Pack 1
1. Man-o’-War
There’s probably no better place to start off than a discussion of Man-o’-War.
Man-o’-War is the best common in Modern Horizons. If it were an uncommon, it would be in the Top 5 uncommons in the set. Modern Horizons can be kinda fast and is driven by interlocking pieces on the battlefield, which is Man-o’-War’s best spot. Not only that, but there are numerous good ways to recycle it, like ninjutsu or String of Disappearances, and it can return your own creatures to clear Aura-based removal.
Past that, Settle Beyond Reality looks similar to clunky overrated removal spells like Blessed Light, but the self-Flicker part is easy to make worth an extra card with creatures like Irregular Cohort or Man-o’-War. Bogardan Dragonheart is a card I massively underrated early, but the 4/4 flier is hard to block. The best kind of direct damage is repeated direct damage, and Bogardan Dragonheart lets you convert your less relevant creatures into that, even when you aren’t Goatnap comboing. In the end I prefer locking in my removal to my good but not amazing finisher, so Settle comes out solidly ahead.
1. Man-o’-War
The rare and uncommon cards in this pack aren’t particularly exciting, which leads us to the commons. Not only is Man-o’-War the best blue common, it’s the top common overall in my opinion, making it the pick here. Advancing your own gameplan and trying to snowball your own synergy while trying to throw a wrench into your opponent’s plan seems to be the name of the game in Modern Horizons Draft, and Man-o’-War excels at that. Moreover, this is a synergy set, and Man-o’-War has insane combos in both Azorius and Dimir with the ability to trigger its enters-the-battlefield effect multiple times.
Settle Beyond Reality is a distant second in this pack, as it doesn’t even make my list of Top 3 white commons, much less come close to cracking the top commons in the set. It’s a card I only want one copy of in my maindeck unless I’m really abusing the blink synergy with my own creatures.
Past that, the decision between Bogardan Dragonheart and Goblin Matron is close, but I land on Matron as the higher-ceiling card in Rakdos decks, which is the natural home for both cards. There is support for both sacrifice shenanigans and Goblin tribal in Rakdos, but I believe the decks that end up with the rare and uncommon Goblin payoffs are a notch stronger, even if they don’t come together as often.
1. Man-o’-War
Man-‘o’-War was first printed in Visions over 20 years ago and in Modern Horizons it’s better than ever. This format, which is very similar to War of the Spark, is all about battlefield presence and tempo. Being able to add to your side of the battlefield and remove something from your opponent’s, all for the low price of three mana, makes Man-o’-War the consensus best common in the set.
Next in line is Goblin Matron, a card that has consistently impressed me. It is, of course, most at home in a Rakdos deck where you will have an abundance of Goblins and some sacrifice outlets to boot to make use of the 1/1 body left behind after the tutor effect has resolved. The inclusion of changelings adds even more fodder for the Matron to find. Beyond that, Settle Beyond Reality is a good removal spell to have access to in any white deck and has synergy in the Azorius Exile archetype. But at five mana, I’m not interested in prioritizing more than one copy.
Pack 2
I have never been fortunate enough to play Fallen Shinobi. I’ve been unfortunate enough to lose to it several times. It feels miserable. There’s very little you can do to predict or avoid the first ninjutsu hit, and the two free cards is usually enough to break open the game. Even if you survive that, there are tons of ways to force it through again. It’s definitively a bomb rare.
Lands that cycle cheaply are very powerful on their own for balancing mana flood, and they get even better when “lands in graveyard” and “drawing multiple cards a turn” are things a set pays you off for. The color pairs for those are Gruul and Izzet, respectively, and Lonely Sandbar fits nicely into one of those two pairs for the power boost. Gluttonous Slug is unassuming on the surface, but it’s in a lot of good spots for the format. If it evolves once, a 1/4 is hard to overwhelm in combat, menace enables ninjutsu, evolve works well with ninjutsu forcing more creatures to enter the battlefield, and this is all for two mana.
So while we are clearly taking the actual Ninja here, the Slug deserves a shout-out. It’s basically Master Splinter.
Anyone else have flashbacks from playing against Ninjas? Seriously, though, Dimir Ninjas is a nightmare to play against, and Fallen Shinobi is a busted rare in one of the best archetypes in the set. I haven’t had the pleasure of casting this card yet, but I can confirm from the other side of the battlefield that it is a windmill-slam first pick. Dimir decks force you to constantly block, and once your opponent gets in the first ninjutsu hit with almost any Ninja, things start to rapidly snowball out of control.
Lonely Sandbar is a powerful option after Shinobi as the runner-up in the pack. It has synergy with a lot of cards in the set that care about drawing two cards per turn or having a land in the graveyard. I’m picking this just below the archetype-defining cards in Pack 1, and once I have synergy with the card draw or lands in graveyards in later packs, I’m taking it over most things. Filling out your deck with powerful lands allows you to play more of your draft picks and ultimately end up with a more consistent deck than your opponent. People seem to be slightly undervaluing these in Magic Online drafts, so I would be careful about seeing them as a signal for a color being open.
Enduring Sliver is a close third for me here over Venomous Changeling. I have both of those cards as the third-best commons in their respective colors, but the mana cost gives the nod to Enduring Sliver for me here. I value premium twos and getting onto the battlefield early highly, and Enduring Sliver fits the bill. It’s good on its own and has synergies across all of the color pairs.
If you have not yet had the pleasure of sneaking in Fallen Shinobi and snagging two of your opponent’s spells for free, I would highly recommend it. The game rarely goes on for much longer after a ninjutsu’d Shinobi connects. There are few windmill-slam, first-pickable rares in this set, but I would include Shinobi on that short list. It asks so little of your deck and impacts the game in such a huge way. Fun Fact: you can cast Crashing Footfalls immediately off a Shinobi trigger. No need to wait four turns for your Rhinos!
Cycling lands have been tough for me to pinpoint in this set. I came in very high on them and have had to readjust as the format matures. Modern Horizons Draft is so fueled by synergy and finding the open lane that intrinsically powerful and flexible cards like Lonely Sandbar may be less important than some of the linchpin gold uncommons, for example. I believe the Temur land cyclers are still quite strong, as Gruul cares about lands in the graveyard and Izzet cares about multiple cards being drawn per turn. As far as the commons in the pack, Enduring Sliver is just rock-solid in this format: good early, relevant late, and synergizes with a dominant tribe in the set.
Pack 3
Irregular Cohort versus Hollowhead Sliver is really close. Hollowhead Sliver is more than just a Boros Sliver card, offering a second draw each turn for the Izzet deck and a way for Gruul to fill up its graveyard with lands on top of just being good-rate card filtering. But Irregular Cohort offers up too many low-effort, solid-reward synergies without being in a specific deck. It levels up your one-shot Flicker on Settle Beyond Reality, it levels up any random tribal effects like Enduring Sliver, it levels up the mass pump on Rhox Veteran, and it recovers a game you started behind. It just does everything with every card.
On the topic of bridging synergies, Springbloom Druid also fits a couple of archetypes. It finds Snow-Covered Islands in Simic and is a way to bin a land in Gruul. Secretly it also gives Golgari more Swamps for Defile and Crypt Rats. But there isn’t enough ramp or payoffs to make going up one mana amazing, so I have to bias towards the cards with more card quality or battlefield impact.
Hollowhead Sliver is now a close but clear first pick for me out of this pick, and that would not have been the case when I first started this format. After playing with it, I believe it is a premium card in Izzet for the ability to trigger two cards drawn in a turn without any mana investment, and it’s good in other red color pairs. You’re happy with it in Boros Slivers as a body and flood protection, and I’ve found my Rakdos decks often have a Sliver/changeling subtheme in them. Raw power plus synergy in multiple decks makes this a high pick. Don’t sleep on this card.
As for Irregular Cohort, despite its name, I will regularly be picking this out of packs because I have it as the second-best white common in the set behind Rhox Veteran. I initially drastically underrated the power of changelings and the ability they provide to create small or medium pockets of synergy in your deck. Yes, they are great in Orzhov specifically, but I have found any creature in the Mardu colors with changeling to be a high pick and the glue that holds my deck together in those color pairs. Additionally, this is a fine target for blink in your Azorius deck. Cards that are good on their own and have synergy in many color pairs in this set are high picks because they provide flexibility and allow you to take your time finding the correct lane in your draft.
Springbloom Druid was another card that I initially passed over, and it has risen rapidly in my top common rankings. This is the card that allows green decks to both ramp and double fix, as well as gets a land in your graveyard, which are all things that green decks care about if you aren’t the beatdown deck with Mother Bear, Savage Swipe, and Trumpeting Herd. This can grab snow lands, which is also serious game. There are five-color snow decks running around crushing everyone thanks to this and Arcum’s Astrolabe, which is another sleeper among top commons in the set. Krosan Tusker wishes it were half as good as the Harrow Druid!
2. Fiery Islet
I find Hollowhead Sliver criminally underrated at the moment. It’s incredibly powerful in the Izzet deck that cares about drawing multiple cards per turn and it’s excellent in either the Boros Slivers deck or just in conjunction with what red has to offer in Bladeback Sliver and Cleaving Sliver. I like cards that have good synergy but also are good one their own and I think Hollowhead fits that bill.
I feel similarly to the Horizon lands as I do to the cycling lands, except that I think the cycling lands are much better. The damage certainly adds up from a card like Fiery Islet, but that fact that it’s a land that you can cash in for a card at some point is big game. It fixes your mana if you happen to splash and has synergy in Gruul and Izzet, just as Lonely Sandbar does. Past that, I’m looking at Irregular Cohort. I’m not thrilled to take this early, but changelings are super-flexible cards that can lead down many different paths and this card gets you two for the price of one.