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Commander is a bit of an oddity in Magic: The Gathering. What started as a fun way to use off-rotation cards has become its own scene within the card game community, allowing players to create unhinged combos with cards years apart in release.
For those who might be new to MtG, Phyrexia: All Will Be One returns a lot of older mechanics to wreak havoc on the battlefield among your friends. Poison Counters let you bypass your opponent’s defenses, winning the game with an alternate win condition by stacking them up. Meanwhile Oil Counters give creatures effects as long as they can hold their oil counters, so you’ve got to manage your resources well.
We caught up with Corey Bowen, Lead Designer for the Commander format in MtG Phyrexia: All Will Be One to talk how the latest chapter of Phyrexian shenanigans were improving old mechanics by putting them front and center.
I think one thing of the most glaring things any Commander player might notice is the use of Toxic as a keyword instead of the previous Poison Counter-based keywords, making it harder to synergize with older Infect cards. Was there a version of the development where you tried to use the older keywords?
Corey: When the ONE Commander team started its work, Toxic was already pretty stable and decided upon in the main set, so we used Toxic and didn’t look back. You’ll also find through playing the deck, that toxic synergizes cleanly with infect and the two mechanics don’t have a hard time fitting in the same deck.
Considering how many other Phyrexian-centric expansions we’ve had in the past, were there any old cards you wanted to make relevant with this set?
Corey: Smaller, evasive infect creatures were made more relevant with the Toxic deck. Those cards are typically weak in commander, but efficient ways to run out three poison counters on your opponents is the entire game plan of Ixhel. The RW deck also has a legendary creature in it that is trying to get players interested in building a Rebels deck if they want, or even an experience counters strategy.
Proliferate in particular seems to be a really interesting ability, working well with both Poison and Oil counters. Could you talk more about fitting that in to Commander?
Corey: Proliferate has been long-loved in Commander and is one of the most popular way to synergize with any counter-centric strategies. For us, proliferate was an awesome tool to help make our cards more relevant in more decks. We’d design a proliferate card designed for the poison deck that also happens to be good in a +1/+1 counters deck or a Planeswalkers deck.
With Commander being as all-spanning a format as it is, could you talk about concerns like accidentally making older cards too powerful or also powercreeping old, dominant cards?
Corey: We have a team that tests our cards against older commanders or potentially dangerous combinations of cards. There are enough cards in Magic that we can’t avoid them all. My main philosophy is to avoid making legendary creatures that have an unfun combo with a single other card, or avoid making cards where they are only useful or fun if you’re doing a problematic game pattern.
Are there any potential Commanders you’re really excited to see get some use in this set?
Corey: I’m a big fan of the new RW phoenix in the RW tokens deck.
With Phyrexia: All Will Be One launching this week, there’s a lot to look forward to. Standard players and Commander players will both have plenty of new cards to sift through, building either entirely new playstyles or reinforcing old staples.
Out thanks to Corey Bowen for taking time to chat with us about what Commander players can look forward to in the new set.
