Minor Misstep – Phyrexia: All Will Be One
Date Reviewed: February 22, 2023
Ratings:
Constructed: 3.50
Casual: 2.25
Limited: 1.25
Multiplayer: 2.00
Commander [EDH]: 2.13
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
Cards like this are the closest many people ever get to hearing Wizards of the Coast admit a specific mistake. Mark Rosewater will sometimes talk about design mistakes, but only to his dedicated audience on Wizards.com or Tumblr, and what he considers a mistake isn’t always what the rest of us do. But that’s a different matter, and even a fixed Mental Misstep is still strong. It works best in the biggest formats, which tend to be quite fast and low on the mana curve, and in some decks it can be an “extra” Mental Misstep or four. It even has one advantage over its famous ancestor, which is the ability to hit Moxen. While it’s not reliable enough for more casual formats or ones with more diverse mana curves, I expect it to have a consistent role in Legacy and Vintage going forward.
Constructed: 3.5
Casual: 2.5
Limited: 1
Multiplayer: 2
Commander [EDH]: 2
Narrow, but effective, Minor Misstep is a card that serves as both an homage to probably the single-biggest design mistake to come out of New Phyrexia and as a solid way to say “no” in its own right. In particular, this is pushed along a very particular axis, as a way for fast formats like Legacy, Modern, and Vintage to disrupt whatever their opponents are trying to do. This is not a replacement for the free answers, but when you consider the plethora of threats this answers (like the various cascade spell targets, Moxen, or just things like Thoughtseize), this will put in a fair bit of work if you need it to. I definitely think this is a card with a narrow niche, but it fills it well, and it might be worth considering if you need just a bit more surety.
Constructed: 3.5
Casual: 2
Limited: 1.5 (most of the things you’d want to counter are going to cost more than 1 mana)
Multiplayer: 2
Commander [EDH]: 2.25 (it does hit Sol Ring, but so would Mental Misstep, and there are lots of better, broader ways to say “no”)
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