Mirage l The Resleevables #13 l Magic: The Gathering History MTG

Cedric Phillips and Patrick Sullivan are here for their deep dive on Magic’s ninth expansion — Mirage!

The duo dissect Magic’s jaunt into the jungle, with their thoughts on flanking and phasing, all thirteen of Mirage’s cycles, and what it was like to play Limited with the first set designed with Sealed Deck in mind.

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Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction
2:46 Facts
19:33 Lore
32:55 Mechanics
50:35 Cycles
1:18:08 Trivia
1:31:14 Awards Show
1:48:40 Grade

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Email us @ theresleevables@gmail.com

Support us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/TheResleevables)

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Sponsors:
Coalesce Apparel + Design (https://www.coalesceapparel.shop/)
Tales of Adventure (https://www.toamagic.com/)

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Credits:
Directed by: Jonathan Choi
Produced by: Cedric Phillips and Jonathan Choi
Edited by: Jonathan Choi
Written by: Cedric Phillips and Patrick Sullivan
Graphics by: Ray Dill

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Information sourced from MagicTheGathering.com, TheSideboard.com, MTGWiki.com and numerous conversations with previous and current Magic players

#theresleevables #mtg #podcast #magicthegathering #commander #mtgcommander #mtgstandard #mtgmodern #mtglegacy #mtgvintage #mtghistoric #mtgalchemy

What’s up everybody welcome back to the receivables Mirage Edition I’m your host Cedric Phillips at Cedric a Phillips on all of the things and I of course joined by my partner in crime Patrick Sullivan at basic Mountain Patrick it’s time to go into block season I love

It this set is something of a Godfather for a lot of the way that magic gets designed today and has been for decades for sure the first set set up for sealed play the first set that was the first set of what was a real block yep I know

That we’ve had Ice Age block but that was kind of an incoherent thing this is a real block yep uh this is the first set that I ever drafted okay have a little story about that too cool and it is beautiful the art the creative elements

Of it the flavor text there is a reason the packaging this set is revered the way that it is among people of my generation because it was way ahead of its time it was full of a bunch of fun and useful cards and it is beautiful the

Setting the art the flavor text all of it the art is very very good in this set if you haven’t really taken the dive in Mirage like we have uh we look forward to you joining us for that we’re going to have plenty of cards flying up on the

Screen and as Patrick did mention they are gorgeous it’s really really good artwork I they there are very few sets that are sort of over represented in terms of basic lands that people still play with very true and often the most popular ones or the ones maybe you

See the most in a tournament setting are somewhat rare and valuable the guru lands come to mind the apacks the Euros you can point to some things for a while the zenar foil extended Arts were that sort of thing until magic printed more and more of those sort of versions and

Kind of fell by the wayside yep Mirage shows up because it’s beautiful and that’s a testament to how enduring the creative sensibilities of the set are well not only are there beautiful cars but there’s a lot of things to go over when it comes to Mirage so we’ll be

Starting this episode like we always do with the facts of Mirage all right everybody we are back and ready for the facts of Mirage but before we get there we must of course shout out our sponsor Tales of Adventure thank you as always to Tales of Adventure their website is toam

Magic.com and you can also follow the store owner TOA Michael on Twitter who posts deals and sales and bundles throughout the course of the week their website is excellent one of my favorite features is that the high-end cards are individually scanned so if you’re in the market for let’s say allian eye Diamond

You can pull up the images and the condition so you can be confident you’re purchasing the car that you want all orders inside the United States are shipped free with tracking and make sure to use promo code rebles at checkout for 8% off of any order Tales of Adventure Eternal lives

Here alrighty let us dive in with the fact that Mirage is the ninth Magic the Gathering expansion it was released on October 8th 1996 and became tournament legal on November 1 1st 1996 and it contains 350 black bordered cards0 Commons 110 uncommons 110 rares and 20 of the aformentioned beautiful basic lands

Mar’s print run is a pretty large one estimated at 400 million cards those cards were sold in 15 card boosters and 60 card starter decks now I believe in alliances we were looking at 12 card boosters serves uh those days are over we’re at 15 now and these booster packs

Contained 11 Commons three uncommons and one rare and the starter decks well those contain 26 Commons nine uncommons three rares and 22 lands alongside a rule book those boosters that we held up well they showcased five different card Arts there’s polymorph tanoa Maro which we’re going to be talking more about

Later jungle Troll and the Very hyped up grinning totem the starter decks well those showcase the art from Ivory charm lastly a booster box of Mirage contain 36 booster packs but you teased the story about drafting this set it did so Mirage was the first set that was I

Would argue was really made with limited in mind okay not just the starter decks that’s certainly part of it and helps accommodate seal but just the right mix of nuts and bolts stuff at lower Rarities you know creatures that can attack and block removal spells whoa can

You imagine the earlier sets that we looked at some of them are completely absent of this there isn’t a way to kill anything yes and you can’t attack Mirage has a lot of that going on and we started hearing Rumblings of booster drafts like a new way to play Magic so

For Eugene Harvey’s birthday which was I believe in July so Mirage had been out for a little while at this point okay the plan was we’re going to booster draft like at his party in his basement or whatever okay and so everyone’s just sort of grabbing whatever no one has any clue what’s

Going on except of course for Eugene who uh proceeded to spend his birthday just busting everyone up with Breeze Keepers oh that’s fun it’s like like a four four flyer with phasing for four okay yeah because everyone’s like oh phasing that’s bad and it’s four four flyer four

Was pretty good sure yeah I got a lot of them and everyone’s trying to attack with two twos if even that sure sure so that was the first set that I could I can claim that I drafted okay even a very unserious and poor way well you did

Your best I don’t even know if that’s true I was overwhelmed by the experience I can only imagine it’s been a long time since my first booster draft but just thinking about that experience but you being around when it was like invented yes is kind of kind of crazy like how

Many colors am I supposed to play no we take that for granted now we do we do but back in the days I don’t know how many cards are you supposed to play how many how many lands yeah that’s what I was gonna say what’s your land spell

Ratio yeah 40 cards how many lands I don’t know 13 sounds right 12ish yeah 12ish whatever just play with all the cards that seemed semi decent yep it was a very uh fast and loose booster draft experience but I still enjoyed it uh let’s talk more about here this

Wonderful set Mirage had two two significant different printings one dark print with a rough finish and one light print with a smooth finish the dark print was printed in the United States and the light print was printed in Belgium at CA Mundy Mirage nonbasic lands have a dull green text box which

They share with visions non monocolor lands mirage’s expansion symbol is a palm tree and that symbolizes the tropical aspects of jamora the world and M Mirage more or less takes place in and now we’re going to get to some names that we have seen before because it is

Time to share with you who designed this wonderful set Bill Rose was the lead Charlie Cantina cantino there’s some in jokes going on there with exactly how to spell Charlie’s last name uh that I’ve learned via the YouTube comments so thank you all uh don Feliz Howard

Kenberg and Joel Mick designed Mirage it was developed by Bill Rose as well who was the lead developer Mike Elliott William joic and again some guy named Mark rosewater still the power level guy yeah still developing still toting the numbers all the things we associate Mark rosewater with today uh our Direction

Was by Sue and hary let’s learn a little more about how this set was developed U Mirage was developed from 1992 through 1995 it’s a very long time by a group of play testers including Bill Rose who was the lead design and lead developer on the set who independently created their

Own cards and also refused cards from several prior sets initially called The managerie Mirage evolved over the years until it was finalized in October 1995 and the African setting was devised by suan hary after the cards had been designed lastly Mirage was one of the first sets that was developed with seal

Deck play in mind as you mentioned Mirage began the first official block one large expansion followed by two smaller expansions all tied together through card mechanics and setting this model became the standard for the concept of Block Rotation but more importantly this set the standard for magic

For 20ish years I don’t really know officially when blocks stopped but during my time coming up through the game you know you get your big base set in like October and then you get your you get your supplementary expansion in like nove or excuse me like February and

And then maybe the next one in May and then like a coret in the summer and just rinse rotate baby we’re good to go as an older magic player and I guess older human being this is this is something that I very much Miss about magic same

First of all the the block setup gives you a lot of mechanical cohesion you have the ability to expand upon mechanics so there isn’t this pressure to make sure that deck X whatever the keyword or creature type is it doesn’t have to be playable out of the box okay

You can wait a little while and stretch it out uh instead of having to put everything in in one basket like you have to do in the non-block settings the calendar releases were also very consistent and so once you kind of got a familiarity for it it’s like yeah you

Have the set coming out in the fall y That’s the set one you have one in February March and then one in June or July and then rotation occurs in standard when the next block releases yep it was a very easy calendar to stay on top of I think it’s taken for granted

How simple that was now oh it is yeah it is and I’m not saying that there aren’t positives to kind of doing it in the more modern way but as a player at the time it was very easy for me to sort of grasp on to when is roughly the next set

Coming out yeah and this was a time where the internet wasn’t nearly as uous as it was now it would be pretty easy to fall out of the communication Loop but with that fairly rigid calendar it was easy just to to remember oh yeah it’s it’s June there’s probably you know

Weather lights coming out soon even if I haven’t played magic for a little while I should you know go check it out because I just am familiar with the calendar and I know when it’s coming Mirage introduced reminder text on cards and some changes to make the cards

Easier to read including a slightly expanded text box and frame and more visible power and toughness numbers now you and I have joked quite a bit reading some of the old cards they were a little 40 some cards I’m thinking mostly of bronze tablet right now try to fit all

That text on one card quite the silly task but they were able to accomplish it of sorts U Mirage really did a nice job of starting to tidy up the room and I think that’s one of the nice things about this set is it started to kind of

Tidy things up a little bit it does reminder text is a big step forward and it’s something that essentially every physical trading card game has borrowed yeah and uses themselves it’s not exactly the first in terms of explanatory test you look at some of Magic’s early designs you know there’s example for

Example Rock Hydra says heads in parenthesis in Alpha sure there are some cards like Sharad for example uh where they walk you through some of the nuances of the sub game you have cards like the hive that say use I forget what the exact word was but tokens or coins

Or whatever to represent the one one Flyers but we’re just talking about ad hoc explanations about how individual cards work this was the first set that took keywords and mechanics and had reminder texts on them so once you saw it the first time you kind of knew how

The thing worked which again I think a very good thing to be doing yes uh let’s see a weird thing that happened here with Mirage uh fifth edition rules were introduced in Mirage although fifth edition wasn’t released until March 97 remember this set was released at the

Back end of 96 uh to avoid any confusion for anyone who started playing with Mirage the fifth edition rules were included with Mirage starter decks which again a little strange further fifth edition rules became the official DCI rules in November 1 1996 when Mirage became legal for tournament play well

Ahead of the release of fifth edition well it’s not ideal we agree I would say it makes more intuitive sense to have rule sets like this updated with core sets and not individual blocks because the core sets are kind of it’s a jumping on point and

Sort of a reset it’s not it’s typically not new stuff going on and so it makes sense to me to say yeah the rules go in when the core set updates occur if we’re doing anything like that that said if you know for sure you’re going to do it

And you have the whole thing laid out already you know what those rules are going to be there’s an argument for getting people acclimated as soon as possible because that change is coming regardless and if they have a little bit more time to get used to it or

A little bit more time to seek out answers to questions that might come up that could be smoother not how I would do it in Ideal World I think it’s correct to tie them to the core sets but I don’t think it’s some major sin to put

It in Mirage once you know what you’re going to do well here are some uh here are some new terminology from fifth edition rules that were implemented alongside the release of Mirage first one is combat damage uh this was the term now used to refer to damage dealt

During damage dealing all cards that refer to damage in combat such as fog and gaseous form now refer to combat damage uh great change um saves a lot of text super intuitive what it means yep even if you didn’t encounter the term before any magic player who’s roughly

Familiar with it would correctly guess what combat damage meant generic Mana this term referred to Mana required for casting cost activation cost Etc that doesn’t need to be any specific color for example disenchant was set to cost one white and one generic Mana did this actually manifest in any of the CeX

Or is this just behind the scenes I think a behind the scenes thing yeah sure whatever fine land home lome described those creatures that depended on having a certain type of land and play to survive and attack for example sea serpent had Island Home a good thing

To keyword um because it’s quite lengthy to write out what xome means yep uh it’s intuitive enough as a word I don’t think you would necessarily get it on first blush what that meant but it would probably be one of your top five guesses okay and um once someone explains it to

You it’s like oh that totally makes sense uh protection a creature could now have protection from anything not just from colors MH so that’s a yeah I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not but it’s a thing that exist and it’s clear now well it’s a nice bit of the

Protection rules as sloppy and not intuitive as they are in certain places they do accommodate protection from something other than color pretty easily yep so again it’s it’s something where if you’re a relatively familiar magic player you can guess accurately pretty quickly what is meant by that Global and local

Enchantments uh enchantments that were played on other permanence were referred to as local enchantments those that were simply put into play were called global enchantments Global enchantments is such a horrible word or term to use coming off of the heels of enchant world yeah it’s so bad yeah this this one’s not my

Favorite yeah uh the global versus local I think that eventually just moving to auras to describe local enchantments is just better yeah we eventually got there yeah end of turn one of the counterintuitive elements of the fourth edition rules was that effects that happened at end of turn occurred before

Effects that lasted until end of turn wore off in fifth edition this procedure was corrected by moving the at end of turn effects to the very end of the turn so moving the resolution of such effects out of the end phase removed any need for that phase so the developers

Collapsed that phase and heal creatures into a single phase called cleanup which we still use today and then note that fast effects were illegal during cleanup just as they were during heal creatures so the last chance to play Fast effects was now out discard and before the player discarded down to seven cards

Okay so I say this as a former protour player and former designer on Magic the Gathering yeah I don’t know how the rules work at all I’ll just I’ll take it as a given that this is an improvement but I can’t really speak to it it’s a complicated game what do you

Want me to say would you rather me lie no I like you tell the I like you tell the truth I’m not confident I fully understand how the end of turn stuff works you make a token that that has Hast and dies the other turn is when does it when

Do you get to go with to it the next turn versus not sure not really sure yeah sure yeah some end of turn stuff you just learn from other players when something bad happens to you oh totally yeah I I was playing in a legacy tournament many many years ago I was

Playing sneaking show and I had through the breach in my hand I was playing against someone with counter spells and Todd Anderson was watching and I I go on to lose this game and he goes why didn’t you try through the breaching at the end of there their turn to like you know

Induce their mana and try to fire it over two turns yeah like I didn’t know it worked that way oh yeah if someone told me it had time I would have RI that off but I didn’t know clear end turn triggers cast through the breach yeah

Didn’t didn’t know that was a thing so you know it’s come up but still not worth it to me to learn the only way I learned it is by having it happen to me so sure there you go uh everybody those are the facts of Mirage we are underway

In what is a fantastic Set uh that we will continue to review but before we do we have a uh we have a flavor and storyline aspect to bring to you right after this all right everybody it is now time for the flavor the storyline the lore of

Mirage now this one is not going to be as long as Baron andure nothing probably ever will be again uh The Baron’s still probably getting some business done right now oh if we to the castle Yeah yeah uh but there’s this is kind of a I would describe Mirage storyline as a

Tale’s oldest time someone wants control over a land sure yeah uh Mirage envisions the second set in the block and uh coming up soon here on theable stand apart from the rest of magic for their tropical African themed setting in jamora and its three nations of femf zal

And squada jamora is a major supercontinent on dominaria so just big land yep okay cool uh the story line begins with The Disappearance of the Plains Walker to fery ever heard of him and the three powerful spellcasters who come looking for him mangara who’s a human Mage on dominaria known for his

Peaceful nature and diplomatic skills I believe it’s pronounced jel yeah laal oral yeah uh one of the oldest zrin Mages on dominaria she retreated from civilization and lives in the manuli jungle which respect I just want to move to not civilization so bad yeah so I

Totally get it which is now part of the self-contained plane of zaler and then carc a black aligned human warlock from dominaria he was the main antagonist of the Mirage block storyline so these are your three main characters uh their search for tfairy set off the events

That would lead to the Mirage War and the Mirage war was a series of conflicts in Northwest Jura between 40 450 and 4195 AR that stems from CarX attempts to of course conquer the region sure yeah means not a clue yeah what do you think it means uh I really don’t know after

Riven Turnbull sure I have no idea I yeah could that could be so there’s a longer version of this but I’m gonna give you a uh I’m gonna give you a shorter version of what’s basically going on here which is tfairy was doing a little magic on his aisle so I’m going

To read this part you find Folks at home uh centuries ago when the land was ruled entirely by the kingdom of zir an internal religious dispute led to the church led the church to secede okay cool though the incident was resolved peacefully the church created its own Province called fth which uh actually

Means judgment in their tongue in time fem grew apart from zir aided by the discovery of Rich gold deposits that helped establish it as an independent state eventually Tales of mineral wealth within ff’s Deep Mountain spread to squada Empire the Empire annexed the lands bordering zir and began to mine

The mountains passing the dwarf and residents into fem so look there’s gold in those those Hills yeah and we somebody wants it yes that doesn’t belong to them right it’s a that’s it’s an African setting yeah that’s it’s based on real life you get it yeah uh

The leaders of fem happily accepted the new refugees as their skills would increase ff’s gold yield sustainability the zrin nobility was angered by the king’s unwillingness to respond to the squat invasion on of the northern reaches and this bickering splintered zir into several independent states only the only the intervention of

The returning Plains Walker tfairy restored zir to a state of calm tfairy was an ancient Court mage of zir and his name still commanded respect centuries after he departed for other PLS Sally tfairy was no Diplomat and after a few decades he resolved to leave the kingdom

To its machinations whilst wilst he took up residence on a small secluded Island to begin a series of magical experiments onto Fair’s aisle Fair in the story tfairy essentially starts phased out phases in phases back out that’s right that’s right comes home and it’s like

This sucks I’m out here I’m out of here so he’s doing some experiments on tarry’s aisle uh he is attempting to manipulate time so that he might overcome the difficulties of magic summoning he theorized that he could drop creatures in and out of the time stream causing them to appear and

Disappear at will AKA phasing as he labeled it but his experiments met with limited success after years of trial and error tfairy concluded the process was inherently unstable random effects constantly occurred where still tfairy discovered that his early clumsy experiments had damaged the time stream and threatened to unravel that stream

Across dominari if left unattended it’s never a good idea to mess with time no every movie every time someone’s like yo let’s mess with time goes bad every time has never gone well uh hardened by the knowledge of his culpability tfairy prepared to fix the time stream with a

Colossal energy burst also never a good idea a dangerous maneuver at best but his only real hope of caring the damage what happened next was truly unexpected the energy Unleashed caused every plant animal and building on the island to phase out of existence leaving just bare rock behind yeah this is what’s called

Uh chasing your losses there’s a lot well the only way to undo the harm I’ve done via the time traveling and phasing is to keep doing it and hoping this time it works so the car to Fair’s aisle which is in the set does have phasing yes for a reason so

Flavor win um the nations of jamora knew nothing about any of what tfairy was doing uh three Mages as I mentioned uh perceived SLE ripples in the time stream took notice first was mangara of of corondor which is a Magik card uh a mage vers in politics and a great Ally of the

Querian elves of the white Woods second was joriel who lived in a series of palaces erected in her name at the heart of the Jungle and then her influence spread through the animal kingdom Bey and Beyond to the sentinent lizard people do you know who they are senent lizard people hold

On uh the is it the burning shield no Sal start to the V BYO yes there you go and threw them to the mighty dragons it was rumored that joral was once a great zifrin Mage who turned her back on that Society to build her Empire of beasts

Third was carac of the burning Isles a mage known for his allegiances with many uh spirits and their allies through herborg and Barden chiefly the N the nightstalkers and the easily manipulated panther warriors the three Mages met on the baron Rock which was T’s aisle no one could explain the mysterious

Residual temporal energy but the three’s curiosity was peaked and they agreed to settle in jamura and keep a close eye on the aisle so mangara comes in marara is like yo let’s keep the peace so he’s over here trying to unite Nations okay um basically we want some diplomacy in

Place so mangara Gibs are deplo for diplomacy and intimidation encouraged peace agreements within a few short years when FF and zaler can AG greed on a border mangara created a buffer zone near the Yaro jungle to police this Zone he summoned a large contingent of querian elves the elves always had a

Good relationship with mangara and happily populated this new land the agreement with with squada was trickier but eventually a trade agreement which squad’s favorite kind was created within a century mangar’s Harmony created a New Age of Enlightenment and the Nations began to trust one another they exchanged ideas and shared their

Strengths even the dwarves and elves were welcome within the cities and then what what that’s the end of the story okay nothing could go wrong uh okay car but car uh kavac was horrified carac had always dreamed of ruling a nation because of course he does but the powerful entities of the

Burning Isles had ensured that his dreams might never come to fruition frustrated by mangar’s success and incapable of of believing that mangara would control zir for any purpose rather than aggression carac began to work on jorelle’s fears and her inability to understand the Ambitions of humans at

This point she had lived with animals for seven for several 100 years excuse me slowly as mangar’s rule took shape carac was able to draw the reclusive joral into the politics of the region in time the two Mages built covert armies of animals and Spirits throughout jumara cool so naturally they’re working

Together even though they’re all trying to work together to find to faery uh carc waited occasionally instigating border disputes and basically working behind the scenes to cause disruption eventually the disputes flared and blood accidentally spilled within days Civil War seemed imminent the disruption was all that K needed he sent dozens of

Evil spirits into the lands faning the Flames of old hatred to spark across the borders mangaro was at a loss and able to control the steadily worsing situation it was then that carc sent a message to mangara an offer of assistance in dealing with the troubles

Mangara agreed to meet with carac in the m in the uh manvi Delta uh mangara never returned from that encounter surprise surprise a carac and Joel ambushed him capturing him within an Amber prison that now sits in the throne room of one of jarel’s palaces many of the zrin

Believed that mangara had fled the land leaving it to Civil War others believed he died in the uh manuli so began the dark days of jamora reports increased you’re going to like this part reports increased of people molded by wild cats and of citizens dying in their sleep

With expressions of horror the only clue to the cause of their demise Farmers began to mysteriously vanished from their fields the three nations met at a great Council they shared their tales and the greatest of the story tellers Keem L Weaver Magic card presented Myriad reports from across yora indeed

Something was a foot and they would have to find a way to put aside their territorial squabbles if they were to deal with these mysterious Terrors it was then carave it was then that carac chose to make his appearance demanding the surrender of the three nations kac’s love making Grand appearance had blinded

Him to the fact that they had now been given the Nations had been given an enemy because they couldn’t forgot who it was and he’s like yo it was me and so now they know who to try to attack and kill United against the common foe the nations of Jora flatly defied carc

Starting stating that they would pay him no fty so guess what happens everybody I’m going to make it short for you we’re rising up against this guy enough is enough and slowly over time jorel well they figured out that maybe I teamed up with the wrong guy yeah so over time

There’s some Wars some battles rage uh spirit of the night hopefully between us he gets involved yes excuse me it get it gets involved uh kill some things whatever over time joral realizes I’ve partnered up with the wrong person I need to get mangara out of this prison but before

Any of this happens the only way that I can do this because I’m not strong enough to stop GC we got to dial up tfairy yes we gotta get tfairy back out here So eventually tfairy makes his way through some summonings and some conversations and jorelle’s got some

Magic at work here we get tfairy to come back tfairy is now here to kind of help with assisting or defeating kavac carac and tfairy meet and car’s like I’m GNA kick your ass doesn’t even get close it’ss absolutely destroyed by tfairy uh and then over time uh zoral basically

Admits it tfairy here’s what I did I did some bad things I’m really sorry tfairy saves the day they get uh mangara out of the prison and then problem solved sounds like everything is more or less fine that’s the Mirage War uh this is like I said a tale is oldest time yes

Someone wants control of the land why does everyone always want control of the land also you know uh one of the main characters realizes at some point they back the wrong horse and tries to sort of half-heartedly make amends with the other side once it’s clear that you’re

Gonna be taking the L otherwise yep yeah yeah it’s the same story every time it’s like you know what this is a good idea we should work together this is a horrible idea we should not work together it’s too late it’s too late I’ve made a grand error this person’s in

Charge of everything how can I get out of this hopefully we’ve got a better friend who’s more powerful I do sort of but T doesn’t really want to get involved no but gets involved smooshes them what I like about this is a couple of things most notably I really think

They’ve done a fantastic job um in the most recent handful of sets of taking a story and incorporating it into the cards yes I think that’s one of my favorite things like it wasn’t happening in the early stages magic it’s starting to really happen now with a lot of the

Cards in sets not just like some it’s like a lot of them now you know like it’s Fair’s aisle having phasing a bunch of cards that are reference with like the city names or like the like the lands and everything like that like it’s all kind of becoming one big thing Amber

Prison is a card in the set like there is a yeah there’s a story being told through the cards but not in a way that’s uh obtrusive yeah it I think Mirage has this really nice job of if you kind of want to just tune out of the

Story you can okay it’s not in terms of just the names and the art the flavor text is not really on top of the entire experience but it’s there if you look for it yeah and I think that’s a really cool thing that started happening uh in

Alliances we saw it we see it happening here and then of course future sets just gets better and better yeah you know which is really really cool so uh that is your flavor and story line without dragging on too long and the reason for that is because boy we got some

Mechanics and Cycles to go over but before we get to those cycles and mechanics we take a short break see you in a sec all right everybody we are back for the mechanics of Mirage that’s not how anything is said but I felt like saying it that way uh Mirage introduced two

Mechanics one is flanking two is phasing I’m not sure which one of these is better than the other I’m going to be very curious your take they’re both good and bad in different ways I’ll say this you know how you just aded earlier in the show that you don’t really know how

Eot Works phasing we’re going to talk about that oh I bet you know not me I do but it’s that’s beside the point okay great uh let’s start with flanking the easier of the two it’s a keyword ability that gives creatures that block a creature with flanking minus one minus one unless

The blocker also has flanking in which case that does not happen flanking was frequently used to make two two creatures for three Mana worthwhile with two exceptions Sidewinder sliver and old fogy old fogy is especially lame by the way all flanking creatures are either Knights on Horseback or Centaur uh they have a

Tactical height advantage and the added Mobility to swing around the enemy and attack in the flanks and the name is inspired by the effective military tactics so flavor win yes uh as far as the uh as far as the keyword ability your thoughts not a huge fan okay um

To start off with I I don’t like the name I know that’s kind of secondary to this but um flanking is a thing that occurs when some person or unit is moving and attacking and another unit is largely stationary it’s a little dissident and Magic when you have to

Declare blocks for then to it’s like oh I was actually flanking you you just had no idea sure sure if you were talking about a game with direct attacking like HearthStone for example where you know my thing attacks your thing flanking as a name is great it’s just a little off

Message for how the mechanic works okay it is a little bit kind of weirdly mathy like you do kind of have to sit down and um especially when it involves flanking and the possibility of double blocking it can it it just takes a beat to register what’s going on for something

That should be fairly simple uh and I I guess the upside of it is I do appreciate here’s a different form of evasion you know magic has a game engine issue where if we’re just kind of playing stuff the game bogs down pretty quickly Y and things that allow

Attackers to continue to proceed through contested Wards is a good thing but flanking doesn’t even really do a great job of that because you’re 2 two flanking can’t with flanking can’t attack past my 44 whereas your 2 two flyer my 44 I flying yeah attack right over attack right over

So it’s kind of messy and not even the smoothest thing to play with for not that much mechanical upside I do appreciate the consistency at least of we’re going to do this on nights and the art really conveys like suah Lancer is a really good example of this of the the

The character is on Horseback uh with a spear like charging down you know or a a a javelin or something charging it does do a pretty good job of conveying what the thing is supposed to be and a lot of the art does a good job of communicating

Something but I think it’s a lot of headache for not that much upset well here’s the thing about flanking uh there’s not a lot of it in the set no so there are five 10 11 cards of flanking it’s uh it’s found in all colors is flanking over the course of magic

History but it’s primarily a white and red ability so white has five cards of flanking there’s femf Knight matenda herder sadar Jabari zrin commander and ZR knight uh PS these cards are weird to pronounce I’m doing my best uh blue nothing black has cadaverous Knight red has burning Shield aari searing spear

Escari how did you say that Su I always heard Su okay I said squada yeah yeah I don’t know which one’s right I don’t know I Su Lancer when I was a kid they’re they’re they’re fake words Su Lancer it is and then uh TM tour yeah

And then lastly and green alongside his fear dark yeah and then last is in green there is jorel Center oh yeah look out for the darts you better so uh slow and steady that’s that’s everything that is is flanking now let’s get to phasing which having some difficulty here maybe

You can smooth it out a little bit uh it’s a keyword ability where perat May phase out great causing them to be treated as if they don’t exist until they automatic Aly phase back in on their next untap step this can be a protective action or a means to temporarily disable an opponent’s

Permanence when a permanent is phased out it’s treated as though it doesn’t exist a phased out permanent can’t affect or be affected by anything that doesn’t specifically mention phased out permanence unlike similar Concepts like flickering a permanent a phased out permanent Remains the Same object and so retains counters attachments and choices

Made during the life of the object when permanence phase they do not change zones or leave the battlefield so no enters the battlefield or leaves the battlefield triggered abilities trigger and any auras equipment or if you play with fortifications attached to that permanent phase out with it before I get

To the number of cars that are in phasing or any of those things okay so let me just take to Fair’s aisle here okay all right it’s say land Taps for two blue and it has phasing and ERS the battlefield tap okay so I play to Fair’s

Aisle I’m with you so far all right it enters the battlefield tapped right let’s assume no Amulet of vigor we’re just playing clean all right so now you take your turn okay all right now I’m gonna go take my turn I untap is it in play uh

Well that’s so the untap is like an automatic thing that occurs that the active phasic get collapsed into okay so what happens is you untap part of the untapping is phasing out any permanent in playay with phasing okay and now we’re in your upkeep to fairy aisle

Nowhere to be seen Gone Gone okay got it so now I take my turn I don’t have the aisle right okay and so now I do whatever I’m going to do I pass back to you okay you take your turn you pass back to me it phases in right untapped yes okay

Great okay so it takes a little while to actually get to use yeah it’s a great it’s a great question to test someone’s I’m glad you brought this example specifically okay to say someone’s knowledge of of phasing which is how long does it take before I could tap on

Various a pretty much pretty much because like I kept looking at it today and I was like I think I’m pretty sure I know how this works and this card’s really not good but okay so there’s a it’s it’s like a land on suspend for a

While for a while and then it’s back on suspend yeah yeah yeah okay all right got it got it got so the GRE keeper well also how does enters the battlefield okay so I guess that’s answered by the enters and leaves the battlefield is not a concept that exists with phasing still

Confusing you just have to know the rules yeah so this is this is the thing I wanted to get to with phasing which is one I’m curious how much it confused you and your friends when you were playing with it if at all I mean I know that you

Know you mentioned the story with Eugene and Drafting and Bree keeper and everything and it sounds like Eugene understood how it worked yeah um but you know did this come up where you were playing games against people you didn’t know and it’s like oh yeah that the way

That’s not how phasing Works here’s how it actually works and it because look this could be a mess if you’re new to card games or young trying to figure out how this works like I’m not even 100% positive now I’ve been playing this game for almost 30 years it definitely came

Up at the local store a mitigating factor in all this was by and large the phasing cards were not that good yep so it wasn’t a you know our casual tournament Friday night scene it wasn’t like there was a lot of phasing going around but if you were just pickup games

At the store yeah people just didn’t really know how it worked okay okay um there are eight cards with phasing um phasing is primarily in blue and then I’ll get you your opinion on excuse me there are 10 cards with phasing not eight uh eight of them are in blue

Though cloak of invisibility murl graders Sandbar crocodile Shimmer tanoa T’s curse T Fair’s Drake T’s imp uh T far’s Isle the aention land and and warping worm so your thoughts on phasing so you know that Meme the like what’s your opinion about something that gets everyone doing this all like the swords

Pointing at yeah one Disney character or whatever yeah I’ve seen that online so my game one of my game designer versions of this is I kind of like phasing okay so here here’s what I like about phasing okay I am generally a really big fan of mechanics that

Are sort of in the space of you play it as it is and and it’s pretty straightforward what the deal you’re making is and you can just play with the card as it’s kind of written but with some exploration you might be able to do more for example Breeze keeper okay so I

Get a four4 fly for four that I kind have access to every other turn okay great cool I you know that could be a card that could be useful or above rate or whatever oh but if I play with wrath of God I phase out my Breeze keeper

Wrath next turn Breeze keeper comes back and I’m dealing I am a big fan of mechanics like that my issue with phasing is it is really complicated and sort of not compatible with the rules at on a foundational level and you can tell because there’s all these car outs for

Phasing that just apply to phasing like no it doesn’t trigger enters the battlefield or lose the battlefield it’s like why it’s like that’s a rule of phasing no enchantments stay on and Equipment stays on why because that’s just a rule of phasing it’s not any intuitive way to be able to figure out

What’s going on and there are mechanics that I’m critical of where it kind of works on its own but yeah with this second or third card now what happens or this mechanic with this peculiar rare how does this resolve I think they can still be worth doing

Cards like that even when there is a or mechanics like that even when there’s a cost in sort of the second and third order interactions and how did these things resolve y phasing is complicated on its own sure yeah I would agree like for example is a card that’s phased out

Counted as being exiled I would guess no I would also guess no but I wouldn’t bet my life on it yeah okay what about the equipment nor is on it well so are those F or you’re asking if those are count as Exiles yeah sure okay for like wish

Considerations or whatever okay well you know they are phased out yes but again yeah what does that exactly mean okay yeah even questions around like I attacked with my creature it then phases out then it phases back in is it untapped like was it ever around during

Its untap moment in any of these iterations it it’s not intuitive at all and you just have to memorize what the rules of phasing are that to me is a gigantic black eye and a reason not to do this and why magic has done very little phasing over the years since

Doing this but the Baseline conceit of it of yeah my it’s on and off I get it every other turn I do I am fond of that I think there’s like good uh design space there but the rules backage is just too intense for me okay uh Mirage includes more multicolored cards than

Any set between Legends and Invasion and the first enemy color cards for all pairs except for black and green because black and green had a card in it from the dark uh oh the Dark of the WS there you go uh there are two of each so

There’s uh two black green cards uh kadav Bloom and Grim Feast there’s two white black cards circle of Despair and Purgatory blue red has Ember wild kif and frenetic of fre white red has energy bolt and reflect damage and blue green has malignant growth and warping horm yes warping worm warping

Worm there we go uh Mirage also includes many creatures with the Knight creature type all with flanking and an activated ability like the aforementioned kavous Knight and to Fair’s Honor Guard but more importantly Mirage introduced some new creature types okay now do you do you

Actually want to try to play I’ll give a shot I wantan to I want to like keep the option of tapping out if I’m just doing too badly okay can tap out at any point okay any point I’ll allow it uh John our editor you can start the clock or

Whatever it is that you do uh ancestor later changed to cleric forgotten ancestor no don’t know auspicious ancestor gotcha brush wag brush wag that’s correct Cyclops a condu cyclops that is correct dealer all right Griffin there are four you only need to get one um oh uh Griffin Kenyon

No don’t have it okay I’ll give you want a hint yeah it is uh friends of the Cyclops you just mentioned a condu griffin that is correct along with matenda Griffin uh turo Griffin and Uno Griffin okay just various Griffins in their homes hyena uh uh gibbering hyena yeah that’s correct

That’s correct is that actually correct well it’s either uh so GI i b b r i n g is that gibbering or gibbering is that gibbering wow I’m shocked that was that was pretty much uh a dark shot all right mantis later change to insect proba mantis no giant mantis okay I knew

You’re gonna get wrong I knew it okay uh martyr later changed to cleric uh don’t know Vigilant Mar okay mircat later changed to Mongoose uh Karu mircat okay so I’ve never even seen that card before 21 Pro blue green colus have you played with that or something obviously read a

Book okay all right all right two1 Pro blue is like that’s a real card that’s nice yeah that’s a real card event unfortunately Karu mcats didn’t have a very long shelf life because the next set had River boa which was also good against Blue but also good against well

Oh yeah oh yeah I the Arts gray just a little just a little I’ve never seen that card before family Mir cats looking up uh minion I don’t know shaku Minion Okay uh pirate Oh No reef pirates in I don’t know um I don’t know how to say this word I’m

Gonna give it the old collar Trier kcam missive oh yeah I know yeah yeah k k mssa yeah Pirates rhino uh crashing Rhino close enough crash of rhinos crash of rhinos close enough Scout there are two Uh Zer Scout no good try uh femf Scouts and then Goblin Scouts wild cat later changed to cat a wild cat later changed to cat uh lives in a family alongside a rangang uh I don’t know Toby wild cats oh okay viashino uh Vino Emissary Vino Warrior Warrior

All right last one Wyn later changed to Drake seruan wav that’s correct okay okay um not too bad I gotta say not a bad effort that wasn’t bad there’s not that many I would have gotten one I would have gotten brush wag yeah that’s what I would got that’s

Something of a layup yeah yeah uh certain Mirage cards had additional creature types in Italian Spanish and German uh shaku en Brer was also a vampire and sadar Jabari was also a knight uh this situation was corrected by successive Oracle announcements and everyone’s favorite thing here on this show the grand creature type

Update boo yeah we boo that right out of here boo so everybody those those are the mechanics of Mirage we going to take a short break and when we come back we’ve got to get into 13 different Cycles here on the rebles all right everybody we are back

For the cycles of Mirage as I mentioned before the break there are 13 of these to go through and we’re going to start with the charms these were common instance that cost a single Mana let you choose one of three possible effects you familiar with the five uh sort of um I

Believe there was also a cycle in Visions uh that’s definitely correct and so I get them I get which ones are confused from the set to set so Ivory charm Sapphire charm ebony chaos and seaing charm y uh and these are again single Mana let you do some stuff these

Rule okay uh a a huge step forward I think in in Magic Design This cycle very appealing okay um it does tap into that sort of cantrip space flavor-wise of doing something sort of more light-hearted and Whimsical and whatever great for color pie definition and it’s actually really great step forward was

The gold charms because that gave you the architecture fast forwarding Raba of color a color B and then what do they share a lot of the charms have that structure which this laid the foundation for I also really appreciate cards that what they’re giving you is flexibility

And options but you do have to make do with the thing it’s not cycling where it’s if it’s bad you just get rid of it oh I love that about these yeah it’s it’s awesome that yeah there’s a lot of stuff going on with these people played

These cards in competitive decks back in the day but it isn’t guaranteed to be useful like sometimes it is not the car that you want but it is flexible enough that there’s typically always something you can be doing with it I also greatly enjoy that none like in on almost every

Charm certainly the beginning like they’re not overpowered right and none of the modes are overpowered you know but like as a package yeah it might be worth a card yeah that flexibility is really nice and I like that their one minute instance this is very easy to

Talk yourself yeah it’s a useful thing to do on the chap great that’s right uh let’s go to the diamonds uncommon artifacts that cost two mana and the battlefield tapped and produce one Mana of the appropriate color when tapped this cycle was later reprinted in sixth edition seventh edition Commander 2014

And Commander Legends you think you can name these um there is charcoal Diamond that’s one fire Diamond two Moss Diamond three um you’re missing white and blue yeah I know I’m trying to to pull it Marble Diamond four and sky diamond that’s five Bang these are super simple designs that I I loved fire Diamond when I was a kid oh yeah thought it was really cool I think the uh so I think there’s like a a lot of awesome stuff going on here um you know people still had an appetite

For moxes even though they were too much Yep this kind of gives you the fix MOX experience I also really appreciate that you know enter the battlefield tapped is just a development knob part of it is power level and part of it is it’s kind of nice to make extra you know Mana

Sources come to play tapped so you’re not not doing the math of the rebate that I get from playing the thing but there is a tone here of yeah you you’ve gone mining you pulled this out of the earth it takes a little time for it to

Activate or for you to apply your magic yep so I think that even though I I would guess it’s largely a mechanical thing there’s the story here is not a zero you can tell of yeah I dug this charcoal out of the ground and I need a

Little time and energy to turn it into like a magical item it’s a good story yeah uh let’s go to the dragons rare four four dragon creatures that have a Mana cost of four and then two of the colored Mana symbols so four white white

Four blue blue so on and so forth uh pearl dragon M Dragon catacomb Dragon volcanic dragon and canopy drag Dragon um dragons are cool people like dragons yeah these were this is a really cool cycle uh it’s a little unfortunate that these were even by the standards of the

Time not particularly good as far as six Mana go but it’s still sweet to get people dragons and you know uh I I also appreciate the uh color pie sort of justification going on here you know colors typically certain colors typically don’t get flying or don’t get

Very much of it but if the story is right if the creature type is right if you’re doing it infrequently if you’re doing it at a high Rarity you can get away with putting certain uh fly flying on into certain colors and I would argue these sort of lay the foundation for the

Kagawa dragons in a certain way okay which is yeah it’s kind of weird to give green a big flyer that’s not typically what they do but it’s a cycle of Dragons It’s High Rarity you know there’s a there’s enough going on there where you give it a pass okay all right I one

Thing I do like is canopy Dragon which is um six Mana four four trample but you can give it flying but to give it flying it has a lose trample yes I just think that’s cool because as you mentioned green doesn’t get a big flyer yeah it’s

Either stomping around on the ground or it’s it’s flying you know there’s a there’s a good D andd story there yeah I like that a lot uh we’ll go to the guild Mages now uh these are common one one wizard creatures that cost a single mana and have two activated abilities each

With the cost of tap and an Allied Mana there’s Civic Guild Mage shaper Guild Mage Shadow Guild Mage Armor Guild Mage and Granger Guild Mage um I feel like I know you well enough to know that you think these are cool these are very cool

Yeah I am not a big fan of uh the red ability that appears on shadowing GRE guil Mage I think it’s just too intense on a one Mana creature but the spirit of the cycle is spectacular sure I like I’ve always been a guild Mage fan especially these simplistic ones back in

The day of like one Mana one one two abilities again not overpowered I I I do agree with you the Granger Guild Mage red ability could be seen as overpowered it’s shooting down like elves and birds people played Shadow and Granger and constructed Shadow’s the black one

Yeah but the the activated abilities are the same across the colors okay got it so the the the red ability is the the same on Shadow and Granger got it this cycle was also I would argue the inspiration like very directly for The Apprentice cycle in Invasion Y which is

Also all one Mana one ones with activated abilities and the activ activated ability is shared by color so both the white ones tap for example gotcha okay uh let’s move on to these flash enchantments these are common Aura enchantments or what we call these local local local enchantments boy thatal great yeah

Uh have a converted Mana cost of two and Flash but our sacrifice to the beginning of the next cleanup step if cast any time a sorcery couldn’t have been cast uh the four excuse me the five cards in question are ward of Lights SAR grave servitude lightning reflexes and armor

Of Thrones the one I’m most familiar with is lightning reflexes so to give everybody an idea of how these cards work lightning reflexes cost one in a red enchant creature you may choose to play Lightning reflexes as an instant if you do buried at end of turn Enchanted

Creature gets plus one plus 0 and gains First Strike so a little bit of a buffer a little bit of help if you want to use it that way or you can just play it on your main phase and then it’s there forever fine uh you know this is uh

Magic has done a bunch of similar things to this yeah um it is a little laborious for how much gameplay is really there but it’s a cool thing to do fill out a file let’s go on to the Mirage boom each of these cards has a small Mana value

And an effect involving the number three this cycle is Loosely linked to the Boon Cyclone Alpha and Ice Age including two reprints and three new cards lightning bolt giant growth and the overpowered ancestral recall they’re out of here uh the five cards in question healing Salve dream catch Dark Ritual incinerates and

A fire Grove what does that do I don’t even know if I know that one by name uh one in a green enchantment if fire Grove comes into play with three plus one plus one counters on it okay fulfilling the number three during your upkeep put one

Of these counters On Target Creature if this Grove thing has none of these counters on it Buri yet okay worse than giant growth probably uh so of course the Boon cycle is healing Salve the normal one is healing Salve uh ancestral recall Dark Ritual lightning bolt giant

Growth they try to fix it in Ice Age and now this is kind of another tempt yeah you know you just keep on removing the Power Hour Power uh level outliers except for dark ritual get a pass until the 2000s yeah why does this just keep

Coming back they I don’t know I someone must have felt this was a good thing to balance the game around okay and I do appreciate it does feel very black like here is this temporary burst of Mana in contrast to Green which does a lot more slow growing sustainable kind of Mana

Development yeah yes but also like come on can we stop doing this necron was already in people’s decks like it wasn’t it wasn’t like at this point people didn’t know sure it was known sure you can just pump the brakes on it nope because you know what

You know what Tempest had the next block after this dark ritual and urza Saga Andia mask it just kept they just kept firing okay so the fact that it’s in mask is really weird because that’s like the power down magic set right and it’s like but we got to give it a little

Juice it’s not even good it’s not even really that good with mercenaries there really really not a lot to do with it uh we move on to some enemy color hosers here these are uncommon spells that hamper both enemy colors we’ve got mangara Equity mind harness rign of

Terror rain of chaos and roots of life and because I love going over enemy color hosers because magic much like with dark ritual they just felt like they had to keep doing this for some reason uh mangar’s Equity see if I can find this one here first uh one white

White enchantment when you play M’s Equity choose black or red during your upkeep pay one in a white or bury mangar’s equity for each one damage a creature of the chosen color deals to you or a white creature you control mandara’s excuse me mangar’s Equity deals one damage to that creature it’s

Pretty tame hoser well one of these is not tame one of these is quietly one of the most messed up cards of all time so I know it’s the next one I know it’s mine harest mine harest is so screwed up yeah I uh so M har a single blue uh play

Only on a red or green creature commun of upkeep of one that’s mine just single Mana control single Mana control magic like could you imagine you just like do that to someone’s questing Beast it’s like it’s over yeah I can pay the upkeep so I’m good I really detest by the way that

Before we get too far that that white design yeah it’s just another one in Magic’s early story history of yes this enchantment has an upkeep cost of two mana and it’s there to punish red and black which you cannot kill it like sure what’s the point of this what is

The point of this if you made it a cumulative upkeep design it’s like okay it’s there for a bit and then it goes away and the game continues right yeah this is just like yeah I I pay I pay too white to keep conversion in play preventing you from casting anything

This one is at least super modest so it’s kind of whatever uh rain of terror is the black one 3bb sorcery uh bury all white creatures or bury all green creatures lose two life for each creature put into the graveyard this way okay it’s just not that good yeah so

It’s whatever okay yeah that’s fine that’s five Mana it’s cost a lot you take some damage to do it so okay sure rain of chaos this is the red one let’s find you real quick uh two RR destroy Target ples and target white creature or Target a destroy Target Island and

Target blue creature okay extremely messed up yeah that’s pretty powerful yeah just you know like it didn’t really show up there was kind of better Stone Rain type of options that’s the thing you’re going to do if you put that card into 2023 and people were playing with

Blue or white creatures it would be super messed up that’ be a really good card now really messed up uh and then roots of Life One G enchantment when you play roots of Life choose Islands or swamps whenever an opponent of the chosen excuse me whatever land of the

Chosen type that Target opponent controls becomes tapped gain of life okay that card sucks yeah as your as your control opponent is Milling you out your counter all your spells I’m at 26 I will cast a big green creature counter spell you’re 28 yeah that that card sort of misses the plot a

Little bit Yeah okay uh we’ve got some counterclockwise color hosers that’s a mouthful uncommon spells that hamper one enemy color uh so the white one hampers red which hampers blue which hampers green which hampers black which hampers white uh there is Yaro Griffin Cilan wyin soul R Soko and decomposition okay

So let me give you an example here I’m going to go to decomposition give green a little bit of love here uh one and a green play only on a black creature okay Enchanted creature gains commun of upkeep one life if Enchanted creature is put into a graveyard controller loses

Two life okay okay that’s not a green card but fine whatever it’s not a green card at all no yeah okay I mean like it’s a green card in name yes yeah yeah I think that’s about it I think the justification for that is if you’re

Putting it on a black creature it’s a super black penalty for the black creature to have yeah but it’s just not a green card uh Soko is one in a red instant Target player reveals his or her hand to all players for each blue interrupt card that player holds he or

She pays four life or discards that card again just doesn’t feel like a red card just not a red card yeah it feels more like a black card I I guess I’ll say it doesn’t feel like a red card I don’t know exactly what it feels like

Okay Soul Ren which is black let’s find you okay one in a black instant bury taret Creature if it’s white draw a card at the beginning of the next turns upkeep okay it feels like a black card yeah okay that’s um that’s the that’s execute yeah it’s

Not slay it’s execute okay uh we got a blue one here the Wyn we’ve we’ve seen this one a couple of times in the show already uh this one is five is a lot four and a green three three flly Pro green okay that’s a I mean that’s a

Hate card yeah sure yeah and then Yaro Griffin if this this white card is probably I’m just guessing it’s not very good okay here it is three in a White 2 two flyer sacrific this Griffin counter Target red spell that assigns damage to you or a creature you control play

Abilities interrupt that’s at least a white card I agree with that it at least passes the color pie test I agree with super modest whatever just not a very good bird and Forge tender type of thing whatever all right we got clockwise enemy boosters uncommon spells it’s a

Weird name for recycle uncommon spells with a basic effect that is boosted if the target has an enemy color so uh the five cars Shadow Bane ether well CarX hex Cinder cloud and tropical storm uh so I’m GNA just go over Shadow Bane I’m only going to go over one of this cycle

So where you at Shadow Bane okay so one in a white in prevent all damage to you or a creature you control from any One Source if that source is black gain one life for each one damage Fant this way okay it’s very Co all right sure so this is just

Another cycle of I mean look I’ll say this they have dialed back the haat yeah with the exception of the egregious mind harness this is a very modest set of cards by the standards of the time I will say in regards to specifically mind harness when people always like blue

Gets the best of everything uh in that case it’s true well I if you go back in the day there’s there’s just just a recurring thing that goes on where it’s okay what’s Green’s color hoser against blue and black it’s just like a creature would swamp walk yeah true and what do

What what do uh what do black and blue get against Green it’s like perish one Mana control magic perish the the uh plague wind in this set it’s not very good but it’s still plague wind y there’s just a lot of well green is gonna get this uh pale bear and it’s

Going to just what are you possibly going to do about that yeah no way to beat that versus just one Mana control magic is just like come on could you just do a bounce could you just do like bounce a creature and draw a card at a good rate or something does

It have to be like this uh let’s go with some clockwise protection creatures these are uncommon creatures with either protection or an ability that protects them from one color so the white one is safe against black the black one safe against Green so so on and so forth uh

Five cards are mise Spirit uh squada firew Walker Oh a dealer Barbed back worm Wildfire Emissary deer we’ll get to that one in a second and then KW mircat deer which you also G you know what I’m gonna go over all five in this cycle so let’s see what maliss Spirit does five

Mana 33 flying protection from black it’s an angel and probably between us okay that one’s not that good white normally got the short and another the sick uh let’s take a look at the blue one here the fire walker uh okay so one blue blue 01 summon wizard uh soqu fir

Walker cannot be the target of red spells or effects okay so basically Pro red and then tap deal one damage start reach your player yeah that’s a good card game that’s a good card game a CarX hex this is a black am I want to make

Sure I’m in the right area nope Barbed back worm my best guess is this one’s not that good okay five Mana 43 worm pay a black Target Green creature blocking barkback worm gets minus oneus one till turn what if I just take four right what if I just do that

Instead uh Wildfire Emissary all right so I know this one I have to look it up four Mana 24 Pro white you can pay one in a red to give it plus one plus plus two plus 0 plus one plus 0 plus one plus 0 all right explain to the people why

This was good certified dealer one of the first cards in Magic that showed up because it was a surgical metagame piece yes a lot of magic back in the day is just yeah you play with ancestral recall because you know draw three for a Mana is pretty good Wildfire Emissary what

Are the removal spells people will play sword of plow shares lightning bolt good luck good luck this card though very modest was an important tournament piece at the time I remember seeing this in like the tournament winning decks yeah very much remember that and thought it was a really cool card good luck

And like many cards in this set has rad artwork yeah uh and then your your mircat 21 Pro blue or is it rat what mircat I had it right mirat yeah yeah cool card cool card multicolored hosers uncommon multicolored spells that gain an advantage from their natural from

Their Mutual enemy color all right so I’ve got a these are some gold cards here so quick little doozy over here we’re going to start with Haz Rider Drake well here are the five so we can bring up on screen Haz Rider Drake haunting apparition why can’t I say this word skako minion

Zakuz yeah yeah whatever wind Reaper Falcon and radiant Essence all right let’s go to the ha Rider Drake Take a look at this four Mana two3 flying Pro Red game not the game continues haunting apparation one blue black oh God I hate every time I run a card like this one plus

Star two toughness yeah awesome flying haunting Apparition has power equal to one plus the number of green creature cards and Target opponent’s graveyard of course it does uh the minion shako I think it’s shaku yeah shako minion one black red two two you can pay a black and a red

And tap it to deal two damage to Target white creature pretty messed up yeah pretty messed up I mean you better swords it I guess yeah uh when ER Falcon is a red green card oh oh right this thing we looked at this the beginning of the show uh three

Mana one one flying Pro yeah good luck with your mind hardness take one I’m gonna just be here dealing yeah I’m gonna Peck you to death uh and then radiant Essence it’s a green white card so you know it’s not good so let’s take a look at looky here real quick uh one

Green white two three as long as Target opponent controls any black perence rtings Essence gets plus one plus two so it becomes a 35 for three if they control any black permanent okay kill it it’s at least like fine some of like one one flying for three Mana is not like

Not fine you’re not wrong you’re not wrong all right Alli color Allied colored X spells these are uncommon non-permanence that cost X Plus each color um and those are Alli so Prismatic Boon alongside sealed fate CarX Purge Savage twister and vitalizing C uh Cascade so the Boon is x white blue

Instant X Target creatures gain protection from a single color of your choice turn that’s actually kind of Co card sure so okay I’ll give that I’ll give that a win sealed fate this is a blue black card with X sorcery look at the top X cards of Target opponent’s

Library remove one of those cards from the game and put the rest back on top of that player’s library in any order not great uh let’s go to CarX Purge K is going to get some Spotlight on this show uh we’ve got x black red destroy Target creature with casting cost equal

To X if that creature is put into the graveyard in this way CarX Purge deals to the creatures controller an amount of damage equal to the creature’s power okay cool but it’s just so bad ah I’m sorry what’s wrong uh the X spell that’s deal damage and if the creature dies they take

Damage equal to not X but some other number yeah really taking the win out of my sales uh Savage twister do the twist great uh X red green Savage twist X damage to each creature and then vitalizing Cascade I’m pretty sure this is just gain life oh it’s okay so X

Green white instant gain X plus three life there you go expells are cool yeah right absolutely and these are gold expells last cycle but not the least cycle fetch lands uncommon lands uncommon lands excuse me that enter the battlefield tapped and can be tapped and sacrificed to fetch a

Land with one of two basic land types associated with Allied colors from your library do know all five uh I don’t know if I know all five but I want to put it out there that as much as I have praised this set’s creative work and I do think

It is spectacular this might be the laziest named cycle in Magic’s history all right okay bad or river it’s bad uh is it Rocky tarpit do we have two Mountain Valley you have three uh what am I missing here white BL white blue you’re missing white BL grasslands that’s four and white blue

One probably saw the most Play I’m I can’t I don’t have it is it like uh like Flat Lake that’s that is so close flood plane is so close it has the word plane in it yeah that’s right that’s already the name of the one of the lands you can go

Get uh these are the OG fetch lands yes I played these at my first BR tour okay um you know that they did what they said they would do that’s definitely true magic obviously blew the doors off of the cycle and just keeps doubling down on them to all of our detriment these

Are pretty modest and fine uh other than the names not really no no really this feels like a this feels like a 1201 deadline I was gonna say this came in at the final minute yeah am we an idea for a final cycle the we need names flood plane fine

That’s fine they’ve done much better than this of course yes uh Mirage has one matched pair and two mirrored pairs this is the last part of our Cycles here folks the match pair is tranquil Grove versus Serene heart each of these common instance cost one in green one destroys

All non Ora enchantments and the other destroys all auras both are illustrated by D Alexander Gregory now hang on a second because I’ve used the term oras quite a bit there when I don’t think that’s what the cards say so uh tranquil excuse me seren heart destroys all local

Enchantments thank you very much while tranquil Grove uh excuse me tranquil domain so even wrote the card name down wrong uh destroys all global enchantment yeah you can’t tell me that wasn’t confusing back in the Dayal so local versus global and Global versus enchant world because

Globe and world are pretty close as far as words go horrendous y you just you can’t there’s nothing you can do to tell me that this was not confusing back in the day it was uh mired pairs burning palm e versus harmattan epit these uncommon two two Ed creatures one blue

And one red both cost 2 mm and have an activated ability of 1 mm that grants or removes flying respectively from a Target creature how do you feel about a FRS as a creature type love them yeah yeah I do like the um the sort of negative

Costing um you’re not fully in control of what this thing is doing it feels a little autonomous or that you know they’re getting something out of the deal too yep um I I think it works really well for uh that creature type and that’s not the type of thing that

You want to do very often typically UND designs and you probably don’t want to do that many e in general for World building purposes so it’s a really clean marriage when it comes up uh and then our last mired pair is the burning Shield escari versus The zrin Knight

These common two two KN creatures one white and one red both cost two in a mana and have flanking and then you can pay two of their respective Mana either two red or two white and give them first strike until end of turn yeah it’s uh uh

On board flanking spy versus spy I like it yeah whatever uh everybody those are the cycles here of Mirage we’re going to take a short break but when we come back we have what many people enjoy about our show trivia right after this all right everybody it is trivia

Time here on the Mirage episode of the receivables now sometimes we have a ton of trivia to go over this time not not as much but we will start things off with cadaverous Bloom card we have not had the opportunity to talk about much yet uh this allowed a player to generate

Large amounts of Mana frequently used in conjunction with drain life as famously uh part of a deck called PR Bloom that comboed with the card Prosperity yes what’s your what’s your history with this a little bit before my time in terms of playing serus tournament magic okay but we were aware

Of the deck I heard of Pros Bon when I was growing up yeah cool combo deck kill your like get a bunch of Mana kill your opponent with drain life yeah it’s actually not that cool in practice because it is a lot of monopolizing the clock in a spot where you’re

99.99% to win okay it is it is in some ways the original high tide deck okay um but it was cool in terms of it was very different yep and played with cards that were unique to itself it it it really was its own thing and a lot of magic

Decks if you look back at the time are sort of kind of what the good cards are pretty well established you can make some metag game calls here and there but it’s kind of defined and this was wow I’ve like I’ve never seen five of these

Cards in the deck before and they’re all here uh we got Celestial Dawn which was nicknamed bleach by players uh could make a multicolor deck into monochrome white counter spells direct damage and all the other color Specialties are than available to the white player I prefer white out or the

Whites I like the whites I like that one the most uh let’s talk about Greening totem a card that I had when I was a kid and I thought I was the luckiest kid alive uh it evolved the gesture cap the gestur cap excuse me concept one step

Further not only letting one look through their opponent’s library and remove a card but then add an insult to injury allows you to play that card as if it were in your own hand possibly turning your opponent’s most powerful spell against them this thing is so damn

Cool because we’re already at a time where Jester’s cat blew people’s minds yeah and it’s like how could you ever do anything cooler than that it’s was like how about this you’d play their card it’s also interesting that this card is uh you know fondly remembered or barely

Remembered at all versus bribery which has something of a notorious reputation yep and it’s because Mana is still a gate bribery is just whatever your best creature is it’s on the battlefield right now on my side no Mana involved y this is if I want to take your eight

Mana creature it’s actually kind of a pain to do that yeah and therefore often I take like a one or two Mana spell out of your deck instead of your most valuable most desired your your favorite card whatever it happens to be so it plays pretty well for what the effect is

Um which is a hard thing to execute on something that’s potentially as invasive as pick up your deck find your best card and take it uh this card has just winning artwork because I remember I had this in my binder and I would just look at it

All the time and just be like I’m never trading this I’m almost positive this was the most valuable card in the set when this that came out I know it was very valuable I know that for sure I wouldn’t trade it rancid it is spoiled milk but that does not matter it

Is beautiful uh Maro was named after designer Mark rosewater and quickly became a favorite for green creature based decks the name came about when rosewater came up with the design but only put his internal tag m a r o as the placeholder name and the creative team

Liked it its concept would be Revisited with molan Maro sorcerer in ‘s Legacy and mimo Maro sorcerer in invasion in 2005’s savior of K saviors of Kagawa excuse me a real Humdinger of a that uh a rare cycle of Creatures based on hand size were printed with

Maro in their name such as kajaru kimaro however you want to pronounce it Maro first suffer I know that card well uh uh I’m like 99% Jerry used to play this card a ton kagaru yeah yeah I I’m pretty sure pretty messed up yeah it was a really really good

Card uh and then the art was an original piece of art depicting the so-called Green Man which was AC ired by art director Sue an hary so uh Mar is a cool card yeah it’s a really cool card it is uh you know people loved it even though

It wasn’t good was never good yep uh which is always a good sign as far as I’m concerned totally agree there is a little bit of the I I don’t like the you have marrow and the number of times where you do something and I go it’s

Dead now yeah not great it’s not fun but it’s still cool and beloved uh we are moving on now to political trickery which will one of the first control exchanges and remains one of the few ways to exchange lands as most control exchangers exclude them how do you feel

About cards and make players exchange permanence generally pretty positive on them like assuming both players kind of have to opt into the experience yep I think there’s a lot of room for counterplay and for the person building a deck around it to do some cool stuff I

Think that really breaks down with lands it’s so rare that you can uh you know with creatures for example swapping control of creatures creatures have sort of by definition a very variable quality sure you have a six Mana thing I have a one Mana thing swap it look what I just

Did lands are a lot or are supposed to be a lot flatter in terms of that power level this card did show up a little bit in sort of the type one scene at the time because stealing someone’s library was so busted y that that was it had

Some purpose um and generally I do like the swap stuff but with Lance it’s it’s so often just about color screwing someone um yeah it is yeah and therefore it’s not really fertile space whereas I think swapping control of creatures is awesome uh Tikka Dragon was based on the

Artificial Dragon made by a character named Tikka in the short story better mouse trap from the Anthology distant Plains but who cares about that nine Mana 55 flying trample Rampage 4 counts as the dragon I love this card yeah good luck triple blood blocking my flying creature that’s right you’re in trouble

Got that covered yeah I mean it’s cool whatever people liked it because it’s just a big old dragon with some stuff going on and those don’t have to be good for them to have an audience but really fly flying in Rampage is just like when is this ever

Happening I don’t know what kind of games you play double blocking double block triple block yeah I’m okay you’re dead now yes you didn’t want to just take five uh CarX torch and torrent of lava have unusual stack-based abilities that they they don’t do this anymore so CarX torch it kind of has

Ward too on it against counter spells a years before Ward was keyworded uh and then torrent of lava this one I want to read really quick uh so xrr sorcery torent to Lava deals X damage to each creature without flying each creature gains tap prevent one damage to this creature from tor

Yeah bad design even setting aside it does not work in the rules that’s already resolved so your creatures are dead yeah yeah okay that’s good try standing there waiting for the prevention that will never come I like the idea of you’re just being covered in

Lava and you’re like ah try to wipe it off or something I really like the idea of the you’re like this pyro beige and you have all of your creatures your minions serving you and you’re about to do this like volcano explosion and they’re looking at you like

Like what are you about to do and I was like don’t worry you can prevent one sure I got you covered on the back end don’t worry sa yourselves uh these two cards CarX torch and Tor of laa alongside lightning storm are the only spells that have on the

Stack in their plain Oracle text and I’m gonna say this CarX torch torrent of lava acceptable mistakes still kind of knew at this lightning storm we’re deep into the game I have no idea why that card exists the way it does yeah so there’s three tiers of this to me which

Is tier the tier one the most acceptable CarX torch pretty clear what that card does even if the particulars of the rules don’t support very well then you have uh tier two which is tornal lava which is doesn’t work and is confusing but it probably didn’t matter sure and

Then you have lightning storm which is like I don’t I played magic for 20 years I I’ve read this thing 10 times I still don’t know how it works lightning storm is the only card on Magic Online that when I cast it I’m just like I’m not

Sure how much damage I’m gonna deal because I don’t know like a lot of the time when I’m playing Magic online and like I want to hold party or something I I I still I play Magic Online almost every day I still don’t know if it’s

Control or alt so I always hold them both yes can’t be too cannot be too safe and then sometimes I also do shift because I’m just not sure which one it is lightning storm I think the answer is none of them my it’s I I I I’m pretty

Sure I’ve told this before but one of my all-time favorite magic stories is day two of a Grand Prix Paul reel in the Hall of Fame Pro Tour Champion one of the best to ever do it calls over a judge and says how does this card work

Okay and for lightning storm yeah and the judge is about to give him Sportsman like conduct of like you’re obviously messing with me and Paul’s like no I don’t know how what this C does or how it works can someone explain it to me and he had to convince the judge that he

Was earnestly asking the question which he was or he was able to get some something approximating plain English for how that card functions it’s nonsense it’s a nonsense Magic card what does this card do really good uh for XI and dreadn a 1212 artifact trampler with casting cost

Of one was the card that inspired Mark rosewater to start writing his regular set preview teasers is what I have learned uh and it is a I mean that’s that card is a a Humdinger it’s its own card kind of can’t believe it exists really I don’t like fexi and dreadn that

Much okay I’m sure I like it it’s just it’s kind it’s a weird oh yeah it is very weird it’s his own thing so there’s you know I’ve talked a lot this episode and previous ones about the you can play this face up but if you go digging a little deeper there’s something

Underneath the service yeah and fexi and dreadn is so transparent that there is nothing normal or face up to do with it like I’m going to sack a million creatures and then have this summoning sick artifact creature that’s just going to die like why would I ever do this

That really the only solution to it is cheating cost somehow putting it directly into play out your deck if the rules supported or a stifle effect or whatever uh and the rules are so ambiguous around that class of stuff that it’s pointing in this direction of

Like I need to search for synergies but I don’t even really know I’m looking for because it’s so rulesyoutube but that would direct it into the place of oh okay I I could probably I could figure something out I could play with Elvish Visionaries and or whatever and sort of set this thing

Up where I’m getting this great deal the fact that the power that you need to sacrifice is equal to the power of the creature means that putting all your eggs on one basket plus the opportunity cost of even having that many creatures and play in the first place is the

Card’s pretty transparently useless in the normal case and then the confusion on the back end is I’m glad it exists as like a legacy card an ADV vintage card or whatever it’s added to the game tournament history but I think this is the wrong way to do this sort of design

Well that’s the right way to do trivia here for our Mirage episode of the receivables which means we’re taking a short break and we’re heading to everyone’s favorite part of the show it’s the awards show for Mirage right after this all right everybody we are back for

Your favorite part of the show it’s our favorite part of the show it’s arguably everybody’s favorite part of the show it’s the award show here for Mirage and we will kick things off as we always do with the oo thief of crowns Award for best card in the set and your answer is

Flash we have not mentioned this card yet it’s really messed up you know what’s also great about this card is on first read doesn’t even look good really no and it is a little bit of an expanding carpool issue there’s some standard formats you would put this in

And I actually don’t think there would be that many where it would be modest because there’s always you know eight Mana creatures with some sick ETB or death Trigger or whatever sure um so a little bit of a scaling uh uh cardpool this was also something that was

Functionally eroded because it it had something of a tournament resume off the Jump and the way that flash used to work was you had to actually pay the Mana difference to get the creature to come into play at all y so it was essentially what the car did was very little it was

Basically some level of Mana fixing plus you get to play the creature instant speed instead sorcery speed magic correctly said we’re not doing the the functional power level AA anymore if we need to ban this thing we will but we’re not going to ask our players to know the

Permutations of all the AA for tens of thousands of cards over the game’s history that is correct unfortunately in this case it was busted immediately had to be banned in uh Legacy which is a pretty high bar to get banned in power level in Legacy Y and uh when it is

Available in vintage cube is one of the sickest cards I have uh been around uh the block here for a while playing in random tournaments and sometimes you forget the tournaments you play in uh because I’ve been playing tournament magic for 20 years I was at the flash GP mhm I was

There what a tournament yeah what a stupid tournament do you remember the uh the the finals the sequence the winning player in that tournament was Steve saden yep turn one mystical tutor for days yep opponent head read up to pyro blast turn two flash days dead dead end of tournament

Yeah have a good day no mus no fuss mystical tutor for days is so sick yeah I’ve got you beat dude I got you I got you beat I got you covered and then some uh if you’ve never looked up the coverage for that tournament feel free

It was uh there were the players that played Flash and there were players that did not if only you know one of the things I’m proud of myself now outside of always calling Jerry Thompson whenever I need a deck is just I don’t play Bad decks anymore I just play whatever the

Best deck is yeah I I wish I had kind of gotten on that train at some point there’s sometimes where I look back at list from 10 or 15 years ago that I like won a ptq with or top 8 or whatever and I go I must be the greatest player alive

Yeah yeah like look at this look at this could have just been playing two Mana win the game like you know what I played in that you know what I was cast in that tournament KY no if only starstorm oh my goodness that’s right that’s nice I

Built a I built a a a Jess sky land still deck that starstorm could like break up the flash combo oh yeah uh I played a card called odds and ends MH I do you know what that is I don’t okay so it’s a split card and the odds half I

Think it either copied the spell or countered the spell oh my goodness yeah so if opponent cast flash I could like either I think it was I think that’s what I had it for was like I either got to copy it oh no that was my Tech

Against them that’s what it was it was for the mirror if I played a flash deck it was like odds end your flash either I get my own and hopefully I have like the rest of the stuff in my hand or your has CED yeah this see this does sound worse

To me than I I didn’t do well in the tournament uh anyway uh my uh my choice for OKO thief of crowns award was Lion’s ey Diamond um which like I don’t play storm or anything like that and I don’t draft storm in vintage Cube or anything

But I do recognize that this card is very powerful uh but as you so eloquently put it this is because of expanding card pools Yep this was actually Red by inquest I believe the worst card in the set purposeless and an old friend of mine told me when this came

Out I I don’t remember if I was in the eighth grade or freshman but I opened up a lion’s eye diamond in a pack and tore it up so I’m like this is useless there you go not the first time I’ve consider $500 won’t be the last

Beta but um yeah that’s a that’s a that memory stings uh we’re gonna go to the carnival Souls award now for the worst card in the set my selection is zebra unicorn uh they could do a lot better for green white card I’ll tell you that

Much uh this thing I’m bringing up on scryfall two green and a white so that’s a four Mana 2 two uh for each one damage that the Unicorn deals I get to gain a life lucky me that’s pretty nice I’m gonna get to gain two life I wonder what

The creative link is between a zebra unicorn and elhaj because they do the same thing they do what a horrible card uh your choice was the sawback man Manor sawback mandor yeah it’s a lot you know uh doesn’t really do anything it’s a lot of Mana this is another strike against Mirage as

A set which you know like I said very fond of is the gold cards in this set are pitiful like for a set that finally correctly Embraces let’s do a ton of gold cards let’s even make some enemy color ones let’s make it let’s make gold

Cards you know 10% of the set or something like that it’s like can we make any of them any good at all they’re they’re quite bad I just want to get this out here now too I’m uncomfortable with mantor how come a legendary animal having the head of a man often with

Horns the body of a lion and the tail of a dragon yeah I think that manacor are kind of like derivative it’s awfully similar to other uh combinations of man and beast that’s I don’t like it also like the least iconic part of a dragon is probably its taals there’s that yeah

Make a brief fire okay now we got something uh the Doom blade award for the best non- rare in the set your selection okay this is not a fair selection I think yours is better I think my selection goes against the spirit of the award when I give it a mystical tutor just

Uh there’s some uncommon tutors in the set sure um let’s about that I really don’t mind worldly tutor and enlightened tutor that much for the ERA with those development sensibilities cuz someone tutors for permanent it’s sort of implicit that there’s going to be some reaction window possible down the line

Getting a spell is like it’s hard to interact with spells it’s like not where you really want to subsidize things yeah uh early on in this car cards history I played against a lot where people were just they would just go get ancestral or time Mar or time twist or whatever

Seemed appropriate um over time you know uh it got better than that yeah to say the least yeah yeah that’s definitely true uh I selected wall of roots which you know it see it still sees playing Modern yes which is pretty cool uh it’s its own unique sort of Mana

Generation for green decks and it’s one of the best Mana accelerant uh two mana mana accelerant I think of all time as far as green is concerned sweet card what I love about this car it’s such a hard thing to hit but it is very much mechanically not a green card while

Really feeling like a green card I would agree with that like putting minus o minus one counters on your thing is that does not sound very green to me but there is this yeah I’m chopping down the I’m getting some Lumber off of this thing yeah it’s awesome yeah super cool

Card uh we are moving on now to the aboro Palace in the clouds award for fun of one of in the Set uh your selection refresh my memory ancestral memories oh yeah that that was a card that I just played some as a kid in one of in some

Decks CU I don’t know it was a weird amount of selection and the the all the blue Mana Pips spoke to me a certain way okay and yeah like one copy was just sweet just a fun card to draw and play with uh my selection is sacred Mesa

Which this is before my time uh this was basically a card you could play as a one-of wind condition in your deck yeah this this card I would say this was probably the worst set to print it in okay because it’s so similar to get gel Dorn Outpost

And you just want to space that out or whatever yeah I think this card would be would have had a pretty good shot at showing up in most standard formats kind of in Magic’s early history if it wasn’t competing with a card that was basically the same thing but better gotcha uh

We’re gonna go to the Mystic Confluence award got it right this time uh for the best vintage Cube card in the Set uh yours is the same thing as your oaka thief of crowns award yeah it’s this is one of the sets where there’s enough vintage heat where it’s

Overlapping yeah you’ve got Flash is so messed up it’s only not the right answer if it’s not in the cube which and it’s not in the cube sometimes because it’s so messed up yeah my choice is lion ey Diamond which again everybody knows I don’t draft storm at least if you watch

Me play vintage Cube you know that U but again I understand that it’s messed up and is a very high pick so uh respect even though I’ll never ever ever do anything that looks like that smothering tide award for the best commander card

In the set I went to EDH wck and I found out that Enlighten tutor is very very popular so that’ll be my selection uh being able to tutor up in artifact enchantment whatever it’s a good card mhm uh yours do you remember is it worldly tutoring that’s correct yeah

It’s like it’s tutoring that’s fun EDH players love tutoring that’s not fun and it’s hard to get that right because the whole conceit of the format is playing one copy of things so tutors are already pretty dissident yeah but someone who’s gonna tutor for the creature is probably up for a good time

Probably it’s a game that all the table can play with yeah you know what I mean I age that and light tutor starts to tread into the territory that’s bad and then my is just bad yeah butor is sweet uh the Patrat Award for best limited

Card in the set okay I’m going to get my answer out of the way first because your answer is outrageously good so as Patrick I were going over our notes here for the pre-show for our Awards I selected Savage twister kills everything I also remember playing it with it in ravik Block when

They reprinted it for GRL was a busted uncommon then and I can only imagine that back in the day it was probably similarly as good just kill all your stuff hopefully leave something alive for me a completely reasonable choice and uh you did better than that

Yeah so they say that Mirage was the first set for Li design with sealed and limited play in mind and it is a big step forward but there are some bumps in the road for example CarX torch uncounterable Fireball at common that’s a little bit much Fireball at common is

Unbelievable yes that is unbelievable not like like not it’s not heat ray oh no no no no it’s a lot better than heat R yeah it is Dome you or doome your thing have a good day common common common common yeah would it be my answer

If it was a rare probably not I think there might be other better there might be better rares in the set but I did want to give it a shed as the first Common that was like what is going on right now yeah who would who approved

This uh the Char rumbler award for weirdest card in the set I am going to go with the aformentioned fexi and dreadn um there ‘s nothing normal about this card you’re not trying to do anything honest with this card it is kind of cool and unique and as you

Mentioned it is part of Magic’s tournament history U but it is a total weirdo as is your answer to fairy aisle usually these award goes to cards that are really long but the inspiration for the award Char rumbler is quite short it’s true it’s simply just confusing in

Practice what is going on true and tar isle is like when when can I this man when do we get to the point yeah where I’m allowed to make two blue that wasn’t a bit by the way earlier the show no I was like I don’t really know how this

Works like you had you’re as someone who’s you know professional magic player and like has spent you know decades like writing articles and covering tournaments and playing events you were like 80% sure but definitely not 100 not 100 not no just the idea that you’re never going to get that two blue Mana

It’s just never going to happen uh let’s go to the John excuse me let’s go to the blank Award for best card name in the Set uh my selection is the hammer of Bo Garden uh first of all not only is the name really cool but boy this artwork so

Sick it is so cool this is the kind of artwork that you would show your friend and be like yeah the thing the game that I play is cool yes this is a really cool game it’s this card is super cool used to be a win condition all on its own

I I’m trying to think of the name of the deck like was it counter Phoenix counter Hammer is it counter Hammer okay got it yeah yeah loved it incredible loved it okay um yours early Harvest yes uh great name meets match for mechanics meets matches the tone of the world very cool

Yeah just it’s it’s awesome on its own and it it speaks to what it does and the world you’re in just beautiful uh we’re going to now go to the John Avon a ward for best land artwork in the set for me I am going to go with uh Mountain Valley

I know the name of these fetchlands are pretty lame but the artwork is pretty good here so that is my selection yours uh the John Avon sunset Mountain this is one of the the I have a a few mountains in my collection that I have you know 20

To 30 copies of okay and this is one of them for times where I feel like being a little bit different with my art it’s a good one it’s beautiful it’s a really really good one yeah Basics the basics are just incredible on the set yeah I’m looking

At them now they’re really good yeah I bought a I bought a heap of Mirage Basics a couple years ago okay just to like have for Cube and and Drafting and stuff like that uh and now we go to the realest Fury award for most overhyped card during previous season I wasn’t

Around then so I don’t have an answer but you do oh that is grinning totem this is like are you kidding me sister cap but I get a cast it busted how can they win horrendous it’s actually bad uh tagor for her most underhyped card during previous season

Well H I don’t remember my answer so your answer was Lions ey diamond oh sure I don’t even know if that’s a fair answer because there wasn’t anything to do with lions side Diamond at the time yeah it got better of course once other cards came out but yeah I would say if

You if you I guess my answer one answer I want to throw out there is uh Crystal vein okay it it’s a pretty innocuous card but a land that comes into play untapped and can tap for two colis is busted it’s very powerful and this one’s like the opportunity cost is very low

There was a frame of reference for the Fallen Empire lands enters play tap tap for one sack for two yep crystania is way better than that yep just because the opportunity cost is so low and people didn’t really get their head around I would argue still have not

Gotten their head around how powerful that card actually is did it have much of a tournament resume so it was a feature in uh Tinker deck in standard okay you’re not going to believe this if you’re a younger Tinker was a deck in standard you played Four

Tinkers it’s true and the artifacts that you were getting you were getting they were quite good yeah um I some people played some copies in um hatred okay hatred style decks because it’s just two Mana no drawback doesn’t cost you any life whatever um the some of just some

Of the Saga block like big Mana decks because it got reprinted in course they’re really addicted to just Mana like free Mana for a very long time I I’d argue they still are yeah so yeah it was it’s a standard Tinker deck show up quite a bit we’re almost to

Earth that’s a legacy this Legacy uh yeah I it had in my opinion without really doing a deep dive I’m confident it has to be like top 10 most played tournament cards of all time okay there’s like times you could have played it and how good it was versus how many

People actually played it I I would guess it’s in the top this is Crystal vean by the way not Tinker yeah everybody know T people figured that one out pretty fast yeah they did uh all right everybody the award show is done which means we have one thing left to

Do all righty partner it’s time to close her down uh what card won Mirage for you do you remember your listed answer and do you want to change your answer was it your listed answer is Hammer Barden yeah I’m gonna stick with that your answer is

Better which bothers me go that in a minute yeah Hammer is just look at the art look at the card it’s new design space it is an archetype onto itself but it’s also not bizarre you can any magic player can pick that up and it’s a simple card to understand yeah this is

So cool it makes you feel like you’re wielding Thor’s hammer in the act of picking up and Swinging again yep it’s the nuts and it like it was good but not as good as people sort of remember that’s definitely true and it just speaks to how awesome the conceit is the blend of

Mechanics meets flavor meets novel gameplay uh a masterpiece all right so my answer is a card that uh my best friend down the street used to play against me and kill me with and anytime it showed up I got really scared with good reason spe of the night awesome

Answer 6 BBB 65 flying trample protection from black First Strike when attacking uh Spear of the Knight is unaffected by summoning sickness just this gigantic legendary monster which is also part of the storyline uh as well but um it’s one of the first magic cards

That if you just look at it you’re like holy crap like this is weird and scary and I don’t want to play against this card and then also it’s just like oh also it just does a lot I I also really like that there’s the package that

Allows you to cheat it the herborg Panther and friends yeah and something that’s cool about is you know herborg Panther is a little Rarity card and so you’re like what is Spirit of the night like what I’ve never heard of that before come find it it’s a cool play pattern

Too because first of all it’s not trivial to cheat the thing out out you have to really mean it and because it’s not trivial sometimes you just have to play with the cards as they are and then Spirit of the night is a simple and straightforward card it’s not like the

Game managing these different game pieces and trying to set up the combo can be hard for you and a little opaque for the opponent who might not know what Spirit of the Knight even does or what the individual pieces do but the fact that it results into something simple

And straightforward is so good really disciplined tells a really good story it’s it’s the nuts it I know this this is not like a competitive segment or whatever but when you said Spirit of the night I was like oh crap that’s just like obviously the right answer so nicely done thank

You uh as far as giving the set of grade uh I try to save this until I get to the end of the episode after I’ve uh had some discourse with you uh through the episode and so now I’m going to come to my great and I’m going to come to a

Seven here okay um good set really fun there’s like it’s not perfect obviously um but there’s a lot of positive things to look at here there’s cool cards um the artwork is great the stories that are being told here are great the names of the cards are cool the lands are

Awesome um you very much feel like you are in a very specific kind of world when you are playing this set I don’t really think personally that there’s anything that’s like horrible to play like against you know like phasing is a little confusing and flanking isn’t really particularly cool but you know

There’s nothing that stands out here at least off the top of my head that is like oh that’s awful and that make that kind of ruins the set right and there’s some unique cards that are like build rounds like polymorph yeah like what what do I do with this card which is

Also kind of true today you know we see polymorph effects nowadays and we all know how to build a deck around polymorph now but before it was probably a fun little uh like deck building experiment to see if this is a thing that you could do um and like you know

Can you build a spirit of the night Deck with uh with like what is it called breath stealer and all that other stuff you know maybe yes maybe no um I think all these things are really cool and then of course there’s a there’s a cycle dragons people are dragons even though

They’re not not even that good um there’s a lot of cool things going on here I don’t know the reprinting of dark ritual might be the most egregious thing yeah I so I give Mirage an eight okay we share a lot of the same sensibilities about this I think the combination of a

Ton of kind of useful cards meets kind of one of build a deck around this exploration thing to think about it’s a really good ratio magic is a little too high at this era on doing one thing or the other for example I would argue in alliances Shock full of useful cards not

A whole lot of head scratchers or like things to really build around it’s just some good rates and some some stuff you’re kind of familiar with for the most part the sets going back earlier than that have a lot of oh this is like a weird thing to to think about not a

Lot of nuts and bolts stuff Mirage is the first set that I think has kind of the right blend of both of those things really good starting point the art and the flavor and the storybuilding is exceptional I consider uh love song of Night and Day something that is uh a

Poem or story that’s written across a lot of flavor texts in the set to be Magic’s single greatest creative output okay because it the the pieces of of flavor by themselves are are individually very very cool and very beautiful together it starts to kind of tell a story of the world but something

That it implies is that the story is not done something that is constantly added to so you feel like you in the present moment but history is not done you’re going to continue to add to this you know Cannon of poems and stories it’s a inspiring on top of the the artwork the

You know the the way way the lands look all of that yep um I don’t think the mechanics really pull their weight I think flanking is basically not worth the text on a card okay and uh phasing is uh like I said it’s cool and there’s

A lot that I like about it in terms of the gameplay principles just too weird and convoluted the average player can’t get their head around it I I mean I totally agree with that um but I would say to mirage’s credit I don’t know if this is intentional or not

Flanking and phasing these are not really where the power level for constructed is put they’re there but it’s not really a prevalent thing there are a bunch of useful cards that don’t speak to the set’s mechanics that are just like fun and cool things on their

Own and those are where a lot of the power of the set is placed in sure so again can’t say if that was on purpose or not but uh I think it ended up playing out pretty well so great set really that some of the architecture for

Modern sets come out of this the block structure that came out of this was magic go to for I forgot about that I don’t even know 20 years or whatever 20ish yeah yeah um so a lot to love here just the mechanics themselves basically my my strikes on the S are mechanics are

Not great and I don’t know why the gold card suck so bad sure and other than that it’s it’s really not only fun but just lovely like something it’s a set that I when I when I was playing Magic at the time I wanted to show these cars

To my friends who were not playing yet sure like look at how cool this is yeah and it is really cool yeah uh scoreboard don’t want to forget that let’s take a look ski on how we have reviewed other sets uh of course you and I gave alpha

Beta unlimited tens we gave Fallen Empires I gave it a two you gave it a three Chronicles we both uh still are only ones on the board uh and now of course miraja gave a seven and you gave an eight we’ll be adding to that very soon with our next episode which is

Vision however we got to do some Shilling on our way out the door so first and foremost you’re probably watching this on YouTube and if you are we appreciate it very much please do subscribe as we are trying to get to 10,000 subscribers by the end of the

Year uh of course when you subscribe here on YouTube you’ll get notified when new episodes go up of this of um our game play series which hopefully you’ve had the opportunity to check out as well the 1994 match of the Gathering World Championships where we broke that down

And also played some games um you can also find uh Snippets of our unsleeved podcast uh previous episodes of the preslees some other cool stuff that’s going on in this channel so uh thank you for subscribing if youve not if you have done so already if you’ve not please do

Uh you can of course if You’ like to get early episodes of the receivables head over to patreon.com thee receivables where you can find a rewards tier that works for you and you will get early episodes or the receivables you’ll get full access to the unsleeved podcast

That Patrick and I do three times a month month um you’ll get access to early cracka packs uh that come out and also you can find the reward tier of 10 or $25 on patreon where you can get one of those packs that we do not crack so

There is that uh and lastly if you’d like to you can follow us on Twitter at twitter.com receivables where again more notifications fun stuff that we tweet out all of that jazz uh to stay up to dat on everything everything that is receivables related lastly a reminder

Where Eternal lives TOA Magic Tales of venture 2A magic.com perfect well done uh what’s on the horizon for us well two things one Visions which this is one Visions pack you can have that one that’s a weather light pack that’s further down the road I got the other Visions pack

Here uh what this do you know what’s good in this set like what’s still worth money yeah not really I would assume that um no that’s what light maybe a vampiric tutor that’s probably wor something I don’t know I’m not up to date on the Visions Mirage though that’s

Got a hitter that’s got a certified LED it’s got a certified like real money card in it we haven’t had one of those since uh Italian Legends yeah so this is uh pretty exciting also I was reading this pack here an expansion for Mirage and Magic the Gathering I it’s just kind

Of nice thing to have on the pack that’s I think it’s kind of cool that it says that uh so we’ll be recording a Visions episode here soon and then second uh we will be recording the 1995 Magic the Gathering World Championships where we’ll go over that we’ll play some games

Of the finalist deck and a whole bunch more so uh that’s on the horizon uh but for now we are all done so for Patrick Sullivan I am Cedric Phillips thank you so much for watching all things Mirage

View 22 Comments

22 Comments

@NerdRageGaming on December 20, 2023 10:49 pm

Nailed it on Vamp Tutor in first place for value in Visions 😀 Thanks for the episode!
@anonymousanonym7275 on December 23, 2023 11:25 am

That was one of my least favourite sets. I disliked the at least some of art(dream fighter,spirit of the night, enduku cyclops),flanking and felt that it was a break in the setting compared to Alliances and Ice age.
I stopped set collecting until tempest.
@ericperry2032 on December 23, 2023 5:22 pm

39:12

Phasing of permanents (either in or out) happens immediately before untapping. So, for example, you can't tap the Isle right before it phases out.
@MauroHernandezEDU on December 24, 2023 6:23 am

I like the light/dark parallel between Mirage prints from different countries and light/dark camera zoom-ins and zoom-outs.
@oldmagemtg7008 on December 25, 2023 1:37 am

Mirage was a breathe of fresh air when it came out. Got my group more excited about magic again. Such a vibrant and interesting set.
@lancemagmer9701 on December 26, 2023 10:14 am

The phase talk at 18:00 just makes me think of the white ball lighting from urzas
@EltWilder on December 26, 2023 9:05 pm

Yeah, good one.
@astelin on January 4, 2024 12:26 am

I'm going to take the day off when the Urza Block episodes came out so I can watch. If MTG had a 80s corporate pirate / coke era, it was Urza's block.
@AnMagicCard on January 4, 2024 6:23 am

"viashino warrior" is notably now a "viashino warrior". it's one of 64 non-basic cards that has a name that matches its type, along with its functional reprint lizard warrior (which is a lizard warrior).
@twi1ightknight on January 9, 2024 7:50 pm

Crystal vein is big in 1-3 color cedh
@badgerchillsky535 on January 17, 2024 6:28 am

Mirage has always been my favorite set when it comes to the overall art direction
@badgerchillsky535 on January 17, 2024 4:45 pm

Sealed Fate can actually be pretty good.

At worst you get rid of the best card from the top X of their deck. But then you get to arrange the remaining cards however is best for you. It dcan definitely have a low floor, but it also has the potential to wreck their draws for the next several turns. If it’s late game and you’re able to give them nothing but lands for several turns that could be enough to seal the game.

Plus the artwork and flavor text are both top tier
@chumley307 on January 18, 2024 12:43 am

One gold card from this set was very solid and did see some light tournament play in the day — Frenetic Efreet. 50% of the time your opponent would try and remove him, he'd be right back. Annoying to play against, fun to play with.
@Murgledoo on January 24, 2024 2:13 am

It’s wild to think back to how we interacted with the game back when this set came out.
@wolfwing1 on January 26, 2024 7:18 pm

Only thing I didn't like about blocks is, 2nd and third sets often felt unbaked, especially 2nd. Yes they used core mechanics from set 1, but set 2 rarely if ever got used in set 3. So awesome things like ninja's that you would love more then a mini set devoted too, are only in the 2nd set, and not in the third.
@wolfwing1 on January 26, 2024 7:19 pm

first set I COULD have drafted in was weatherlight :> I went to the combo weatherlight/regional championships each day but had already spent the last of my money for the day buying some cards from vendors when I found out about draft and kicked myself hehe.
@pawnstorminreno on February 9, 2024 2:10 pm

By the way, the old newb way to play P Dreadnaught was to play it in an aggro deck pump your creatures, get in for a ton of damage and while they were still pumped cash out for the 12/12.
@earlofdrumer1851 on February 19, 2024 5:39 pm

The best set of Magic. Love Mirage
@ryanbowen4526 on March 3, 2024 4:23 am

Shout put to Purraj of Urborg for first strike when attacking
@AWildGrickit on March 4, 2024 3:44 pm

I ordered ~$15 of tokens and emblems from TOA the other day and they packed that like s— they were shipping me power 9. 👍👍👍
@GrizonII on March 6, 2024 7:12 pm

The best "honest" use of Phyrexian Dreadnought I can think of would be alongside some board-wide power pumping spells. Like one could cast something like Overrun, swing in with at least three 1/1s, then cast Dreadnought in the second main phase and sac those to it (of course if you're swinging in with Overrun you probably would hope to win that turn, but it could act somewhat as an insurance by giving a big untapped blocker that can presumably swing again for lethal next turn).
@lasertoothtunes on March 7, 2024 7:21 am

In math, it's pretty common to use "global" and "local" as contrasting adjectives meaning "the whole thing" vs. "a single point". Given that that's not really how they're used in everyday language, I wouldn't be surprised if the terminology of "global enchantments" and "local enchantments" was a mathematician's fault.