They serve to give your side of the board tempo by allowing your creatures to attack (removing defenders), giving you more time to set up the board (removing attackers/expensive creatures), and allow for combat tricks (saving your creatures after damage is on the stack
IGN: Easily the most delightful part of Set 2, for me, is the Merlin/Madam Mim (and Arthur) package
Thats not even considering the more straightforward A+B infinites you can sneak into this theme, like Grand Architect with Pili-Pala, Painters Servant with Grindstone, or Rings of Brighthearth with Basalt Monolith
Adkison tapped Garfield himself to quickly develop a smaller set of new cards to jump the expansion queue and get a new Magic product to market faster
A box of Dragon Shields always comes with 100 sleeves, giving you plenty of extra when you go to sleeve up a constructed deck plus its sideboard, or a complete Commander deck
Eventually we crush our opponents with even more Jolrael land beatsticks from Irenicus's Vile Duplication and Strionic Resonator or pumping all our lands with Sylvan Advocate and Kamahl, Heart of Krosa
