Article: Welder-MUD and Mirrodin

I orginally wrote this article for Starcity, but it never got published, so I decided to post it here now.

It somewhat outdated, but still contains some interesting information:

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Welder-MUD, an in-depth analysis of possible Mirrodin inclusions

With the first speculations about Mirrodin two things became clear: It would include a lot a Type-1 worthy cards and it would be an Artifact-Set. These two statements promised a lot for Welder-MUD, but what would Mirrodin really add to the deck?

For those of you who don’t know what a typical decklist of Welder-MUD looks like I will provide one here, if you want to know more about the deck, it’s goals, it’s development and a lot more facts you also might want to read this article (the link leads to the first part, you should be able to find the other parts from there too.). It’s also worth looking at if you want a good read, it was written by the other creator of MUD and Welder-MUD, Arthur Tindemans (We co-created both decks).

As you can read both Arthur and I made very good results with the deck, till a point at which we were totally hated out at two tournaments in one single weekend. Also faster combo decks became more and more popular at that time and they created a new threat for MUD/Welder-MUD, since they were able to out-speed the deck and so avoid part of the disruption. Even a before so feared Workshop - Metalworker opening often proved too slow. At that point I stopped playing the deck, just because there were better options to play. (I started playing Burning Desire). But now with Mirrodin things change again, and Burning Desire will most likely take a step back, mainly because of Chalice of the Void.

Welder-MUD
Pre-Mirrodin
By Arthur Tindemans and Koen van der Hulst

Lands: (18)
2 City of traitors
4 Mishra’s Workshop
6 Mountain
1 Strip Mine
1 Tolarian Academy
4 Wasteland

Artifact Mana: (13)
1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
4 Metalworker
5 Moxen
1 Sol Ring

The Core: (12)
4 Smokestack
4 Sphere of Resistance
4 Tangle Wire

The Tools: (10)
4 Goblin Welder
3 Jester’s Cap (metagame call)
3 Powder Keg

The Draw Engine: (5)
4 Grafted Skullcap
1 Memory Jar

The Kill: (2)
2 Karn, Silver Golem

Mirrodin
Now, in only a few days Mirrodin will be legal in sanctioned play. Let’s take a look at what new options the set provided:

Lands:

Great Furnace
Artifact Land ©
(This isn't a spell.)
Tap: Add R to your mana pool.
Kuldotha, wellspring of molten metal, temple of the goblin horde.
#282

Before the official rulings off the Artifact Lands appeared there was a lot of speculation about these cards. The most common included a ruling like Rock Jockey. This meant that you couldn’t play a land in the turn in which you played your Artifact Land, but you could play another Artifact Land. There also were other versions floating around, but all seemed clearly better than the actual ones that really saw print in Mirrodin. As soon as this wording became clear people said that the only deck worth playing these in would be Welder-MUD. But how good is it really?

It’s basically a Mountain with some advantages and some disadvantages:

Advantages:
- It provides another target for Goblin Welder, which can turn it into a threat that previously was in your graveyard.
- It counts as another Artifact for Metalworker, so that you can get more mana out of the Metalworker.

Disadvantages:
- It’s a Non-Basic Land, making you more vulnerable to Wasteland and Price of Progress in particular.
- It’s an Artifact, like most of your deck, and thus often will fall to the same hosers as the rest of your deck, cards like Null Rod, Energy Flux and Gorilla Shaman.
- It doesn’t double the damage a Goblin Charbelcher does (we’ll get to this card later)

With two advantages and three disadvantages given the choice to run it or not might seems a very close call, but trust me, it isn’t.

The advantages of this card are very small, and often will not influence the game. It’s a nice target for Goblin Welder to switch, but in a deck with thirty-eight Artifacts there are only very little situations in which you would need this. The advantage with Metalworker is also a very small one, since it has quite some requirements to end up in a situation in which it would actually make a difference (you still need the Great Furnace in your hand after dropping Metalworker, the two mana more gained would have to enable you to drop more or a better Artifact and the Metalworker had to survive for a turn.)

The disadvantages on the other hand are pretty important, and shouldn’t be ignored. Cards like Null Rod and Energy Flux force you to rely (more) on your lands it they (the hosers) hit play. And having one of your lands in addition to your Mana-Artifacts disabled by such a hoser isn’t a good idea. Also taking another two damage from a Price of Progress can be the difference between winning and losing, since you often win with a low life total against Sligh.

Conclusion:
The disadvantages of Great Furnace clearly outweigh the advantages, and therefore this card does not belong in Welder-MUD. And, for that matter, I doubt if it ever will see serious play in type 1.

Artifact Mana:

Mirrodin didn’t give us another broken mana-Artifact useable in Welder-MUD. Chrome Mox might see play in some Combo-Decks, and maybe some other decks like Parfait or Enchantress. But the new Mox is worth nothing in Welder-MUD, the only thing you can effectively imprint is Goblin Welder, and you rather would just play it.

The Core:

Chalice of the Void
XX
Artifact ®
Chalice of the Void comes into play with X charge counters on it.
Whenever a player casts a spell with converted mana cost equal to the number of charge counters on this, counter that spell.
#150

This card is probably the most discussed card in Mirrodin, everybody is talking about it (in the Type 1 environment that is). This card really seems to split the majority of the crowd into two groups, the ones who adore Chalice of the Void, and the ones that condemn it.

Many have also already discussed the impact that Chalice of the Void might have/has on the current environment, and I will not start another discussion here that would probably double the length of this article Wink

.

Now, how does this card fit into Welder-MUD? Let me get straight to the point, this card is a gift from god. It fit’s better into Welder-MUD than any other deck, because of two reasons: Welder-MUD’s shared disruptive nature with Chalice of the Void and the inclusion on Mishra’s Workshop and other fast mana producers in Welder-MUD.

I would like to explain this last argument, why does Workshop make Chalice of the Void’s strength improve enormously? Again, there are two reasons.

First of all, Mishra’s Workshop makes it able for you to drop a Chalice of the Void with either zero, one or two counters on it on your first turn. And the sooner you can drop it, the more effective it will be.

Another thing that Mishra’s Workshop does in Welder-MUD is allowing the use of relatively expensive (mana-wise) cards. Where most decks run card that are all three mana or less with very few more expensive cards, Welder-MUD runs a good amount of four casting cost cards. Therefore a Chalice of the Void is more likely to hit your opponent a lot more than it will hit you.

Also Chalice of the Void can be very good at eliminating the opponent’s hate, while at the same time also disrupting your opponent, here are some examples: (keep in mind that there are different version of every deck, so a card stated here doesn’t have to be in every version of that deck.)

Keeper:
At one it will stop Gorilla Shaman from making it’s way into the game, and at the same time it also takes out a good amount of other cards: Brainstorm, Swords to Plowshares, Mystical Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Duress and Sol Ring. After sideboarding a Chalice of the Void with two counters will also stop Disenchant and Shattering Pulse on top of a good number of maindecked cards.

Fish:
At two it stops Null Rod and other possible hate such as Hurkyl’s Recall and Magus of the Unseen after sideboarding. Also it stops twelve of their creatures (eight in some builds) and Standstill.

Tog:
This deck is extremely vulnerable to Chalice of the Void, it doesn’t matter if the Chalice of the Void has one, two or three counters, Tog will suffer from it a lot. Pre-sideboard a Chalice with three counters would win the game against the current builds. After sideboarding two counters stops all their hate: Artifact Mutation, Hurkyl’s Recall and Naturalise, and on top of that their draw engine also gets neutered (Accumulated Knowledge) together with Mana Drain, Merchant Scroll, Time Walk and Demonic Tutor. The deck probably suffers most little from a Chalice of the Void with one counter, but it still loses Brainstorm, Duress, Mystical Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Berserk and Sol Ring.

But keep in mind that the Chalice of the Void will hurt you too, even if it’s less than it will hurt your opponent. Here are the (possible) card that get disabled by a Chalice of the Void with a certain number of counters:

0: All Moxen, Mana Crypt, Black Lotus, Chalice of the Void for zero mana
1: Goblin Welder, Sol Ring, Mana Vault, and Pyrite Spellbomb
2: Sphere of Resistance, Powder Keg and Chalice of the Void for two mana
3: Metalworker, Mindstorm Crown, Tangle Wire and Sculpting Steel
4: Smokestack, Grafted Skullcap, Goblin Charbelcher, Solemn Simulacrum, Chalice of the Void for four mana
5: Karn, Silver Golem and Memory Jar

Goblin Welder can work around your or your opponents Chalice of the Void, since you can have your Artifact countered by the Chalice, or simply discard it to Grafted Skullcap, so that you can weld it back into play.

Ruling Issues:
A Chalice of the Void that entered the play by Goblin Welder action has zero counters.
A copy of Chalice of the Void created with Sculpting Steel has zero counters.
While on the stack, the mana cost of this card is the actual mana you paid for it, and when in play X will be seen as zero.

Conclusion:
Chalice of the Void will earn its place as one of the core cards of Welder-MUD and it will give a huge boost to the strength of this deck. It also is a perfect answer to the hate that might show up when Welder-MUD gets more popular again.

The Tools:

Pyrite Spellbomb
1
Artifact ©
R, Sacrifice Pyrite Spellbomb: Pyrite Spellbomb deals 2 damage to target creature or player.
1, Sacrifice Pyrite Spellbomb: Draw a card.
"Melt that which was never frozen." - Spellbomb inscription
Illus. Jim Nelson
#232

In the past, when TNT and Stax became more and more popular, we tried cards like Cursed Scroll and Aelopile to deal with the Goblin Welders. But these cards proved too weak and we had to settle with Cursed Totems in (Mono-brown) MUD. Since Cursed Totem is a poor choice in Welder-MUD we previously has to settle with Serrated Arrows, and now there is this card…

It has most of the qualities that good cards have, it’s cheap for the effect is provides, it’s useable in different ways, and it can always be replaced with another card if not needed. In a way it’s very comparable to Fire/Ice, a card that sees quite a lot of play.

The card has two downsides; first of all it requires red mana to activate the damage ability. This means you will have to play with more Mountains if you want to use this card effectively. And this card somehow interferes with Chalice of the Void, since you will often set a Chalice of the Void at one counter.

Pyrite Spellbomb does give Welder-MUD another option at having some targeted removal; the best so far in that category was Powder Keg. Against most aggressive strategies this card is able to slow them down marginally, just picture shooting off a first turn Jackal Pup. But this card also can get rid of some very annoying small creatures, like Gorilla Shaman, Goblin Welder, Goblin Vandal and Magus if the Unseen. Targeted removal is something that will be needed in Welder-MUD because Chalice of the Void is a very good card, but it doesn’t stop threats already in play.

Another advantage of this card is that it provides a very cheap way of getting an Artifact into your graveyard. Sometimes you are stuck with an active Goblin Welder, but you can’t use it simply because you’re lacking a target in your graveyard. Previously you often had to wait for a Tangle Wire to fade away so that you could use your Goblin Welder, but this goes to your graveyard for just two mana, and you get to draw a card.

On a final note, if you want to play with this card, play it in the maindeck because it cycles, is very cheap and will almost never be dead. If you want a similar card in your sideboard, there are better options, such as the previous mentioned Serrated Arrows.

Conclusion:
This card is a very viable option for Welder-MUD, although overlooked by most people. Against aggressive decks Pyrite Spellbomb together with Goblin Welder can win games. It somewhat depends on the metagame, but I think this will see play in Welder-MUD. This card is also very good in the Mirror.

Solemn Simulacrum
4
Artifact Creature ®
When Solemn Simulacrum comes into play, you may search your library for a basic land card and put that card into play tapped. If you do, shuffle your library.
When Solemn Simulacrum is put into a graveyard from play, you may draw a card.
2/2
Illus. Greg Staples
#245

This card is the newest in a serie of cards of which the winner of the Invitational provided the original idea. Some others are: Phyrexian Infiltatrator, Meddling Mage, Rootwater Thief and Avalanche Riders.

This card was more or less designed by Jens Thorén, winner of the last invitational, who submitted this card:

Forestfolk
2GU
Creature – Elf Wizard ®
When Forestfolk comes into play you may search your library for a basic land card and put that card into play tapped. Then shuffle your library.
When Forestfolk leaves play, draw a card.
2/2

As you can see, the card didn’t change much, the wording was changed slightly and it was converted to Mirrodin flavour, to an Artifact. But by doing that Wizards made this card a lot stronger, in any format, but mostly in Type 1, again because of Mishra’s Workshop and the other fast colourless mana producers.

It costs the same as a Juggernaut or a Su-Chi, but can’t match with them in creature combat. But this card does not have a offensive nature, it mainly screams one thing: “card advantage!”

First of all you get a 2/2 body, this might not seem much, and probably won’t cause you’re opponent to start sweating, but don’t underestimate it. It’s perfect for defensive use, also known as blocking Wink

. And while your opponent is struggling under your lock and disruption cards, Solemn Simulacrum can become a real threat.

When this enters play, so when you cast it, or when you get it back with Goblin Welder, you get to search out one of your Mountains. This provides you with a way to find red mana, and therefore if you play this card, you can drop the Mountain count in your build. Also getting a Mountain into play means you get another permanent, and that allows you to optimise Smokestack or Tangle Wire. And off course there’s the deck thinning, with every Mountain you search for, there’s one less to draw, so the percent of business spells you will draw will increase. The only downside on this effect in this the effectiveness of your Goblin Charbelcher goes down a little with each Mountain you search for.

And last, but not least there is the card draw. You can trigger this on many different ways, blocking off course is one of them. But also you got Smokestack and Goblin Welder to trigger it.

Conclusion:
This card shares perfect synergy with some of your card, but less with others. The synergy with Smokestack and with Goblin Welder has to be called amazing. The card is of most value against creature-orientated decks, and proves worse against control decks and other creature-light or creature-less decks. Therefore the choice whether to play this card or not mainly depends on your metagame, in an aggro-metagame this is a perfect choice, but in a more control or combo-metagame this makes less sense.

Sculpting Steel
3
Artifact ®
When Sculpting Steel comes into play; it becomes a copy of any artifact in play
#238

Bringing back memories of Copy Artifact?

That wouldn’t be that strange since it’s almost the same card, but again it got better by mutating into an Artifact body. This allows some very neat tricks with Goblin Welder, aside off course from the synergy with Mishra’s Workshop and Metalworker.

But Copy Artifact never made it into any deck similar to MUD, why would this? It’s pretty hard to describe the use of this card, since it relies on card you already have cast, but here are some possible plays:

Copying a Smokestack allows you to use one of them till you don’t want it anymore (and you sacrifice it to itself if your lacking an active Goblin Welder). Then you can fall back onto the second Smokestack to control your opponent.

Copying a Tangle Wire gives you a new copy with the full four fading counters on it at the same cost of a real Tangle Wire.

Copying a Sphere of Resistance can be a very good play since Sphere of Resistance more and more proves to be one of the most important card in the deck.

Copying a Chalice of the Void gives you one with zero counters on it. This can be handy in some situations, and adds another option to the list.

Copying a Goblin Charbelcher can speed up your kill by a lot, and make it less vulnerable to targeted removal since your opponent now has to deal with two copies.

Copying a Grafted Skullcap is maybe one of the best uses of this card, in just one turn it goes even and afterwards it’s a one-card card advantage every turn, now if that doesn’t make up for the little tempo lost.

And off course there’s always the option of copying your opponents Artifact, who knows what kind of juice target they might have?

Together with Goblin Welder this card gets to show it’s real strength, if you feel your current copy has become less useful Goblin Welder can turn the Sculpting Steel into any other Artifact on the board.

Ruling Issues:
This card comes into play as the copied card, so it triggers any “whenever/when/as comes into play” functions. (Following the oracle texts, not the one’s on the actual cards)
Since X is seen as zero, copying a Chalice of the Void will leave you with a copy with zero counters.

Conclusion:
Sculpting Steel is a card with many options, and it’s very hard to conclude anything about it yet. More testing and actual tournament play has to show whether this card is worth playing or not.

Draw Engine:

Mindstorm Crown
3
Artifact (U)
At the beginning of your upkeep, if you have no cards in your hand, draw a card. Otherwise, you lose one life.
#207

This is the easiest card to compare with an existing part of Welder-MUD: Grafted Skullcap. Both cards give exactly the same advantage, an additional card draw every turn, but their drawbacks are significantly different. Let’s compare the two.

Advantages of Mindstorm Crown over Grafted Skullcap
- It one mana cheaper
- It can be dropped earlier, because you don’t automatically lose your hand
- It allows you to keep card in your hand if you want to (like Pyroblast, which can be ditched at the end of your opponents turn, meaning you still get to draw the extra card.)
- It doesn’t turn your opponents Hurkyl’s Recall into a game winner

Advantages of Grafted Skullcap over Mindstorm Crown
- You always get to draw two cards, there are no “ifs”
- It won’t ever damage you

When I first saw this card I basically though it was a watered-down version of Grafted Skullcap, but when time passed I learned to appreciate the card. Ironically Arthur felt just the opposite, he first tried to convince me of this card, and now has dropped the idea of running it.

One thing to has to be mentioned is that a double Grafted Skullcap is better than a double Mindstorm crown, but one of each is better than have one of them double.

Conclusion:
Mindstorm Crown could see play in Welder-MUD but mostly in addition to Grafted Skullcap, I would not go below three Skullcap just to add more of these. It would probably be better in mono-brown Mud, since there you can’t be left with a welder in your hand due to no red mana sources and you have less chance to draw into two lands, since you play less lands.

The Kill:

Goblin Charbelcher
4
Artifact ®
3, T: Reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal a land card. Goblin Charbelcher deals damage equal to the number of nonland cards revealed this way to target creature or player. If the revealed land card was a Mountain, Goblin Charbelcher deals double that damage instead. Put the revealed cards on the bottom of your library in any order.
#176

Also known as “Cursed Scroll on crack”, but how much better is it really? Time to do some maths.
The following numbers were calculated with a 60-card deck with 7 Mountains and 11 other lands.

The change at doing a certain amount of damage with a single activation of Goblin Charbelcher:
0 damage – 30.00 %
1 damage – 13.08 %
2 damage – 17.55 %
3 damage – 6.42 %
4 damage – 10.39 %
5 damage – 3.12 %
6 damage – 6.22 %
7 damage – 1.47 %
8 damage – 3.86 %
9 damage – 0.64 %
10 damage – 2.41 %
11 damage – 0.28 %
12 damage – 1.54 %
13 damage – 0.12 %
14 damage – 1.00 %
15 damage – 0.04 %
16 damage – 0.65 %
17 damage – 0.02 %
18 damage – 0.42 %
19 damage – 0.01 %
20 or more damage – 0.77 %

This leads to a average damage of 3.05

There’s a ruling issue I would like to point at, here’s Cursed Scroll’s text from the Oracle:

Text (TE+errata): ,{Tap}: Name a card. An opponent chooses a card at random from your hand. Reveal that card. If the card is the named card, ~this~ deals 2 damage to target creature or player. [Oracle 1999/07/21]

You choose a target creature or player on announcement. You choose the opponent and they pick a card from your hand during resolution. [D'Angelo 1999/06/01]

I was told about Cursed Scroll that you first see if you’re opponents pick was right or not, before announcing the target. With Cursed Scroll this doesn’t make any difference in the game-play, but since Goblin Charbelcher has the same wording, the same counts for Goblin Charbelcher and there it does make a huge difference.

Logically I thought you could first see how much damage the Goblin Charbelcher would deal, before choosing a target. That makes the card a lot better than it actually is, since than it’s a lot better useable as removal. Now choosing whether to target a 2/2 or a 4/4 creature becomes a hard choice. And you will hate yourself if you do 4 damage to the 2/2, or when you will do 2 damage to the 4/4. So my first impression of this card was a lot more relaxing.

We’re left with a card that creates a very random effect. What does the random amount of damage cause in the game? It can work both as a advantage and a disadvantage.

The advantage is that your opponent will fear any Goblin Charbelcher, since it could kill him at activation. Thus your opponents will try to get rid of this card at almost all costs, since it’s a potential lethal threat.

But on the other hand, the randomness can heavily work in your disadvantage. I already described the problems you can have if your facing more than one creature, but there’s more. You also can never rely on this card to finish your opponent off quickly. Sometimes it deals twenty damage in three activation’s, but sometimes it also deals just two damage in three activation’s.

This card does get a lot stronger when your library is getting thinner. At some point you will be able to stack your cards in the perfect order in which you want to draw them, and you can stick lands together so that this card will deal more damage.

In Welder-MUD the first card to compare this card too would be Karn, Silver Golem, since this card mainly will act as your win condition with the added option of creature removal.

Advantages of Goblin Charbelcher over Karn, Silver Golem
- It’s not a creature, and thus is harder to deal with
- The randomness can be a huge pain in the ass for your opponent, since he can’t start planning ahead
- It’s costs four mana, one cheaper than Karn, Silver Golem
- In the late game this card allows some library manipulation
- It doesn’t rely on a attack-phase to win the game, so you can still kill with cards like Moat, Ensnaring Bridge, Spike Weaver etc. on the board.

Advantages of Karn, Silver Golem over Goblin Charbelcher
- It can block any creature in Type 1 all day long (Aside from unblockable ones, Psychatog and Phyrexian Dreadnought)
- It doubles as a card that can destroy Moxes and other zero casting cost Artifacts (Chalice of the Void, anyone?).
- Often it’s a lot faster
- You know what it can and cannot, there’s no such thing as randomness
- In the late-game removal won’t stop your kill, since you will be able to animate all you’re Artifacts in response and still deal lethal damage

Conclusion:
This card was overhyped, and probably does not earn its place in Welder-MUD, although it always stays an possibility and can be played if the metagame calls for it. If your looking for a straight kill, Karn, Silver Golem is faster, and for removal Powder Keg or Pyrite Spellbomb are the better cards. (Be happy that you don’t have to play with another card with the new layout). However in Stacker this seems a better option, since in that deck you’re already relying on your attack phase because of other creatures and you got less Artifacts to animate with Karn, Silver Golem.

Sideboard:
There were no spectacular sideboard cards in Mirrodin, but the set might still change the sideboard because the environment will most likely see a big shift.

Welder-MUD post-Mirrodin
Now you’re probably expecting to see a decklist, right?
I won’t give one here yet, because we wanted to keep it secret till next tournament, and because we aren’t totally settled with a final version yet, so I have to disappoint you.

Some thoughts about the metagame post-Mirrodin:
I’m expecting that Welder-MUD will prove itself as one of the top-tier decks. Other contenders could be updated Long/The Perfect Storm (Dutch Tendrils), Keeper, Dragon and Fish. But maybe the metagame takes an unexpected shift and other decks will rise to the top. Only time can tell…

Koen van der Hulst

Props to Arthur Tindemans for sharing thoughts with me, and helping me edit this article.

edit: fixed links\n\n