Exclusive Modern Horizons 2 Preview: What if Warp World Was Free?
I've been counting down the days until Modern Horizons 2 spoiler season. The first Modern Horizons became one of my all-time favorite sets after it unleashed a ton of sweet decks into my favorite format, and Modern Horizons 2 promises to do the same. It's—by far—the set I'm most excited about this year, despite the fact that there are a ton of interesting sets on the...umm...horizon. Today, thanks to Wizards, I get to show you a spicy new Modern Horizons 2 rare that mashes together two of my favorite cards in Restore Balance and Warp World. Take a look at Glimpse of Tomorrow!
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As you can see, Glimpse of Tomorrow has no mana cost, something we've seen a handful of times in the past, primarily in a cycle of very playable cards in Time Spiral that included Restore Balance, Living End, Ancestral Vision, and the banned-in-Modern Hypergenesis, but also with Crashing Footfalls in the original Modern Horizons. Having no mana symbol means that you literally cannot cast the card. Instead, like other cards without a mana cost, the fair way to play them is to suspend them for a certain amount of mana and turns and then reap their benefits once they come off of suspend. Glimpse of Tomorrow itself costs two red mana to suspend and takes three turns to come off suspension. This means that, if played fairly, you can suspend Glimpse of Tomorrow on Turn 2 and cast it on Turn 5.
Once Glimpse of Tomorrow resolves, we get what is essentially a Warp World that doesn't hit our opponents and only impacts our permanents. We shuffle all of our permanents into our library and then reveal that many cards from our library and put any number of permanents into play. Apart from not wrecking the opponent, Glimpse of Tomorrow is very close to a word-for-word reprint of Warp World (there is a slight difference in when enchantments come into play, but it's unlikely this will matter in practice). While we obviously don't have the ability to play with Glimpse of Tomorrow itself yet, if you want an idea of what the effect can do check out the Warp World / The Great Aurora deck we played on Against the Odds a few weeks ago.
So, what do you do with Glimpse of Tomorrow? My guess is the same thing that you do with Warp World, which is a card we've played a few times in the past to spectacular results. The easiest way to power up the card is to play permanents that put multiple permanents onto the battlefield. Take Tireless Tracker, for example. Let's say that we're playing a Glimpse of Tomorrow deck. On Turn 1, we play a mana dork. On Turn 2, we suspend Glimpse of Tomorrow. On Turn 3, we play Tireless Tracker and a fetch land, which can make two Clue tokens with Tireless Trackers pseudo-landfall trigger. On Turn 4, we can play another fetch land to make two more Clues. Even without any extra help, this should give us 10 permanents on the battlefield when Glimpse of Tomorrow comes off of suspend on our next upkeep, which means that as long as we're playing some big finishers in our deck, we're likely to shuffle into at least a couple of them in our top 10 cards and put them directly into play.
While Tireless Tracker is one of the best examples, there are plenty of other permanents that can put multiple permanents into play. Many planeswalkers are permanents that can make one (or more) tokens each turn. Wood Elves and Primeval Titan are examples of creatures that put multiple permanents into play by tutoring lands directly to the battlefield. Siege-Gang Commander gives you four permanents for the cost of a single card. While it is probably possible to take advantage of non-permanents that make permanents (like March of the Multitudes or Lingering Souls) in a Glimpse of Tomorrow deck, these cards come with a big drawback: once we resolve Glimpse of Tomorrow they are whiffs since Glimpse of Tomorrow can only put permanents into play, so in general we want to minimize (or even eliminate) the number of non-permanent spells we have in our Glimpse of Tomorrow deck.
The tricky part of building around Glimpse of Tomorrow is it not having a mana cost. While suspending for three turns for two mana doesn't seem unreasonable, traditionally, cards without a mana cost haven't really seen much "fair" play in Modern (or anywhere for that matter). While it's possible that Glimpse of Tomorrow could break the mold, there are a couple of big issues with the suspend plan. In the example we used earlier, we focused on the best-case scenario for suspending Glimpse of Tomorrow—suspending it on Turn 2. If we don't have Glimpse of Tomorrow in our opening hand to suspend, it's a really poor top-deck in the mid- to late game, when we'll likely be dead before it can come off suspend. (Considering the speed of Modern, even if we suspend it on Turn 2, we'll probably be dead in some matchups before we can cast it.) Suspending Glimpse of Tomorrow also lets our opponent know that our personal Warp World is coming, which means our opponent will know they probably need to kill us or deal with our board (to reduce the number of permanents we have for Glimpse of Tomorrow) before it comes off suspend, knowing that if they don't something bad is likely to happen to them the turn Glimpse of Tomorrow comes off of suspension. While Glimpse of Tomorrow is costed in a way that I think it will be suspended some percentage of the time (unlike many other no-mana-cost spells like Living End and Restore Balance, which almost never are suspended), my guess is the primary way to play Glimpse of Tomorrow, like other no-mana-cost cards, will be to cheat it into play...
While a bunch of cards allow you to cast Glimpse of Tomorrow without suspending it (the trick is to look for cards that allow you to play something "without paying its mana cost," like Bring to Light, Yahenni's Expertise, and friends, which make the fact that Glimpse of Tomorrow doesn't have a mana cost irrelevant), we've seen two plans be especially powerful. Perhaps the most popular at the moment is As Foretold (usually with Electrodominance as a backup), which is commonaly played with Restore Balance, Crashing Footfalls, and other, older no-mana-cost cards. Let's say we're playing a deck very similar to the one we talked about before, with cards like Tireless Tracker and Primeval Titan to power up Glimpse of Tomorrow. If we also have an As Foretold on the battlefield, we can use it to cast Glimpse of Tomorrow whenever we want without waiting a bunch of turns for it to come off suspend and risk our board getting wrathed or, worse yet, dying in the meantime. Considering that Glimpse of Tomorrow specifically cares about permanents, my guess is that As Foretold will be the single best way to cheat it into play. Electrodominance can be a good backup to As Foretold, although it comes with the drawback of being an instant, and a deck built around Glimpse of Tomorrow can't afford to play many non-permanents, or else we'll risk resolving our namesake spell, shuffling our battlefield into our library and revealing a bunch of useless spells in return, potentially losing us the game on the spot.
The other way we've seen no-mana-cost cards played is with cascade. With cards like Violent Outburst and Ardent Plea, if we can make sure that Glimpse of Tomorrow is the only spell in our deck that costs two mana or less, we'll know that we'll hit our no-mana-cost spell every time when we cascade. While this plan has worked well with cards like Living End and Restore Balance, I'm skeptical that it will be that good with Glimpse of Tomorrow, mostly because it seems difficult to flood the board with permanents if everything in our deck (except Glimpse of Tomorrow itself) costs three mana or more. That said, it's still worth keeping in mind because the cascade plan has a massive upside: we don't need to draw Glimpse of Tomorrow—all we need to do is draw one of many cascade spells and cascade will find Glimpse of Tomorrow, no matter where it might be hiding in our deck.
Just how good will Glimpse of Tomorrow be? I really have no idea. I'm super excited to build a deck around it. I feel like every time I've resolved a Warp World, I've gone on to win the game. The problem with Warp World is that it costs eight mana, and resolving an eight-mana sorcery isn't all that easy in a format like Modern. Glimpse of Tomorrow solves this problem, either naturally with suspend or with the help of cards like As Foretold and Electrodominance. A one-sided Warp World that costs somewhere between two mana and some time and zero mana with As Foretold is much more manageable than the original.
Oddly, not hitting the opponent might be the bigger drawback. Part of the power of cards like Warp World and The Great Aurora is that if you build your deck around them and your opponent does not, along with upgrading your permanents, you typically will downgrade your opponent's battlefield since they likely aren't playing a deck full of permanents. Resolving a couple of Warp Worlds or The Great Auroras often wins the game almost by itself because your opponent ends up with very few (or even literally zero) permanents in play as each Warp World leaves the opponent with less and less permanents due to the composition of their deck.
As a result, a Glimpse of Tomorrow deck might need to focus on having more big finishers to flip into play off of Glimpse of Tomorrow. As far as Modern is concerned, two Glimpse of Tomorrow plans are especially interesting. The first is to lean heavily into As Foretold and Eternal Witness along with cards like Tireless Tracker and Primeval Titan to try to cast multiple Glimpse of Tomorrows in one big combo turn, building an increasingly big board each time. The dream is that you get something like 10 permanents on the battlefield quickly, use As Foretold to play Glimpse of Tomorrow, and spin into a new As Foretold and an Eternal Witness (to get Glimpse of Tomorrow back from the graveyard) to immediately Glimpse of Tomorrow again. If we can also hit something like Tireless Tracker and some Primeval Titans or Wood Elves–style cards, we can make a ton of Clue tokens. And when we cast the second Glimpse of Tomorrow, we should have 15 or 20 permanents on the battlefield, which will increase our odds of hitting our combo pieces (As Foretold and Eternal Witness to get back and cast Glimpse of Tomorrow, along with a way to flood the board with permanents) so we can do it again. Eventually (and with a bit of luck), we should be able to get to the point where Glimpse of Tomorrow is putting our entire library of permanents into play when it resolves. Toss in something like Courser of Kruphix, and we'll gain infinite life, or maybe add a Craterhoof Behemoth (or something that gives all of our stuff haste like Urabrask the Hidden or Kenrith, the Returned King), and we should be able to end the loop by killing our opponent with one massive attack.
It's also worth mentioning that we can steal some tech from Amulet Titan decks to make the combo more consistent by playing Tolaria West. If we don't happen to spin into Eternal Witness, we can use the bounce land to pick up Tolaria West and transmute it to find another copy of Glimpse of Tomorrow (hopefully to cast with our As Foretold) to keep the combo going.
While using Glimpse of Tomorrow to loop through your entire deck an infinite number of times sounds spectacular, there is an easier option: just playing a bunch of expensive finishers like Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, Ugin, the Spirit Dragon, Griselbrand, or whatever and hoping that we hit at least one of them when we resolve Glimpse of Tomorrow. The upside of this plan is that it wouldn't take as much work.
Let's say you put 12 finishers in your deck (maybe four Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, four Ugin, the Spirit Dragon, and four Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger). You suspend Glimpse of Tomorrow on Turn 2 and don't do much of anything else for your first four turns, so that when Glimpse of Tomorrow resolves, you only have five permanents. Even in this worst-case scenario, you'll hit at least one of your finishers nearly 70% of the time. On the other hand, if you can get up to 10 permanents (like with the Tireless Tracker trick we used earlier) before Glimpse of Tomorrow resolves, you'll hit one or more finishers 91% of the time and two or more 64% of the time. Throw in some Through the Breachs or other backup ways of sneaking big things into play as well asAs Foretold / Electrodominance to give you more control over when you cast Glimpse of Tomorrow, and this could work.
The other upside of the "play big finishers and trust the math" plan is that you can play more non-permanents in your deck than in the more combo-y build of Glimpse of Tomorrow we talked about before. This would open up the possibility of playing other free spells like Crashing Footfalls and Ancestral Vision because rather than trying to Glimpse of Tomorrow into as many big things as possible, our goal is to hit just one or two big things and trust that they'll be enough to close out the game.
Conclusion
Will Glimpse of Tomorrow become a legitimate top-tier card in Modern? It's really hard to say. On one hand, Warp World has mostly lived in the realm of Against the Odds cards, although this is probably, at least in part, because it costs so much mana. On the other hand, no-mana-cost suspend cards have shown themselves to be extremely playable in Modern, with Wheel of Fate being the only one of the six in existence to not see significant play in the format. Living End and Restore Balance both have decks named after them. Crashing Footfalls shows up alongside As Foretold and Electrodominance. Ancestral Vision was banned in the format. Hypergenesis still is. While Glimpse of Tomorrow comes with a higher deck-building cost than many of the other no-mana-cost suspend cards (drawing three cards or making two 4/4 Rhinos is always good, while Warp World is only as good as you make it while building your deck), it has a high enough power level that I wouldn't be at all surprised if someone finds a way to break it or at least make it into a janky, semi-competitive lower-tier option in the format. If nothing else, I know that I'll be trying!
Wrap-Up
Anyway, that's all for today. Thanks again to Wizards for hooking us up with an awesome preview! What do you think of Glimpse of Tomorrow? What other possibilities are there for building around it? Let us know in the comments! As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
