New Phyrexia first picks

Now I have played some games with the new set, and done a draft or two, I thought I'd look over a couple of packs and see what I would pick if  had just opened it in a draft. I have four packs to look over today, what I usually do is pick out the top couple that I would consider picking and compare them before choosing one (and maybe a second, as in if that card wasn't in there or I had just been passed the pack). I only do the top few because it keeps my ramblings down, and there isn't too much to learn about comparing mediocre draft cards. 

Drafting New Phyrexia

I have now done two drafts using New Phyrexia, so have a little bit of a better feel for the format. The first draft was triple New Phyrexia, which was just fun, I thought I was drafting infect, but most of that was the creatures that gain infect when an opponent is poisoned... somewhat deceptive! I did appreciate the green creature that puts stuff on the bottom of your opponents library, that helped me a few times. 


The second draft I did was doing it the proper way - New Phyrexia, followed by Mirrodin Besieged, followed by Scars of Mirrodin, so will be more informative to usual drafting of the set. We had a fair few people coming along so had about 13 people in one large pod. 

New Phyrexia!

I got some New Phyrexia cards in the post today, impressed that I got an hour window for it to be delivered and it came right at the start of the window. As I had a bit of time before leaving for work, I opened two packs to have a look at the new cards properly for the first time. I have to say I was very impressed. 

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).