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Mirrodin Besieged – A Poison Master’s Guide
Posted on January 30, 2011 by Plejades
I pretty much agree with all the stuff written within. I’d have to say that infect creatures at the common slot take a huge hit (Not much really compares with Stinger and Cystbearer in this set) but due to the small set numbers you do get some of the better uncommons about as often as you’d see a common in Scars.
As for the prerelease it seems to me that Mirrans just were miles better. R/W is so good in Scars and stack that on top of even more good cheap removal at common/uncommon in Besieged it was really easy pickings vrs the infectors. Also infect decks really really needed to hit the common print run with Inchorclaw Myr and Plague Stinger to really get the needed density of 2 drops to be aggressive enough. (If you opened Contagion Engine/skittles/hand that would also obviously be a huge boon).
Burn the Impure is also pretty insane vrs infect because it really turns the race around (and it kills almost every important infect guy, including the tough Cyst). Having 2 of them in my sealed It was almost impossible for phyrexia to race against my random dorks.
Both the X-0′s my prerelease, one of which was me, were Mirran. The majority of the players in the room choose phyrexia and I understand as they get to open much better money rares while Mirrans really only have money mythics. Most other sealed events I heard off were dominated by the mirran side. And of course the majority of players everywhere seemed to have sided with the Phyrexians.
I went 3-1 at my prerelease with Phyrexnia. I played black/white non-infect with 3 Spread the Sickness, Black Sun’s Zenith, Tempered Steel, Razor Hippogriff and a bunch of artifacts. Psychosis Crawler was an MVP and the 3 living weapons I had (Mortarpod and Skinwing) were terrific. Myr Sire is a better card than it looks, too; it’s gets a lot of value for metalcraft and in chumping infect. The guy who beat me and 4-0′d my pod was Phyrexinia too. He had Contagion Engine and a tonne of infect guys.
Mirran seemed like it had problems with synergy. A bunch of people around me had too few creatures and/or too few artifacts. They ended up short on metalcraft with a handful of subpar dudes.
In the draft I played, I took Mirran and went red (1st pick Red Sun’s Zenith) and added black for Spread the Sickness in the 2nd pack. I ended up not losing a game. I got Burn the Impure, 2 Skinrenders, Oxidda Scrapmelter, 2 Phyrexian Ragers, 2 Blisterstick Shamans, 2 Orge Resisters, 2 Myr Sires and some other good stuff. The value of my guys wasoverwhelming. They were 2-for-1ing all over the place.
Infect has definitely gotten more diverse. There are great new architypes all over the map.
Besieged did so little for infect. This is the turning point, really. There’s only a few new cards for infect that will actually be useful. I doubt any serious decks won’t be G/B. They didn’t gain much, really. Signal pest is the only 4-of card, really. Everything else is sideboard worthy, but hardly worth much.
Aside from signal pest, only Virulent Wound, the black crusader, maybe the rats, the vatmother. corrupter and the spider will see play.
…
alright maybe infect got a bit of a buff. It’s still going to make Boros infect hate incredibly good.
R/W v G/B all day every day
i went 5-1 in a 74 man prerelease in north jersey tonight and made the finals as phreyxia. But i did it different with u/w/b and venser recurring corpse curs and bone hoard to chump block their stuff all day. the only guy i lost to was the same one that won the tourney. he had skythrix hand of praetors phryexian knight, just an insane deck. the sickest decks possible are phryexian but the worst decks are also phryexian too its a coin flip. you need your scars to yield something and your besieged to be just ok really. i had 24 playables with 2 plague myr and a silver myr to help cast venser. even running 2 islands and just the myr for the blue on venser i only failed to cast it once today and i won that game anyways.
and for what its worth our top 8 after 6 rnds was 6 phryexia 2 mirren. one of the mirren lost in the top 8 and i got the other in the semis
So now that the set has been fully spoiled this means well have our usual daily articles again? Been waiting for ever for rag to riches.
Too bad most of these new infect choices are all uncommon and rare….Not going to be of much help to my pauper decks T_T…. but still Im interested in the transition from fast small infect to giant infect stomp
Virulent Wound is, as you said, great for getting rid of an early dude and most importantly – letting you get that first poison counter through. Playing infect in block a ton recently makes me really, really love infect effects that net uncontested poison counters (i.e. Ichor Rats, Hand, etc.). Also note that this card can be a late game surprise to get in the last counter. For a B mana this card is an auto-include in my infect decks.
And I too am really itching for another installment of Rags to Riches. I would love to see you comment and/or act upon the effects that MBS being let out of the bag had on other currently under-valued cards (Hand of Praetors, Shape Anew, etc.).
I’ve heard MANY people say that 4 toughness is the golden point in scars block, since few creatures have 4 or more toughness… so why would the keepers be a sideboard card? seems good enough to maindeck 99% of the time.
Great analysis of the new infect cards. It’s interesting to think how different the strategy would be if it were still drafted the ‘classic’ way instead of having MBS first.
So right about your bullet on critical mass. I have won so many limited games at something like 13 life and 6 poison.
Thanks for this nice listing, just wanted to scroll the mirrodin cards myself to make an infectlist when i saw this ! About Darksteel Plate : to bad there is no way (except countering) to prevent exciling…
Blightsteel Colossus looks awesome ^_^ I really want to try him out in a “shape anew” deck
I must share this with you : i just won the first game of an MBS release draft by poisoning my oponent in decider… Funny Fact : I had NO poison creatures
!!
I started with virulent wound; then had vedalken anatomist to control the board an 4 fuel for the causes which i could all use to proliferate; also 2 spread the sickness to get him to 8 counters (had also played a second virulent wound). Then i put inkmoth nexus on table and he quit…
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