Monday, April 25, 2011

New Phyrexia EDH Set Review: Part 5 - Green

Green is quite a popular color in EDH. Let's hope it gets the love it deserves!

This is already one of the most hotly anticipated cards in the set. Not bad for an uncommon. It's a mono-G, Instant speed Vindicate that has an almost insignificant drawback. A 2/2 would make this way more appealing, but it's good enough to be played in virtually every deck ever.


This excites me far more than Beast Within, mostly because utility cards like that are kinda boring no matter how good and splashy they are. But repeatable creature tutoring has always been good in EDH (Citanul Flute, Survival of the Fittest). It does suck that you can only do this at Sorcery speed, and that'll hamper expectations a bit, but I'm still determined to run this. The fact that it scales UP is a nice bonus.

This would be a great utility creature if it weren't so overcosted. 6 mana for a 3/3 is hard to justify despite it's ETBF effect. This is another Exarch where if it just did BOTH abilities at the same time, I'd love it.

This is pretty iffy. Green has better, more reliable ramp available, but usually not attached to a hugh body. Vigilance and Reach are not exciting, but they are pretty good. This guy block and kills Akroma and lives to tell the tale, so he does have SOME appeal. He'll be great for newer EDH players without a huge, deep cardpool, but for those of us with big collections he's not going to make the cut.


If this was Instant, I'd play it in a second, and love it. As a sorcery, it is drastically less appealing. Arashi, Sky Asunder still owns this thing's face.

An anti-Wrath card in the vein of Caller of the Claw. Not too bad, but I'm not going to be playing it, I think. Then again, this could have some strong applications in decks like Sek'Kuar that already seek to sac their guys for benefit. Very playable, but not my style.


A nice, efficient bear with three abilities that effectively act as one to shut down Infect completely. Also foils Black Sun's Zenith and many other similar cards. Still, most decks will be able to just kill her and keep on Poisoning, Infecting and Proliferating. I'm just not sure she'll be enough. I certainly think she'll see some play, but usually as a tool to enable infinite Persist shenanigans or as a companion to Phyrexian Unlife.



This is the closest thing to a new E. Witness we get? Lame. I can't see playing this in a format where Regrowth is legal.



Very funny! I like this. I don't think I can make it work in EDH, but I'll definitely find somewhere to stick this. It's really cool how this scales in Multiplayer though. Spread a little early poison around, and this will crank out hoards of bugs.

An Infect Rhox? Cool. Expensive, though. I really can't see playing this over Putrefax in any deck, but only the most die-hard Infect decks would want both.



 Hrm, an Infect Overrun seems really strong, even with just a +1/+1 bonus. I almost wonder if this isn't going to push Infect over the edge in EDH. I kinda doubt it, but when your opponent has 5 or 6 tokens on the board, you're going to be praying they don't have this in hand. The thing about this card is it gets you to "alpha strike" level much faster, and with fewer creatures on the board than Overrun.
Every deck that plays any form of Overrun should consider this.


 And the final Praetor... well, he's better than Jin Gitaxias, but doesn't stack up favorably next to the other three. Still, the one-sided Heartbeat of Spring is nice. The rest is just gravy. This will make a fine Tooth and Nail target at the very least.















Well, Beast Within is clearly the hype card, but personally I'm much more excited for Birthing Chamber. Vorinclex is not super, but he's also infinitely less infuriating and dickish than Jin Gitaxias. Obviously some new toys for Infect, but the only one that really seems strong is the Overrun. Swarmlord gets the win on cool points, though.

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