March of the Machine Review, Part 4 of 4: The Colorless Cards

At last, Magic’s newest expansion has us reaching the climax of the 4 part story arc with the Phyrexians as Elesh Norn’s forces spill out into countless planes, bringing together strange allies and forever altering the fabric of the multiverse. A new set means new cards, and we’re finishing our review with the colorless cards. 

Last time we covered the monocolor cards, and this time we actually WILL be looking at everything since there are so few new colorless cards in the set, and we’ll still be doing this primarily but not exclusively with an eye for Commander play.

Flywheel Racer

FromTheShire: Alas, this is no Cultivator’s Caravan. Having to crew before you can activate the mana ability means that while this still makes the cut in a Vehicle deck, it’s not worth an inclusion anywhere else. A 3/2 isn’t exactly lighting the world on fire.

Halo Hopper

FromTheShire: Look at this little guy. Just the cutest little neon origami frog. It’s also a callback to Frogmite, except much worse because it has convoke instead of affinity. Extremely fun art though.

Invasion of Ravnica / Guildpact Paragon

FromTheShire: I’ve definitely run Scour from Existence in more decks than I care to admit since a lot of color pairings struggle to exile certain things and this is kind of a worse version overall with some upside in specific two color decks. Yes it’s cheaper but sorcery speed is a serious downside. At least it hits the vast majority of things. Once it flips, it’s actually a pretty sick value engine in something like a Niv-Mizzet Reborn deck, digging 6 deep each time means you’re pretty likely to hit something every time.

BPhillipYork: Solid card for multicolor matters decks, not a lot of relevance elsewhere, 5 colorless for exile target permanent that isn’t 2-colors isn’t bad, though it’s pricy, obviously, but if you have a ton of colorless mana might not be so bad, and it’s triggered, so in a deck focused around Panharmonicon effects it’s not so bad.

Phyrexian Archivist

FromTheShire: The Phyrexians went to compleat Cogwork Archivist and discovered they were already perfect in every way except for needing a scythe hand. It’s pricey but this is actually super useful in Grenzo, Dungeon Warden decks, and hopefully you can cheat it into play rather than cast it.

Realmbreaker, the Invasion Tree

FromTheShire: In Commander you probably don’t get enough value out of this to run it out early and go on the mill plan. Instead, you want to drop this once you can activate the sacrifice ability right away and laugh your way to victory with all of your Praetors. In Standard it will not surprise you to know this is already the star of a number of Against the Odds style decks, putting 10 Praetors in to play and absolutely smashing people when it goes off. Super fun card.

BPhillipYork: Stealing your opponents lands is interesting, fairly pricy. Fun if you’re doing Praetor tribal, reminds me of Monument to Perfection and The World Tree, for obvious reasons.

Sword of Once and Future

FromTheShire: Pro blue and black is definitely relevant with black’s removal and blue’s bounce and tapping abilities, and then you get to surveil 2 and cast something small for free when you connect. Not the most powerful sword but not bad either.

BPhillipYork: The set of swords is now complete, this one is decent, recasting 2 or less instants or sorceries is pretty solid, especially for free. If your deck is full of low cost spells this could be really powerful, especially if you’re doing something like Fork-ing extra combat spells.

Urn of Godfire

FromTheShire: This seems like a nothing card, but it does actually have some very niche utility for decks that can make infinite colorless mana since this then lets you filter that mana into whatever color you need, ensuring you secure the win. In an emergency you can overpay for the removal as well, which isn’t the worst if the choice is between paying 6 or dying.

That wraps up our look at the set’s colorless cards. Join us next time as we continue our Unstable Mutation on the companion preconstructed decks. In the meantime, if you have any questions or feedback, drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com.