The spoilers for one of the most anticipated sets for Modern has wrapped, and there are a LOT of goodies. 

Let’s break down the implications of these new cards and reprints and take a peek into what the future of Modern can hold!


Kuang Wu

by Kuang Wu 14/06/2021

Murktide Regent

Murktide Regent is very reminiscent of Tombstalker from Future Sight, a big Flying threat that can cost as little as little as two coloured mana. Where Tombstalker is a 5/5 that is Dismemberable, this Dragon can become as large as an 8/8 when it enters the battlefield. With more room to grow as more Instants and Sorceries leave your graveyard, either through casting more Murktide Regents or your opponent exiling cards from your graveyard. 

Scavenging Ooze exiling your spells with a Murktide Regent in play just got a whole lot more awkward.

This is the perfect complement to a tempo deck like Delver, as an big evasive threat that avoids Fatal Push, Skyclave Apparition and in most cases Lightning Bolt. The Delve cost freeing up mana so it can be cast in the mid game with counterspell backup.

 

Titania, Protector of Argoth

Land decks seem to be receiving a lot of great additions recently and Titania, Protector of Argoth is certainly one of them!

Titania synergises with Omnath, Locus of Mana by bringing back Fetchlands and triggering both of their abilities.

Here’s a scenario:

You play Omanth on turn five, followed by a Misty Rainforest, fetching a Forest and generating 4 mana.

Using the mana, you cast Titania and bring back the Misty Rainforest and trigger Omnath’s third Landfall ability, and deal four damage to each opponent and Planeswalker that you don’t control. 

With the Misty Rainforest you now have access to a 5/3 Token at instant speed- not bad work for a turn.

In the Bring to Light Scapeshift decks, casting Titania will yield a similarly deadly result if played alongside Dryad of the Ilysian Grove and a Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle.

Titania can be cast on turn four as Dryad will allow you to play an additional land, bringing back one of the 11 Fetchlands that will presumably be in your graveyard and triggering Valakut (as all lands are Mountains, thanks to Dryad), dealing three damage to anything, sacrificing the Fetchland to make a 5/3 token and shoot another target for three damage. 

Pretty hard to beat that on turn 4!

Here are the best lands for Titania:

Fetchlands

Horizon lands (Horizon Canopy, Nurturing Peatland)

Blast Zone

Field of Ruin / Ghost Quarter

Urza’s Saga

Given that Titania is usually played in a land themed deck which will face land destruction after sideboarding, it is likely to bring back lands like Valakut too!

 

Dauthi Voidwalker 

Dauthi Voidwalker has a lot of hype surrounding it, with those who play decks like Jund [HYPERLINK] believing it could be the next big thing in the archetype.

I can certainly see it, the upside for this card against the midrange deck’s worst matchups is enough to give you a fair shot at winning.

Costed at Black/Black is cheap enough to be snuck in early, before your opponent has too much assembled. 

Untapping on turn three, casting a Thoughtseize and hitting an Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger will just end games on the spot. Yes that’s right, Dauthi Voidwalker casts the exiled card for FREE!

Ulamog is most likely the best cast scenario, but it’s not unreasonable to snag a powerful Planeswalker with its ability. Jund plays on average six one-drop discard spells (Thoughtseize, Inquisition of Kozilek), Kroxa, Titan of Death’s Hunger, Kolaghan’s Command, and Liliana of the Veil. Not to mention cards like Collective Brutality and occasionally Duress in the sideboard.

With that many ways to discard cards, Dauthi Voidwalker fits the deck like a glove.

The inclusion of Dauthi Voidwalker will change the way you play some of Jund’s matchups, opting to cast discard after you have landed the two-drop in order to eke out more value from your spells. Thoughtseize becomes a lot more valuable, being able to take any nonland card on turn three and cast it immediately (I’ve always wanted to cast a Jace, the Mind Sculptor in Jund).

Here is an early list for Jund I am eager to try when the set is released:

 

Main Deck: 60

Creatures: 14

4 Dauthi Voidwalker

2 Kroxa, Titan of Death’s Hunger

4 Tarmogoyf

4 Bloodbraid Elf

Spells: 23

2 Fatal Push

3 Inquisition of Kozilek

4 Lightning Bolt

3 Thoughtseize

1 Abrupt Decay

3 Wrenn and Six

2 Kolaghan’s Command

4 Liliana of the Veil

1 Maelstrom Pulse

Lands: 23

4 Blackcleave Cliffs

2 Blood Crypt

4 Bloodstained Mire

1 Forest

1 Mountain

1 Nurturing Peatland

1 Overgrown Tomb

1 Raging Ravine

1 Stomping Ground

1 Swamp

1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

4 Verdant Catacombs

1 Wooded Foothills 

Sideboard: 15

1 Engineered Explosives

2 Nihil Spellbomb

2 Veil of Summer

1 Ancient Grudge

2 Break the Ice

2 Collective Brutality

2 Ashiok, Dream Render

2 Fulminator Mage

1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet

 

Break the Ice is also getting some love in the sideboard, giving the deck the opportunity to blow up a Tron piece on turn three is a blessing and helps in an unpleasant matchups.

Endurance is a card that couldn’t be fit into the sideboard as the deck is currently constructed, without enough Green cards to be able to pitch to cast it for it’s Evoke cost and ‘gotcha’ opponents like Surgical Extraction does. 

If hard cast, a 3/4 with Flash and Reach can already ambush evasive creatures. But being strong against graveyard decks like Dredge and the new Madness/Vengevine deck is a massive plus.

Not to mention it also messes with Thassa’s Oracle win conditions and Mill decks, shuffling the entire graveyard of any player to the bottom of their deck, voiding their win the game trigger and avoiding decking out!

I’m a big fan of this card, and am looking to include it in Jund when it includes more Green cards or other heavy Green based Modern decks, like Heliod Company.

The other version of Jund I was tossing up between was one that included Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer and Mishra’s Bauble replacing Liliana of the Veil and Bloodbraid Elf so that Lurrus of the Dream-Den could be the Companion.

Ragavan is certainly a time-will-tell card, on paper it generates so much card advantage that the upside will be worth it. But in a format where Lava Dart is rampant, it certainly seems unlikely to connect and generate the boatload of Treasure (and card advantage), that is depicted in the art.

 

General Ferrous Rokiric

General Ferrous Rokiric benefits most from being played alongside multicoloured spells, generating a 4/4 Token each time. Kind of like a super Young Pyromancer.

It’ll slot right into Niv to Light, a deck that plays a lot of multicolour spells in order to maximise off a Niv Mizzet Reborn trigger.

Other decks this can slot into are the new Domain archetype, playing Shardless Agent, Territorial Kavu, and Scion of Draco from Modern Horizons 2. Alongside Modern All Stars like Bloodbraid Elf, Mantis Rider, and Lightning Helix that can help generate Golem Tokens. 

Humans can also be a home for General Ferrous Rokiric, relieving fellow General, Kudro from the three-drop slot. Unsettled Mariner, Meddling Mage, Mantis Rider, and Reflector Mage help trigger its ability in the main deck, with more multicolour threats like Gaddock Teeg, Deputy of Detention, and Sin Collector in the board.

Hexproof from monocoloured shouldn’t be overlooked here, it avoids Modern’s best removal; Lightning Bolt, Path to Exile, Fatal Push, and Skyclave Apparition. Your opponent will try to remove your Golem generating General to no avail with those spells in hand.

 

Damn

Damn, this is an interesting removal spell. 

A Terminate for Black/Black with Overload for the price of Wrath of God. This seems like a natural fit into Esper Control, a board wipe that works around Gaddock Teeg’s restrictions and can pick off creatures pressuring your life total or Planeswalkers early.

 

Madness

Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar, Blazing Roowalla, and The Underworld Cookbook have come together to revive an archetype that has been forgotten since the banning of Faithless Looting: Hollow One.

This trio has brought back the feeling of discarding to generate large amounts of power in Creatures. The deck isn’t quite the same as it used to be:

d00mwake’s Asmoran Hollow One Deck

Main Deck: 60 

Creatures: 32

4 Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar

4 Blazing Rootwalla

4 Insolent Neonate

4 Bartered Cow

4 Vengevine

4 Street Wraith

4 Hollow One

4 Feasting Troll King

Spells: 11

3 Burning Inquiry

4 The Underworld Cookbook

4 Goblin Lore

Lands: 17

4 Bloodstained Mire

3 Copperline Gorge

4 Mountain

2 Stomping Ground

4 Wooded Foothills

Sideboard: 15

1 Ancient Grudge

2 Ingot Chewer

1 Lightning Axe

4 Blood Moon

4 Leyline of the Void

1 Gnaw to the Bone

2 Foundation Breaker

 

If someone told me Bartered Cow and Feasting Troll King would be featured in a top competitive deck following Modern Horizons 2, I wouldn’t have believed you.

But after seeing this decklist I can see how they can be key roleplayers to this deck.

Let’s run through how the deck plays for those that are unfamiliar.

With Burning Inquiry and Goblin Lore you’re drawing three and four cards respectively and discard three cards at random. With so many cards that benefit from being discarded or in the graveyard, the ideal scenario is one where Vengevine and Blazing Rootwalla are discarded, casting Rootwalla for free and casting a Hollow One for free from your hand. This will trigger Vengevine from the graveyard and all of a sudden you have 9 power in play.

The scary part, this can happen on turn one, off a Burning Inquiry.

After losing Faithless Looting, this deck lost too much consistency to operate efficiently.

Enter the Food component; The Underworld Cookbook discards cards and generates Food Tokens, this can help reduce the cost of Hollow One, cast Rootwalla for free and Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar for one mana. By adding Bartered Cow to the deck, discarding it will also generate a Food Token. Let’s say you draw a Feasting Troll King the next turn and discard it to your Cookbook, well now you have three Food Tokens and the Troll King in the graveyard, which means you can bring it back by sacrificing your three Food Tokens and receiving a 7/6 Vigilance Trampler in return.

This is certainly a deck to look out for in the early weeks after the release of Modern Horizons 2.

 

The Wrap

That’s a wrap for Modern Horizon 2 spoilers, a set sure to provide ammunition to a number of Modern decks. With plenty more decks to be brewed thanks to the new cards and reprints this set offers.

With the first ever prerelease for Modern Horizons 2 this weekend, I’m looking forward to playing an awesome limited forward before assembling some Modern decks!

 

Kuang Wu has played Magic since the original Zendikar set. Qualifying for both Player’s Tours in 2020 and finishing 10th at Grand Prix Brisbane in 2017. He primarily plays Modern at Good Games Central and Town Hall. You can follow him @kuangfupanda on Twitter.