Some time ago a friend said to me “Equipment sucks, I hate it. It's actually awful.” He was talking about Mirrodin block Limited, and at the time I thought he was out of his mind. Since then I have come to realise that in many ways he's right. Not completely right of course, some Equipment is always good. And some decks need Equipment, no matter how bad it is. Skyhunter Cub was never meant to be a white Gray Ogre. Despite that, many people seem to overrate Equipment in general. Even back when that comment was first made I already knew that other people liked Equipment more than me. Now I know why.
There are actually several fundamental things which Equipment has against it. Firstly, they occasionally let your opponent get card advantage (by Shattering that pretty Vulshok Morningstar, causing that attacking Skyhunter Cub of yours to get mugged by their random dork). Secondly, they do not function on their own. This may seem obvious, and not really a disadvantage. After all, you always have creatures in Limited, right? Well, you often have creatures in Limited, but you need to spend time casting them. So what? You also need to spend time casting and equipping Equipment. So we come to the third strike against Equipment, and the main focus of this article: Tempo.
Picture this: You have what looks like a good hand to the untrained eye (or the trained eye for that matter): 4 lands of white and blue, a Skyhunter Cub, a Skyhunter Patrol and a Vulshok Battlegear. Better still, you're first to play. So for 2 turns you lay your lands (you draw an Arrest on turn 2, huzzah!). Your opponent has no turn 1 or 2 plays either, so you triumphantly play your Skyhunter Cub on turn 3 (drawing another land). He plays a Nim Replica on his 3rd turn. Your 4th turn, and you slap down the Battlegear, ready to go to town next turn! You don't want to trade your Cub for his Replica, so you pass the turn. He plays another land and attacks you, you take 3. Then he plays a Dross Golem (with 2 swamps in play, costing him 3), leaving a Mountain conspicuously untapped.
Victory is yours! You barely look at the card you draw as you tap 3 mana and push the Cub sideways (Equipment doesn't tap when your creature's attack) across the table at your hapless opponent. You can almost hear the fanfare announcing your crushing victory. You're already busy thinking up the best way to brag to your friends about it when your annoying opponent interrupts you. “Wait a second,” he says. “I have an effect while equip is on the stack.” What's this? Electrostatic Bolt? That's hardly fair. Dead Cub. Better look at other options now I guess. What can we do with the 2 mana we've got left this turn? Hmm... looks like nothing. Hey, I peeled a Loxodon Mystic and another Arrest the last 2 turns, that's pretty good. And I've still got this Skyhunter Patrol too, I'll be fine yet. Have a turn buddy.
Your opponent's 5th turn consists of playing a land, casting a Vulshok Berserker and attacking, putting you on 8 life. No matter what you do now, you can't win because your nasty opponent has an Essence Drain in his hand for your next creature.
I hope everyone can see where our hero went wrong above, and probably most of you would have played it correctly. Perhaps you can see how differently the game might have turned out, too. What you may not know is exactly why it was the wrong way to play it. Many of you will have some sort of intuitive notion that casting creatures is better than putting Equipment into play. That's good, it shows that at some level you do analyse these situations, even if you don't think you do. What I'd like you to do is engage your conscious thought processes here, because intuition can only take you so far. The above situation is not complicated, but there are many players who would not think that the opponent might have creature removal and go for the cheesy Cub and Battlegear win. If you are one of those players, you need to think about Tempo more.
Above is a pretty blatant example of the “eggs in one basket” play. Occasionally it's the only option, but generally this sort of thing is not advisable. The presence of a plethora of cheap answers in Mirrodin block Limited makes this play particularly bad (although it applies in any Limited format). There are any number of cards that could have had a similar effect such as Arrest, Echoing Truth, Echoing Decay, Terror, Unforge, Barbed Lightning, the list goes on. Electrostatic Bolt was just the easiest one to use to illustrate the point. Cheap instant-speed (or even sorcery-speed) artifact removal would hardly have improved matters, leaving our hero with a tapped 2/2 in play against an army of 3-power men.
The issue here is the use of that much mana - early in the game - being spent on things which won't solidify your board. There was no reason to play the Battlegear on turn 4, there was a perfectly good (excellent actually) creature to play instead, and if our hero had been paying attention he would've seen a good 5th turn drop coming next turn. With 2 Arrests in hand, the Mystic and 2 flyers plus Battlegear, the game was looking very solid against pretty much any draw by the opponent. However, the 9 mana that was available during turns 4 and 5 was almost completely wasted, causing a premature death with all those powerful cards still in hand.
So Equipment is horrible, right? Not quite. The Battlegear above may have played a very important role in the game. But not early, you can't afford the mana early. Expensive Equipment like Battlegear is great once the game has progressed to the point where most cards are in play (or in graveyards) rather than in hands. At that point, both players have plenty of mana to spend on whatever they want, and that's when a movable +3/+3 will win you games.
“Yeah, yeah,” you're saying. “That was obvious. I'm a good enough player to see that you should drop the Patrol on turn 4.” OK smarty-pants, what if we replace the Battlegear with a Loxodon Warhammer? How many of you would play the Hammer on turn 3, planning to follow up with Patrol turn 4, equip and swing turn 5? I bet there's a few of you. And it'll win you the game often enough that you'll discount the times your opponent has a Barbed Lightning or Terror as Bad Luck. It's not the percentage play though, better to wait until you have 6 mana to cast and equip on one turn, preferably when your opponent is tapped out. To misquote someone: “Loxodon Warhammer has a casting cost of 6 and an equip cost of 0”. If your opponent Terrors the creature next turn at least you got one swing in, and hopefully the life-gain will be enough to counteract the Tempo lost from getting your investment of 10+ mana killed for just 2 mana. And hopefully you've been casting other creatures in the intervening turns.
Even tougher decision: You don't have a Cub this time, so Warhammer gets into play on turn 3 (you decide that you'd rather not “waste” an Arrest on their Nim Replica, although there are reasons that you might want to). Patrol is the play turn 4, now it's turn 5. You've got a decision between equipping up the bomb and swinging, or dropping the Loxodon Mystic you drew last turn. Thoughts? Unless my opponent is completely tapped out (or enough so that he can't kill a Patrol or a Warhammer at instant speed) I don't even consider the equipping option. If he is tapped out, I have to think about it. Then it depends on what colours he's playing, exactly what he's got in play, the life totals (presumably he's on 20, but I'm probably not), any cards I've seen from his deck in previous games, what else is in my hand, etc, etc.
To give a specific example, if I had another land (a 6th) and an Arrest (or another 3-mana spell) in hand, I would almost certainly play the Mystic. The plan would be to both equip/swing and Arrest next turn. Equipping on turn 5 is a far less efficient use of mana, it could waste as much as a whole turn depending on what else I've got. Additionally, getting the Mystic into play and active is a high priority, since it takes a turn to warm up. The more options you give yourself the better, and equipping and swinging on turn 5 takes all your options away and says to your opponent “Can you deal with this?” If it turns out they can't, you probably win, but if they can you're much worse off than you need to be.
Incidentally, white decks in Mirrodin block Limited tend not to want expensive Equipment for precisely the reasons above. You want to strap up your Cub and start swinging ASAP, without throwing the rest of your curve too far out to do it. Bonesplitter or Leonin Scimitar are perfect for this as your curve will rarely be affected casting them, and a spare 1 mana is usually not difficult to find on turn 4 or 5. I've played with Golem-Skin Gauntlets on more than one occasion because I was desperate for cheap Equipment, and it's perfectly fine if you only ever want to put it on Leonin Den-Guards or Skyhunter Cubs. Pretty awful otherwise though.
On the other hand, decks which have a very solid curve (like the aggressive red/black decks that I like to draft when I can, or some green/x decks) don't want to spare even 1 or 2 mana early, so they might as well play more expensive Equipment for bigger effects. I'll regularly run Whispersilk Cloak in very aggressive decks, but I'll almost never run a Leonin Scimitar (Bonesplitter is often worth it though). You need to think about whether your deck's curve can support the Equipment you want to run, and whether your creatures will in general benefit from those Equipments. Better still, think about it while you're drafting. Fangren Hunters don't need Leonin Scimitars, Skyhunter Cubs don't want Swords of Kaldra.
All this is useful theory to have in general, not just for Mirrodin block Limited. In most situations early on in a game, you will have choices about how to spend your mana. To follow a line of play - that leaves more than a few mana unused in those crucial early turns - requires a very good reason, because you're putting yourself behind from the start.
As a final note I'd like to talk about a few of the most overrated Equipment, as I see it, and some Equipment that I do like in almost any deck:
Overrated first, and coming in number 3 is our old friend Vulshok Battlegear. Sure, it's good. Sure, it'll win you games. It doesn't go in every deck though. You also don't want more than 1 or 2 pieces of Equipment this expensive in a deck, so if you've got a Warhammer and a Sword of Fire/Ice, leave this bad boy in the sideboard.
Banshee's Blade is number 2. I always failed to see what people liked about this card, other than the 1 game in 5 you get a cheesy win with it. Cheesy wins are all well and good, but getting smashed the other 4 games, because you were fixated on charging the stupid thing, is bad. I particularly like letting my opponents spend time and resources to charge it a bit, then destroying or bouncing it.
And number 1 (cue fanfare): Vulshok Gauntlets! I don't have enough bad words for this card. Not only is it expensive to move but it locks your men down, compelling you to throw away your precious mana just to let your poor guys untap properly. And there are only about a million tap effects around. Well, actually there's 4 common ones in Mirrodin Block and 3 of them are white. Still, you get hurt up by various cards your opponent might have. Even a bit of creature removal is painful, often leaving you with only bad options. And once it's equipped to something you can never go back! Oh yeah, they also make you want to play with mediocre creatures, like Yotian Soldier or Goblin War Wagon. All that said, I have run them before. It was for a very specific purpose though: upgrading a plethora of small ground guys to block, while my air force went to town. They were passable then, they're often awful. I usually like it when my opponents cast them.
Enough with the slops, on to the props!
Lightning Greaves is a card I don't play with enough. Initially skeptical, whenever I have decided to run them they've done nothing but good. However they aren't for every deck, not quite. Generally, the more creatures you have the better. If you've got a couple of neat guys like Fangren Hunters that you'd rather not have Terrored, then go for it. Small guys without tap abilities tend not to let the Greaves really shine, so think before including them in that sort of deck. Spikeshot Goblin loves this, as does Memnarch, funnily enough.
Leonin Bola has never been cut to the sideboard by me, and should never be by you, either. I'll run this in a deck with 11 creatures (I actually did this a couple of weeks ago, pure gold it was), the ability to use one of your Myrs or other useless blockers to tap down a big attacker is great, and it lets you tap half their team for a big attack. All for a very economical cost too.
And finally, Viridian Longbow has to be my favorite piece of Equipment in Mirrodin Block. It's not the best Equipment in the block but it's definitely my favorite. Ping is very good, and there's the potential for dealing 2 or even 3 damage by passing and pinging. It's cheap to cast, and although it's 3 mana to equip, I generally don't equip it unless there's something to kill in play - in which case I'm basically paying 3 mana to kill their guy and turn one of mine into a pinger. It's mere presence will usually prevent them from casting their 1-toughness guys, so it's often unnecessary to equip it until turn 5 or 6 when you can spare the mana.
That's all for this installment, so until next time be more mindful of your mana. Next article I'll try and do some deckbuilding for Constructed. Until then, may you draft Leonin Shikari and 3 Leonin Bolas.
Anatoli Lightfoot
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