Season 23, Episode 12: Weekly Roundup

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Transcript

Welcome and Introduction

[00:00:00] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Hello and welcome to the Faithless Brewing Podcast, I’m your host Dan Shriever, also known as Cavedan. And I’m joined, for the first time in a long time, by our dear friend, Emi Sagasti. Emi, welcome!

[00:00:39] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Hey, Oran! It’s true, it’s been a while, but Fade, a few comments about the state of modern, and one slap for Grimms and Zenith has brought us all together again.

[00:00:52] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): All the old modern vets crawling out of the woodwork.

Modern BNR Update Reactions

[00:00:55] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): I asked David if he wants to record anything about this shocking, shocking modern BNR update and he said, No, go find a modern player. So, we’ve got one. And

[00:01:06] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): the next message, literally 30 seconds later, Green Sun Zenith Icefang Coatl meet again. For the first time in a lifetime.

He

[00:01:14] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): immediately got a Green Sun Zenith Icefang Coatl decklist to share. So, alright, that’s what this episode is all about. It is two hours of pure Icefang. Gs Ice and

[00:01:25] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): galore.

[00:01:26] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Oh my gosh, . All right, so it’s Tuesday, December 17th. Uh, we’re about 24 hours after this shocking update. We’ve had some time to process.

We’ve already had like three different deck dumps published on Magic Online. Hm. The format is exploding again. Um, internet is blown up. People are melting down.

[00:01:46] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Doomwake returned to modern. Everyone that had forgotten about modern is all of a sudden a modern fan again, for a

[00:01:54] Speaker 2: few days. I

[00:01:57] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): think that’s a big question on my mind.

How long will this last? Are they doing this just for shock value? But we’re getting a little bit ahead of ourselves. So yeah, I think this episode will be all about modern. Huge news. So, Mor, do you want to take us through it?

[00:02:10] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Yes.

Banned and Unbanned Cards Discussion

[00:02:11] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): So, for anybody that lives under a rock for the past, I don’t know, a week, if you’re hearing, after you’re hearing this, we got four beautifuls and bands in modern and three bands.

Two of the bands I think everyone was expecting, the One Ring, the Raptor and the Giganta, was, I think the Giganta was a bit more surprising.

[00:02:30] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Well, I think One Ring was expected. I had seen that people thought something would go from energy. I did not see any consensus on what that would be.

[00:02:37] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): So, I was Pretty sure it couldn’t be Guide of Souls, because if you killed Guide, you couldn’t play Ocelot, and without any of the eight one drops, you kinda just killed the deck.

Like, if you take out Guide of Souls, you cannot play the Ocelot. Without the ETB life gain, without a Soul Sister in your deck, Ocelot sucks.

[00:02:57] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Okay, so you, you were thinking they would probably not kill the deck, which is actually exactly what they said. They said, we’re not trying to kill the deck.

[00:03:03] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): So do you have to take Raptor or a shiny, but I think killing a shiny does nothing.

Do you just get the second mediocre to drop. They wanna play and they go from there. So I said I, I knew it, I knew it was gonna be Raptor, at least I was pretty sure and ring, and I’m happy they just decided to kill Ganta. A bit surprised they decide to keep Obo and Cahir alive just because like they’re, they’re not willing to admit companion has failed.

[00:03:30] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Right. And they killed the elk in multiple formats. They took it out in Pioneer, in Explorer, and Modern. Very similar reasoning.

[00:03:40] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): It was free. Like, you didn’t make your deck to feed in Giganta. You played Giganta if it was free. Like, that’s the opposite of creative game design. That’s why they banned Lutri in Commander.

You wouldn’t play Lutri you had to play Lutri if you wanted to not be dumb.

[00:03:58] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So, yeah, I think David would agree with you on this. Utter failure of a mechanic. After they did a power level errata on the entire mechanic, they still banned, I think, five of the ten companions? I think this is the fifth,

[00:04:10] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): yeah. I think this is the fifth, yeah.

I think this is the fifth, yeah. Gigantanao?

[00:04:15] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): I believe in Legacy, the Fox is banned, and then Lutri is banned in Commander as

[00:04:21] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): well. So five have been banned in different formats, one of them the first banned card in Vintage.

[00:04:27] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Oh god, yeah.

[00:04:29] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): But talking about really bad game design, they did decide to unban three really bad game designs.

Which in today’s modern might be not that bad.

You fight fire with fire, after all. We’re just bringing back old archaic fire, this is like Greek fire, to fight I don’t know what the fuck we’re wielding with right now.

[00:04:51] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): What was that stuff they used in King’s Landing? Uh, wildfire?

[00:04:56] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Exactly.

Impact of Unbanning Mox Opal

[00:04:57] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): So, first of all, they unbanned Mox Opal. Which I, I was a bit excited about, I thought it could happen, like in my mind that was a possibility and everything else was a huge surprise.

Mox Opal, I think, got the hates and deserves in the White Wrath, like, Wrath of the Skies with the removal of the ring becomes the best Wrath in the format and absolutely devastates any deck that wants to play Mox Opal.

[00:05:22] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Yeah, and I’m glad that actually came out and said in their reasoning that we understand Mox Opal is broken and powerful, but We’ve still been pouring on the artifact hate non stop for the past five years.

And I’m like, yeah, my feelings are validated. Cause when you look at the MH3 spoiler and you’re like Meltdown, like what the Meltdown? Why? Wrath of the Skies. Like, who are these artifact decks that they envision themselves taking out? And so, yeah, they were, they were planning ahead for this. They’re like, yeah, we will reintroduce Mox Opal just to have your dreams crushed by Wrath of the Skies.

[00:05:52] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): When Mox Opal was banned, your typical Azorius decklist or Jeskai decklist played. Path of Exile, Path to Exile, and Supreme Verdict as their main removal. Now they play either March of Otherworldly Lights or Prismatic Ending, which both exile any artifact for efficient mana cost without giving you a land, and instead of Supreme Verdict, Wrath of the Skies, which not only gets rid of your creatures, but literally any permanent you might have or lands.

The advantage they have even in their main decks. Makes it insanely different.

[00:06:23] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Okay, so when you were saying bad designs, you are saying that Mox Opal is a bad design.

[00:06:27] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Yeah, yeah, of course. Mox Opal is, I think, too free. At least, it might have been good game design when there weren’t so many zero mana efficient artifacts, but it’s the same as Birthing Port.

In a closed environment, it might be sound, it just restricts everything you can do from then on. I can’t create cheap artifacts if Mox Opal exists. I can’t make good, efficient, cheap critters, it’s very simple, it exists.

[00:06:55] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Well, you’re saying that they cannot free Orcum to Astrolabe while Mox Opal is free?

[00:07:01] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): I think unbanning Mox Opal makes my argument for Astrolabe a lot harder when I have to get to court.

Yes. But at the same time, I think we already have tapped Artifact Lands, we already have Mox Amber, we have Mithras Bubble, we have the set of stuff already that empowers Mox Opal to be a really powerful card. Ursa Saga, Olofa Saren, You don’t have to play Springleaf Drum to get back your mana.

[00:07:23] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Oh god.

[00:07:24] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): You used to play freaking Springleaf Drum and now you can get Vox Opal.

Like, the jump from that is so insanely just from that. You can play one Vox Opal in your deck and you will feel a difference.

[00:07:34] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Yeah.

[00:07:36] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): And from there it’s all upside.

[00:07:38] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Shares in Springleaf Drum have plummeted. Investing heavily in the drum and I’m never gonna recover

[00:07:44] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): from this. Drum

[00:07:45] Speaker 2: devastation,

[00:07:45] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): stungens. Oh god.

Okay, so that that’s one of your bad designs.

[00:07:49] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): So the one card I’m scared about, Vox Opal, is with Underworld Breach. That deck might really, really enjoy Opal, a deck that was already playing Emery, a deck that was already playing Mox Zomber, Mistrust Bubble, Underworld Breach, all cards that really love Mox Opal.

[00:08:05] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So I don’t think too much about Breach, I just don’t give it very much mind space, it’s not the kind of deck that appeals to me.

[00:08:10] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): I fear the card.

[00:08:11] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): I understand that it has lurked somewhere between Tier 1 and Tier 3 for the past, ever since it was printed, basically, in Modern. Some people say it’s very good.

I think one of the first comments in our, you know, our discord was like, well, here’s a turn one kill that Breach will not be doing. You know, all you need is the opal and the Breach and, uh, what else? You don’t even need a channeler anymore. You just need No.

[00:08:32] Speaker 2: You just need, um, the grinding station.

[00:08:36] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Yeah. So I don’t know how problematic that is.

I mean, that seems unlikely enough that it’s just like another turn one kill that could exist in a

[00:08:45] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): I think we’ll see. But second of the unbannings is, I think, a more reasonable one.

Green Sun’s Zenith Returns

[00:08:49] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): I think one that might not bring a lot of trouble to the format, but my favorite by a bunch, which is freaking Greensun’s Zenith, which I’m gonna admit, it’s a card I have not cast, I likely have cast more in the last 24 hours than at any time before.

[00:09:05] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So, within minutes of us discussing when to record an episode of this, Moore already had a Greensun’s Zenith decklist with Eight creatures in it that you could find with the Greensuns, and I said, Mordred, you’re gonna run out of creatures, and he said, no, I’ve got endurance in

[00:09:18] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): there. Listen, the eighth creature is clearly an endurance, Dan.

Okay. So, Greensun’s Zenith. For anybody that doesn’t know, Greensun’s Zenith is a mana dork.

[00:09:30] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): That’s the most important part of the card.

[00:09:31] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): That’s the most important part of the card, and you have to respect that you are now playing a decklist with mana dorks, and that makes your decklist better. Imagine, when you compare Bring some settings to a card in your mind.

You tend to make comparisons to cards like card of devastation, um, it’s not card of the, card of devastation? What’s the name of the devastation one? Exactly.

[00:09:52] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Finale of devastation. Finale of devastation,

[00:09:53] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): card of calling, Eladam,

[00:09:56] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Riscol.

[00:09:56] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Maybe a weird, um.

[00:10:00] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Those are the main ones. Eldritch evolution, something like that.

Yeah,

[00:10:02] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Eldritch evolution, I was talking about, I was basically one mana delirium, get a creature and traverse the open wall. You imagine things like that, but the difference is If your starting hand is Green Sun Zenith, 3 mana Teferi, and a removal spell, your hand is insane. If

[00:10:18] Speaker 4: your

[00:10:19] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): starting hand is any of those other cards, a 3 drop and a removal spell, your hand sucks.

It’s a mana dork you cannot flood in.

[00:10:29] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So does that mean that if I’m gonna play 4 Green Sun Zenith in my deck, and presumably just 1 Dryad Arbor, right? You’re not saying 2 Dryad Arbors? No, no, I, I,

[00:10:36] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): I, I, only in really weird scenarios. In all my games yesterday, I never ran into a scenario where I really wanted, um, a second Raya Dardvore.

I did run into scenarios where I might have wanted a second, a first Panadork. Like, you can see in one of the four colonies we’re going to discuss later, they do have one Delighted Halfling. I found myself in scenarios with two, three mana that I say, okay, I need to fix or I need mana.

[00:10:59] Speaker 4: Okay.

[00:11:00] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): But I wouldn’t play a second Raya Dardvore.

Like, I think, I really think two, one mana Winston Zenith are weird.

[00:11:07] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Now, Greensun Zenith has been banned since, I think, 2011, basically the entirety of modern. We discussed this, yeah. But Dryad Arbor has always been legal, and it has always sucked, right? That’s always been the thing that people say, right?

Like, you can trick yourself into putting it in your deck, it’s always going to disappoint you, it’s going to betray you.

[00:11:23] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Yeah, only in your most Is that still true with

[00:11:25] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Greensun Zenith? No,

[00:11:26] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): no. With Greensun Zenith, you play a Dryad Arbor because the card is insane if you have a Dryad Arbor. Because the difference between Novel Hierarch, which is likely the best mana dork, or Delighted, so let’s talk about any, the best mana dork is Delighted Halfling, because it has toughness.

[00:11:43] Speaker 6: Yes.

[00:11:44] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): So let’s ignore the best mana dork, because it’s the best one, and talk about the second, third, fourth. Um, Novel Hierarch, Ink Novel Hierarch, Birds of Paradise, your choice of it. The difference between any of those and Llanowar Elves is close to zero.

[00:11:58] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Okay.

[00:11:58] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): In a regular modern game. If

[00:12:00] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): it untaps,

[00:12:01] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): it will do the same job 99 percent of the time, and in most scenarios it won’t untap.

[00:12:06] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Yeah.

[00:12:08] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): And it dies equally easily.

[00:12:10] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): I was playing with a friend’s modern cube last weekend, which I typically don’t do, but they had a really nice cube, and it was focused on cards from the golden age of modern 2014 to 2018 or something like that, and I had all these mana dorks, like all of them. I had like Elvish Mystic, Landwar Elves, Ignoble Hierarch, Noble Hierarch, Birds of Paradise.

I just kept drafting them because I didn’t realize how many there were in the cube. And it was exactly like you were saying, where they were all literally the exact same card. There was no discernible difference between them. So yeah, I mean, I guess all that really matters is do you have two toughness?

And only one creature has that.

[00:12:44] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Yeah, exactly. So If you’re gonna say, yeah, a specific manor is a lot better, you’re right, right? That Halfling is a lot better than greens and sand is for Dryad org because it doesn’t die to ball Master and it doesn’t die to brand. And six, if it ever gets back in the format.

That’s a notable difference, especially the ball master part. Besides that, you Matador is a manor regardless of whatever one you play. So being able to transform the same card into a turn for either endurance or Nisa, or what else could it? If you have seen decks playing anything, in my case, it’s mostly Eternal Witness, because I just love being able to get Eternal Witness, but being able to transform the same card that’s 90 percent as powerful as a mana dork into a topdeck, into a likely your best card in the topdeck mode, just doesn’t make any sense.

You really feel the top deck, the average top deck of your deck getting insanely more powerful. You have better openings because you are able to play mana dorks in a control deck or a midrange deck without making your top deck worse. I mean, technically, you make your top deck, your mulligan slightly worse because you can get Riot Arbor in your hand or in your top, or your first card and ruin your whole structure.

But that’s the weakness.

[00:14:00] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): What I love about what you’re saying is that the example creatures you just gave These are not cards that are currently played in Modern, right? These are all cards that used to be good and just have not seen any play at all. So the long standing argument that Greensun’s Zenith will reduce deck diversity, right?

For the short term, at least, that’s going to increase diversity, it’s going to bring back these creatures that we haven’t really seen in a while.

[00:14:22] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): 50 50. I think a lot of those creatures are returning because the one ring is banned. You are now allowed to have fun with other engines. The problem with 4 is any engine is secondary to the one ring.

So even if your engine was like 5 or 10 percent worse, there was no reason to not play the one ring. Now, Risen Rift is back, Endurance is back, Nissa is back, Omnast is back, all those little packages, people, Ursa is back, especially with Mox Opal and Emry. These other mid range value packages are starting again to unfold.

Titan doesn’t play Titan is playing Tireless Tracker again. Because they’re not playing Ring, they’re playing Four Grins and Zenith. So Tracker is likely the best free mana creature they can get for value. Like, double change actually works a lot, and for the first time in our lifetime we can thank Devoid for making the format not suck.

Because Basking Road Wallah would be insane.

[00:15:22] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Brasking Broodscale is not green. In the announcement itself, they’re like, and don’t worry, the devoid mechanic means that Broodscale combo deck is not going to take over the format. They mentioned specifically Yawgmoth and Broodscale as two existing creature combo decks that will not be helped that much.

[00:15:42] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): They say that because I didn’t like it. There’s some people trying it in Yawgmoth, but besides Greased, Getting Gris into play is pretty big. I don’t really love what you can do.

[00:15:54] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Right, right. So, I mean, it’s interesting. Like, they’re talking about the meta as we know it now doesn’t seem to need green stones.

Now, they didn’t mention Primeval Titan, of course. The less said about that, the better. No, no, of

[00:16:04] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): course. The less we can talk about that big issue, the better. So, let’s keep discussing the banned cards and the unbanned cards we can get to a more specific decklist. I’m gonna skip the third one for last.

Splinter Twin Unbanned

[00:16:15] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Next, something people have been clamoring for a long while and I think never would have happened, and now I think it won’t be as strong, is Splinter Twin.

[00:16:23] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): This was almost a meme unbanned just to make sure that people shut up, you know? Just to get people, yeah, you want it? Play it! Enjoy it! Take your twin, we don’t

[00:16:31] Speaker 5: care.

Come and have it!

[00:16:34] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So they do specifically say, alright, we understand that Kiki Jiki sucks, right? So, if you want to try it, like, go ahead, it’s probably not good anymore. They basically say that in the announcement.

[00:16:46] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): So I have seen a lot of people try it. We were discussing a few minutes ago the 5 0 meme by Bamsing, which he was playing Stock Boros energy, take out the ring, add Bell Ringer and Splinter Twin, drag the power of Boros energy to the wind Village Bell Ringer Village Bell Ringer, 4, enter the battlefield and tap all creatures That card is bad

[00:17:10] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So that was a day 1, immediately after the unban, kind of meme 5 0

[00:17:15] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): So Splinter Twin, I don’t know if it’s gonna be great I

[00:17:20] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): mean, how can it be?

[00:17:23] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): There’s some It can win games. Like, we have seen the 5 0s, and we’re gonna see some results. So I’m just seeing a decklist of 5 0 that’s playing Twisted Image in the main deck because it kills Tamiyo. We have reached this point of degeneration. Oh, we have evolved back into ourselves. I see.

[00:17:49] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): This is going to be an interesting few days in modern LCS.

Oh yeah, they’re

[00:17:52] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): gonna be. But, the best for Splinter Twin, I do think Splinter Twin is likely the best shell for a card I love, which is Flare of Denial. I always say Flare of Denial is amazing at defending a 3 or 4 mana sorcery speed spell. It’s the only zero man spell. You can play efficiently on your own turn while playing a a threat.

So the fact you can go turn two ARD being a snap cast or falli into three, into turn three hold, mana, or one send the pester, mite or xr turn four printer to pla plus flare of denial might actually make it in shop playable deck. The wizard shell might actually help a lot with that.

[00:18:30] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Maria! Interesting. So they did mention Flare of Denial as one of the defensive tools against TWIN.

So in their reasoning, they say, it’s been eight years since we banned TWIN. They do not acknowledge that TWIN probably should have never been banned in the first place, but that’s fine. Whatever. Eight years of Format Evolution has given us more answers to TWIN, and they mentioned Solitude, they mentioned Force of Negation, or FON as Mord calls it, Force of Vigor, or FOV as you might call it.

FOV? FOV? What do you call Flare of Denial? Flowed. Full fla .

[00:19:00] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Full, full

[00:19:02] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): food. Okay,

[00:19:04] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): we, we do have the O for us. For us. The oi. Okay.

[00:19:09] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Full food, phone fo and food.

[00:19:11] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Yeah, it’s fun. Fault. F for allegation, for something for superior phone fall.

[00:19:19] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Sounds like you’re conjugating a verb in some really obscure language.

[00:19:23] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): some in some weird Turkish language. So they’re saying

[00:19:28] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): basically free spells will protect you from Splinter

[00:19:31] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Twin. No, I do say Flare of the Nihil is the best for Twin itself to protect itself. And I think Force of Negation will be the best at stopping Twin. Also the fact Solitude exists makes it for white decks to be pretty immune.

Red decks also now have Galvanic Discharge, which is able to kill Exarch in most scenarios where Lightning Bolt wasn’t used to, which is pretty huge. Like, there’s been a lot of slight differences that are huge. Force of Negation, Solitude, Galvanic Disturb, Orcish Bomb Master to kill Pestermite. Pestarmade is not playable right now, like a lot of are not playing Pestarmade, they are either on just Exarch or Exarch and the three mana 3 3 3

[00:20:10] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Lizard, Simic.

Or the Bounding Cresses.

[00:20:12] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): That one.

[00:20:14] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Yeah, I think one mana interaction is also fine against Splinter Twin, right? Like Dismember, Discharge. Yeah, I don’t think Twin is where people are gonna Maybe Path to Exile, not Path to Exile.

[00:20:25] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Twin might be a fan favorite, but I don’t think it’s gonna, where people are gonna spend most of their time testing or looking into.

I do feel like this is gonna go into the fan favorite Grimmsons series, or the most fan favorite that I think Dan, this is for you. The unban you have been waiting for for years. Hit me. Five years now. Hit me.

Faithless Looting Unbanned

[00:20:45] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): So, back in 2019, after Pro Tour Barcelona, due to Hogak, we lost our dear boy, Faceless Looting.

[00:20:54] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): I love how they actually said this is one of the cards that died for Hogak’s sins.

They literally said that.

[00:21:01] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): It was the second one, after the really innocent victim that was Under. Well, rich,

[00:21:08] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): I have a poster that says Faithless Looting died for hoac sins ,

[00:21:12] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): and now it has been a acknowledged. Now it’s cannon.

[00:21:15] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): I made this poster. You can see it. It’s in one of, uh, manna symbol’s videos somewhere.

I

[00:21:19] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): will look. Oh, I think I know which one it is. It’s Cannon. Now. It has been confirmed by whistle itself. It died for its sin.

[00:21:27] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): I printed out this giant ass poster, and I went to the campus, uh, Duke University, because I was, uh, in North Carolina at the time, and, like, filmed a little segment, like, me setting up, like, a change my mind type coffee table to, like, try to argue with passerby that looting died for hoagie accents, and I’m glad that someone at Wizards was listening, and they agreed.

I mean, I

[00:21:47] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): think they all agreed, but at the same time, the fact that, like, so badass Mardu Just show the evolution it would take. Like, I think the other day someone said as a half meme in a group, Jeskai looting, and I was like, that’s a meme! And then it was like, turn one Tamisho, turn two Flip and discard Flesh.

It’s not a

[00:22:08] Speaker 6: meme. See?

[00:22:11] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): So all of a sudden, anything that puts Flesh in a graveyard is not so bad.

[00:22:17] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): People talk about what was Faithless Looting’s crime, and they say, well, it enabled the graveyard decks, and if Looting is back, then the graveyard decks are back, Dredge or whatever, maybe it’s Reanimator now.

But it’s not just a graveyard card, it’s just a really unique access to a game effect, Draw 2, Discard 2. For Tamiyo, all you care about is the Draw 2 part. Right, and that’s still, Faithless Looting is the only card that really does that in the format now, unless I’m missing one, but in modern I think that’s about it, right?

One mana draw two?

[00:22:48] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Yeah, I don’t think there’s any playable effect that does that, and like, I’m sure that we have something, but not with this amount of value, and not with the fracking flashback. I

[00:23:00] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): mean, you gotta have flashback, 2024, you gotta have flashback.

[00:23:03] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s just, so, Faithless Looting, what has happened since Looting was gone?

I don’t know. Well, two things. Three things. First, meme. I love it. SneakySnacker. I love SneakySnacker. Is it good? I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t think so. I love SneakySnacker.

[00:23:18] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Remind us what that card does.

[00:23:19] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Two mana, two one from I think the last set from Rumbloro. It’s Dimir colors. When it’s in your graveyard and you draw the third card this turn, it returns from the graveyard to the battlefield.

[00:23:32] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Tapped. Tapped. And this is actually in Modern Horizons 3, 3 mechanic. Oh, you’re right. Yeah, same condition as Tamiyo.

[00:23:39] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Yeah, same condition as Tamiyo. So, this is played with Faithless Looting, which you place it in the graveyard as a way to return it to the battlefield. We don’t have Brainstorm. This card is amazing in Popper because you have Brainstorm.

Here we have to make our ends work.

[00:23:52] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Right. Previously, you may have seen someone like this. Dack Fade in 0. 7 using deep analysis flashback to get Sneaky Snackers back is not good. I mean, if

[00:24:03] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): it goes around one loading, maybe it is, but that’s for the future to decide. So the second biggest problem, which is, I think, not as worrisome as people think, is Arclight Phoenix.

People are back on Arclight Phoenix, people are loving it, trying new things. I just don’t think Phoenix is great. The reason I don’t think Phoenix is great is how weak it is to specifically the card that they said they were willing to unban Looting Ford due to endurance. They literally went out and said, it’s endurance that allows us to do this.

[00:24:35] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Interesting. Yeah, I never felt like Phoenix was that powerful.

[00:24:40] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Yeah, exactly, and I sort of agree. I don’t think Phoenix will be that big of an issue even with looting. The card I do think will be that big of an issue is freaking Persist Orgoreo’s Vengeance, the favor of the choice they pick.

[00:24:52] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Right. So, the old Goreo’s deck could Just get a Gristlebrand and kill you immediately, right?

[00:24:59] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Yeah, so, I don’t think that’s gonna be quite the deck they will play. We were living in a world where if you were super unlucky, like it happened from time to time and it was almost a guaranteed loss, your opponent could go turn one in your end step, surveil one, maybe, just maybe put an Archon in the graveyard and turn to persist.

That was super low odds. Now it’s gonna be pretty common. Turn 1 looting, discard Archon plus something else, meet a second looting, being a flesh because I’m playing a mid range deck that can go turn 2 persist. I go turn 1 looting, discard an Archon, discard any 3 drop I freaking have in my deck, turn 2 persist, turn 3 fable, season, whatever.

I can play a mid range deck that has a turn 2 persist angle. Or I can play a full on combo deck and just go turn 1 discard, turn 2 looting into turn 3. Turn 2 Holy Interaction plus Looting into turn 3 Ephemerate, because now I don’t have to play cards like Faithful Mending.

[00:25:58] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Faithful Mending was quite sad.

[00:26:00] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): I mean, yeah, but That was a

[00:26:02] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): sad chapter in modern history, and in pioneer’s history, when people were trying to play Faithful Mending.

[00:26:07] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): We can have the beautiful, oh so beautiful, Grixis decks that has been spinning around that goes turn 1 Tamiyo, turn 2 Ludin, flip Tamiyo, and, and Erthokulus. I love that, I

[00:26:18] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): actually love that.

It’s so

[00:26:20] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): easy to put stuff in your graveyard with Ludin!

[00:26:23] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): There’s already been a few 5 0s like that already in the last 24 hours.

[00:26:26] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): So, the, the broken part about Ludin is that it’s not only amazing at putting stuff in the graveyard, it’s also so efficient at finding the second part. Because when you are playing the Dimir and Earth deck, if you played it in the past with Oculus and Earth, it was pretty common, like in one fifth of your games, or even one fourth even, you would just be stuck with a Dimir in hand that’s uncastable, or an Earth in hand without a target, and that happens so much less when you have, um, looting in your deck.

Looting digs so deep, so consistently, and if the game goes long, you’re gonna start flashing it back to make sure you’re not flooding.

[00:27:04] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Right, and that’s the kind of deck that actually is equipped to play a longer game, right? Like, they have a lot of interactive tools, they don’t mind if the game goes long.

Whereas maybe, like, the pure combo deck, like, the pure Turn 2 Persist Archon is, is not going to win the longer the game goes. I mean, I

[00:27:19] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): think the Turn 2 Persist Archon is gonna be a maintenance deck. I think it’s gonna, I think it’s gonna be a Mardu deck that just has four Archons. I mean, it’s gonna be a Mardu deck that plays Flesh, Galvanic Discharge, Removal, four Thoughtseize, four Looting, because it’s a Mardu deck.

Why not four Archons for Persist?

[00:27:37] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Okay.

[00:27:38] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): I have all the shell here. It’s just, it, borderline builds itself. And if they want to go more combo, they can go the Gorious Vengeance Ephemerate route.

[00:27:48] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So, if you say midrange, I expect it to have some way to win that doesn’t require me to use the graveyard. Flesh!

That’s always the big vuln well, that requires a graveyard. Yeah,

[00:27:57] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): yeah, but I mean, game one, your opponent is not gonna make is not gonna main the graveyard hit you, and then you can play fable or whatever. Like, midrange decks win with fable and flesh today. And Colin Ardman somehow, because we’re back to 2015.

[00:28:14] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So I think this is kind the, the big question I’m left with from these UNB bands is when you look at faithless. Looting, so in the announcement they specifically mentioned that, oh, faithless, looting supported multiple strategies like Phoenix or Dredge, uh, even hollow one.

[00:28:28] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Oh, holo, and he’s so back.

[00:28:30] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Decks featuring young pyromanes.

Right, um, okay, so maybe Dredge is like the biggest example of, oh, broken graveyard deck, right? No, no one has a chance against Dredge. That’s not even true anymore, but at the time, what the thought was only graveyard hate can beat Dredge. So if we’re returning to that era, Then people should be playing a lot more graveyard hate, a lot more endurance, a lot more leyline.

And then similarly, what you’re saying about Mox Opal, if this is going to lead to, oh, turn one kills with Underworld Breach and Mox Opal, then we need to like, be stacking up the hate for that. And then we’ll get back to this era of modern where it was just like, all determined by sideboard cards, or who decided to main deck their sideboard cards, or the pairings lottery.

You know, ships passing in the night. I don’t know if that’s actually going to happen, but if we’re thinking a Faithless Looting deck is going to be so strong with a Graveyard Strategy or a Hopeful deck will make Artifact decks so strong that only hate can stop them.

[00:29:25] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): So I think a lot of the decks that you can place down main decks, so decks are not willing to go.

The fact Endurance exists alongside other cards makes it so Dredge cannot play a balls to the wall strategy from turn one.

[00:29:40] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): No.

[00:29:41] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): I think you are forced back by the efficiency, how efficient the solutions are now.

[00:29:47] Speaker 4: Okay.

[00:29:47] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): I’m not saying it’s not gonna be the whole format, I’m not saying you’re not gonna be forced to have a lot of graveyard hate, I am just feared that the games are gonna most games will play out decently, I’m just afraid more games will be decided by god hands.

In between quotes. Like, yeah, 8 out of our 10 games are gonna be reasonable games where we both get to play midrange or 3 4 turns before something gets definitive. And another small percentage of games will be defined by Tron going turn 2 Karn, or Mardu going turn 2 Persist the Archon, or RubyStorm just outright winning on turn 2 because they got the nuts.

I think individual cards get more powerful, and the way to scalate threats is by scalating answers and vice versa. You start getting more of these, I just have the nuts scenarios. Like you used to have with violent outwards in the past, you know? Like the Living End, only Rhinos and Living End used to have that super powerful nut.

A hand you cannot beat.

[00:30:45] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Well, isn’t that just their normal hand? I guess I was thinking that when you were saying that, I thought you were talking about like turn one grief. That’s the, you know, occasional frustrating hand. I mean, there’s going to be

[00:30:55] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): hands like that. If it’s game one and your opponent go turn one looting to turn two Archon on the play, It’s not Grief Ephemerate, but at the same time, are you winning that game a reasonable amount of times?

And it’s a lot less resources and a lot better quality of card than Grief Ephemerate. So, at least, maybe not Grief Ephemerate, but really, yes, that Grief Undying.

[00:31:23] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Well, okay, so now take that same scenario and what happens when you add a Leyline of the Void into the mix? No, that’s Wave. Game 1 with a God Hand.

Game 2 and 3, you have a chance of starting with Leyline. Is this a good matchup of modern?

[00:31:37] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): That’s why I think decks are not going full to the wall on combo. That’s why I think the Mardu deck that has the Persist, Blast, Corio is going to play a lot of, it’s going to play it’s share of removal. It’s going to play it’s midrange fables.

It’s maybe Ragavan is back. I don’t know. Hopefully not. But it’s going to play things that it can do as a plan B. It will stall for removal for that because it’s not going to be looting, mending, discard outlets. Four Atraxa, four, I’m sorry, four Archon, and four, I don’t know, the next decent payoff is.

You’re gonna be facing a deck that most of the games is gonna go turn one Thotsis, turn two Orcish Bowmaster, turn three Fable, and 20 percent of the games is gonna go turn one Looting, turn two Persist. Looting allows you to do that. Mardu used to play freaking Bedlam Reveler as a top end. You can feed Fable now, you can play real cards now.

You don’t have to play young Pyromancer and Bedlam Reveler, you can play Fable of the Mirrorbreaker and Orcish Moonmaster like a reasonable human being and win games.

[00:32:41] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So if that is the best way to use looting, I mean, that deck sounds kind of healthy, right?

[00:32:47] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): I, yeah, I’m mostly afraid of the, of what if that isn’t the case, like what if that prediction is wrong and looting just ends up being played in grinding station because it becomes the best deck somehow, and, I don’t know, maybe it gives a stupid amount of consistency to mono redstorm.

I’m not sure that’s not the case.

[00:33:09] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Yeah, well, actually, let me just go back to the mid range thing for a second. Now, I know this is just gonna make me sound like an old man, but in that scenario, I would say the problem is Archon or Atraxa, right? And these are like the new kids on the block.

[00:33:21] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): I 100 percent agree.

[00:33:22] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): It was their choice to make that by far the best top end creature so that we can’t even think of a second creature that we want to reanimate with Persist.

[00:33:30] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): No, no, yeah, that’s what happened. Like, Archon is insanely po The same with Creativity, like, what can you get that’s not legendary for Creativity?

Creativity. Everything else kinda really sucks. Serra’s Emissary, meh. Like, really, eh? I don’t think

[00:33:45] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): anyone actually enjoys Archon, right? No, no, no one does.

[00:33:48] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): No one does? But at the same time, if you want to print Persist, Archon. Because Persist sucks. You don’t, you

[00:33:54] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): really, well, you didn’t need to do any of that, first of all.

No,

[00:33:57] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): no, I’m, I’m not saying They printed all that

[00:33:59] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): in the same set, which was very frustrating. They didn’t need to do it! They printed Archon and Serra’s Emissary and Persist in the same set.

[00:34:04] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Your printing Persist. You need to print Archon, because if you want Persist to be a card, you need Archon, because Persist sucks without it, as we can see.

The next best thing is Oculus, that you can get back with an Earth. So that’s the situation that random self eat you. Psychic Frol was a card I was afraid was going to get banned. Like, without the advance, Psychic Frol

[00:34:26] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): in Legacy.

[00:34:26] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): In Legacy. So, sorry.

Legacy Format Changes

[00:34:29] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Let’s talk about, a second, about the Legacy bans. It’s just really really fu because they ban Vexing Babel because it annoys control, because it was harmful against control and that’s just so freaking insane, that the card they print to stop fast mana gets banned because it stops control, just shows how delusional the format has gone.

[00:34:47] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): It hurt free countermagic. That was their explanation. Free countermagic is too important in Legacy, it’s the essence of the format.

[00:34:54] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): In Legacy they were going turn one Sol and play Vexing Babel turn two Ring. And that was it! No fun, no fob, no com what are you doing?

[00:35:05] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Yeah, you should at least have the distancy to play turn 1 Faithless Looting, turn 2 Persist Archon.

[00:35:09] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): At least let me endurance you! That’s a proper

[00:35:11] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): matchup, Magnus!

[00:35:11] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): And see, now I can’t even endurance! Turn 1 Vexing Babel turns to endurance! I can’t endurance!

[00:35:16] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Mmm.

[00:35:17] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): What can I do? I’m gone! I’m defeated! But yeah, so, poor Legacy players, I think Psychic Frog was a bit too powerful, I think Vexing Babel was causing troubles, but I’m sadly not knowledgeable enough.

And the only thing I wanted was Popper Vance that didn’t happen. But into the ones we care about! Yeah, I do think looting is gonna be great in midrange. I think those decks are gonna start to appear. Mardu midrange was a really late development, right? It spent years before like, it was months of not having any midrange and all of a sudden it appeared.

It’s not like new cards were given! I do think people have learned from that and in over the few next days we’re gonna see some mid range cells just playing looting, right? Jeskai with looting, we’re gonna start seeing people trying looting on stuff. Until something sticks.

[00:36:06] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Well, you mentioned Indo Creativity as the other Archon deck, which is Oh, yeah.

Unlocked now by the one ring. So should you put Faith exuding and persist into that deck? Is that, is that what you’re envisioning?

[00:36:17] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): I mean, the rag there, there used to be a rag, those when creativity was tier one, it had two shells, the four color one, and the rag. Those one that was playing the human discard, that gave haste and persist.

This is so much insanely better than the Enchantment.

[00:36:30] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Oh, Bitter Triumph, Bitter Union. Yeah, and it was

[00:36:34] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): winning and playing Bitter Union. Now, they banned the one ring, which is what took it out of the format, and you get looting. Like, that’s two decent upgrades. I really do think creativity might be back in the format.

I’m not saying it’s gonna be Tier 1 or 0 deck, but it’s back as a Tier maybe 2 or 1. 5 deck. It’s gonna be. Present again.

[00:36:52] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): And I just want to preempt the complaints and say, just ban Arkhan of Cruelty. Nobody likes that card.

[00:36:57] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): 31st March is the next announcement. They did say they wanted to unban more stuff.

Maybe we can start praying for Astrolabe, right? We can start crossing. Like, I’m not fighting for Uro, I’m not fighting for Oko. No one fights for Oko, long live Uro, long live Oko, the king is dead, but Once Upon a Time is not coming back. Urion is not coming back. Just give me. Either Beanstalk or Astrolabe.

I’m a simple man.

[00:37:28] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Umazawa’s is never coming back. The card is far too powerful for today’s modern.

[00:37:33] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Punishing Fire, I think it’s just getting banned because of time dexterity. Like, I think that’s, that’s the only argument to keep Punishing Fire banned. Card is not powerful. Card is not good. It’s just, they are afraid of people timing out.

[00:37:48] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Wait, are you saying that you think Uro should come back?

[00:37:51] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): No, no, no. I think Uro. Sorry. I think Uro. I’m willing to have the conversation now with the new Anvans and with Flesh in the format. Flesh makes it so if you want to grind, you can stay in other colors. The biggest problem with Uro was, sort of like the Ring was the best engine, Uro was always the best engine.

Grinding without being Simic was just being an idiot. So it forced you into, like, you were trying to play Mardu, you were trying to do something fun, no no, Uro. Oko did the same.

[00:38:23] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): I see flage getting mentioned a lot, it was even mentioned in the announcement, they said they were considering flage as one of the cards to weaken Boros.

I think it’s fun. People are saying, oh, flage is going to be a problem because, you know, the Faithless Luton Dex have access to flage now, well, I don’t know, I mean, is that, how big of a problem is flage?

[00:38:41] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): So, I think it’s deceptive. People don’t hate losing to Flesh, it’s a fun card and I think that helps him a lot.

And unlike Uro which just ran out with the game due to give you mana, people assume you having to make removal is a lot more fair. If you’re getting the 2 for 1 for Flesh because I played a creature, I felt I had a decision in you getting a 2 for 1. That’s not the case with Uro. You just always play Uro on turn 3.

Unless you’re holding up contra or using a removal failure, you’re playing good. See, that’s no reason not to.

[00:39:16] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So that’s a, that’s a turn three Fage. But what about the, you know, surveil my Fage into the graveyard and then eventually I just 12 you with Arena of Glory? I mean,

[00:39:24] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): yeah, but so there’s two things.

Those are not the most common games, and people do tilt at those games. They’re just so weird. They don’t pile those up. When you lost judo, it didn’t tend to be like, oh, for 12, that’s easy. It tended to be . Escape Uro. Attack with Uro. Escape a new Uro. Play Uro from hand. Pass turn. Untap.

[00:39:49] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Escape Uro.

[00:39:50] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Ephemeral Uro.

Yeah, exactly, that was the playstyle with Uro. It wasn’t Arena of Glory U412. It was, oh no, take me out of this misery. And I think that, I don’t think it’s much weaker than Uro. Like, I think it’s a card that practically everyone underestimated. Like, I was hyped for it. I said it was gonna be like a fun 2 off in Boros and 4 color.

And it was so much more! It was the closest thing to Uro we’re gonna get. Uh, for some it’s stronger than Uro, in certain metas I will agree it’s stronger than Uro. If everybody’s playing a creature on turn 2 that you can trade favorably, it’s better than Uro. In that specific case.

[00:40:32] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Yeah, I think I did not realize just how strong Flage would be. Although I did, I did call out that Arena of Glory would be the best thing to do with Flage.

[00:40:39] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Yeah, Arena of Glory is insane. Arena of Glory is generally a good card, I think it’s a bit underused at the moment. But so many decks just do great things with it.

[00:40:50] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Love to see the Arena of Glory with the new Kiora. Get that Haste, get that Octopus.

[00:40:56] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): See? Spike was doing something like that.

Hollow One Decks: The Good, The Bad, and The Fun

[00:40:59] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): I think more realistically, I mean, Arena of Glory is pretty decent in the Hollow One decks. Oh, yeah, so Hollow One is In a big way.

[00:41:08] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Hollow One is so bad. Detective Phoenix was such a, is such a great card for that deck after its return.

[00:41:16] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So, Hollow Moon is one of the worst cards to ever be famous, right? I don’t know why so many people think of Hollow Moon all the time. It’s just a terrible card. It’s just awful. It’s a 4 4. And yet, the deck is fun. I mean, I think the biggest reason to even look at it is Fun. It lets you play through Graveyard Hates, right?

You have another thing that you could potentially win with. Like, oh, how can they beat a 4 4? They can beat a 4 4. Now, if it’s got plus two, plus two flying in a haste, maybe they can’t beat it, so that’s a little bit of a different thing. Um, but we’ll see.

Crabvine and Faithless Looting: A Deckbuilding Dilemma

[00:41:46] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): I mean, yeah, I was trying to think of, you know, I’m a big lover of Crabvine.

I was trying to think, is there any way to put Faithless Looting into Crabvine? There really isn’t. I mean, at a certain point, you should just be playing Hollywood instead.

[00:41:57] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Yeah, at a certain point, why not just start at Phoenix?

[00:42:02] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Yeah, it’s just too different. The mechanic of drawing and discarding is just very different.

No, no, I completely get it. I completely

[00:42:09] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): get it. It’s a whole different deck at the same time, when it’s like the suddenly evolution.

[00:42:15] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Yeah, so, I mean, you would not call Hollow One a midrange deck, but I guess the reason why it’s scary is because you can’t really beat it with Graveyard Hate, even though it does use the Graveyard very well.

[00:42:27] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Because you sometimes just get lagged out of the game. Well, Hollow One is one of those decks that really play into what I said of, some good decks just will have more consistently a god hand. The number of turn one, two, three Hollow Ones I have been seeing over the past few It makes me wa or I must rephrase, I mean, 24 hours, to be more exact, even.

I have seen, like, what, ten screenshots of multiple hollow ones on turn one? It really makes me want to just play Solitude Ephemerate so I can have, like, a safety blanket I can hug and feel safe. I

[00:42:56] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): mean, one Force of Vigor eliminates their entire God Hand. First of all, these are screenshots, also, so people are just gonna screenshot their stuff.

Some of them probably lost those games.

The Power of Nethergoyf and Fear of Missing Out

[00:43:05] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): No, but yeah, Detectives Phoenix, Fear of Missing Out, and Nethergulf are three huge upgrades.

[00:43:12] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): I didn’t think Nethergoyf was going to be that important for that deck, but I guess you just need to put pressure on, and Nethergoyf is much better than Flameblade Adept or whatever garbage used to be in that deck.

One mana for I mean, they’re

[00:43:21] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): also playing Adept. The one that died for their sins was the

[00:43:25] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): The Ritwala?

[00:43:26] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): No. No, um, Dragonrage.

[00:43:28] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Oh, Dragonrage. I mean, that card never really made sense anyway. But yeah,

[00:43:31] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): some play Dragonrage instead of Adept. The one that always sticks is Nethergoyf. Then they play sometimes two, sometimes four bowmasters, and split with Fear of Missing Out.

Fear of Missing Out is an amazing card, being an enchantment. Looting on ETB, enchantment, extra on a face attack, it’s literally everything you want.

[00:43:49] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So, David and I were trying to figure this out last time we talked.

Modern vs. Pioneer: A Tale of Two Formats

[00:43:53] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Specifically in Pioneer, people keep playing Fear of Missing Out, and it sucks there. Like, we think it just doesn’t do anything.

Now, why is it different in modern? Is it, are you saying because you always have delirium

[00:44:02] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): delirium.

[00:44:04] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Okay, so it’s like a real threat. It’s,

[00:44:05] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): in modern it’s stupidly easy to get delirium if your deck is half trying it. Like, a normal, a normal hand by this deck will go turn one, nether, go if Turn 2 Burning Inquiry, and Turn 2 Burning Inquiry will mean you already have the land, because we’re playing modern.

We’re playing 10 Fetchlands in a deck, and we’re playing Surveillance, we already have the land. In most scenarios. Looting or Inquiry is gonna be the sorcery. That means, if we get to bin any of the Darkfires, any of the Detective Phoenix, any of the Fear of Missing Outs, or any of the Hollow Ones, we got the Lithium already.

With nothing else. Only one of those.

[00:44:40] Speaker 4: Okay.

[00:44:41] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Because they are two types, all of them. If we get any other creature, any other instant, and Mithras bubble, or any other instant plus sorcery, we’re done. It’s that easy.

[00:44:52] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Well, what do you mean by we’re done? You have a large nether You have four! That’s not

[00:44:56] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): You have the land, you have the sorcery, and you have creature artifact or creature enchantment or artifact plus creature.

[00:45:02] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Well, yeah, but I mean all, all you have so far is a large attacker.

[00:45:06] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): No, no. Right. You have a tooth, you, you have whatever you deal with that it can be, for example, a pretty common thing in this scenario. You have fear of facing out. You might be able to on, you might be able to play the fear of facing out on run three with case from the Phoenix and Swing for like, what is that?

A damage with haste.

[00:45:24] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Or from the Arena of Glory, I suppose. So, yeah. Like,

[00:45:28] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): it’s easy to, you don’t have to, it doesn’t need to have haste. I’m sorry, it needs to have haste for it to get all its value. But the fact it’s also a looting on this deck makes it So, it can sometimes be the extra card you need to play the hollow one for free, or just discard one of the phoenixes.

It

[00:45:48] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): is nice that a deck like this actually has options and choices, right? Because if Fear of Missing Out is that powerful, like Morda is saying, but it’s also like a 2 2 split with Bowmasters, because Bowmasters is stupidly powerful with Burning Inquiry, it’s extremely powerful against Faithless Looting.

Which may be the format for the future.

[00:46:05] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): It’s amazing with goblin lore. Goblin

[00:46:08] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): lore,

[00:46:09] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): geez.

[00:46:12] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Hopefully nobody ever plays that card again. But yeah, so it’s gonna be interesting. I don’t know what role Bowmasters has to play in this new Dryad Arbor faithless looting format.

[00:46:22] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): A big one. About to be a big one, I think.

[00:46:27] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So, for the time being, I’m excited about Fatal Suiting. How about you?

[00:46:30] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): No, I’m excited about all four cards. I think of all the possible Anbans, are some I’m the most happy about. They did specify they were naming Anban in port, and I’m sadly to have to agree. You cut that Bant board. Wait, where did

[00:46:43] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): they say that?

They said they’re never going to do this?

[00:46:44] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): I’m not sure if they said they’re never going to do it or they just said it’s a bad game design that li I think they said they limit game design and we’re not willing to do it. It’s like too much of a sacrifice for what they want.

[00:46:56] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Okay, so let’s talk about this for a second.

The Impact of Unbans on Modern

[00:46:58] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So the middle part of the article, first they explain why they’re banning the One Ring, why they’re banning Amped Raptor, why they’re banning Gigantha. Then they get to the Unbans and they say, It is worth noting that this is the beginning of a new era, I’m quoting here. Many of you have given feedback time and again about the good old days of modern, before Modern Horizon sets started increasing the power level and making iconic decks obsolete.

Okay, so, they’ve got a list of nostalgic, Chorus from the good old days, right? They’re saying, all right, fuck it. Just let’s just see what happens. You can have them all. We need people to at least talk about modern again, because it sounds like modern has really been suffering. Um, I don’t know if that’s been true in your local area, Mord.

No,

[00:47:38] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): no, it has been borderline gone. Like even the grinders were like, yeah, I’m just doing this for a living, not because I’m enjoying it. Like, and now they’re just bombing with joy.

[00:47:48] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): After one day, we’ll see how this goes. No, no. As

[00:47:50] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): I said, every single time someone has said it, they are bombing with joy. Today.

This can last 72 hours. Aphodia might die before January.

[00:48:02] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So they’re saying we’re going to monitor these closely and on March 31st, 2025, we will re evaluate. So that’s three full months. A little bit more than three months.

[00:48:13] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): I think it’s a good amount of time. Like, I really don’t think Things will get stale before February, even if it goes wrong.

So at worst, it will be one or two months of bullshit, but it’s not that long. Like, they’re not saying June. If they had said June or July, I think this would have, might have been really, really dangerous.

The Future of Modern: Nostalgia vs. New Cards

[00:48:33] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So the question that they ask, can we handle a wave of nostalgic and infamous cards to re enter modern?

So if this is true, let’s say that everything works out well, right? And that, you know, the format has been juiced up by MH3, but now you can juice even further with your favorite nostalgic old cards. They should keep going, right? Like, if it’s a big success, they should just keep unbanning stuff. Give us a reason to pay attention to Modern.

Mord, you already named some cards you think could come back.

[00:48:59] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Oh, I think there might be a I think there’s a lot of cards that could come back and shouldn’t. What do I mean with could and should? With could and shouldn’t, I think these cards are power the power level of these cards is correct, but the gameplay or different things they do to the format are not positive.

Be it Eurion extending game extending games and causing dexterity issues, be it, um, what’s the one mana draw spell for elves?

[00:49:28] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Glimpse of Nature.

[00:49:29] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): No one wants to play against Glimpse of Nature, even if it’s a balanced deck. You are making 2 percent of all decks of else players happy, and everyone else miserable watching them combo.

No, it’s not good for a format to have that deck.

[00:49:42] Speaker 6: Bowmasters hold it in checkmord. No,

[00:49:44] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): no, I understand, and that’s why I say it. I’m not saying it would be good, I’m just saying it would be boring. Which is more important. So that’s, I agree that Iorion can cost that, Punishing Fire can cost that, um, As we just said, it can cost that.

Then I think there’s cards that just can’t be unbanned because of power level, like the Artifact Lance.

[00:50:04] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Bridge from Below, how about that?

[00:50:06] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): No, Bridge from Below could be un could be unbanned. I just think it’s in the same camp for them as the one I said before. It’s bad, but why risk it? It’s just bad and boring.

[00:50:16] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Umesawashite?

[00:50:18] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): No, Umesawashite, I have no idea what they’re doing. I I for the life of me cannot understand why they just didn’t sneak in Umesawashite today. Like, oh yeah, and you also have a hit as a little treat. No one freaking would care! No one would play it! Who the fuck plays Stoneforge?

[00:50:35] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Like, that’s one that they can just unban without even announcing it.

Today! Yeah, tomorrow! They can just make a clerical change, like, actually, it’s now legal, we’re not even gonna tell you it’s legal.

[00:50:42] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): If they tomorrow tweet, Ume People would just laugh, and it would be fine, and no one would care because it’s Umeshawa freaking Shite in 2024. Like, I really don’t understand why that card is banned.

[00:50:58] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): All right, what about Up the Beanstalk? Up

[00:51:00] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): the Beanstalk, I think, depends on how the format adapts to this. Like, I think some of the cards they have provided other decks might allow you to give back a form of powerful engine to control. But, it really depends on how the format tunes up the VSTOCK is extremely powerful, the interaction with solitude and leyline binding makes little to no sense.

Disregarding more niche stuff like commandeer and weird things, the fact you can just 2 for 1 on every binding and 2 for 1 on ETB makes it enough.

[00:51:32] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Yeah, I think you make a good point there. I mean, my initial reaction is, well, the problem is the cost reduction, but I think we’ve seen that they’re never going to give up that.

Yeah, yeah, we have to assume cost reduction is staying,

[00:51:43] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): so we have to play accordingly. They’re just not gonna take it out, they’re gonna keep it there. KCI is a one I think might be, with Mox Opal can never be unbanned. It’s one or the other, you can’t have both again, never.

[00:51:56] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Same with Astrolabe? Astrolabe

[00:51:58] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): I don’t think so as much, I don’t think Ursa like the decks that were using both were the Ursa Oko decks, which I don’t think will be particularly powerful nowadays.

I do think you could bring back Astrolabe, as long as you don’t bring back anything else, like no Uro, no, no, no other of the parts of it, right? Um, you can never unban Microsynth Lattice. Microsynth Lattice remains there forever. Deathrite Shaman is an interesting talk. The unban of Prince and Zinith really makes it hard to unban Deathrite, but

[00:52:34] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So, when you’re saying Mycos and Gladdoth can never be unbanned, right?

That was a fun ban, right? Like, they were never saying it’s too powerful.

[00:52:41] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): I think it’s too powerful now.

[00:52:42] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): That continues to be No, no, I think it’s too powerful now.

[00:52:46] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Now it’s really easy to get you 10 mana. Now you can get you 10 mana on turn 5 semi consistently.

[00:52:52] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Oh, I see. So you think that should also be a power level ban.

I

[00:52:54] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): think now it’s a power level ban at the moment it wasn’t. I think the acceleration in modern with the addition of two pairs of soul lands, better throne lands, more efficient, everything has made it so you can easily get there. You will see if you play modern today, you will notice a lot of your games going something like turn one talisman into turn two Miko spawn ramp into turn three wallbreaker or Miko spawn ramp into turn four ten mana ulamog or something.

[00:53:23] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Which I think is totally fine. I mean, that’s extremely acceptable. No, no, I think it’s acceptable,

[00:53:28] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): but you cannot The only

[00:53:28] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): problem with that was the one ring. Everything else about that was healthy.

[00:53:32] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): You cannot give lattice to that. That’s what I’m saying. You cannot have an egg that goes turn 1 ramp, turn 2 ramp with a 3 3, turn 3 ramp with a 3 3, and turn 4 mana.

And turn 4 If you cannot kill this card, I win, right now, with two blockers on the way. That’s just not fair. It’s already hard to beat a card in that scenario. If they just had a six mana, I win.

[00:53:57] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Okay. Deathrite Shaman, you think?

[00:54:00] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Deathrite Shaman? I have never been able to play with the card. Like, my judgment of it, it’s a bit icky.

I do think it’s extremely powerful, and the biggest problem with Deathrite, it just buffs so many decks, we’re leaving so many completely untouched. It’s like a straight buff to 40 percent of the meta. I

[00:54:20] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): mean, it definitely changes the value of all the graveyard stuff, right?

[00:54:24] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): And makes black a lot better. I think it would be interesting.

Makes black a lot better in the format.

[00:54:30] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Hmm.

[00:54:30] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): That’s why it ends pseudo, right? Like, it gives Dimir a mana lurk. You need to take that into consideration whenever you speak about Deathrite.

[00:54:38] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Well, I mean, if green gets Dryadorper, why shouldn’t black get a Manadork as well?

[00:54:41] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): No, no, I mean, I understand the point.

I’m just saying it comes with a lot of repercussions. Chrome Mox is correctly banned, Ludus is correctly banned, Io Fugin is correctly banned,

[00:54:50] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Hyper Genesis Do you think Chrome Mox is correctly banned?

[00:54:53] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Yeah, yeah, I think all Moxes are correctly banned. If Mox Zombies, I think So any Mox that doesn’t require a buildaround is, I think, broken in modern.

Zero man fast manner in modern without build around is broken.

[00:55:08] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): I see

[00:55:08] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): all the build around. You cannot, you don’t have fast man in modern that hasn’t, that doesn’t have build around, that isn’t green. Your soland are all tribal, like they require a seven dropping hand or an elra. Mm-hmm . Your, your best Turk or any or similar are tribal.

Your, your Moes are amber or mos. You’re either playing a lot of artifacts or fucking legend race. Cheap legendaries at that, which are Tamiyo, Ragavan, and two more. Like, you have to beat around these fast manas. I don’t think you can just keep fast mana in modern. I don’t think it’s something you’re able to give out.

Mana tends to be the most restrictive aspect of modern games.

[00:55:50] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Okay, fair enough. Yeah, fast mana is probably dangerous. What about the long game stuff? So, Field of the Dead, Mystic Sanctuary, Ponder.

[00:55:59] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Oh, Ponder I think Let’s talk in March, let’s see how the format affects my looting. I think Ponder might be just super, super easy to let go.

Then you said, Field of the Dead, let’s talk, let’s see Titan, because everybody’s afraid Titan will just be amazing today, so I don’t want to give Field of the Dead to that deck. I also think Field of the Dead, even if it’s weak enough, It’s boring. Like, remember the old four color decklist that just played no Wincons and had one Feel of the Dead on it?

[00:56:28] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Oh, with Uro? Yeah!

[00:56:30] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): You just stole that Feel of the Dead. Maybe without Uro it’s more fun now, because you’re not having that stupid loop of just playing landscape in life, make zombies scold the game. But it’s a boring card. Like, you cannot play fair against that. Maybe with the threats now being flyers and more efficient, maybe it can be back.

I just think it’s boring. Not a fan for the format whenever it’s unleashed.

[00:56:55] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Okay, what about Mystic Sanctuary?

[00:56:58] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Oh, Myst no, Mystic Sanctuary, I think, is the biggest punish is the biggest culprit of most unfun card to play against.

[00:57:07] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Really?

[00:57:08] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Yeah, yeah. So Mystic Sanctuary gave something to control decks that sort of killed the mood of Like, whenever you’re playing against an Azorius control deck, or you’re playing against Jeskai, you’re playing against Dimir, you’re playing against anything.

Once you’re both at two or three cards in hand, you feel like right now there might be a game. It’s gonna be a top deck mode game. Mystic Sanctuary makes that a lie. We both have four lands, we both have two cards in hand, control has won this game. Unless you top deck perfectly, Don’t worry, they will topdeck perfectly.

[00:57:38] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): I see. So it almost doesn’t matter what spell they’re getting back, the fact that The

[00:57:41] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): fact that they can get back Their deck has

[00:57:42] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): all spells now. I

[00:57:43] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): mean, they can get back Archmage’s Charm for all I care. How do I win against someone that the next three draws are gonna be Archmage’s Charm? If my next three draws are truly random.

And that’s being completely fair and picking a one for one counter spell.

[00:58:01] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Get some of my companion while they’re doing that. Oh, I could

[00:58:03] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): get back Iorean or Alurus. No, but I think There’s a few cards I think I hope could come back. Ponder, I think, can’t return, that wouldn’t be an issue, Punishing Fire could, I think they are being exaggerating, Shirek could just pop into the game and no one would care, Up the Beanstalk, maybe?

Um, Grave Troll, no, not with looting, not with looting out and about. Summer Bloom was, Bloom was something some people were asking about, but not with greens and zenith. I think it was one of the other.

[00:58:39] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Grief and Fury?

[00:58:40] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): I think Fury, yes. I think Grief not. But Grief, due to fun aspects of the game. Fury, not so much.

I don’t, I think Acrodex have gotten enough tools where they can now fight back against Fury. Where that was not the case when Fury got banned.

[00:58:57] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Dread Return.

[00:58:59] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Oh. Hmm. Would that make Oops too good? No, no idea. Could be fun. At least as a try. Seething Song would be too strong. Monorail Storm is already too good.

Hear. Fire.

I really, I really hope Monorail Storm starts playing looting.

[00:59:19] Speaker 6: You want that?

[00:59:21] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): I mean, kinda, just to get the card banned faster, but actually because I think it’s just good. You want this to

[00:59:25] Speaker 6: get banned again? Oh, come on.

[00:59:28] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Die, looting, die! No, no, I hope it doesn’t. I really think mid January we’re gonna start seeing the meta settle in.

Because now it’s, now it’s, we have the holidays, it’s for a few weeks. We have a week where everyone is full on grinding and testing that it’s gonna die down for a bit, and then when it returns it’s gonna settle, and I just hope it isn’t Graveyard against Graveyard hate, or like, combo against hate as you said it was a few years ago.

I don’t want to just be forced to play a deck that has 4 Land of the Void, 4 Endurance, 4 Land of Sanctity, and Wrath of the Skies as a way to make sure I don’t get hated out of the format. I don’t get turned to kill every game or, or, or looting into something awful.

[01:00:14] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So the question that I posed in our Faithless Brewing Discord, at this point we’re primarily a pioneer podcast, um, that’s David’s main brewing interest.

I haven’t been able to play enough modern to contribute anything meaningful recently on the modern front. So a lot of our people in the Discord are, like, pioneer focused, and I’m just wondering, will people actually come back to Modern because of these changes? Right? These are nostalgic cards. I think the response has been deliriously positive, right?

Everyone’s like, oh my gosh, this is so huge. But will people actually come back? Will they actually stick and will they actually try Modern again?

[01:00:45] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): So I think it’s two different questions. I think people will come back and people will stick, depends on what happens next month. Depends on how the format stalls.

Like, when the format gets stalled, once this whole innovation and everyone playing crappy stuff and fun stuff, and everyone is having fun, people are playing Bruce, you just see Snow, you play a league, you see Snowdecks, you see Tron, you see Storm, you see Combo, that’s fun, that’s gonna get people hooked, and people are gonna stay a while.

If in 40 days from now, every single game is either turn 1 looting, or 5 mana in 2 mocs, or my or trying to find a way that my opponent does not combo me, It’s not. People are gonna get bored and go back to Pioneer. But, even Menguchi, which has to be like one of the biggest modern streamers, has stopped streaming modern.

He literally said, I’m done with modern, come back in ten days after advance.

[01:01:35] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): But that was a one ring problem.

[01:01:37] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): No, no, that was, exactly! But that’s why a lot of people left. The one ring problem was a lot for a lot of people. A lot, most people that left because of that will return. Doomwake left like a year ago, and he was freaking happy to be playing Rhinos again.

With Slinger Twin. That’s all a man needed! He needed one week to die and he was happy, he was back! I think people will be back for this month, and I really hope the format ends up Not sure if healthy is the word, I think fun is more important. At least for now, the format really needs people to enjoy it again.

[01:02:11] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Yeah, I agree with that. Now here’s the darkness on the horizon that we haven’t really talked about. Let’s talk about the One Ring and the implications of what we’ve seen from the One Ring ban. They basically acknowledged in this announcement that they knew the One Ring was broken, that their last announcement was bullshit, when they said, Oh, there’s, you know, there’s no dominant One Ring deck.

Crap. That was bullshit, right? That was total crap. And they knew that, but presumably it was still selling packs, and then once the outcry from that non ban happened, people sort of stopped buying the one ring, and they felt like there was no more reason to drag out this farce any longer, so they said, okay, fine, it’s banned.

We’re the good guys now, we banned it, congratulations, have your format back. So nothing really surprising about that, but we know that All these sets are coming, right? We can briefly enjoy Nostalgic Modern for like Christmas, like a vintage cube or something.

The Role of Universes Beyond in Modern

[01:03:02] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): And then next year is just going to be all this Universes Beyond stuff forever, until Modern dies.

[01:03:07] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Universes Beyond is going to so, two things. The first is bad for bad for everyone else, good for Modern, which is Universes Beyond now go to Standard. So now they stop being a power level issue.

[01:03:21] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So that was gonna be my question. So do you believe that the One Ring was just a mistake that they’ve learned from and that No, no, no, no, no.

[01:03:27] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): I think, no, no. First of all, I don’t think the One Ring was a mistake. First off, I think for them, the One Ring was Magnific. The likely best soul set in Magic’s history was the one, the Lord of the Rings. Post Malone had a picture with his The One Ring. It was the most played card for the last year and a half.

The One Ring was a fucking success! The One Ring worked! Everybody was talking about it. In newspapers, in articles, people were talking about The One Ring. It fucking worked. It’s not a lesson they’re gonna If it’s a lesson they’re gonna learn, It’s not a good one.

[01:04:00] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So the lesson is they should do this more often, as often as they

[01:04:03] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): can.

Yeah, 100%. They will do this more often. Maybe not in modern, maybe just in, maybe they will just keep spraying commander. Maybe they will see what they do. Maybe they realized the power level wasn’t that too high, but the idea was correct. Let’s, let’s actually say something pretty specific. When the one ring got spoiled, people thought it sucked.

I had to fight people to say this is playable, and two months later, I had to fight people saying, nope, they’re not gonna ban it. I told you it was powerful, trust me when I tell you, they’re not gonna ban it today. It’s not that big of a problem, we have grief still in the format. Like, it went from a card people said it was a formal and playable sorcery, to a card people are begging to get banned in less than 45 days, and it lasted over a year.

[01:04:51] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): And do you think that MH3 had anything to do with that?

[01:04:54] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Oh yeah, a hundred percent. That’s why I don’t think the universes beyond or standard or fire design is the issue. I think it’s the straight to modern sets, but, and not even because they are badly designed, but because the modern player at heart believes modern to be an unmutable format.

A lot of people got into modern because when they had to choose five, ten years ago, between standard modern and legacy, they get offered super expensive, mildly expensive, but retains, but you will get to keep it, or cheap and rotatory. People, most people elected mild, mildly expensive, but you get to keep it.

That’s not the essence of the format anymore. Modern Horizons, it’s a confirmation by Wizards. That’s not the format. That’s not what they’re promising. That’s not what they’re delivering.

[01:05:44] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So. Right. Modern rotates faster than any format now. Every two

[01:05:47] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): years! Every two years, modern will rotate heavily. You should know that.

We should know that. They have announced that. Every two years they will Reli will release an MH set and this will happen. The biggest problem was in 2023, we have two MH sets. What? Because Universe Beyond was straight to modern and we had MH three. It was like a time bomb both together. It was the one, it was a lot of the rings with the busted cards.

They wanted to sell in all formats. And MH3.

[01:06:21] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So, what do you expect for 2025, then, with, uh, three Universes Beyond sets?

[01:06:26] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): No, I, I, now I don’t care about them because they are straight to standard. So, like, I care about them on the thing of, the lore in Magic is, dies with the Universe Beyond, right? So, You cannot, it’s really hard to bond yourself to a story where, when you realize anything is possible with marketing.

What do I mean with this? I can bond with the characters. I feel it’s hard to bond with, with Chase. When I know fucking Tryndamere from League of Legends might appear tomorrow. It’s hard to form a trajectory with Jayce, with freaking whatever, if I have to be concerned how they might relate to Jinx from Arcane in two years.

That’s part of the universe. So

[01:07:15] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): I feel the same way too, but I’ve been told that for people who grew up with comic books, or for people who are just younger, maybe more like your generation, that crossovers are normal and expected, and that it’s not a problem.

[01:07:27] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): The yes and no. Crossovers are normal and expected in games.

[01:07:31] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Okay.

[01:07:32] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Generally, in these games where the plot is not powerful, where the narrative is not important, I think being a card game, your narrative, not your plot, not your lore, but your narrative is important. What you’re showing, what people are looking. People didn’t get into magic because How many people got into magic because it looks cool.

It looks fun. And I get what they’re doing with this They are doing the same for a new group of people. They are doing the same like hey Instead of hey, this dragon looks cute that like they were doing in 1995. Hey, look at this human dragon. Look how cute it is It’s amazing. It’s a dragon. They’re going.

Oh, hey, look, it’s Iron Man It’s your favorite superhero with a card! You little kid, you need to buy this! And it works. Like, for that it works. I think it just kills the identity of the game. People are not playing Magic, they are playing the card stay alive game. And that’s fine, because they’re also going for Commander as their main setup.

Like, it’s a whole arc. It sells it. It’s a good narrative they’re selling. It works for what they want. The problem is, the strict form the real formats, the ones that we love, are the collateral damage. I

[01:08:37] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): mean, can they coexist? I guess that’s what I’m wondering.

[01:08:39] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): I mean, they can, they just are too Hasbro is just too greedy.

They could, yeah, they could coexist. People blame Commander on the death of Muldren, and that’s just people complaining for complaining’s sake. What does Commander fucking have to do? The problem is they decided to print Commander Cancel Modern. That’s not Commander’s fault, that’s fucking Hasbro! Why are you print Why do you print Why do you ratanadu?

Like, we You print a card You change a card in MH3 one week before release saying you didn’t have time to test it because you didn’t consider it would be strong enough in Commander. You change a card in MH3 without testing because it wasn’t strong enough for Commander, what the fuck? Like, from there!

Like, that’s the, that’s the issue. That’s, that’s the whole issue, that’s the whole total issue with modern. We had to deal with four months for Naru, because they didn’t think it was powerful enough for a format, they ended up banning it. They banned it in Commander. So what for, what the fuck was it for?

[01:09:47] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Well, in this announcement, they mentioned that the Alchemy version of Nadu is doing quite well in Brawl. They’re happy with the twist. They’re happy with the

[01:09:55] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): twist! For fuck’s sake. So, next year they are releasing Elden Rift releases on February, which has some amazing cards from what we have seen. Like it has, Elder Drakes releases in February, it has like the super Captain Ranger of Eos, the four mana Gearhulk, do you know?

I don’t know if he remembers it. Then we have Tarkir in April, and then we have the first issue which is Final Fantasy in June. But that’s straight to, then we have Age of, so it’s only three sets next year? No,

[01:10:26] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): there’s six. Then there is

[01:10:31] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Innistrad Remastered?

[01:10:32] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Uh, Spider Man is coming next. Oh, Spider Man is coming next.

They haven’t announced what the third Universes Beyond set is yet. Yeah, then we have Age of Eternity, Sinogost,

[01:10:41] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Spider Man, and one more.

[01:10:44] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Yeah, so it’ll be every two months. A new set every two months. So just going back to what you were saying about the choice you make, which format, you know, which door do you walk through, which path through the dungeon do you take.

Basically, Playoneer They’re just trying to pretend Pioneer doesn’t exist right now, like it’s not on the competitive schedule. Modern, Standard,

[01:11:03] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Modern, right? Or the other way? Standard, Modern, Standard.

[01:11:06] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Something like that. Standard is becoming much more like Pioneer was. Three year rotation is decent and it’s going to be large, so it’s going to have like that feel of discovery and brewing.

And so if you have to choose between Standard and Modern

[01:11:20] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): So I remember when I made a statement, I think it was on one of our first episodes after Pioneer was releasing, and I said like Pioneer failed at what they wanted. They wanted Pioneer to kill Modern, and it ended with Modern killing Legacy. I I I I I I saw I remember that that was my assessment of the situation, and it ended just like that.

The and when they decided Pioneer failed, they went all ahead on standard, because you need a set you need a strong set for new people. You need people to that to want to play something. And now people are looking at modern like an old relic of the past. I have a lot of friends that have joined the game over the past two or three years, and they play Arena, Commander, and Popper.

[01:12:02] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): That’s interesting.

[01:12:03] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): That’s what they, that’s what people play. That’s what people get to know of the game. They have said in the past 40 percent of players don’t know what a planeswalker is. They’re playing Commander. Oh. If 40 percent doesn’t know what a, 40 percent doesn’t know what a commander is. From that stat alone, and they’re focusing on the people that are a bit more knowledgeable than that.

What’s that, the other 50%? People between commander, people between competitive players, and I know what a commander, what a planeswalker is.

[01:12:35] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Now, what, what percentage of players know that there’s a post combat main phase?

[01:12:38] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): No, the other day, the other day, I don’t remember who was asking, so will this rule, you know, there was a change in the combat rules a few months ago, right?

[01:12:47] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Oh, with foundations?

[01:12:48] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Yeah, that you can block different.

[01:12:50] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): I don’t even think of Magic Online knows that. Yeah, Magic Online does. It’s really hard to figure out. Yeah, Magic

[01:12:54] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Online did. They changed it immediately. But

[01:12:56] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): did they fix it? Because I saw people saying it’s like impossible to assign the damage correctly now.

[01:13:01] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): And in my case it got easy, but, and I remember someone asking, oh, this is going to be a big change. People, and I was like, no, no one even fucking knows the blocking rules. I can go to an FNM tomorrow, ask 25 players, can you accurately describe the changes that were made and advantage and disadvantages of the situations?

And 23 won’t be able to. They don’t care either, it’s not like they are dumb, they just don’t care enough about the profundities of the game, they are playing at FNM. It’s not that big, at least for most players, they are playing a really casual game, and Wizards really likes to push into that, which I think part of the issue of the magic as a whole dying, the identity of it.

If people just join Fort Commander for play for the cards they like, will they return later? Or do you have to keep printing more Marvel cards? Like, are they printing Spider Man to keep the people they bring in with Marvel? Is that a reality? Or do people that are coming with marvels just stay? I don’t think they stay, I think that’s the move.

I think you bring them in, release Desperate Time 2 Time Data Piece to them, and you get a new community, and you start bringing people in, that’s what they need after all.

The Financial Dynamics of Modern and Other Formats

[01:14:14] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So what I’m hearing you say is that, if we think about modern as a format, that there’s nothing there, there’s no sacred history, there’s no integrity to modern that needs to be preserved.

There’s no even core player base that needs to be preserved. It’s just, if modern can exist, it’s to temporarily be fun for some people. And right now that’s for the nostalgic people who want to get back into it. And you know, whatever it takes to like make modern relevant, they just have to do that.

[01:14:36] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): So not quite.

I think sadly for them, I think this is sad for them, like this is not an advantage. There’s too many modern players. Or at least people actively invested in modern.

[01:14:47] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): They can’t get rid of us that easily. You

[01:14:49] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): cannot disregard a format like you can Legacy. I think Legacy is in exactly the state you just described.

They don’t care about Legacy. They just have a handful of people playing it that they enjoy, that spend money. Why, why say, why, why anger them? They just, like, they won’t look deep into it. You can tell when they write the things they are not Legacy players. They don’t care. The community is always angry.

The bands, the, the, the, the meta always sucks. Legacy only stays for Legacy players. And there are a few of them and that’s perfectly fine. They don’t brew, they don’t design for Legacy. They don’t care about how a card will impact Legacy. That’s second, fourth thought. They do care about modern. Why? Because it’s an explorable player base still.

Like they, they have to consider it. Yeah.

[01:15:32] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): There’s still money to be made there. There’s still money to be made, and players,

[01:15:35] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): yeah, why, why ignore them? Like, like, there is a demand. I do think in their urge to use the content for modern, for more things, they end up harming mostly modern. Like, printing Naru in MH3 doesn’t harm commander, it harms modern.

Because why would it harm commander? They don’t care about the camp scout. If you ask a commander player what half the cards they print in the deck were printed, they don’t know. They don’t care about sets. They care about cards. Only specific cards. There’s no lore, there’s no narrative behind them.

There’s no draft, generally.

[01:16:08] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): But are you saying that Wizards or Hasbro would just be happier if modern players quit? Hasbro Because we are a bunch of complaining players. If Hasbro

[01:16:17] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): was able to transform 40 percent of all the player base from other formats into Commander and just shut down everything else, they would.

[01:16:26] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Okay.

[01:16:26] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): If they could just say, okay, every single format is dead with the guarantee that I don’t know how many percentage of the playerbase would stay, they would just do it. They just know they can’t kill modern and keep modern players. Why? Because it has a strong identity, people have grafted into a format, and I think it was one of those core beliefs that brought us into it, the thing that we will get to keep what our deck.

I was brought into modern with the belief that I would always be able to play my Death and Taxes deck. I mean, but weren’t we all? When you built, when someone built their first shun, when someone built their first, when someone got their first Bloodbrary the Elf, when someone got their first Burn deck, didn’t you believe that you would be able to play this until magic died?

At least that was the promise in between quotes.

[01:17:13] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): That’s what people said, right? Whenever anyone complained about why it costs 200 for a Tarmogryph or something. You can keep your deck.

[01:17:20] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): And that’s not the core of Modern anymore. They gave that, they sent that back. They said, oh no, you want to get that? Yeah, you can find that in Legacy.

No, no, in Modern we change.

[01:17:27] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Right. They no longer mention non rotating. It

[01:17:31] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): stopped being a part of the core of it. Why? Because they needed to sell in Modern. Because modern players didn’t spend. How much did you spend at how much did you give Wizards? Like, to give to Wizards, you would have to buy something at a store that that store bought from Wizards, or spend on MTCO.

How much have you done that, as a 15 year old player? 20 year old player?

[01:17:54] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Gosh. In my life?

[01:17:56] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): I mean, I could

[01:17:58] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): have retired if I had spent my money on, if I just invested instead of buying these stupid cardboard.

[01:18:05] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): No, but if you bought cards, you didn’t pay, you didn’t, if you spent on the secondary market, that’s not earnings for WotC.

[01:18:12] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Oh, I see what you’re saying. Okay. No, that’s what I

[01:18:14] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): mean. You and I are likely negative value for Wizard. I am negative value. I have earned more from Pro Tour earnings and MTCO than I have given them. I have, I bought like once, two seal boxes in my life and two priority list packages and maybe something else.

I’m like, I’m not actually, while using their services for everything, I am Only, or a really bad marketing investment, because I talk about their game for free.

[01:18:45] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): A really bad marketing investment?

The Economics of Modern Play

[01:18:47] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Or! Like, I gotta erase this part, I don’t want anyone to hear this, if they hear this, they’re gonna shut down Modern for Good, and they’ll be like, oh my god,

[01:18:54] Speaker 6: the word

[01:18:54] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): is not

[01:18:56] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Or a really bad marketing investment, because I’m talking about their game for, in between quotes, free, or I’m just a bad business.

[01:19:04] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): I think that your presence in the modern ecosystem keeps profitable players engaged in some way. Somebody’s got to be paying, somebody’s got to be purchasing treasure chests, somebody’s got to be purchasing event tickets online. That’s

[01:19:15] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): what I mean with the bad propaganda. The fact I play, the fact I stream, I need someone to play the deck and in that way get the money.

But I don’t give the money, I don’t spend that, I don’t spend that wizard, I don’t buy sealed packages. Any friend I know,

[01:19:31] Speaker 6: yeah, but

[01:19:31] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): any friend I know that plays commander over less than three years has spent more money than me. In sealed packages, in commander decks, in things that are not secondary market.

Commander Players vs. Modern Players

[01:19:45] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Commander players spend money in stores. We don’t. And that’s a huge difference for Hasbro, it’s all the difference. That’s literally all they care! And it works, so they bring in commander players. Commander players spend more, spend it on stuff they care about. They are not that, they are not that hard to deal with as well.

You don’t need to be constantly banning. You don’t need to be constantly printing. You can print whatever the freak you want most of the time. You can be free, you can create four commander decks. They can print 600 cards into commander every two months, and no one cares. People are just happy to see new cards.

[01:20:22] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): There’s a wide world of whales out there in Commander and they just, they haven’t been hunting whales for a long time. It’s more, no, no, no,

[01:20:30] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): no, it’s different. I was willing to pay for Catan more than I’m willing to pay, I paid for Catan more happily than I paid for an MH Box. It’s a board game. People spend money to play games.

That’s what it is. It’s, we don’t treat Magic like a game. We don’t spend money to play Magic. I don’t, I, for fucks, I have not spent money to play Magic for like three years now, besides paying an LCS entry.

[01:20:55] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So that’s the toxic mindset that they’re trying to stamp out by killing competitive play. Yeah.

Strangling the formats. They don’t want people Leaving them in disrepair.

[01:21:03] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): They don’t want people looking at the EB of a tournament entry. We do! But that’s not good for business. I want people coming into my commander event. In the commander events, they charge an entry to just play in the event. See how much easier that is It’s a set

[01:21:20] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): of a table.

See

[01:21:21] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): how much easier that is than signing up huge board events?

[01:21:25] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Right, it’s like the command zone is just an area with tables, and you pay to go in.

[01:21:30] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): It’s that easy. And they know that. And Hasbro is trading money. And WotC is the golden calf.

And it works, and sadly, that’s what the price we pay. I do think there’s smart people inside, I do think the game design, mostly, does an amazing work. I just think they need to review some policies, like fucking printing a card without testing it last week.

The Impact of Universes Beyond

[01:21:53] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): But, changing safety policies, I do think they’re doing a great work, and I think making sure that the Universe is beyond, as bad as it is for modern, for magic, it’s great for modern.

It’s really bad for standard and pioneer, I really think it might re I think it will make it hard for an arena to preserve an identity. You look at Fortnite, and it’s Fortnite is now a blanket for market. You enter Fortnite, it’s a blanket for skins, you know? I don’t know if you have any Fortnite knowledge.

[01:22:25] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): I don’t play, but that’s my understanding of it. No, no, not

[01:22:27] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): playing, but if you have seen videos, you see Goku flying, fighting against a family guy, fighting against fucking Pocahontas. You can see that in a Fortnite game. Magic is slowly drifting into that, and it’s fine if that’s what you’re willing to sell.

If you’re willing to sell, which I think what you’re saying, is magic as a board game. Magic as a set of rules for your cards. Your Warhammer cards, your Marvel cards, your, well, Final Fantasy cards, Spider Man cards! You can play a Spider Man against your Marvel’s Deck friends! You can play your Lord of the Rings commander against your Marvel’s Deck friends!

It’s so much more charming, in a way, to the modern society.

[01:23:10] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): I mean, back in the day, long ago, before the internet, people used to make custom magic sets for like, whatever. And it was always kind of cheesy and lame, but some people thought it was so funny. Like, oh, a cute star. I made a Star Wars themed magic set.

Like, you know, that’s fine. But we were all young in those days.

Nostalgia and Early Magic Sets

[01:23:31] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): You should go back and listen to our last episode, Mord, where David and I were talking about the era of nostalgia, like the function of nostalgia in the earliest sets. And he made the point that back then, You know, everyone was just sort of bored, right, there just wasn’t that much content out there.

So you could have an objectively not very interesting mutant man called Force of Nature, and that was like the most mind blowing thing for a kid. I mean, I got to play against a Force of Nature last weekend. So I remember

[01:23:57] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): It was amazing. One of the things I remember the most about reading from Early Game Magic is, one of the most important things for Garfield was, people will never know the entirety of the cards.

People shouldn’t know the entirety of the cards, people should know the cards they stumbled upon. The feeling of discovering new cards should be what gets player buying, it should, like, what gets player interested should be knowledge, should be learning more. It was part of the game, you know, the library was literally the spells you know, it was quite literally, You got more knowledge, you got a better library by learning more, by getting better cards.

There

[01:24:28] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): was no internet back then. No, no,

[01:24:29] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): I know, of course, and you had to rely on the Inquest magazine and the freaking million things that came with it, and it was a huge advantage. Some games, some IPs have been able to retain their identity, and it’s a shame Magic did for so long. Like, what was the first split?

The secret lair? I think secret lairs were fine, to be fair. Everyone complained about secret lairs and I was always on for it. Secret Layers felt like the correct way to do this. I

[01:25:01] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): mean, what Dave and I were talking about was, by the time we started playing, which was within a year of the game coming out, there were already unattainable Secret Lair drop cards from Alpha, Beta, and the New Revise, the Legends, right?

We didn’t realize this at the time, but Arabian Nights was also Universes Beyond, and Richard Garfield just says that now. So I don’t know. That’s been a weird return to this era, in a very roundabout way.

[01:25:24] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): I just think, like, I’m going to explain my problem, and I think it’s, I don’t think, I think it’s a lie, Arabian Nights, it’s not Universe Beyond, because they took the time to bring it into Magic.

You don’t feel Arabia as Arabia, as I would call Arabia, as Arabia Saudite, you don’t feel it. I do feel that when Spider Man releases, I’m going to be in fucking Boston, or in fucking, I don’t know what city is Spider Man from, I’m going to remember in Boston, But I’m, they’re not bringing that world, they’re not bringing Iron Man into MTG.

They’re just showing you a quick representation. Like, I gotta say, from the universes beyond, I haven’t seen any besides Lord of the Rings to actually feel worked. Lord of the Rings actually feels worked, you can see most of the characters, you can The others don’t even do that. They

[01:26:14] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): just feel It’s possible we’re just not looking that hard, and the game has gotten so big that I just ignore the vast majority of these products.

No, no, but I do! I

[01:26:21] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): actually care about looking at the Like, I’m not making these comments out of just spite, on the contrary, because I was on board! When Lord of the Rings got announced, I was happy! I didn’t say the identity of the game was it, I just said, Guys, this is amazing! We’ll be the best selling set ever!

It’s fucking Lord of the Rings! But one thing is giving the nerd fans Lord of the Rings. And the other is making sure you can sell every fucking IP you can. And I think that’s the middle ground. I think that’s, I think there’s a danceable middle ground. I just think we got lost in it. I just think modern is just a way to keep players seen.

Modern is not a form of the strife form. Modern is the way they keep us modern players in MTG. They know we would likely leave. Or swim to Pioneer, or swim to Better Grounds. But have you ever, have you seen more, a lot of modern players change to Standard?

[01:27:16] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): I think Spike was streaming Standard for a while.

Yeah, but No, generally not.

[01:27:20] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): But, friends, you know, people who have played Modern, how many people do you know that Modern died and they were like, yeah, I’m gonna keep playing the same amount of Magic I did?

[01:27:28] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Right. There’s just too much out there to spend our time on to, like, make a shift like that. I’m just not gonna do it.

[01:27:34] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Yeah, I mean, it would be insanely annoying for me to get into Pioneer. Yeah. Like, to half the stake, get half the ca anything would be annoying.

[01:27:43] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Right. Hmm.

Modern Decklists and Strategies

[01:27:46] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Okay, well, with that in mind, I mean, should we celebrate Modern for just

[01:27:51] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): No, I’m really happy Just a few

[01:27:52] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): days, and like, talk about a few of these brews?

[01:27:54] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): For this Modern I’m still extremely happy, especially with these brews, but as I said, we can just hope it works as great as it looks.

[01:28:05] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): All right, let’s close things out with a few decklists. Maybe it’s premature to look ahead to 2025, we should just focus on the next three months. Or maybe the next week. When everyone’s trying modern ideas before we realize, wait a minute, this sucks.

[01:28:19] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): I don’t think Twiin will keep seeing play in two weeks.

Like, besides people randomly loving it or such, I think Twiin has an expiration hype of two weeks. Uh,

[01:28:30] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): and I’m fine with that. No, no, we all are. So let’s talk about the list you’ve got in front of us.

Exploring Green Sun’s Zenith

[01:28:37] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Tell me about Greensunzenith.

[01:28:39] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): So first things first, beautiful Greensunzenith. As first as I saw the card, so I hadn’t played Greensunzenith before besides Cube or such.

And my literally first game with it, I had it in my standing hand and I was like, Okay, I deserve my whole life, this is not a tutor, this is a dork. This is a beautiful mana dork in the skin of something else. But, it also allows me to just stream on cards I don’t want to play a playset. So immediately I went to what likely has been the deck I have been playing the most of when trying to play modern, which is Bant Ephemerate.

[01:29:14] Speaker 6: Oh god.

[01:29:15] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): So, the only reason this has a time warp instead of an omen is because I was trying it and I was afraid of time. I’m trying, sorry, omen on, I’m trying playing Odin’s Chant instead of time warp, generally, because it’s more efficient. And with Teferi that’s the same in an annoying way. But, why are we playing Grimmsons in a band deck?

Do we have many creatures? No, we have The Dryad Arbor, Icefang Coal, Eternal Wind and Endurance, but that’s all you need. Because as I said, Grimmsand’s Zenith in most scenarios, if it’s in your opening hand, it’s a mana dork. Grimmsand’s Zenith is not a mana dork when topdecked, and I don’t think that’s a rule for this deck.

That’s a rule for building with Grimmsand’s Zenith.

[01:29:57] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): This is quite literally eight creatures. Four Ice fang, two eternal witness, one dry arbor, one endurance, four green sunzi net two attune with Ether.

[01:30:07] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Yes. Three E eRate. So the, this list has four flare of the Nile and four standard drop that when I actually went to play got changed for four pels and four four soft negations.

[01:30:18] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Oh, you cut the thunder trap trainers. Yeah,

[01:30:20] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): they got chase for counters. Well, because I was afraid of the motor of the format, I saw too many pictures of combo x.

[01:30:26] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Okay, so you’re no longer trying to do Flare of Denial on this one. Not on

[01:30:29] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): this one, at least. Then I have The Threaded Witness, Teferi, Solitude, Time Warp, Wrath of the Skies, which is, with the ban of the One Ring, and Ursa Saga, Mox Opal getting the spotlight, once again an amazing card.

Jeskai had gone straight away from it, it had gone into Supreme Verdict again, but, well, Mox Opal I’m sure will change that pretty soon. And then, well, prismatic ending. Why do we have Grimms and Sinith here for? Well, first of all, turn 2 Teferi time traveler is insane. Two years have passed since I last said that, it’s still insane.

Somehow, turn 2 Teferi Bansu and Trevor your opponent is doing is still powerful enough. Is it weak, is it weak to the flavor of, to likely the best card printed in the last tier, which is Bone Master? Yes. Bouncing whatever your opponent did on turn one leaves your Teferi exposed to Bone Master, but that’s the life we live in.

Bone Master exists, we can’t hide from it. We have to embrace and move on. But the amazing thing I did with Grins and Sin is, in this deck, it is easy to find the Ephemerate, or it is easy to find the time, whatever else you need to grind, because they are good with what you’re doing. If you have an Ephemerate in your hand, Solitude, Icefang Quarrel, you’re gonna find a use for it.

Either defending a Dread Arbor, as I did in the past, You know, I’m willing to pay a one white mana to protect myself from a st from a Ponsa, but, in Rule of Witness, you cannot play multiple copies of, you cannot play playset of Witness in your modern deck and hope you don’t get stuck with three of them in your hand on turn two.

Zenith is amazing to find it. Zenith get Witness allows you to just get in the game, play enough few copies where you can play Zenith as your mana, or go down on your amount of lands, and make sure you still have copies of your combo pieces.

[01:32:20] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Yeah, it’s interesting because Eternal Witness, it cannot get a Green Sun’s Zenith back, right?

Those just go back to the deck. But It does essentially allow you to tutor up Snapcaster Mage in some way, and then you have this special combo of Eternal Witness and Ephemerate whenever you’re ready for that. My criticism of the deck, Mord, is that you’re not really using the toolbox aspect of Zenith. I look at your sideboard, you’re not really prioritizing green creatures.

Yeah, let me

[01:32:44] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): change, let me upload the correct list with it. The sideboard got two changes, and I had added exactly as you said, Collect the Roof, Sporefrog and Nidofoto. Sporefrog works as combo B. Eternal Witness, Ephemerate, Sporefrog is win. Against 80 percent of the meta.

[01:33:03] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): That allows you to Sporefrog every turn?

Yeah.

[01:33:06] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Eternal Witness plus Ephemerate allows you to do X thing every turn. Generally, it’s an extra turn. When I’m annoying, it’s Anonymous Chant. And when I’m extra annoying, it’s Sporefrog.

[01:33:19] Speaker 6: Okay, alright.

[01:33:22] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): With Timewarp being the most reasonable one. But yeah, Collector Ouphe in particular It’s a great card to have in your Winds and Scenics arsenal nowadays. There’s also the new and better scavenging goose, the two mana raccoon.

[01:33:38] Speaker 6: Ah, yes. The

[01:33:39] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): two mana raccoon is playing second. Collector or something.

And then you have the one mana one two little guy fungus. Which I’m not playing, but a lot of people are. One mana, one, two

[01:33:48] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Insidious Fungus?

[01:33:49] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Yeah, you can pay two mana, sacrifice to disenchant, or to draw a card, or to explore. So those are some of the most common alternatives I have seen, besides Endurance.

Everyone is playing as many Endurances as they can, right?

[01:34:06] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Well, you’re only playing one main deck, two side, why is that?

[01:34:10] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): I don’t know, I have just changed the decklist for the Let me just post it. Oh, it

[01:34:15] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): hasn’t updated for me yet, sorry.

[01:34:18] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): There we go. Which literally pushed me into 4 Endurances because I’m afraid of looting.

[01:34:25] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Ah, I see. You still believe in Ice Fang though. I don’t quite understand that. What’s the point of Ice Fang?

[01:34:32] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Um, I’m trying, I’m trying what is the best card to Ephemerate. Like you need, if you’re playing Ephemerate, you need, besides what you’re trying to combo it with or whatever, you need good creatures.

You need creatures you can Ephemerate during the game to try and get value out of them. Maybe I should just play Wall of Omens.

[01:34:51] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): But that’s not green. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[01:34:53] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): But it has been good, you just And Greensand City for Quarrel is dumb, but Quarrel has Death Touch. Like, yesterday I won a game against Eldrazi because I had I literally went in the mid game, I was like turn I had gone turn one Greensand City for Arbor, and like on turn five I got Teferi bounce.

And when they attac I’m sorry, Teferi plus, and when they attack, um, Quince and Zinith for Koalas, a blocker, and a trade.

Quince and Zinith doesn’t suck in a format with big creatures, like, against Hollow One, against Nethergoif.

[01:35:28] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): All right, I guess I gotta give Icefang a chance. It’s no death touch. That card was briefly good. It was briefly expensive, even, in MH1.

[01:35:37] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): But I do think, in a shell like this, cynicism is amazing at being able to find witness or the specific creature you need.

I’m afraid most combo creatures are not green, though, so, at least, I mean, as they said half meanly, the Void is saving the modern format, because the only green creature I can think of is Devoted Druid, and I will never green Sun Sinister or Devoted Druid as long as I live.

[01:36:06] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): I guess it’s Omnath.

[01:36:07] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): No, I mean, we are going to get to that in the future, you just have to scroll down long enough to see green Sun Sinister and Omnath.

[01:36:16] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): All right, let’s scroll down. What’s next?

Mono Blue Belcher Strategy

[01:36:18] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): So, next, we have Mono Blue, Belcher, Mox Zomber. So we have 4 Man Knights, 4 4 Orthornithopters, 4 Drum, 4 Prototypes, so 8 drums. 4 Tamiyo, 4 Shawari Disruption, 4 Emery, 12 more MDFC Lance Blues, 4 Veltcher, 4 Ursa. We have literally 8 Mox Veltcher.

[01:36:45] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): All right, I now, I now understand what you were saying about Chrome Mox not being safe.

If this is what the future holds.

[01:36:52] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Yeah, people want to play Moxes. Just

[01:36:53] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): burn the Chrome Mox. We

[01:36:55] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): need to make sure Moxes are hard to play because people try to lap them. Ha, ha, ha. Also why I say, don’t get out of your houses if you are playing white, without Temporary Lockdown or Wrath of the Skies, either or in your sideboards will make wonders.

[01:37:12] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So you are playing a lot of really bad cards here, 4 Bemknight and 4 Ornathopter and 4 Drum. Ambers that will only be unlocked some of the time, right? So you’re really relying heavily on, what, Urza, Belcher, I mean that’s basically it, those are 4 cards that do something, Emery sort of does something, Tameo, Abner.

You’re sort of

[01:37:31] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): relying heavily on just getting a turn 3 Belcher. You only need, of all those mana accelerants, you have 16, you only need 2 of them to get a turn 3 win.

[01:37:44] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Turn 4 win.

[01:37:44] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): No, turn 3, you only need 2. If you go turn 1 Prototype, Main Might, Mox, Opal, you go turn 2 Belcher, turn 3 win.

[01:37:54] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): I see. Oh, so you actually want to cast the Belcher, you want to double accelerate, cast Belcher on turn 2.

Yeah, yeah,

[01:37:58] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): you just tend to cast Belcher with this, with Mono Blue Belcher. You go ahead and put it on board. If your opponent can clean it, good for them. Doesn’t tend to be the case. Yes. Besides binding, there’s not many efficient removals for a formal artifact nowadays. And

[01:38:13] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): you’re not really playing any way to search for the Belcher, so what’s the plan?

No,

[01:38:17] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): I’ll turn to Ursa. That’s why it has 8 4 drops. Okay. The plan is simple. You either go turn 2 Belcher or Ursa, or turn 1 Tamiyo or Embry. You want to develop a fast threat that either closes the game, or I’m not sure if early enough you can find a real threat. You have 16 mana accelerants.

[01:38:39] Speaker 6: Have you tried this deck?

[01:38:40] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): No. But I have played a lot of Mono Bluebelcher. And it’s really common for Mono Bluebelcher to only need one turn acceleration. What do I mean with this? I won games. A lot of games with mono blue Belcher going, turn one tap, turn two Taliban phone turn three Belcher turn four win. That just happens a lot.

[01:39:01] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): What’s the density of cars that actually do something in the, in the existing mono blue Belcher decks?

[01:39:06] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Eight. They play or 10? Uh, sorry. 11 if you count, um, Tameshi, so they play like 4 Weir, which is a super slow Belcher, 4 Belcher and 3, um, Tameshis.

[01:39:19] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): They were not playing One Ring?

[01:39:20] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): No, no, they never played the One Ring.

[01:39:22] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): It’s Tameshi,

[01:39:24] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Belcher, Weir. You could play a Weir here if you want the extra hits. Weir of Invention is likely better in this one than in the other shells. With Men, Minority, Thotter, and Mishra.

[01:39:37] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Gosh, definitely more castable.

[01:39:41] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): I mean, you could also do something really stupid like turn one, Island, Men, Might, Mishra, Saigo, and step weird for one of, um, Bloom.

[01:39:50] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): That’s actually kind of intriguing.

[01:39:51] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Turn two and tap with, what is, what is it, like, five mana? Without a Mox or anything?

[01:39:58] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): I actually don’t think you can cast Wyrm in that situation though. Don’t you need triple blue? Oh yeah, you

[01:40:02] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): need triple blue. Yeah, okay. Yeah, improvise doesn’t work like that. So we’re safe.

[01:40:05] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): That’s right.

[01:40:06] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): We’re back to safety, everybody. But yeah, I think this deck, look, I think it is fun. Might be a bit too fast on it, but I do think there will be a shell with both Sopal and Belcher. Maybe not Mox Amber.

[01:40:22] Speaker 6: I see.

Boros Twin and Splinter Twin

[01:40:23] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Following that, we have um, half meme, half maybe true evolution of Boros. What if Boros meets Twin?

Feature FOMO, Fear of Missing Out on Twin. So, four Fear of Missing Out, four Twins, and we have Boros Twin. Four Ahari, four Guide of Souls, four Ocelot Pride, four Static Prisons, four Darasis, four Galvanic Discharge, three Flesh, four Mishra’s Bubble. Nothing out of the ordinary, the Mishra Bubble is there alongside the Static Prison to make sure you have the Lithium.

[01:40:53] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So you’re saying that Fear of Missing Out can function as a village bell ringer. If you have the Lithium.

[01:40:59] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Exactly. Beginning of combat, it attacks, it attacks itself, creates a copy, attack, da da da da da da da.

[01:41:04] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Okay, and that for sure works. Like there’s not any scenario where that doesn’t work? Like if they have a first strike blocker or something?

[01:41:11] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): I’m thinking it always works. I mean, I mean, maybe if they have a blocker, I’m not sure if you can win if they have a blocker large enough with first strike and with first strike.

[01:41:23] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Like, uh, or a lifelink blocker or something. No,

[01:41:25] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): no, because the lifelink blocker will die. You will send infinite 2 3 7, like it will resus Like, I had the same thought as you, like, no, no, it has to trade infinitely with your one attacker.

It’s not that easy.

[01:41:40] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Yeah, well, Atraxa can No, no, Atraxa Can Atraxa do

[01:41:43] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): it? Atraxa Sire

[01:41:44] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): of Seven Deaths can do it, the new one. Yeah, if it has First Strike

[01:41:47] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): and more If it has First Strike and more than three power, it can, but that’s the only way. Lifelink, Death Touch, anything else does not matter because it’s infinite 2 3 attacking one by one.

The only problem is, as it’s one by one, First Strike can’t stop it infinitely. But that’s, but no one plays a three powers first striker in modern.

[01:42:08] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Okay, so you think the future of Splinter Twin, which is only going to be one week, is going to be Fear of Missing Out, and it could just be in its energy tank.

It

[01:42:15] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): might be Fear of Missing Out, or it might be the, um, a decklist, or it might be the, a Wizards Twin decklist. playing Flirt of the Nihil, but yeah, I think it’s one of those two shells. I don’t think sadly there’s anything much new for twin. I don’t think we have four color twin with Teferi. And I mean, hold on.

Rinsansenith does get the unbound crassies.

[01:42:40] Speaker 6: Yes. Okay. So

[01:42:41] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): maybe, maybe we might be recooking. We will see. So,

[01:42:45] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): does Splinter Twin do anything else with the other creatures here? I mean, I see Ajani, I see Guide of Souls, Ocelot Pride, Dragon’s Edge Channeler, Flage No, no, it

[01:42:53] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): doesn’t. It isn’t really an amazing card besides that.

I mean, on Ajani you get a planeswalker, which has an extremely powerful minus one that Splinter Twin activates. But that’s not really something I’m looking forward.

[01:43:08] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Okay. So this, this feels like a meme or I don’t know, like every time I draw a splitter twin, it doesn’t do anything.

[01:43:13] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): I think that’s the issue with splitter twin in the whole format.

I don’t think you can avoid that. I think that’s the twin, the twin’s curse. That’s why I don’t think that the card will be great. I don’t think I can play modern today, top the splitter twin and be like, Oh, what an amazing card. Four mana to tap myself. Oh, what is this ring? Well,

[01:43:33] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): if you put it on Iceman collateral, I mean, now, now we’re cooking.

[01:43:37] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): We come from a modern where playing four mana for the one ring was likely so much better than anything Splinter Dream can tap for that doesn’t win the game. So, it’s really hard to convince me that I want to cast twin without winning. Borderline impossible.

Mardu Midrange Reanimator

[01:43:54] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): From there we have what I was talking about, one of the first Mardu midrange shells I have seen, 4 Ephemerate, 4 Prismatic Ending, a Soliture, 4 Gorious Vengeance, Griselbrand, 4 Emperor of Bones, 4 Thoughtseize, 4 Faithless Looting, 4 Fear of Missing Out, 3 Flesh, 4 Atraxa.

A deck that really just wants to turn 3 Atraxa you or Griselbrand That doesn’t have to play really bad cards like Painted Deluge or Faithful Mending.

[01:44:26] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So I know that everyone’s going to talk about Faithless Looting breaking this kind of strategy, but again, going back to my Archon of Cruelty comments, I

[01:44:32] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): think it’s I agree.

You see,

[01:44:33] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Atraxa here, Atraxa’s a problem. I

[01:44:34] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): do I do think Any problems coming nowadays might be more problem due to either A Atraxa or B Archon, depending on what happens, on on I don’t know which will be playing more, if Persist or Gorioth. I think one will triumph over the other, and I think no one is sure yet.

I think it will be Persist.

[01:44:54] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): It’s like, sort of an interesting question, but if Mono is a format that’s so large, and yet there’s really only two creatures to consider, and two reanimation spells to get there, it’s just not that interesting. It’s worse. It’s one

[01:45:04] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): creature to reanimate. Because, yeah, you pick the reanimate spell and you get your answer for you.

[01:45:11] Speaker 5: Right.

[01:45:11] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): It’s not like you can pick Godeus and choose. You get Godeus and you go, okay, I have Atraxa, and Bada Atraxa Geriselveran. In the case of Persist, you have in between quotes, some selection, you have Archon, Terastodon for three different things, but that’s like asking for a scalpel for a scalpel situation when 90 percent of the time the hammer will work, 90 Archon will be the hammer you need to solve almost anything.

[01:45:39] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Time to get your Orvar the Allform before this week. Orvar,

[01:45:44] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): like, to be fair, Orvar did spike a lot during the

[01:45:49] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Oh it did? No, I had to pay a half hefty price to trade for those, so rules, $15 each. When I traded for them,

[01:45:54] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): I’m just gonna say OBA was 40 cents, 15, 15 days ago, and it’s $1 now on gold votes.

Someone was speculating on a ring band, someone. Someone on November, on November, on December 1st woke up, said I need to buy all bars because the one ring is getting banned and spike the spike the price.

[01:46:15] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Insider trading, somebody doubled up their investment total. They doubled

[01:46:19] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): the doorbars. Oh

[01:46:20] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): my god. Okay, so yeah, that’s a Mardu mid range reanimator Goryeos.

[01:46:27] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Yeah, I do think they will straight towards persist more, but looting plus flesh is just an insane power interaction. And

[01:46:35] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): I would not call this midrange. I mean, there’s no midrange plan. It’s just Goryeos or bust, right? It just, it interacts a bit, so it can happen a little bit later in the game, but there’s no other way to win that doesn’t involve Goryeos, right?

[01:46:47] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): I mean, you are gonna go, you have four Arena of Glories, four lootings, you are gonna haste, you are gonna escape a Fleish and turn four with haste a lot of the games.

[01:46:57] Speaker 6: Ah, okay, fair enough. Like,

[01:46:58] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): a lot of the games. And you have four Emperor of Bones, you should do something similar. Hmm. I mean. I think we can both agree it’s not midrange, but it’s not traditional combo.

We’re not just playing a Ley Line of Void and winning this game.

[01:47:13] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): When you put it that way, now going back to our conversation about flage, so you described how it was like a lucky situation when they get to escape the flage off of Surveil. Right. But with, with looting in the mix, turn four, peace flage, attack for 12 is very common.

[01:47:28] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Yeah. And it might become a problem for flage. Like people might start hitting on flage if they play pattern of turn three looting plus something or turn one looting becomes a constant, okay, now I have three turns to solve that flage before it kills me. Because it’s super easy to play Four Arena of Glory in your looting flage deck.

It’s really easy.

[01:47:51] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Okay, I’m with you now, I understand. Alright, I take back what I said about this not having another plan. Man, F this deck, boar, this is crazy!

[01:47:59] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): I don’t, see, this is And it’s worse when you cannot persist because you don’t have to play Ephemerate, you can just play good cards. That’s why I think it will just go that way.

But we will see, and yeah, that’s a shell I think will be interesting to try a lot. Mardu reanimate will be seeing a lot of play.

[01:48:19] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): You like Emperor of Bones here?

[01:48:20] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): I don’t love Emperor of Bones, I just think it’s a good reanimate here where you don’t have any consistency. Like, you have six reanimation six things you want to reanimate, but only four quality reanimators.

I like the insurance. Besides it makes sure your opponent has to wait a removal on it. Also, the fact you’re playing for Fear of Missing Out means the situation we just described, maybe it will happen a lot of turn 3’s Fear of Missing Out turn 4 Escape Flage hitting you for 24. Sorry, 21.

[01:48:49] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Well, you wouldn’t have delirium if that happened, so, I hope.

[01:48:52] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Wha yeah, yeah, you’re escaping, it’s gonna be pretty tough. But yeah, but it’s a situation we have to start considering now. Looting allows that stuff to happen consistently. That’s the problem with looting. Consistency. Nothing else. It’s not like script When your opponent plays looting, they don’t tend to be doing something extremely powerful.

The problem is you know they will do it again.

[01:49:15] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): I, for one, welcome our faithless looting overlords.

[01:49:18] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): No, no, I do as well as long as I get to keep trying greens and zinnith.

Four-Color Omnath with Green Sun’s Zenith

[01:49:22] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): And after that, exactly the deck I will be playing for the next 24 hours, Four Color Omnath by Kurusu, they got a 5 0 yesterday without greens and zinnith, and they got a 5 0 today with greens and zinnith.

So, 4 color Omnath with greensun is exactly what you would expect, 24 lands, sorry, 23 lands, one of them being a Dryad Arbor, 4 greensun scenic, 4 solitude, 4 Omnath, 4 Brennan 6, 3 Prismatic Ending, Galvanic Discharge, Binding, your usual removals, Wrath of the Skies as your Wrath of Choice, 2 Teferis, 1 Endurance, 3 Risen Reef, 1 Delighted Halfling Main Deck, as your things you can tutor for.

[01:49:58] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So, the only cards here that surprise me are, I guess there’s the one Nissa that’s kind of interesting. 3 Risen Reef hasn’t, that hasn’t really been a very popular card.

[01:50:07] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): So, Nissa is there because of Ruin Sun. Of two reasons because of Greensand. A, you can get Greensand, and Greensand is the first time this deck has had something I have asked for a million times, which is a way to trigger Omnath.

Greensand for one triggers Landfall. Which is something this deck has never been able to do.

[01:50:26] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Since the Euro beta,

[01:50:28] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): at least. Exactly, exactly, since it’s glory days. And it’s huge, because a lot of the times that 4 damage with Omnath will win you the game. Like it’s, and, I do think this list is a bit heavy, I think if you’re playing for Greensight you can go only 3 Omnath.

I am not a fan of Risen Rift, especially considering we’re in the Orcish Bow Master meta, but Solitude is also pretty good in this meta, so it might work. I will have to try it at least and see.

[01:50:55] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So you would add Ephemerate and Eternal Witness, I’m guessing.

[01:50:58] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): I mean, if I don’t like the Risen Rift package, yes, I think you have to play the Ephemerate package.

I think you need to play a package to win the game. You need a solid foundation of 2 4 1s in nowadays modern. You can’t just rely on stuff happening your way. You can’t just shun them out.

[01:51:16] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): I don’t know why, I just, I look at these cards, I actually have most of these cards now, I could play this, but it just feels like a brain dead deck.

Oh, it is. Like, there’s no concept, it’s just like the best value engines that happen to exist, in all colors, in four colors. Yes,

[01:51:30] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): in the Cyborgs you have your four Consign, which is likely the best Cyborg card nowadays, like in years. Consign is so good against so many decks. Yes.

[01:51:38] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Well, not anymore, because of the One Ring.

I

[01:51:40] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): mean, it stops Belcher, it stops Eldrazi, which are two tier 1s that crash you, and stops them dead on its tracks.

[01:51:47] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Eldrazi didn’t get anything from these unbans, though. It lost the One Ring, which is I really don’t think, I

[01:51:52] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): really don’t think Eldrazi will crumble and die.

[01:51:56] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): I don’t know, I mean, like, the good ramp version of Eldrazi is nothing without the One Ring.

[01:52:00] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Yeah, well, I just don’t think, if it runs out of labor and Belcher doesn’t rise up, we can finally forget about Consign. But all the leagues I played today I saw multiple Eldrassi, so I’m keeping my Gunsigns next to my heart.

[01:52:12] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Were they doing anything different? I mean, were they playing Karns? Yeah, they were playing 4 mana Karns.

[01:52:17] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): That’s the swap I assumed they made and once they casted it I was confirming.

[01:52:24] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Interesting.

[01:52:25] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Then in the sideboard we said before, the 2 I think in my sideboards I would also always want to play, if I’m playing Zenith, as I said before, Collector Ouphe, likely at its best moment ever, Knight of Forum, another considerable addition to any sideboard.

[01:52:43] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Keen Eye Curator, that’s the Raccoon. That’s the Raccoon. That’s the Scavenging Ooze Raccoon.

[01:52:47] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): The Green Wrynn.

Grixis Oculus and Faithless Looting

[01:52:48] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): And for last, what’s likely the most beautiful decklist we are going to see today, playing mostly all playsets, We have Grixis Oculus, with 4 looting, 4 4 push, 4 counterspell, 4 frogs, 4 faun, and 4 aberrant oculus.

Then, 2 spice it up, 2 spell snares, and 2 deep analysis. 20 lands. Perfect.

[01:53:14] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So the changes here ’cause Deir Merc tide with Oculus has been, I guess the default build of that deck, which is not super great deck, but it is a known, I would

[01:53:24] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): say, until today. Okay. Yesterday I preferred, um, Deir Murti to Deir Oculus.

I felt the inconsistency of unearth plus Oculus made one of the strongest part of the legs, which is his straightness and how consistent it was Flake. Which I didn’t love. I think just playing Moortite and Frog was better. That goes completely out the window the moment they give me a one mana spell that puts Oculus in my graveyard and it’s not fucking Mindscower.

Thoughtscower. The moment that happens, all that beautiful argument I had goes completely out the window and fucking Oculus is amazing now.

[01:54:01] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): This deck looks super fun. Also,

[01:54:03] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): did you look at the fucking sideboard? Four Nihil Spellbound, four Stride Scalding, four Meltdown, three Thoughtseeds. It’s perfect.

[01:54:10] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So, Meltdown for the Mox Opal decks.

As predicted in the BNR announcement, they’ve been releasing waves of hate for Mox Opal in advance. Spellbomb to fight against other Faithless Looting decks, and we also note for Orcus Bowmaster’s main deck to fight against Looting decks. Why is Thurn scolding here?

[01:54:27] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Oh, there’s a lot of Yawgmoth going around.

Energy is still being played. Um, it crushes the Basking Root Wallet deck. It’s still an amazing card. You’re still gonna face Yawgmoth, you’re still gonna face, um, almost any Mox Amber deck, you get every single Mox Amber creature. Um, you get Emry, you get Tamiyo, you get Ursa, you get Ragavan. If everybody is playing, um, Moza starts calling it good.

[01:54:56] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So in the main deck, the interaction is the three counters, spells on 4, 4, 4 counter spells. Oh, four counters. That one is hiding there

[01:55:02] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): for some godforsaken. Reason

[01:55:05] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): four fatal push one sink into stupor. Two spell snare false sees within the sideboard.

[01:55:11] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): I think that’s a lot like we have to not forget something, which is a lot of the games you will just go deep on frog deep analysis and looting allow you to go super deep on frog, almost, almost unpunished.

[01:55:27] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): It’s a beautiful pairing. Faithless Looting and Deep Analysis. Freakin love that. Like,

[01:55:30] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): you can go turn to frog, and if you’re opponent Galvanic Discharge it, you can discard Analysis and Looting. And it has to be one of the most stupidest things.

At least something to love of this deck. I love that it’s only playing red for Looting and Meltdown. No balls, nothing weird.

[01:55:51] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So how good is Tamiyo with Faithless Library? Insane.

[01:55:55] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): It’s Insane? It has never been, like, how did you flip Tamiyo in the past? You said it yourself, you had to flashback deep analysis, you had to attack with frog and cast a cantrip.

You had to, like, the most common way to activate Tamiyo, I think you will agree, Was turn three Crack the Clue and Cantrip, or late game Crack the Clue and Cantrip?

[01:56:16] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Yeah, I thought that deck used to play Preordain. Yeah,

[01:56:19] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): but then you, like, you’re still missing a card, right? Like, draw for turn, Cantrip?

[01:56:25] Speaker 6: Yes.

[01:56:26] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): It was super, it’s super hard to turn two Tamiyo without using all your resources.

Even turn three it was a bit annoying. Now you can just do it for two mana with Without losing mostly anything.

[01:56:39] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So you would occasionally see it happen, like turn one Tamiyo plus Bobble, turn two they, you know, cantrip. Do you win those games? I mean, how do you come back from a Tamiyo that’s flipped on turn two?

[01:56:49] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): No, no, Tamiyo is beatable. Tamiyo dies to binding, dies to pending. It’s worth noting, if Tamiyo didn’t attack, Let’s say, opponent goes turn two, Tamiyo looting. It goes plus two. On turn three, that Tamiyo is getting its first piece of value.

[01:57:10] Speaker 4: Like,

[01:57:10] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): it can minus three, and for the first time it will actually trade for a card.

And it will be a planeswalker with one loyalty left. In most cases, Tamiyo is solvable. It is also sort of like the Brennan Six case of a really ugly planeswalker that can’t run away with the game. I

[01:57:28] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): mean, the ultimate’s pretty fast. That’s what I’m afraid of.

[01:57:31] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Like, it’s easy to solve, but it puts you on a four turn timer.

That counter spell plus force of negation plus frog might keep you on your toes long enough for that to happen.

[01:57:43] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So I’m excited to try this. I’m not too excited to play against it, but I think that’s true for all of Modern, right? Yeah. It looks fun to do all these powerful things. It’s probably less fun when your opponent is doing their powerful thing.

Modern’s Future and Final Thoughts

[01:57:54] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Yeah, the only other deck I think I haven’t, I didn’t post here, but we discussed, was the Rakdos Creativity, which I think will be shining a bit, a lot brighter than it was last week.

[01:58:06] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Yeah, I mean, so I was following the chatter after the unbans, and everyone’s sort of calling out, oh, this deck is better, that deck is better, but this goes straight into my, you know, whatever deck.

Basically all of that has already 5 0ed, so people are trying this, everything you can think of, all the obvious decks. They’re being tried and so far they’re succeeding. Now we’ll have to see what actually wins when like big tournaments happen. I’m hopeful there’ll be more cool stuff like what Mord is doing that is actually new.

I think we will see. Excited to see like the big streamers. Like, they’re really creative brewers coming back to the format, including Mordsk, so

[01:58:39] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Spike was already playing elves. We are gonna get some new stuff.

[01:58:43] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Well, elves, I mean, like, elves, they actually called that out in the announcement. Like, oh, maybe we’ll see elves come back.

So what’s, like, an obvious?

[01:58:48] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Scales? Oh, Scales is an obvious winner we said nothing about, and I’m super happy. I really hope Scales is Right, I saw a few scales, five of those. I really hope it gets back in the format. Super fun deck, super interactive, feels like it really plays a game a lot more than Affinity does.

So it’s like, Affinity is healthy cussing.

[01:59:09] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So this should be an interesting couple of weeks in Modern.

[01:59:12] Speaker 2: Hopefully.

[01:59:13] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): So Mord, I mean, maybe we can check in again pretty soon and see what you’ve been playing was actually winning. I think we should wrap it up here. Um, we didn’t talk about Pioneer, but, you know, David will have his thoughts on Giganto, I’m sure.

[01:59:25] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): No, no, I’m sure David will rejoice in the pleasure of finally another one of the companions getting shot down. I’m sure, like, he has a bull he has, like, a big poster in his house with all ten companions, and just slaps them with a knife every single time one gets banned, and rejoices, opens a bottle of scotch, and just rejoices for the night.

Finally Gigante is gone, one gone, five to go. Look straight into the eyes of Geruda, you’re next.

[01:59:54] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): Oh my god, all right, love that. Okay, well Mord, it’s been an absolute pleasure and I can’t wait to see what you’re brewing next.

[02:00:03] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): And hopefully we should be seeing each other, well, not sure next week because of Christmas, so hopefully everybody, if we don’t meet each other, then everyone, Merry Christmas, but hopefully seeing each other again before the end of year.

[02:00:15] Dan Schriever (@CavedanMTG): I love it. All right. Great to see you. Great to see you. Take care. Take care everybody.

[02:00:19] Emi Sagasti (@MordeToLight): Have a good night. Bye

bye.