The Song of Phyresis

Commander / EDH Mortlocke

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The "New" Phyrexian Tribe —July 5, 2021

With Modern Horizons 2 comes a very interesting retcon - a list of roughly 225 creatures (and a small assortment of other cards) now have the subtype "Phyrexian" or create tokens that have that subtype. What makes this retcon so interesting is that now this deck is essentially a Phyrexian tribal deck, with the exception of Grateful Apparition, Spike Weaver, and Evolution Sage. Oh, and for the curious, below is the full list of creatures affected by the errata:

So what does all this mean for the deck? At the moment, not much outside of a potential card swap of Defense of the Heart for Urza's Incubator (Ideally, this will help me get a Praetor out a turn or two earlier). Going forward, I can only hope that Wizards will print more Phyrexians that will be viable substitutions for some of the previously mentioned non-Phyrexians. My dream is to have a Grateful Apparition, but with Infect. Or a mono-white color shifted Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon. Now that would be exciting.

Separately, I chose to pre-order the Secret Lair: Compleat Edition. Honestly, I'm conflicted about this product - as a Phyrexia fan-boy I'm happy to see more cards in the Phyrexian language - but the Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite included in the package is the one card that upsets me. Back in the day I made a very big and very expensive trade to get the original Elesh Norn Judge promo, as far as I know this was the first and for a long time - only card with Phyrexian text. Now Wizards simply prints off this very rare and special print (albeit with a different border) for anyone to pick up. This Secret Lair kind of trivializes how special and rare that Elesh Norn is, or was rather - in my opinion.

Curious to see everyone's thoughts on the Secret Lair: Compleat Edition - will you buy it? Do you think it's something magic players will want to spend money on? Is it at a good price point? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.