Phyrexia: All Will Be One Commander - 7point Highlander set review

 

Release date: Feb10th 2023

Latest points change at the time of writing this - The Lord of the Rings - Tales of Middle-earth

Throughout my set reviews I use '~' to denote the subject card.

I'll try ~ out in my Mono White Lurrus deck equipment deck. My build of mono white isn't good at attacking with multiple creatures but ~ may be good enough any way.

Adding ~ to my Lurrus deck would improve the karnstructs from Urza's Saga without increasing my vulnerability to Null Rod, which is nice.

Of course ~ adds extra utility to my equipment tutors: Steelshaper's Gift, Stoneforge Mystic and Open the Armory. The other equipment are more powerful and therefore I would tutor for them first. However, Mono White Lurrus is a really grindy deck and sometimes I do have a tutor in hand but no equipment left in my library. Having one more equipment would help. Also, the token that ~ produces is not white, it's red, which is relevant against cards like Tourach, Dread Cantor, Mother of Runes and Giver of Runes.

Producing a token 

I like this design. Card draw engines are best in control decks where you have lots of cheap disruption to recover the tempo loss of casting and activating your card draw engine and you eventually bury the opponent. However, ~ requires creature tokens, which are not part of control strategies, except perhaps deathtouch tokens:

Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons

Ophiomancer

...not many of those

Even though card draw engines are best in control decks, they can still be good in other archetypes; whichever archetype you put ~ into you'll want ways of recovering tempo, e.g. mana ramp or cheap removal.

I can imagine a ramp deck with all the mana dorks, all the top end being token making planeswalkers and then the equipment tutor package to Skullclamp away all your mana dorks late game or search for Living Weapons/For Mirrodin! equipment that create tokens for ~. You could also go for artifact ramp, i.e. Tolarian Academy focused. Retrofitter Foundry and Urza's Saga are good options there.

A good example of a midrange deck utilising ~ is my mate Brooksey's Winota Initiative deck. The idea being that you don't care that the spirit token is a mere 1/1 because having the initiative or triggering Winota makes up for it and the deck naturally makes many tokens, e.g. Legion Warboss, Goblin Rabblemaster, Caldaia Guardian. You may even make the skeleton token from the Undercity to trigger ~.

They can kill ~ in response to the trigger to prevent you drawing a card.

Goes infinite with Dualcaster Mage. So does Cackling Counterpart and Repudiate // Replicate

Another Copy Artifact for Coveted Jewel combo.

Triple red may be hard to do when you're running all the non-red producing artifact lands. I think ~ is still good at 5 mana, which is approximately turn 4, which is 10 cards seen on the play; My chosen probability is 87% (because that's roughly the probability of a 2 land 7 card hand with 24 lands in deck, gotta pick a spot somewhere)...anyway, hypergeometric calculator says 24-25 sources to get triple red! Oh boy. Well Tolarian Academy, 6 non-red artifact lands. Therefore I'd want 7 red sources that aren't lands:

Mox Opal, Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, Chaos of Caves Adventurer, Arcum's Astrolabe, Mox Diamond, Phial of Galadriel, Bloodboil Sorcerer, Magus of the Moon, Blood Moon. That's 9, easy!

This would be a non Mishra's Workshop build, which is arguably the most powerful artifact payoff. What artifact build is best depends on the metagame and honestly I would need to see each of the builds side-by-side to evaluate better. And of course there's the issue of Mishra's Workshop's price tag.

I should mention that you could potentially take advantage of the high mana value of ~ with cards like Blazing Shoal.

Probably only good in a Mishra's Workshop deck. Best in stompy builds that run artifact fatties which survive combat.

Having the 2/2 leftover from a Shatterstorm is nice.

The equipment by itself is a serious threat if the token dies.

CONCLUSION

That's it! Just 5 cards. Nothing really noteworthy. Chiss-Goria is my favourite out of the lot.

Thanks for reading,

Mulch