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Just yesterday, I was in a type one tournament, and there they were: MIRAGE cards! Luckily they were on my side of the playing field. Could they make a significant difference in a type one tourney? I was about to find out. I had replaced one of my four Llanowar Elves with the new Quirion Elves and I had removed a Centaur Archer in order to add a Femeref Archer. The tournament was going well. The only card making much of a showing were the Quirion Elves. They were extremely handy in getting that specific 1 mana of any color(chosen when they come into play) and of course for their ability to give me an extra green, but in a deck with several spells requiring two red and some amount of colorless mana they were an extremely welcome compliment to the mana birds.
Okay, so the fourth round rolls around and I am still in good standing as far as points were concerned, but now I am about to face the deck which I feared the most. It had all the spoiler cards: a lotus, a couple of moxes, timewalk, ancestral recall,... you get the idea. It was a blue/white deck with serendibs, spirit links, flying men, serras and juggernauts along with many other well chosen cards. The deck was also played by skilled player with a good deal of experience under his belt. Then there was the worst part about the deck: I had played against it before with the deck I was playing,... and it had beaten me. What happened, you ask? This is when the Femeref Archers started pulling there weight. With a casting cost of G2, power and toughness of 2 and the ability to tap and deal 4 points of damage to a target attacking creature with flying, they were an easy substitute for the Centaur Archers. Between the new archers and my Maze of Ith (and some well placed fireballs) I was able to hold off the speedy assault of my opponent's squadron of serendibs and serras long enough for my deck to develop its ground assault force (Marton Stromgald with several other 'choice' creatures). The result: I swept the match 3-0. The next big threat was in the semi-final round. I was up against a Willogedon deck. I knew that the deck had fared extremely well in the world championships (either first or second place). This was my toughest match of the day, but again the Mirage cards helped to pull me through. With the Femeref Archers taking down serras and the Quirion Elves giving me the mana boost that I needed after the Armageddons I was able to defeat my opponent, although it did go down to the wire each game. In the final I faced a discard deck and I promptly disposed of it (those decks need a new gimmick now that mind twist is banned). Overall it may have been possible for me to win the tournament without the Mirage cards, but it would have been a lot more difficult. Do I think the Mirage set is going to have a major impact on how the game is played and what new decks we will be seeing? The answer is simple, of course it will. There are some nasty card combos running around, and the set has not even been released yet!
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