Pointed Discussion

First improvement you should make to your Tezzeret deck? (Or second - after adding in any other copies of Tezzeret the Seeker you have.) Swap out three Islands for three more copies of this artifact land.

Yup. Tezzeret, the new Garruk.

Who'd have guessed just how Broken a basic land could be made artifact.

When you think about it, there was nothing smart at all about the artifact lands. Terrible Idea.

Ok, this is a sick double-land play. We all know you can't play multiple lands each turn. Well, how about Prototype Portal? drop a free land each turn as it has CMC = 0. Multiple portals = multiple bonus lands.

Wizards had no idea the insanity unleashed by this seemingly innocent thing.

Tezzeret's deck should have included more than one of these.

Flavorwise, these made a lot of sense. I shouldn't have to mention Mirrodin's artifact theme. I mean, all of Mirrodin is metal. So why wouldn't it's lands be seen as artifacts? It was mechanically that they screwed up. The problem is that MTG is one part game and one part story (flavor). These helped tell the story, but in combination with the other cards of the set, branded it as MTG's most broken set.

I don't think that these are all that bad on their own. I mean, they have their own weaknesses (Shatter-able for ). It was affinity that was the f*ck up. Affinity for artifacts on Mirrodin would have been like affinity for land on Zendikar. I think Ravanica's Convoke ability was well done. But sadly, it suffered from the aftershock of Mirrodin (as did many sets) and was never pushed to the limits it could have on fear of repeating history.

It is funny to use with Master Transmuter.

Grants Aphetto Alchemist the power of Llanowar Elves.

Isn't Urza's something the most broken set, or just Alpha? Was Mirrodin really that bad (I wasn't around then).

Yet another use: Turn Voltaic Key into a mana fixer. Is there anything these little lands can't do?

Part of a five card cycle:
Ancient Den
Seat of the Synod <-- You are here.
Vault of Whispers
Great Furnace
Tree of Tales

And the honorable mention for cycle-dom:
Darksteel Citadel

There is something really fun about playing affinity, but overall I hate the mechanic. It seems so skilless. When you can make blanket statements that cards like this are an autoinclude it takes the fun out of creative deck making.