Modern Horizons 3 is, well, on the horizon. Right about now, I would be chillaxing on the metaphorical Magic beach, pina colada in my hand, enjoying the brief momentary breather in between sets. But oh no! What’s this? Trouble in paradise! Leaks aplenty! In a wild turn of events, the folks at Wizards of the Coast (WotC) combatted these potato-quality leaks and instead opted to share with us the high-quality cards in article form. Color me surprised and call me Shirley, because I did not expect that to happen. I avoid leaks at all costs, however, when the article was posted, my eyes hungrily devoured these tasty morsels and wow, am I excited! As of writing this article, there are currently 40 total Modern Horizons 3 and Modern Horizons 3 Commander cards previewed by the folks at WotC, so I thought I would select five of my favorites and gush about them.
Planar Nexus
This one might seem boring to some, but let me tell you, it is anything but. A long time ago, I released an article detailing why I equate purchasing lands to getting socks at Christmas. Lands can be boring. They don’t have insane mana values and more often than not, their abilities are impactful, but not thrilling. They are a necessity, much like socks. But every now and then, you spy a wacky pair of socks that just boat your float if you catch my drift. Planar Nexus is one of those pairs of wacky socks.
At first glance, Planar Nexus is essentially a Painted Bluffs or a Shimmering Grotto or an Unknown Shores. It’s a boring filter land. So what? What makes this land so special is that it is every nonbasic land type. This means that it is a Cave, Desert, Gate, Lair, Locus, Mine, Power-Plant, Sphere, Tower, and Urza’s. I looooooove this. It is so niche and yet so broad. It tickles me. This land counts as a Gate for stuff like Maze’s End, a Locus for Cloudpost and Glimmerpost, and a Desert for Yuma! Don’t even get me started on the Urza’s stuff! This land is so versatile and can fit into any weird, niche deck your heart desires. I am so excited for it.
Kudo, King Among Bears
Kudo is the Johnathan Owens to Ayula’s Simone Biles. I never knew Ayula had a husband just like I had no clue Simone Biles was married. Everyone knows who Ayula is. No one knows who Kudo is. But now we do! He is Ayula’s husband. Mr. Ayula!
Weird, niche internet jokes aside, I am tickled to see an extension on the most popular Bear commander. Ayula buffs bears and makes them fight. Kudo turns every creature into a Bear with base power and toughness 2/2. Like, hold the phone – other creatures… That means your opponent’s creatures too! This card can devastate your opponent’s beefy Eldrazi build or can buff up your small 1/1 tokens if that is the direction you decide to take your commander brew into (I mean, let’s be honest all we want are bears). HE IS LITERALLY A HATE BEAR!!! My only major disappointment is that Kudo is two colors, meaning that you can’t run him in your Ayula deck. I mean, yeah, sure you could put Ayula in his 99, but come on. She is the Simone Biles of bears.
Winter Moon
You’ve heard of Winter Orb, now get ready for… Winter Moon? Why not call it Winter Square or Summer Cone? But yeah, sure, Winter Moon. When looking at the current previews from the set, we can see a ton of references to some of Magic’s most iconic cards. I didn’t expect to see a callback or reference to Winter Orb in this set, but I really like what I see. Winter Orb is often heralded as one of Magic’s saltiest cards. It’s a hate card, as it attacks the manabase. You only get to untap one land during your untap step. One land, so choose wisely and it impacts everyone.
Winter Moon, on the other hand, flips this hateful ability around in a cheeky sort of way. Winter Moon instead makes it so that players can’t untap more than one nonbasic land during their untap step. This is SIGNIFICANTLY less hateful and yet also not? My mind wanders towards the Tron player. How will they Tron their hearts out if they can’t untap Tron? Then I think about the average Commander player who shuns basics in favor of expensive shocks, triomes, and duals and other iconic nonbasic lands. So many times have I played in a pod to find people essentially dead to a commander equipped with a Trailblazer’s Boots. Commander players live, laugh, love their nonbasic lands, and I can see this being a kick in the teeth to those who shun the basic land. I love this in Modern and I love this in Commander. Having such a card find a harmony between two incredibly different formats makes my heart sing. I love card designs like this so so so much. If it were to hit the battlefield in one of my pods, even if it decimated my momentum, I would cheer in excitement.
Urza’s Cave
On my life, Urza was at a branding seminar day one and was definitely committed to the bit. When I think of Urza, I think of brand recognition. That man puts his name and face on everything, and I do mean everything. Battlethopters, Armor, Baubles, Blueprints, Chalices, Glasses, Sunglasses. The dude has everything. He is worse than Jojo Siwa. I mean, yeah, we knew he was into real estate at one point with the Mines, Power Plants, and Towers. Now he’s into caving, I guess.
Modern players rejoice. Tron has been resurrected with the coming of Urza’s Cave. Yeah, the man has a cave now. It’s like yeah, we get it, you like land. I love this card for both commander and modern players. Commander players essentially get to have a more expensive Crop Rotation in their mana base. It can also count towards Urza’s Workshop if you were feeling a little zany. What excites me the most is that Modern players can use it to dig for their missing piece to assemble Tron. Do I play Modern? Not a lick, but I won’t lie that seeing the Tron players scream, cry, gag, and throw up over a colorless land on the internet has me feeling happy for them. Go off, little Tron players. Go off.
Herigast, Erupting Nullkite
As a Commander player, I get absolutely exhausted by colorless legendary creatures that have WUBRG in their textbox, thus making them 5C commanders. Golos, Ramos, Codie, Morophon, and Urtet come to mind. Don’t get me wrong. Those are all fun commanders, but it feels like a shortcut around the rules for some reason. If it’s a 5C commander, it should have those colors in the mana value. Herigast, Erupting Nullkite is a departure from this formula that I absolutely adore. It gets to join the ranks of other such commanders like Bosh, Iron Golem, Memnarch, and Zabaz, the Glimmerwasp (commanders who are all super popular and dominate pods this is sarcasm y’all).
Herigast is an Eldrazi Dragon. That should be all that I have to say to get you interested in this commander. This boy is downright diabolical, as he is the first mono-colored Eldrazi to grace your command zone. He has emerge and also gives each creature spell you cast emerge as well. This is a huge ability to have in the command zone, because the emerge costs are reduced by the sacrificed creature’s mana value. This means that with a little bit of patience, you can essentially pop out an Eldrazi titan as early as Turn 3 if you play your cards right. You’re essentially playing leapfrog with your deck. It is actually insane. I’ve already begun taking a peak at some of the brews on Moxfield, and they look super fun. The card advantage tacked onto Herigast is basically gravy after the insane emerge ability. I know for a fact that this is one commander that I am not looking forward to seeing at my FNM (because I know it will kick my teeth in so fast). I wonder if we are going to see other mono-colored legendary Eldrazi pop up in the set as well.
A Modern Marvel
When I saw that Modern Horizons 3 was getting Commander precons, I felt a strong sense of hesitancy. Modern Horizons is for modern, not for Commander, and as a Commander player, I felt weird having this treat thrown at us. How would it be? How would the cards in the main set balance out in both formats without throwing one completely out of whack? I wasn’t expecting it whatsoever. And yet, out of the 40 cards we have seen so far, I am fully thrilled and excited. I love seeing these designs. They fill me with an excitement and energy for Magic that I first felt when I started playing in 2015. There is such a delicate balance and care in the card designs that really shine through in this set. While the circumstances that these cards were presented to us were less than stellar (I hate leaks with a fiery passion), what we have seen so far has me chomping at the bit for preview season. I predict this will be a smashing success and I can’t wait. Happy Modern Horizoning, deckbuilders!
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