The Best Cards We Pulled From Phyrexia All Will Be One

The newest Magic: The Gathering set, Phyrexia All Will Be One, just released this weekend, and we opened a lot of packs (a full booster box, used to playtest Limited formats, and some collector's packs to boot). To celebrate this weekend, and showcase some of our favorite cards that we've been playing with, we're showing off our favorite pulls from the weekend. From extremely powerful cards that can turn the tide of battle, to rare and valuable picks, and even a bunch of cards that we think, quite frankly, just look pretty damn cool -- these are our favorite pulls from Phyrexia All Will Be One.

Phyrexia All Will Be One Card Pulls - White Blue Black

As you'll see as we continue further on in this article, the cards we pulled in White, Blue, and Black were, over all, the least numerous among our favorites. (Full disclosure: that's bias on my part, to be sure, as I'm a long-time Gruul rage-freak. But what we did open really blew us away).

Let's start with the top of the color wheel in White, with everyone's favorite Praetor, Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines. Building a deck around her means you're focused on maximizing triggered effects - of which there are plenty to work with at common and uncommon, and the added bonus of shutting down your opponents' triggered effects. Perhaps a little tricky to build around in Limited, we're already theory-crafting nasty Standard decks to slot her into. Skrelv, Defector Mite, on the other hand, is just begging to be drafted, and we found ourselves easily overwhelming our opponents. And then there's Phyrexian Vindicator, which is just purely nasty and powerful as a 5/5 with flying that redirects damage. Block, block, block away!

In Blue, the only card we opened that really wowed us (which we opened twice!) was Mercurial Spelldancer. Though she takes a bit of work to get her engine going, once you get those two oil counters on her she can begin replacing oil counters fairly easily, and if you're playing an Instant and Sorcery-centric deck she can quickly become a major headache for your opponents.

In Black, we don't love Geth, Thane of Contracts, but that art is pretty sick. What we do love, however, is Karumonix, The Rat King, who gives all our rats Toxic 1 and lets us do a little rat-fishing while we're at it.

Phyrexia All Will Be One Card Pulls - Red

Now we're starting to really cook with Red. First up, the titular All Will Be One allows us to ping for damage each time we give our opponents' a poison counter, and paired with cards in the set that want to give +1/+1 or Oil counters, it can almost instantly get out of hand! Capricious Hellraiser is a classic big, dumb flying monster that also lets us copy a card from our graveyard and pop it back onto the battlefield. Slobad, Iron Goblin isn't great but we love the alt art treatment. And Solphim, Mayhem Dominus rewards all that non-combat damage Red wants to be doing (and synergizes with the above-mentioned All Will Be One quite nicely).

Phyrexia All Will Be One Card Pulls - Green

With Green, we're really getting some power onto the board. I'm personally super-excited about Green Sun's Twilight, as it'll have a happy home in my Gluntch Group Hug Commander deck. Venerated Rotpriest does so much work to keep your Green creatures protected, Tyrranax Rex is just begging to be ramped into, Zopandrel, Hunger Dominus gives an aggressive green deck and serious boost (and can protect itself), and Bloated Contaminator gives us the proliferate we need to get our poison counters fully out of control. We're really stoked about these Green cards and the synergies around them.

Phyrexia All Will Be One Card Pulls - Gold and Colorless

First up for our Gold and Colorless cards we're looking at is Glissa Sunslayer, who's plenty useful as a 3/3 with First Strike and Deathtouch, but her added abilities are where she really shines. Atraxa, Grand Unifier may have a 7-mana, four color cost, but with Flying, Vigilance, Deathtouch, and Lifelink, and the ability to reveal the top ten cards of your library and add a card per card-type into your hand, this is a serious bomb. 

From an artwork perspective, poor ol' Venser, Corpse Puppet looks great in this alternate art scheme, though his ability is a bit tricky to get to really work well in a deck. Melira, The Living Cure also sports a great alt art mockup, but is much more useful in stopping an overflow of poison. And then there's Tadeas, Juniper Ascendant, which isn't part of this set - but included as one of "The List" cards from other sets randomly added into packs of Phyrexia All Will Be One. Not a super strong card to play in any old deck, but it's always nice to see one of these surprise cards pop up! Finally, we close out our Gold and Colorless with Urtet, Remnant of Memnarch, a card in the Phyrexia All Will Be One commander set who can seriously buff other Myr creatures you control.

Phyrexia All Will Be One Card Pulls - Planeswalkers

Phyrexia All Will Be One boasts an impressive ten Planeswalkers in the set, appearing at both Rare and Mythic Rare. So we were certainly hoping we'd open a few throughout release weekend. And we weren't disappointed! Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler pairs will with a lot of what Black and Green want to do in this set, Koth, Fire of Resistance gives us a little bit of ramp in Red (???) and lets us pepper the battlefield with damage should we protect him long enough to make use of his latter two abilities, Kaya, Intangible Slayer is great at that classic Orzhov life drain and helps us pseudo-blink our most valuable assets. And finally, Nahiri, the Unforgiving has the Compleated rules on her, and her abilities are so potent for sneaking copies of powerful cards onto the battlefield.

Phyrexia All Will Be One Card Pulls - Generally Cool Cards!

Finally, we're just havin' a little fun here (isn't that nice?) and checking out some of the other cards we opened that we just think look pretty damn cool. K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth was a fun surprise to open in these decks, as was the valuable and powerful Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider and Jace, The Perfected Mind with his text made out in Phyrexian. Sinew Dancer may be a common, but this may be the best use of alternate art on any of the cards we've seen. And call me a sucker for nostalgia, but damn it sure is nice to open a pack and see the old border and fantastic retro artwork of Benalish Infantry.

So these are some of our favorite cards that we opened while cracking packs this weekend, what were your favorite pulls?

Products used in the creation of this feature were provided by Wizards of the Coast.