This is the article for deck number two of the Mirrodin Pre-constructed decks, “Bait and Bludgeon”. Anyone who looked at Mirrodin cards in black and blue might guess what this deck is about, since those were two of the dominating colors of the dreaded Artifact Affinity decks back in the day. With Mirrodin alone there are still some cards missing to make the deck as obnoxious as it was, but that does not mean that there are no useful cards for the strategy in the first set of the block.
Thankfully, WotC gave us some of those useful tools in this deck, as you can see here:
Creatures (22):
2x Steel Wall (1)
2x Leaden Myr (2)
2x Myr Retriever (2)
2x Silver Myr (2)
2x Bottle Gnomes (3)
3x Frogmite (4)
1x Lodestone Myr (4)
2x Nim Shrieker (3B)
2x Somber Hoverguard (5U)
3x Myr Enforcer (7)
1x Broodstar (8UU)
Spells (16):
2x Aether Spellbomb (1)
4x Talisman of Dominance (2)
1x Scale of Chiss-Goria (3)
1x Serum Tank (3)
1x Tooth of Chiss-Goria (3)
2x Thirst for Knowledge (2U)
2x Irradiate (3B)
1x Thoughtcast (4U)
2x Assert Authority (5UU)
Lands (22):
11x Island
3x Swamp
4x Seat of the Synod
4x Vault of Whispers
Of course, there is also a marketing blurb telling us what the deck is supposed to do. They do overhype some of the cards in the deck again, but see for yourselves:
The “Bait & Bludgeon” deck shows your opponents the value of affinity, one of the new Mirrodin mechanics. Cards with affinity for artifacts cost {1} less to play for each artifact you control. Affinity doesn’t affect the colored mana required, but with enough artifacts in play, you’ll pay close to nothing for your affinity spells. The cornerstone of the “Bait & Bludgeon” deck is its mana acceleration, which lets you play spells quicker than the usual one land per turn would. Talisman of Dominance, Leaden Myr, and Silver Myr fill this role nicely. With a deck full of affinity spells, the mana acceleration doesn’t stop there. Every artifact you get on the table often acts like an extra land regardless of what else it does. The most efficient artifacts to play are the artifact lands. Not only can you tap them for mana, but they also reduce the cost of your affinity spells. Playing lots of mana accelerators is only half the battle. You need to draw lots of cards to take advantage of your cheap affinity spells. Use cards like Serum Tank, Thirst for Knowledge, and Thoughtcast to refill your hand. Don’t be afraid to use Aether Spellbomb to draw a card if you need to. While you work up your mana base and refill your hand, buy time on the ground with Steel Wall, a cheap 0/4 blocker. Slow things down by bouncing your opponent’s creatures with Aether Spellbomb. If your opponent gets a really big threat out, take it down permanently with Irradiate. With the number of artifacts packed into the “Bait & Bludgeon” deck, Irradiate can take out almost any monster. Once your arsenal of artifacts is on the table, it’s time to drop some killer creatures. Fly over your opponent’s defenses with Somber Hoverguard. For an even bigger punch, use Nim Shrieker, which gets +1/+0 for each artifact you have in play. Want the best of both worlds? Broodstar has affinity and it gets +1/+1 for each artifact you have. And it flies, too!
– Mirrodin “Bait and Bludgeon” Theme Deck Product Description
Ah, Artifact Affinity, the keyword that even WotC admitted was a little bit too powerful in retrospective. Here is a deck that works with that exact premise, albeit not using the potential to its fullest due to the lack of cards like “Arcbound Ravager” or “Disciple of the Vault“. Nonetheless, one can receive the basics for a solid build here: Getting more mana via “Talisman of Dominance“, “Silver Myr“, and “Leaden Myr” is a generally a good idea, since you can not only speed up playing the big cards, but since they are all Artifacts the cost of the Artifact Affinity cards reduces aswell. “Frogmite“, “Myr Enforcer“, “Somber Hoverguard“, and “Broodstar” all start with extremely high mana costs that drop drastically once you get your plays started. “Thoughtcast” is very helpful keeping the speed up since you are going to throw out cards like no tomorrow, so it is somewhat unfortunate that the deck only has one copy of it. Other than that, there are some other nice options available aswell: “Aether Spellbomb” is a solid card to increase your Artifact Affinity, provides card draw in a pinch, and can even serve as removal if necessary. In fact, the only card that I feel cannot provide as much benefit to the deck as is claimed in the text is “Irradiate“. Yes, lowering an opposing creature for -8/-8 if you have eight Artifacts on the board is quite good for four mana, but at that point you can also probably just play removal spells that do the same in most situations but cost less mana overall; and which are not depending on you having loads of Artifacts around.
As usual, there are some stinkers in the list that do not really provide that much overall. Both “Tooth of Chiss-Goria” and “Scale of Chiss-Goria” are Artifacts with Artifact Affinity and can be played for zero mana when you control three or more Artifacts, but I would not deem either card a good choice for deckslots. My choice would always be “Cranial Plating“, even though I understand that they could not have put that card into the list since it did not exist back then. But both “Chiss-Goria” Artifacts simply do too little while there are many other, better options available in the game. Furthermore, I am not sure the deck needs “Lodestone Myr“, especially since it only grows big for tapping your resources. There are probably better Artifact Creatures to play, even though it is one of the rares in the list. The “Bottle Gnomes” probably an inside joke that I cannot comprehend without knowing the full picture, but some combo like “Bottle Gnomes” plus “Myr Retriever” are definitely not worth the mana. I am also not a fan of “Assert Authority“, but that might come down to me disliking the card as a counterspell, not the card being bad per se.
Price trend-wise, the “Bait and Bludgeon” deck is actually quite good. Not really on the rare-front, since “Broodstar” has a price trend of 0.35€, while “Lodestone Myr” goes for around 0.17€. However, thankfully there are Artifact Lands in the mix: With four copies of “Seat of the Synod” for around 0.69€ and four copies of “Vault of Whispers” averaging 0.33€. Even better, the deck comes with a playset of “Talisman of Dominance” at around 1.17€ per piece, which is pretty good value so far. On top of that, you get aforementioned three “Frogmite“, three “Myr Enforcer“, two “Myr Retriever“, and two “Somber Hoverguard“, you get some crucial cards for an Artifact Affinity deck; or even Artifact-based decks in general. The good news are therefore that “Bait and Bludgeon” definitely delivers value for your money, which is why I would say that the sealed product could be worth up to 15€ before getting the singles would be a better choice. Unfortunately, I am not the only one saying that the deck is worth some money, which lead to the price of the deck being inflated beyond belief, with 70$ required for the first offer I could find on ebay, which is quite frankly ridiculous. If you can get the deck cheap, it definitely delivers a solid base for a new player to work with and lots of room for experimentation and deck-building; however, this is one of the products that simply cannot live up to the high price sellers currently ask for, which is why you might be better off buying the cards on their own instead of spending a fortune on the pre-packed version.
Cubic Creativity 