With March of the Machine, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Magic: The Gathering brings to a close a story o෴ver a decade in 💙the making. The Phyrexians have been defeated, with most dead or rendered inert thanks to New Phyrexia being sealed away from the rest of the multiverse. While the Phyrexians were almost entirely crushed, beheaded, or dropped into a vat of their own flesh-eating monsters, one has managed to sneak out of the set (mostly) intact.
At long last, the red Praetor Urabrask has his time to shine in March of the Machinﷺe. Even if we never see the Phyrexians rise to power again, I hope we see more of this freedom-loving engine boy somewhere down the line.
Whereas the other 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Phyrexian Praetors mostly fell under Elesh Norn’s command, and were committed to ღmaking all life in the universe Phyrexian, Urabrask is different. He’s by no means a moral or kind chara𝓡cter, but he felt it should be a person’s choice to become compleated (converted into a Phyrexian). He’d happily do this by making his domain a hellscape of lava and furnaces that only Phyrexians could feasibly survive in, but he wasn’t strapping people to tables and pouring oil in their mouths like Jin-Gitaxias or Vorinclex.
This emphasis on free will always set Urabrask aside from the other Praetors,꧋ meaning he’s often been absent from the story. For the longest time, his only card was Urabrask the Hidden, and it wasn’t until Streets of New Capenna’s Urabrask, Heretic Praetor that we finally got some more insight into what makes the red Phyrexian faction tick. Urabrask stood against Elesh Norn and her invasion of the Multiverse, and would go as far as to recruit 🌟non-Phyrexian Planeswalkers to help him out.
Of course, this backfired spectacularly when, in March of the Machine, we saw Elesh Norn finally capture Urabrask in the card Merciless Repurposing. Instead of just killing him like she did 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Sheoldred, though, she tore him limb from limb and left him to die. While we don’t know for sure what happened to him after this, the fact he’s th🔯e😼 only Praetor we didn’t explicitly see die in the story suggests he could be the last surviving Phyrexian in the Multiverse. His serialised alt-art certainly suggests as much, showing him with new, metallic limbs.
I hope this isn’t the last we see of Urabrask. A universe without the Phyrexians could make for an interesting development to his character – with nobody left to fight, and no way to compleat the multiverse ♑without New Phyrexia, what does he do next? Even if a redemption arc is off the table, this rebel Phyrexian has always been one of the most interesting characters in MTG, 🐼and having some time away from world-ending threats to explore his character away from the machinations of New Phyrexia could be a new take on the Phyrexians we’ve not seen before.
It feels like Wizards had only just worked out who Urabrask is. Thanks to his secretive nature we’d never seen too much of him before the current story arc, and he lacked the cohesive, easily readable design of his fellow Praetors. Everyone knows Jin-Gitaxias is a big Xenomorph-like thing, or Elesh Norn is a lady without skin. Nobody could really get a grasp on what Urabrask was until his redesign into a more canine-like creature in Phyrexia: All Will🌳 Be One, and March of the Machine gave him easily his clearest, best arဣt to da꧅te.
More importantly, Wizards finally worked out how to make a good Urabrask card. 🎀Praetors have often been considered some of the scariest, strongest creatures in the game, with cards like Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider; Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, and Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines dominating𝔉 their respective Standard formats. It’s also always been a bit of a meme that Urabrask has the worst of the bunch.
Uraཧbrask the Hidden was a good haste-enabler, while also preventing your opponents from putting up useful chump blockers, but it was hardly the borderline broken of contemporaries like Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite or Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger. Heretic Praetor was even worse, costing five mana for some impulsive draw.
The Urabrask in March of the Machine is different, though. This thing is an absolute house, and one of the best cards in the entire set. It’s a huge payoff for spell༺slinging decks by giving you mana whenever you cast an instant or sorcery, before transforming into a Saga that could easily combo off into game-winning turns by letting you cast spells right out of any player’s grave🦩yard. In a set that features all five Praetors, Urabrask finally coming out on top as the one to rip packs for is a big win.
There’s no way MTG is done with Urabrask. The Phyrexians may be defeated, and we may be entering a new era with new villains threatening the multiverse, but he’s still scampering a🃏round somewhere. After so much time left out of the Phyrexian limelight, I hope he gets to shine long after we’ve moved on from Elesh Norn.