We are the Borg, resistance is futile.

Uh... I mean... embrace the glory of Phyrexia!

...you get the idea.

Phyrexia: All Will Be One is almost upon us, bringing Phyrexia's twisted vision of perfection to bear as the next major threat to the multiverse. We've already seen a number of our favorite planeswalkers get compleated, as this is making itself out to be quite the major event in Magic lore. (Aside - boy I wish there was a TV show or movie to help flesh out the story.)

As such, this set stands to be a pretty big deal, and at first glance there's a lot of powerful and interesting stuff going on. At the time of writing this the full card list has just been released, which means it's time for first impressions in the form of my love/hates! Note that these are not just static rankings. The point of my Love/Hate article is not just to call cards good or bad, but to view cards based on the first impressions people have been having or are likely to have. The goal is to dispel undue hype or to draw attention to cards that are being overlooked.

Let's get started!

Love - Sheoldred's Edict

Starting off with a gimmie - Sheoldred's Edict is the best Diabolic Edict effect ever printed and it's not particularly close.

Edict effects are often marginally playable at two mana, gaining extra value against things that may be difficult to target like Slippery Boggle or Bonecrusher Giant, but are often too unreliable to be, well, reliable. Two mana can be a lot to spend when you aren't even able to kill what you want, and Edict effects have always been super soft to creature tokens and worthless against planeswalkers.

No longer!

Whether it's a hard to kill creature you want to remove, a specific pesky token, or any planeswalker, you're good to go. It's the planeswalker clause here that really pushes things over the edge, moving this into Hero's Downfall territory for a scant two easy to cast mana. Rarely will your opponent have more than one planeswalker in play, making this one of the cleanest ways to remove planeswalkers ever printed.

Make no mistake, this is a huge card for almost every format in Magic.

Hate - Phyrexian Obliterator & Phyrexian Vindicator

Might as well make y'all hate me right off the bat here, as I know Phyrexian Obliterator is a much beloved Magic card, but both these cards have very similar problems - they're too polarized.

When they're good, they're going to be insane. Against Green or Red decks that can't actually remove them without damage or evade them, both of these cards will stand tall and mighty and be quite difficult to beat. However, against any deck playing direct removal, exile effects, sweepers, bounce, or just cards that don't really care about a 5/5, they are going to be woefully ineffective and usually trade down on mana and tempo. And that's not even to speak about how difficult they are to cast.

Both of these cards will have a small part to play in niche scenarios in Standard, but I doubt they will be much more than that. Phyrexian Obliterator is the better of the two, but also has to go toe to toe with Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, one of the best Black 4-drops of all time, so prospects ain't looking good.

Love - Jace, the Perfected Mind

JACE NOOO!!!!

Seeing a fringe planeswalker like Tamiyo or Ajani get compleated is one thing, but Jace Beleren? One of the face cards of the entire game... bold move Wizards! But compleated or not, in true Jace fashion it looks like Jace, the Perfected Mind is one of the best of the new ten planeswalkers in All Will Be One.

Any time you can play a planeswalker for three mana you need to stand up and take notice, and Jace has the usual dynamic duo of a +1 that helps to protect it and a -2 that generates card advantage. On the whole, that's decent, but what's really interesting is how well Jace interacts with graveyard stuff. Sure, you can choose to mill your opponent, but much more interesting is how Jace plays in a self-mill graveyard deck where he plays as both an enabler and a payoff.

On pure rate I don't think Jace quite gets there, but if you're doing some serious graveyard stuff it's hard to imagine a better planeswalker for your deck. This is one I'm very excited about.

Hate - Sword of Forge and Frontier

It pains me to put such an awesome design in the "hate" column, but the point of this article is to assess playability in Constructed gameplay, where Sword of Forge and Frontier just falls short.

The various members of the Sword of X and Y cycle have, outside of formats where Stoneforge Mystic is legal, only ever seen fringe play, and that was before the immense power creep of the last few years. Tapping five mana at sorcery speed just to enhance one of your creatures and then hope it actually hits your opponent is a bit of a pipe dream even in Standard, and the payoff when you do it is just drawing cards; nothing that actually effects the board. Furthermore, Red and Green are the two colors best at destroying artifacts, making the protection far less safe than you'd think.

Both the exile-to-draw effect as well as playing extra lands is awesome, but you need something much more powerful like killing things or untapping all of your lands to really make the juice worth the squeeze on a five mana equipment. There is some hope for equipment synergy stuff to maybe make Sword of Forge and Frontier playable, but sadly I think this sword will mostly be relegated to Commander and casual play.

Great design and fun limited card though!

Love - Cinderslash Ravager

Looking through the full card list, there are a ton of cards that utilize the new oil counters, especially concentrated in Red and Green, which makes this somewhat unassuming uncommon look very impressive.

At six mana Cinderslash Ravager is not a playable Constructed card, but as you lower that cost more and more things start to look very appealing. A 5/5 vigilance is the perfect size to dominate the board and dodge many commonly played removal spells, with the ability also having huge upside against cards like Wedding Announcement // Wedding Festivity. Don't forget how good Goblin Chainwhirler was!

If you can get Cinderslash Ravager down to three or four mana you're in pretty good shape, and casting it for two has got to feel real good. Given how important oil counters seem in the set, I think we've got a sleeper on our hands here.

Hate - Zenith Chronicler

These sort of "hate" cards are almost always overestimated by the general Magic public.

The thought process is "oh, I've been losing to Raffine, Scheming Seer out of Esper or Corpse Appraiser out of Grixis, Zenith Chronicler seems like the perfect card to punish those three-color decks," but the issue with this is not considering how the games actually play out and how those decks are usually Constructed.

Yes, if you manage to draw even one card of Zenith Chronicler you are certainly there on rate, and if you draw more than one, you're way ahead. The issue however is twofold. First is that your opponent has the choice whether to cast those spells or not, getting to decide if it is worth it to give you card. The second, and perhaps most important, is that most cheap removal spells are almost universally one color, meaning that dispatching Zenith Chronicler with something like Cut Down or Voltage Surge won't be difficult at all. And that's to say nothing of how fragile the body is in combat.

This is not the way to fight against multicolored midrange in Standard.

Love - Rebel Salvo

Rebel Salvo is a very exciting Magic card. Soul Sear was already a borderline playable Standard card (and people have been playing Rending Flame to deal with Sheoldred recently), and Rebel Salvo is just almost strictly better than both of those cards.

At three mana Rebel Salvo is passable, at two mana it is excellent, and at one mana it is Legacy or Modern power level. Equipment isn't always the most accessible or playable card type, but there are two very positive factors at work here. The For Mirrodin! mechanic means that there's a lot of new reasonable equipment floating around, as coming with a creature attached does a lot to mitigate the downside that equipment normally has, but perhaps more important are the reconfigure creatures from Neon Dynasty.

These are actual creatures that also count as equipment, making reducing the cost of Rebel Salvo super easy. Time will tell if there's enough support for equipment to field a reasonable deck, but even just playing Rebel Salvo in your Mono-Red Aggro deck that's already playing four copies of Rabbit Battery is a nice thing to have access to.

Ten New Brews!

I'm not going to lie, it was tough culling down all the potential cards for this article.

There's just a lot of awesome cards to go through and build with! Luckily for me, I've got my usual new set content run to go through. This includes my complete (compleat?) set review which will be today on my stream and YouTube, as well as my Bronze to Mythic draft run and most importantly my Ten New Brews!

Thanks to Wizards of the Coast I'll be taking part in the Early Access Event next Thursday the 2nd, where I'll have a fully stocked account and one day to play against other content creators! I'll be building my usual Ten New Brews and playing all of them, which will end up on my YouTube, but most importantly right here next Friday where I go over all ten decklists and give the full breakdown on what worked and what didn't.

I'll see you there!