Memory Jar: Phyrexia: All Will Be One – Cards to Remember

Memory Jar articles attempt to capture the cards from sets that should be remembered, cards that should be on your default consideration list for a deck of a given color or archetype, the cards you need to put in your Memory Jar.

Charforger

BPhillipYork: This kind of effect is basically 3 deaths for card draw, pretty solid. Combined with additional counters coming from another source, this can get out of control. With a good solid source of Treasures, like Prosper, Tome-Bound, this potentially gets out of control.

Glissa Sunslayer

BPhillipYork: This is a really solid effect on something with deathtouch and first strike, basically drawing cards on attack is just really dependable on something like that. Solid value Commander or else just to stick in the 99.

FromTheShire: First strike and deathtouch is maybe my favorite combination of keywords so I already love this card on top of the nostalgia value, and then all 3 modes can be excellent. Big fan.

Ovika, Enigma Goliath

BPhillipYork: Granted this is a pricy boi, but generating X tokens for each noncreature spell is a huge triggered effect. Can eat them for mana or create Impact Tremors triggers or just tons of creatures.

Tainted Observer

BPhillipYork: A proliferate trigger like this is pretty powerful, and a flying 2/3 toxic for 3 on a solid respectable body with evasion and a triggered combat hit you want.

Synthesis Pod

BPhillipYork: This is a strange card. WotC is getting more into creating cards that target spells, and even do so conditionally, I think Errant, Street Artist was maybe the weirdest example of this. Anyway, on its face this doesn’t seem like a great card, you exile one of your own spells, but then you get to go through a target opponents’ library and cast a card. Well the immediate play here is 4 cost spells into Ad Nauseam. A lot of cEDH decks will run Ad Naus as one of the only 5 cost spells in their deck. Sadly for this theory, Force of Will also has a mana value of 5, so you’d want to avoid targeting decks with blue color identity. Other than that you can do strange things with it, if a spell of yours is countered, before the counter resolves you can exile the spell off the stack. You can also just play roulette with your spells or copies of spells, which sounds kind of fun, if not that strong.

Glistening Sphere

BPhillipYork: This is definitely conditionally playable in decks that want to proliferate, especially with poison, which is pretty obvious, but good poison based decks tend to be multicolor and need support from multiple colors, it’s a bit pricy at 3 mana but it’s 1 mana of any color, and a proliferate, and taps for 3 once they hit 3 poison counters with corrupted, which all goes together pretty nicely. Just a relatively solid piece to include in such decks.

FromTheShire: These days a 3 mana rock has to do something else noteworthy to make the cut. For the vast majority of decks this doesn’t get there, especially since it enters tapped, but in poison/proliferate decks I’d include it for being on theme.

Mondrak, Glory Dominus

BPhillipYork: This is a creature based token doubler that can get indestructible by sacrificing tokens, it’s just all around a solid card. In theory you could also move the counters around using cards like Nesting Grounds. The fact it’s in white, where most of the board wipes live definitely adds to Mondrak’s basic value.

FromTheShire: Way up at the top of my personal list, a token doubler that should always be indestructible is crazy useful. There’s a reason this is already commanding the price tag it does.

Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines

BPhillipYork: So doubling your ETBs and ending your opponents is pretty solid for 5 mana and a 4/7 with vigilance. Very solid value creature, but hardly the format threatening card that Sheldon was whining about. Truthfully this hurts decks that rely on ETBs when they should run interaction, probably as a side-effect of being a value card, which to me really hits a lot of good points. Weirdly there are times that “no ETBs” is both a stax effect you want, and also lets you play cards that have negative ETBs in order to balance them, like Lotus Field, which is one of the more interesting way to play the no ETBs game in my opinion. Norn won’t let you do that, which is too bad.

FromTheShire: Speaking of price tags… Also with a reason. Elesh Norn is bonkers powerful and will absolutely dominate a lot of average tables.

Ichormoon Gauntlet

BPhillipYork: Take a lot of turns. Okay, yes, you could proliferate with this but… I don’t really like this card, it’s just an obvious combo piece enabler for planeswalker decks, and, yes you could also use it to put some weird counters on things like charge counter artifacts or Strixhaven Stadium.

Tekuthal, Inquiry Dominus

BPhillipYork: So doubling proliferate starts to get kind of nuts, and there’s plenty of sources of proliferate that are themselves doubled already, Contagion Engine for example, so this could start to get really out of hand.

FromTheShire: Extremely powerful in the narrow subset of decks it goes in. 

Vraska, Betrayal’s Sting

BPhillipYork: To me this is a super solid planeswalker. The 0: ability will net you a counter and a card and also uptick everything else for you, and -2 turn something into a Treasure is also great, letting you remove a huge threat. The give someone 9 poison counters isn’t so great, especially in a 4 player game, but even so.

Drivnod, Carnage Dominus

BPhillipYork: Solid all around aristocrats card, also kind of a scary 8/3 to get indestructible on. A bit disappointing he doesn’t feature both sides of the trick, sacrificing creatures to get his indestructible, but that might’ve been too abusive, especially with Phyrexian mana.

FromTheShire: Really great Commander for sacrifice decks, or an equally great inclusion in a lot of 99’s.

All Will Be One

BPhillipYork: Pretty solid card, great interaction with planeswalkers, goes infinite with a couple of cards, another in the pantheon of unique red enchantments that are big swingy cards but really expensive.

Soulless Jailer

BPhillipYork: Solid stax effect, on an artifact is nice for some of the tutors and things, rather than disallowing abilities or anything just prevents them from entering, and also locks out spells cast from exile, which is increasingly a thing. This shuts down Prosper, and Underworld Breach, and Impulse Draw, and Cascade, and a lot of abilities that just exile cards to cast later. Really good hatebear.

FromTheShire: Fantastic hate piece for a format that frequently treats the graveyard as a second hand and increasingly casts from exile.

The Mycosynth Gardens

BPhillipYork: Everyone was oohing and aahing over this as a card to copy a Sol Ring on turn 1, and that’s neat, and yes you then might have like 2 Sol Rings, which is 4 colorless mana on turn 2, which is a lot, but not really that much. I think it’s stronger for combo-ing some card that is dangerous once you have 2 of them, Panharmonicon springs to mind, but it could be a Thorn of Amethyst or a Cloud Key.

Urtet, Remnant of Memnarch

BPhillipYork: Just a fun big Myr boy to play 5-color Myr, but your Myr will get really big really fast if you can dump out 3 +1/+1s twice a turn with him.

Skyhunter Strike Force

BPhillipYork: Melee is potentially really powerful for token decks since it can mean +3/+3 to all your creatures. For token based decks or decks that just want to attack a lot to get value from various things, this means your attacks will be a lot more punishing.

If there are cards from Phyrexia: All Will Be One that you think should be added to the list, that you’ll be putting in lots of decks, please leave a comment below!

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