Pattern Recognition #381 - Darksteel

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

4 September 2025

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Hello Everyone! My name is berryjon, and I welcome you all to Pattern Recognition, TappedOut.Net's longest running article series. Also the only one. I am a well deserved Old Fogey having started the game back in 1996. My experience in both Magic and Gaming is quite extensive, and I use this series to try and bring some of that to you. I dabble in deck construction, mechanics design, Magic's story and characters, as well as more abstract concepts. Or whatever happens to catch my fancy that week. Please, feel free to talk about each week's subject in the comments section at the bottom of the page, from corrections to suggested improvements or your own anecdotes. I won't bite. :) Now, on with the show!

I tried to keep writing the stuff I was writing last week, and I realized it was just bad. So time for a different subject! New! Exciting! Something that you've probably seen around and wondered 'what the heck is this?'

Darksteel was the middle of the original Mirrodin block, and it had a focus on the world in the buildup to the Fifth Dawn. As part of that buildup and the exploration and examination of the arc-villain Memnarch, we are more formally introduced in terms of cards to the titular material found on this plane. And as near as we can tell, it is equally unique to Mirrordin.

Darksteel is a dark grey to dull black metal that is surrounded by motes or rings of a golden hued energy. It has never been described as heavier or lighter than regular steel, just having a unique coloration. It is used primarily in war materials due to the one characteristic that makes it so worthwhile. Once it is created, it is effectively indestructible and immutable to all but the most powerful of artificers and magicians. Even old Planeswalkers have had trouble manipulating the material, though our examples there are thin on the ground as I recall Nicol Bolas making a quick effort while studying it, and discarding it as a 'later' project. Or was that Karn? I can't remember.

So before I get into using it, how exactly does one make Darksteel in the first place?

Well, we don't actually know. Tezzeret, whom we have seen make the most effort to study the material, is working with the idea that you less forge the material into the shape you desire - as Jin-Gitaxius believed, and more that you had to forge and shape reality into the shape that you want the Darksteel to be in. His efforts to put this into practice have been less than fruitful.

As I understood it though, from memories long gone (and perhaps some crossed wires here and there from that block) was that Darksteel wasn't always Dark steel during the creation process, and you could shape and forge it into the desired shape before it became Darksteel.

Regardless, the actual process is unknown to us, the players, and probably never will be. Whomever created first, we have no clue, or how they came by that information or the process. It's a mystery, and one that has persisted for a long, long time.

But because it is effectively indestructible, Darksteel was used in mostly high-impact, and high wear-and-tear aspects of life. So, you know, weapons and armor. These are represented in the game mostly through Darksteel Plate and Darksteel Axe. However, because no one said that Darksteel could only be forged in single discrete objects, some enterprising artificers with more skill than most were able to fashion complete artifact creatures of the stuff! From the Darksteel Brute to the mighty Darksteel Colossus! Sure, the joints could be a problem as Darksteel doesn't really bend, but there is Magic involved. Some leeway is allowed.

Darksteel also scaled very well, and production if it wasn't limited to small items like a Darksteel Relic or a Darkstel Ingot. Some constructs make of this material included full buildings like the Darksteel Garrison, or full on lands - Darksteel Citadel. So while it may not be everything on the plane, there certainly isn't a lack of it to go around either.

Many people could make the material, but the best was Memnarch, who was recognized as the undisputed master of making the stuff, and making things out of the stuff. He was also very canny about who earned, purchased or was gifted his masterworks as they were legitimately that good. It doesn't come up on his card as that focused on his thieving, but he was a master artificer as well. I really hope Wizards revists him someday to depict him before his fall into madness and villainy.

Now, Darksteel isn't new. Well, it is for Magic. But the idea of the indestructable metal isn't new to fantasy or fiction in general. The Hindu mythologies give us Varja, the metal of the gods of which they made their arms and armor. Chinese mythology has Bin, a metal with the same qualities. The Norse bring us various Dwarven metals that depending on the story and who is doing the telling (thanks for ruining so many of those, Christianity), and the Greeks had Adamant.

That should tell you where I'm going with this because the idea of the unbreakable isn't new, and it isn't old either. Marvel Comics introduced Adamantium in May 1996, with Avengers #66. In it, the Avengers are called up to attempt to destroy a metal developed by SHIELD aboard one of their Helicarriers, and due to events, Ultron is recreated using that metal, making him indestructible!

Since then, it has entered into (at least North American) media awareness thanks to it's most famous user..

Hey Bub, got a light?

And with Marvel becoming a cornerstone of Magic for the foreseeable future, I can see Wizards dipping into Darksteel territory to print Adamantium cards - or at least functional reprints. I won't mind at all, and I won't say that this is an original thought of mine. But I'm saying it here and now!

But good things cannot last. Sadly, because of Ken Nagle and his people (and yes, I know he left Wizards 2 years ago - the damage is done), New Phyrexia got their hands on Darksteel, and because the whole theme of NP is "What's yours is mine, but better because fuck you", they too got their hands on Darksteel.

It turns out, New Phyrexia couldn't just infect the stuff and call it a day. They had to actually work for it - as much as they worked for anything. Jin-Gitaxius determined that the best they could do with it was to make something out of Darksteel and then submerge it the Glistening Oil for a long time, letting the oil slowly seep and soak its way into the bonds that held Darksteel together, adding to it without taking away the fundamental construction or capacities of the base metal.

Fortunately for everyone, the sheer amount of Oil required and the time spent soaking things to make them into Blightsteel was seen as excessive by the jumped up Newts in charge of New Phyhrexia, so while they did make some of that material they only spared enough to make a single Blightsteel Colossus before their Invasion. Something that had everyone else breathe a sigh of relief when they found out.

With the failure of the Invasion and the replacement of New Phyrexia with Zhalfir, the only potential source of Darksteel in the Multiverse is in the minds of those who followed Koth, Fire of Resistance into the wild and brave unknown. If they can make it, or even if they want to, we don't know. It is something hasn't been addressed, and it won't be addressed until it becomes relevant again.

Which will probably be never.

As a mechanic, Darksteel didn't really do anything. It wasn't a mechanic. It was a theme. It was an idea that here you could find something that was eternal, something indomitable. Something that no matter how much you tried, it just wouldn't go away (as Exiling things was harder back then).

Darksteel was part of a larger story, it was an undercurrent that something was wrong in the setting. That the auspices of Memnarch may have been more than what the protagonists were expecting when they discovered Darksteel where it should not have been.

I loved that sort of storytelling, where the environment and the cards matched up, and if you saw the signs, everything became more and more clear.

Darksteel came. It went, and it lets its mark. What more can I expect?

Thank you all for watching and reading, and I'll see you all next week!

Until then, please consider donating to my Pattern Recognition Patreon. Yeah, I have a job (now), but more income is always better, and I can use it to buy cards! I still have plans to do a audio Pattern Recognition at some point, or perhaps a Twitch stream. And you can bribe your way to the front of the line to have your questions, comments and observations answered!