Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1316: Mirrodin Besieged

Episode Date: February 20, 2026

This podcast is another in my quest to record a podcast about every Magic expansion. This time, I talk about Mirrodin Besieged, the second set in the Scars of Mirrodin block and a set with one of the most unique Prereleases of all time.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time to have their drive to work. Okay, so one of my ongoing quest is to talk about every magic expansion in existence. So I am up to Meriden Besiege, which is today's topic. So I've talked about Scars of Meriden before. But let me refresh a little bit to set the tone for Meridian Besiege. So the original idea for Scars and Mirren Bessage was that we were going to

to begin in new phrexia. The first set, the fall set, would be new phrexia. And then we'd be a new ferrexia for three sets. And in the very end, there'd be the big reveal, dun, dun, da, this is actually mirrored in. So what had happened was, in the story, the phrexians had been a big part of magic story. They're the main villain in the Weatherlight saga.

At the end of the Weatherlight saga, they are apparently destroyed forever. But they're awesome villains, and since they can be recreated, from a drop of oil, we felt like maybe they're not gone just yet. So our plan was we wanted to bring them back.

And so what we did, Brady Domrith and I were very involved in this, is in the original Mirrodin story, if you read the novel, the bad guy, like in the first couple pages in the novel deals with some oil that goes

in his fingers and sort of evaporates into his skin. And not much is sad about it. and basically the Karn, who at the time was infected, ends up bringing, not realizing and bringing the phrexia to Meriden, the world that he created. And so, anyway, it was a slow burn. We said, like, a little hints up that phrexia was going to, that phrexia had now started to invade Mirridan, in the first Mirridon set, but pretty subtle. And the idea was we were going to come back and that Myriden, the plan had always been that Myriden over, sorry, that Frexia overtakes Miriden to turn it into new phrexia.

That was the plan from the very beginning. And kind of what worked really well was Mirren ended up being this very powerful set. In fact, almost too so. And the idea that even the Mirans couldn't hold up against the Frexians, we thought was pretty powerful. Because the idea was we wanted to put the stake in the map, the Frexians are back. And the idea of this whole block would just, you just have to learn the phrexians are back. The one Achilles heel, the phrexians,

is they don't have the ability to travel between worlds. And so we learned that they overtake Mirridan, but now they're trapped on Mirrodin. But if they get out of Mirridan, uh-oh, you know, the multiverse is going to be in trouble, which obviously later paid out in a big story. So the idea was originally that we were just going to do new phrexia. So I spent a bunch of time,

and then I really was spinning my wheels. In fact, for those I've never heard me tell my story, I think the greatest crisis of conscience I ever had as a designer, as a lead, was on this set. And in fact, at one point, Bill actually said that if I couldn't resolve it, he was going to replace me on the set. But he said to me, he had faith in me. He said, I believe, you're a good designer,

I believe you can figure this out. And so I really had a heart to heart, and when I came to realize was that we were telling the wrong story, that the fall of Mirrodin to Forexia was just a really cool story why we skipping past that cool story like watching Mirren fall to ferrexia so the pitch I made to Bill is

what if this block what if new ferrexia wasn't the start of the block it was the end of the block and the idea was that we come back to scars of Mirren there's this little hint that Frexia is there and I mean not very loudly that Frexia is here

and then we would have a giant war and then it would become new phrexia. And then Bill pitched the idea, what if we didn't know the outcome? I'd pitch the idea of the big war. So the second sets of war, and then the idea is we were going to say at the public, hey, we don't know what happens

if, you know, Frexians win this new phrexia, but if Mirren wins, it's Mirren pure. Like, we don't know who's going to win this war. Now, obviously, behind the scenes, we knew for sure it was going to win the war. It was just sort of a dramatic thing. And we were, at this point in the process, we were just trying to find more ways to make pre-release is kind of more intriguing.

So, Myrden Bustin had probably one of the most exciting pre-release things we'd ever done. Maybe ever done. I don't know. It's pretty cool. So what we did is, in Mirridon, the Forexians were about 10% of the set. And then in the middle set, they were going to be 50-50. Half the set would be Mirren. Half would be Phorexian.

like we see the heart of the conflict where either side could win and the final set new phrexia I forget exactly the first set was a large set the second set was a small set and third set was like a medium set

so I think in the third set the frexians were like 80%. It averaged out to being basically throughout the course of the block half of it was mirrored in half of it was

uh... uh... but the frexian part sort of came off over and then one of the things we decided to do um was use

watermarks. I'm trying to think. I think Ravnik was the first place you use watermarks. But the idea was we're going to tell you whether the card is Frexian or was Mirren. And then in the first set, you could see that most of the set is miran, just a little bit of Frexian.

In the middle state, you can see it's half and half. And the third state you could see, oh, it's clearly there's a few Meridian holdouts, but it's mostly Frexian. So anyway, so that brings us to Meriden beseech. So Mirate of a siege from the very beginning. was designed to be the war set.

It was a set in which you would come to the pre-release, you would choose your side. Are you team Mirren, or are you team phrexia? And then you would get a pre-release pack that only had the cards from your side of the conflict. I think there were a few that were not, a couple that were neither. Maybe you could get those in either thing.

But the idea was you were fighting against one side or the other. So one of the things that we did in the set, So first off, this is, it's Mirrodin, right? So we are coming back to Miriden. So we did return, let's walk through the mechanics in Scars of Burden before we get to the mechanics in just in the set. So we wanted to represent the phrexians and the phrexians influence. And so the two ways we did that was we had, in fact, so infect was a mechanic that said, all your damage is dealt to players in the form of minus one minus one counters.

and to players in the form of poison counters. So if a creature was a two-two creature, if I dealt damage to a player, they got two poison. If I dealt damage to a creature, they got two minus-one-minus-one counters. So the idea is they are going to infect whatever they come. And in fact, basically, was taking the idea of the poisonous mechanic

we'd hinted at in FutureSite, along with Wither, which was a mechanic from Shadowmore. Then we had proliferate. Polyferate said, when you proliferate, for every permanent or player who has a counter on them,

you may choose to make another of that kind of counter. Now, in Scars of Mirrodin, that mostly was minus one, minus one counters and poison counters. But there were, we used a bunch of charged counters to represent the

Mirren side. So proliferate could be used to play a phrexene deck, although in Scars and Mirrens besiege, we consider anything anything that had proliferate on it had a watermark that was phrexian. It was a frexian mechanic. Then we had two mirroden mechanics. One was metalcraft.

So metal craft was basically a threshold mechanic where you needed to have three artifacts on the battlefield. And if you did, we did talk about Scars Mirren having affinity for artifacts, which had been in the original Miridon. But it had gone awry in the original set. Even though we kind of thought we could do it right, We were a little shy to do it, so we ended up doing metalcraft instead. And then we brought back in print.

Imprint's a mechanic where it tells you from some zone to exile one or more cards. And the card that is imprinted with those cards, something about the quality of the card it cares about. And because you have the card there as a reference, you can bond much bigger things. Okay, so that was Miriden. So now we get to Mirid Moseech. So real quickly, Mirrenbysheed, the set, the code name is. of that block were lights camera action. So this was camera. This was the middle set. It was 155 cards, 60 commons, 40 Uncommons, 35 rairs, 10 mythic rairs, and 10 basic lands.

And the set came out February 4th, 2011. The lead, the design team was led by Mark Gottlieb, included Gregory Marks, Ken Troop, not Ken Troupe, Ken Nagel, Mike Turian, and myself. And the development was led by Eric Lauer and Ryan Deuce, Tom Lippili and Mike Turian were the development team with him. I believe this was the first set that Mark Gottlieb led, the first design team that he led, and this was the first main premiere set. Gottlieb had led some at least one or two core sets, but this is the first main set that he led. So this was both of them were doing it for the first time.

And the art director was Jeremy Jarvis. Okay, so we decided that we wanted to have two new mechanics in the set, and we decided since it was Frexia versus Mirridon, that we should have a Frexie mechanic, and we should have a Meriden mechanic. So the Frexie mechanic was a mechanic called Living Weapon. So one of the things we realized was that when we made artifacts, the original Miriden had introduced artifacts. And so we were really interested in the Miriden mechanic, not the Meriden mechanic, the Frexian mechanic,

the Frexian mechanic co-opting, a lot of the fun of the Frexin's is they co-opt the stuff from the place they're invading. So he said, oh, is there a way to do something cool with equipment since equipment is organic and natural to, you know, it came from here. And that's where it premiered. And the idea that we came up across was, what if, like, one of the challenges of playing equipment is that you only have somebody slots in your deck that aren't for creatures. And we're like, well, what if we could make equipment count for creatures?

So what we did is a living weapon, the creatures, they're all equipment, they arrive with a zero zero phrexium black germ, or a black phrexian germ. And the idea is all the equipment gave at least toughness. Most of them gave power as well. So if I give you plus two plus one, now I'm a two one creature. So the idea is it came equipped with this existing creature so that the equipment sort of you could count it as a creature for your deck. You could put it in your creature count because it entered as a creature. Now when it died, one of the sides is, well, while you lost the counter, you still could equip it to other things. So it was kind of slightly better equipment, but equipment that was easier to play.

And I will say that living weapon, really, every once in a while we make something, it just turns out to be a core idea that we just go back to again and again. And this is one of those ideas, the idea that I can bring out the equipment and make a body, a token body that I attach it to. Now in the future, we learned zero-zero was problematic, only in that every single equipment had to define power toughness, that if we make a creature that's a one-one or a two-two. Like, if we define the power and toughness on the creature, the equipment no longer has the responsibility to have them to do that, and it just makes it easier to make equipment.

So anyway, living weapon was the Frexian. The mirrored inside was a mechanic called Battle Cry. A creature with Battle Cry said, if I attack, all other attacking creatures get plus one plus O. So in general, the idea was we wanted Meriden to be a little bit more of the aggressive side of things and Frexia a little bit more of the slow buildup. Now, Mirren, I'm sorry, Ferrexia, I'm confusing, Frexian mirrored it. Forexian had poison. So there was a fast strategy, there was an aggra strategy for Forexia if you wanted it.

But the stronger strategy, strategy was a little bit better and limited, was not the poison strategy. It was the slow controlling polyphorate. Like, I poison you a little bit, but then I proliferate you to death more than I kill you to death with creatures. And proliferating and minus one-minus encounters and poison, like, it all sort of came together to make this slower controlling deck. So in the matchup, phrexia was a little bit faster. Sorry, Myriden was a little bit faster than phrexia. Although there were, like, strategies with poison. The other thing we had done is when we first introduced the mechanics in Mirrodin, Scars of Miriden,

they show up in fewer colors. I'm trying to remember exactly. I think poison only shows up in black and green in the first set. And then to start showing up, I think, in white in Meriden besieged. And then proliferate was only, I think, in blue and green in Scars of Mirrenon. showing up in black, I believe, in this set. But anyway, so as the thing progresses, not only does Forexia grow in percentages in AsFAN,

but we also start spreading its mechanics a little more. And another fun thing. So I was going to walk through some of the key cards. And as I talk to some of the popular cards, I will also sort of talk about a little different facets of the set. So the first card we talk about is, go for the throat. So this is an instant that costs one in a black,

is destroy target non-artifact creature. So one of the things that we like playing around with, and this is true for Mirren says, that Mirrodin set was an artifact set. There were other factors going on. There was the phrexian element going on, but still, at its core, we're on Miriden. Mirren is very artifact-centric.

Now, one of the reasons we chose Miridon for the phrexians is the Frexians are also very artifact-centric, so it made a lot of sense. And so one of the things we definitely played around with is, like we had in an original Mirrenan, is a lot of things are artifacts. A lot of things are artifact creatures. And so having cards that go for the throat

where we basically made a tear except we took away the restrictions of non-black. When Richard first made in Alpha, there's a car called Terror. Terror was one in a black, destroyed target, non-black, non-art artifact creature. And for many years, we kept that rider on, as if that's core to how black destroys things.

Black doesn't destroy black or artifact things. And eventually, like, well, we learned that, well, black really, can't kill whatever it wants. It has no problem. Like, the reason that, that terror was like, well, if I'm scaring you to death, it's hard to scare a black thing to death. Flavorably. But the idea is, well, black

has no qualm with killing black things. Artifact creatures were always sort of, I mean, black can kill creatures, so black can kill artifact creatures. Black does have a vulnerability artifacts. Black can't kill artifacts. So the idea was, let's make terror. Same cost and everything. Just, let's

strip the non-black. We don't do non-black anymore, or rarely do non-black. And so it's not sort of coming back, and it's a pretty powerful spell, especially in formats where you just don't expect to see tons of artifact creatures. It's pretty good. Okay, next. Oh, the other thing that had happened in original Meriden, this was a throwback too, was one of the things that I had tried to do in original Meridian was because it was an artifact set with so many artifacts, I thought it was fun to do contextual stuff, and so terror, the original tear, wasn't the set, because the set had Shatter and Terror.

And traditionally, terror was way better than Shatter. But in this set, because half the things were artifacts, Shatter actually ended up being

stronger than terror in the Meredon set in Limited. Anyway, so, and this was kind of an eye to that too. Okay.

Next up. Psychosis Crawler. It's an artifact creature for five. It's a horror. It's got star, star,

for power, toughness. And its power and toughness are equal to cards in hand. Yes, it's an artifact tomorrow. And whenever an opponent draws, they lose life for each card they draw.

So the idea essentially is, I want to have a lot of cards. The more cards I have, the bigger I am. And as you draw cards, you're slowly zapped away. So one of the things we definitely wanted to do, because we were back in Meriden, is we wanted to have a lot. Like, one of the fun things about original Meriden was it really leaned into artifacts. And so we wanted to have a lot of fun artifacts. And so not only the things, we wanted to have a lot of fun artifacts.

were we doing the whole, you know, ferexia and Asian thing, but also because we're back on Mirrodin, especially, the, Mirrenan was kind of going to disappear. I mean, it's in it a little bit in New Phrexia, but we really was our last opportunity to get a lot of fun, cool, like, normal

Mirren style artifacts in the set. Okay, next up, Massacre Worm. Three black, black, so six man a total, three of which is black. It's a worm, creature. Six, five. When it enters, All the opponent's creatures get minus two, minus two until end of turn,

and whenever a creature controlled by an opponent goes to the graveyard, they lose two life. So, Magic and Woman, first off, just kills lots of things. And then as things die, it's helping you win. And this was a very popular card. One of the things, by the way, that we definitely played around with is that we liked the idea that the phorexians, that minus one, minus one counters,

and just minusing in general, was very phorexian. The frets, one of our big motifs with the Frexian, in Mirren, one of the things that I wanted is I wanted to give them a strong definition. And so the idea of their disease. And so there were four adjectives we used to describe them. They were viral. They were relentless. They were adaptive. And they were toxic.

And so all the stuff we built around them. And so there were a bunch of different things we mechanically tied to Frexians. Life loss was tied to Frexians. death triggers were tied to phrexians, minus one, minus one counters, and in general, N minus N was tied to Frexians. So, like, massacre worm,

does many of these things, so it's very Frexian-coded. Next up, the sword of feast and famine. This is an artifact that costs three. It's an equipment. Plus two, plus two, the equipped creature gets plus two plus two, protection from black and green.

Whenever the exchange creature deals damage, the opponent has to discard a card, and then you untap all your lands. It costs two to equipments. So the swords were, we made the first sword, was it an original meridian? Where did the first sword? There was, in fact, two swords.

We made light and dark, and we made, what was the blue-red one? We had made them originally, we didn't, we originally made them, we did not intend for them to be a cycle, to be honest. We had just thought, here's two cool cards that we made an original Meriden block. But it is hard to make two dots and not have people want to make a line. And so there's a lot of A lot of people wanted us to quote unquote finish the sword cycle

and so we did and then we our first pass is we did all the enemy ones and then we eventually came back later and did all the ally ones. But anyway, this was I don't know, it's one of the enemy ones

so I don't know what order it is. But anyway, very popular cards, very powerful cards. The way that all the swords worked is you got protection from two colors. and then when you hit the damage, when the quick creature dealt combat damage to a player, you got two effects,

one in the first color, one in the second color was the idea. Okay, next, green sun's zenith. So there was a cycle, I think they were rare, rare, mythic rare. Might have been mythic rare. So they were all instances of sorceries.

I think they all had X in their mana cost, and all of them, after you cast them, they shuffled into your library rather than going to your graveyard. The most popular one was green sun's zenith. So XG Sorcery. So the manna value was one, technically, but it was X and a green mana. And then you search your library for a green creature with mana value X or less,

and they put it on the battlefield. Then you shuffle green sunsumseem into the library. So by the way, the green system is deemed that that mechanic shuffling these into your library had been one of the original main mechanics in Onslaught. It was a mechanic that went on spells and you would shuffle them back into your library. We decided it wasn't splashy enough to really be in the volume it was, and we ended up on slot went in different directions. But we did like that as a flashy thing.

So in this one, I think it's a mythic rare cycle, we put it on to it. Although we did make it. We just spelled it out. We didn't make a mechanic out of it. Okay, next, consecrated sthinx. Four blue-blue, it's a four-six sphinx. It is flying because of a sphinx. And whenever opponent draws a card, you draw two cards.

So at bare minimum, you get two cards a turn because your opponent gets a card. But this is particularly good in multiplayer where lots of opponents are drawing lots of cards. And so that's, I think that's why this card sees a lot of play. One of the things that's always fun when you're doing designs is just trying to make... It's fun to make a line when you read it. You're like, what? And this is definitely one of those lines. Because you understand your opponent's going to draw cards.

So, you know, very cool. Next, Iker Wellspring. So this is an artifact that costs two. So when it enters or it's put into the graveyard from the battlefield, you draw a card. And this was a very Johnny Jenny card. It's sort of like, I mean, nothing that it were some spike ramifications for it. Obviously, it's... But it's kind of like, I have an artifact.

I want to play it, then I want to get it to the graveyard. So probably I want to sacrifice it. But it helped with metalcraft. It definitely helped with... There's just a lot of different, you know, artifact sacrificing was the thing, obviously. And so it's this neat little toy that, like, unto itself doesn't do much. It doesn't even give you a way to get itself in the graveyard, right? Like, essentially, it's two draw a card for an artifact that if I manage to kill it, I get a second card.

But because it's not built in, you know, to draw a card is not too bad. I mean, in a vacuum, it's not worth a card. But the fact that you get an extra card out of it for two mana total. It needs to be in the right deck, but it's a cool card. Next start, dark steel plates. A plate, dark steel plate. It costs three. It's an equipment.

So dark steel was something we invented an original mirrogan block. I created, Bill Rose during torment had come to me and said, or maybe I realized this independent. But anyway, I was thinking about, we were making an artifact set, and I was like, what do people really dislike? You know, what negative thing could I adjust for? And I'm like, you know what people hate? When someone destroys your creature? And I'm like, what if they couldn't? And I came up with an indestructible mechanic.

What if something couldn't be destroyed? And then we ended up tying into a material called Dark Steel, which the set Dark Steel was named after us, where Indestructible premiered. And originally Indestructible was just English. Like, it can't be destroyed, well, that's an English word. And then eventually we made it into a keyword. So now you can grant indestructible and stuff.

Anyway, sorry, this dark steel plate is an equipment that costs three. It is indestructible, meaning the equipment itself is indestructible. Enchanted creature, or instead, not enchanted, equipped creature is indestructible, and it costs two to equip. So the idea is if I put this on my creature, now you can't destroy my creature or it. So it's pretty, pretty potent. Normally, by the way, when we grant indestructible, we don't make the thing that. grants indestructible, itself indestructible, so there's an answer for it. But this one, we didn't.

But this was definitely on the Mirrodin side. One of the things we were trying to show is that the Mirren were pulling out all the stops, right? The Meriden were making use of every tool they had available to try to stop the Frexians. Because the Frexians were a very, very dangerous enemy. Okay, next up. But the Phrexians, not only do the Miridans use Mirren things, the Frexians use them as well. So next deal is bright steel Colossus. It costs 12.

It's an artifact creature of Gallum, and it's an 1111. It has trample, infect, and indestructible. And then if it would go to the graveyard from anywhere, it gets shuffled in. So the idea was dark steel colossus was this really impressive thing. It was a 10-10 creature with infect that I had made... I think I'd made it for original Meredith, but I think it showed up in... I think it showed up in dark steel. But anyway, I made it original Miriden.

The idea was that we were sort of playing around with In fact. Well, in fact, when you get 10 poison counters, you die. Well, this was a 10-10. Meaning, if it hits you, I made a card called Phage in legions where if it dealt damage to you, you just automatically lost the game.

And this was kind of making a new phage. Now, I mean, there is answers to this. If you keep it from doing all the damage, it won't kill you and such. And this became a very popular target for a while for re-enimate. Well, you had to be a good. get in your graveyard, which you can't do. So

reanimation is not what it, that's why we put the writer on. I guess people have figured other ways to get it from the library, I guess. Anyway, I know there's people who like, that's the go-to of I want to get this in play. I think the original was 11 for a 10-10, and we made it 12.

It originally was a trample 10-10 and it had it was a 12-12 trampler. An instructable 12-12-trapler. Not 12-12, 10-10-trapler. So we made it, in fact, we ended up putting it to 11. I think just because we wanted to one up from the 10-10. I mean, the idea is it hits you, you die, so 10 or 11 didn't matter too much. But anyway, one of the things that was really important is that what the Frexians do

as a villain is they come and they make you into them. So one of the most dangerous things about the Frexians is they turned your own weapons against you. what better way to communicate that the mirons are in trouble than their greatest weapon has fallen to the Frexians. And that's what... I think once again, I think I designed this in Scars of Meriden

and we realized it just had more impact in the war. So we held it off. So anyway, that is bright... Oh, sorry, bright steel colossus. Next, shimmer mirror. This is an artifact creature that costs three. Obviously, it's a mirror.

How big is it? a 2-3 creature and what does it do? It has flash and it grants all your other artifacts flash. So the mirror were a member of part of Mirrodin, very popular part of Mirrodin.

So again, like one of the fun things about going back to Mirren is, A, we got to do all the fun things we do in return is bring back all the things people liked about the world in the first place. We brought a lot of it back, not everything I brought back, but a lot of things.

And then we also got to play around with, you know, doing new things and having Frexian influence. But this is definitely a Mirren card. Nothing about this says Frexia. It just says Mirrenan. The final card to talk about today is Blue Sun-Zenith. It's another of the Zenith. So it's X-Blue, Blue.

Target player draws X-Cards. So there's a card in original magic. What is it called? Oh, no, is it an original magic? Yeah, Brain Geyser. A card called Brain Geyser. It was in original magic. It was X-Blue, I think.

X cards, target player draws X cards. So it's used a lot because it's really good for you drawing cards, but also was a wind condition because you could mail it your opponent. This was made as a nod to that. It has three blue man and not one blue man. So it's a little harder to use. But it definitely so the only reason this is below green sun's

zanis is there's just a strictly better version of this card that exists if you get your hands on it, but it's a hard to get alpha card. So a lot of people probably play blue sunsinesis if they can't get their hand on brain guys. Or maybe you play both. So the pre-release was pretty cool. It was well attended. We did track how many people took Frexian boxes versus Mirren boxes,

and Frexia edged out at Mirren by a little bit. Some people think that the outcome of the, like the thirst at being new Frexia was the side effect of how the pre-release went. That's not the case, and there's no way mechanically could have done that. The advertisement of the two sets were just a gimmick for... We didn't tell the stores until right before. I'm sure I will get to do a podcast on Newfrexia.

But anyway, so it was a very fun pre-release. People had a lot of fun. Oh, the other fun thing is at the Pro Tour around for the pre-release, the Pro Tour before the set got released. The weird thing called, what's it called? Giant Magic. Where we play with these huge cards.

and I played Richard, and I played Frexia, and Richard played Myrden, and we had this grandiose battle. I think I talked, if you listen to my podcast, I did a talk in Magic 30, about the 30 big memories, with 30 pictures and stuff. And in that talk, I talk all about Richard and I duking out. At one point, Richard becomes a double agent, comes over Frexia, then he's a triple agent, he goes back, and anyway, it's super fun, had a lot of fun doing it. Anyway, Scars and Miriden was, for what started as a very troublesome block, ended up. be a really fun, cool block. And I really like to... Married and Receive turned out.

So anyway, guys, that is my... That's my recap, because I am in now at work, and we all know what that means is the end of my drive-to-work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you all next time.