Coming out a month ago to much fanfare, Modern Horizons has proven to be a deep and capable format. At Mythic Championship IV in Barcelona, it will get its biggest test yet: The best players in the world will be drafting it under the lights and scrutiny of Magic's highest level of competition.
With that in mind, let's dive into the best cards, archetypes, and strategies that the pro players will use to maneuver through the tricky Limited rounds. To help us on this exploration, we're picking the brains of Hall of Famer Ben Stark and former Player of the Year Mike Sigrist — both of the MPL — as well as Hall of Famer and all-time great Luis Scott-Vargas.
What's the Best Deck?
When the set first came out, the most obvious deck was the blue-green snow deck. There is a snow-covered basic land in every booster pack, and a lot of cards that care about snow-covered permanents.
Both Luis and Ben had this deck in their top tier, but Ben did offer this caveat: "I think Blue-Green snow is the best deck... but I also think this is most people's opinion and a lot of people will be trying to draft it." He has a point. Not only was it the most obvious to start with, it has proven powerful and even flexible.
Luis made a point to mention that it's rarely just green and blue cards in these decks; with the excellent mana fixing available from cards like Springbloom Druid, Arcum's Astrolabe, and Krosan Tusker, the snow deck often ends up being three or four colors.
This opens up a potent combination of synergistic snow cards combined with the option to play the most powerful cards you open, almost regardless of color. So what's a key indicator if you're watching at home? Look for when the snow-covered lands start disappearing from the pack.
Imagine you are at that draft table, your first three picks are good blue and green snow cards. The fourth pick arrives and you notice that there isn't a snow-covered basic land in the pack. This is a terrifying harbinger that you may be getting cut out of your archetype.
For Mike Sigrist's take on the best archetypes, snow didn't make his list. In fact, he said he would prefer to avoid it if possible. When it all comes together and you are the only one in the archetype, he describes it as "incredibly powerful. But when the big payoffs aren't there, I find my deck much worse than lower quality decks of other archetypes."
The first deck Mike did list was blue black ninjas. This was the only deck that all of the pros I asked put in their top category, and seems to be as close as we'll get to a consensus best deck in the format. The luxury of the ninjas deck is that it doesn't particularly care what's going on with the other side of the battlefield. A great curve out from a ninjas deck will win a majority of games regardless of what the opponent is doing, and this is a huge boon for a deck that can also win without that dream scenario.
A key sweet spot for what ends up being the best deck to draft in a format is that it can't be obvious and super powerful (like snow) because too many people will fight for it. But it also has to be powerful enough that when it comes together it's in the uppermost tier of all archetypes. Additionally, a huge benefit is when it has cards that it needs that no other deck wants. Ninjas has several low-priority or just outright unplayable cards in other decks that it will eagerly snatch up.
Smoke Shroud is just a flat-out good card in the ninjas deck, even though no other deck even sees it in the pack. Changeling Outcast and Faerie Seer are fringe playable in other decks, but are great enablers for getting those ninjutsu activations going early and often.
To leave you with a couple of underdog archetypes, Mike and Luis both mentioned black-red goblins, though Luis noted he only really liked it, "when you get a lot of uncommons."
Mike said that he's had good success with the red green lands deck as well. It's noteworthy that he's the only one who mentioned that archetype; it may be just in that sweet spot where it's powerful enough to be good when you get it, but not quite good enough for people to fight for it.
Best Commons
When our gurus were asked what the best commons are in each color, for the most part they were on the same page.
Hard removal is good, even if Settle Beyond Reality is expensive at five mana. With so many enters-the-battlefield triggers on creatures in this set, it's pretty easy to engineer a situation where you get some good value by "blinking" one of your own creatures, too.
For blue, the world has finally woken up to my way of seeing things and crowned the best creature ever printed in Magic as the best common! Personal bias aside, Man-o'-War really is a total all-star in this format, slotting effortlessly into any deck that can cast it and enabling a bunch of different synergies.
How many one-word card names—and only three letters to boot—are there left? You know they weren't going to waste it on a junky card. Mob isn't flashy, but it gets the job done and is splashable. 'Nuff said.
While not quite as elegantly named as Mob, everything I said about it applies to Magmatic Sinkhole too. This is just efficient removal and most decks need efficient removal.
This is the only slot where they differed, with Ben putting Rime Tender above Springbloom Druid. One of Ben's favorite archetypes that he listed alongside blue green snow is "Green ramp." Rime Tender gives you that, plus some cool squirrel-making synergies if you get a Squirrel Nest on a snow-covered land.
Still, I was surprised to see that as I have Springbloom Druid ranked not only higher than Rime Tender, but also all of the other commons in the set. It's also the best example of a key concept that we'll see play out at the draft tables: Pivot cards.
Pivot Cards
The two main criteria that you'll see when people rank the best commons in a set are raw power and how much they enable the archetypes they go into. Occasionally, we'll find cards that enable multiple archetypes while also retain a good power level. These are called pivot cards.
I dubbed these with that label because you can take them early but they allow you to pivot into many archetypes, reading the table as to what is open. So how do those "best commons" look through the lens of pivot cards?
The number one pivot card for this set is Springbloom Druid. It can go in the snow deck as a way to dig up two snow-covered basic lands, and the red green lands deck as a way to get a land into the graveyard and ramp you towards your big finishers like Murasa Behemoth. If you are into the whole green black sacrifice thing, it is a relevant effect that leaves behind a 1/1 body.
Everyone's favorite jellyfish is powerful on its own just for the tempo you gain by adding to your board while taking away from theirs. Decks like the blue green snow deck can take advantage of this. But in the blue white blink deck, Man-o'-War is a great companion for Soulherder. Or try it out in the blue black ninjas deck. It's awesome at getting blockers out of the way, but also if it ever goes unblocked, you get to put it back in your hand with ninjutsu and then re-play it again later!
Like the others, Irregular Cohort enjoys a very solid power baseline, but also goes well in multiple decks. In the blue white blink deck, it's perfect as it generates a body every time enters the battlefield. In the red white slivers deck it counts as not one but two separate slivers, and this is true for the black white creature-types-matters/changelings deck as well.
As Ben told me, "I think all the archetypes are good and I'll definitely be 'Drafting the Hard Way' in this Mythic Championship. Just trying to find what's open/under drafted at my table."
Dreaming of Pack 1, Pick 1
As the cherry on top of this dive into Modern Horizons, I asked our panel a hypothetical where they could choose any card in the set to open in pack one pick one.
For Mike, the first card that came to mind is Yawgmoth, Thran Physician.
You can see why. The card is a stone bomb and also reflects some of Mike's aesthetic when it comes to Limited; he tends to lean on cards that are individually powerful rather than fragile with their abilities.
Speaking of individually powerful, Ben went for another bomb, this time of the one mana variety:
It starts out as a 2/1 for one mana. A few turns later your good instant speed removal spells can't kill it. A few turns after that it's a mini Progenitus. Good luck with that, and good choice Ben.
For Luis, I told him he could have any card in the set, and he said, "Springbloom Dryad".
When I told him that wasn't a card in the set, he said he still wanted it and that the spelling didn't matter, and that he thought it was "the best common in the set in my opinion."
As it turns out, we agree there. Springbloom Druid is the best common in the set for the reasons already discussed. I may have aimed a little higher than Luis when given the choice of any card in the set, but maybe drafting the hard way means something else to him than it does to Ben?
Join us for the coverage of Mythic Championship IV for what may be the most exciting Limited rounds ever at this level of competition. We'll be on twitch.tv/magic starting July 26th from Barcelona, Spain!