Phyrexia: All Will Be One Limited Set Review: Green

Hey everyone! I am here to usher you to your destiny of becoming part of the Phyrexian collective. Join us, as we will all be one soon enough. Oh wait, sorry… I’ve been told that I am to hold off on helping you be compleat and review all of the cards for limited purposes in its place. I guess we can do that instead, but you’re really missing out because Phyrexians know how to party.

Seriously though, I love this time of each set. Everything is new and exciting; we get to make all kinds of wild speculations about what the format is going to turn out to be. They may not let me sleep (or go outside, I miss grass) until I finish these reviews, but it’s still a great time. So, without further ado, I present to you Phyrexia: All Will Be One the limited review.

Here’s the usual grading scale:

• 5.0: Disgustingly powerful and basically unbeatable. Either answer it the turn it comes down or just pack up your cards. (Tovolar's Huntmaster, The Meathook Massacre, Starnheim Unleashed)
• 4.5: Incredible bomb that still gives your opponent a slim chance. (Adeline, Resplendent Cathar, Alrund's Epiphany, Grand Master of Flowers)
• 4.0: Great rare or the absolute best uncommons and removal. (Froghemoth, Morbid Opportunist, Skullport Merchant)
• 3.5: Great role filler or removal that you never cut. (Magic Missile, Cathartic Pyre, Battle Cry Goblin)
• 3.0: Good playable that I’m basically never cutting. (Usher of the Fallen, Search Party Captain, Dragon Turtle)
• 2.5: Decent playable and the bar I hope nearly every card in my deck to reach. (Mourning Patrol, Steadfast Paladin, Goblin Morningstar)
• 2.0: Mediocre filler that normally is your 20-23rd card(s). (Contact Other Plane, Mindleech Ghoul, Timberland Guide)
• 1.5: Replaceable, overall bad filler. Could also be decent sideboard cards. (Secrets of the Key, Spiked Pit Trap, Village Rites)
• 1.0: Bad filler. Gets cut most of the time. (Secret Door, Mystic Skull, Funeral Longboat)
• 0.5: Very unhappy to main deck this, but maybe it has fringe sideboard applications. (You See a Guard Approach, Bramble Armor, Compelled Duel)
• 0.0: Unplayable in every possible situation. (Mimic, Change of Fortune, Curse of Shaken Faith)

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Adaptive Sporesinger

Rating: 2.0/5

Whether or not you want to play this card is entirely dependent on the potential value you can get out of the proliferate. Without any +1/+1 counters in the set, you really need to have a plan to take advantage of it.

The other option can help force through some damage, but overall, just a meh card.

Armored Scrapgorger

Rating: 3.0/5

This does everything you want out of a cheap mana dork. You get to ramp, fix your colors, and even incidentally get some graveyard hate thrown in. On top of that, it turns into a 3/3 later in the game when you are no longer in need of its services.

Bloated Contaminator

Rating: 4.0/5

Only having one green in the casting cost is huge. It’s just so massive for the price that it is going to run over anything they can throw in front of it. The Trample ensures that the Toxic is going through and it functionally has Toxic two since you get to proliferate when you hit as well.

The major problem is that Hexgold Slash is a thing. You may notice this is a recurring theme.

Branchblight Stalker

Rating: 2.0/5

The usual disclaimer that a 3/1 for two gets wrecked by literally anything. Toxic 2 does force the issue of trading a lot more than just normal damage would so tricks will be at a premium.  

Cankerbloom

Rating: 3.0/5

This lets you have that safety net to pop off an artifact or enchantment without having to play an otherwise dead card in your deck. There really isn’t a cost to having it because a 3/2 for two is a fine curve filler. It even has a proliferate trigger sitting in its back pocket if that is what you really need.

Carnivorous Canopy

Rating: 1.5/5

I don’t feel the need to explain why this is a sideboard card. It is a classic example of one.

Conduit of Worlds

Rating: 2.0/5

The sphere lands are a nice way to generate some extra value out of this since you can just keep replaying them every turn. There isn’t much self-mill floating around to fill your graveyard with so any other lands you get off of this are most likely coming from rummages or loots.

The permanents you bring back with this don’t get exiled so you can actually keep casting the same ones over and over again. Restricting yourself to one spell a turn is alleviated a bit by instants and flash. It’s technically card advantage, but it’s slow conditional card advantage.

Contagious Vorrac

Rating: 3.5/5

This piggy might be contagious, but it’s probably worth taking that chance. Centaur Courser is looking a lot better when it gets you a land on top of it. It’s not restricted to basics so you can grab a sphere land instead.

There is the possibility you miss, but the math says you should hit most of the time. I’m not going to give you a full break down on the different permutations because that’s beyond the scope of this article.

The decision to choose a land is a may so you can decide to proliferate with this instead if that’s what you’re into.

Copper Longlegs

Rating: 2.0/5

On its own this is a pretty janky card. If your deck has trouble with the early game and will want proliferate, then this is a nice little bridge to later turns.

Evolved Spinoderm

Rating: 3.5/5

Good old Blastoderm has returned to continue the tradition of smashing into the red zone (I am pre-emptively being good and saving my editor the time of removing what we used to call Blastoderm. You can assume it was inappropriate).

Unless you have ways to oil this beast up, it will only get one attack in while it still has hexproof so it doesn’t quite have the staying power against removal that the OG derm did. Trample isn’t a bad fall-back though.

Evolving Adaptive

Rating: 3.0/5

I have heard some pretty crazy things said about this and I’m here to talk people down. It is not Experiment One which also had a mana free regeneration ability and was in a slower format.

I understand that you can Proliferate this up and that it can lead to some starts that snowball. It has a ton of cheap removal that cleanly answer it running around and it is a horrible late game top deck. Very good card, not the bomb that some people are making it out to be.

Expand the Sphere

Rating: 1.0/5

Remember when Explosive Vegetation was considered good? Yeah, people still had beepers and were watching the first Spider-Man movie in theatres soooo…you might say we’ve come a long way.

This doesn’t require only grabbing basic lands so maybe you can gain some card advantage with a sphere land. Unfortunately, it doesn’t even fix your colors if the right lands aren’t in the top six. The bigger problem is when you are trying to ramp and miss. A four mana do nothing can be game ending for you.

Maybe if I have a deck that heavily benefits from Proliferate, I can talk myself into this. Unlikely though.

Green Sun’s Twilight

Rating: 1.5/5

You need to have some serious chonkers to want to play this. You almost always want to cast it for at least five to be able to put the creature into play so you’re not going way down on mana.

It’s also key to do it for enough to make sure you preferably hit both a land and a creature with it. Imagine trying to make this a green Divination and revealing two lands plus an instant. Pretty much a disaster.

Ichorspit Basilisk

Rating: 2.0/5

A three-toughness creature with Deathtouch is very annoying to deal with in normal combat scenarios. The Toxic encourages them to block, but that leaves them open to getting wrecked by a trick especially if you have Zealot's Conviction for the Deathtouch/First Strike combo.

Incubation Sac

Rating: 2.5/5

This seems really slow to me and you might just get run over while trying to accumulate value from it. You do want a slightly lower curve and ways to proliferate to really take advantage of it. I just keep coming back to wanting higher impact cards than this.

Would you be happy playing Phyrexian Processor for three? You’re still tapping four mana to make the creature and it’s a blank Hill Giant. It’s a very high variance card.

Infectious Bite

Rating: 3.5/5

This is such a well named card considering that it is a poison card that bites. It’s great especially with Deathtouch creatures. Being instant speed lets you blow out opposing tricks or sneakily get corrupted mid-combat.

Lattice-Blade Mantis

Rating: 2.0/5

It’s well sized on the attack and it does get to play D at the same time. It’s just not as great at blocking with that little butt. Fine if you need a four drop.

Maze’s Mantle

Rating: 1.5/5

The only way you really get a ton of value out of this is if you cleanly win a combat or counter a removal spell with it. The problem is that three mana is a bit too much to hold up. It’s more a card you need to be conscious of existing so you avoid getting blown out by it.

Nissa, Ascended Animist

Rating: 4.5/5

Play Nissa. Win game. I believe this is self-explanatory. Other random words about a mythic planeswalker. Bad joke that is questionably appropriate. Something about Floridamun yelling at his screen when they play this.

Noxious Assault

Rating: 1.5/5

This is a pretty bad Overrun effect. Unless you are fully in on the toxic deck, they will just block your toxic creatures and let your normal ones through so you don’t really win unless you were going to win anyway.

Oil-Gorger Troll

Rating: 2.5/5

Not being guaranteed to draw the card is a pretty big downside as it’s more of a 1.5 if you can’t draw the card. This can be good, but we’ve been calling it the trap troll since it was previewed.

Paladin of Predation

Rating: 2.0/5

Lacks the modality of something like Boulderbranch Golem or Dread Linnorm leaving you with a seven-drop hanging out in your hand.  It then proceeds to do nothing the turn you play it, but it will be a real problem if they don’t have a way to deal with it.

Plague Nurse

Rating: 1.5/5

A four drop 3/4 better have some real oomph behind it to make me want to play it. As long as you’re packing a herd of toxic creatures this can force them into making tough decisions since it is an instant speed ability. Mostly filler though.

Predation Steward

Rating: 2.0/5

The activation being expensive as sin and only as a sorcery are pretty big knocks against this. It’s still just a bear that could potentially force your other creatures through.

It is kind of odd how far a bear with upside has fallen in the rankings. Power creep is real.

Rustvine Cultivator

Rating: 1.0/5

This doesn’t fix your mana and is also slower than molasses for ramping. We’ve been spoiled by Jaspera Sentinel and Citanul Stalwart. Don’t fall for this one, it’s a trap.

Ruthless Predation

Rating: 3.0/5

It feels like we just saw this card somewhere else. Hint: it was in BRO as Epic Confrontation. It was good there and it’ll be good here as well.

It can swing a game in your favor by efficiently letting you catch back up or double spell to lengthen the lead. It also plays quite well with Ichorspit Basilisk.

Skyscythe Engulfer

Rating: 2.0/5

This has keyword: massive. If you’re lacking other top end, this can sub in. You can’t just fill your deck with five and six drops though.

Sylvok Battle-Chair

Rating: 2.5/5

It’s Colossal Dreadmaw, but with extra steps. While massively expensive to reequip, it’s nice to have something left over if they deal with the initial onslaught. It makes anything a viable threat even if it takes you entire turn to pay for it.

Thirsting Roots

Rating: 1.5/5

You can replace a different color land with one of these if you are heavy green, but it’s not really that great. I don’t think you should ever play more than one and even that is pushing it.

Thrun, Breaker of Silence

Rating: 4.5/5

Oh, this is going to be fun… To kill it outside of combat (which only works if you block with Thrun since it’s indestructible on your turn), your opponent needs a board wipe, Ruthless Predation, Infectious Bite, or to catch you unprepared with an edict. They can’t even -X/-X it since those are black spells that target.

Titanic Growth

Rating: 1.5/5

Since Toxic doesn’t add more counters for doing more damage, the raw stats on this are slightly less valuable. It also doesn’t have anything else tossed in with it like most of the other tricks in the set. If you just need a trick, this will be acceptable.

Tyrranax Atrocity

Rating: 2.5/5

Welcome to Phyrexian Park! They have to keep this speedy dino in mind as soon as they get high on poison counters because hasting in three more counters could be an instant game over or at least get them within range of getting proliferated up out the joint.

Tyrranax Rex

Rating: 4.0/5

Hold on to your butts! The dinos are running wild in New Phyrexia and you don’t want to mess with sexy Rexy here. Unless they know it’s coming, it’s really hard to be able to deal with ward four without taking a big hit on this. It’ll be a fun game to see if they die to the poison or the normal damage first.

Tyvar’s Stand

Rating: 3.0/5

This can be looked at as a modular card that has a whole bunch of different modes. Getting both Hexproof and Indestructible lets you protect against any type of removal. Its scalable to ensure you win almost any combat and sometimes you just fireball the face for approximately a billion. That’s a ton of versatility packed into one trick.

Unnatural Restoration

Rating: 1.5/5

You really need bombs that happen to be permanents to want to be playing this. Even then it’s still filler.

Venerated Rotpriest

Rating: 3.5/5

This is a great way to start stacking Poison counters with a swiftness. Outside of sneaking in a couple attacks you get a token every time you use a trick or they try to use a removal. It is a very, very quick clock.

Venomous Brutalizer

Rating: 3.0/5

You can brutalize your opponent with this beastly knight that comes with a whole bunch of toxic on it. The “Kicker” on this gives you a nice little bonus if you draw it later on.  Good body + good ability = good card. Same problem with Hexgold Slash as many other cards.

Viral Spawning

Rating: 3.0/5

They might call them beasts, but as far as I’m concerned, they’ve corrupted Dumbo. It’s corrupted Call of the Herd time people! As long as you have the expectation of hitting corrupted, you want this card.

Zopandrel, Hunger Dominus

Rating: 4.0/5

Kind of pricy, but it does trigger the turn it comes into play so you might just end things right there. Being able to pay four life when you’re tapped out to give it indestructible is a pretty nice option even if you do have to sacrifice a couple of creatures (sorry mites, been nice knowing you).

It also triggers on your opponents turn as well so your blockers are a beefy wall to shut stuff down.

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Wrap Up

Green is looking like a great color filled with large efficient creatures. It doesn’t have the best interaction, but what it has can still get the job done. It should pair well with every other color especially if you are trying to push a Toxic agenda.

I’ll be back tomorrow with my Phyrexia: All Will Be One Limited Review of Artifacts, Lands, and Multicolor cards. Until then, stay classy Magic people!

If you have any questions, let me know in the comments below.

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