Mirrdon Beseiged Mechanics & Spoilers

Hello everyone! Today is an exciting day as we are only 7 days away from the official start of Beseiged spoilers, and to hold us over, the new mechanics have been released from the mothership. We already knew about Battle Cry, but I'm going to take this time to talk about how awesome it is some more.

Battle Cry is going to be the backbone mechanic to a whole slew of aggro decks. And what is my pick/which am I going to try first? Knights. Notice how this guy is a knight and the Mythic Hero of Bladehorn (the Mirran pre-release card) is a knight as well. Hmmm... what other awesome knights are there? How about Student of Warfare? White Knight? Why knights? Remember that card Knight Exemplar? The M11 rare that got tons of hype, but is currently casual fodder? Wondering why I'm asking so many questions in a row? (I am too). I don't think Battle Cry will just be kept to White. I think it will also make its way into red and green as well. Whether or not it comes into those colors, some other decks that will become much stronger thanks to Battle Cry are Boros and Vengevine decks. In the GW and RW decks, the knights theme probably won't work unless we get some knights of varying colors in beseiged.

I took a 6 hour break from writing this to toss together and play some games with the mono-white Knights deck. I realized after I completely forgot about the Mirran Crusader, and that I made many other mistakes. However, the deck can be absurdly powerful if not answered immediatly. Battle Cry damage stacks up fast, and yes, Hero of Bladehorn is epic! I will do more testing with it in the next couple days and do things like cutting Kor Duelist (I only ran 3 Adventuring Gear and 1 Basilisk Collar) and 1 or 2 Stoneforge in place of a couple more lands (I had 8 fetch 12 plains) and the Crusader. But more on this in yet another instalment!

Metalcraft.... blah blah...

Living Weapon?! This is a sick mechanic! Basically it's a way to make topdecking an equipment suck a whole lot less! While it's obviously not a "build around me" mechanic, it is certainly a limited staple and possibly a constructed card too. In Mark Rosewater's interview from Evan Erwin (found here) he mentioned that the last 2 swords from the cycle (BG, RW) will be printed. Interestingly enough, those last 2 color pairs are the primary color combinations for Phyrexians and Mirrans. Imagine the RW one having Living Weapon! It would be the ultimate anti-Mirran weapon! I think this is a great limited mechanic that might never make it into constructed.

3
Equipped Creature gets +2/+2 and Infect
Living Weapon
Equip 2

^^That would be a cool card I would like to see

And Phyrexia gets another development with "poisoned". Basically, once the infection starts, all those that would be infecting get even stronger! I really like this mechanic, as it helps Phyrexia go over the top to close out games. This makes Ichor Rats better, as it is the only poison burn spell, but I think it is possible for another to get printed.

B
Instant
Target player gets a poison counter

^^Think that could happen?

One last thing, Phyrexia has officially infected white! It was suspected that they would as one of the Phyrexian starter decks is GW. But today, this got released:

I think this guy will never be a constructed force as it's not aggressive enough (and I think this set will be all about aggro), but I will definitely play it in the Pre-release. Because of the Mirran/Phyrexia boosters, I think poison will also emerge in red and blue, so that going Phyrexia doesn't give you the immediate advantage of more cards in your colors.

Alo released today is the booster pack arts. The 3 arts are of the Mirran and Phyrexian Crusaders and of the new Tezzeret. This means that Tez will be the only planeswalker in the set, as all Planeswalkers have always appeared on the boosters. (yes, I used today to referance Monday and Tuesday). That's all for now. Until next time, stay classy!