Pointed Discussion

As intimidating as the name Phyrexian Furnace sounds, I'm relieved to note that it's nothing more than a post-modern puppet show and a giant hand. Phew.

(Aw, look at the baby Relic of Progenitus!)

Bad card, and the artwork does not belong on a mtg card, let alone anywhere near the word Phyrexian.

Seriously, unless Phyrexia is little more than a poorly funded Broadway musical, this cards art makes no sense.

My opinion on the art is that it's a shaft heading into a furnace, where flames can be seen licking up as a guy hangs on. Unfortunately, he's being crushed by a large amount of junk so he's dead anyway.

I wish this card would be reprinted, even if it sucks, just so they could add some actually interesting art. The flavor justifies the means!

Incidentally, did you know this was actually sideboarded in a pro tour deck? 1998, Nicholas Labarre's Fish deck.

I think it's a cool concept, emptying out the oldest dead bodies that are useless for reanimating because they're so decomposed. However, it is a pretty bad card and has terrible artwork (unless you're trying to win an avant-guarde art show)

WELCOME TO RAPTURE

at least it cantrips

WORST, ARTWORK, EVAR

Who likes Dada?

Am I the only one seeing that this can be used to prevent your opponent ever receiving treshold. Or continously remove the creatures the black player tries to reanimate. This doesn't need two cards in the grayard to remove the bottom one, you know.

I don't get it. can someone please tell me how this is any worse than nihil spellbomb? And if you need your graveyard too, such as for EDH, isn't this better than relic of progenitus? I just don't see why this card is rated so low

Rather weak, though graveyard hosers have improved with time.

Surreal artwork that has nothing really to do with the card name. Should be played with Statis since its artwork also has nothing to do with the card name.

I do appreciate that that the card ruling does not include the disclaimer about preserving graveyard order.

Looks like a poster for a Phyrexian jazz concert to me.
Live at the Furnace! 7:00pm, every Wednesday. Featuring artists such as Vats Domino, Gooey Armstrong, and more.

This is not a bad card... what is wrong with everyone??? Putting it in your sideboard makes sense. What if your opponent is using a re-animator deck? When they put their horrible creature into the graveyard (or whatever card they need to put into their graveyard) Phyrexian Furnace can take care of it.

Jeez.

'been playing magic since 1997

This is a great card, and a classic.

Relic of Progenitus is NOT 100% better, since it also removes your graveyard. And unlike both the relic and Scrabbling Claws, the 1st ability doesn't give your opponent a choice of which card to remove- if you are trying to remove a specific threat without wanting to blow the sac ability, you will remove it in the order it hit the graveyard rather than absolute last (by letting your opp. pick).

As for the art, you all need to get the proverbial sticks out of your collective rears. Do you really want all of the art in MTG to be the new style of soulless photoshop garbage? The old art has character, mystique, and style- things most of the art since M10 have utterly lacked.

I do really enjoy abstract art on Magic cards, and I really want to see more of it in modern sets.

But in the case of this card, the abstract art looks like it'd have much more to do with a Jazz concert than a detritus-burning and memory-incinerating diabolic machination created by an evil race of zealous life-eviscerators.

The art looks like poster for a jazz concert (microphone in the lower right corner, zany graphics meant to evoke the liveliness of jazz).

This card is awesome.

@NARFNra
This card HAS been reprinted as closely as it possibly can (I suppose they could have named it more similar to this and kept the same flavour) - scrabbling claws.

"Graveyard order matters" cards have all been abolished. Keeping track of your and your opponent's graveyards is really annoying and players constantly sift through graveyards to see what's going on. Some players even organise their graveyards because their deck is going to use specific cards from it. This is all not allowed if someone has a phyrexian furnace in their deck.

Anyway, I do not agree that this card sucks. It is graveyard hate that can cycle itself if it is not needed. If you land it early, you can often keep your opponent's graveyard completely empty with just this card.

Comparing it to relic of progenitus:
Relic
- Hits the whole graveyard.
- Cycles itself on use.
- Hurts to use it when the enemy only has a couple cards since you will need another one when they refill their graveyard.

Furnace
- Preserves your own graveyard.
- Repeatable so when the opponent has only a few cards, you can hit them without losing your rattlesnake effect.
- Only gets 1 card at a time.

They are both useful at different times.

In Tempest tournaments, this was sided in to try and deal with Survival/Nightmare decks. Unfortunatey, I believe it was too slow to hose said decks, and was easily removed by a tutored-out Cloudchaser Eagle. Still, reusable graveyard hate had to start somewhere!

This card is potentially very useful, and I like the flavor of it burning the graveyard from the bottom up, but having a card that cares about other players' graveyard order is very annoying in EDH. I'd like to run it! It's just too inconvenient to get everyone to remember to maintain their graveyard order when they are so used to it not making a difference.

Stuff like Moldgraf Monstrosity are messed with by the Furance, but mostly people are used to being able to "shuffle" their graveyard to pick creatures at random, which is entirely too troublesome when you have to be able to put them back in the right order. Sure, you can work out something with dice or whatever else, but it is still too bothersome to use when you could run Scrabbling Claws instead.