Wizards of the Coast had their official launch for the 3rd installation of Magic the Gathering (on the 10th of February), to the 4-part saga where the whole Phyrexian disaster began, with Dominaria United. Lucky for us, we received a care package from WotC, right in time to fuel our excitement for the set. As someone who does play more creature-based decks, and less artifact-y like The Brother’s War installation, for instance, this is pretty exciting. Not to forget, Elesh Norn is pretty hard to say no to. Without any delay, here’s what we cracked in our MTG Phyrexia All Will Be One Booster Box.
MTG Phyrexia All Will Be One Booster Box Review
Starting off with the MTG Phyrexia All Will Be One Lands
Basic Lands
Let’s start with the normal basic lands which we are all familiar with. It’s normal for Magic to include basic lands with their sets but in the past, we have seen a rather traditional layout of land included in the sets. But this time around, the Phyrexia All Will Be One takes it to another level. The basic lands included by default are the full-art kinds. So, if you loved the robot-or-mecha-themed lands from The Brothers War, you might like this one. You have different “panoramic” like lands based on different planes, according to the colour. These lands are based on the five factions – which is pretty easy to tell.
Now if you happen to crack Set Boosters like us, then you can get these lands pretty easily – non-foils more than foils, of course. But you can get foils, for sure. I like the non-foils better as it has beautiful artwork by Alayna Danner. There’s another type of land you do get with this set and that’s the…
… Phyrexian Basic Lands
It’s safe to say that the Phyrexian’s invasion has added flavours to MTG cards – including the Basic Lands. According to our knowledge, we saw Phyrexian text cards from Dominaria United (Shouldred for instance). That trend is continuing and makes complete sense that this set has them. These Phyrexian Basic Lands by Mark Riddick are written in Phyrexianized Basics. Not just that, the artwork really stands out with the five colours popping out very well.
The foil Phyrexian Basic Lands are the ones you should get. For one, it uses a matte foil, which adds that shine and under any kind of lighting, it brings out the “emblem” in the middle, like its holographic – similarly to the Theros Beyond Death “pokemon” lands.
Personally, I am not a fan of phyrexian-texts on character cards, because – it does make it hard to read while playing. (Unless you know how to read Phyrexian, then, mad respect to you sir/madam) But these lands on the other hand are quite alright and straightforward to use. So, get them.
Other Lands in this Set
These aren’t the only lands you will be stumbling upon in this set. In fact, this set introduces a specific land type called “Sphere” – the commons/uncommons Sphere lands enter the battlefield tapped. Now, in addition to tapping for mana, you can sacrifice them to draw a card – in the event of getting land or mana screwed.
Now Rare ones, however, have an interesting mechanism which you can see with The Seedcore, The Mycosynth Gardens and The Monumental Façade. There is another land type you can get in this set – Fastlands (Thanks Bob). So, to accelerate your game to ramp up that mana, these lands are going to be solid. Again, these are reprints from an older set. So, for those who can’t get those – as usually lands are pretty expensive, these reprints will suffice.
The Tokens
Tokens are a part of the game’s element – you could either create token creatures with the mechanic you run through the deck and so on. But what’s more interesting is the Poison Counter card. Yep, you read that right – Phyrexia All Will be One introduces the Poison Counter mechanic. Honestly, it is disgusting. As long as a player racks up 10 poison counters, that player is immediately dead even if he/she has all of their life intact.
It is a bit odd when you have a rule in commander if you deal 21 damage with your commander, the player dies – but the poison counter happens to be more lethal than a commander’s damage. I recently played against my friend Bob, who played Atraxa. Despite the fact that I won, I was one or two counters away from dying – so it is pretty disgusting.
Other than that, we have some of the tokens here we cracked in this set – such as Phyrexian Beast, Phyrexian Goblin, Drone, Rebel, The Hollow Sentinel and Phyrexian Mite.
The Alternate Art Style Cards
Just like the Showcase-designed cards we had in Battle of Baldur’s Gate, this new Phyrexia set introduces different Alternate Art styled cards – which are far more beautiful than the Showcase cards. To me at least. These cards you see have paint-splattered artwork on a white background with a black border. In fact, the colour of the art matches the mana type.
In cards where you have colourless mana – has only a black and white tone on the card. In a mixture of two colours, you can notice that the borders on the text box are in two colours with the art in an inversed colour – the art is in white and the card is in black – which also blends beautifully with the borders.
The foil ones, have a matte texture on them with a nice subtle shine on them, where the artwork does pop but it isn’t as obvious as the Phyrexian land cards or even the Showcase cards where the foil ones do have this nice shine to them.
Cards from the Past…
Initially, I wasn’t aware of this, but in some Set Booster packets – instead of a token card, Magic included cards from the sets of the past. Now, these can be differentiated with the Magic-trident-like logo on the bottom left corner. But instead of mentioning ONE, it says which set it came from. Now you could crack a common, uncommon, rare or even mythic.
In our case, we cracked the following: Brightstone Ritual, Yotian Soldier (BRD), Phyrexian Snowcrusher, The Antiquities War (DOM), Sword of War and Peace (2XM), Tevesh Szat (CMR) and Underdark Rift (AFC).
The Foils
Other than the usual cards, you can pull Commons and Uncommons in foil as a part of the “guaranteed” foil cards. You can check out the cards we pulled in the photos below. They do have a nice shine to them and after leaving the card out for just a day – we noticed the “pringle” effect. So, we’d suggest keeping them stored well.
What did we Crack?
The Mythic Cards
MTG Phyrexian All Will Be One is a fun set to crack – at least for us because the number of good cards we got is pretty neat. We cracked the following: Tekuthal, Inquiry Dominus, Jace, Vraska, Lukka and Sword of Forge and Frontier. So, that’s 3 Planeswalkers, 1 creature and 1 artefact equipment. But the big question is, did we crack something more interesting, like MOM for instance?
We did…
Here’s the Mother of Madness in the flesh – now we didn’t crack any of the other variants but we cracked the normal non-foil Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines.
Now the card I am really hoping to get in my hand is the Junji Ito version, which happens to be one beautiful work of art. We did crack the art card, sans the signature on it – but I have to say, it sure is pretty to see the art all in its glory.
The Rares
We did organize these cards according to their colours – Red, Blue, Green, Black and White – to see what we have cracked in the Set Booster. Given that white happens to be the prime colour in this set, we did get more blue colours than anything else.
The Manga Art cards, add a beautiful flavour to the cards, especially if you happen to love art. The foil cards do stand out very well – in our case we have Koth and Skrelv.
The Non-foil Manga card we have, which is Melira is absolutely beautiful, and so is the Alternate Art Card, Ezuri.
Apart from all the coloured and multicoloured cards, the one that caught our attention is Soulless Jailer. A 2 mana Artifact creature with 0/4 that limits players from casting from their graveyards – which is absolutely helpful if you happen to go against graveyard decks.
The Commons and Uncommons
Once again, keeping things organized – we have once again sorted the cards based on the colours for easy viewing.
Our Opinion about ONE
The MTG Phyrexia All will be One Booster Box really caught us by surprise with absolutely delicious treats to build decks that will absolutely obliterate the opponents – just the way the Phyrexians are taking charge in the multiverse. Now, truth be told, the Poison counter is a disgusting mechanic and while it does bring the game quickly to an end, it does give EDH players the challenge to strategize with others and be able to overcome that.
On the other hand, cracking a Set Booster is fun but if you are aiming to just get one card to upgrade your existing deck, its preferably better to get singles. However, with the new Poison Mechanic – it is a little hard to introduce the counter into your existing deck, say in my case: Miirym.
If you do want Elesh Norn or Moldrak, we found out that it is pretty easy to pull them out if you happen to purchase a Set Booster box. In fact, during the Pre Release, we found out – out of 10 players, 4 of them got Elesh Norn. Which only brings to my next question: how easy it is to even pull one?
Based on what I’ve observed, I guess – given that we have so many variants, stumbling upon one shouldn’t be that hard. But what is hard to come across is the Junji Ito Elesh Norn.
There is another Set you can Purchase…
MTG Phyrexia All will be One isn’t just available in Set Boosters, Collector Boosters, Draft Boosters and Bundle. There is one other set we have not checked out or gotten our hands on. It’s the Compleat Bundle.
This bundle guarantees you some good hits – the Oil Slick Lands and the Phyrexian Lands, where you do get a guaranteed number of them. Followed by that, you will also get 5-6 packs of Set Boosters and 1 Special Compleat Pack which is only available in this set. This pack will give you the chance to get an Oil Slick card which is totally worth it. But unfortunately, checking from every store around us – Magic has gone with the “allocation” route where stores will refund if they don’t have enough at hand.
In fact, the prices of the Compleat Edition are going high. MTGRocks wrote a whole article about this – which you can read here.
Conclusion: To Crack or Not to?
Okay, now this is a pretty tough question for us to answer for this particular set because we asked Bob, our MTG guide. MTG Phyrexia All will be One happens to be one volatile set – the prices are going up and down. This is pretty true given that, the Normal Elesh Norn was at $49.99 and spiked last week to $54.99. Which again, dropped to $49.99. This isn’t the only card, the same happened to other cards, including the one I have my eyes set on: Junji Ito’s Elesh Norn. At the time of pre-release, it was around $129-149, and after that, it dropped to $70+ and now it’s going back up to the $100+ mark.
If you are just planning to get a few cards which isn’t going to cost as much as a Booster Box then just get the singles. Otherwise, you can crack a box, perhaps with a friend so that it doesn’t take a toll on your wallet. All in all, it is a “mixture of being a really good set and some mixed sentiment from players” (According to Bob). I personally agree with that because The Brother’s War was a huge disappointment for me.
Just be smart in what you plan to get. In the meantime, we will build our ONE EDH deck and explain more in another content real soon.
