Welcome to my set review of Phyrexia: All Will Be One, where I will pick five cards of each colour and discuss my favourite cards from them.
Given that Phyrexia: All Will Be One also comes out with a pair of preconstructed Commander decks, I’ll also be covering my favourite new cards from there in another article.
Without further ado, here are my favourite Colourless and Lands cards!
This is a fun colourless commander. There aren’t a ton of amazing token generators, but my first thought was make an army of 1/1s and turn them into 5/3 Juggernauts. There’s something fun about Solemn Simulacrum daring your opponents to block it when it’s going to eat what’s in its way.
Graaz can be a real finisher in a Thalisse, Reverent Medium deck or even a Krenko, Mob Boss deck. Just any deck where you have a huge amount of creatures that would be buffed if turned into 5/3s, Graaz is your new anthem that’ll make people smile. You can also Goblin Welder this out! Loot on end step, Goblin Welder, untap, swing. GGs, everybody.
You can pay three mana for a fetch land. Or you can play Mirran Safehouse to be the Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx you just hit with a Beast Within. Playing a mill deck? You’ll surely find a utility land to somewhere for you to take advantage of. Mirran Safehouse isn’t fancy, but it’s cool, it’s new and it’s a Strip Mine away from being a Cabal Coffers that’s also… a Strip Mine. This is sneaky!
I love a good callback.
Staff of Domination has been Compleated and Staff of Compleation tells you to pay life instead of mana. It will add up, but in a superfriends deck, you’re looking at adding loyalty for three life. Card draw is a little steep, but paying four life and tapping this with Vilis, Broker of Blood under your control gets you practically a new hand. I don’t consider this quite a mana rock since it will dig into your life a little too aggressively, but it is one in a pinch. It’s versatile and useful, but be careful with your life!
Turn your land into any nontoken artifact you control by paying for it again. Mirage Mirror so good you need another? Good, here it is. Want a second Sol Ring or Mana Crypt? Consider it done. As long as you’re not looking for an ETB trigger to copy, The Mycosynth Gardens are a solid include for nontoken artifact targets like a Conjurer’s Closet or Sword of the Animist. It’s a land and it filters for any colour. Enjoy testing this one, it is bound to surprise many of us as the set rolls out. It’s not stuck at sorcery speed either!
Keep token players on their toes with this ability to blow them up at any time. It’s a Ratchet Bomb, we’ve seen this before. But this is legendary and fits in your legendary matters decks and, in certain cases, you can remove ten oil counters to deal a knockout blow of 10 damage. I really like that we have a legendary Ratchet Bomb. With the legendary matters push in Dominaria United, I think this is a solid and interesting addition to the card pool. I’m running this in my Will the Wise / Mike, the Dungeon Master deck.
Honorable Mentions
- Argentum Masticore – A repeatable upkeep discard outlet that snipes stuff your opponents control? Solid hate piece here.
- Monument to Perfection – Toxic 9 is the highest we’ll see, but unfortunately this isn’t going to be much beyond a repeatable basic tutor. I love the art so much which is a shame.
- Soulless Jailer – If you play this against me, I’ll fold. It’s such great hate, it’s like Grafdigger’s Cage. It’s fantastic and eerie looking. Exactly what you need in a stax piece that hates on graveyards.
- Sword of Forge and Frontier – One more to go after this! The Dimir sword should be coming soon at this clip. The Gruul Sword of X and Y is a great amount of advantage and is way more utility than flashy. Don’t listen to anybody calling this the worst of the swords, they’re wrong.
- Zenith Chronicler – I love this for monocoloured decks who know their meta well enough. Niv-Mizzet Reborn decks can suck it.
- The Spheres – The Autonomous Furnace is the example here. It’s not good. I don’t see why we need this card. Late game in limited, sure. Commander, ignore these.
- The Seedcore – Hey, is this corrupted Pendelhaven?
- The Allied Fast Lands (Blackcleave Cliffs) – There was a time where these were must have lands in modern and they all cost over $30. Now, you’ll pick them up for $3 and you’ll be glad you did. These are coming into Pioneer and that’ll heat up that format I’m sure. In Commander, I’m a bigger fan of the slow lands from Crimson Vow and Midnight Hunt, but if you have these, play them. At their worst, they are like guild gates and those are fine in Commander.
That does it for Lands and Artifacts! Catch you next time for the new cards from the Commander Precons!
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