Pointed Discussion

I actually love this card; one of the most underrated Mirrodin-block cards in my opinion.

Not only does it provide great mana accel for an artifact deck, it can have another great use to bring out the (multi)colored artifact cards from esper.

pretty good card, especially in esper

this guy is pretty ridiculous for artifact decks

Ridiculous mana acceleration, especially if you make him cast something that accelerates your mana further. One of my casual decks.

Esper's best friend. I love when cards from a span of sets seem to all work together in such great harmony.

Aaron's Random Card Comment of the Day #18, 10/20/10

This card might seem weird to people. After all, where is “mana production” in blue’s slice of the color pie? It isn’t there, right? Maybe not. (I don’t have access to our current “official color pie” doçument right now—I’m at home—although I doubt it’s on there.)

Well, blue loves artifacts, right? Well, what does that allow it to get away with? Could a blue card say “Artifact creatures you control have haste and lifelink”? If blue loves artifacts, why not? Doesn’t haste or lifelink in blue make as much sense as mana production?

I don’t think so. I like this card. I like it when colors carve off small but meaningful bits of larger mechanics and make them their own. Fog makes sense in green, even though damage prevention is white. Hail of Arrows makes sense in white, even though direct damage is red. And Vedalken Engineer makes sense in blue (to me at least) even though mana production is green.

Blue is all about artifice and science. Blue “makes” things; and what better conveys “making” in Magic than getting mana to cast stuff? As long as this is how blue uses mana production (as seen here and on Grand Architect), then I considering it to be further defining the color pie, not breaking it.

The “any color” part was added during Darksteel development once it was clear that sunburst was going into the following set. (The Engineer used to just produce {2}.) I don’t love how that part ended up. I think the card feels a little weird in a vacuum (even though there are cards like Pyrite Spellbomb and Hematite Golem that this card can activate), and it doesn’t go far enough to enable sunburst (which would entail adding two mana of any combination of colors to your mana pool). That’s my only real complaint here. Note that the Grand Architect in Scars of Mirrodin simply adds {2}, even though there are color-activated artifacts in the set. It’s cleaner that way, and it avoids the confusing situation of trying to spend the Architect mana to pay the colored cost on the Scars Spellbombs (you couldn’t, as the colored payment on them isn’t part of an activated ability).

Vedalken Are Sweet The Whatever Is Goin On In The Art Is Really Cool And Yeah Turn Three Tower Gargoyle Or Sphinx Summoner Goes Well In Esper

I loved this card back in Mirrodin block, but sadly it was completely overshadowed by the glut of powerful cards, and Affinity. The artifacts were so powerful they didn't need any help from cards like this. I like to think that it would have made a lot of sense for this to be reprinted in the Scars of Mirrodin block alongside Grand Architect and the new beater, Myr Superion.

@ Aaron
Not the best arguments.

After all, where is “mana production” in blue’s slice of the color pie?

Really? For me, there are three basic concepts in Magic.
First: You draw cards
Second: You need mana to play these cards - usually creature spells
Third: You win by reducing the life of other players to zero.

Within these three points, there are four marked words - draw, mana, creature, life - and EVERY color should have access to these fundamental words AND should be able concentrate on one field.

So if you wouldn't restrict creatures to specific colors (or specific mana costs), you should neither restrict access to mana nor to cards nor to lifepoints. The "artifact" way however isn't very unique and I believe WotC is missing a big opportunity by not producing flavourful in-color versions.

So each color should have ways to play their iconic creatures, like a blue elemental or leviathan, a white angel or a black demon. And if that player wants to concentrate on these cards, he should be able to do so in-color.

So there could be a unique way to accelerate the mana production:
White: land auras like Wild Growth
Blue: Artifical mana or search spells for non-basic lands like Ancient Stirrings or Sylvan Scrying
Black: creature-based mana like a black Elves of Deep Shadow
Red: spell-based mana, faster land play

Likewise every color should have access to card advantage
White: draw spells
Blue: Scry or seach spells for specific cards, buyback
Black: discard & graveyard returnal
Red: mass destruction
Green: creature-based draw, reusable creature cards.

And every color should have ways to gain life... and there are several ways to do so.

@ Aaron:
The funny thing is that you've mentioned Fog and Hail of Arrows. However, I believe that Fog should be neither white, green nor black, but blue. And Hail of Arrows should be neither white nor red, but the color in between => green.

Blue should have Fog to represent a misguidance and is the most combat-avoiding color. Hail of Arrows should be green, since green is a friend of red and should therefore similar things and Hail of Arrows is restricted to combat - a thing that green values most. (And would be a nice replacement for the loss of the Fog)

I've always thought this card was Soldevi Machinist updated for colored artifacts... and Soldevi Machinist was himself a fixed Power Artifact.

I think it's amusing that one of Aaron's two instances of cards that let "colors carve off small but meaningful bits of larger mechanics and make them their own" have been colorshifted.

Fog has been functionally reprinted as Holy Day and Darkness.

Hail of Arrows is a better example when placed next to Rock Slide. White goes after the attackers, wherever they are, while Red can't quite reach the fliers but can take out blockers.

With the mana having to be the same color, I see this as a helper not to sunburst but to Cranial Plating and its less-borken cousins. I'm perfectly okay with this, but it's good that you learned your lesson from this card when you made Smokebraider, which is disproportionately high on my list of all-time favorite cards because of how it single-handedly makes the "Five-Color Red Elementals" deck viable.

Works great with Memnarch.

if i had that i would immediately build a blue artifact deck.