it’s time for the next one Magic: The Gathering ready to launch as Phyrexia: All will be one it’s storming stores and available to buy at places that have pre-releases tonight. Yesterday I had the opportunity to have some early hands-on time with the set on magic sand as part of a Wizard’s run early access program and I’m here to share some thoughts on the set with a bit of a focus on Limited.
1) The Phyrexia: All will be one Limited format is fast
There are many good early drops in this set. These creatures can stack up damage quickly, and we see stat lines that are pretty aggressive on the overall set, especially when you consider the effective bonus damage dealt by toxics. The creatures here hit early and hit hard while stacking buffs for their caster.
The fact that the main token type in the set is the Phyrexian Mite also influences its speedup. Tokens are a classic strategy to help clog the board, but since the Phyrexian Mites can’t block, the format is sped up. While other tiles like the 2/2 Red Rebel tiles can block, there are fewer of them overall in the set.
There are some slower control archetypes in the format on a limited basis, but they should respond to things quickly and promptly – this isn’t a set you’re building on to summon giant robots or Eldrazi. Instead, the Phyrexians seek to complement each other in their respective visions quickly and efficiently.
2) Toxic and Corrupt are important and play differently than infect
Toxic is one of the core mechanics of Phyrexia: All will be one and the primary method of delivering poison counters to opponents. It appears primarily in black, green, and white, and deals normal damage in addition to applying poison counters when it hits the player. This is significantly different from Infect, which was completely isolated on an alternate track; instead, toxic coexists with normal vital damage. There are two life totals to track here, and players with toxic creatures will pressure both.
Another major difference is corruption, as this means that many effects only trigger once your opponent has at least three poison counters. This means that even early poison counters have an impact on the game, with some decks being more concerned with getting corrupted online than trying to outright kill with poison. So you have to weigh the first few poison damage heavier than normal damage to allow or not, especially if your opponent is White/Black.
The change to toxic being a fixed number compared to the infect power scaling means it’s less explosive overall. You’re not going to see as much ‘bomb spell, you’re dead’ out of the blue like you might in Scars of Mirrodin or against Modern Infect decks. However, that’s not to say you should feel safe once you reach a higher poison count, as there are ways your opponents can finish you off from afar or by surprise. There’s a cheat that gives a creature Toxic, a good amount of proliferate on the set, and various instants or sorcery can directly give your opponent(s) a Poison counter.
3) Expect to see more Planeswalkers than you are used to
Although there is not a war of the sparks planeswalker level, Phyrexia: All will be one he has ten planeswalkers, the second most in a set. More importantly, five of these planeswalkers are rares, and not mythic rares, which makes them much more likely to drop in limited form. They make up about eight percent of normal rares and a quarter of mythic rares. Since in a normal draft, 24 packages are opened, there is more than 80% chance that a planeswalker is somewhere in your capsule, so you should consider it.
Rare planeswalkers are Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler, Kaito, Dancing Shadow, Koth, Fire of Resistance, The Eternal Wanderer, and Kaya, Intangible Slayer. Out of these five, The Eternal Wanderer is probably the biggest bombshell with its massive kill ability, strong tokens, and a passive shield ability. The weakest for Limited is probably Tyvar, although it is quite interesting for built applications.
Mythic rares can also be quite bomby with vraskaand nissa be absolute housewreckers if you go up against them. That’s more unlikely and what you’d expect in a normal set, but it’s worth remembering that they’re also available.
A quick reminder that Proliferate is in this set and will further help planeswalkers. It makes getting something like Vraska’s 9 loyalty for their ult much easier, while also giving them some effective extra protection. Phyrexia is making her servants more and more committed to the cause.
4) Expect a lot of combat tricks in Phyrexia: All will be one
There are a lot of good combat tricks in Phyrexia: All will be one and a lower than normal amount of Instant Speed Targeted Takedown (just a couple in red and one in black). There’s also a single lightning creature that can drop down and block, so you should expect most of the combat step shenanigans to come from combat tricks.
Overall, there are 11 common and uncommon bomb spells in Phyrexia: All will be one distributed in the five colors, with 4 in White, 1 in Blue and Black, 2 in Red and 3 in Green. Some of these are quite strong, like white. complete devotion replacing itself if it targets a toxic creature, while granting +2/+2 to the creature. There are also a number of instants that have proliferated, which depending on the board can also work as a cheat. Every color has at least a couple of ways to waste time in the spell combat step, and some pretty solid ones overall. The dearth of instant speed removal in some places also makes them more attractive, so expect to see the combat math completely flip at times.
5) Wait for card prices for most cards – they will largely drop
I know, Phyrexia All will be one it is the new thing and we all want to collect the cards that interest us right now. However, maximizing your magical spend sometimes requires a bit of patience and examining Phyrexia: All will be one we can see that there are a lot of high value cards in pre-orders and what people are looking at.
Each set effectively has only as much secondary market ‘value’ as it can hold, because when the value is noticeably more than what is being sold, players and shops buy more boxes and open them. If the estimated value (EV) of a bundle in a set is significantly higher than what you’re paying for, it makes sense to do so and plan to resell the cards you don’t want. If it’s less, players and shops open less, which increases the scarcity of cards that do have value in the set and increases their value. In essence: supply and demand apply to magic cards and effectively tie the value of the cards in a set to their retail price while in print.
Because there are many good letters in Phyrexia All will be one, the advance and pre-order prices for them are really high as the cards are swanky and impressive. Some of these are cards that would be favorites in a weaker set, but while the set is in print, all of these interesting cards have a lot of value, especially when Elesh Norn, Mother of Machinesand Mondrak, Gloria Dominus they are eating up a lot of value. These are cards that cost $40 to $50 or more as they are in high demand in Magic’s most popular format, Commander, the current driving force in magical finance. With several of the cards gobbling up much of the set’s value, there’s a lot less to spread around among other cards, resulting in more affordable prices for other cards, as we saw with Kamigawa Neon Dynasty.
Which makes it a good time to be a Magic player, as we have what in my initial experience is a great new set, and some really great cards will be available cheaper than they might be in another set. For tonight, I plan to enjoy throwing some cards with our Phyrexian Overlords as I prepare for my inevitable completion.