I like how this card has a lot of flavor that
isn't being conveyed by the flavor text. He's
the chief engineer, so he organizes your other
creatures and gets them to help working on that
big project you've got in mind. On the other
hand, part of me wonders if we won't be seeing
this as the second coming of Affinity for
Artifacts, which was so ruinous to Standard that
it prompted a complete overhaul of the
philosophies behind Magic: the Gathering as a
whole. There's no doubt in my mind that
thousands of Magic players who piloted Affinity
back in those days and are still longing for
that particular flavor of adrenaline rush will
try their damnedest to make this work, but will
it be the same? Probably not.
First of all, affinity is an aspect of the cards
it's on at all times, while Chief Engineer only
works when he's in play. That means you can't
play out your hand on Turn One-- you need to
actually draw and cast the Engineer, and your
opponent can (in theory) stop your shenanigans
from getting out of control by killing your 1/3
creature. Second of all, affinity was so hard to
stop because it snowballed so easily. Play an
artifact with affinity for artifacts, and you
now have one more artifact reducing the costs of
your artifacts. Giving artifact spells convoke
is a little different, since it's creatures that
are helping you cast them. True, there is such a
thing as "artifact creatures" but it's still not
quite so explosive since you need to tap the
creatures that are helping you pay for more
artifacts, which means they aren't attacking,
blocking, or using tap abilities that turn. Time
will tell how strong this ends up being, but I
fully expect it to be popular.
Artifact spells are good candidates for convoke
- perhaps the best, since it doesn't matter what
color creatures you use and since some of them
are fairly expensive for their effect. On the
other hand, in casual settings, you have access
to artifacts that actually generate mana
themselves, and thus the Engineer may seem
superfluous. When you have the possibility of
reducing something's cost - anything's cost - to
zero, it's always going to draw attention, but
it will take some experimenting to find the
right deck for this guy.
Today's card of the day is Chief Engineer which
is a two mana Blue 1/3 that gives Convoke to
artifact spells that you cast. This is an
interesting cost reducing effect, particularly
in swarm or token builds that use Coat of Arms
or similar enhancements and of course primarily
artifact builds. The 1/3 body is solid
enough and overall this is a very playable card
in the right deck which means it should see play
across multiple formats and even reach the
Competitive level as acceleration for an almost
Affinity style design.
In Limited the value of this purely rests on how
many usable artifacts are in your pool in
addition to the strength of your Blue cards.
Splashing it is possible, though with few or no
worthwhile artifacts there would be little
benefit. A risky first pick in Booster that
should only be taken in a weak pack or if aiming
aggressively for an artifact build that may not
be feasible. In Sealed it depends on the
other cards and is playable as a 1/3 for two if
needed, plus can be used for minor psychological
impact if an opponent tries to predict your
plays.
