In early 2023, Magic: The Gathering continues its four-part Phyrexian storyline with the premier set Phyrexia: All Will Be One. If the name didn’t tip you off, in this set we’ll be taking a trip into the belly of the beast, to the sinister plane of New Phyrexia itself. Expect to see black wastelands of scrap, gleaming white spires, and rivers of molten slag in this inhospitable world of metal monsters.
Yes, Magic: The Gathering’s plot is headed to the Phyrexian homeworld, to see how Elesh Norn puts her feet up on her days off. The Phyrexians invaded in Dominaria United, and now it’s payback time. With the knowledge gained in The Brothers’ War, a strike force of heroic planeswalkers plans to take the fight right to the source… But how many more planeswalkers will be compleated in the process?
The soon arriving set will feature plenty of poison, proliferate, and an enormous helping of the Phyrexian creature type. From card spoilers to Phyrexia: All Will Be One’s release date, here’s everything we know about the upcoming release. Check out our MTG 2023 release schedule for details on the rest of the year’s MTG sets.
MTG Phyrexia: All Will Be One release date
We now have the precise release date for MTG Phyrexia All Will Be One. It’s coming out February 10, 2023. That’s the date of Phyrexia All Will Be One’s tabletop release. Before that there’ll be a week of prerelease events, running from February 3 – 9.
The set pretty much follows MTG’s regular cadence, with a week of spoilers running from January 17 to January 25 – hey, that’s right now! Wizards has announced that this set (and the next one) will be available in paper at prerelease events prior to its digital launch. That’s reflected in Phyrexia: All Will Be One’s MTG Arena launch date of February 7.
MTG Phyrexia: All Will Be One spoilers
On December 13 we saw our first official card previews for MTG Phyrexia: All Will Be One. First, and likely to be one of the most sought after cards from the set is Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines. This Phyrexian Praetor doubles all your ETB triggers, while negating all your opponents’ (ouch!). The wide variety of different gorgeous-yet-grim art variants also makes Elesh Norn pretty desireable (just look at the Junji Ito Elesh Norn art).
Then there’s Blue Sun’s Twilight. Obviously playing off the ‘Sun’s Zenith’ cards, this is part of a cycle, showing monuments to all of the Phyrexian Praetors. Jin-Gix’s spell here lets you seize control of another creature, and make a copy of it if you pay the price. This is part of a cycle, and we’ve now seen the White and Black versions too.
We’ve also seen the set’s many, many planeswalkers – there’s ten in total! Koth, Fire of Resistance is a rare planeswalker who cares a great deal about Mountains, while Kaito, Dancing Shadow works great with ninjas. The Eternal Wanderer can protect herself incredibly well, and wipe the board. These are three of the five planeswalkers in Phyrexia: All Will Be One that are presumably safe from compleation – but some beloved characters won’t be so lucky…
Also on the heroes side, Boros creature Jor Kadeen can pump up and draw cards, if you’ve got enough MTG equipment. On the bad guy’s side of the struggle, there’s a terrifying black reprint, Phyrexian Obliterator. Then, oh no! Poor Slobad’s been compleated, becoming Slobad, Iron Goblin, who can sacrifice artifacts to make mana, to create more artifacts.
Lukka is the first compleated planeswalker to be revealed. His new card, Lukka, Bound to Ruin looks punishing in a creature-heavy deck, with three useful abilities, each of which can be used right out the gate. Nahiri, the Unforgiving is a cheapo walker that can loot, and grab temporary creatures and equipment out of the yard. Meanwhile, Vraska, Betrayal’s Sting turns your foe’s creatures into treasure. Nissa, Ascended Animist can create huge tokens and huge damage boosts, and Jace, the Perfected Mind is a mill-happy card drawer.
Then we’ve got Ezuri, Stalker of Spheres, a sinister MTG elf that loves proliferate. Mondrak, Glory Dominus, is basically Doubling Season on a stick, but can quickly make itself indestructible. And it looks like a biblically accurate angel!
What else? Well, there’s a new Atraxa card, and though her effect is not too exciting in itself, it reveals the existence of an entirely new, unreleased MTG card type, Battle. There’s also a new Mirran sword, the Gruul, Sword of Forge and Frontier, which has some great card advantage and ramping opportunities.
Clearly the Phyrexian oil containers have been rusting, as this has been a particularly leaky MTG set, with grainy images of all sorts of cards turning up on social media. We’re not covering those here, but one particular bit of news has caught our eye: Phyrexia: All Will Be One cards are showing up in Dominaria Remastered packs.
MTG Phyrexia: All Will Be One mechanics
Amazon spoilers showing the face Commanders for the set have revealed the new Toxic mechanic. This mechanic includes a keyword prefaces by a number – such as Toxic 2. Players dealt damage by a creature with Toxic get that many poison counters. Wizards says it was nervous to use them, but poison counters are back in Standard. Watch out!
Making poison even more dangerous, we have Proliferate, which lets you add a counter of the same type to anything that already has a counter. Like poison, this mechanic was another shoe-in for the set. Not only is the proliferate keyword tied intrinsically to the Phyrexians, first appearing in Scars of Mirridon, there are counters all over the shop in Standard right now, from sagas, to brand new counter types like stun and shield.
Adding to their number, oil counters can be used for all kinds of things, they’re a kind of all-purpose counter designed to help proliferate do lots of different things. There aren’t any regular counters in the set though.
When it comes to Poison, ten is traditionally the magic number. Corrupted is a new mechanic that triggers when you give an opponent three or more poison counters – meaning there’s value in just smidgen of poison, as well as a lethal dose.
MTG Phyrexia: All Will Be One Commander decks
Amazon first revealed the Commander decks releasing alongside Phyrexia: All Will Be One, and now the full lists have been revealed. The first, representing the baddies, is led by a relative of one our all time favourite MTG commanders, Atraxa! Ixhel, Descendant of Atraxa is a white, green, and black Phyrexian angel with Toxic 2, who lets you steal and cast other players’ cards provided they have a poison counter.
The Boros commander, Neyali, Sun’s Vanguard, leads the rebel’s Commander deck. She’s a token-based commander, letting you exile cards from your library and play them on turns when you attack with a token.
Both seem like pretty standard card advantage engines, though they go about earning you value in very different ways. Every colour except blue is represented in the decks.
MTG Phyrexia: All Will Be One story
In the 2022 Wizards Presents showcase, it was stated that in Phyrexia: All Will Be One “our villains grow ever stronger”. It’s pretty clear that this is the set where the Phyrexians’ plans come to fruition, before a massive showdown in March of the Machine marks the finale of the storyline.
What exactly are those plans? Well, you see those tentacle thingies at the bottom of the image above? Those are the ‘branches’ of what Phyrexia’s calling its ‘invasion tree’, Realmbreaker. From March of the Machine artwork, it seems in that set, Realmbreaker is going to go smashing into planes throughout the multiverse.
In Phyrexia: All Will Be One, the heroes are trying to take their newly forged Sylex superweapon, and dive through the many layers of Phyrexia to reach Realmbreaker’s Seedcore, and blow it up. Presumably, it isn’t going to go very well.
It’s been a good decade since we visited New Phyrexia, and the plane’s changed quite a bit since last we came a-calling. Phyrexia: All Will Be One will have a whole new world to show us, with nine spheres to explore, from the “tangled copper wilderness” of the Hunter’s Maze to the spooky, cathedral-filled Fair Basilica.
One key, and worrying detail of the story, is that a grand total of five, yes five, planeswalkers will be compleated in MTG Phyrexia: All Will Be One. Check out the list of possible victims.
