We know it’s been a while but we’re back, with a fairly sizeable update this time around. Modern Horizons 3 took quite some time to chew and digest so we apologize for the delay.
White
Adds
Dog Umbra
is another one in the list of “wow, Pacifism
is outdated” cards for white. We do want to monitor what the experience of players is. Whether this is mostly just a Pacifism with flash or winds up saving your creatures more often will factor into how we view this card in the future.
Aerie Auxiliary
besides being a real tongue twister is just a generally great rate for the amount of body it comes with.
Mandibular Kite
is another card in the series of cards that confirm living weapon is a silly keyword. This one instead of past ones also adds some very useful evasion on. While that 4 mana equip cost might seem high, we’re pretty sure that this is gonna contribute at least a few games in the win column.
Thraben Charm
is exactly what you want to see in a charm. The first mode will more than likely be a Murder
a good amount of the time, tacking on the ability to deal with a niche card type as well as some incidental graveyard hate is all great.
Cuts
Realmbreaker's Grasp
and Cooped Up
are both getting cut for the two pieces of removal we’re bringing in as they were deemed the least unique/useful.
From feedback we’ve gotten, Recommission
has not been performing as well as some hoped. It’s getting pulled as a result of this.
Seraph of Dawn
is an older inclusion that isn’t quite as good as it used to be, but on top of that pretty much makes any 3 power or less creature a fraught proposition.
Blue
Adds
Serum Visionary
continues to demonstrate that we keep getting better and better Phyrexian Rager variants printed.
Deranged Assistant
is the first move into introducing ramp back into Simic’s tool kit. In addition this plays into various cards that want to either have other cards in the graveyard or themselve be put into the yard.
Cuts
Faerie Duelist
has been mostly deeply forgettable, not serving its role as well as we had hoped, and also is running counter to our hopes for more proactive gameplay.
Mnemonic Wall
is getting the cut here as well since we’ve been hearing rumblings in the discord that folks feel the flicker deck is maybe getting a bit too good to be enjoyable. We’ll continue to monitor the state of the deck and your feedback, so make sure you let us know how you continue to feel about the deck.
Black
Adds
Wither and Bloom
is another in the long line of Last Gasp
with upsides, We’re excited to see how a version that helps buff creatures later plays out.
Retrofitted Transmogrant
is a Mons's Goblin Raiders
that then when it dies draws you a Hill Giant
which when it dies, draws a Hill Giant, which, you get the point.
Accursed Marauder
is getting a test to see if going down to 2 mana is what the Fleshbag Marauder
effect needs to really sing in our limited environment
Scurrilous Sentry
should surprise no one as at worst this thing is a flow of looking at more cards and best case it keeps growing to keep the pressure up. We’re hoping Wizards continues to view the “Titan Style” triggers as something to help buff common power levels.
Cuts
Persistent Specimen
is mostly just worse than transmogrant and the committee didn’t feel we needed 2 of that effect.
Ruthless Ripper
trades with a lot of the cube for 1 mana, mostly just punishing attacking into it.
Drown in Sorrow
despite getting in fairly recently is getting the axe here as we feel it’s doing far more to hinder aggressive leaning decks from doing what they want to than we’d like, being only 2 mana.
Mold Folk
has just not performed as well as expected and is getting cut as it’s always a slightly below rate creature that requires spare material to be used to keep it even close to on curve.
Red
Adds
Molten Gatekeeper
Is another of an effect we liked to help keep pushing through damage. We decided that this effect was good enough the first time that we’d like a second one for now.
Galvanic Discharge
is being added in not to indicate a future pivot into heavy use of the energy mechanic, but because it’s simply a very efficient removal spell. While it doesn’t go face, it’s still a good rate for this sort of spell when we played last gasp for ages.
Cuts
Fiery Cannonade
similar to Drown in Sorrow above, is also a bit more efficiently costed than we’d like for even a soft board wipe.
Voldaren Epicure
has been fine but it’s being pulled as we’re already looking to other options for a 1 drop that allows some level of card velocity.
Green
With this update we’re hoping to address some of the issues that folks have raised with green not feeling like a good color to draft with more cards that we hope to give some additional resiliency to the color.
Adds
Evolution Witness
was one of the more popular cards we’ve seen in a while, the initial thread in the discord was hugely in favor of it and the NPS score for it bore that out. While most times this will trigger once, please be sure to let us know when you manage to get at least 2 or 3 things back.
Nyxborn Hydra
is both a good card and fits the theme for Selesnya.
Colossal Dreadmask
means that every single creature on your board from the point it hits suddenly becomes a potentially game ending evasive threat, sans artifact removal, this should end games pretty fast.
Eldrazi Repurposer
is coming in as a pretty reasonable 3 drop with a pile of bodies coming along on both entry and departure.
Basking Broodscale
is similar to Evolution Witness a neat little counters matter card that is just fine on rate and it you manage to start getting more counters on it can provide a bit of additional ramp or bodies to have hang around.
Malevolent Rumble
is a bit slower and more restricted Impulse
but it should hopefully get the job done.
Horrific Assault
finally lets us have the Bite/Punch/whatever you want to call it effect at 1 mana, it’s going in as a good piece of green removal.
Longstalk Brawl
is an interesting take on the classic 1 mana fight spell in that it has a decent probability of winning the fight and leaving your opponent with a 1/1. With the sizes of creatures in our format being relatively compact, giving +1/+1 lets this emulate a bite more than a fight.
Utopia Sprawl
along with it’s best friend Arbor Elf
make for a really solid and aggressive amount of ramp possible in the early game. We’re testing this one out for the time being.
Cuts
Gnoll Hunter
was an experimental inclusion that seems to have failed the experiment.
Primal Huntbeast
at this point feels just very clunky, we have left its sibling in the cube (Jade Guardian
) for the counters synergies, just to see how things shake out.
Jungleborn Pioneer
is a relic of when 3s in green were far worse.
Deepwood Denizen
is a counters card that hopefully the counters deck shouldn’t need. While it’s a neat little draw engine, we feel like the counters deck is doing best when it’s just attacking.
Clear Shot
is rough at 3 mana and while we got a nice new version of it with silly art, it just isn’t that good.
Titanic Brawl
is not great, it relates to one of green’s themes, but it was always just an ok addition, not an actual payoff.
Voracious Typhon
is going out as an uninteresting variant on the threat that has multiple angles of use.
Prizefight
is another example of a fight card we just felt wasn’t feeling as good as it once did.
Fyndhorn Elves
is leaving so our one drops aren’t too crowded with functionally identical cards.
Edge of Autumn
is a fun little riff on Rampant Growth
but we’re adding in other ramp and we figured this was the one that would be missed the least.
Gold
The big structural update for this update is going to be that we’re swapping from 4 “gold” slots to what we’re describing as 3 “True Gold” and 1 “Not-gold”. You might have questions as to what exactly means, so here’s the breakdown.
“True Gold” cards are cards that the committee has deemed would be either unplayable or at least much worse without access to all colors in their color identity. We include anything that requires 2 colors to cast in this definition, as well as cards that are one color but have an additional cost such as flashback or kicker where we feel that the base mode is not good enough on its own.
“Not-Gold” cards are best exemplified by hybrid cards, though this is not a requisite. They are cards where you would be content playing them in either of their colors, but are even more useful if you’re in both colors. This could include Split cards or some new, unforeseen mechanic that satisfies this idea.
WU – Add Judge’s Familiar, cut Lawmage’s Binding
Judge's Familiar
never felt perfect for the things Azorius was trying to do, but fit perfectly as either a white or blue card, so it made perfect sense for it to be here. We also managed to get in another instant speed effect like binding in the form of dog umbra, so it felt like the least interesting one left.
UB – Dimir Guildmage takes up a hybrid Slot now
BR – Add Cindering Cutthroat, Cut Terminate
Cindering Cutthroat
helps put a solid threat into both black and red, a welcome addition to both colors. Terminate
on the other hand, while A-plus removal is currently taking up a far more limited slot than some of its equivalents
RG – BTE takes up a Hybrid slot Now, Add Writhing Chrysalis, cut Colossal Might
BTE has been swapped into the newly created slot. We’re adding in Writhing Chrysalis
as it was an absolutely absurd common in its own limited format and while we have fewer eldrazi tokens running around, it should still prove to be a solid threat.
GW – Add Safehold Elite, add Watchdog, cut Qasali Pridemage, Travel preparations
Safehold Elite
swings back in, while not the craziest include, it does interact somewhat with the selesnya theme in being able to be reset.
We’ve also decided to bring in Faithful Watchdog
as it’s not only a great rate but is a nice card for the counters deck as it’s just generally a solid body that gets to do the color pair’s main thing.
Coming out are Qasali Pridemage
as well as Travel Preparations
. While the first might be somewhat obvious for not fitting directly into the theme, travel preparations is one we feel will take some explaining, especially with Armadillo Cloak
remaining in. The committee decided that generally Armadillo Cloak is more likely going to lead to winning games, even if it’s not strictly following the theme.
BW – Add Gift of Orzhova, cut Unmake
We did talk about the idea of if Unmake
was the cut here, but ultimately decided since it’s functionally more of a True Gold card at the end of the day, we cut it and added in Gift of Orzhova
as a replacement taking up the Not-gold slot.
UR – Add Tempest Angler, cut Fire/Ice
Potentially a controversial swap, we felt that in order to handle this change in a way that felt balanced, we felt that Fire // Ice was closer to a Not-Gold that True Gold, and wanted to make space for Tempest Angler
BG – Desecrator Hag takes up a Hybrid slot Now
RW – Dog Walker takes up a Hybrid slot Now
GU – Add Quandrix Pledgemage, cut Temporal Spring
Quandrix Pledgemage
sees a return here, and we’ve heard your opinions, Temporal Spring
is out of here.
Colorless
You may have noticed that there’s some oddness going on with the colorless and land modifications, we decided that we’re going slightly up on our land count and that meant that something had to go.
Cuts
Thundering Tanadon
is a weird outlier in that we had 6 technically colorless cards and at some point along the way we wound up with 2 greenish ones, and Tanadon lost against Mutagenic.
Star Compass
is a fine mana rock but not one that we were thrilled to have just hanging around this long.
Sylvok Lifestaff
is not helping any deck trying to be more proactive in its gameplan, and as part of our continued effort to make aggressive decks better, the equipment that keeps casting healing salve over and over isn’t helping
Skyscanner
is one that some members really wanted in as a “glue” to fix up drafts but frankly average card quality as well as abundance of fixing means that having something like it has become less and less necessary.
Lands
Adds
Hidden Grotto
We liked this enough when it had a Desert typeline, why not have 2?
The Landscapes
We’re adding the 10 landscapes, they’re all very strong options, coming in untapped, getting a basic when the fixing is more important than the mana, and sometimes you might even have the chance to cycle one, but we’re not gonna hold our breaths on that one.
Cuts
The CLB gates
The gates are good, don’t get us wrong, but we don’t need more fixing with the landscapes coming in. That and the fact these need to be manually tracked goes a bit against the general idea of keeping things as simple as possible when we can.
Ash Barrens
and Shire Terrace
also are both exiting as more Evolving Wilds adjacent lands.