So, Maro confirmed there will be errata for the Phyrexian creature type:

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... 2021-02-15



That's awesome, and because this really matters to me, I thought I'd try to be a helpful little Vorthos and did some work on the side. I'm sure there are folks at WotC who are looking into this, but some additional sets of eyes from the community probably won't hurt. "Everything that's a Phyrexian", you say? Well, I have some Phyrexians for you!

Consider:

This is the section for cards that I wasn't immediately sure about and that might require some thought/discussion/hitting the books to figure out whether or not they should count as "Phyrexian". I haven't really had the time for that, but I'll just drop them here for now:



Tokens created by:



Core Sets:

Soul of New Phyrexia

Antiquities:



Ice Age Block:



Mirage Block:



Tempest Block:

Phyrexian Hulk

Urza Block:



Masques Block:



Invasion Block:



Time Spiral Block:

Phyrexian Totem

Commander Products:



Scars Block:

[all creatures with the Phyrexian watermark]
Inkmoth Nexus

Modern Horizons:

Plague Engineer
First-Sphere Gargantua


Have you got any objections to my picks? Anything I've missed? What about the unclear ones? Feel free to discuss! I'm going to bed now...

Yeah, realistically only 20 of those things will be phyrexians.

Why? Wizards normally tries to make sure that people can somewhat reliably guess a creature's type by looking at the card when they errata something, so why would they arbitrarily errata some Phyrexians to count as "Phyrexian" but not others? There are already a lot more creatures with "Phyrexia(n)" in their names than 20, and a LOT more than that with the Phyrexian watermark, and those two things seem like the most obvious markers of Phyrexian-ness that you could give to a creature. The Grand Creature Type Update affected a lot more creatures than my suggestions for Phyrexians would, especially when it comes to Humans.

I agree with Maro that some cards are in a bit of a grey area, which is why I made a large section for those, and maybe I could get over it if they left the creature tokens alone (although they really shouldn't, they even made two different pieces of artwork for Phyrexian and Mirran Myr and Golems, and all Germ tokens are obviously Phyrexian etc.), but if what they end up doing isn't at least somewhere in the ball park of my compilation, I might just lose interest in New Phyrexia altogether. I can't stand illogical creature types, and Phyrexia is one of a small handful of things that at least keep me in the orbit of Magic. If they make an effort to get it right, though, Phyrexian might become one of my favourite tribes going forward.

Took WOTC three to five times to errata all the dinosaurs.

Eh, maybe? But at least they put some serious thought into it and got there eventually. I don't really care if it takes them multiple waves to errata all Phyrexians as long as they, you know, errata all Phyrexians. They couldn't really justify leaving some of them out on purpose.

Some of these could be problematic simply because of space. In thinking specifically about Atraxa. I doubt they could fit phyrexian in her type line in print, and they will almost certainly reprint her again some day. I guess they could have her lose the horror type, but I'm not sure.

Actually replacing the horror on phyrexians with the phyrexian type and giving horror more of its own identity might be their play here

Would be smart; horror is basically the "default" phyrexian creature.

Same with germ. Germ doesn't exist outside of phyrexia, so it has to go.

I get why people want a Phyrexian type but I personally like that cards like Blinding Souleater and the Exarch cycle are just race-less Clerics. To me, that shows compleation removing all biological definition from the creature and they are only the role they have in Phyrexia.

But, beyond those few cards, this is not a consistent pattern for Phyrexian creatures so losing that doesn't matter really.

I don't think everything with a phyrexian watermark really deserves the phyrexian type.
While they may be aligned and loyal to Phyrexia, unless they're actually compleated, it's not really their creature type, it's just their loyalty. (Blind zealot, for example)

I think another factor might be in how flexible the name is and potentially how much the mechanic on the card is tired to Phyrexia. Theoretically, if it's sufficiently flavor neutral, it probably shouldn't get its type changed for purely pragmatic reprint reasons.

My default reaction when people argue something wouldn't fit on a typeline is to point them in the direction of the German printing of Jedit Ojanen of Efrava from Planar Chaos when he still had the Lord type. If they can fit "Legendäre Kreatur - Katze, Krieger, Herrscher" on a typeline (note the additional colons that German cards have between creature types), I think Atraxa could work as a Phyrexian Angel Horror. I couldn't find an image of the German Jedit, but there are some other non-English printings with a pretty long type line out there, like this one:



I guess they could always just errata Atraxa now and worry about the type line when/if they actually reprint her. But they simply can't introduce a Phyrexian type and leave out cards that are as obviously Phyrexian as Atraxa.


Sure, there's a tiny handful of Human cards that have the Phyrexian watermark but no obvious mechanical ties to Phyrexia and that don't look obviously compleated (like Blind Zealot), but I guess those may or may not be compleated and go either way. Another argument in favour of making them Phyrexians would be the way the "new" Glistening Oil on Mirrodin worked. Because everyone and everything that is loyal to the Phyrexian side probably got that way by being exposed to the oil. Some of those individuals are more corrupted by the oil than others, with cards like Tel-Jilad Fallen or Fallen Ferromancer having Infect and showing visible signs of corruption without being compleated in the taditional sense. So I would argue the creatures with the Phyrexian watermark from Scars block could all be justified as having the Phyrexian type by saying they must have been "infected" by the oil, if not outright compleated. That sort of corruption was the whole point of the Infect and Proliferate mechanics after all.

So, looking at some of the cards in the "consider" category, I'd say we can probably rule out Traxos and possibly Rona.





Traxos doesn't make a whole lot of sense to begin with. What even is that thing? Clearly not a dragon engine, but whatever the case, it says "based on Phyrexian designs", which I take to mean it must be one of the machines Mishra built himself rather than one of Phyrexian origin. Traxos feels like another Ramos situation in that the description makes it sound like they should have appeared in The Brothers' War but clearly didn't. The less gets said about Traxos, the better.

I guess you could argue for either side when it comes to Rona, but personally I'm leaning more on the side of not giving her the Phyrexian type, unless they really want to foreshadow her turning into a Phyrexian-style monstrosity down the road. But as it stands now, she only has some artificial modifications she made to her own body, no real connection to Phyrexia proper beyond an admiration for Gix.

The biggest elephant in the room is the Father of Machines himself. Should they give Yawgmoth - in his human form - the Phyrexian type? I guess it would be kinda sad if you wanted to build a Phyrexian tribal deck and it didn't care about Yawgmoth, but then again, it shows him at a time when "Phyrexians" weren't really a thing. Our best guess might be to look at The Thran to figure out whether the incarnation of Yawgmoth that's shown in the artwork can be put on a particular point of the timeline and whether that means he has already established his connection to Phyrexia at that point. I guess the powerstone on his workbench is supposed to be the one that will be split into the Might- and Weakstone, but I can't tell from the top of my head whether that makes sense within the context of the story or where that might put him on the timeline. Then again, his mechanics are very Phyrexian, and that armour he's wearing looks special enough to be some kind of power armour like the ones that were used in the Thran-Phyrexian war later in the novel. I could probably buy Wizards handwaving the art as mostly symbolic and just giving (or not giving) him the Phyrexian type either way (it might just be 'a' powerstone, not 'the' powerstone). It could be justified if he already established his metaphysical connection to Phyrexia, which would arguably make him the first Phyrexian.

Looking at a few more cards from the "consider" category, I'd say I probably wouldn't give errata to Skittering Horror, Skittering Monstrosity, Bone Shredder, Abyssal Horror, Looming Shade and Selenia, Dark Angel. I guess most of those just stuck out to me when I went through the sets in question because they were creepy black monsters from Urza block. Abyssal Horror and Looming Shade have been reprinted with different flavour text and more generic artwork, and none of those creatures really look Phyrexian. Selenia was probably just cursed or tainted with black mana, and her body shattered into millions of shards when she died, so I'd say she was very much still a pure mana construct.

Edit: Oh, and Wall of Junk is just a rusty pile of, well, junk and probably too generic to get the Phyrexian type anyway, so I'd consider that a 'no' as well.

So, now that the Phyrexian Creature Type Errata is upon is, what do people think about it? Here's the list with every creature that now has the Phyrexian type:
https://scryfall.com/search?as=grid&ord ... Aphyrexian

Also, if you look at the list of cards with "Phyrexian" in their rules text, you get a pretty good idea about the tokens that got the type as well:
https://scryfall.com/search?as=grid&ord ... APhyrexian

Note that Living Weapon has been errata'd to make a Phyrexian Germ for instance. While I was never a fan of the idea of a Phyrexian creature type, I'm really happy that they were so thorough in applying errata. Considering how good the overall execution is, I'm on board, and I really hope we'll get some proper Phyrexian tribal somewhere down the line. Can we have a card called 'Tsabo Tavoc, Phyrexian General' that does what it says on the tin? Pretty please? And I guess that means Gix will be printed as a Phyrexian Demon once we get him, which is great because I was kinda worried he might end up being a Demon Praetor, and Praetor is one of the most redundant types ever...

I reckon most people thought my list in the OP was total overkill, but the errata we got was even more inclusive than that. I have some thoughts about individual cards, though:

- It's a bit weird to give errata to Skittering Horror but not Skittering Monstrosity. Then again, the flavourtext of the latter might suggest it was a non-Phyrexian creature that took on some Phyrexian characteristics after the Invasion or whatever.

- If Shivan Zombie is a Phyrexian, so should Metathran Zombie. Pyre Zombie is a bit odd in that it looks a lot like the other two but is shown tearing a Phyrexian apart, so I guess he isn't on their side for some reason...

- With all the other random freaks from Rath that got errata'd, Abyssal Gatekeeper should 100% be a Phyrexian

- Dark Hatchling and Spined Fluke?

- Cackling Fiend should probably get the type as well, although I can kinda see why they thought it reprintable and generic enough to not errata it

- Dragon Engine, Witch Engine, Greel, Mind Raker and Ramos, Dragon Engine are clearly Phyrexians, especially the first two.

Not going to lie, there's something dumbly hilarious about something like Cathedral Membrane being typed "Phyrexian Wall"

I also ultimately feel there's a discussion to be made over the Moggs if we're going to include Greven.

Nah, Greven at least had a Phyrexian spine and some other modifications (and maybe Glistening Oil for blood, but I don't remember that part for sure...), the moggs are just weird goblins that were bred by Volrath. They already leaned a lot more into making weird stuff from Rath Phyrexians than I expected...

They were the direct result of Phyrexian meddling via Volrath. Not just bred, but mutated to breed that way.
Actually, sitting down and thinking on it, they probably predate Volrath, and if they don't, there was definitely some mutations going on.

If they made moggs phyrexians they'd have to accept there were non- phyrexians before Mirrodin and that would erode the minds of the lore faithful for sure.

In the debate of Mogg's, weren't Rootwater Merfolk also bred to be that way?