Ode To Modern Horizons
The very concept of Modern Horizons was a risk. Traditionally, non-rotating formats develop naturally as cards are printed into Standard and then move into older formats. The idea of printing cards specifically for Modern was controversial. Would these cards invalidate beloved older cards? Would there be a bunch of new staples that would push long-time top-tier decks to the sidelines, forcing players to spend a bunch of money to buy a new deck or massively updating their old one? Would the format break under the weight of whatever crazy mythics Wizards printed or random cards that it simply missed due to the lack of testing of older formats? Do we even want Wizards designing cards specifically for formats like Modern?
All of these concerns and more were legitimate. Many of the worst possible outcomes were realized, with broken formats, ultra-expensive new staples like Force of Negation and Wrenn and Six, and multiple bannings. Modern Horizons even managed to mostly ruin Grand Prix Las Vegas—the biggest and most important Grand Prix in the before times. Still, despite all of these issues, I'd argue that Modern Horizons was one of the best things to ever happen to the Modern format and should be viewed as one of the best sets in Magic's history.
Let's start with the bad news: in what was a tradition for sets released in 2019 and 2020, Wizards pushed a few cards in Modern Horizons too far. The facewalker of the set—Wrenn and Six—ended up breaking Legacy and is right on the border of acceptable power for Modern. Urza, Lord High Artificer ended up forcing the banning of Mox Opal in Modern, although in reality, Mox Opal had it coming. Even if Urza, Lord High Artificer weren't printed, it almost certainly would have required a banning eventually anyway (if anything, it's more surprising that it stuck around in Modern as long as it did, not that it ended up being banned). Arcum's Astrolabe made mana too easy, although it's perhaps an understandable miss considering Prophetic Prism does the same thing for one more mana with less restriction and has never been playable, let alone broken. We can argue over whether cards like Force of Negation are a positive or a negative for a format.
Of course, all of these mistakes pale in comparison to Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis, which broke Modern, arguably more so than any archetype to come before it, with all due respect to Colorless Eldrazi and Eldrazi Winter. The delve-convoke monstrosity—a card, rumor has it, that Wizards viewed more as a legend for Commander than as a real threat to Modern—absolutely destroyed Modern from the time it was printed until it was finally banned, nearly three months later, to the point where people were running playsets of Leyline of the Void in the main deck just to fight the archetype and still not having consistent success. Wizards doubled down by making the mistake of first trying to ban a support card (Bridge from Below) before eventually giving up, realizing that Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis itself was the real problem and banning it, but not before a summer of Modern mostly was ruined by the Avatar.
Some have argued that Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis was also responsible for Faithless Looting being banned in Modern. And while Faithless Looting was banned at the same time as Hogaak and it was an important part of the Hogaak deck, I'm not sure placing all of the blame on the Modern Horizons rare is fair. Sure, Hogaak was destroying the format, in part because of Faithless Looting, but if you look at the Modern meta at the time, Faithless Looting was also a key piece of Izzet Phoenix (one of the few decks that could sort of compete with Hogaak and, at various non-Hogaak times, was the best deck in the Modern format), Grishoalbrand, Mardu Pyromancer, Jeskai Ascendancy Combo, and more. The card was everywhere, and there was a legitimate fear that if just Hogaak were banned, Izzet Phoenix would simply replace it as the clear top deck in the format if nothing else changed. So, while Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis certainly helped to push Faithless Looting toward a banning, much like the relationship between Urza, Lord High Artificer and Mox Opal, there's a pretty strong argument that Faithless Looting needed to be banned anyway, even if Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis were never printed.
All of this is to say that there were certainly some negative aspects of Modern Horizons, and the format was admittedly in one of its all-time worst states in the couple of months following the release of the set, thanks mostly to Hogaak. At the same time, it's important to remember that this problem—a handful of ultra-pushed cards breaking formats—wasn't unique to Modern Horizons. It happened with basically every set printed between War of the Spark and Ikoria. War of the Spark's best planeswalkers ended up banned or restricted in multiple formats (Teferi, Time Raveler, Narset, Parter of Veils, and Karn, the Great Creator). Core Set 2020 broke formats from Standard to Modern with Field of the Dead and Veil of Summer. Throne of Eldraine had too many broken cards to count. Theros: Beyond Death couldn't escape from Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath. Ikoria? Companions—the most broken mechanic in the game's history. A more holistic view would suggest that rather than being uniquely problematic, Modern Horizons was really just another set printed in 2019–2020 and suffered from the exact same issues of every other set released during that time period: Wizards pushed a handful of cards way, way too far, and formats broke as a result.
The good news is that over the next couple of years after the Hogaak and Mox Opal bannings, something magical happened: tons of sweet, new, but not overpowered decks appeared in Modern as a result of Modern Horizons. These decks were good enough to compete in the format, and many were interesting, unique, and generally considered to be fun but certainly not oppressive. One of the biggest appeals of Modern is that there are a ton of playable and semi-playable decks. A huge, diverse meta where you never really know what you might play against any given match is a large part of what makes the format fun. In my opinion, Modern is better when there are more tier-two / -three decks that are strong enough to run in a tournament or league on Magic Online but not so strong that they end up as one of the best decks in the format. In reality, there are too many of these decklists here, but here are a few of my favorite Modern lists that simply wouldn't exist if not for Modern Horizons.
Take, for example, Yawgmoth's Hospital, an interesting midrange sacrifice-based combo deck that takes advantage of a lot of otherwise unplayable undying creatures like Strangleroot Geist and Geralf's Messenger. The deck simply wouldn't be a thing if it weren't for Yawgmoth, Thran Physician, which is the driving force of and most important card in the deck.
The printing of Lightning Skelemental, Vesperlark, and, to a lesser extent, Unsettled Mariner made Five-Color Elementals into a deck.
The value-centric Soulherder deck wouldn't be blinking its way through the format if it weren't for Soulherder itself and the sneakily powerful Ephemerate.
Crashing Footfalls helped to make sure that the plan of casting spells without a mana cost with cards like As Foretold and Electrodominance would remain viable by giving the deck a way to actually close out the game that didn't require suspending a Greater Gargadon and resolving a Restore Balance.
While the Conspicuous Snoop combo later pushed Goblins up a tier or two, it's unlikely the tribe would really have been competitive in the Modern format if not for Modern Horizons additions Goblin Matron and Sling-Gang Lieutenant to help support the combo by finding pieces and finishing the game with drain post-combo.
Adding Ingenious Infiltrator alongside Ninja of the Deep Hours made the plan of ninjutsuing an evasive one-drop back to your hand on Turn 2 to cheat a Ninja into play redundant and consistent enough to be a real option in the format.
Cloudshredder Sliver gave Five-Color Slivers enough speed and power to keep up with all of the pushed cards printed in the past couple of years, keeping one of Magic's most popular casual tribes relevant in the format.
And this doesn't even consider all of the cards that haven't quite gotten there consistently on a tournament level but still show up on occasion, like Cordial Vampire Vampires, Scrapyard Recombiner in Hardened Scales, Collected Conjuring, Astral Drift, Carrion Feeder Zombies and Aristocrats, Undead Augur Zombies, janky combos involving Planebound Accomplice or Mirrodin Besieged, or snow decks featuring the ever-underrated Abominable Treefolk.
It also doesn't include cards that have proven themselves to be strong enough to support multiple archetypes but in a decidedly fair and not-broken way. Ranger-Captain of Eos shows up in everything from Heliod Combo to Hammer Time. Seasoned Pyromancer softened the blow of Faithless Looting's ban and kept decks like GR Midrange and GR Ponza on the map thanks to its card advantage and filtering. Ice-Fang Coatl offers a solid value creature in everything from snow decks to Stoneblade. Collector Ouphe and Plague Engineer show up in a lot of sideboards. Both the cycling lands and the Horizon lands see play in various decks.
At least from my perspective, when you add all of this together, Modern Horizons was a huge, huge win and one of the best and most exciting sets printed in recent years. While in an ideal world, we'd have all of the benefits of the set—the fun new decks, weird archetypes becoming playable, and the rebirth of some classic tribes on a competitive level—without the drawback of the format breaking to the point where multiple cards are banned, if a few bannings is the price we have to pay for a massive pile of interesting new decks, personally, I'm willing to pay it.
I'm cautiously optimistic that Wizards can pull off Modern Horizons 2 without printing something like Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis. If the worst happens and something does break the format, hopefully, Wizards has at least learned from the last Modern Horizons that it needs to ban the problem card directly (and quickly), rather than nibbling around the edges and doing silly things like banning Bridge from Below in a halfhearted attempt to stop Hogaak. Even if Wizards didn't learn a thing and we have to put up with two or three months of unplayable Modern as the result of something absurd printed in Modern Horizons 2, at least for me, it will likely still be worth it in the end thanks to all of the new decks and fun cards the set should add to the format.
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. What do you think of Modern Horizons and its impacts on Modern? Are you looking forward to Modern Horizons 2? Are you dreading it and what it might do to Modern? 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.
