The flavor is a big part ofMagic: The Gathering’s continued success, but it’s also a difficult concept to put down in words. It represents the intersection of art, flavor text, individual card mechanics, and the wider game beyond: an intricate contraption in which every card is a crucial gear.
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Some cards hit so hard on every one of the four axes above that they resonate, reaching something within players beyond mere gameplay. They spill out into the realm of reality, evoking ideas and events that players recognize from the waking world. Phyrexia: All will Be One has no shortage of designs like these, but today we’re bringing you the very best: if Phyrexia was a flavor, it would be a blend of these ten cards.
10Melira, The Living Cure
This new incarnation of Melira is a textbook example of how to represent character traits mechanically. Melira is well-known for two things: her immunity to Phyresis and her selfless heroism. This card shows off both of those key traits perfectly.
Her immunity to Phyresis is, of course, represented by her first ability, which limits the effects of poison from your opponents (but doesn’t entirely remove them, unlike her previous version, likely showing the increased power of the Phyrexians since last time). Her selflessness is shown in her ability to sacrifice herself to save another creature or artifact. All of this makes Melira a compact character study of the highest order.
9Phyrexian Vindicator
Magic often features cycles and mirrored pairs of cards within a set, but generally, these are for mechanical rather than flavor reasons. Phyrexian Vindicator bucks the trend in this regard, presenting a color-shifted Phyrexian Obliterator that serves more than just a gameplay function.
A major theme of Phyrexia: All Will Be One is the internal conflict between thefive Praetor-led factionsand how that gives the Resistance more hope as they strive to prevent their multi-Plane invasion. One of these conflicts is between Sheoldred and Elesh Norn, which this mirrored pair makes very clear through its opposing art and abilities. you’re able to even see some of Norn’s soldiers being dismembered in the Obliterator art to literally hammer the point home.
8Incubation Sac
Some of the best flavorful designs in Magic tell a self-contained story or let players act out a real-world process within the mechanics of an in-game card. Incubation Sac does just this, letting you raise your very own Phyrexian Golems with a combination of time, oil, and love.
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The story is largely told through mana costs here: the Sac itself costs just one mana, but it costs four mana to actually produce a Golem, meaning you’ll need to leave it to ‘grow’ if you play it early. After a few turns have passed, you may pay the activation cost and ‘hatch’ a Golem now that it’s had time to mature. It’s simple, but it’s still an effective mechanical analog that drips with both oil and flavor.
7Encroaching Mycosynth
Revisiting past designs is a great way to build up flavor that spans multiple sets, and that’s just what Encroaching Mycosynth does, harkening back to Darksteel’s Mycosynth Lattice. The original card made all permanents in play, as well as all cards in all zones, colorless, which led to a range of interesting gameplay scenarios.
Encroaching Mycosynth takes things even further, changing not just the color of cards but also their type. While it’s in play, all your cards, everywhere, are artifacts. This, along with the horrific art, show just how far the mycosynth has encroached on the Plane we used to love.
6Phyrexian Atlas
This card’s art takes a slice through New Phyrexia, the Multiverse’s most rotten onion, exposing the colorful strata built upon its wretched core. It’s a great way of showcasing the varied biomes of New Phyrexia as a Plane, which are reinforced further by the card’s mechanical abilities.
Tapping for mana of any color is a nice way of representing the Plane’s aforementioned diversity. The additional upside provided when the opponent hasthree or more poison countersreflects the Plane-wide goal of spreading Phyresis across the Multiverse. It’s a subtly great design that packs in a lot of world-building.
5Sheoldred’s Edict
The Dross Pits, home of Standard scourge Sheoldred, may just be the bleakest area of New Phyrexia. Beyond the deep wells of oil, the biome also plays host to Sheoldred’s Coliseum, an arena where her myriad subjects can compete for the honor of entertaining the powerful Praetor.
All of this is depicted beautifully in Sheoldred’s Edict. The modal nature of the card, which gives the player a choice as to what it does, mirrors the cruel whims of the Praetor herself, who has the final say on who dies in her arena and when. The art, which shows Sheoldred crossing her arms in a gesture that could either mean life or death for the unfortunate warrior on the ground, helps develop the culture of the area nicely as well.
4Unctus, Grand Metatect
Minor legendary creatures in Magic don’t tend to get much air time in the overall story and lore, which leaves their cards to do the bulk of their character development work. Unctus is a great example of this, where everything you need to know about him can be gleaned from his abilities.
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His looting (drawing then discarding) ability, commonly associated withresearch in Magic, confirms his status as a scientist. His ability to alter the color and type of your creatures at will, along with his artwork, takes this idea further, showing that his specific area of science is genetic modification. Unctus is an exemplary union of art and mechanical flavor, who feels fully fleshed out even in such a confined frame.
3Cruel Grimnarch
Religious propaganda is, unfortunately, an idea as old as time, and Magic is no stranger to the concept. That said, it’s hard to think of a card that conveys the idea better than Cruel Grimnarch, the multi-mouthed messiah of Sheoldred’s unsavory gospel.
When it enters the battlefield, the Grimnarch forces your opponent to discard a card, an action often associated with the dealing of mental damage to your opponent. This, when logically extended, could be read as your opponent slowly being won over to the Grimnarch’s ideas following repeated sermons. The fact that the Grimnarch rewards you when your opponent has no cards left in hand is a nice way of representing a new follower being gained.
A tragic example of excellent character work, Slobad’s two-act story features beautiful mechanical symmetry that works perfectly with the associated narrative. In his original Darksteel appearance, Slobad can sacrifice artifacts to protect other artifacts. In his All Will Be One version, he can sacrifice artifacts to generate mana, which can only be spent on more artifacts.
It’s a nice depiction of the modern struggle between sustainability and overconsumption, the choice of repairing an old item or tossing it out in favor of something new, with the latter, an oft-criticized element of capitalist living, framed as evil. Tying this idea in with New Phyrexia, a mechanized antagonistic force, makes perfect sense, and is an idea embodied brilliantly in Slobad here.
1Eye Of Malcator
Many bemoan how Magic’s narrative elements have been scaled back in recent years, but in reality, they just aren’t looking in the right places. So much of the game’s worldbuilding is tied up in unassuming commons and uncommons, and the micro-narratives they tell. Take Eye of Malcator: it’s easy to ignore since it won’t beshaking up Standardany time soon, but it gives us some fascinating insight into the security systems in place in Jin-Gitaxias’ Surgical Bay.
The card’s scry ability lets you literally see more cards, tying in well with the idea of a security camera, while its ability to become a creature when an artifact enters play is a nice analog for a mechanized threat response. Put it all together, and you have a flavorfully rich card, if not especially effective.
