Bojangles! In all of the history of Magic, there are only 5 creatures with a printed toughness of 13 or greater, so this card can kill off the other 5834 creatures ever printed (not including SoM) in one hit. Of those 5 huge creatures, one is BFM from unglued, so you will probably never have to stare it down (although if you do, run! It's a 99/99 that can only be blocked by 3 or more creatures) and the other is Death's Shadow, which unless you have an Abyssal Persecutor or your opponent has a Platinum Angel and they have 0 or less life, will have 12 or less toughness anyways and won't survive the calamities. While yes this card is incredibly powerful, I don't think it will ever see play, even in limited. It costs 8 mana to completely overkill a single creature. While yes, it doesn't require using extra cards, there's a point where you just need to stop.
Another cool note about this card is how it fits in with original Mirroden. Back 7/8 years ago when Mirroden came out, there were 4 towers that cost 4 mana, and had a very powerful ability for 8 mana and tapping. Their arts all showed a big epic tower, and the background suggested what color of mana it represented. The cards are:
Tower of Eons - White
Tower of Fortunes - Blue
Tower of Murmurs - Black
Tower of Champions - Green
It's cool to see how Wizards finished the cycle so many years later.
Mind Control is a really cool card, right? You like your opponent's Kozelik, so you steal him to your side and continue the annihilation, but just going the other way. How about using Mind Control on everything? For the extra investment of U, you can stel anything, from an opponent's Mox Opal to their Jace, the Mind Sculptor. Wait you can steal Planeswalkers?!?! Yeah, that is probably what this card will be doing whenever it hits play. Imagine you spend a long time using + abilities on your planeswalker (let's say Jace, the Mind Sculptor) and your opponent steals the card and immediatly uses its ultimate ability on you (which in Jace's case means you almost immediatly lose for putting love and care into your 'walker). If your in Game 1 against a player not running planeswalkers, you can steal anything you want, even a land if you really want to! This card isn't actually horrible by any means, and if you have this in your limited pool and you're sold on blue, this could be a huge bomb when your opponent drops Platinum Emporion, and you steal it.
I have talked before about how milling isn't really a viable strategy (with that being said I recently found a video from Worlds last year where a mill deck did really well, here's the deck tech vid. I still dont' like mill) and this is an initially difficult rare that gives mill a new perspective. Mill is typically UB, and blue is where we have seen all of your proliferate cards so far (and I expect all proliferate cards will either be artifacts or blue) so you could drop this on turn 2, tap it to put the first counter, then turn 3 play Steady Progress and tap to mill 2. Now for the rest of the game you don't have to put any mana into your Millstone which can only get better as you hit more proliferate cards. As much as I don't like milling, I will give it this one pitch: Leyline of the Void is in standard once again thanks to its reprinting in M11, so mill won't completely crash and burn to an Emrakul deck when all your hard work of milling your opponent is lost when they mill Emrakul and shuffle it all back. So maybe mill is something to look into. I will do it just to quiet all of the haters (DEFO!) in due time
Back in the day I had a BR discard deck that quickly dropped red to go mono-black, and then soon got scrapped because it never really worked right. Well, this could be the missing piece that gives the deck a lot more gas! If your deck is doing it's thing properly, then they should have no cards in hand within a turn of playing this card (Mind Sludge --> Painful Quandary) and then they have some tough choices. Either they can get 2-for-1ed every turn by losing an additional card every time they play one (which if they have no cards in hand means they can only play a spell once every 2 turns) or they can lose a quarter of their life for each spell they cast. That's just cruel! The discard deck loses Hypotic Specter, but still has Duress, Inquisition of Kozelik, Mind Rot, Guul Draz Specter, Mind Sludge, Liliana Vess and Quest for Nihil Stone, so it is still a potentially powerful deck going forward. I still have all the cards (except a Liliana which I had traded 1-for-1 for a Sarkhan the Mad =D) so I will probably bring this deck back out from my trade binder and cause some headaches around the table.
Geez! This card is wicke powerful. Even if you equip this to a 0/1 plant token, you can hit your opponent for 6 and destroy something every turn (like a chumpblocker that would get in your way). Wow, this is absolutely insane. Oh wait... it costs 6 to play? Ok, that's managable at the top of the curve. Wait, it costs 6 to equip as well?! I don't think I can invest 12 mana into this card... Fear not! There is a way to avoid all of these futile costs. Using white Kor, we can do some insane things. Check this out:
Turn 1: land, Trusty Machete
Turn 2: land, Stoneforge Mystic (fetch: Argentum Armor)
Turn 3: land, use Stoneforge Mystic's tap ability to get Argentum Armor in play, Kor Duelist
Turn 4: land, Kor Outfitter (equip Armor to Duelist for free), equip Machete to Duelist, attack for 18
The Machete isn't even required for this setup, I just threw it in there because it fits perfectly with the extra mana from playing the 3 creatures. Without the Machete, you are still hitting for 14 on turn 4, which is nothing to laugh at. Another awesome equipment for the deck is Sword of Vengence, and a less powerful, but still solid creature to equip is Kitesail Apprentice, and there is a card coming out in SoM which puts tokens in play if you have it equipped. That's another deck that I have had, scrapped, but can probably bring back. Bone Saw is gone, but there are other cards that should be able to replace it.
Start aside:
This card's flavor text suggests that Karn, who created Mirroden, but dissapeared during Time Spiral block will come back. The novel for this block is called "Quest for Karn," and about a year ago Mark Rosewater hinted there would be a colorless planeswalker in this block. To add to that, Karn was just reprinted in From the Vault: Relics. 2 years ago, they reprinted Nicol Bolas in From the Vault: Dragons, and he was reprinted as a planeswalker in Conflux. Everything here points to there being a card printed in either Mirroden Beseiged or "Action" named something to the degree of Karn, Planeswalker. I will probably be more accurate in my guess when the name of the 3rd set is released, but right now, this is how I am guessing the flavor of this block will roll:
Scars of Mirroden: Introduction to plane, hint at Phyrexian takeover
Mirroden Besieged: Phyrexia has regrown and is bringing the heat, some people go out on an expedition across the multiverse to find Karn who can put away Phyrexia again
"Action": Karn was found and now returns to Mirroden to clense the land of the Phyrexian invasion and restore peace to the plane
So I think Karn will be printed in the 3rd set in this block. He will be a pretty sweet colorless planeswalker that makes artifacts come alive and do his bidding, but Karn himself will not be able to directly interact with creatures.
End aside
So, why did I call this article Bulk Rares? A bulk rare is basically a rare that actually stinks and you don't want to play it (Baneful Omen, Disaster Radius). Currently the prices on these cards on SCG are:
Tower of Calamaties: $0.59
Volition Reins: $0.29
Grindclock: $0.99
Painful Quandry: $0.99
Argentum Armor: $1.49
Even though they don't carry a hefty price, these cards aren't necessarily bad, you just need to work with them. Cards like these, which require a full deck to be built around them, are what really got me into deckbuilding and I look forward to continuing to make experimental rogue decks.
That's all for now folks, until next time, don't doubt the rare in that pack until you have given it true justice
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