New Phyrexia cards - Legacy-centric review

Gitaxian Probe and Mental Misstep are the most significant cards in the set for Eternal play.

Also, I just found a clever new Magic pun name for the blog. Sweet.

Mental Misstep

This is going to be a card where which will appear in the 75 (probably as a 4-of) for both Merfolk and Counter-Top. It should also see some play in many other archetypes as a sideboard card, namely in ANT or TES against Spell Snare.

For Counter-Top, it is great against both Merfolk and Goblins, since you would be willing to use your Force of Will on either Goblin Lackey or Aether Vial against either deck. The lack of late-game argument is mostly irrelevant with regards to Counter-Top since a Lackey or Vial is still a very strong card late game against you (though it does depend what version you are running) and most of the cards in your deck are irrelevant once you have the lock in place. I would also like to point out the is counters spell pierce and spell snare, both of which see a strong amount of play and are important in the mirror.

In Merfolk, this card makes the Goblins and Zoo matchups significantly better, because it lets you take the beatdown role. Normally in both of these mathchups, excluding a nut-draw for Merfolk, the game plan is to play lots of dudes to trade and force them to burn your weaker creatures out, then land a leveled Coralhelm Commander or multiple lords in one turn. This is a very difficult plan, and this is why these are Merfolk's worst matchups. With Mental Misstep, you will get to for example, counter Wild Nacatl on the draw instead of Forcing it. This also lets you save your Force for better spells such as Tarmogoyf.

In my list I am testing for Providence, I already have 4 main deck. Merfolk might not being the right deck for that tournament, but if it is, it WILL have 4 of these main.

Gitaxian Probe

This card, while it might not seem that good at first, is WAY better than you think. Why? Because you are comparing it to Peek. Peek generally has only seen play in a few Standard decks (such as Faeries played by Sam Black). What does this go in? COMBO DECKS. Charbelcher, TES, Cephalid Breakfast, probably and non-blue or black Natural Order deck, maybe a Show and Tell deck all might want this card. In ANT you probably don't want it since you really will never be going off before a Duress unless you are 100% sure they don't have it (ie. they played Goblin Lackey or Wild Nacatl). But in TES? TES is much better set up to utilize this card. Not only does it effectively make your deck 56 cards, but it adds to the storm count, lets you know when to play around taxing counters, and even lets you know how long you can wait to go off. Almost every time you will probably rather have Duress, so i'm not saying this is an auto 4-of, but it will probably see some sideboard play against Merfolk and Bant where is it correct a lot of the time to keep hands that only have taxing counters if they have a really fast clock.

The best deck for this card though is Charbelcher. The deck already will sometimes play Street Wraith, and this is a strict upgrade to that. But lets think about this, how does Charbelcher lose games? Basically every loss comes down to having the force for either your Belcher or your last ritual before Empty-ing. For the most part, this card will make game 1 situations where your opponent will not be mulling to Force a bunch easier.

Thanks for reading, and let me know if you agree/disagree!