One Year Later: Revisiting Modern Horizons 2
Whenever new Magic cards are released, which is about once every other week in 2022, nothing brings players more joy than engaging in the time-honored tradition of wildly misevaluating cards. This tradition has recently brought us such highlights as $0.50 Fable of the Mirror-Breaker and Unlicensed Hearse, alongside $35 Ob Nixilis, the Adversary.
Today, I’ll look back at the predictions I made a little over one year ago when I rated my Top 8 Cards from Modern Horizons II.
In the original article, I wrote the following:
“Modern Horizons II may be one of the most challenging sets ever to write a “top 8 cards” article for. Taken together, the enormous amount of hate for current archetypes, toys for existing decks, and powerful tools for strategies that have long been lost to Modern's top tiers mean that Modern will likely look very different from today.”
In this, I was correct. The degree to which MH2 “rotated” the format was unprecedented in Modern’s history. As such, creating a Top 8 list of MH2 cards meant that, rather than rank the cards in the current Modern format, I needed to try to predict what Modern would become, and then rank accordingly. Let’s see how I did!
Today, Ignoble Hierarch sees play in a single major Modern archetype (Yawgmoth) in addition to a couple of fringe strategies (Ponza). Looking back, my reasoning for Ignoble Hierarch being powerful is not very compelling. It mostly boils down to: “Well, Noble Hierarch has been good, so this probably will be too.”
This failed to predict Modern’s shift away from the appeal of traditional mana dorks to power out things like Thought-Knot Seer or Reality Smasher. Why bother speeding out three- and four-drops when the power level of the one- and two-drops themselves have increased so dramatically (Ragavan, DRC, Ledger Shredder)? Or when decks are going so over the top that ramping out a fast three- or four-drop is kind of embarrassing? Why not just Solitude/Ephemerate and get a five-mana creature for one-mana, and take two of your opponent’s creatures along with it?
Ignoble Hierarch was a very safe bet for a pick for a playable card. Even if it did see play, it would never become super-dominant, and someone somewhere was likely to play it. Today, this card would not make too many Top 8 lists, but I don’t feel awful about this pick in hindsight.
Grist is another prediction that I felt good about at the time, and continue to feel good about today. Though it sees play only in Yawgmoth and here and there in Jund, it is the card that I would argue is most responsible for pushing Yawgmoth into the high tiers of Modern playability. Without Grist, the Yawgmoth deck is far more one-dimensional; it tries to do the Yawgmoth thing, and if it fails, it tries to beat down with 2/1’s. Grist changed all that, allowing the Yawgmoth deck to grind in a way it had been unable to previously, generating free sacrifice fodder, threatening a non-combat kill, and dealing with troublesome fliers like Murktide Regent that can’t be chump-blocked.
I like Grist at #7 on this list; it was always going to be more on the niche side due to being two colors, but it's absurd power level, flexibility, and ability to be cheated into play makes it a serious consideration for any deck that is playing BG.
This card was too low on my list. In my original article, I write:
“On the unfair front, Shardless Agent can be slotted into Living End or splashed into an Electrodominance / As Foretold shell. It also conveniently Cascades into both Sword of the Meek and Thopter Foundry, the two combo pieces included alongside Urza, Lord High Artificer where being an Artifact Creature certainly doesn't hurt.”
You’ll note that I spent half the statement above (and most of the remaining discussion) on the fair applications of Shardless Agent, of which it has seen close to zero. I mention Living End in the same breath as Electrodominance/As Foretold, which is a testament to just how much of a joke Living End was back in the pre-MH2 times. Back then, Living End was Jund-colored, and relied on Demonic Dread (which didn’t always have a target) and Violent Outburst (the good one) alongside a bunch of Cyclers to make a big board and kill. Its ability to interact was so poor that it relied on mainboard Fulminator Mages to slow opponents down and Beast Within to beat things like Rest in Peace, Teferi, Time Raveler, or Chalice of the Void.
When I evaluated Shardless Agent, I wasn’t thinking enough about what the move toward Temur would do for Living End’s (or any other Cascade deck, for that matter) ability to interact. Force of Negation, of course, was the biggest addition to the deck that Shardless Agent enabled them to play. Additionally, the Blue Cyclers were just better. Hexproof threats like Striped Riverwinder alongside huge beaters in the form of Waker of Waves far outscaled Fulminator Mage and Deadshot Minotaur.
This card should’ve been higher on my list, and it’s valuable to note that the reason I missed it was because I failed to account for how the Cascade shells would benefit from swapping Black for Blue. Shardless Agent is definitely a better Demonic Dread in a vacuum, but format-changing when you consider the surrounding shell.
I’m relatively pleased with the presence of Esper Sentinel as #5 on my list. I correctly noted its utility as an artifact creature, and predicted that Affinity decks would want this. The rate lined up exceedingly well against the popular removal in the format at the time (Push, Bolt, Path lol).
I also write that “it’s a highly efficient Human that furthers the Humans gameplan of restricting the opponent’s actions while exerting pressure.” While Humans has long since been a dead Modern deck, this is exactly the role that it serves in Wx Hammer decks. It turns on Puresteel Paladin’s Metalcraft, and it allows for stronger board development due to opponent’s delaying their interaction. If they do interact, then you get card advantage, which is also great. Overall, I’m pleased with how I evaluated this one.
4. Counterspell
This is the last prediction from my list that I was pleased with. In my original article, I wrote:
“Counterspell is a strong, appropriate answer to a format that revolves around a wide variety of cheap threats.”
And it is! Counterspell is the answer that the format needed, showing up in UR Murktide in a tempo role, UW Control in a control role, and 4C Omnath in a midrange/control role as a way to try to get some points back against the combo decks. It is powerful, prevalent in the top tier of Modern, and is a key role-player that failed to live up to the doomsayers claiming it would be “too good.”
3. Merfolk
Here, we reach the most embarrassing of my predictions. Apparently, the third best thing in MH2 was… the Merfolk?
In my original article, I argue that any one of these cards would be insufficient to put Merfolk back on the map, but taken as a package, they are able to push the pressure + disruption of the fish into playability alongside Counterspell. I also point to Svyelun of Sea and Sky as the most impressive of the bunch.
So what happened? Why did I get this so wrong? My unfamiliarity with the Merfolk archetype led me to assume that the one-mana Merfolk were much better than they actually are. Rishadan Dockhand is actually unplayable in the deck, particularly given the archetype’s desire to hold up mana to flash in threats or counter spells. Tide Shaper is playable, but the “value added over replacement” of the card is just not that high. It’s better than whatever Merfolk played before, sure, but not that much better. This leaves Svyelun as the only true upgrade to the deck. And while I maintain that the Merfolk God is an absolute house, raising the power level of the Merfolk deck, it doesn’t actually shore up any of the weaknesses of the deck.
This prediction doesn’t feel as bad as the Merfolk, but it’s still pretty bad. In contrast to my predictions around Modern Horizons 1, where I tended to underrate flexibility, here I overrated it. In my original article, I note that Recruiter can be used fairly (in Humans), unfairly (Felidar Guardian 🡪 Blink 🡪 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker), or somewhere in between (in Yawgmoth).
The problem, of course, is that cards like Archmage’s Charm are good because any deck that plays it will be happy to have any of the three modes, so that flexibility adds a lot. Recruiter, on the other hand, only ever does one thing in the deck that it’s in, and it feels pretty bad doing it. In Humans, a three-mana 1/1 is just not good enough for an aggressively slanted disruptive deck. Yawgmoth already has a high degree of redundancy with cards that are actually good (Chord of Calling, Eldritch Evolution), and thinking that a player will be able to untap with Guardian to go off with Kiki-Jiki is optimistic, to say the least. When a card could fit into any archetype, but it’s bad in all of them, that card’s not flexible, it’s just bad.
1. Thought Monitor/Power Depot
Finally, my embarrassing pick for the best cards from MH2: Thought Monitor and Power Depot. On the one hand, I was correct to predict that Thought Monitor would bring back Affinity, even if the UW Affinity decks of today look much different from the aggro/combo Affinity decks of 2015. On the other hand, they’re just not very good.
So why did I mess up so badly here? With Mox Opal being banned, I believed that Wizards would use MH2 to push a new Artifact-based archetype into Modern playability. It may be time to recognize that this is wishful thinking: I had Urza, Lord High Artificer ranked as my #1 card from MH1, and in the discussion of Shardless Agent, I somehow brought up Thopter-Sword combo. I really want artifacts to be playable again in Modern, and this biased me toward ranking Thought Monitor highly. In the future, this is a bias I need to be more cognizant of.
Honorable Mentions
Though I was teased a bit for writing a Top 8 article followed by a long list of additional cards I liked, I’m pleased that I did it, as I correctly recognized that MH2 was going to upend the entire format, and a larger number of cards than usual would find their way into playability.
Archon of Cruelty/Unmarked Grave/Persist: The sorceries have seen some fringe play, but Archon of Cruelty is proving to be the real winner here. I correctly identified that there was too much graveyard hate for Unmarked Grave or Persist to ever be dominant, but Indomitable Creativity and Transmogrify, when used with Hard Evidence and the new Treasure-makers, provide a more hate-proofed route to fetching up fast Archons.
Dauthi Voidwalker/Sanctifier En-Vec: I correctly identified these as being powerful sideboard cards, though Voidwalker less-so, mostly seeing fringe play in RB decks.
Fractured Sanity: Correctly identified this giving Mill a boost.
Flame Rift: Argued that it might be good in Scourge of the Skyclaves decks, failing to see that the prevalence of Dress Down and Solitude permanently relegated Scourge to the trade binder.
Flame Blitz: Super niche, super powerful. Not right for today’s metagame.
Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar/The Underworld Cookbook: I note that these cards are powerful, but suggest that they would need to be played alongside the more underwhelming Madness cards. Instead, they’re just reasonable cards, and see some light play in Modern.
Brainstone/Dress Down/Soul Snare: Identified as being “sweet with Lurrus.” Of course, Lurrus had far more broken things to do than flashback Brainstone and Soul Snare, but Lurrus/Dress Down was occasionally done. I also missed the absolute powerhouse that Dress Down was, predominantly because I failed to recognize that Modern would move to revolve around ETB effects in the 4C Omnath decks.
Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer: Identified as “hella pushed.” Indeed. If it were so pushed, one might imagine it would be on my top 8 list over, say, Power Depot.
Urza's Saga: Recognized this one as powerful, flexible, and unique, but also recognized that I just didn’t know what to do with it. Neither did anyone else; in the beginning of the format, people were calling for bans of the cards when they tried to jam it in everything. As people played more with the card, they figured out that the best thing it does is fetch Hammer, the second best thing it does is fetch Shadowspear, and the third best thing it does is make Constructs. It was format-warping enough to bring back cards like Alpine Moon, Spreading Seas, and push March of Otherworldly Light into fringe playability.
Tron Hate: Void Mirror/Break the Ice/Obsidian Charmaw: Charmaw sees the most play, with Void Mirror being out-flexible’d by Chalice of the Void, and Break the Ice just not being good enough.
Conclusions
What are the key takeaways from looking back at these evaluations from one year ago? First off, the lessons learned from my first MH1 Top 8 Cards article were:
1) Be careful thinking about synergy. Individual card quality shines in Modern. Cards that do strong things already don’t need other cards to shine, and cards that do bad things will not be played alongside cards that make them less bad.
2) Don’t underrate flexibility. Modern is a diverse format, and flexibility is power.
3) Metagame matters. All predictions are made in the context of the metagame, and that’s a hard thing to predict. Individually powerful cards will shine through, however.
This time around, my big misses were:
1) Evoke Elementals: I underrated these because Modern at the time was too fast to likely hardcast them, and going down cards for the effects seemed too weak. I failed to see that Omnath, Locus of Creation, Wrenn and Six, and Yorion, Sky Nomad would allow for easy pitching early, perfect manabases, and an archetype that would play slower games than Modern had seen in some time. I also missed the utility of the elementals as free reactive answers, such as Grief in Living End, Solitude against Hammer and Titan, and Fury against Yawgmoth or a board of DRC’s and Ragavans.
2) Dragon's Rage Channeler/Murktide Regent/Unholy Heat: As in the case of Hogaak, I failed to understand just how easy it would be to consistently fill the graveyard over and over again. As is so often the case, Mishra's Bauble is one of the great enablers of the broken stuff, and DRC is wildly flexible, even if it is today being pushed out by Ledger Shredder.
3) Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer: The card should’ve been on the list, and my few words on it leave me puzzled as to why I did not include it.
4) Prismatic Ending: I failed to see Modern’s movement toward a world where extremely cheap threats came in a variety of permanent types. The ability to answer Sigarda's Aid, Hammer, Wrenn and Six, and Ragavan at mana parity is absurdly good. I underrated the power of Ending’s flexibility because Modern mostly revolved around creatures and spells at the time it was printed.
Things I got right:
1) Enchantress: Despite the influx of pushed enchantress cards, the archetype is only fringe-playable. Prismatic Ending, Engineered Explosives, and fast decks like Hammer and Cascade are too hostile.
2) The non-Grist planeswalkers were bad: Dakkon is a hodge-podge of abilities with no current payoff, and Dihada doesn’t impact anything except life total, which it does at a slow rate.
3) Domain wasn’t good enough: Territorial Kavu and Scion of Draco are too fair for a deck that requires a terrible manabase.
Lessons:
1) The first is the same as last year: I continue to overrate synergy in Modern. Individually powerful cards are always better picks.
2) Be more aware that I tend to bias toward artifact cards.
3) Consider the shell, not just the card. This was the big reason I missed on Shardless Agent.
Today, my Top 8 list would be:
8. Dress Down
7. Urza's Saga
6. Unholy Heat
3. Counterspell
1. Solitude
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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