Following years of build up, Wizards decided to cap off the Phyrexia story arc in glorious fashion. March of the Machine brought with it a revisitation to virtually every single plane ever visited throughout the game's long history - including several we'd only seen small glimpses of in the past. This mighty set provided such an unbelievably epic finish that wowed players everywhere, regardless of how abrupt the story itself may have wrapped.

With such an epic set, there's sure to be a ton of great mythics to talk about. As usually, we're going to go through and rate all of them. With 20 sweet designs, let's not waste time and get straight to it!

• 20. Borborygmos and Fblthp
• 19. Invasion of Ravnica // Guildpact Paragon
• 18. Invasion of Innistrad // Deluge of the Dead
• 17. Kroxa and Kunoros
• 16. Invasion of Shandalar // Leyline Surge
• 15. Zimone and Dina
• 14. Invasion of Tarkir // Defiant Thundermaw
• 13. Elesh Norn // The Argent Etchings
• 12. Zurgo and Ojutai
• 11. Jin-Gitaxias // The Great Synthesis

10. Invasion of New Phyrexia // Teferi Akosa of Zhalfir

Invasion of New Phyrexia really represents all the cool things that happened with this set. Not only was it a powerful battle - the set's new card type - but it represented a critical story moment as well in the phasing in of Zhalfir. Did the card make a big splash on Constructed? No. It's not even a great Commander card. It was, however, a huge card for Limited and had a certain wow factor that made it stand much higher among the set's mythics than it otherwise might've.

9. Sheoldred // The True Scriptures

When it comes to the five praetors in this set, I'm honestly kind of going mostly on vibes (with one exception). The big reason for this is that it's weirdly difficult to search for their historic play in competitive Magic thanks to their unusual names. Some sites don't like searching up double-sided cards and just typing in their standalone front-side names brings up anything with the character's name in it, which causes issues. For this reason, I tend to lean a little more toward application in other spaces like Limited and Commander.

This iteration of Sheoldred saw some modest play thanks to being a strong edict effect that only impacts your opponents and not your creatures unlike Plaguecrafter or Fleshbag Marauder. While naturally not as strong as her prior incarnations, this ability tacked onto a big threat made for a daunting creature to fight back against. Better still, if you could flip her over, each of her abilities were fairly backbreaking and made for a devastating move, though it often required a decent amount of setup in many games.

8. Wrenn and Realmbreaker

Wrenn and Realmbreaker represents another major story moment where the planeswalker Wrenn merges with Realmbreaker to bring an end to the Phyrexian invasion. Her card represented a really cool tool for Commander decks as a means to fix mana, self-mill, and re-play stuff from the graveyard. This wasn't good enough to show up in Constructed play and remains ho-hum in Limited, but when she's good, she's really good.

7. Urabrask // The Great Work

Players got really excited when Urabrask got previewed. Both of the Red praetor's previous versions were ridiculed as being the worst of their cycles by a substantial margin. That wasn't the case here. Many people expected this Urabrask to be good enough to see Constructed play. That may not have happened much ultimately, but it still proved to be a great design that was perfect for casual play, as it boasts the highest EDHREC ranking of all this set's mythics.

6. Sword of Once and Future

After many years of speculation and anticipation, Wizards finally printed the last two color Sword of X and Y in this set. It proved a perfect spot for the card, though the result was far from the lofty heights of the mega cycle, it still proved quite potent in the right scenario. This Standard era saw decks like Dimir Midrange and Esper Midrange become big players, leading the Sword to be a sweet inclusion for certain decks to get a leg up on the competition. It may have just been a niche sideboard option most of the time, but it was still sweet to see that these classic artifacts could still pack one hell of a punch.

5. Vorinclex // The Grand Evolution

Strangely enough, Vorinclex is the one in this cycle that ended up being the best of the praetors. This may not be too surprising as from a Commander standpoint, Vorinclex's previous iterations were arguably the best for that format. This time around, though, Vorinclex also showed up a decent amount in Standard as well. As a large legendary creature, it served as a perfect top end for the Slogurk decks of the era, acting as a huge threat and a powerful option to flip into. This also makes it great in Commander and Cube as well, ensuring that it has a long trail long after Slogurk came and went.

4. Monastery Mentor

It's admittedly a bit weird to put Monastery Mentor so high on this list. It was met with somewhat ho-hum fanfare when it re-released and players weren't exactly screaming for a reprint or anything. What pushes this one up so high is a combination of two factors.

First, most of the cards before this are surprisingly a bit on the underwhelming side. Second, and more importantly, Mentor enabled some interesting self-mill spell-based decks using cards like Ledger Shredder, Picklock Prankster, Recommission, and Haughty Djinn. It wasn't a major player most of the time, but was solid enough of a deck to put this a bit higher than the rest - especially given its historic pedigree.

3. Archangel Elspeth

Elspeth returning to the battlefield as not only an angel but an archangel was a stunning if somewhat unsurprising turn of events that became a major moment for the story. As a result, Wizards made her have a pretty great card too. The card itself made for an absolute house in Limited gameplay. Compared to most of the cards in this set, she also had quite a decent Constructed showing as well, thanks to being a mainstay of Mono-White Token Control decks and the occasional Azorius Control list.

2. Chandra, Hope's Beacon

Chandra became one of the best roleplayers in Constructed from this set despite having a fairly niche role. During her time in Standard, she showed up in small numbers in a variety of different decks, owing to her ability to copy critical spells. This led to her being quite useful in Pioneer as well, where one or two copies became the standard for Lotus Field combo decks as a way to ensure that players could get the amount of mana they needed by copying an untap spell. This isn't even touching on her utility in formats like Commander and Limited, making for a decent all-around card, even if her overall applications weren't as dominant as other sets' top mythics.

1. Thalia and the Gitrog Monster

I debated what I should put at number one for quite a bit. None of the cards on this list felt like top-level Constructed or Commander cards in the way most of my mythic rankings end. Chandra and Elspeth both saw quite a bit more play in Constructed, but they usually felt much more like roleplayers than major cards. I like Thalia and the Gitrog Monster as a top choice thanks to its resonance. It encapsulates the team up legends that form a large part of the set's identity and remains a popular commander to this day. Sometimes it's worth showing that it's not always competitive Magic that ends up defining what makes a set awesome, and Thalia and the Gitrog Monster is a great showcase for a set like this.

Paige Smith

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