sunday morning, I went to one Sunday night. It was a sealed pack event with everyone getting 3 packs of Scars of Mirrodin and 3 packs of Mirrodin Besieged. The three packs were either from the Mirran or the Phyrexian faction. Unlike the normal packs which will be a mix, each of these packs held cards from only one of the factions. (The cards from the Scars of Mirrodin set showed the 2 different symbols in the backgrounds of the text portion of the cards just as they did on both these new cards and the packaging from the pre-release packs.) I had a good time at the one I went to here both playing in the tournament (I came in 6th place.) as well as getting to meet some new people.

A couple new mechanics are being introduced in this expansion. One is Battle Cry. This gives creatures attacking along side the creature with Battle Cry a +1/+0 bonus. Interesting but not overly impressive. The other, and much more interesting mechanic, is Living Equipment. Equipment has been around for a while now but it always came into play and then had to be equipped to something before it became useful. Artifacts with this new mechanic come into play attached to a 0/0 creature. These new equipment always increase the stats of the attached creature to keep it from automatically dying due to it’s 0 toughness. Like any other equipment, it will drop when the creature is killed but will be useful immediately upon casting. Obviously, you can always pay the casting cost and move it to a creature already in play, allowing the 0/0 creature to just go away. Hopefully, this should make for a some interesting play. So, anyone up for a game?