Hello! 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 (aka 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 Red cards!
Okay, so it takes a little time to become full on Ball Lightning, but this triggering every combat and letting you keep the token until your end step is great.
Any extra combat decks out there? Oh, there are? Fantastic, here’s one for you. Every combat, you’ll get a beefier token that just wants to rushdown your opponents. Got a Fling deck like Ziatora, the Incinerator? Do you run Warstorm Surge? How about Stalking Vengeance? Maybe it’s time to run these along Vicious Shadows to embrace the birth and death of these Phyrexian Horrors. This is going into my Grand Warlord Radha deck and I’m excited to see how it turns out.
This card combos with so many cards that it is going to be hard to justify not killing the player who puts it out. Cathars’ Crusade is a mild case if you’ve got a bunch of tokens entering. The infinities with this are The Red Terror, War Elemental, Quest for Pure Flame, and Talon of Pain.
Pair this and damage based board wipes like Blasphemous Act and Soul-Scar Mage and you’ll have a board wipe that gets around indestructible but also will likely kill an opponent if not all of them. Your Vivid lands enter the battlefield and become real Shock lands. It’s cool, it’s splashy, but it’s also very scary. Play with caution!
This is one of the coolest looking of the Domini. Solphim is a Furnace of Rath that doesn’t deal double damage to yourself or things you control. A discard outlet as an activated ability that gives Solphim indestructible is also pretty solid in the right decks. Put this in any deck that wants to play the game in fast forward. Punisher decks found a new commander or at least one that can tag team with Zo-Zu the Punisher. Impact Tremors, Purphoros, God of the Forge, and Witty Toastmaster all become way more dangerous with Solphim out. There’s a lot to love about this card, but what I think is coolest is that it puts aggro strategies back on the menu for Commander. Get ‘em!
I talked about Slobad in a previous article and I remain just as intrigued. Wearing the remains of Bosh, Iron Golem as armor, Slobad is an interesting take on a mana dork. I love Illuminor Szeras and Soldevi Adnate, so seeing a Phyrexianized Slobad, Iron Goblin follow their line but as an Artifact mana dork makes me wonder what we’re about to see.
Obviously, you can’t sacrifice a token for mana with Slobad, but you can use your curve to your advantage. Portal to Phyrexia is nine mana, but is nine mana that much when you’ve found a way to turn your expensive mana rocks sideways and then bin them for value? Gilded Lotus taps for three and then sacrificed for five, that means you’ve got eight mana without even touching your lands. There are artifacts that run their course like Meteor Golem or the Wellsprings. You can use Liquimetal Torque and Liquimetal Coating to sacrifice nonartifact permanents to Slobad! I love Atsushi, the Blazing Sky for this personally. And if you’ve got too much mana to use well, you can always find cards with activated abilities, like Gemstone Array or Equipment that untap Slobad.
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Bladehold Aspirant
Speaking of Equipment, reducing equip costs by one is huge. Skullclamp and Swiftfoot Boots become free activations. Reducing equip costs by two when it’s the Aspirant though means that you’ll be able to free equip all the Swords of X & Y to it and swing basically unblockable and get a ton of triggers!
Honorable Mentions:
- Capricious Hellraiser – I like my graveyard too much to exile stuff willynilly. This goes in Dragon decks that are heavy on noncreature spells I guess? Or spellslinger decks? I’m not a fan of this one but a mythic dragon that can be cast for RRR is worth noting.
- Koth, Fire of Resistance – Red’s Liliana of the Dark Realms isn’t super impressive, but if you land that ultimate and have a ton of mountains enter the battlefield, enjoy the power!
- Furnace Punisher – Punisher decks have something to slam down in the early game against greedy land bases.
- Red Sun’s Twilight – The tokens don’t stick around, but if you can target up to five things, this can be a game stealer.
- Gleeful Demolition – Kuldotha Rebirth gets its own more flexible rebirth.
- Vindictive Flamestoker – This is excellent for spellslinger cards that have a hard time refilling their hands. My discard deck is heavy on the enchantments and might be able to make use of this to refill when I’ve whittled everybody’s hands to zero.
That does it for Red! Catch you next time for Green!
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