Magic: The Gathering has always had its share of villainy in its storyline. Generally, in most Magic stories the heroes tend to take the villain down with some kind of deus-ex-machina of sorts, the most fitting "God in the Machine" for the job. But what happens when the heroes lose even with such a device? Phyrexia: All Will Be One has officially kicked off its preview season, and, much like the Furnace layer of what was once Mirrodin, we are stoked!
New Mechanics
This new set will feature three all-new mechanics: Toxic, Corrupted, and For Mirrodin!, which are all completely new (or is that compleat-ly new?). Two will be exclusively used by the Phyrexians but For Mirrodin! will be used - you guessed it - by the rebels from the Mirran counter-insurgency. There's always going to be some degree of hope in these stories, and that's where it lies. We will get further into this soon but that's about as far as that hope goes, however.
Getting right into the mechanics, Toxic [N] deals N poison counters to a player damaged by the source with the aforementioned keyword. This is sort of like a fixed version of Infect, except it also does not affect creatures or planeswalkers at all.
Corrupted also has interactions with poison counters, which, as we ought to remind players, if you have ten of these counters, will cost you the game. Corrupted is a pseudo-keyword that thrives on an opponent having only at least three poison counters, and augments the effect of something based on that.
Finally, For Mirrodin! is similar to the Living Weapon keyword of Mirrodin Besieged and onward, as it creates a token creature to equip upon casting an Equipment spell with the keyword. The key difference between the two is that while Living Weapon creates a 0/0 Phyrexian Germ token, For Mirrodin! creates a 2/2 Rebel token. Therefore, even if the Equipment goes away you still have a creature to work with later, in theory.
A Story Most Bleak
Now, we did mention that the Mirrans are pretty much the only hopeful aspect of the story. While Planeswalkers from outside of Mirrodin/Phyrexia/Argentum have come to attempt to liberate the Mirrans from Phyrexian corruption, it is my sad duty to inform you that they have failed. Five of them have managed to evade compleation but there were ten who are featured in the set's cards, and of those ten, the other five have fully succumbed to the Phyrexian oil.
If you've been paying attention to the spoilers thus far, you'd know that Nissa, Nahiri, Lukka, and Vraska were all given cards showing their failure to stave off the glistening oil of Phyrexia. However, Jace was also subdued and compleated, as evidenced by the storyline's climactic continuation from Monday, January 16th. Hope you're sitting down; here's the last of the five compleated planeswalker cards:
New Card Treatments
Phyrexia: All Will Be One features a bunch of new styles for cards. These include the usual borderless treatment that is granted to the obligatory dual lands in each set and the full-art basic lands, but also these:
Wow, that's a lot of different styles for Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines! But there's one more alternative style for the card beyond the norm: If you purchase the Compleat Edition Bundle for the set, you have a chance of opening one of these as well:
This foil treatment is sort of along the lines of the SDCC black-on-black promos they did for the planeswalker cards back in the day. It doesn't show perfectly in the image above but it will look something more like those, which, if true, is pretty darn awesome!
Commanders For The Set
Phyrexia: All Will Be One will be supplemented by two Commander deck products. The decks are called "Corrupting Influence," a green-black-white deck, and "Rebellion Rising," a white-red deck. The commanders are Ixhel, Scion of Atraxa, and Neyali, Suns' Vanguard, respectively.
While I'm not much of a Boros player, I expect Neyali will be fairly popular with players who like going wide with a token strategy and/or impulse draws. I am extremely excited for Ixhel because as a player with two Abzan decks already, I don't foresee myself not getting this deck either for a new commander or for parts to augment my own deck with.
Parting Words
This article is almost at its end. Before I go I just want to give a huge "thank you" to Wizards of the Coast for facilitating this article and for continuing to support me. It seriously means a lot to me.
I also think, before we part for now, that I should show my readers the card that uses the featured image of this article. Give it up for Mondrak, Glory Dominus (and its Ichor-style treatment, which is no less cool):
Until next time, may you be one with your horrors!
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