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One of the things that was fun about the future sight expansion set of magic the gathering was that it allowed the people at wizard of the coast to show possible new keyword abilities without any promise of them actually existing in the future. This gave them the chance to try new ideas, or ones that they knew would be cool but couldn't really be used enough to make it into a set.

Darksteel Garrison is one of those cards with a keyword ability that is not seen on any other card. It is a rare artifact fortification which costs two colorless mana to put into play and three to attach to a land. For this it makes the fortified land indestructible and whenever the fortified land is tapped target creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn.

Sadly while this is a cool card it is unlikely that it will see much tournament play, or that the fortification keyword is likely to find its way into future sets of magic the gathering. The reasons for this are connected.

The problem is that while attaching equipment is useful because it allows you to move the card from one creature to another, attaching a fortification to a land is generally just extra cost since in large part one land is like another in magic the gathering. This means that in order to really use this you are going to have to dedicate your second and third turn to playing and attaching this. Then you have to tap the land in order to use the ability, and while the removal of mana burn from the game means that you can do so every turn if you desire all it really does in the end is give a single creature +1/+1.

Perhaps the most fun part of this card is to imagine what other fortifications might do. I can see cards that give your creatures bonuses of defense so long as the land is untapped while others allow them bonuses to attack and even abilities that work like many of the land abilities we have seen in the past making tokens, or even doing direct damage, and yet none of these are so exciting that I can really see the advantage of the card having to be attached to a land rather than simply being an artifact that did the same thing or an aura with a single cost.

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