Thoughts on Phyrexian Mana

Since the whole of the next M:TG set (New Phyrexia) has been spolied early, I thought I'd have a look through the new Phyrexian mana and see what cards would be worth playing with in different formats. It's a shame the whole set was spoiled early, usually the whole set is available from Wizards the day before the pre-release, (which I think is a little too close as there's not much time to absorb all the information, a day or two earlier than that would be nice), butthis was unexpectedly spoiled a couple of weeks early, which I think is a bit too early as the pre-release isn't for a few weeks. The whole set is now available on the main site, a little while after it was unofficially spoiled on the internet.

In this posting, I am going to look at all the cards that cost Phyrexian mana (PX is one Phyrexian mana of the colour specified by the standard WUBRG notation); the ones you can either pay the one coloured mana for, or two life, and some of the artifacts that have an ability that uses this mana. In Mark Rosewaters column on the subject, he said "I'll write an article soon about the impact of Phyrexian mana on the color pie—it's too big an issue to discuss today", which is a pretty big understatement, as the spilling of effects is very severe in some cases (but hey, at least there's no 'destroy enchantment' that red or black can get to play). I will be looking at limited (drafting mainly), constructed (standard, I follow it a bit and use some sort of rogue deck when I do play occasionally) and casual (fairly general, probably thinking about multi-player as it's what I usually play if I'm not playing the above two formats).

New computer

I got a new computer the other day, a net top one. Quite cheap, just the base unit (although a mouse and keyboard came too which was handy). I set it up to connect to one of the two monitors I use for my other computer, which luckily has two input ports so I can switch screens if I have both on (although I confuse myself with both on as I have to remember which keyboard and mouse to use). 

New deck: Mono-B Infect

Most of the time I have drafted since Scars of Mirrodin came out (which isn't a huge amount), I tend to be tempted towards playing infect, and have done so more often than not. This is probably also shown through some of the draft pick posts I've written. Infect is fun to play (at least I think so anyway), and I particularly like playing the strategy during the Mirrodin Besieged release, so I put together an infect standard deck. I've been putting it together for a little while, but haven't had much of a chance to play Magic at all recently, so have been unable to test it. At the draft I went to the other day I did manage to play it a couple of times between rounds, and it seemed to do OK, so I'm going to write about it here. 

What to pick... (MBS first picks again)

Its been a while since I went to a draft, but went along to Hemel last night and had some fun. Deck seemed to be mainly removal and infect creatures, and I had a couple of fast games. Won two of three rounds, so got two boosters as prizes and, as I've done a few times now, had a look through each one to decide what I would be picking first were I to start a draft opening each pack. 

Some more MBS first picks

After playing a sealed for fun with Liz, we opened two spare packs I had lying around and picked out what we would take first in a draft (see photo below for the top 3).