Shackles
We finish up a tour of the plane of Kamigawa this week with Saviors. The set’s mechanics focused on “wisdom,” as measured by the amount of cards in your hand versus another player’s hand. In theory, this sounds pretty cool; however, in practice, it meant that a player had to keep in mind both hand sizes at all times. The mechanic was unfortunate in that it rewarded players for holding onto their creatures and spells instead of playing them out. What could have been an interesting source of in-game tension wasn’t developed well enough to make it worthwhile to play with the wisdom cards. Although it was a small, poorly-received third set, Saviors has a good selection of money cards for traders to profit from.
Fifth Dawn was the third set in Mirrodin and was inexplicably focused on getting people to play all five colors. In the abstract, this is fine, but this was in a set full of artifacts that gave you advantages for running them. It would be like if Onslaught Block culminated in a set focused on super-powered spells instead of really good Tribal creatures…
Oh, wait.