This card's second ability is probably the one
that will get the most attention, as it's the
one that makes reference to a card that doesn't
exist yet. Heart-Piercer Bow is a solid
Equipment card in its own right, and we may
review that another day; however, I'd just like
to point out that mana acceleration is one of
the most valuable things in the game, and being
limited to artifacts is not much of a limitation
at all in older formats. It's not affinity and
it's not even quite Etherium Sculptor, but it
still has the potential to be very dangerous.
Today's card of the day is Renowned Weaponsmith
which is a two mana Blue
1/3 that can tap to add two mana to your pool
for artifacts or their
activated abilities or for one Blue mana and
tapping it can search your
library for a Heart-Piercer Bow or Vial of
Dragonfire then add it to
your hand. The bow is pretty weak and not
worth adding to most decks
and the Vial hasn't been printed at this time,
so the first effect of
Renowned is the focal point. Tapping for
two mana is a very nice form
of acceleration in an artifact based deck and
Blue has quite a bit of
support for the theme, so this is likely to see
play across a variety of
formats and potentially reach competitive levels
as well.
In Limited this is a two mana 1/3 that can offer
some acceleration
depending on the pool, though probably can't be
relied on for that. It
works well as potential removal bait or a
blocker that can offer more in
some situations, so there is little reason not
to include it in a Sealed
build using Blue. In Booster without
artifacts this has minimal value,
but if drafting multiple artifacts it is an easy
second or third pick.
There are quite a number of good artifacts
available now. The weaponsmith can really help
you get some of them out much more quickly. Turn
4 Scuttling Doom Engine anyone? The fact that
you have a 1/3 creature on turn 2 doesn’t hurt
anything either. It’s a decent blocker against a
weenie deck.
The second ability is hard to rate right now
since we only know one of the cards you can
search for, and it’s not really very exciting. I
don’t see many times I’d want to search for
Heart-Piercer Bow, so I hope Vial of Dragonfire
turns out to be a good card. Even if it doesn’t,
the weaponsmith is a good specialty card for an
artifact deck.
