Phyrexia: All Will Be One - 7point Highlander Set Review

 

I finally caught up to the current year...

Release date: Febuary 10th 2023

Latest set released 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 still don't own one dammit.

7 mana is hard castable in a midrange/control matchup but typically you'll be trying to cheat her onto the battlefield with Oath of Druids or Indomitable Creativity or Natural Order or whatever reanimation spell. Perhaps you could use Kaalia of the Vast!

~ gets better if you're running some combination of Force of Negation, Force of Will, Grief to reveal off the trigger and protect her.

Disruption for Cleric tribal. 

Can be protected with Mother of Runes, Giver of Runes, Benevolent Bodyguard.

Very interesting to evaluate strategically.

There's a concept that Pat Chapin termed 'all Mulldrifters or all Baneslayers'. If you're all Mulldrifters then you make all their removal spells bad. If you're all Baneslayers then all their removal spells are are good against you but if you exhaust their removal and even just one Baneslayer survives then it will still win the game by itself. Creatures with ETB trigger abilities are typically in the Mulldrifter category, but ~ is very clearly a Baneslayer.

I suppose you may be able to get away with running a bunch of Mulldrifters and hoping ~ lives. Her 5 mana value dodges Abrupt Decay and Fatal Push; Her 7 toughness dodges Lightning Bolt and even Unholy Heat. Shutting down opposing ETB's also protects her from Leyline Binding, Palace Jailer and Solitude. Common answers to worry about are counterspells, Karakas, Snuff Out, Grist, the Hunger Tide, and of course, Swords to Plowshares. That's not many.

A sure way to make ~ work is it to run 'all Titans'. Titans are a category named after the original series of Grave Titan, Primeval Titan, etc. These are creatures which must be killed but also provide some ETB value. Of course these cards are some of the most powerful in the game, think Fable of the Mirror Breaker, Omnath, Locus of Creation, Fury, Spellseeker (with the Ephemerate + Time Walk), Seasoned Dungeoneer, Caves of Chaos Adventurer. Players who own Time Walks have been very successful for a long time running all these in the same deck. Considering how good ~ is against the mirror and against Thassa's Oracle, I think she deserves a spot.

I run ~ in my Mono White Lurrus deck. IOpen the Armory can now answer planeswalkers thanks to ~. It also adds redundancy in case On Thin Ice has already been used.

Straight into my Mono White Lurrus deck. Protects 'unbeatable' creatures like Lurrus of the Dream-Den, which means they'll need multiple removal spells to win and the one they spend on ~ is trading for your single W mana rather than something of yours worth more.

~ is not definite protection. Sweepers which don't target will still kill the creature you wish to protect and ~.

1 toughness was already very vulnerable with the combined presence of Wrenn and Six, Fury and Liliana, the Last Hope but now there's also Orcish Bowmastesr in the mix. ~ only costs 1mana, so it's not absolute game over if it gets W&6'd. My deck also has Skullclamp and several tutors for it, so often I can clamp ~ the same turn if need be.

~ is part of the small, exciting, and relatively new team of ≤1mana legends. Mox Amber is poised to be even more broken very soon.

Easy to overlook because classically auras are bad against cards like Ephemerate, Teferi, Time Raveler, etc. They are also bad against cards with powerful static abilities. ~, Reprobation and Realmbreaker's Grasp are underrated in my opinion. At the least they should be playable in a Kor Spiritdancer strategy.
~ and Realmbreaker's Grasp answer The One Ring fairly well.

I've had multiple people ask if I've added ~ to my merfolk deck. I agree ~ is very merfolky. Far to elegant looking for a Phyrexian.

It pleases me that ~ is a rogue because it is defiant: a popular 1toughness creature in a Wrenn and Six, Orcish Bowmasters format.

Anything that copies, recasts or returns instants and sorceries is going to be more powerful in 7PH that any other format because you can double up the most powerful instant and sorceries in the game: Treasure Cruise, Ancestral Recall, Time Walk, etc.

~ generates enough value that you don't even need powerful spells to copy. ~ behaves similarly to Dreadhorde Arcanist. You need to run a tonne of cheap noncreature spells and you a free cantrip every attack. The big power difference is that ~ has that vulnerable 1toughness and you won't see the benefit of cheap spells cast before it like you do with Dreadhorde Arcanist.

I can see this being good in metagames where exile really matters, e.g. a high percentage of Lurrus, Skullclamp, Birthing Pod, Hermit Druid, Devoted Druid combo, persiste combo, etc.

Made popular in pioneer due to the combo with Metamorphic Alteration.

A good demon for Liliana's Contract.

Kills in 3 hits (you can expect them to lose ≥2 life from their fetchlands, etc) so I don't think you need to worry about the upkeep trigger killing you.

The final ability is randomly good against some combos like Samwise Gamgee + Cauldron Familiar + Carrion Feeder, or Saffi Eriksdotter + Loyal Retainers.

The second best mono black edict ever. 1st would have to go to Liliana of the Veil.

3rd place goes to Liliana's Triumph. ~ hits planeswalkers where Liliana's Triumph does not.

The token clause is relevant against Orcish Bowmasters, Goblin Rabblemaster, Legion Warboss, Squee, Dubious Monarch

 Monestary Mentor, Third Path Iconoclast, Young Pyromancer and more.

Whether you choose to run ~ over something else depends on which creatures you are scared of. If the creatures you most want to kill are often put in decks with mana elves, then ~ probably isn't the best choice. You might prefer Go for the Throat there. If you're super scared of True-Name Nemesis or Sanctifier En-Vec, then ~ may be better than Go for the Throat.

Of course if you're running the respective colours then Angrath's Rampage or Abrupt Decay or Vanishing Verse may be the winners.

For my Aluren deck I needed cheap removal to fill my curve early on, so I made a simple grid of potential removal spells Vs threats that I needed to kill, and if certain threats were especially important to kill I increased their multiplier, and a the sum column gave me a rough indicator of the probable best choices. This technique could be useful for assessing if you add ~ to your deck.

C-c-c-c-combo! ~ combos with either of these. War Elemental is really bad, so it's hard to imagine that ever happening. Quest for the Pure Flame is far more likely but enchantments have always been difficult to tutor for compared to creatures, lands and artifacts. Perhaps a weird modular aggro deck featuring Walking Ballista could make the enchantments passable cards in their own right and then occaissionally the combo comes together.

I can imagine some kind of Heroic deck. You'd need to be really fast though, i.e. turn 4 kill consistently. Featuring cards like:

Ivy, Gleeful Spellthief

Feather, the Redeemed

Mavinda, Student's Advocate

Silverfur Partisan

Wild Defiance

Vesuvan Duplmancy

Ink-Treader Nephilim

Storm-Kiln Arcanist

I know listing 4drops contradicts the "turn 4 kill" thing I mentioned earlier but the cards are so sweet I couldn't help myself.

Tribal decks are typically low on disruption; removal being a subset of disruption. You can practically sacrifice ~ at will by blocking with it, or attacking. There is a negligible amount of zero-power blockers so either their blocker will kill ~ or you can sac it to its own trigger. What matters is how much damage you can deal. I hope players are running far fewer 1toughness creatures these days considering the punish factor of Orcish Bowmasters, Wrenn and Six and Liliana, the Last Hope. With that in mind you really need to pump ~ somehow if you want it to reliable kill something worthwhile. Goblin tribal have plenty of ways to pump ~:
Rundvelt Hordemaster, Goblin King, Goblin Chieftain, Pashalik Mons (kind of). If you're running the persist Goblin combo you might have Goblin Sledder or Mogg Raiders, which give you a big ~ and sacrifice it; and you would also have Metallic Mimic and Grumgully to take advantage of the proliferate footer on ~'s trigger.

I personally haven't tested ~ maindeck in Goblins but I have run it sideboard for a while against aggro decks and been very happy with it, especially for curve reasons. Goblins takes out a lot of cards against aggro, e.g. Blood Moon, Ancient Tomb, Earwig Squad, Magus of the Moon, Ardoz, Cobbler of War. There is plenty of room in the sideboard for ~ et al: Goblin Arsonist, Shamblin Goblin, Fireblade Charger, Festering Goblin. They take down Robber of the Rich and they kill Ragavan even if removed.

Typically you'll run zero multi colour spells of your own and run ~ in metagames where every other deck has plenty of multicolour spells. Having said that, 4 colour decks typically only run about 25% multicolour spells, so ~ is not providing enough value to be a sideboard card. I think it's best as a metagame maindeck card, especially in artifact decks where 2drops are slim and you get the synergies.

Bad against Wrenn and Six, but not a toal disaster since you draw a card. 

I like ~ as a puzzle to solve. You can't just fill your yard with cantrips and fetches because then you won't copy something powerful (I say that but a 4/4 flier that ETB cantrips for three mana is really good). You can simply cast ~ for 6 mana but at that point you would rather just cast a Titan or a 6mana Chandra. You probably need to do weird things like:

• Use ~ as a stepping stone for Neoform and Eldritch Evolution.
• Good hit with Dragonstorm as you're likely to cast Dragonstorm again with the trigger.
• A nice creature to find with Primal Command to let you cast it again.
• If the stars align you can cast ~ cheaply with 9 cards in the yard but before it resolves you can Dig Through Time away all the worst cards and probably recast Dig Through Time.

Generally good beater that has synergy with +1/+1 counters and planeswalkers. 

2 generic mana curves nicely with Ancient Tomb, City of Traitors, Mana Crypt.

The toxic might be relevant against infinite life combos, although they are super rare.

The ferocious mechanic may get revisited. The 4 power is also good with Rhonas the Indomitable.

There are plenty of 3drop threat options but I can see ~ getting chosen if your deck is lacking answers to artifacts and enchantments like Umezawa's Jitte. You should try to sense if they have Jitte by their play patterns and deck strategy before committing your oil counters to either of the other abilities.

The 1mana ability is nice in initiative games, providing psuedo evasion and still letting ~ block if you manage to take the initiative off them.

It is bigger than any blocker you would expect to face. You can use the 2mana ability twice in the same turn to get a huge hit in, which makes ~ fast enough when you're racing combo.

Infinite with Time Walk because for some reason the card you cast doesn't get exiled. Might even be a good Modern combo with Time Warp. Note that you won't be able to cast Time Walk from the graveyard using ~'s ability the same turn that you cast ~.

Also good in decks with powerful lands like Tolarian Academy, Gaea's Cradle and Urza's Saga. If you've built your deck around those lands, you probably win the game if you have them, so having contigency against Wasteland and Strip Mine is good. You will want to include cards with good activated abilities so that you can utilise any remaining mana after casting your single spell for the turn. Urza's Saga is a mana sync itself. Instants also work well with ~, although you can only activate ~ at sorcery speed, so you can't cast the instants in their turn with ~.

Turns on Baird, Argivian Recruiter.

Good 1drop for Warrior tribal.

Could be good in the same deck as Baird, Argivian Recruiter

Slayer's Stronghold

Resiliant Khenra

Sword of the Chosen

Mirkwood Trapper

The Royal Scions

Rancor

Audacity

Skullclamp

Rabbit Battery

Shadowspear

Decent option as a haymaker for the midrange Gaea's Cradle deck. Tim Hughes has had success for a long time with this strategy. All your cheap spells are mana dorks and the rest are haymakers. You want your haymakers to be resistant to creature sweepers because all your mana dorks are unavoidably weak to them already.

The fact that Nissa scales is really good with Gaea's Cradle. You can easily kill them immediately with the full cast -7.

A weakness of this deck is that it can lack disruption, so the -1 Naturalize ability is nice against random stuff like Helm of Awakening or Voltaic Key before the opponent untaps and kills you. It also kills Umezawa's Jitte if you already have ~ down before Jitte kills two of your mana dorks.

Hard to imagine losing after Natural Order-ing ~ on turn 3. I suppose the real question is if ~ is better than the competition:

Hornet Queen

Craterhoof Behemoth

Titan of Industry

Progenitus

Primeval Titan

Titania, Protector of Argoth

Cultivator Colossus

Atraxa, Grand Unifier

Hard to say. They're all better against different things and have different levels of hard-castability. I suppose 5mana threats like Titania, Protector of Argoth are going to trump the typical non-ramp creatures like Tasigur, the Golden Fang, Ledger Shredder, Tarmogoyf, Baleful Strix, etc, so you're probably better off capping at 5mana threats to ramp into with your mana dorks.

Not disruptive against combo but strong in a typical game of creatures and removal.

Ideally you'll have a creature ready to attack on the turn you cast ~. They will probably only have one blocker and ~'s +1 will let you get through the blocker to enable the second planeswalker activation. The +1 ability prevents the creature from attacking ~ next turn also. You can effectively lock down two of their creatures if you have the mana to recast the creature you returned.

Ideally you will be running cheap creatures with ETB's like Baleful Strix, Icefang Coatl, Mawloc and Flametongue Yearling.

You really want to sacrifice something straight away, and there's a good chance that your 3drop got killed or countered, therefore I think ~ is only really good at sacrificing 2drops to find powerful 1drops. 

You could use ~ as a tutor for a specific 1drop to combo with, e.g. Cauldron Familiar, but I think that's the wrong approach because if Cauldron Familiar isn't in your library then you're losing value. However, it doesn't hurt to have a combo or two in your deck that uses 1drops.

Sylvan Safekeeper is another combo 1drop if you can find Titania, Protector of Argoth consistently.

I know I often mention Bloodghast but it really is the premium thing to sacrifice repetitively.

You can sacrifice delve creatures but most of the delve creatures are really good already so you'd rather not sac them.

Generally strong must-kill creature. Obviously the biggest downside is that she dies to Lightning Bolt but 7PH mana is so good that you can run all the best creatures and eventually they'll run out of removal, i.e. some combination of:

Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer

Mother of Runes

Give of Runes

Deathrite Shaman

Tarmogoyf

Territorial Kavu

Scion of Draco

Orcish Bowmasters

Nishoba Brawler

Dauthi Voidwalker

Smuggler's Copter

Voltaic Brawler

Lurrus of the Dream-Den

Leovold, Emissary of Trest

Opposition Agent

Laelia, the Blade Reforged

Tasigur, the Golden Fang

plus all the support cards required, e.g. removal and minimum disruption against combo.

Potential tribal synergies with Elf and Zombie creature types.

Green Sun'sable

Collected Companyable

A Corpse Dance for Hermit Druid combo; allowing you to return Hermit and  activate immediately, which is especially good against removal. Unlike Corpse Dance, ~ can be cast proactively, which is good in the weird tempo dance that combo decks perform against disruption.

~ has seen play in Pioneer, bringing back Rona, Herald of Invasion, which combos with Retraction Helix and Mox Amber; however that is way too many cards for a singleton strategy. I just mentioned it to demonstrate ~'s potential.

I think if you're running a bunch of must-kill 1drops and 2drops that are good at blocking, then ~ is generally good. Assuming your 2drops dies immediately, you can return it with ~ turn 3 and only be down 1 mana and you've presented a planeswalker which the opponent needs to deal with lest it returns more dudes.

Mother of Runes is a nice one to bring back because you can block and activate immediately.

The mill is gravy although you may not want to run ~ if your deck contains combo cards that you really want in your library, or if some of your fetches are low on searchable lands.

Acts similar to Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler when bring Hermit Druid back from the graveyard with haste. Doesn't matter if you exile Hermit Druid when the opponent dies that turn!

Strong in decks with big powerful creatures, artifact combos and creature combos. 

Saving Lurrus of the Dream-Den from a Lightning Bolt is enough to win the game. Even better if the creature you're saving has an ETB trigger. Evoking Solitude and bringing it back with ~ is strong. Same for Fury and Grief.

I haven't seen anyone run ~ in any format, she seems very underplayed to me.

Can make tokens for Polymorph decks.

Gets better if you run equipment.

Another rival for Qasali Pridemage. I think exalted is a little better than the extra power, but obviously your deck may not be white. ~ supercedes Outland Liberator but running both is totally acceptable. It's just that the first one makes all your creature tutors a lot better, especially if you're a Lurrus of the Dream-Den deck and/or have ways of returning creatures from the graveyard.

I've noticed 3 power is nice against the popular White Plume Adventurer because you can attack the turn after. Typically they'll chump with the mana dork that White Plume untapped and then White Plume becomes a 5/5, but killing the mana dork is nice.

PROLIFERATE

Possible addition to a Hardened Scales deck, or Deploy the Gatewatch deck but probably only if those decks are 5 colours. Both of those decks would only work in certain metagames which don't have combo decks. Which can happen at local stores where you can predict what each player will play.

Proliferate is very powerful with planeswalkers, sagas and Hardened Scales strategies. Removal is so important these days, ~ definitely has a home.

ARTIFACT STRATS

I can see this in a token deck with all the equipment tutors. Your primary plan is to beat down but in some matchups you can clamp all your tokens and out-grind your opponent. Being Boros gives you access to not only Steelshaper's Gift, Stoneforge Mystic and Open the Armory, but also Fighter Class.

Could possibly go in an aggro Transmogrify/Polymorph deck where you force your opponent to tap out against your pressure and that lets you resolve the Transmogrify.

Other aggro tokens include: Sarcomancy, Ancestral Blade, Citizen's Crowbar, Call of the Conclave, Clowning Around, Ranger Class, Selesnya Charm, Staff of the Storyteller.

I like this in Rakdos Mishra's Workshop stompy alongside Chaos Defiler and Hellbrute.

~ is even good as a powerful Stoneforge Mystic option. you might assume Kaldra Compleat is a better option but ~ is far easier to hardcast.

"Finisher" doesn't really match the flavour text. This guy would be first to charge I imagine. Very evocative though, you feel the power looking at the art. I also imagine this gigantic aggressive ogre standing placidly at the blacksmith whilst his armour gets measured and fitted.

You need to be a stompy artifact deck to take advantage of ~'s aggressive nature.

I think you're happy paying 3 mana for ~. It dodges a lot of popular removal thanks to its high mana cost and toughness.

Not being an artifact itself makes it worse with Mishra's Workshop and cards like Forging the Anchor or Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas, but I think you want your finisher cards to not be artifacts, so that you improve your resilience against hate like Shatterstorm and Null Rod.

There could possibly be a 'Hammer Time' 7PH deck with Colossal Hammer and Belt of Giant Strength. You would run Steelshaper's Gift, Stoneforge Mystic, Urza's Saga, Open the Amory, Skullclamp, Umezawa's Jitte and perhaps blue for Trinket Mage and Tribute Mage. If you don't run the blue mages then you could run Lurrus to always have a cat and a way to get back your key equipment.

Lion Sash is even a cat you can tutor for!

You would need some ways of getting through blockers, e.g. Giver of Runes and Mother of Runes.

Of course you also need other ways of 'cheat equipping' Hammer, e.g. Sigarda's Aid, Puresteel Paladin, Ardenn, Intrepid Archaeologist, Shape Anew.

Deck seems my style.

I can see this in a deck that consistently tutors for Cranial Plating. If the mana base can support Tempered Steel, that could also make ~ good.

2mana 1/1 is unforgivable without a way to make it huge though, so you really need that Cranial Plating.

I always liked Blade Splicer. Was good to blink with the likes of Restoration Angel or sacrifice to Birthing Pod. Malcator trades the first strike for the potential of extra golems. If you can manage to get a second golem the turn ~ enters, that is game winning, 7 power for 3 mana, and perhaps another golem the next turn. You could get a second golem turn 3 with the first golem, an artifact land and a zero-mana artifact like Mishra's Bauble or Urza's Bauble.

~ is nice to Karakas, although it would be unusual for Karakas to be the correct points choice in an artifact deck when it's competing with Urza's Saga, Tolarian Academy, Mishra's Workshop, Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Mana Vault, Time Vault, Tinker, Skullclamp, Ancient Tomb, Moxes...

I would only run ~ in a Mishra's Workshop deck. Otherwise you stand to lose too much tempo against removal. And of course you won't always naturally draw the Mishra's Workshop, so perhaps this deck requires a bunch of ways of finding Workshop, e.g. Sylvan Scrying, Expedition Map, Crop Rotation, Ancient Stirrings, Once Upon a Time.

~ practically turns all the spells in your hand into removal spells. Mishra's Workshop decks are typically low on removal spells, so this is nice.

Pro multicolour is good against Teferi, Time Raveler.

Probably needs to be a Mishra's Workshop deck. ~ is weak by itself but add enough synergy and I think it becomes playable:

Give Walking Ballista deathtouch

Give Starscream, Power Hungry first strike (to give the opponent the Monarch and have one of your regular damage creatures take it back the very next phase)

Give Traxos, Scourge of Kroog lifelink

The lifelink is really nice against mono red. The flying is nice against initiative.

Versatile yet slow.

Obviously you won't get any ETB value of things you're copying.

Copying Blinkmoth Nexus, Mishra's Foundry and Mishra's Factory gives you pump options.

~ can act as a backup Time Vault if you have the mana spare to copy Time Vault in response to opposing removal. Same goes for any critical artifacts I suppose, sideboard Grafdigger's Cage is another good example.

~ is good with Mana Crypt. It becomes a bit like an Ancient Tomb that enters tapped.

Note that ~ doesn't retain the copy ability, i.e. it's a one shot

ARISTOCRATS

You really need three creature in your graveyard ready to go, or a few creatures on the battlefield that you can sacrifice at will if need be, to save ~ from Lightning Bolt.
Perhaps with a sacrifice creature and enough fodder you can get enough triggers to kill them with:

Blood Artist

Cruel Celebrant

Zulaport Cutthroat

Elas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim

Spiteful Prankster

Judith, Scourge Diva

Performs a similar role to Drivnod, Carnage Dominus but you really need the life gain from Blood Artist et al to go off easily. Honestly ~ is probably not playable but she was right under Drivnod in my Gatherer search and was easy to say 'as above'.

The flavour text is pretty dumb. Vraan wants to be the Father of Machines and believes he can kill the praetors, he doesn't need to be hired to achieve this goal. He can just try kill them whenever.

~ can go in any deck that can kill it's own creatures at will for value: persist combo, aristocrats, Academy Rector, Birthing Pod. Pyre of Heroes Vampire deck would be a great home for ~. Max out Bloodghast tutors, Blood Artist, etc.

Good removal for tokens decks.

SIDEBOARD CARDS

Gets better with time as power creep brings the mana value of creatures down.

Good sideboard card against control decks if you run lots of removal yourself. Control decks do run creatures these days(because the initiative has forced them to, but those creatures aren't killing you quickly and therefore you have time to cast ~ and attack with him. Having removal of your own will prevent their creatures from blocking or racing ~.

Acts a bit like Grafdigger's Cage and Weathered Runestone except it allows players to cast spells from libraries, so you can run Green Sun's Zenith, Collected Company, Realmwalker and Birthing Pod and not worry about the nombo that Grafdigger's Cage would've caused. Of course you can't stop their copies of those cards either, so it's a trade off.

Unlike Grafdigger's Cage, ~ is a creature, which makes it more tutorable.

There are a tonne of antigrayard sideboard options. It's important to really analyse which ones are the best for your strategy.

Joins Ratchet Bomb and Powder Keg. These cards can be good against Time Vault + Voltaic Key combo, swarming aggro decks and slower hard to kill permanents like True-Name Nemesis, Back to Basics or Serenity if you're going first.

CURRENTLY NOT GOOD ENOUGH BUT HAS POTENTIAL

At the moment I can't think of how this is better than Liquimetal Coating or Liquimetal Torque but it's such a warping effect that there has to be a powerful interaction eventually. Perhaps a permanent that sacrifices an artifact to make multiple non artifact tokens and goes infinite.

Another potentially powerful card. I can't think of anything that its broken with though.

~ adds extra counters indiscriminately, so I can imagine something like a Myojin of Seeing Winds that only has 1 counter but that counter is super valuable. Or perhaps a card which does something powerful when it reaches 3 or 4 counters but there's a huge cost to adding them, like Magistrates Scepter but better.

If there's ever a mill deck, ~ gets in there. Say your aggro opponent kills you on turn4 consistently, can you race that? They remove a minimum 12 cards from their library with natural draws and fetchlands, leaving roughly 48 cards. The equivalent life total is about 18 thanks to minimum fetchlands or whatever. 18/48 = 0.375. Converting mill to damage; ~ at 3 mana would be 4 mana for 3.375, very bad. ~ at 4 mana is 5.625, also really bad.

Getting ~'s -2 is powerful but if you can get 17 cards in your graveyard you can probably be doing more powerful things like Sailor's Bane, Octavia, Living Thesis, Bedlam Reveler, Emrakul, the Promised End or Living Death.

I read up the lore and Rick Sanchez slayed Karumonix but then the Phyrexians resurrecuted him.

One day I'll make a Rat Colony/Relentless Rats deck just to have a laugh at Wednesday Highlander at Plenty of Games, Melbourne. There are a few powerful support cards already in Thrumming Stone, Desperate Research and Bloodbond March.

This would be good in Doublestrike decks but unfortunately, like so many strategies, Wrenn and Six, Liliana, the Last Hope and Orcish Bowmasters kill nearly all the creatures in those decks. Perhaps if Wrenn and Six goes to 2 points we could see that strategey emerge.

There are planeswalkers that are better at bringing you back from a tempo deficit but none of those have hexproof, which is huge when the opponent might have access to Leyline Binding, Otawara, Soaring City, Unholy Heat, Dreadbore, Brazen Borrower, Scalding Viper, Grist, the Hunger Tide.

You can cast game winning spells for much cheaper than 7 mana, and therefore you really need to be cheating ~ onto the battlefield to make her work. 

I have ~ in the 'potentially playable' section because you may as well cheat in powerful creatures instead of planeswalkers. There are more powerful creatures and cheaper ways of getting them onto the battlefield. The only cheap way of sneaking planeswalkers onto the battlefield that I can think of is Arena Rector, which is very conditional. But perhaps in the future they might print a few good ways of cheating walkers onto the battlefield and using noncreature threats may have a strategic advantage. 

I had a whole proliferate category to in this set review but despite that I don't think there are enough cards which proliferate on turn 3 to make ~ playable. There may be in the future though! Proliferate is a fun mechanic, which I expect Wizards to keep using. Here are the current ≤3mana proliferate cards:

Thirsting Roots

Drown in Ichor

Huatli's Raptor

annnd those are the only decent ones I think.

Such a weird card, there's gotta be something there.

Having ~ with a Scorched Ruins in the graveyard is powerful. I looked for lands that could untap it, the closest I found was Oboro, Palace in the Clouds but that's mana neutral

CONCLUSION / BEST CARDS OF THE SET IN DESCENDING POWER ORDER

Atraxa, Grand Unifier

Glissa Sunslayer

Mercurial Spelldancer

Melira, the Living Cure

Cankerbloom

Thanks for reading, hopefully I gave you some ideas. Next set up is Phyrexia: All Will Be One - Commander.

Mulch