It seems like every day Modern Horizons gives new gifts to us all; the spoilers keep coming, fast and furious, and seemingly every day someone lets out a cry of joy.

I've been one of those people.

For every Shenanigans which makes the Lantern player in me wail, there is the Tectonic Reformation which makes the brewer in me dream and wonder.

I have a feeling that Modern Horizons is going to result in a huge shakeup of the format, so much so that it will hardly be identifiable in a month. I suspect there will be so much newness going on in the set we'll be unraveling its effects on Modern for many months, and it might not settle for a while longer.

If you ask me, that's good.

One of the most fabulous times to be playing Magic is when there is a depth of untapped possibility. When I think about my favorite times playing Magic, it's when I've been surprised. I still recall Maga, Traitor to Mortals being dropped on me by Justin Cohen at the Wisconsin State Championship in Round 7 back in 2005. I still think fondly back on David Williams unleashed Recurring Nightmare/Survival of the Fittest on the World at the US Open in 1997, and then Caleb Durward bringing Survival of the Fittest back by unveiling it in Legacy with Vengevine in 2010. I've had a few of my own such moments.

These moments are fantastic.

Even the most ubiquitous decks often started out as a gleam in someone's eye. Caw-Blade. Hardened Scales Affinity. Dredge. All the various Storm decks. There was a moment before these decks hit the public eye that they were unknowns. I have a feeling we are likely to see a huge shake-up in Modern. Some decks will continue on from today and many will die. It isn't that the decks that are gone "won't be good anymore". More, it is that there will be a new order in predator and prey, and some decks just won't be able to succeed for a while.

As I looked at Modern Horizons, there were two cards that inspired me to think about the rebirth of a few decks from my past. One card was new, one card was quite old.

In with the New: Unsettled Mariner

As a Changeling, it seems like everyone is looking at this card for their various Tribal decks. "It's a bird! It's a plane!" You can expect Humans to think about packing it in their deck. Slivers might give it a go as well. I know I'll likely try it in Allies.

But, I'm also sure that I'll try it in Dragons.

Back in 2015, while I was on Team UltraPro, I was working on a deck called Esper Dragons in Modern. While Zac Elsik was working on Lantern and teammates Pat Chapin and Corey Burkhart were working on Grixis Control for Grand Prix Charlotte, I was working on this:

There is a lot going on in this list, and a lot I'd change today. The big issue was simple: I was trying to play Silumgar's Scorn.

Now, don't get me wrong: Silumgar's Scorn is a hell of a card. However, a huge part of the reason this deck struggled, and a huge part of the reason this deck worked all came from the same source: Nameless Inversion. I needed Nameless Inversion because I needed more Dragons to make Silumgar's Scorn work. Frankly, four Dragonlord Ojutai wasn't enough, and at the time, Nameless Inversion - sneakily a "Dragon" - was one way to make Silumgar's Scorn work.

Now, there are plenty of other decisions we can criticize about the deck, but overall it was pretty good, if flawed.

These days, stretching the mana to accommodate a full Esper deck feels unnecessary, especially for so light a splash. Sure, the discard package is nice, but plenty of decks have been succeeding as of late as pure two-color Control. Let's use those as a guidepost, and update the deck with the add-on of the new Dragon.

One of the most amazing things about being able to use Unsettled Mariner is the card is an absolutely solid contender for Modern without doing much to help it out. This means, where before you were running four Dragonlord Ojutai because you had to, now you can actually not run four copies of a five-casting cost card! Considering where this deck was before, this is actually quite a huge upgrade.

Another thing that's great about running what is essentially a creature-heavy build of Control is the creatures give you a little bit of a means to threaten the many planeswalkers of opposing Control decks. This is especially the case given they are either hard to touch creatures (Dragonlord Ojutai and Unsettled Mariner) or they can flash into play (Snapcaster Mage and Vendilion Clique).

For Dragonlord Ojutai, pushing the power of it as your card draw engine just takes a bit of nudging. While I couldn't find room for Blessed Alliance anywhere in my 75, Minamo, School at Water's Edge can make it hard to take down the Dragon (while fellow "Dragons", the Unsettled Mariner, can help out in protecting the big Dragon), and Cavern of Souls can ensure that it comes down. Add in a Tolaria West and you're ready to go!

Much of the rest of the deck takes on a look that will no-doubt be familiar to Modern aficionados. Silumgar's Scorn takes the place of a lot of the other countermagic, and it is an utter slam-dunk. Remember, sometimes the card can even be a counterspell without a Dragon, so don't hesitate to run it out as a Censor of sorts. These extra hard counters make it safer to cut one of the Cryptic Command, a card which is excellent, but also, ironically, one of the worst cards in the deck.

Perhaps the one major departure is running Settle the Wreckage over various other alternatives. Settle the Wreckage won't kill our own Dragonlord Ojutai, and it also has a lot of value against Phoenixes, which does let us lower our guard slightly in the form of less graveyard removal (though we attempt to bolster that with the Tolaria West/Academy Ruins/Tormod's Crypt package).

Here is the current list.

Currently, one of my big question marks is if Narset, Parter of Veils belongs in the deck or not. There are more creatures in this deck (ten!) than usually appear in this kind of archetype, so I feel like I'm pushing it.

The sideboard doesn't really have much in the way of surprises, though it does include a few other choices that could help bolster things like the Phoenix Matchup (Terminus over Supreme Verdict, for example), or otherwise allow for a versatile set of solutions.

The awesome thing about this deck, innocuous though it may be, is I don't think it could even be worth considering if it weren't for Unsettled Mariner. That's pretty awesome that it can make a splash so far from a more traditional home, like a true Tribal deck.

The Golden Oldies

Of course, one of the most impressive responses that the Modern Horizons spoiler got out of me was a gasp. I couldn't believe what I was seeing:

These cards utterly change the flavor of what is possible. Life from the Loam is reborn as an avenue for exploration immediately upon the existence of these cards in the format. My friend Ian DeGraff likes to say, "Unless things have gotten degenerate, Life from the Loam will likely be the best card advantage engine."

Long ago, working with my friends Andrew "Box" Klein and Brian Kowal, we made a Life from the Loam Prison deck based on Andrew's idea of using Spellweaver Helix and Primal Command. The basic idea was that if you get a Spellweaver Helix on Primal Command and a reusable spell like Raven's Crime or Life from the Loam, that is usually all-she-wrote.

Here is my current "future" version, with the fabulous cycling lands of Modern Horizons:

This deck is a wild blast to play. You feel a lot like a normal ol' Rock deck in much of its setup, albeit more controlling than a normal build. When you achieve the Spellweaver Helix lock with Primal Command, if they can't escape right then, like a Lantern of Insight deck, they will almost always be stitched up completely.

There are a couple of small details that need to be figured out. Where the Ojutai deck was based on a solid base, this one is much more speculative. More typically, four Fatal Push would be the norm, but I'm skimping a little. I could see cutting an Inquisition of Kozilek, but I'm a little reticent to cut such a versatile card. As a "first draft" of sorts with the new cards, I think this is pretty close, but I expect I'll be tweaking it in the months to come.

Who knows what amazing possibilities will be here when we can see the full Modern Horizons set! By the time you read this, you likely will have a jump on me, but even from here in the past, I know one thing: this will be a hell of a time to be brewing in Modern!

- Adrian Sullivan

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