Hellllooooooo everyone and welcome back to another Type 4 Set Review, this time focusing on Phyrexia: All Will Be One. The set looks super cool from initial impressions so let’s see what sort of stuff we have!
Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines: Reasonable body, with a very potent effect. Any permanent having double triggers is super strong, and cutting off those of your opponents can neuter a lot of their impact. That said, no immediate board impact, no real protection for herself, and as your only creature she’s not really good at all. Probably annoying as hell in EDH but only a mid-tier threat here.
The Eternal Wanderer: Not the best Planeswalker for the format, but definitely one of the stronger ones. In-built protection against swarm attacks, first two abilities provide good utility, and the ult can come down immediately for an excellent effect. Very cool card.
Mondrak, Glory Dominus: While this looks exciting, a 4/4 with maybe indestructible isn’t all that good, and it needs you to cast another spell for it to be good at all. Pass for me.
Phyrexian Vindicator: Big, scary, and impossible to kill with damage (and turns off damage based mass removal too). A classic card for the format, but classic cards aren’t at their best these days. Still, worth a look.
Vanish into Eternity: Is this a reprint? It looks like one. But regardless, this is the generic “great removal spell” of the set, which is still great and makes not having expensive older cards way easier. Swords is finally obsolete in the format.
Blue Sun’s Twilight: Steal a guy, and get a 2nd of them. Very good card for the format, definitely something your target is going to want to counter. Getting all the sweet ETB effects is fantastic too.
Reject Imperfection: Cancel with set ability. There’s always one. This one isn’t very good. Play it if you need some.
Tamiyo’s Logbook: Another tome, which are again plentiful in the format at this point. Some are always fun to use, and this is as good as most of the others.
Black Sun’s Twilight: I thought the Blue one would be best, but damn does this give it a run for the money. Kill their threat, get one of yours back, all at instant speed. Fantastic card.
Capricious Hellraiser: Cool effect, but a little random for my taste. I want my graveyard casting to be more targeted (though this is if you have 3 or fewer cards, but still). Plus, the body isn’t all that much to write home about. Not unplayable, but still wish it did more.
Red Sun’s Twilight: This is so close to being good enough. If it were an instant. If it didn’t exile them at EoT. At least you can overpay for X, kill fewer than 5, and get the tokens still. This is certainly a cool card, but it’s probably not there on power.
Conduit of Worlds: While lands aren’t super common, replaying Blighted Cataract every turn seems cool as a bonus, because the tap ability is what’s hopping here. Don’t want to cast spells from your hand? Make them deal with this one threat over and over. Has to be a permanent, but there are plenty of those that can mess people up. Note this will turn off “free” spells, Cascade, alternate costs, and any other way that we typically cheat the One Spell A Turn restriction, but this level of recursive threat that doesn’t even lock you out on other turns seems fantastic. I’ll be trying it out.
Green Sun’s Twilight: This effectively tutors for a land and creature and puts them into play. I don’t play any tutoring myself, but you might, and if so this seems like a pretty good one.
Tyrranax Rex: an 8/8 Trample Haste that can’t be countered is still pretty big game today. Ward here is obviously worthless, but Toxic might come up against people gaining a lot of life. There are surprisingly few alternate ways to win the game in Type 4 beyond damage or self-decking, so poison isn’t unwelcome here.
Zopandrel, Hunger Dominus: Make all your stuff bigger every turn. This is a sweet finisher and potentially alright on its own. That said, until you get two other creatures, this guy himself isn’t all that robust. Potentially cool, but I’m not a buyer.
Atraxa, Grand Unifier: Keyword soup returns, with a bigger body and a sick ETB. Drawing 4 off this shouldn’t be hard at all for even the most generic Type 4 deck, and you have some selection too. Autoinclude for me.
Kaya, Intangible Slayer: Can’t be targeted, which in the world of plentiful Planeswalker killing is nice. But the real draw here is that every ability on her is kinda fantastic. +2 can and will end games fast, 0 is just draw 2 every turn, and -3 steals ETBs and kills their stuff. I’m a buyer on this as one of the best PWs in the format, maybe even 2nd best (With Teferi, Time Raveler being the clear #1).
Ovika, Enigma Goliath: Here, Ward is actually sorta relevant, but clearly the big game is casting noncreatures and getting a ton of 1/1s. This is a fantastic aggro card. My dream situation is going this into Titanic Ultimatum, make 7 dudes, swing for 42 first strike trample lifelink. Living the dream as only this format can bring.
Ria Ivor, Bane of Bladehold: Included here only as the most wordy card I’ve seen in a while.
Argentum Masticore: This isn’t the OG (and nothing every really will be), but it’s not bad. 5/5 pro multicolor is a decent body, and this kills any nonland with the discard. That said, the allure of Masticore was killing everything, so this probably doesn’t scratch enough itches to make the cut.
And as always, we’ve got some Commander cards. And some other cards. I really hate how hard it was to find EVERY card in the set.
Clever Concealment: Anti-wrath that can be a free spell. Not sure if its good enough, but the effect is pretty unique and powerful enough.
Goldwarden’s Gambit: 10 power of 2/2s with haste is not insignificant. A decent aggro card that plays well with token matters, anthems, and the like.
Hexplate Wallbreaker: Getting 2 attacks every turn is REAL big game. Slam this on whoever you have, keep the 2/2 back to block, and get cranking.
Wurmquake: Make 14 power of trample off one card across two bodies. Wurm sorceries are a classic in the format, and while this isn’t the best of them, it’s probably still ok in a lot of stacks.
Synthesis Pod: This is a goofy card, but it might be ok. It can turn your countered spells into something of theirs, and if you know some of the cards in decks you can try and be specific with it. Not sure if it’s good enough for my stack, but it’s certainly cool.
And that will wrap us up! Two great Planeswalkers and two fantastic X spells, alongside a couple strong utility artifacts and bodies, but there’s a lot of stuff that’s just not quite there. EDHwise, set looks great, but not as awesome here. That said, I’m excited to fool around with some of the cards, so until next time, have fun!
