Top 10 Phyrexian Mana Cards (*Free Mana Spells)

fexi and Mana is a somewhat Infamous mechanic in the magic Community introduced all the way back into forexia this mechanic has been Revisited sparingly throughout the rest of the game's history this simple mechanic is denoted by a Mana symbol in a cost which can be paid for with either one Mana of the appropriate color or two life this ended up being far too low of a cost however and many of the forexia Mana cards ended up being incredibly powerful today we're going to be going over the best of the best listing the best cards that have forian Mana anywhere on their card so starting us off at number 10 we have gutshot this is an instant that costs one fexi and red Mana it is the effect where it deals one damage to any Target this card is a great example of why fexi and Mana can be such a problem gutshot has one of the weakest and least useful effects in the game often basically being worthless hitting your opponent with a spell will make you lose more life than your opponent and it can only remove very specific threats overall the card just had very little impact on the games it was Cas in and often times was more detrimental than anything despite all of these shortcomings however gutshot was effectively a zero Mana spell any card that you can cast for no Mana will at least have some applications since the card costs no Mana to cast all your Mana can be spent on cards that make gut shot somewhat useful cards like Monastery Swift Spear and stormwing entity are made a lot better by you casting multiple instance or sorcery spells on a single turn gutshot was essentially just another free spell you could cast in these decks to enable these more powerful cards in this scenario the card's rather narrow application of removing one toughness from creatures becomes a lot more useful even better most of these cards had prowess which gives creatures plus one plus one for a turn whenever you cast a non-creature spell this means that casting a single spell can change the combat math a lot or allow one of your threats to escape dying to a lightning bolt while gutshot is good in these decks its home has been since usurped by lava Dart which was reprinted into modern and modern Horizons this spell deals one damage to any Target and costs one red very similar to gutshot however it can be cast for free from your graveyard by sacrificing a mountain though it will Exile itself afterwards being able to cast the spell twice and cast it from your graveyard has made lava Dart a better spell for the red spellslinger decks pushing gutshot to the side since losing its home in these decks it's mostly seen play in non- red Decks that need removal against one toughness creatures in some formats most notably popper colors like blue often lack access to powerful cheap removal often the best way these decks have to answer these one toughness creatures ends up just being a gutshot gutshot has slowed down in terms of play ever since lava Dart became legal and modern but a free spell will always have application somewhere and at number nine we have spell skite this is a 04 forian horror with a Mana ctive 2 it is ability or you can pay one forian blue Mana to change the target of Target spell or ability to spell skite this is an ability that's extremely versatile any beneficial targeted effect your opponent uses like auras can be changed to targeting spell skite allowing you to get the beneficial effects instead of your opponent's cards of course your opponent isn't likely to simply walk into this mistake so the card mostly just stops your opponent from casting any of these kinds of cards while it's on the field the card's main purpose was to take the bullet from one of your creatures whenever your opponent use a removal spell any deck that had a particular creature it wanted to keep alive would play spell sky to essentially force your opponent to out the card twice decks like Affinity would play the card to make it even more difficult for your opponent interact with their arcbound ravager and other various threats even better spell skite made certain removal spells outright terrible cards like lightning bolt were awful into spell skite as it could make itself the target of a bolt and live thanks to having four toughness this means that to kill any of your creatures they'll either have to draw a different removal spell that could answer spell skite or they have to draw another direct damage spell use two removal spells to kill spell sky before finally being able to remove your other creature now while this is very powerful spell skite has fallen out of favor over the years decks have largely gotten more powerful over time making it so that often it was better to just play another car that was part of your strategy rather than something like spell skite Decks that did want protection spells found it easier to use cards like blossoming defense or surge of Salvation to protect their cards and white decks in modern have also gotten Giver of runes to protect their creatures essentially most decks have slowly found better cards for spell Sky's job and at number eight we have mutogenic growth this is an incident with the Mana Costa 1 Forex in green Mana it is the effect where Target creature gets plus two plus two until end of turn mutogenic growth is in a very similar place to gutshot though its effect is more immediately useful in a lot of situations combat tricks are a bit Niche but dodging direct damage removal and winning combat is something that comes up a lot in games still the card is a lot less impactful than other tricks cards like giant growth gives a creature plus three plus three for a turn for just one mana and more expensive combat tricks have an even bigger impact so the card has a comparatively margin effect to balance out the fact that it can be cast for free well not something that every deck is interested in Decks that want to hit their opponent for as much damage as possible and as quickly as possible have often looked to growth to pump their threats the card has also seen play in the prowess space aggro Decks that gutshot has being another free cast for the deck and one that could even do more damage than gutshot could variance of these decks in POA are also quite strong build around cards like kill and fiend which get a massive plus three plus Z whenever you cast an incident or sorcerer spell bining this with a few free spells like mutagenic growth and some ways to make sure they go in for combat damage then you can deal a full 20 damage to your opponent in a single turn in the right situation however the most famous place mutagenic growth has seen play is an infect decks infect is an ability that makes it so the source deals damage to creatures in the form of minus one minus one counters and players in the form of poison counters and if a player ever has 10 or more poison counters they lose the game infect decks would play very cheap infect creatures and then use pump spells to hit 10 infect damage as soon as possible and growth would basically give you two free infect counters if you hit it with your opponent which was often the difference between winning and losing while in fact hasn't seen as much play as it used to more recently growth is still seen playing a variety of decks like most of the other for rexi Mana cards even if it doesn't have the best effect around its non-existent Mana cost has made it very powerful in a lot of decks and at number seven we have noxious Revival this is an instant that cost one for XI and green it has the effect that you can put Target creature in graveyard on top of its owner's Library this is usually not that useful of an effect it puts you down an entire card and recurring a card from your graveyard is a very situational effect in order for it to really be worth it you have to already have a good card in your graveyard which will require either the game to go on for quite a while or for you to manually Mill yourself first despite these flaws Revival is a spell that you can cast for free so if there's ever a time where this effect could be useful it's the best card for the job it's basically Bally never been used fairly as going down a card isn't good unless the card you're getting back is gamebreaking for example this card's most common home is in vintage dredge this is a deck built around Milling itself as much as possible and then using graveyard effects to win the game the most important card in the deck is bizar bdad an incredibly powerful land that you can tap to draw two cards and then discard three however vintage is full of cards like strip mind and Wasteland that can remove Bazar the difference between the deck with Bazar and play and without it is night and day so finding ways to get the land back especially ones that don't cost Mana is at a premium for the deck which is where noxious Revival comes in Revival is basically the only viable way for the deck to get their bazars back it also happens to have some extra play in the deck you can put bad cards on top of your opponent's deck on a key turn to mess up their draw and the card is a viable pitch to force of vigor which is important for the deck to be able to answer cards like layline of the Void Revival has been used in other combo decks at various points but if we mention all of them we'd be here forever Revival's ability to grab a card from your graveyard for no Mana will give it a niche for as long as Wizards doesn't power creep it and at number six we have fian metamorph this is a z00 forian shape shifter artifact creature with the Mana cost of three and one for reex and blue Mana it has the ability where you may have metamorph enter the battlefield as a copy of any creature artifact on the battlefield except if it's an artifact in addition to its other types metamorph is basically just a typical clone creature though with three notable upsides unlike most clones it only costs three Mana to cast if you're willing to pay some life and it can copy artifacts and it doesn't require actual blue Mana to play this is something that's true of all the fexi Mana cards in the original run though this is the first time it's really mattered for a card the other cards were facts that aren't that difficult to get on the color of the spell but cloting is a very blue effect this is the only card in the game that can allow something like a white green deck to copy artifacts or creatures this is in part why none of the newer forexia Mana cards made this list Beyond Wizards balancing them better they also added colored Mana to the cost of various fexi and Mana cards so they couldn't be used in decks of any color various non-blue decks have taken advantage of this ability throughout the years creatures or artifact based combo decks like yog moth combo and Harden scals Affinity have played the card to get a second copy of an important combo piece Tron a deck based around using Tron lands to make a ton of extra Mana also played the card in order to grab it off of K the great Creator there it could copy any number of powerful creatures or artifacts to help close the game basically any deck that can make use of a clone that isn't blue uses forian metamorph as it's basically the only real option available and at number five we have birthing pot this is an artifact with a Mana cost of three and one for reex and green Mana it is the ability where you can pay one in one for x and gr Mana tap it and sacrifice a creature to search your library for a creature card with a Mana Mana value equal to one plus the sacrific creatures Mana value put it onto your Battlefield then Shuffle pod is a fairly contentious card in the magic Community as the card has been banned in modern for a long time now however a large portion of the community argues that the card could easily be unbanned in the modern day the reason this card was banned was thanks to how good it was in creature combo decks the card was used to find various creature-based combos to end the game out of nowhere for a few quick examples you can find Archangel of Thun and Spike feeder archangel has the ability where whenever you gain life you put a plus one plus1 counter in all of your creatures while Spike feeder has the ability where you can remove a plus one plus1 counter from it to gain two life since gaining life will trigger Archangel and put another counter back on Spike feeder you can just remove the counter immediately to gain more life you can just do this infinitely to gain as much life as you want while also putting a ton of plus one plus1 counters on your board other variations of this combo appeared in this deck as well players would also combine murderous Red Cap with Mala syoc Outcast to get around persist and allow red have to come back over and over to deal infinite damage while pod could help you find tons of combos it was the card's versatility that really made it so powerful at some point Wizards has printed a creature that does basically anything you could want if you need to kill an artifact or enchantment you could find Reclamation Sage if you were worried about a card in your opponent's hand you could find sin collector if you had a scary graveyard you could just find Scavenging Ooze and we could spend all day going over examples this way unlike most other tutors pod was repeatable allowing you to go for a power Temple play on one turn while still ultimately working towards your combo win condition cards like elam's call or eldri Evolution May cost less Mana to use initially but being a one- shot effect makes it far less appealing to use them to just find an answer to whatever your opponent is currently doing P's unique ability to let you quickly find Combos and being able to do so multiple times in a game gives it a niche that no other card has been able to replicate and at number four we have dismember this is an instant with the Mana Costa one and two fexi and black Mana it is the effect where Target creature gets minus 5 -5 until end of turn this is a pretty typical removal effect in terms of cost and effect in every way except for the fact that it's forian Mana OB nixus cruelty has the same Mana value and is just as good at killing creatures of course dismember is effectively a one Mana spell thanks to the forx and Mana it has in its cost however this card isn't quite like the other spells on this list so far you see while it can be cast for very cheap it effectively costs or life to cast if you don't pay any black Mana While most magic will tell you that paying life or an effect is a good deal it's not like your life total doesn't matter at all against Decks that play a lot of creatures paying too much life can make it far too easy to die if combat goes the wrong way and of course dis member's only purpose is removing creatures so it's best into matchups where the life cost actually matters this makes dismember a powerful but often risky card Black decks have often found the cards like fatal push are more effective effective as removal spells than dismember however being a fian Mana card any color of a deck could play it and many other colors struggle to remove creatures in many decks in formats like modern the most effective kill spell they can have access to is dismember famously decks like Tron a deck that mostly makes colorless Mana has played dismember to be able to kill key threats without dismember the deck would basically have no way to answer anything besides pay Seven Mana or so for a card like all its dust other decks locked out of good removal by their colors such as amulet Titan have used the card whenever killing creatures ends up being important unless wizard does something very strange with a color pie this member will remain the best removal spell for a lot of decks and at number three we have surgical extraction this is an instant with a Mana cost of one for rexan black it is the effect where you choose Target card in a graveyard other than a basic land card you search its owner's hand graveyard and library for any number of cards with the same name and Exile them then that player shuffles this type of effect has shown up in a few different black cards over the years and has been very strong in different metag games cards like Slaughter games has seen quite a bit of play Not only in standard but in formats like pioneer and vintage thanks to being able to completely shut off your opponent's combos any deck that relies on a particular spell to be able to win will essentially immediately lose if you use a card like surgical on it the main issue with these kinds of effects is how they don't really do anything to turn you play them they don't affect the board and there's no guarantee that your opponent will have any copies of the card in their hand however surgical mostly gets around this downside by not costing any Mana while you do still use up an entire card being able to have such a huge impact on the game in the right matchup more than makes up for this surgical also doesn't cost any colored Mana so any deck can play it this has made surgical a staple sideboard card or it can be brought in against certain combo decks to completely shut down their strategy the card does have its limits though mainly that it requires the card to be in the graveyard before for can extract it this makes the card far better against graveyard Focus decks or better in Decks that are capable of Milling some of their opponent's cards these limitations haven't stopped the card from seeing play though anytime a deck like dredge becomes popular people start sleeving up their surgicals despite being one of the most common sideboard Techs in all of magic there are still two fexi and Mana cards that make surgical look tame by comparison and at number two we have guxian probe this is a sorcery that costs one Forex and blue mana and has effect where you look at Target player's hand then draw a card this is a sideg graded version of peak a card that has seen some competitive play over the years but it's not exactly a staple however probe has proven to be so powerful that it's been banned in multiple formats and been restricted in vintage the main reason for this of course is that it costs no Mana this is also the only fexi and Mana card that both cost no Mana to cast if you pay life and draws you a card if you pay the two life this is essentially a completely free spell and while life is an important resource there are a lot of games where your life total isn't all that important the card essentially gave you free information telling you exactly what your opponent's hand had and letting you plan around it this was most important in combo decks most combo decks would just win the game if they were able to play out their combo however a single piece of interaction at an inopportune moment could spell disaster knowing if your opponent has interaction or what kind of interaction they do have can allow you to play your combo in such a way that their interaction can't stop you or let you know if you need to hold off until you're in a better position cards like Peak couldn't really be used in this way because they put you behind on Mana being down even one Mana can make it impossible to pull off your combo in a lot of board States so paying even one Mana to check your opponent's hand was too much probe essentially push matchups too far in the favor of combo decks without really having to give up anything they can get all the info they needed to play out the rest of the match this card just had too much of an impact on the games it was casting even though on the surface it didn't actually do anything and at number one we have mental misstep this is an instant with the Mana cost of one fian blue it is the effect to counter Target spell with a Mana value of exactly one this is a card we've talked about multiple times on this channel so if you've been around here a while you know what's coming the long and short of it is that Wizards drastically underestimated the importance of one man of value spells to non-rotating formats misstep quickly proved itself to be far too strong of a card thanks not only to being great against the majority of deck in a field but also thanks to the fact that it was the best answer to itself if you were playing burn and trying to find a way to protect your Goblin guides from your opponent's missteps or removal misstep itself was a great answer this card quickly became completely ubiquitous to the point that basically every deck was playing at least a few copies just a quick example to prove this a Star City Games Atlanta all the way back in 2011 before the card was Bann six of the eight top 10 decks were playing misstep in their main board and mostly at four copies you you could probably even argue that other decks should have been playing it too and in the modern day one Mana spells have become even more important if it were on bandn everyone would be scrambling at play sets to throw into literally every deck there are very few cards that are this format warping even in tier zero metas where one deck is considered Far and Away better than everything else the most broken cards very rarely find themselves in basically every list in a format recently at the time of writing Fury was banned from Modern despite being considered very format warping Fury didn't see anywhere near as much play as misstep would you could argue that this is because Fury requires you to be playing red but that's kind of the point there's no barrier to playing misstep in any deck which is what leads to it taking over formats the way it does there are very few magic cards that are as format warming as misstep and no other card with forian Mana even comes close to its level of power all right and that's the list are there the forian cards you think we may have missed or have any ideas for future videos just like this one if so let us know down in the comments below [Music]

Channel: TheManaLogs

Views: 26,771

Keywords: magic, mtg, magic the gathering, tcg, card game

Id: A-d2a4v9QkA

Length: 19min 9sec (1149 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 10 2024