One of the huge challenges for any set is making that set relevant to the largest formats. Legacy might be my favorite Eternal format, but I still recognize that Modern is simply the format that is going to have the most support of those formats. The reason for that is fairly simple, of course: the entry point into Legacy, let alone Vintage, is very, very high.
Still, Eternal formats in general provide a bit of a conundrum for Wizards of the Coast. The older the format, the higher the bar needed for a card to be relevant to it. When you’re competing against Tarmogoyf, that is hard enough. Raise the bar to Force of Will and Lion’s Eye Diamond, and you’re truly starting to make things difficult for a new card. Vintage? Well, forget about it!
This is a huge part of why Wizards of the Coast decided to stop supporting Modern Pro Tours. Here, there was just too much in conflict. How do you make a new set relevant to enough that when spectators flock online to watch, say, Pro Tour Eldritch Moon, they actually see Eldritch Moon cards being played? The answers are simple: you either make it a Standard Pro Tour, or you beef up the new cards if it is going to be Modern.
That’s how we got Pro Tour All The Eldrazi.
It turns out if you push hard enough, things get pretty powerful.
So, without the artificial impetus for that push, how does Eldritch Moon relate to Modern, if at all?
Here’s my take, card-by-card, for the ones that matter, even a little bit.
I really love this little card, and I think it manages to do enough that it is relevant for Modern. The most likely home for this card is probably in Lantern Prison. Now, I’ve seen many players, most notably fellow Madisonian Sam Black, play Sea Gate Wreckage in their builds of Lantern, but in my own experience, the card just fell well short. Having access to that much mana and an empty hand either means one of two things: you’re already safe, hiding behind an Ensnaring Bridge, or you’re desperate.
When I’ve been safe, I’m not actually looking for a card like Sea Gate Wreckage. Things feel wrapped up, and any leaning whatsoever seems like it will usually end it. When I’m desperate, the mana associated with the Wreckage is wildly prohibitive.
Geier Reach Sanitarium, on the other hand, feels like the Mikokoro, Center of the Sea that you’d actually want to have. When you’re desperate, it can help you for fairly cheap and get you closer to that card you need (usually Ensnaring Bridge). When you’re not, you can actually use it in odd situations, like versus an empty-handed opponent, to get rid of the top card of your opponent’s library. Most importantly, you’re not going to accidentally go from zero cards under an Ensnaring Bridge to one card, all because you accidentally found a second land.
There are likely other homes for this card as well (I’m fantasizing about finding room for it in Waste Not, a pet card of mine), but Lantern Control is the clear and obvious place to start.
Another colorless land, this card is powerful in its own right, without even going towards the question of melding it into Hanweir, Writhing Township. It’s easy to picture this land making the cut in certain builds of numerous decks, from Eldrazi with Red to Affinity to Primeval Titan decks, and even to Zoo or Burn lists that decide they can afford the colorless land.
Of these, Affinity makes the most sense to me. In that build, I imagine you’d likely only be able to fit a single copy of the land, or perhaps add an extra land to the deck in place of a spell. When you have scary threats that include Cranial Plating and other heavy-power creating things, it is easy to imagine casting an Ornithopter, Plating it up, and activating a Hanweir Battlements for the kill.
I’m not opposed to imagining that Hanweir, the Writhing Township is a possibility. Hanweir Garrison is impressive in its power, even for Modern, and while it is a stretch to picture, it isn’t impossible.
Okay, I somewhat cheated. Now you get another bit of new art, though, yes?
Are you in the market for Turbo Time Warp? If you are, one of the things you’ve probably noticed is that, far too often, aggressive decks just get the better of you. You might be close, but that Delver of Secrets transforms, or that Inkmoth Nexus goes for the kill, and you’re just shy of making it.
If you’ve tried Unsummon effects like Vapor Snag, you know this can help, but in those early turns, the opponent simply re-deploying is deeply problematic. Dismember is a step up, but four life isn’t free. Spontaneous Mutation actually practically gets rid of the creature much of the time.
I can imagine the card being similarly used by other decks looking for an alternative to Vapor Snag and Dismember.
Back before Temur Delver was a thing, before RUG Delver was a thing, back in the time of Canadian Threshold, Nimble Mongoose made quite a splash. Gnarlwood Dryad is quite reminiscent of that card. Now, any time you could make a 4/5 Tarmogoyf by yourself (which is often in a land of Thought Scour and fetchlands), you can have a 3/3 for one mana. That is a revelation.
I don’t know if it is going to be enough to make anything new happen, but that is a significant payoff. Wild Nacatl is an incredible card, and having extra Nacatls is a big deal.
Probably Lupine Prototype is just facing too much competition to end up making it into Affinity. Probably. However, it is right on the borderline of consideration, especially for those decks that really, really push the aggro elements of he deck, attempting to maximize a speedy discharge of the hand. Tarmogoyf is obviously a card that holds back the value of Lupine Prototype, but remember, pumping up a Robot Wolf is pretty trivial.
This is quite speculative, but it is still on my radar because it might exactly be a kind of supplementing removal that some decks need. If you’re not running red, you can’t easily get a solid Lightning Helix like effect, and this is one. Perhaps I’m overly speculating because I have visions of the card helping out my old Modern Esper Dragons list.
Speaking of Lightning Helix, this Lone Rider creature seems pretty great with that card. In addition to just being a card that you might play in R/W, it also feels like another card that might be able to be a part of a supplement to decks like Martyr-Proc or Soul Sisters.
Dauntless Escort occasionally finds itself in decks. Selfless Spirit seems like, for the most part, almost a pure upgrade. It is especially great because the evasive body actually feels like it might end up being relevant more often than not.
Curious Homunculus has quite a bit of competition for the slot. In Modern, you’re looking at Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy, Snapcaster Mage, and even Tarmogoyf. One impressive thing that Curious Homunculus does, however, is that unlike those other cards, Curious Homunculus gives back resources for the mana investment, and quickly. A 3/4 Prowess is actually quite remarkable for only two mana, and while the colorless mana might struggle to be spent, it feels like Curious Homunculus might be good enough to make the cut, albeit pushing the envelope of what that level needed is.
You might not think this is good enough to make the cut. But then I’d ask you to think about a few cards. Kitchen Finks. Voice of Resurgence. Prized Amalgam.
I picture this being worthy of consideration in a deck like U/W Tron, which might be capable of actually making the mana to cast some of the incredibly huge Eldrazi but might not be able to reliably afford to draw into them.
Liliana and Eternal Witness, sitting in a tree! Kay-Eye-Ess-Ess-Eye-Enn-Gee!
Demonic Pact and Harmless Offering might exist as a potential Standard deck, but it is in Modern that I think you’ll see the most potential legs for this combo. There are more discard cards to make Demonic Pact all the more painful, there is better mana so that three colors could be utterly reasonable if not easy, and there is far better searching.
I haven’t made this deck in Modern yet, but I plan on it.
If this just had two modes, deal three to a player and four to a creature, I don’t think it would be worth it. However, because of the one-way-Wheel effect, causing a player to draw a new hand opens up all manner of possibility. Mostly, I think about it as yet another card to try out in a Waste Not deck, but it is also fun to think about with cards like Notion Thief.
There are already great options in Modern that are similar, especially Chord of Calling. However, it is certainly possible that you might just be in the market for yet another card similar to this.
Spell Queller doesn’t care about your Cavern of Souls.
Summary Dismissal doesn’t care about your Cavern of Souls or your Emrakul trigger. It is worth noting that a card like this would probably simply be way too expensive to warrant consideration normally. However, the super-Stifle effect of the card changes things, and I expect to see this as an infrequent sideboard card for a deck needing the ability.
It is truly impressive how many lands we can get into the graveyard. This could be an alternative way to produce a Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle kill or simply an absurd way to get massive mana advantage in any deck running fetchlands and Thought Scour.
Harmonize was taken by Ben Stark and shown to be an incredible sideboard card in moments when there is an obvious grind. The only reason Concentrate really hasn’t seen the same thing happen for it is that the cost to one’s ability to play counterspells is too huge. I could imagine this taking the role that Fact or Fiction once did in Extended, albeit requiring a tiny bit more setup to make work.
I can imagine this in Burn, in the sideboard or even in the main. I can imagine this in a Thought Scour-based deck looking to grind. I can imagine this in any of the million Serum Visions / Though Scour decks, probably as a friend and confidant to Delver of Secrets. I can even imagine it in a few more combo-rific decks.
This card excites me.
Krosan Grip is awesome, but attaching it to a creature is a big deal. If we imagine a card like Eternal Witness on the battlefield, we’re still talking a hefty investment (five mana), but it comes attached to such a huge creature, it is worth keeping in mind.
Emrakul, the Promised End has a problem: it has to fight with Emrakul, the Aeons Torn.
They are fighting for much the same space in a potential deck. That can be a hard sell.
However, it doesn’t feel horribly difficult to imagine something like “Sorcery, Instant, Land, Creature” in a graveyard, which makes for a fairly cheap and scary Mindslaver effect. Once we go further and really push that graveyard, it could even get to a level that is probably unpleasantly cheap for an opponent. At that point, it is pretty easy to imagine reasons to run Emrakul 13, especially within a Thought Scour shell (and maybe you’re sensing a common statement for many of these decks).
Conclusion
Some of these ideas were a little speculative, but many of them are simply natural fits to Modern. Far more cards feel like they are than I would have imagined, in fact.
A large part of the reason for this, I suspect, is the delirium and cast-trigger themes to the set. As a result of those themes, you have a natural fit for a format which might be easily capable of filling a graveyard or might naturally be concerned with what it is going to do in the face of countermagic.
I’ve been spending a lot of time with Eldritch Moon since the set was printed. Most of that time has been in Draft, but I kept having these moments where I’d think, “Oh! I really want to try that in this Modern brew I already have working,” or I’d muse out loud, “Hmm… does this fix the problem I’ve been having with [fill in the deck]?”.
That is pretty exciting to me, especially since it appears that Eldritch Moon has achieved this relevance without wildly pushing a mechanic, like happened during the Eldrazi takeover of that final Modern Pro Tour. I’m heartened to see that that is the case. At the same time, I’m definitely glad that the next Pro Tour is Standard, not Modern.
As I write this, I’m traveling to Sydney for the last Pro Tour of the Season. I’ve got a lot to accomplish if I want to re-up on Gold. Feel free to wish me luck!
One Grand Prix, and then a Pro Tour. C’mon, Eldritch Moon, help me find Gold! Let’s do this!