How does Treasure Mage compare to Trinket Mage?
Well, Trinket usually finds you something that
you can cast that same turn or the turn
immediately after, whereas Treasure gets you
something you'll play later on, giving an
opponent more time to prepare, or to forget what
you searched for. Six-cost artifacts tend to be
finishers, like Steel Hellkite, Contagion
Engine, or Wurmcoil Engine, while one-cost
artifacts tend to be combo pieces like
Ornithopter or Voltaic Key, or incremental
advantage like Everflowing Chalice or the
Spellbombs. Thus Trinket is best suited for
combo while Treasure for control.
But to be honest, there's really no point
comparing Treasure Mage to Trinket Mage. There's
really no deck out there that would ever
struggle to choose between them-- you either
want one, or you want the other. And the place
you want Treasure Mage the most is in casual
formats, where the game will make it to turn
six. Especially Commander/EDH, since tutor
effects are at their most powerful there.
Once upon a time, Trinket Mage control decks
were quite viable in various constructed
formats. As a similar but sort of mirrored
version, you'd expect Treasure Mage to have the
same sort of potential. It demands a
differently-constructed control deck, in some
obvious ways and some more subtle ways
(artifacts that cost six or greater are
game-enders, and not generally game-controlling
spells, Steel Hellkite notwithstanding). And
like its famous predecessor, it is only likely
to get better as time goes on.
Today's card of the day is Treasure Mage which
is a three mana 2/2 that can search your library
for an artifact with a casting cost of six or
greater. This may or may not sound very
useful considering the speed of Constructed
formats, but cards like Wurmcoil Engine and
Steel Hellkite are popular plus Myr Battlesphere
and Contagion Engine can be targeted as well.
Few decks will get use from Treasure Mage, but
those with proper acceleration and running one
of these big threats will be noticeably better
with this included.
In Limited the value of Treasure Mage is
entirely dependent on whether or not you have
one or more of the seventeen (at this time)
possible choices in your pool to target for the
effect. Mana acceleration can be a big
benefit if you are looking at multiple high cost
artifacts, but having a few in deck won't
negatively impact most mana curves. For
Sealed this should be included if you are
building the deck with enough Blue mana to
reliably cast it and several high cost
artifacts. Just one bomb rare is not
enough and should be supported with a backup
card to trigger the effect if the rare is drawn
before Treasure Mage. In Booster this
should be drafted if you already picked a big
artifact, possibly as early as second or third
choice, but passed if you have none in your pool
already. If picked be sure to draft
another target for the effect as a backup for
the same reasons mentioned in Sealed as in
either case the card advantage is wasted if
there is nothing to target in the library.
Welcome to another card of
the day review here at Pojo.com. Today we are
taking a look at Treasure Mage. Treasure Mage is
a 2/2 creature that costs two generic and one
blue mana. When he enters the battlefield you
may search your library for any artifact card
with converted mana cost of six or more and put
it into your hand after revealing it, then
shuffle the library.
This is just another artifact fetch card, along the
lines of Trinket Mage and Fabricate. This one
just means that you get something big, instead
of something small like with the Trinket Mage.
This is a useful card when you need say a
Blightseel Colossus, Wurmcoil Engine, Spin of
Ish Sah, or any number of other cards that just
cost a lot. This is a useful combo when running
it with the no longer standard Master Transmuter,
since it is easy to drop whatever you fetched.
And there are plenty of ways in blue to send the
Treasure Mage back to your hand so that you can
recast it, sending out whatever you fetched with
the Master Transmuter again and again.
