Magic: The Gathering’s plane of New Phyrexia might be a horrific world of corrupted monsters, glistening oil, and endless suffering, but there are still humans fighting to survive. One day, the Mirrans may even be able to reclaim New Phyrexia, and return it to the glory days of old Mirrodin.
To represent this handful of survivors, Phyrexia: All Will Be One introduced the For Mirrodin! mechanic. A step up from the older living weapon cards, with For Mirrodin!, your horde of creature tokens will be armed to the teeth and ready to take it to Elesh Norn. Here’s everything you need to know about For Mirrodin!.
What Is For Mirrodin!?
For Mirrodin! is a keyword ability found on Equipment artifact cards, representing a triggered ability that triggers when that Equipment enters the battlefield. When an Equipment with For Mirrodin! enters the battlefield under your control, you create a 2/2 red Rebel creature token, and then attach the Equipment that entered to it.
This mechanic is incredibly similar to a couple of older ones. It’s almost identical to the older living weapon keyword, with the primary difference being the token it makes (a 2/2 red Rebel rather than a 0/0 black Phyrexian Germ). It’s also similar to the ‘Snap-On Equipment’ found in Zendikar Rising, although you can’t specify which creature a For Mirrodin! Equipment initially attaches to.
Once the red Rebel has been made and had the Equipment attached to it, you can treat it the same way you would any other Equipment. You can pay the Equip cost to move it to another creature, and your Rebel token will remain in play. If the creature dies, the Equipment will just fall off and remain on the battlefield to be re-equipped on to something else.
How To Use For Mirrodin!
For Mirrodin! answers one of the common problems with Equipment cards: they don’t do anything until you Equip them. Instead of paying to cast, and then paying to attach it to something else, you have a creature already equipped ready and raring to go for just the initial casting cost. This makes For Mirrodin! excellent in both Aggro decks and go-wide token strategies.
It also mitigates a big weakness of Equipment-heavy Voltron decks – that they focus all their resources on a single creature. You can simply pay to Equip the Equipment onto your Voltron’d up creature as usual, but you’ll have backup creatures for blocking or swinging out when needed.
It’s worth mentioning that For Mirrodin! is an enter-the-battlefield trigger, not an on-cast one. In most situations, this won’t matter, but it does mean cards like Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines could prevent the trigger and stop you making the 2/2. Alternatively, if you have a token doubler, like Mondrak, Glory Dominus, you’ll make two Rebels instead, and choose which one to put the Equipment onto.
What Colour Is For Mirrodin!?
As of Phyrexia: All Will Be One, its debut set, For Mirrodin! is only found on 13 cards, all of the Equipment artifacts.
Red and white are by far the most common colour, with five red, and five white. There is also one green and one blue For Mirrodin! Equipment, making black currently the only colour to lack any cards with the mechanic. There are also no colourless cards.
There is also one multicolour card, the red/white Bladehold War-Whip.