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Mar 14, 2010 -- 9:42PM, ZursApprentice wrote:

That Phyrexia deck will dominate that Coalition deck.  The Coalition deck is 4 colors without the right lands to support it.  It has poor mana fixers, which helps the mana, but also leaves the deck about 40 mana sources and 20 business spells.  The deck sucks. 

Funny enough, we tested them to make sure that didn't happen!

as someone who missed invasion block this duel decks concept missed me. I don't like the fact that all the creatures with phyrexian names have the same ability. The biggest miss IMHO is the mythics. I know he said he had trouble deciding but seriously an expensive lightning bolt that can't be countered and an oudated card that will likely lose more games for his team than win. Basically you have to have a sacrifice outlet before you can even cast him. These "mythics" will be the first two cards on the chopping block if I do get these decks and make any modifications.

I do appreciate the effort of raiding the "reserved" list. I also love the duel decks and appreciate the testing and balance that is a result. It's probably because I (still) am unfamiliar with Gerrard and the coalition and phyrexia and the story (to date) has never caught my attention enough to go back and read it. I've read different articles on the sight about bits and pieces of the story but It never really peaked my interest.

edit// One final thought I'd personally rather have fetchlands than dragons the mana base is so horrid for coalition.

Chris Millar's writing is always a blast; I've missed him.

I have been playing these decks against each other with MWS, and have verified that they have an extremely nice matchup.  In general, Phyrexia wins slightly more often, but Dominaria's victories are more spectacular and memorable come-from-behind achievements, which is highly appropriate to the story you're (kinda) replaying here.  The Phyrexia deck is a well-tuned machine whose victories are brutal and predictable affairs, powered by tight synergy among the components; the Coalition, rather, has hugely swingy spells like the Battlemages and Charms which it can use to answer Phyrexia's threats, while attempting to stick a Dragon or the like for a win after Phyrexia runs out of removal spells.  Both decks succumb to land-flood somewhat frequently, but this is unsurprising; it's not as if they could have given them $20 manabases full of fetchlands and cycling, but the player is free to do this himself if wishing to streamline the experience, and if not they still play rather well, with mana flood striking perhaps one game in 3 or 4 and mana screw significantly less common (which is good).

In terms of the alternate art, I'm not too happy with Urza's Rage, as he really doesn't look angry in this picture; the original art showed him in a battlesuit facing to the right, while the original Negator faces to the left, so they could have used those apart from the Reserve List nonsense.  But even with a new picture, I'd rather have seen Urza in his suit, even if it would have blurred the "good vs. evil" aspect by reminding us that "Urza's means began to resemble Phyrexia's end".  I'm also sad that they showed us two pieces of Dominaria's art today (not counting Urza, as he's on the cover and we'd seen that already) but nothing of Phyrexia other than the Negator (which was even less surprising than the picture of Urza, since for that at least I didn't know what the card was exactly, while the Negator is unmistakable).  I'm strongly hoping to see Narrow Escape and Hideous End with non-Zendikar pictures, and I really hope they'll reillustrate Carrion Feeder as a Phyrexian rather than a mutant zombie (the fact that Phyrexians are often Zombies in game terms is convenient for this reason, though it saddens me on a Vorthotic level).  Hornet Cannon is another card which isn't very Phyrexian-flavored and could maybe use an update, but Puppet Strings would be even more to the point.

All told, this is an excellent product, and I am planning to get it after not having bought any Magic product since the Zendikar release (money's tight, you understand).  Interestingly, after MWS play convinced me NOT to buy Garruk vs. Liliana, it had the opposite effect here; I know that Wotco frowns on the program's use, but it has convinced me to purchase product several times by enabling me to find out how much fun there is to be had, and in this case I would definitely not have plunked down $20 for 120 cards without confirming that, unlike in GVL, this pair of decks was keenly balanced and a ton of fun to play from either side.