CardName – Phyrexia: All Will Be One
Date Reviewed: April 3, 2023
Ratings:
Constructed: 3.13
Casual: 4.00
Limited: 4.00
Multiplayer: 3.50
Commander [EDH]: 3.63
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
Capricious Hellraiser is a very red card, both in being a swoopy dragon and in its recursion element. Getting a free spell is nice with Mister Biggles, though the catch there is that the cost discount to cast him conflicts with the free spell you get, since it’s from a randomly-drawn pool. That said, moderating your own graveyard afterhe comes down is reasonable, and while you only get one spell, there are plenty of ways to make it pop.
On one hand, it can be a three-mana 4/4. On the other, nine cards in your graveyard is a tall ask, even with red’s proclivity towards looting; even with the most aggressive looting you have, you’ll be hard-pressed to make it there by turn three, and this even asks for triple-red. I think it costing three mana is going to be generally the preferred way to play this, and while there’s a bit of fiddliness involved in getting this to maximize its swooping potential, there’s apt to be some deck able to use its talents.
Constructed: 3.25
Casual: 4
Limited: 4 (likely more playable as a cheap, swooping threat)
Multiplayer: 3
Commander [EDH]: 3.25
Everybody’s getting in on the graveyard/self-mill stuff these days. Red had a hint of this in Modern Horizons 2 where delirium was one of its themes, and Capricious Hellraiser kicks it up just a little. If you want to have a less-random pool of spells to choose from, six mana is still a manageable price, though perhaps not in faster formats. I’m guessing people will try him first in spellslinger decks, where they can take advantage of cards like Faithless Looting; but it’s worth noting that he can copy planeswalker spells (“noncreature, nonland” is a bigger category that it used to be). Actually, he can copy enchantments, too, which might be useful for any Theros-themed decks (and he’s more on-theme for those than he first looks, too).
It’s also kind of funny to me that he has a very similar theme to an actual factual space whale. But I guess there are only so many expressions of the laws of magic!
Constructed: 3
Casual: 4
Limited: 4
Multiplayer: 4
Commander [EDH]: 4
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