Much Abrew: Blood Moon and Urza's Saga, Together at Last (Modern)
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Much Abrew About Nothing! With the release of Final Fantasy, Wizards changed the rules on how Sagas work. In the past, if a Saga lost all abilities, it would be sacrificed immediately. But now, a Saga with no abilities sticks around on the battlefield. This change does some crazy things with how Urza's Saga interacts with Blood Moon specifically. Until now, a Blood Moon would just kill an Urza's Saga. But with the new rules, not only will Urza's Saga stay on the battlefield, but also, thanks to some weirdness with layers, it will actually keep whatever abilities it had when Blood Moon hits the battlefield, which means if we can get an Urza's Saga to chapter II, we can keep using it to make Construct tokens forever, even though it's technically just a Mountain! As such, we're looking to abuse this new rule today with the help of my all-time favorite Modern deck: Mono-Red Prison! With our best draws, we can play Urza's Saga on Turn 1, ritual out Blood Moon on Turn 2, and lock in the Construct mode forever! Can the plan work? Is Mono-Red Prison even good in Modern anymore? Is Modern fun? Let's get to the video and find out!
Much Abrew: Mono-Red Saga Prison
Discussion
Rather than going card by card through the deck, which probably isn't necessary since we've played Mono-Red Prison a few times before, let's focus on a couple of big questions: What did we learn about the Urza's Saga / Blood Moon synergy? And how are Mono-Red Prison in Modern and Modern as a whole?
Record-wise, I played two leagues with the deck, going 3-2 in each, which is a fine if unspectacular record. Why play two leagues? Well, during the first league, we didn't pull off the Urza's Saga / Blood Moon combo a single time! While we did pull it off a couple of times in league two, and it was pretty sweet, my overall perception is that it's a bit too inconsistent to be a deck's central plan. Since we need to have an Urza's Saga on chapter II when we play Blood Moon for the combo to work, the timing is tricky. We have a one-turn window to play Blood Moon. If it's too early, Urza's Saga won't get to chapter II, and if it's too late, Urza's Saga will have sacrificed itself.
On the other hand, I think being able to play Urza's Saga in Blood Moon decks is actually super powerful. Under the old rules, you couldn't do this at all because you would just Stone Rain yourself if you ever had both Urza's Saga and Blood Moon on the battlefield. While the full combo of a chapter II Urza's Saga with Blood Moon won't happen super often, simply the fact that you can keep Urza's Saga on the battlefield making mana through a Blood Moon is a huge, huge deal. My guess is that, moving forward, we'll see various Urza's Saga decks (stuff with Mox Opal, for example) running Blood Moon, which is something they just couldn't do before.
As far as Mono-Red Prison and the state of Modern, I think the deck is in an okay but not great place in the meta. It's rough having decks at the top of the meta that don't really care about Blood Moon, like Boros Energy and Izzet Prowess, although thankfully, a quick Chalice of the Void is good in those matchups. We also got to see Ensnaring Bridge be absurd, winning us some games all by itself.
Meanwhile, Modern was actually pretty fun. We played against Psychic Frog a bunch, but overall, our matchups were pretty diverse and interesting. While I don't think I'll ever fully get used to seeing Modern Horizons sets dominate the format to such an extreme extent and Boros Energy probably should be hit by another banning, in general, I think the format is in a better spot now than it has been in a while, which means we might be seeing more of it on the channel in the future.
So, should you play Urza's Saga with Blood Moon? I think the answer is yes! Just don't expect to get the chapter II lock set up all that often because the timing is pretty tricky. But even if we don't get the full lock, just not losing our Urza's Saga when we play our Blood Moon opens up a bunch of interesting possibilities!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
