Koth, Fire of Resistance – Phyrexia: All Will Be One
Date Reviewed: February 7, 2023
Ratings:
Constructed: 3.25
Casual: 3.75
Limited: 4.00
Multiplayer: 3.00
Commander [EDH]: 3.13
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
Koth promised to fight forever, and it looks like he kept his promise. It’s interesting to note that his new card is designed very much in character, if you like, namely in the way it works better by far in mono-red decks. The card doesn’t add tricks to aggressive or midrange strategies the way some of Chandra’s do – the obvious play is to go for his ultimate, since you can get it quite early as these things go, and then have about two guaranteed Mountain blasts, and he doesn’t have a lot of versatility beyond that. Still, that might turn out to be enough for certain settings.
Constructed: 3
Casual: 3.5
Limited: 3.5
Multiplayer: 3
Commander [EDH]: 3
Koth’s second card comes over a decade after his first one, which had been a surprisingly powerful and beloved red planeswalker for simply being a straightforward, good card. Of note is that Phyrexia: All Will Be One has ten planeswalkers in the set: five of them are rare and represent the resistance, while the other five are all compleated and at mythic rare.
All things considered, Koth is absurdly straightforward and centered specifically around Mountains in particular, which actually hews rather close to his previous outing. That said, while his +2 can only find basic Mountains, his other two abilities only care about Mountains in general, and being able to potentially remove a troublesome creature for four mana isn’t a bad gameplan in red. Of note, Koth can cleanly kill Elesh Norn with enough Mountains, so there is that. His ultimate is a bit peculiar, but there are a lot of things it plays well with; most of them are not red, but red/green has always been a land-inclined combination.
I think Koth will probably play better than he looks, though he looks decent enough. He is in the bracket of “ends the game if unchecked”, but he does so fairly slowly. All that said, while I think he’s worse at a short game, he can be a strong piece to power you through a longer affair, which red is infamously bad at on its own.
Constructed: 3.5 (he probably only will work in mono-red, but I don’t know if that’s good right now)
Casual: 4
Limited: 4.5
Multiplayer: 3
Commander [EDH]: 3.25
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