Good Grief! A Brewer’s Guide to Modern Horizons, Part 1

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:00:00] You are listening to Faithless Brewing a magic, the gathering podcasts for the spike road each week. We design view decks in modern and pioneer. We put our creations to the test and share our findings on the air. Today is part one of our brewers guide to Modern Horizons. Two, three, we’re breaking down the evoke cycle, the free spells and the most exciting cards from week one of previews on episode one.

MH two seasons. Thanks for listening and enjoy the show.

hello and welcome to the Faithless Brewing podcast. I and Dan Schriever also known as cavedan online and I am joined by my guy on the left coast, Dr. Damon Alexander Damon. It’s good to have it back. How are you doing.

Damon Alexander: [00:01:16] Yeah, I’m good. Just had a nice, quick trip to Minnesota. So my parents saw my sister and her family.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:01:21] That’s wonderful. How are things in the land of 10,000 lakes?

Damon Alexander: [00:01:25] It’s good. Weather was warm and kind of rainy, you know, spring, spring season in Minnesota, not always the perfect blue skies of Seattle, although I’m kind of joking on that, but yeah, it was interesting cause we, we moved my parents out of their house, uh, along with, as you’ll see, I think in the next decade, many baby boomers will be moving out of their houses.

And so I had to get a rental car and a hotel, so kind of like a business trip almost, but, uh, I think my next trip I’ll feel right at home, walking up the ACE rental car counter in the MSP airport I’ll know where it is and at the, uh, live in hotel near the 3m building.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:01:56] So long time listeners of this podcast will know that Damon and I actually grew up as next door neighbors in St.

Paul, Minnesota. Um, when we were just little Ninos and my dad actually still lives right next to where to guess where your parents lived. He’s been very key into figuring out what’s going on. He said, oh, they’re selling the house. They’re selling the house. It’s the talk of the neighborhood, new family moving in.

Damon Alexander: [00:02:16] Yeah, that is correct. If anybody’s looking to buy a house near where Dan and I grew up, you could be next door neighbors to Dan’s father. Very friendly.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:02:25] I dunno if that increases or decreases your property values, maybe we shouldn’t put this information out there in the public. True. True. All right. Well, we’ve got a big show ahead of us.

Uh, it’s been a crazy week so far. We are in the kickoff week for Modern Horizons, two previews. So as you can imagine, uh, that is what we will be devoting the bulk of this episode to. On our Sunday episode, we are going to check in on some of the deck lists that we propose last week and had a chance to test them.

Uh, some of our final Strixhaven brews. And I think they actually, they went really well. I was actually really encouraged. So I’m excited to talk about those, but today is all about Modern Horizons. Uh, we’re going to get through as much as we possibly can. You know, this set is made for modern. It’s devoted entirely to sort of spicing up these non-rotating formats.

So there’s a ton of powerful cards. If we don’t cover the cars that you’re eager to hear about, it’s possible that it hasn’t been spoiled yet, or we just ran out of time or we think the card is bad. So we’ll see. We’ll see how it all goes.

Damon Alexander: [00:03:25] Yeah. Should we just dive right in?

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:03:27] Uh, yes, we should. So. I have ordered these, I guess when in doubts, I think it’s safest to go in manna costs order if you’re not sure of which cards are most likely to make an impact on the formats, the closer cost is zero.

This is my theory. The closer our cost is zero. The more likely it is to be a card that’s a, we should pay attention to. So we’re going to start with the zero drops, work way up to the ones, twos, threes, fours, and you know, maybe even a couple of fives, if things get really crazy. So Damon kick us off. Uh, let’s let’s talk about the cycle.

That’s got everyone talking. Uh, this is the mythic cycle.

Damon Alexander: [00:04:02] Free card is force of negation appearing only in collectors boosters in edge foil and foil tree. Oh, Modern Horizons to you. You said Modern Horizons. Uh, yeah. So we have grief to black, black for a three-two elemental incarnation with menace. On ETB target upon our fields, their hand, you choose a non land card and they discard it.

And the free part of it is as evoke exile, a black card from your hand. So what does it evoke again for all you people that don’t actually love? Mulldrifter like I do, you can cast it for that as an alternate cost, and then it comes into play and goes into the graveyard. You sacrifice it. I put the trigger on the stack to sacrifice the creature.

And so the obvious play pattern that kind of sends some people on Twitter into a Twitter storms, tweet, swarms, whatever you call it is that, you know, you’re playing your classic black, white Lillian Liliana’s and Gideon’s stone blade deck or whatever you go. Turn one exile, Liliana to cast grief for evoke comes into play, put the evoke trigger and the discard trigger on the stack.

Uh, make your point a discarded card and then cast Ephemerate before the evoke trigger resolves, letting you then make your opponent discard a second card. And so interestingly, if you’re pointing, it has like a force of negation and you actually can pluck it from your hand before you even cast Ephemerate, then you’re gonna come to your second upkeep and Ephemerate it again.

And so by your second term, they’ll have just carded three cards and you’ll spend kind of three cards along the way, you know, your Liliana, your grief itself, and you’re Ephemerate. We will have a three-two menace and you ideally have just kind of ruined their opening game plan.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:05:31] Well, you’ve also spent only one mana in this scenario.

So yeah, this is, I think a really terrifying opener grief was the first card of this cycle of spoiled. The second card was subtlety, which also uses the evoke mechanic and has a bit of a counter spell effect. It seems like we’re going to get one mythic for each color in the cycle. Let’s just step back for a second here.

Big picture. What are you expecting from this? Like, so assuming all these cards work the same way. We’re talking about essentially a split card. So you have two options, right? You can either evoke it for free. In which case you’re spending two cards to get a zero minute effect or option B you, you hard cast it.

As we say, you, you pay the retail price to black, black for grief. And I believe subtlety is what to blue blue as well. So now you’re spending four managed for a creature with enter the battlefield effect that creates our casts. It’s spelled when it comes into play. And now you’re actually getting like a two for one on the backside.

So it’s either a two for one in your opponent’s favor. If you’re going to make the tempo play of casting it for free, or it’s a two for one in your favor. If you’re willing to pay the full price.

Damon Alexander: [00:06:45] Yeah. Yeah. Which is certainly an interesting comparison to just the kind of the force cycle, like the aforementioned force of negation.

And so that card is kind of a split card to where you can basically pay it for zero to get exile target, um, non creature spell, or you can cast it for one blue blue, but these ones, when you spend the manna for it, you, you kind of get an additional effect. Namely you get the actual creature that’s attached, so you get kind of a better, fairly cast mode.

And so you’d think that to be kind of loosely balanced with the forest cycles, although that cycle itself was incredibly imbalanced, uh, you’d want to have kind of a slightly worse, uh, freak pre part. Yeah.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:07:20] I’m honestly like terrified of this cycle. I think that the fact that the backside is, I don’t know, I want to say it’s a blood-braid elf or it’s a cryptic command.

Just anything that’s four mana, a two for one in your favor that by itself mitigates the fact that sometimes you’ll have to cast it for free now. Granted these effects when you do cast them for free, like they’re a little bit narrow. So grief reminds us of the card unmask from, from legacy. And, you know, when I think when the car was first boiled, some of the reactions were, oh, well, unmask is much more versatile Unmask.

Can target yourself, et cetera. You know, there’s no combo decks like that in modern, that that need to just punch through their combo spells. So like, what’s the future of grief. But then as soon as the Ephemerate line became the focus of discussion, then it’s like, okay. So in addition to having the option to cast unmask for zero, or, uh, I’m going to keep the same Bloodbraid Elf, but obviously it’s not blood braid Elf, um, Entomber Exarch or something like that.

For four, you also have the option to do these shenanigans because as you described, Damon evoke is a really tricksy mechanic.

Damon Alexander: [00:08:26] Yeah. Yeah. I mean it also triggers cards like mayhem devil or just any sort of creature dying trigger. So these cards are flexible. Uh, this card, I think. You know, in legacy, it’s actually unmasked five through eight and that card is so good just because of Griselbrand and you get the Griselbrand on a play, you drop a bunch of cards.

Some of those cards are Unmask. And before you put on, even on taps, their hand just gets completely shredded modern. It’s a little bit trickier to get Griselbrand to play, but there’s texts like Goryo’s vengeance that don’t see play. Now that could maybe kind of go for these lines. They also miss the ability to kind of, you know, ritual or a Lotus Petal to get the thoughts he’s off.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:09:03] Yeah. So what do you expect to be the future of this card? I mean, we’re talking about Reanimator just because that’s been like the legacy equivalent, but you know, the, the discard decks in modern, our thoughts, these decks they’re a little bit grindier they tend to be mid range. They seek to disrupt, get everyone low on resources.

And then pull ahead with something like, for example, a three-two minutes were four. That has a nice end to battlefield trigger. On the other hand, you mentioned Ephemerates, which also lends itself to more of like a mid range, the value game. So is that kind of the future for grief? Yeah.

Damon Alexander: [00:09:39] Grief is a hard one to estimate.

I think that, you know, maybe this Ephemerate line is so good that the card just sees a bunch of planning, kind of spawns, uh, or pushes a new archetype to tier one or tier 1.5. Uh, it’s also possible that the general play pattern of exile a black card and, you know, spend this to make your partner’s card. A single card is not worth it that it’s not good to go down.

A resource. Now there’s maybe these fringe cases where you can kind of like double spell where you, you can cast this and another spell in the same turn if they have a single counter spell. But you know, if you have a Thoughtseize, you could just cast the counter, spell the term before. If you have two counter spells that double spell doesn’t really do enough.

And meanwhile, the thing with Bloodbraid Elf is that it actually is really good against counter spells, uh, because of the, you get the free extra spell. This card just doesn’t have that ability is usually even kind of dead and late game. Uh, haste is probably generally better than menace. So I’m actually not convinced this card is going to see a ton of play, but we’ll have to try it out and I could be wrong.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:10:38] Yeah, I think you’re very wrong. I think this card is possibly broken. I mean, I’m going to say this about every card in this cycle. I’m sure. Once we talk about subtlety, I’m going to be even more upset. This grief card reminds me of so much of, of Hogaak, right? It’s like, excuse me, it doesn’t immediately fit into a deck.

So I think there’s that initial barrier as people would go through the existing decks and modern and think, oh, this doesn’t seem to be exactly what this or that existing deck wants. And so therefore it’s not going to make a big impact, but when you look at what is capable of doing, it’s just stunning card.

And I think that this is going to be the new meta. I mean that Ephemerate line is almost unbeatable, I think the only way is to really have counter play or to have veil of summer that you cast while the grief is still on the stack. Because even having a removal spell in hand, it does not. Uh, that doesn’t protect you.

Cause like you said, they get to resolve the first thought sees before they have to cast the Ephemerate. It enables a really devastating sequence that only costs one man, uh, that uses only good cards, grief, and Ephemerates. If for some reason you can’t execute that line, uh, your, your backup plan is that you just have these really good cards that you can, they scale very well into the mid game.

Damon Alexander: [00:11:52] Yeah. But even if you go for the Ephemerate line, suppose you’re on the playground for the Ephemerate line, you play your land, you do your grief exilic card. If Ephemerate you’re down to, you know, what is it? Three cards in hand, your pony goes out of four cards in hand by your upkeep. So it becomes a super low resource game, but you haven’t really broken symmetry too much.

I mean, maybe you can take the chief spells and they’re stuck where they get Teferi five in hand and they’re just not going to get there. Sometimes you’re pulling, it keeps it at hand. That’s like, you know, two spells five lands. Now they actually kind of come out ahead.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:12:24] I think that’s a starting place for like, figuring out how to build a deck.

So assuming that that’s my best line, you know, what, what is my turn to follow up, going to be maybe a Dark Confidant or maybe it’s something that, or like Liliana of the veil that converts on this low resource game. Even there’s some other cars here in the spoilers that that might also help. So yeah, I see what you’re saying.

I mean, I don’t see why that’s a bad thing to have triple Thoughtseize them and gotten a Wild Nacatl leftover. That sounds great to me. Um, I don’t see why that’s considered a bad thing. That reminds me of like a turn one Splinter twin.

Damon Alexander: [00:12:56] Well, it turned a little Wild Nacatl, like kind of for free versus term on splinter twin, I think are extremely different.

One wins the game on the spot. One is a three-three in this case, a three two, but what I do like about this card, uh, is that if you’re playing, you’re kind of fair black, white deck or whatever, there are most match-ups, you probably don’t want to be evoking without an Ephemerate handy, but there’s matchups.

We’re, you know, you’re up against like a Neobrand deck. Maybe that deck isn’t big today, but in, you know, there’s some other car to come that makes that deck come back or any other sort of combo deck. You do have the option of two for one of yourself. And there are plenty of mashups with that actually is a good thing to do.

Against some sort of like ask for told deck where you take a couple of the right spells and you’re down some resources, but their deck just doesn’t function.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:13:39] Yeah. And I mean, I think the more we get into with these backup uses or less explosive plays, the more we’re going to find the grief is extremely powerful.

Like I think the best grief sequence would actually be term one Thoughtseize, just to make sure that the coast is clear and then turn to you evoke the grief rector hand. Um, it means you don’t have to do it on term one. So I think it’s just going to be so such a powerful sequence. You can do all kinds of shenanigans with it.

As you said, you know, evoke is dealing with precast. It triggers Vengevines. For example, it deals with death triggers, enter the battlefield triggers. The grief ends up in the graveyard. So you can reanimate it if you want to. It’s a, it’s a huge canvas and this is just the black one.

Damon Alexander: [00:14:17] Yeah, it’s true.

You’re right. That if people start going turn with Stitcher’s Supplier mill, you know, to Vengevines evoke a grief discard, your Relic of Progenitus get back my Vengevines. Then this card will feel like Hogaak.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:14:31] All right. Well, should we take a look at the blue one while we’re on this subject?

Damon Alexander: [00:14:36] Yeah. Yeah. This one looks awesome. Oh, you like the blue one? Yeah. Yeah. So what is the blue and blue one subtlety we’re taking kind of the opposite approach to, you know, guile and, and the other kind of incarnations from the Lorwyn Lorehold.

Yeah. So this is two blue, blue fray, three elemental incarnation flash flying on ETB. Choose up to one target creature spell or Planeswalker spell, and its owner puts it on the top or bottom of their library, evoke Xcel, a blue card from your hand. So you kind of gain this like Aether gust effect, but it doesn’t hit permanent.

So it’s just like an Aether Guster spell, uh, which is kind of worse than memory lapse. They’re spelled because they can choose if that goes on the bottom, but there’s some promise here. What do you think Dan.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:15:15] I mean, I hate this. I hate everything about that. Philosophically you’ve heard me complain about Force of Negation many times.

So leaning even harder into their free spell space with more free counter spells. I’m not about that life. What happened after this car was previewed was that a lot of people reacted just almost instinctively reacted like I did. And we’re like, no, no more free kind of spells. And then a bunch of people took the opposite side and said, oh, this is a lot weaker than you think.

You know, I don’t see what all the fuss is about this, this particular type of tone or smell a modal memory Lapse where the opponent gets to choose is like the weakest Counterspell. There is not worth going down two for one, et cetera, et cetera. Arguing that, you know, the, the other side casting this as a format of three, three flash flyer is also not very impressive and so on and so forth.

But I mean, for me, it’s the same analysis as with, with grief, like the fact that this is a split card that you have the option to either gets a nice tempo play of the free memory lapse, or once you get to turn four and later, you know, you’ve bought some time by casting early Counterspells. You now, as you get to the late game, have all these four drop two for ones, many draining Whelks in your deck.

And those are very clean, very nice. Two for ones. That you’ve put into your deck without cluttering your deck up with high drops.

Damon Alexander: [00:16:36] Yeah. Th this card, I think that the evoke mode is not super strong. Um, what makes ether go so good is that it hits permanents too. And so as a result, it kind of becomes a Pyroblast where it’s good on the stack as good off the stack.

This card is only good on the stack as a result. Like Ephemerating it doesn’t really do a whole lot, at least off the evoke. Cause you’re just gonna w you to hit two spells there on the second at the same time, of course, once it’s in play, maybe you can accelerate it to hit another spell. Um, of course you rebound trigger and the upkeep probably won’t provide value.

So in that sense, it just isn’t quite as abusable as grief, but I completely agree that the two blue, blue mini draining whelk mode is a super powerful tempo line.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:17:19] Yeah. And I think the decks that are going to immediately put this to the best of you is, are going to be creature based sticks. I think a Merfolk players are very excited about this.

For those who play elementals, uh, this cycle has the creature typeline elemental incarnation. So now you have some interaction out of your elemental deck triggers, risen reef when it comes into play. So you get another car back that way. I think any kind of, I mean, even spirits, or just think a blue, white blink Ephemerate deck, even though it doesn’t work that great with Ephemerate, um, it’s a car that you can put into your deck that now has like a clean counter spell on a creature so that, you know, if you need to memory lapse, something you have that line available to you and otherwise wouldn’t have been moving into the harder control decks, whether that’s blue white or Izzet through the breach, Esper like there, I can see where some might argue all this is not as strong as other hard control options like Planeswalkers and so forth.

But even there, I still think this will actually perform quite nicely acquit itself, admirably just the ability to come down as like a very beefy Phantom monster at instant speed. That’s a relevant combat creature that can also close the game that doesn’t clutter up your hand again, because it either pitches to itself early in the game or you even pitcher.

So Force of Negation. Yeah.

Damon Alexander: [00:18:34] Yeah. And if you’re on the draw, like maybe you are actually, you know, casting this on an Arbor Elf turn one or something.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:18:40] Yeah. I mean, in this day and age, like cards are the easiest thing to, to make up. My manna is where the battle is won and loss. I don’t know if that’s true.

I’m just going to say that is that that’s true. Mana is where the battle is won and lost and the war is like really escalating now. Um, but yeah, I mean, again, shenanigans, you can do, so I think Shardless Agent is in the sets and it’s not officially a spoiled yet, but all signs point to Shardless agent being here.

So if you’re looking to do some kind of ancestral visions, cascade deck, you know, we saw how strong that was with Tibalt cascade. You’re just put in mythical disputes, some negations. Now you have subtlety as well. You have a bunch of stuff you can do. And the early turns, breeze and borrowers, um, that doesn’t mess up your Shardless Agent lines.

So it could be some completely unseen deck like that, that ends up becoming the best home for subtlety.

Damon Alexander: [00:19:26] Yeah. Is a good answer to provable tight enough cavern of souls, and it is a free answer to it. So you can like tap out for Ral, Izzet Viceroy in your 2018 blue moon deck or whatever, and feel safe and then probably lose the match anyway. But,

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:19:44] so what do you think to him and is this worthy of one slot in Europe? Blue moon deck,

Damon Alexander: [00:19:49] almost anything that’s worth. One slot in the blue moon deck is a trial. So yeah. Yeah. I look forward to trying this and my blue moon calendar deck, the premier place to make the one slot adjustments, because that’s all you can do.

Uh, one more answer to, Teferi when you lose a counter war Teferi, Time Raveler, when you’re playing blue, moon is just an absolute, like, I just want to go home type card and this card is kind of good against Teferi kind of not good against Teferi because they just draw it the next turn, but you’ll be more a

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:20:18] yeah. Worth remembering that it does counter a Planeswalker spell. Um, it’s it’s not just a creature actually. I’m glad you pointed that out. Cause I forgot.

Damon Alexander: [00:20:25] Yeah. Yeah. But then they just replaced the very next turn, bounce, your subtlety and it doesn’t count or anything of that.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:20:32] Sure, sure. But, I Ephemerate the subtlety three steps.

Damon Alexander: [00:20:37] Sounds good.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:20:38] All right. We move on. We’re still in the free part of the set. So our next card. Is a no man of cost suspend card. Tell us about the profane tutor.

Damon Alexander: [00:20:49] Yeah. So this is a sorcery that is a black spell suspend two for one, and a black searcher library for a card. Put that card into your hand, then shuffle that’s kind of crazy spend too, you know, we’ve played with a I’m blanking on the name search for tomorrow, which is also suspend too.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:21:08] So assuming you do this on turn two, it comes off suspend on turn four, you get your demonic tutor effectively. Yeah. I think that play patterns suggest two homes right off the bat. So the first one will be ad nauseam or whatever’s left of ad nauseam. I am not a counselor that like myself and my understanding is that ad nauseam tries to wait on turn four and this fits that pattern and you’ve seen them attempt it with Wishclaw talisman at some, at some points in time.

Um, the second home would be some kind of, As Foretold deck where you’re, you’re really leaning into the ability to do free cast things. And now. As for told only lets you cast one spell per turn for free. So if you’re going to cast your profane tutor off as for tools and like tutor up something else, but restore balance, maybe a crashing footfalls you’ve already used up your As Foretold for them turn.

So that’s like so, so, but there are other ways to get more explosive lines. Collected conjuring. For example, we talked about fires of invention last week. That would actually let you cast the profane tutor and restore balance on the same turn.

Damon Alexander: [00:22:12] Yeah. Uh, I mean, certainly the demonic tutor is a strong card.

It gets stronger, the better the cards you’re tutoring for, whether that’d be like a black Lotus or ancestral recall in the only one V one format besides, um, where demonic tutor is legal. I’m a little bit put off by the suspend mechanic in general, just because there’s a lot of Teferi. Time is floating around modern right now.

And this card just gets completely blanked by those.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:22:35] Yeah. I mean, I feel like there’s going to be more if this is also part of a cycle. And if Shardless is indeed back, this, this could be like a new annoying deck that we have to fight against. Now they did give us another tool. There’s a, on a new hate piece for this kind of spell, but in terms of like what it enables, I think it’s worth it.

It’s worth at least trying, putting it through its paces and ad nauseam and ask for tools, give collective conjuring another look. I know there’s a pilot named, named silent song, uh, who is just, uh, uh, asked for toll master. And he has recently shifted to playing three collected conjuring his main deck, and he has almost 20 trophies.

Now on the season with, with that build playing actually you see the truth as a tool to hit off collected contouring. So maybe the actually supporting pieces are there for this to go in a number of different, different directions.

Damon Alexander: [00:23:21] Yeah. And more tutors just shooters in general, make every single AB combo better because they of, you know, either half of it.

So I wonder if it was AB combos out there that we’re not thinking of, that this card will help level up, whether that be, you know, splinter, twin quote, unquote with Kiki Jiki or other ones. Yeah.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:23:38] You can tutor up your grief and your Ephemerate for the turn forest, which are twin. All right. So moving on, we have a land Cabal coffers, nice little reprints from our youth.

Damon Alexander: [00:23:50] Yeah, two and tap, add black for each swamp. You control this card enabled and in standard de Moto black control, is that right? Dan, you were playing more magic than I was back then.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:24:01] Yeah. I mean, this is a, this is a boomer card. Anytime you hear someone say mono black control, you know, you know that they have not actually sleeved up and won a tournament in the last seven years, because when was the last time a black control was ever a deck in, in any you competitive format, standard, modern, anything, it just doesn’t exist.

They’re all thinking of that one three-month window. When Odyssey and tormented just come out and Cabal coffers was there to pump up your Nantuko shades and cast Mutilates.

Damon Alexander: [00:24:30] There was also a format where with gray merchant of Asphodel. Right. Maybe it wasn’t control.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:24:35] That’s true. Original Theros correct.

Damon Alexander: [00:24:38] It’s still quite awhile ago.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:24:40] So do you expect this to actually have any chops in one-on-one player in this day and age? Yeah.

Damon Alexander: [00:24:45] So in theory, if you have, for example, in term of to move  into Cabal coffers, then as soon as turned three, you kind of can get four men out of your lands. No, you can get three men out of your lands on turn three.

Um, so you haven’t really gone ahead. It’s only by turned four that you start to pull ahead. Uh, and so that’s like not exactly extremely exciting, but it just goes up from there with Urborg out. I mean, if this card is not legendary Urborg is, but if you have multiple Cabal coffers and an Urborg with five lands, you also just have a ton of mana at your disposal.

Uh, of course maybe, you know, you’re at negative five life and your opponent has a battlefield, was the storming entity and two Monastery Swiftspears, but maybe, you know, you Mount a black controlled, like is full of removal for those pesky, uh, prowess creatures. The question is what the best thing to do with that.

Amanda is, you know, is a Gray merchant plan, viable and modern. I suspect no, but we have, you know, some pretty fancy, you know, black mythic, rare demons or other, such things.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:25:41] Yeah. I’m not sure what spell your casting. So I think Urborg is a, is a key piece to making any of this even contemplate a bubble because the cabal coffers does not by itself tap for any mana on.

So it’s almost like you wasteland yourself for the first couple of turns. If this is one of the early land plays, but Dryad of the Elysian Grove, Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, prismatic, omen, um, even abundant growth. If for some reason you’re doing that, just anything that gives us the ability to tap for a mana makes it not so bad.

And then it does count your non-basic swamps. So unlike the card, cabals strongholds from Dominaria, this one counts your shock lands or Triomes and whatever else. So it is conceivable that a modern man base could try this. I see David, you could not join us this week, but he’s been frantically. You looking up all these spoilers.

He has a note here about Korlash Heir to blackblades. I don’t know what he’s thinking for this one in particular, but I’m excited to see it’s a, whenever he drops that brew on us. Yeah.

Damon Alexander: [00:26:40] As, as a quick aside, uh, this card is a nice lesson of WotC reprint policy. Uh, this car has been uplifted to mythic rare.

Isn’t that crazy? And I’ll comment to mythic. Well, it turns out that even though wizards clearly claims they don’t acknowledge the secondary market, they obviously do because usually whenever they reprint something, they put it in a spot to make it be approximately equal to his current market value, which for Cabal coffers was like 50 ish dollars.

And so this is the way that you maximize your juicing of, uh, players like us never give magic players something for free, basically, which is certainly a, you know, if we believe that WotC’s longterm financial success is, uh, you know, critical to the health of magic as a whole is a smart strategy.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:27:22] Yeah. And I think this is actually a big win for modern players. The fact that they put this desirable EDH card reprint in the mythic slots will drive down the price of all the tournament cards. And I mean, we talked about this. I think I went on a great length of how the fetch lands being at rare and Modern Horizons too means that none of the other cards are going to be expensive, no matter how broken they are, even grief, even subtlety this evokes cycle, they can’t be that expensive because the fetch lands, the enemy fetches are just going to be worth so much.

And then on top of that, you have cards like cabal coffers, $50 card. Patriarchs bidding. Another $50 card is in the bonus slot. Essentially. They’re really like putting stuff for everyone here. And the more commander players want this product, the more of it will be open. The more singles beyond the markets and modern players will be able to pick up the car as they want more cheaply.

Damon Alexander: [00:28:09] Yeah. Yeah. After we go by our place of subtleties, yes, we’ll be saving money for the next year after that.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:28:18] So we’re four cars in, we still have not spent any men, uh, and that trend will continue with this next car entertainment.

Damon Alexander: [00:28:25] Next we have wonder which many of you know, this is a classic magic card going all the way back to judgment a three and a blue for a two to incarnation.

They didn’t have the elemental incarnation back then. So just an incarnation, even though it looks quite elemental in nature for a flyer, uh, but the two, two flyers, really not what you get wonder for you. Get it because as long as wonder is in your graveyard and you control an island creatures, you control have flying.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:28:52] So wonder was an absolute terror of standard back in the day. Blue-green madness. One of the most terrifying archetypes w w went head to head with  for like a year, we’re talking about wild mongrels, discarding, basking rootwallas, discarding, arrogant wurms. At some point you find a wonder, you discard that, and now all of your random green creatures have flying.

And you just cruise in flapping your wings, I guess, or I guess they’re not wings. They’re just in amazement that they’re enlightened states. They fly in and can’t be blocked for lethal damage. Is there a deck like that in modern that I was actually keen to gain flying, because wonder it can grant that at a very low cost.

Damon Alexander: [00:29:32] Uh, I’m leaning. No. Um, the card actually sees some play in vintage. Whenever people are playing survival of the fittest. I don’t think it’s a good deck right now, but that lets you kind of selectively find your one of wonder and put in the graver quite easily. But in vintage there’s actually like a ton of creature combat because people are playing these like hollow ones and things like that.

Uh, they’re getting flying is actually quite useful in modern. I’m just not convinced that the utility of wonder is kind of outweighed by the clunkiness. You have to first off get it in the graveyard, which is sometimes, you know, not hard, but sometimes if you’re playing like one of it, you have to just get lucky and then also have an island in play.

And so just asks you to do a little bit. And so you really do need to make sure that that like the way you get from it is worth it.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:30:13] Well, let’s talk about hollow one. I mean, I think that’s a perfect home to explore. Vengevine I mentioned is a card you might want to pair with grief or these free evoke creatures.

Um, we’ve also seen Vengevine used in heavy self mill strategies, Crab Vine it’s sometimes called where you’ve playing Hedron crabs glimpse the unthinkable, trying to fill your own graveyard and bring the vengevines back. But there’ve been other variants that focus more on discard, you know, hollow one plus vengevine for a while was something that people explored.

So you could put wonder into that deck and they actually, there’s a madness creature here that we’ll talk about in a bit that I think will be a perfect pairing for that as well. I think this can actually be a thing

Damon Alexander: [00:30:53] I guess giving hollow on flying is useful. And if you want to play like a blue, red Hollow One, yeah.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:30:59] Maybe, maybe just getting Vengevine flying. I’m not sure. I think it’s going to depend on how, like how bad the enablers are for discarding and self Miller. How far out of our way we’re going to like get those effects into the deck. And then are we dead to graveyard hates?

Damon Alexander: [00:31:13] I just said the number of times that I’ve been up against event find deck and like beating them because I have blockers around for their Vengevines, I think is pretty.

Pretty rare. So I’m not, I’m not convinced that evasion is really all that useful there. I mean, sometimes, you know, you have like a batterskull or something and you block their Vengevine and you lose your germ, but you get a gain for life. Meanwhile, they just go there eventually and back the next turn and you have to spend a lot of mana to get your germ back.

So I think I generally lose those games anyway.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:31:37] Well, it’s about to get even more rare. Damon writes let’s move on. Let’s go up the curve a little bit to the one man of spells. I’m going to jump to kitchen imp because that is relevant to the discussion we’re just having. Yeah.

Damon Alexander: [00:31:51] This is three and a black for a 2/2 imp with flying haste and madness for a single black

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:31:58] fun fact that this is actually a cheapest Madness card and modern for creatures.

At least, uh, there, there are cheaper madness spells, but in terms of creatures, there’s kitchen imp and there’s big game hunter. Now a big game, hunter. You probably don’t want to put that in your Vengevine deck because it just kills you Vengevines. And it’s just the one, one, but kitchen imp is a two to flying haste.

So if you are engineering something with, I dunno what it would be Noose constrictor, Bazaar Trademage. If they give us careful study, I’m not sure some kind of draw and discard effect you discard the vengevine, you discard the kitchen imp. You cast the kitchen imp off of madness and you’re a business.

Damon Alexander: [00:32:36] Yeah. Hopeless cart is, you know, an innocuous role player. That will be pretty good. Or like the new ArcLight Phoenix, because madness effectively, it gives you like a free card. Uh, just like archery thing. You know, when you’re getting it back to the ops, you maintain your resource count. Uh, but just get a free three to flying haste.

This card is if you cast some sort of draw this card, you know, you’re no longer discarding, you’re getting two, two flying hastes. Uh, and so that’s like maybe really good

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:33:03] madness is one of the themes that are pushing in at least the draft archetypes for this set. It’s the red, black theme. In the sort of set preview article, they single out madness.

Is that something that they thought was on the verge of being competitive and just needed more cards? It was so interesting to see that because I think of badness as that ancient blue-green deck from Odyssey block. And I can’t think of any deck since then in the decades, since then, that even came close to competitive.

I feel like madness cars have led us down so many times. And here I’m thinking specifically of fiery temper. Why is that car disappointed? And does kitchen offer any better hope? Like his man is just too finicky, like too many moving parts or is it that the payoffs are too weak?

Damon Alexander: [00:33:48] Yeah. I mean, madness is in fact extremely finicky in limited formats, you can play cards.

It’s like, you know, three and a red for a two to haste that lets you rummage or whatever. And in that was a great card in a ultimate masters, mad prophet or something. I forget the name, but the problem is like the best discard outlets in limited are extremely not constructed, playable like sparks bidder.

That makes three, one elementals that died on of turn. And when you have to discard a card, that card was great. That card is not creating Modern

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:34:19] much needed sparks, bitter, or reprint. That’s all that’s holding back the kitchen.

Damon Alexander: [00:34:24] Meanwhile, like the thing is like with the card, like Rielle that, uh, David has had a lot of success with, I think you have to Dan, um, Is that her ability doesn’t require you to have manna up. And so you can just cast the Prismari commander or whatever, and immediately profit from it.

This does require you to have a little bit of black man available, uh, and also be sort of generally in the business of winning via two to flying haste creatures, which I think are typical blue, red, real decks. Aren’t.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:34:50] Yeah, that’s true. I mean, I do like how this is at least on plan with attacking with vengevines, Gravecrawlers, hollow ones, that kind of thing.

Whereas a car like fiery temper is not fiery temper. You do all this work to set it up and then your payoff is a lightning bolt that might not even do anything. So I think at least for that card, every time I’ve tried to play it, I’ve been like a little bit let down by the payoff or here at least you’d know what you’re getting, you know, you’re getting a creature, you know, you’re getting a cast trigger and a little bit of chip damage.

Damon Alexander: [00:35:20] Yeah. Well, let’s ask a simple question. Would you ever play a car that was black man or two to flying haste?

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:35:25] Yeah. Well, I think that car would be insane. Black men a to, to flying is what

Damon Alexander: [00:35:30] I mean. I don’t know. Haven’t we talked about like, it could be a 10, 10 and not be that good.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:35:37] Yeah, but a haste is a totally different ball game.

And you’re talking about a goblin guide with the evasion and no drawback.

Damon Alexander: [00:35:42] Yeah. Okay. Okay. In the, in the goblin guide type decks, I guess that would be really good.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:35:46] I mean, I mean, that’s a fair question though. Cause that’s what you’re getting. If you get the kitchen Imp for just one.

Damon Alexander: [00:35:51] Yeah. Yeah. But you’ll be getting it, I guess.

Probably not on turn one on like goblin guide, you know, what’s the, what’s the fastest line that gets us into play. You play Noose constructor on turn to, are there any one man enablers that are any good

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:36:02] fastest line would be your opponent plays grief on turn one Ephemerates it, you put your kitchen hip into play.

Damon Alexander: [00:36:10] You is all kitchen Imps

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:36:13] exactly got them. Huh? All right. Well, this is one that I know David is very excited about. He thinks this is better than all the Mythics we’ve been talking about, and I’m sure that he’s going to have at least a deck or two, that he wants us to put through his paces for kitchen Imp.

So you have not heard the last of that, uh, that little card sticking with a one drop. So let’s go take a look at the year Rishadan Dockhand. Yeah.

Damon Alexander: [00:36:36] So all the people, the citizens of Rashad have now gone on boats and there are one blue mana for a, one, two Merfolk with island walk and true to ourselves.

One tap, tap, target land. So this is basically a modernized version of Rishadan port and it’s on a creature.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:36:55] Okay. So a listener, Benjamin S asked us last week, if we thought Rishadan Port would be healthy for mater and both David and myself said, absolutely not. So we do not like mana denial, especially not on the land.

Now this one, if David were here, I’m sure he would say that’s okay. The fact that it’s on a creature makes it fair. This can be interacted with, with a normal course of magic. So as concerned as we may be about our lands, getting tapped, at least we can lightning bolts, fatal, push it and free ourselves from that, uh, that being said, they give us generous stats.

It is a one, two. So it survives the Lava Dart Wrenn and Six tests. It is a Merfolk, so it will get buffed by all those Lords. And we’ll be tapping things while they have other vial doing all the heavy lifting for them. I don’t know. I mean, how good do you think this card is?

Damon Alexander: [00:37:42] It makes me pretty nervous.

Um, the thing with Rishadan port is that when you’re using your Rishadan port, you’re basically taking a temporary one for two, you’re using your Rishadan port plus, uh, another land for the one man activation to neutralize one of their manna. So again, it’s like a short-term one for two, and that’s, you know, it could be a very good thing.

If you’re head on board to, to do that. Um, what is obviously has a, some sort of downsides this card, you get the same math on the one for two, but the thing you’re missing out on isn’t an extra land drop. It’s a creature, the cost one manna. So in that sense, it actually might be like a lot better than Rishadan port, because now you can use the extra man out to do other things.

As you mentioned, mana is more important than cards. And so while you’re busy porting them with your dock hand, you actually are one for one on mana. Uh, and so it feels like any sort of start with an Aether Viol of multiple of these is going to be a frustrating time for your opponent.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:38:38] I think you hit it on the head.

I mean, that, that’s such a huge difference. Rishadan Port takes two mana to activate. This takes one, that’s a hundred percent discount or something. And yeah, I mean, I’ve seen people talking about moving into blue, white taxes for this, even if you’re already attacking their mana with something like Leonin Arbiteres here, you have another car doing that.

Maybe, you know, diets, removal, but everything in that deck is a must kill. So I think it could be seeing a lot of this guy. I agree with you, Damon, this could be asleep,

Damon Alexander: [00:39:09] so I’ll just be playing, uh, blue, white taxes. Mirrors were unsold Mariner becomes by far the best card in modern.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:39:15] Oh gosh. Oh, I guess that prevents this

Damon Alexander: [00:39:17] prevents the Dockhand or slows down the dockhand.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:39:21] It prevents grief. I mean, this is the key we’re inventing the new meta right here. Live on air. This is great.

Damon Alexander: [00:39:28] Absolutely. Now what does make me nervous is Rishadan port. I’m not convinced it’s an extremely powerful magic card. It’s certainly, you know, good in the seas, you know, legacy play. Um, what I dislike about as the play pattern, it’s such a, such an annoying game state when you’re like now, instead of being like upkeep draw and show your main face and cast your spells, you’re like upkeeping your opponent, like kind of like looking away.

And you’re like drawing and, and they’re like, wait, hold on. And they’re like, wait, let me wish land Lando, port multiple. Then they have two ports. So you’re like at Florida blue and they’re like, okay, pass priority. And then it’s like, it’s just like this, this game you play every single upkeep that is, uh, kind of annoying, uh, with MTG, with a lot of clicking.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:40:08] Gosh, when was the last time you played with Aether vials in a paper match? You have to announce every single phase. Like, okay. I go to my upkeep. I put the trigger on the stack and he responses. All right, go into my next phase. Now I moved to my draw phase. It’s like the most tedious thing. And now we’re going to have the Dockhands mucking that up as well.

Good times. Yeah.

Damon Alexander: [00:40:30] Yeah. It’s going to sharpen up our social social skills coming out of the pandemic in a hurry, having court around in modern.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:40:37] All right. Let’s move on to Zabar, the glimmerwasp.

Damon Alexander: [00:40:41] Yeah, this is one manna for a zero zero legendary artifact feature insect with modular one, which is a quick reminder means it shows up with a one, one counter, and whenever it dies, he moves one on one counter to another artifact you control then going into the rest of the text.

It has first off. If a model triggered ability would move one or more, plus impossible, possible counters on a creature you control. You get one extra counter. So kind of like a hardened scales effect, but only for modular triggers then for red destroyed target artifact, you control, which sounds kind of weird.

We’ll talk about in a second. And lastly, white is a boss games. Find one of turn. And so the red ability lets it do what Arcbound Ravager does, namely sack all your artifacts to steadily grow, uh, you know, a single creature. This, you obviously have to spend managed to do this, which makes it kind of a more fair version of Ravager, but Ravager doesn’t provide a scales effect.

It provides something similar with its modular ability to kind of collect counters on itself. But it’s not the same.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:41:39] Yeah. I mean, they obviously are intending us to play this alongside the Ravager and I assume alongside hardened scales. I’m a little bit surprised that the activity abilities are red and white when harden scales is traditionally green, maybe with a black splash, sometimes I’ve seen some splashing different colors.

Um, so how important are those activated abilities? Obviously, if I’m playing a hard in the skills that I probably want to at least put some of this on my deck, but am I also gonna change my men outs? I get access to the self-destructing red button.

Damon Alexander: [00:42:14] Those texts can splash pretty easily sometimes off of cards like Spire of industry.

So I suspect that it’s also not clear to me that you really need the red ability or the white ability that this card is being a skills effect on a stick, uh, is enough to be quite good.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:42:29] And the fact that it’s legendary, does that put you off playing a full place? That’s obviously this is like strictly better than Arcbound worker, a card that hardened Scales already plays four of.

Are we looking to supplement the Arcbound worker accounts with some copies of the bonds, the glimmer of loss, or are we going to replace them entirely or maybe play more than four?

Damon Alexander: [00:42:49] Yeah, it’s interesting. I mean, maybe you just do a swap. You say it to the rest of the 56 cards are great. And now we just upgrade one of our slots.

Um, the effect is legendary is not that big of a deal because when you play a new one, you just have the new one die and immediately get to put two counters on another artifact you control. And so that’s actually like kind of a good thing. You’d probably rather have that than just have a one, one.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:43:12] Yeah, yeah, I think that’s right.

It’s um, you can also tour this up with Urza saga when chapter three resolves, you can go fetch your Zabaz and now you’ll have access to that bonus modular effect. So I think we’re definitely gonna be seeing this at hardened scales and I think it will be a measurable improvement in the deck now where it goes from there.

It remains to be seen.

Damon Alexander: [00:43:33] Yeah. And that, that could certainly use a little bit of help, but it feels like that deck has never been the same since losing Mox Opal.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:43:38] True. True. So the next creature here still in the one drops also works with sacrificing things. I could kind of see it in like a Hardened Scales strategy, although I don’t think that’s the best home.

Do you want to tell us about the Ravenous squirrel?

Damon Alexander: [00:43:53] Yeah. So this is a green black hybrid manna for a one one squirrel, whenever you sacrifice and Artifactory creature, uh, put a counter plus simple, some counter on ravenous squirrel, and then one queen black sacrificed artifacts, your creature, you gain one life and draw card and implicitly are putting a counter on the squirrel.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:44:10] So it’s a bit of a meme, but it is a one drop hybrid. Black green kind of reminds me of carrion feeder kind of reminds me of mortician beetle. The ways in which it is better than those are threefold. One is that. This gains counters for sacrificing artifacts. So Mishra’s Bauble for example, you crack your Mishra’s Bauble Ravenous squirrel gets a Tundra.

If you’re playing the, a Cat Oven combo, which is, Witch’s Oven Cauldron Familiar Ravenous squirrel gains two counters per cycle because you’re sacking a creature, you’re sacrificing a food doesn’t benefit from sacrificing lands. So if you’re thinking of some kind of mayhem devil’s sacrifice strategy, we won’t go turbo mode with them, with the Ravenous squirrel, but that’s something to think about the other ways in which is the better.

It is a squirrel squirrel. Tribal is one of the themes of the set and it has this activity stability for three that has actually kind of a nice way to grind.

Damon Alexander: [00:45:10] Yeah, it is a, it is a grindy ability. Um, the thing with carrying a feeder though, is that it is a kind of a free SAC outlet, uh, plus counter generation all in a single, single lean one black package.

This card kind of feels like he needs help to do a lot on the battlefield. And that’s maybe not good to the kind of Carrion feeder, just easy enabler. And then with a single other card just goes nuts. This card, I feel like you kind of need two other cards and played a really go nuts with it. Pardon the pun? A nonsensical?

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:45:40] Well, that’s a, that’s a fair point, I think without the Witch’s Oven combo specifically, um, you’re not going to be gaining at a tremendous rate, but I mean, for a one drop, this is interesting skills. Pick up a counter for sacrificing Kroxa evoked your grief, get a counter. I don’t know.

Damon Alexander: [00:45:59] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it certainly does grow fast. I mean, yeah. The cat often combo grows it quite quickly. One thing is. You know, Carrion feeder, post grave crawler, lets you kind of keep playing, uh, your grave crawl out of the grave for a single black man to kind of grow your Carrion Feeder. But if you have multiple carrying feeders to kind of have to share the same grave, crawler, the revenue squirrels, uh, don’t have to share so-so maybe this does kind of just play into this zombie deck, even though it’s a squirrel.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:46:24] The fact that it only costs one minimum means that it actually has a pretty decent chance. Now you’re going to have to work for it. I think it’s going to be a while before some streamers or Meemers put this deck together, but I think it’s going to be a pleasant surprise. All right. We are 50 minutes in and we have finished the zero drops and one drops preview so far.

Let’s take a short break. When we come back, we will proceed all the way up the curve to, you know, the, the boomer cards, the two Mehta and up cards. For the slowpokes like us who want to extend the game. We’ll have those for you. After the break,

Damon Alexander: [00:47:19] come back, uh, going into the two slot, we have unmarked grave, one in a black fray, sorcery searched your library for a non legendary card, put it into your graveyards in shuffle. So this card is clearly much, much worse than Entomb, which is clearly a much too good card for Modern. Where does that leave on mark grave, Dan?

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:47:40] Yeah, that’s a fascinating question. It really puts into perspective how good Entomb is. I mean, it’s double the cost and as a sorcery speed. So. Whatever you’re going to try to do. They’re going to see it coming. You’re not going to catch them with instep, unmarked grave, and then, you know, turn three Footsteps of the Goryo or Gorgas vengeance or whatever you’re trying to do.

Um, oh, not Goryo’s Vengeance, sorry. You’d only find as non legendary cards that being said, there are some exciting cars to Reanimate with this Protean Hulk I think is the big one that people are talking about. Protean Hulk. If you manage to kill, it will fetch up a whole little package of creatures that you can engineer to have a deterministic loop kill.

And I think there are a clean way to do that would be Unmarked Grave on turn to Footsteps of the Goryo on turn three. And you’re done that being said it is worth mentioning, I guess, in the same discussion since we’re here. Some of the other renovation affects. So black, white is kind of a ReAnimator archetype that they’ve seen as support for that at common and uncommon.

And they’ve also given us another rare here, Priest of Fell Rites. Maybe let’s just put this one into the mix, because I think it’s worth thinking about in conjunction with unmarked graves.

Damon Alexander: [00:48:58] Yeah. So we have white, black for a two to human warlock. Tap pay three life sack Priest of Fell RIghts returned her your future card from your graveyard to the battlefield activate only as a sorcery and then on earth, three white plaque, which lets you get it back from your graveyard.

Uh, as a sorcery, uh, with hasten and Dyson of turn, it gets exiled out of turn. So this card to me reminds me of like a sort of Boseiju effect for the reanimation lines, where for three white black, you get this back. You renovate your Griselbrand or whatever you’re looking for. Um, and it can’t be countered.

It just sort of happens, uh, through interaction besides, you know, nimble obstructionists.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:49:43] Yeah. This card surprised me as I was thinking through like how Priest of Fell Rites would play. It actually seems kind of fair. Like on the one hand tapping to renovate something is fantastic. I mean, that’s the cheapest reanimation effect in modern, outside of Goryo’s vengeance, but this is a permanent reanimation, whatever you bring back sticks around.

If the opponent wants to stop you from that, they have options, right. They can attack the graveyard or they can just kill the or filler rights. But that just buys time, right? The, the delay you, but you still get to cast your re animation because you can unearth the priest for five. And that, as you said, can not be countered.

So I think it’s like a fair exchange all the way around. I think that’s an exciting to have reanimation back on the menu as it were in modern. All right. So let’s go back to the unmarked grave and put that back into discussion. So we could combine these two, right? You, you could play your Priest of Fell Rites on turn two, turn three, you Thoughtseize them again or something or grief them again.

And then you cast your unmarked grave and try to get some kind of wind that way. Is that a, the shape you think a ReAnimator deck will take or are there other uses for either of these cards, the unmarked grave or the Priest of Fell Rites that branch had a different directions.

Damon Alexander: [00:51:04] That seems kind of like what you’re looking to do.

Maybe Priest of Fell Rites. Just isn’t good enough. You’d rather just have Unburial Rites, because one of the cool things about Entomb with cards like priests of fellow rights or on burial rights, Uh, or dread return if you’re playing that kind of format, um, is that you can search for either your, you know, scary graveyard reanimation target, or your graveyard renovation spell.

And so it makes unmarked grave kind of like a, essentially like a demonic tutor for the graveyard strategies. Um, although in this case, again, it doesn’t get, it only gets non legendary.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:51:36] What did you say that Priest of Fell Rites makes unburden our rights completely obsolete? Or is it that it’s one cheaper to activate out of the group?

Damon Alexander: [00:51:45] Well, it’s one cheaper. Uh, you don’t have to pay three life. Uh, I think the three life is, um, sometimes quite significant. Sometimes you’re just dying to agro or whatever, and that puts you in a death range sometimes. Uh, you’re getting a Griselbrand and then to three life messes up your bill, you draw seven cards.

Um, on the other hand Unburial Rites can be countered. This card can not.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:52:05] Hmm. Yeah. I mean, it seems also like there’s some interesting loops you could do. If you had to Priest of Fell RItes, um, you can use it with Lurrus, but it does have so many sickness. So that is going to throw a wrench in all of this.

And it does cause three life, which in my mind, I’m like blocking that out. I don’t want to hear it, but I think you’re absolutely right. That that is going to be a serious call. Yeah.

Damon Alexander: [00:52:29] Yeah. We will have to spend time. I mean, randomization in the modern has not really been a big thing, uh, in a long time, besides, you know, there there’s infringed X that the Reanimate, but there’s never been, you know, like a legacy as a tier one ReAnimator deck.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:52:45] Yeah. I’m in the graveyard hate in modern is fantastic. So it’s going to be an uphill climb for sure. I am guessing the best, the best future for ReAnimator is some kind of mid range deck where like a card, like grief will be an important components because that. Breaks up some of their interaction, it’s thought, you know, let’s you kill the graveyard hate before it hits the battlefield.

And then grief becomes a fine card to reanimate. For example, with your priest of Fell Rites, if you need to do it again. Whereas if you’re just all in on trying to get some giant card, whether that’s protean hole or whether that’s the, um, the new serra angel thing from this sets, once they see what you’re up to, they can stop that pretty easily with any number of cards.

Damon Alexander: [00:53:26] Yeah, you’d ever want to play Priest of Fell Rites in like some fair fashion where you’re like, all right, well, you may have failed to push my turmeric life, but I play priesthood fell rights. And then if they fail, I’ll push again. You on earth. That’s somewhere. Grief is definitely coming back

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:53:40] when masterstroke. Okay. Next card up is another two drop flametongue yearling.

Damon Alexander: [00:53:48] Yeah, red red for a two, one Kavu with multi kicker to, uh, it ETBs with a possible plus one counter for each time it was kicked. And then on ETB deals, damage equal to its power to target creature. So it is obviously a play off flame tongue Kavu, but it’s just a baby, unless you Multicheck it a bunch in which case it’s huge.

So interesting card. Where do we land Dan?

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:54:11] Well, I am definitely going to be playing this, although I don’t think I actually should. The problem with Flametongue Kavu is that the enter the battlefield trigger is not optional. It deals for damage to a creature, no matter what. And if your opponent does not have any creatures for you to target, you have to target one of your own creatures.

In some cases, you even have to target the flame tongue Kavu has a target itself if there’s no other creature in play. So flame tongue yearling in the same COVID tradition has that same templating. So if you’re thinking I’m going to, I’m going to curve out, you know, turn one monastery Swiftspear turn to flame tongue yearling, suit Monastery

Swiftspear like, it’s not the greatest opening secrets. Well, obviously, if your opponent was kind enough to play a one drop, then you’ve had the greatest turn two of all time. Yeah.

Damon Alexander: [00:54:56] Yeah. I mean, yeah, this card is just, where does it sit? Does like a red, green ponds, a deck want to play this as like a way to kill creatures?

You know, are you really looking forward to going to red red play a three-two kill your idol on of the revel or whatever, uh, or even to read right. To kill your storming entity. If they don’t have a gut shot or mutagenic growth lying around.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:55:14] I think that’s closer to where it’s supposed to. I think it’s supposed to be like a tool for red mirror matches.

You bring it in. And you know, if you think they’re going to be playing one drops and you are yourself or in aggressive deck that can make use of a two, one creature, you can turn to the flame tongue yearling of that way. It’s actually not great at killing some of the other creatures that are actually more important than modern, Dryad of the Elysian Grove.

Omnath these have four toughness, FLametongue Yearling takes six minutes. You want to try to deal for damage with it. So it’s actually not. It doesn’t scale super well. That being said, the place that I’m going to be trying, this is my kicker deck. The, is it goblin Bushwhacker, roost of Drakes deck that I like to call Drake whack.

Um, but, uh, that deck I’m desperate for anything. So I’ll play any card with you, ticker, and this has ticker and it’s sort of affordable. So there will be four flame tongue yearlings in my 75. When I bring that deck back out of the cellar, I’m just not sure whether they’re going to be a main deck or nots.

Damon Alexander: [00:56:13] Yeah. I mean, as we’ve, we’ve known for a long time that eventually your of great techs will become a complete tier zero monstrosity when the exact right car gets pointed for maybe it’s flame tongue yearlings. We probably can’t say due to this card for now, until we at least give David’s note a quick review, just because it gives you a bit of David’s splice it’s for this pod.

If you’re one of the beep JJ Abrams, horrific fan service, the force awakens, have we got it’s hard for you. So I guess, uh, David is not a fan of the force awakens.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:56:48] Yeah. He puts these like personal attacks on the, in the show notes on you. I love the force awakens. Yeah. Every capture the magic. What’s wrong with liking the force a week.

I mean, I love the Phantom menace to even Jar Jar Binks is actually the greatest character in the franchise, but that’s like a whole different, that’s a whole different podcasts. Not even episode, that’s like a whole different spinoff podcast.

Damon Alexander: [00:57:11] Yeah. I mean, I think he’s right about the fan service aspect.

Like, wow, we have another death star, but anyway, that is,

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:57:19] he’s just being a Grinch who stole Christmas on this. I mean, people have been asking for Flametongue Kavu for years are a fixed FLametongue Kavu. This is kind of like a fixed version that still captures what made flame tongue, flame tongue, namely that the risk of having to blast yourself,

Damon Alexander: [00:57:35] what would FTK be broken?

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:57:37] Uh, I don’t know, like, I’m not sure if they’re thinking this is better or worse than FTK. I think they both have like a similar role. I think FTK is actually a little more versatile. I’m a little more oppressive just because it’s closer to a clean terminate, but, well, we’ll see. Yeah. Anyway, I mean, we don’t have that option.

We have the yearly, so Drake wack, ticker deck. It is,

Damon Alexander: [00:57:57] yeah, up next, we have a pretty crazy card void mirror for two manna, for an artifact. Whenever a player cast a spell, if no colored mana was spent to cast it, counter that spell. So this stops a pretty broad swath of cards. So for example, definitely I’ll draw sea turtles plays no colored manna whatsoever would get their entire deck countered by this card unless they have a cavern on Eldrazi.

Meanwhile, anything that you cascade into or bring to light for because you’re kissing it for no manner at all? No, man, I means no colored manna. So like this actually cuts out a large class of cards that overlaps with what’s Teferi time Reveler blocks in a lot of ways, obviously doesn’t stop flusterstorm or whatever.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:58:41] Yeah. That’s a super interesting cross section of effects. Obviously the immediate reaction was, oh, another Tron hate it slows down classic Tron, but the way that it’s written, it says if they did not spend any color of metal on the spell, it doesn’t matter what the cast and cost of the spill was. So that means that the Tron player, as long as they have a forest in plea can still cast at least one Spiller turn into the void mirror and there’ll be fine.

E-tron. You have to have a cavern of souls to get around the, um, the counter clause. So this doesn’t prevent you from casting. It, it just says when you cast it, it is countered. So Cavern will power through that. Or maybe if this car becomes super prevalent, Eldrazi Tron we’ll just have to splash a colored land that they can fetch up with expedition map to get around the void mirror that way.

So in that sense, the void mirror. I guess it like slows down color the stacks, but it really shuts down these free spell decks, like completely shuts down and like As Foretold deck, right?

Damon Alexander: [00:59:38] Yeah. If you like evoke out your grief, then it will be countered. So this card I think is possibly just gonna become a one or two of in most modern deck sideboard, as long as you aren’t yourself, like a, you know, a bring to light deck or whatever.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [00:59:53] I mean, I don’t actually think that you would bring it in, in those match-ups. And I think this is where it’s going to let a lot of people down. They’re going to assume that this is like the new thing, the new great sideboard card, bringing in a bunch of like fairer match-ups, you know, you’ll think, well, what, what, what does my opponents that have that this can stop?

You know, they’re going to cast lava darts and mutagenic growths, or they’re going to cast up, bring to light, you know, maybe I’ll bring it in for that. You know, they’re going to cast a grief. So I’ll bring in the void mirror to stop that. And you’ll find out that you lost any way. Like they just hard cast the grief for four and now you’re down.

Three cars to one, or just, you know, spending two meadow on a hit pieces is not reliable. These days removal is plentiful. And if it is a problem, it doesn’t shut down. Their entire deck is, I guess what I’m trying to say. So if it doesn’t shut down their entire deck, is it really worth a slot? I’m not sure.

Damon Alexander: [01:00:42] Yeah. It’s true. If it’s only stopping, like it brings to light, maybe it’s a little bit too narrow if it’s just like the lava darts or mutagenic gross out of blue, red prowess also probably too narrow.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:00:51] Yeah. I mean, it’s not like Teferi, Time Raveler cause Teferi, Time Raveler does everything at once.

And this does some things a little bit earlier, so I am tentatively, I’m a low on this, I guess

Damon Alexander: [01:01:03] if you’re in a MetAware, Eldrazi Tron is huge. I think you’re happy to have this around. I think it is good against Tron. I mean, it stops their nut draws. It slows them down. Um, it’s probably not the only piece you, you, you need against them, but it bridges the early turns.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:01:16] Sure. Okay. So we’re still in the two drops. We have, uh, some honorary, two drops here. Let’s take a look at some of the storm cards. We have chatterstorm and we have a big dinosaur.

Damon Alexander: [01:01:29] Yeah. Chatterstorm is one and a green for a source where you make a one, one green squirrel token with storm. And so it’s like empty the warrens, but it half price for half as many goblins that are now squirrels.

Does that change anything or are we just playing empty over there?

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:01:44] Yeah, I’m not sure. Like, it’s just so weird to me to see a storm in green. And I mentioned the dinosaur because that also is effectively a storm card. This is Thrasta, Tempest’s Roar, 10 green green for a seven, seven Thrasta costs three less to cast.

For each other spell that was already cast this turn. So it was kind of like use a storm as a cost reduction effect. And then it’s a seven, seven trample haste with trample over Planeswalkers and it has hex proof during the turn that it entered the battlefield. So, uh, if you’re in some kind of green thrown deck, you have chatter storm, you have Thrasta.

You even there’s like an ooze for five that also makes copies of itself with storm. I haven’t seen any like storm enablers yet, although we’re early in the preview weeks as we record this, we’re recording this on a Tuesday. So, I’m not sure if these are all meant to go on the same deck or if we’re just supposed to like figure out what each card does.

Best chatterstorm seems best at making a squirrel tokens for the squirrel tribal deck. It also seems like, okay, you’re triggering a major craft. If you want to do something like, I don’t know, pick a major craft card Sedgemoor Witch Quandrix apprentice and just have a  storm card.

Damon Alexander: [01:02:55] Yeah. I mean, I think Chatterstorm is a limited card is my assessment.

Um, which is the point of you’re casting empty the Warren’s or whatever you you’d rather just double it. The test run for four will not win the game. Anytime soon, empty for four will thrust the Tempest war, I think is interesting. Um, I mean, green does have a lot of tools available to storm off with Manamorphose Burning-Tree Emissary.

Mishra’s Bauble, uh, and more, um, I’m just not sure that that kind of storm deck is looking for a big dinosaur.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:03:26] Uh, I really don’t like how it’s only an expert for one turn. If they’re doing all this work to storm off and you have to storm three times to get this, to get thrust it down to three men, if you storm, if storm charges is four, it only costs two minute, but that’s really hard.

Now your payoff instead of winning the game, like a Grapeshot or empty the Warrens gifts on given, passing, and flames, et cetera. Instead of that, you’re getting a 7 damage in with a big dyno, and then it dies on the next turn to a path exile or whatever. And I’m underselling it a little bit. Obviously we’ve seen that boring clicks is actually pretty good.

Just the big things with trampoline haste are pretty strong. So maybe if you’re not in like a dedicated storm combo, but are just some kind of. Uh, aggressive as mid range deck that has some stormy elements built in. You could make better use of threats though.

Damon Alexander: [01:04:20] Yeah. With the one problem is that if the storm is zero, it does in fact cost 10 green green.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:04:24] True. Well, you trick them into countering your Mishra’s Bauble and that it’s to storm right there.

Damon Alexander: [01:04:30] Sure, sure. It’s just that if you draw it off the top in your mid-range deck and the game goes long, uh, this card is pretty bad.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:04:36] Yes. Yes it is. All right, let’s move on. We have another honoraria to drop here.

Damon Alexander: [01:04:43] Fractured sanity is blue, blue, blue fray, sorcery, each opponent mills 14 cards, and then cycling one in a blue. When you cycle fresh sanity, each opponent mills four cards. This card is busted. Blue mill has been, uh, a pretty good deck actually in modern right now. And this card is a serious upgrade.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:05:04] Busted really.

Damon Alexander: [01:05:06] Yeah. I mean, first off Mill’s 14 cards for three manna is a very good rate. Um, but then milling for while cycling is also, I think, quite good. The blue black mailbox can be turbo mill playing like eight crabs and just kinda going straight for the mill plan, but they can also be, you know, you, you and I have tried to variance of the mill deck that are more of controlling that are happy with just your archive traps or whatever.

Uh, and you just want to get your Drown in the Loch active, uh, and cast and fatal pushes. Or I was even kissing, didn’t say, please, and this card just lets you, you know, hold up drown in the lock mill for you start getting, you know, you land a couple of archive traps. You’re probably pretty close to the million 14 being enough.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:05:47] So you’re saying a lot of value in being able to pass the turn on turn to, uh, with the option to drown or fatal push or a cyclist.

Damon Alexander: [01:05:55] Yeah. Yeah. And I think, I think as a much more interesting version of mil, the more interactive middle of X, then the kind of the current eight crab ducks.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:06:03] Interesting. I was just thinking in the eight crab deck, I was still probably want this, although I’m not sure if I will more often be casting it for blue, blue, blue for the full 14, or if it’s more valuable to get the cycling mode for damage draw card, not for damage mail for a draw card so that the next card could be anything, you know, it could even be another fractured sanity.

Damon Alexander: [01:06:24] Yeah. I mean, those techs don’t have perfect manner. They play cards like field of room to enable archives trap. Uh, I think you probably would be cycling it more than casting it. Um, but I think that is good. I mean, mil for draw card, is that better than mill 10? 

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:06:44] worth noting that both fractured sanity and maddening cacophony do not target.

So veil of summer is not going to stop them. Similarly, if Leyline of sanctity was your way of combating mil, you might not get there with that either just because now that the mill decks have access to so many non-targeted mill effects ruined crab, similarly. So in that sense, the mill deck, they’re obviously pushing it with this card and I’m kind of surprised, cause I thought ruined crab would have been enough.

Maybe they designed this and they didn’t realize that rune crab was going to be in Zendikar or whatever. And that meal doesn’t actually need this. So that’s, that’s part of it. On the other hand, if you need to beat mill, you can just put one Eldrazi Titan somewhere in your 75, CyBorD it in and have your deck is shuffled.

So maybe there’s like a hard cap on how good meal can be.

Damon Alexander: [01:07:31] The Eldrazi Titan plan is beatable with surgical extraction.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:07:35] It is, but you know, at least gives us something to something to negotiate as we’re navigating the new mill tier one metal.

Damon Alexander: [01:07:43] Yeah. I mean, those decks are playing a resource game where they are spending cards to mill you and those decks typically pick up speed in the late game.

Once they’re Ancestral visions or sorry, ancestral visions of beyond get turned on. And so drawing towards visions of beyond actually I think it’s pretty strong.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:08:02] Yeah. So we’re, I think we’re both seeing this as a straight upgrade to mill as an archetype. That much seems clear your thinking for of, for sure.

Kick something else out of the deck. Yeah. I think once we’re thinking of it as a two man, I can’t trip, then it starts to become much clearer. Like why, why the card is going to be so important. Do you have any interest in like an alternative meal deck with, um, what does that card that as a chroma and it reveals your top 10.

And then you, you get to bill them for you to blue PIP.

Damon Alexander: [01:08:33] How’s this even tides, Sanity grinding,

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:08:35] sanity grinding. Yes. So sanity grinding has like a clear, built around mission, right? Like fit as many blue pips into your deck as you can. And maybe you’ll mill 20 when you resolve this notably sanity, grinding has three blue pips itself and fractured sanity also has three blue pips you can put in who knows counter smell.

You could put that in for two blue pips archive shop is two pips. You can put in Sea gate restoration as a land for three more blue pips. So I’m envisioning that my chromo speller could mill 10 or 15 cards. And then with fractured sanity, also a million, 10 or 15 cards.

Damon Alexander: [01:09:11] Yeah. You actually made me want to build the deck differently.

If you’re planning on just putting a bunch of blue pips, you maybe just start almost playing like motto blue.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:09:19] Right. I mean, I’m thinking even like a collected conjuring something, cause that would hit both the sanity grinding and the fractured sanity. This is probably a strictly worse than the existing mill deck, but like you’re saying, you know, opens up new ways to build the deck.

And I think that’s interesting, at least it’s kind of exciting if Millers is thing. All right. Let’s uh, let’s see one last card. Uh, we’ve made it through some of the two traps. We’ll have to come back for the higher CMC cards and the Sunday episode. But, uh, do you want to tell us about rise and shine?

Damon Alexander: [01:09:49] Yeah. So rise and shine is one in a blue for a sorcery target, non pitcher artifact. You control becomes a zero, zero artifact creature put four plus and plus one camera’s on it. Uh, and so we’ve seen similar effects before, but this one has overload for blue blue. And so this makes all your nine creature artifacts become four fours.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:10:08] Right. So it’s, I guess functionally the same card is that adventure from throne of Eldraine bringing to life, but this cost too, right? So it is a decent turn to play. If you’re leading off on, I dunno, Ghostfire Blade or something, but then there’s overload mode overload for six. Now everything becomes a four for everything that wasn’t already a creature.

I know David really likes this style of card. I mean, it’s just kind of fun. It’s kind of surprising. It gives you extra copies of insole artifact. If you’re already doing that on the other hand, nothing I’ve described so far is an existing deck or has been closed to an existing deck and Modern.

Damon Alexander: [01:10:46] Yeah. And so artifact is frequently a very good card in pioneer, but is not a good card in modern.

David has a comment about how, if you’re playing an Urza tech, uh, you typically first of have six men available and second off, maybe have enough things lying around. Like for example, if you’re playing one of the E old tireless tracker Urza decks. Uh, you know, every, every clue you have becomes a four, four.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:11:10] Okay. That actually sounds really sweet. Right? I mean, I’ve been playing a lot of gingerbread cabin tireless tracker stuff this week and shape a new for Blightsteel Colossus was not getting the job done, but rise and shine, rise and shine. All right. I’m in for that, you know, at least squander 10 tickets on that one.

Damon Alexander: [01:11:28] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can get a whole pile of clues sometimes.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:11:33] We’ll have to see. All right. Well, we have been, uh, chattering like squirrels here for, for some time. Now. I think we should call it here for today. Obviously we’ve only touched on a sliver of this cards preview, and I’m sure more will be revealed by the time this episode goes live.

We’re going to be back on Sunday to talk about. Some of the decks we played last week and time permitting. We’ll hit a few more of the preview cars as well. If you want to hear about some of the exciting Planeswalkers and the higher CMC cards, but, you know, I want to start with these cheap ones, because these are the ones that are going to be seeing the most often earliest in the game.

And I mean, some of them. That we talked about here. It looked like absolute bangers.

Damon Alexander: [01:12:14] Yeah. Tons to get excited about a lot of new brewing awaits. Stay with us until Sunday.

Daniel Schriever (cavedan): [01:12:19] All right. Take care. That’s a wrap on episode one of Modern Horizons seasons tune in on Sunday for our testing results. With conspiracy theorist Prismari command and Quandrix apprentice support for this podcast is provided by brewers life view.

If you’d like we’ll be do you can become a supporter at Patreon.com / Faithless Brewing for discord access bonus content and more that’s all for today. Stay safe and we’ll see you next time.