Mirage

    by Orgg

    Small Tidbits

    Mirage is Wizards of the Coast's second stand alone set

    Mirage takes place in a mystical continent called Jamuraa, on Dominaria. Unlike the setting in Ice Age, Mirage is set in a rich, tropical climate

    Mirage showcases the introduction of two new abilities, Flanking, and Phasing

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    		 On September 22, we attended the Mirage Pre-release tourney in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. Since there are plenty of people talking about how Mirage is going to affect the game play of Magic in general, we decided to just talk about our first impressions of Mirage, and the effects/thoughts/comments of a Mirage sealed deck tournament.

    After opening our packs, we noticed a few things about Mirage... :

  • The card stock was immensly crappy. The cards tended to stick to one another
  • The creature's power/toughness on the bottom of a card were now printed in bold, making it much easier to read
  • I don't know if it was just us, but the black borders on the front of the card seemed to be a tad wider
  • The manual that came with the starters seemed to be better written
  • The cards still came with that fresh Magic smell! = )

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    Mirage Sealed-Deck Gameplay

    I don't want to give away any spoilers, so if you want to find out more about a specific card mentioned below, go over to the Mirage spoiler page.

    Since Mirage was meant to be a creature heavy set, it wasn't surprising that many of the people who advanced into the playoffs had creature-abundant decks. The lack of a presence of much direct damage also helped this. The predominant color played was green, partly due to the fast mana and those really kewl new "super-elves", the Quirion Elves, which made it much more easier to play 3 color decks. However, I think the most powerful cards to have in a sealed deck tournament were Celestial Dawn, or Sacred Mesa. Celestial Dawn just about lets you cast anything you please, while Sacred Mesa allows you to swamp your opponent with flyers. I don't want to give too much away, so if you want more details about these cards, please check the Spoiler page.

    Of course, there were cards that almost sucked for a Sealed Deck tournament, but would rock otherwise (i.e. Dwarven Miner - not many non basic land that stay around; Phyrexian Dreadnought - if you had creatures with power greater than 12, you should have won already!) Still, everyone thoroughly enjoyed the tournament, and mostly everyone agreed that Mirage makes a great, or at least interesting, sealed deck tournament. If you haven't seen Mirage yet, try playing an informal sealed deck tournament with your friends, and have fun! (Hopefully you can figure out all the new abilities (flanking and phasing) by yourselves...)

    Copyright © 1996 Beyond Dominia.

    Magic: the Gathering is a Registered Trademark of Wizards of the Coast