Ichormoon Gauntlet – Phyrexia: All Will Be One
Date Reviewed: March 28, 2023
Ratings:
Constructed: 2.50
Casual: 4.00
Limited: 1.75
Multiplayer: 3.25
Commander [EDH]: 3.38
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
Yesterday we were talking about build-around cards, and this is perhaps one of the most seemingly narrow ones. It only really does much in decks with lots of planeswalkers, and even requires that the deck be part blue; on the flip side, blue does give you plenty of options for tutoring artifacts and protecting combos, not to mention some otherwise solid-to-amazing cards like the various versions of Narset, Tamiyo, and Jace. I’m not sure that’s inherently stronger than other styles of blue control deck, but I suspect it’ll have an audience, not least since there seems to be something inherently satisfying about proliferating and moving counters around.
Constructed: 2.5
Casual: 3.5
Limited: 1.5
Multiplayer: 3
Commander [EDH]: 3
Ichormoon Gauntlet is a fairly unique artifact, granting planeswalkers additional abilities that synergize with each other. The new “ultimate”, -12 for an extra turn, is certainly flashy and will have places where it matters, but I’d say it’s far less interesting than the ability to just proliferate if you have nothing better to do. That functions as a +1 of sorts and can play well with more planeswalkers being out at the same time, using them to chain together massive loyalty boosts. The mini-proliferate on noncreature spells also helps in that endeavor a lot and gives it use outside of being a planeswalker enabler, though it only hits one thing and can’t hit players.
I feel like this is a hard card to judge, but it strikes me as more “fun” than powerful. It can definitely make for some very rude board states and snarls, and only at three mana, but planeswalkers are already famous for being an expensive permanent type in terms of mana cost (two cost two mana, and three mana tends to be a “weaker” point on the curve unless your name is Liliana). It’ll have plenty of fun to enact in “super friends” decks, but I feel like this might be a bit too slow to make waves in Constructed, and it’d likely make it off the back of the second ability if anything.
Constructed: 2.5 (I don’t think it’s terrible, but it feels underwhelming in practice)
Casual: 4.5
Limited: 2 (planeswalkers are at rare or higher in this set, and this not being an actual proliferate tool makes it worse for killing with poison)
Multiplayer: 3.5
Commander [EDH]: 3.75 (planeswalkers are famously a bit hard to make work in Commander, but this helps them out if you can make rude board states)
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