New Phyrexia Spoilers *Part 2*

Time to continue where we left off

Act of Aggression        3{R/P}{R/P}
Instant
Gain control of target creature an opponent controls until end of turn.
Untap that creature, it gains haste until end of turn.

Threaten/Act of Treason/Mark of Mutiny effects have seen constructed play at times, but its quite amazing how much better the effect is at instant speed.  Being able to take a guy during your opponent's combat allows for potential blowouts and you can always just steal and attack with a Titan.  3 mana and 4 life is a pretty low cost, and in addition the being one of the more insane limited uncommons in the set this should be good enough to see some play in standard.




Priest of Urabrask                  2R
Creature
When Priest of Urabrask enters the battlefield, add RRR to your mana pool
2/1

It's been a long time since Priest of Gix, and I don't believe this will really see that much play, but it's still something to take notice of.




Ruthless Invasion              3{R/P}
Sorcery
Non-artifact creatures can't block this turn

This is mainly interesting because its basically colorless, and the effect can be very strong in certain matchups where the board tends to get cluttered with creatures quickly.




Urabrask the Hidden             3RR
Legendary Creature
Creatures you control have haste
Creatures your opponents control enter the battlefield tapped
4/4

5 mana is a lot for giving your dudes haste, since ideally you'll have already played out plenty of creatures by turn 5.  Still, 5 mana for a 4/4 haste is solid in itself and its pretty tough to set up any kind of defense with this guy in play.




Whipflare                       1R
Sorcery
Whipflare deals 2 damage to each non-artifact creature

Its pyroclasm, except it doesn't hit artifacts.  I'll leave it up to you to figure out when you'd want this instead of pyroclasm.





Birthing Pod                  3{G/P}
Artifact
1{G/P}, tap, sacrifice a creature: Search your library for a creature with converted mana cost exactly 1 more than the sacrificed creature and put it onto the battlefield, then shuffle.  Activate this only whenever you could play a sorcery.

This is kinda slow if you're trying to ramp up to anything huge, and the life loss definitely adds up if you aren't actually playing green.  With that said, turning Vengevines into Baneslayers, Baneslayer into Sun Titan, and Birds of Paradise into Fauna Shaman/Stoneforge Mystic are all nice ways to make this card worth it.




Fresh Meat               3G
Instant
Put a 3/3 Beast creature token into play for each creature put into your graveyard from the battlefield this turn.

Whether its a Wrath of God/Day of Judgement, creatures trading in combat, or some sort of sacrifice effect, creatures are going to hit the bin, and this card will lead to a large number of blowouts because of that.




Triumph of the Hordes         2GG
Sorcery
Until end of turn, creatures you control gain +1/+1, trample, and infect.

Infect Overrun means you only have to trample over for 10 for this card to be lethal, so if your creatures have a combined power of 10 more than your opponents, that's game.  In addition, costing 4 is a lot better than costing 5 given that the kinds of decks that want this card usually have mana creatures, and costing 1 less mana means you can attack with 1 more creature.  While is some decks Overwhelming Stampede is still preferred, in decks with mostly 1/1's I can see this being the preferred way to end games.




Batterskull                      5
Artifact- Equipment
Living Weapon
Equipped Creature gets +4/+4, Vigilance, and Lifelink
3: Return Batterskull to its owner's hand
Equip 5

In addition to being my pick for best Standard card in the set, this is also my pick for the card that could actually result in a banning in standard (of Stoneforge Mystic, not of Batterskull).  While this card is completely fair without Mystic, tapping 2 to put this into play at instant speed is beyond insane.  Searching this up on turn 2 pretty much completely dominates the game for the next few turns, and the germ token is almost guaranteed to attack at least once before something comes down that can compete with it.  On top of that, if the germ token does die, you still have an equipment that can be moved around or even returned to your hand, because for some reason Wizards decided that they needed to add the ability to reuse this even with no other creatures in play.
While I'm complaining about this card, did I mention it's a Mythic Rare?  Seems about right, since a random 4/4 for 5 with some additional benefits definitely feels Mythic to me.





Hex Parasite                            1
Artifact Creature
X{B/P}: Remove up to X counters from target permanent.  For each counter removed this way, Hex Parasite gets +X/+0 until end of turn.

Jace and Tumble Magnet are the cards right now that this best deals with.  Thankfully, this can be used immediately since it doesn't have to tap, meaning for 4 mana in any color you can kill a Jace on 3 counters, which helps to keep the Mind Sculpting in check. The fact that its a 1/1 means it won't stick around to completely shut down Planeswalker based strategies, but its a reasonable answer.




Lashwrithe                        4
Artifact- Equipment
Living Weapon
Equipped Creature gets +1/+1 for each swamp you control
Equip {B/P}{B/P}

Heavy black decks haven't really been a contender for quite some time, but between this and the Obliterator they pick up some decent tools.  I don't expect to be playing this card anytime soon but that doesn't mean it isn't good.




Mycosynth Wellspring        2
Artifact
When Mycosynth Wellspring enters the battlefield or is put into the graveyard from the battlefield, search your library for a basic land card, reveal it, and put it into your hand, then shuffle your library.

Ichor Wellspring got a new friend.  This one is obviously better in the early game when you need to dig for lands, but is worse as a late game topdeck.  Like Ichor Wellspring, its definitely playable with any way to get it into the yard, but has the additional benefit of being excellent 5 color mana fixing for multicolor decks.




Sword of War and Peace              3
Artifact- Equipment
Equipped creature gets +2/+2 and protection from white and red
Whenever equipped creature deals combat damage to a player, Sword of War and Peace deals damage to that player equal to the number of cards in his or her hand, and you gain life equal to the number of cards in your hand.

So we end with the card people have been waiting for since Sword of Body and Mind first indicated that the cycle would be completed.  Red and White are potentially the two best colors to grant protection from, especially in the current standard where the best removal spells and best creatures right now are in those colors.  The triggered abilities of the sword may not be quite as good as those on Sword of Feast and Famine or Sword of Fire and Ice, but an addition ~5 point life swing each time you connect is pretty strong in racing scenarios and is not to be underestimated.  I would definitely say that this will be the sword of choice in aggro decks, though I still believe it falls behind Batterskull as the top equipment in the set.



Overall, I'm extremely impressed by this set, both in the large number of cards that will have an impact in constructed an in the overall design of the set.  Phyrexian mana is a pretty interesting mechanic, though I'm disappointed that the Infect mechanic wasn't taken as far as it could have been.  Still, I'm definitely looking forward to the prerelease and can't wait to start playing with some of the new cards.