Looking Back at Modern Horizons
Whenever new Magic cards are released, which is about once every other week in 2021, nothing brings players more joy than engaging in the time-honored tradition of wildly misevaluating cards. This tradition brought us such highlights as $50 Narset Transcendent, $2 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy, and people leaving their Tarmogoyf s in bulk piles at prereleases.
But how often do we look back at our evaluations and try to learn from? Join in making fun of my stupidity as I look back at my original Modern Horizons prediction article, “Top 8 Cards in Modern Horizons.”
- Not Counterspell
Originally, I was despondent over the lack of Counterspell's inclusion in Modern Horizons. When evaluating what are now arguably the two best counterspells in Modern, I wrote:
“Both these cards are fine, but overhyped and rather unexciting. Modern is not broken enough on a noncreature-based axis to merit Force of Negation seeing much play, and Charm is awkward to cast and clunky. They'll likely both see limited play.)”
Today, these cards are staples of most Blue control decks. Where did I go wrong?
First, my bar for Force of Negation was too high. Because Modern was not “broken” on a noncreature-based axis, I assumed that the card disadvantage would make it unplayable. This isn't a great assumption given the prevalence of Force of Will in Legacy. While Legacy does have some busted combo decks, and the card is stronger than Force of Negation, Force of Will demonstrates that there are plentiful instances in which countering a spell for free is worth two cards. The other element that I failed to account for is Force of Negation's cheap mana cost, only one more than Negate. I should have evaluated it as a modal card, essentially a three-mana Negate (on which the exile is relevant) with another, free mode.
Archmage's Charm is a bit more interesting. Honestly, it's still somewhat surprising just how prevalent this card is in Blue decks, as UUU is a real hurdle. I attribute this to a couple things. First, Arcum's Astrolabe allowed everyone to play this card easily, which allowed people to see just how powerful it was. Second, post Astrolabe-ban, players got creative to build manabased that could support this by leaning on Filter Lands like Sunken Ruins and the newly printed Ikoria Triomes, which were a huge boon to three-color decks that didn't exist when I was evaluating Charm. Finally, the rise of Death's Shadow and Red Prowess decks made the third mode of Charm incredibly relevant. Originally, I had evaluated the card as an instant-speed Divination/Cancel split card (and undervalued even that), when in actuality, the third mode adds enormous power to the card.
In both cases, I fell into a common trap of evaluating cards: underestimating flexibility. I decided that while both cards were highly flexible and allowed choices, that flexibility wasn't enough of a boon to make up for the downsides of FoN's card disadvantage and Archmage's Charm casting cost.
My cheeky title clearly indicated that I had high hopes for Echo of Eons. At the time, Narset, Parter of Veils was dominating Standard and seeing some play in Modern as well, so it felt natural to combine the two. My argument was that putting cards into the graveyard was easy (Faithless Looting was three months away from its banning), and Narset, Parter of Veils allowed a common, powerful way to break the symmetry.
We never really got to play Echo with Looting, as Hogaak destroyed Modern in those three pre-ban months. Even if we had, I'm skeptical it would've done much. I considered Narset to be a good card, and it was seeing play in Modern at the time. However, what I did not foresee was the rise of aggressive Red Prowess decks alongside the printing of Mystical Dispute in Throne of Eldraine. These two factors made a three-mana Blue planeswalker that doesn't protect itself in any way entirely unplayable in the format. To play it just to break Echo of Eons is a classic case of playing bad cards to make mediocre cards better, though I had overestimated Narset, Parter of Veils as a good card in the pre-Prowess, pre-Dispute metagame.
I got one right! Sort of. Wrenn and Six, like the Blue counterspells, was a card that I underestimated. I wrote:
“There may be a deck that is really happy to have this card, but I'm not sure it exists yet. If it does, it might be Loamy.”
When evaluating what is now one of the best (if not the best) planeswalkers in Modern, I tunnel-visioned on the +1 returning lands, and drew the conclusion that, in order for Wrenn to be good, we would want a deck that cares about lands. This brought me to Loam-style decks, which care about lands as their primary avenue to victory. Idiotically, I did not consider that literally every deck in Modern would happily take a free fetchland every turn. What I didn't see is that Wrenn doesn't need a specific shell to be good; she's a powerful card advantage engine that dodges Lightning Bolt, protects herself from early threats, and is a must-answer threat.
This was a card that I saw as good, but not great. At least for me, I had to play with the card before I truly understood just how good Wrenn and Six was.
- Snow Cards
What a weird mixed bag this was. In the #5 slot for my evaluation, I included a card that would get banned for breaking Modern and letting every deck play every color, a couple of powerful role players, and a couple of cards that are absolute garbage.
As was the case with Wrenn and Six, I fixated too heavily on ideas about synergy. If Snow cards were to be good, surely you'd be playing them in a deck with a lot of them! In fact, the Snow-Covered lands were more than enough to make Ice-Fang Coatl, Dead of Winter, and On Thin Ice playable, as the lands are close to free. Instead of evaluating these cards in “snow decks,” I should've evaluated these cards in decks that just run Snow lands. In that case, it becomes quickly apparent that Marit Lage's Slumber and Glacial Revelation are unplayable, and the others are just niche.
Astrolabe I severely underestimated. Sure, it fixes. Sure, it cantrips. Sure, it's an artifact that sits around afterward. And yes, it's a Snow permanent. But these are all such tiny advantages by themselves – the card doesn't really do anything. Taken together, of course, it means that this is a free way to have perfect mana every game, which means Modern decks could just play absolutely absurd manabases. Decks with mostly Snow-Covered Islands could easily Escape Uro and cast Supreme Verdict.
The takeaway from my mis-evaluation here was focusing too hard on synergy. I needed to consider the cards by themselves with Snow lands, and not in dedicated Snow decks, which lack a critical mass of Snow to be viable.
In my evaluation for Hogaak and Altar, I explicitly identify Bridgevine briefly approached a ban-worthy deck, until the format responded accordingly with people playing more Surgical Extractions, a trend that Arclight Phoenix's dominance cemented. I then outline the exact combo that Hogaak could use to easily mill out opponents. After doing all this, I wrote:
“I love the design of Hogaak, and Modern Horizons is uniquely suited to blend mechanics like Convoke and Delve to create a unique card with a strange play pattern. If Hogaak/Altar proves viable, we could see the emergence of a Bridgevine deck that is a combo deck first and a Vengevine deck second.”
How was my reasoning so good, but my assessment still so far beneath the power level of the eventual deck?
I made two mistakes. First, I assumed that the hate for Hogaak would be enough to keep it in check. In this case, I underestimated both the speed and consistency of the deck. I assumed that Surgical Extraction would be enough, and Rest in Peace would be another great solution. I never imagined that Hogaak mirrors would become so common that matchups were about who had more Leylines of the Void, and then who had more Forces of Vigor.
Second, and the reason that the hate wasn't good enough, was that I focused too hard on the combo element of the deck. Combo or not, 8/8's on Turn 2 are pretty good by themselves, especially if they're bringing back Vengevines and making Zombies. After all, putting enormous amounts of power onto the board very quickly via cheating on mana was the major issue with the Eye of Ugin Eldrazi decks.
Fundamentally, Hogaak provided the latest in a long line of examples of why cheating on mana is dangerous. While I recognized that the card had the potential to be powerful, I simply failed to recognize how fast and resilient the Hogaak shell would end up being.
This was an interesting pick that was built on just how easy Faithless Looting made it to put stuff into graveyards. It allows a player to cheat on mana, grind, and get more consistent combos (Vizier/Druid was a popular deck at the time). Cycling stapled on is obviously a great ability for a conditional card like this to have.
In the years since, Unearth has gone in and out of popularity. At first, as I predicted, it was most popular in Faithless Looting decks, especially those that took advantage of Lightning Skelemental. After Faithless Looting was banned and Throne of Eldraine was printed, the format was about all the wrong things for Unearth to shine. Field of the Dead, Uro, and Oko Whirza didn't lend themselves to making Unearth good. In the time since, we've seen a bit of an uptick in Unearth in aggressive Lurrus decks.
I'm relatively happy with how I evaluated this card, though I probably ranked it a bit too highly.
- Canopy Lands
While I also ranked these too highly on my list, as there were plenty of other cards that had larger impacts on the format, I was pretty spot-on in my evaluation. I correctly identified the red lands as being the best for Burn and Prowess, and was lower on the others. If I had done a better job identifying Wrenn's power and popularity, my assessment of Nurturing Peatland might have gone up. Admittedly, this was a bit of a freebee; Horizon Canopy had shown us exactly what types of decks want the card and exactly how good it was, so it wasn't much of a stretch to generalize to the rest of the cycle.
Though I had no particular attachment to artifact strategies when MH1 was released, Urza ended up being my favorite card from Modern Horizons, and the one that I have cast the most. In my original article, I substantially overestimated
While some would argue that I correctly identified Urza as broken, I believe that the post-Hogaak dominance of the Urza deck did not come from its namesake card. Rather, it came from Arcum's Astrolabe and Oko, Thief of Crowns. I was crushed when Wizards banned Mox Opal, as it rendered Urza (and most other artifact decks) unplayable. With Opal, I believe Urza would be a player in Modern, but by no means a dominant force. #UnbanOpal
What are the key takeaways from looking back at these evaluations from two years ago?
The first is that I need to be careful when thinking about synergy. I underestimated Wrenn and Astrolabe because I assumed they required synergy to be good, when in fact they were both just busted. I overestimated Echo of Eons and some of the Snow cards for the same reason.
Second, flexibility is powerful. Both counterspells were lower than they should've been because I put too much stock in their costs and not enough in their benefits.
Finally, metagame matters. This one is obvious and impossible to predict, but when MH1 was printed, Modern was a largely non-rotating format. The predictions I made were not helped by Wizards deciding to print Core Set 2020 (Field of the Dead, Veil of Summer), Throne of Eldraine (about half the set), Theros: Beyond Death (Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath), and Ikoria (Companions). In the span of two years, Wizards changed the Modern format more than it had changed since its birth in 2011. Thus, many of my predictions were rendered moot because Modern broke over and over again, and if you weren't doing The Broken Thing, you were losing.
Today, my Top 8 unbanned cards from Modern Horizon, along with a quick note on why I missed the ones I missed, would be:
Check back in a couple weeks when I mis-evaluate the Top 8 cards from Modern Horizons 2!
Ryan Normandin is a grinder from Boston who has lost at the Pro Tour, in GP & SCG Top 8's, and to 7-year-olds at FNM. Despite being described as "not funny" by his best friend and "the worst Magic player ever" by Twitch chat, he cheerfully decided to blend his lack of talents together to write funny articles about Magic.
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