Assassin’s Creed has already made a stealthy, understated arrival in Modern. It was always going to be drowned out by the aftermath of Pro Tour Modern Horizons 3, and the Nadu, Winged Wisdom debacle confirmed that. With a Nadu ban a question of when, not if, we still don’t know what the ‘new Modern’ will look like. Any contenders from Assassin’s Creed must wait for the dust to settle first.
Under normal circumstances, any standouts would prompt some fun hypotheticals – what if these cards had been legal just a week sooner for the Pro Tour? – but there are no guaranteed hits in the set, and for now, that bar is much higher. The set’s size and broad focus work against it here, and the mechanics are a mixed bag for Constructed, but there are some individual cards that grab your attention.
Ezio Auditore da Firenze
Batching the Assassin typal theme with Commanders is a shameless but effective way to ensure that these otherwise narrow cards see play in Magic’s biggest market. For Modern or Legacy enthusiasts who can’t hope to use the Commander clause, this is a stark reminder of who the primary audience is these days as they hunt for playable Assassins.
This can turn up some hidden gems – don’t tell me you knew Vein Ripper was an Assassin already! – but all that yields is an even more obscure way to port the gimmick of Rakdos Vampires from Pioneer to Modern. Changelings tick that box automatically, but it’s slim pickings there too – Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord into Morophon, the Boundless was a delightful sequence that always led to even more nonsense (usually involving The First Sliver and friends), and Ezio makes that first part more consistent, but that strategy still needs quite a few improvements to be ready for prime time.
Scarblade Elite is still lonely as an ‘Assassins payoff’, but it’s worth remembering the other cards that care about Assassins or happen to be Assassins. All Assassins are outlaws but not all outlaws are Assassins, and so on.
Surtr, Fiery Jötun
The set’s historic theme is a much more likely source of success. Modern gives you twenty years of pushed legends and artifacts to play with, and every new set adds to those lists.
Two of Modern’s standout free spells show off the potential here. It feels flippant to say Mishra’s Bauble is good if you care about casting historic spells – it’s good if you care about anything! – but getting a nice bonus from a card that slots so seamlessly into almost any deck is a great first step. Meanwhile, Mox Amber has been waiting patiently for years for the right legend to push it over the edge and finally make it as broken as it looks. Legends that in turn reward you for historic spells sound very promising there.
Basim Ibn Ishaq
You can imagine Basim Ibn Ishaq in a recent Standard set enabling a generation of Esper Legends decks as the perfect partner for Raffine, Scheming Seer or Gix, Yawgmoth Praetor. As you dip your toe in these larger formats, your inner artificer comes out, and you start dreaming of drawing cards right away with Amber or Bauble and then every turn after that too.
Basim being a gold card and not being an artifact can create some tension in deckbuilding (as anyone who has tried pairing Baleful Strix with Urza’s Saga in Legacy can testify) – it will be worse than it looks in a dedicated Affinity deck, for example.
Luckily, many of these blue-heavy and artifact-curious decks already want legends with their own artifact synergies. I’ve seen Grinding Breach lists that dabble in black as their tertiary colour for the first time to experiment with Basim.
Creatures (17)
- 4 Urza, Lord High Artificer
- 4 Emry, Lurker of the Loch
- 1 The Reality Chip
- 4 Rona, Herald of Invasion
- 4 Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student
Lands (22)
Spells (21)
Crystal Skull, Isu Spyglass
Future Sight effects offer a unique thrill that I’m always keen to chase. Future Sight itself hasn’t aged well (though some pre-pandemic Urza decks made use of its reappearance in Modern Horizons and showed newcomers why it was so feared back in its day) but bespoke versions like Crystal Skull, Isu Spyglass (and The Reality Chip, which also fits neatly here) reward you for meeting their demands.
Unfortunately, any card advantage engine like this has to compete with The One Ring, which boasts about being very attractive and low-maintenance. This deck is even well-placed to get the most it can from Ring with a lot of ramp and various synergies with cards like Emry and Minamo – but then why not just lean into Ring more instead?
Abstergo Entertainment
Abstergo Entertainment joins the ever-expanding land toolbox for the various Tron decks and Amulet Titan. Rebuying a key threat or The One Ring is appealing enough, and the Scavenger Grounds impression is an ace against decks like Esper Goryo’s Vengeance.
Basim isn’t the only cheap legend putting its interest in history to good use.
Arbaaz Mir
Though its nontoken restriction stops the easiest ways to stack up damage, Arbaaz Mir gives you free points left and right without asking much of you. It’s a slam-dunk in the base-Boros aggressive Legends decks that have always felt just a card or two away from the big leagues, but it’s an ambitious combo enabler too:
Creatures (29)
- 4 Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer
- 3 Skrelv, Defector Mite
- 4 Rona, Herald of Invasion
- 2 Inti, Seneschal of the Sun
- 4 Ajani, Nacatl Pariah
- 4 Phlage, Titan of Fire's Fury
- 4 Guide of Souls
- 4 Arbaaz Mir
Lands (20)
Spells (11)
Here you can play a fair game with Modern Horizons 3’s breakout Boros cards while building towards a big finish. Your cheap legends and tokens can power a Return to the Ranks, with each legend dealing damage for each Arbaaz in circulation and creating such a wide battlefield that Goblin Bombardment or Ajani, Nacatl Avenger can deal the finishing blow. Note that when Ajani (or other transforming planeswalkers with the same template – Kytheon, Hero of Akros, among others) triggers, it exiles and then returns itself yielding yet another Arbaaz trigger.
Unlike Basim, Arbaaz triggers when a legendary land enters too, so it’s easy to freeroll additional Arbaaz triggers with lands that you’d want to play anyway and become even more appealing with the high density of legends.
If Basim can bring back Breach, why not Arbaaz? Arbaaz is a win condition of sorts – you bring back so many Mishra’s Baubles and Mox Ambers that you can whittle them down manually rather than having to rely on Thassa’s Oracle – and Phlage is a perfect pickup for a deck that needs more backup plans, wants to mill itself, and can even cheat the escape clause with Underworld Breach.
Senu, Keen-Eyed Protector
Senu, Keen-Eyed Protector is a weird card (not derogatory) that offers the kind of fiddly subquest that gets people going. To get your ‘free’ Senu, you have to pass two tests.
Attacking with a legend is much easier now thanks to Modern Horizons 3, with Phelia, Exuberant Shepherd as a particular standout. This points towards the same aggressive legends shell that wants Arbaaz, likely still in Boros, since no one-drop legends in other colours hold a candle to Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer. You can even unlock additional value from Phlage’s escape cost in long games (assuming Phlage coming back isn’t enough to lock those up on its own).
Exiling a specific card is non-trivial, but easier than before, thanks to the pitch Elementals from Modern Horizons 2, and easiest in white. Force of Virtue is no Force of Negation, but Solitude is a slam-dunk for these shells even before it becomes a ‘combo card’. Shining Shoal has been blindsiding people for twenty years and counting, including in some fringe Modern decks.
If you’re really committed to this angle, you can turn to fan favourite Serum Powder as well as Gemstone Caverns (which, despite some adoption in combo decks at recent Modern Pro Tours, remains among the most underplayed cards in Magic).
Red’s current model of card advantage (exile the cards and you have a short window to cast them) is incidentally perfect here. Imagine attacking with some cheap threat, discarding to Inti to pump it and make it hard to block, and exiling a Senu that then jumps into the fray too.
The Senu sub-quest is the perfect example of being much more trouble than it’s worth but a fun puzzle to solve, a good use of a slot in a set like this.
Yggdrasil, Rebirth Engine
Modern Horizons 3 brought more Reanimator cards than anyone knows what to do with, but they share an obvious weakness to graveyard hate. Yggdrasil, Rebirth Engine is an intriguing way to fight back, fitting into the reanimation plan when it’s available and bypassing the graveyard when it isn’t. Picture the Esper Goryo’s Vengeance deck championed by former SCG Tour stalwart Edgar Magalhaes which gave Matt Sperling a 10-0 run in Constructed at Pro Tour Modern Horizons 3 and Edgar (along with all-time great Kai Budde!) a PTQ victory on Sunday. Yggdrasil is another route to Atraxa, Grand Unifier or Griselbrand there, but can also serve up a steady stream of Griefs and Solitudes for the elusive ‘fair’ plan.
Ratonhnhaké:ton
Colossus Hammer has fallen on hard times – the classic Hammer deck was a powerhouse in the early days of Modern Horizons 2 and has completely vanished with Modern Horizons 3. This bizarre new legend lets you build an equipment reanimation deck that still has the fast Sigarda’s Aid draws and the flexibility of Stoneforge Mystic, with Forge Anew tying the room together – but you are adding extra ingredients to a recipe that is already out of fashion.
Let’s finish with a look at some more conventional cards:
Black Market Connections
Black Market Connections has gained a devoted following across formats and platforms, from Arena-exclusive playgrounds to the casual Commander tables, and finally makes its Modern debut with Assassin’s Creed.
Will it make a splash in a more cutthroat format? It’s hard to know what it compares to or competes with. As a card advantage engine, it pales next to Necrodominance (and if triple black is too rich for your blood, you and everyone else can turn to The One Ring), but that’s just one of its many talents. From the right angle, it looks more like Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, whose true power wasn’t immediately obvious but in turn caused many similar cards that did a bit of everything to be unjustly hyped up as the next Fable. The lack of an immediate impact is already a big difference – Fable may ‘just’ make a Gray Ogre for now, but that’s not nothing!
The steep life payments here can’t be ignored – and the pain adds up quickly, especially if you are trying to squeeze all the value you can from it. Even the grindy matchups in Modern are hacking away with Dauthi Voidwalker and Orcish Bowmasters, or firing off Lightning Helix left and right with Phlage. Don’t do their dirty work for them!
Tax Collector
Tax Collector is a rare design these days that feels clean and almost overdue. Thalia, Guardian of Thraben is another iconic card that proved how powerful these effects can be when priced to move (where Glowrider mostly failed) and spawned a long list of imitators, but the noncreature clause makes it very polarized. More generic versions like Sphere of Resistance tend to be symmetrical and/or situational.
Tax Collector doesn’t stick around after its job is over – it isn’t meant to be this kind of ongoing hate card – but it provides total coverage for that one turn. Many of the combo decks trying to chain a lot of spells together are creature-heavy, and even decks like Ruby Storm can have key creatures like Ral, Monsoon Mage. Making Ral more expensive can derail their whole turn.
Tax Collector ‘only’ buys a turn – and then another one, and another one. Phelia is a big boon to any blink strategy and ensures no tax evasion will take place on its watch.
The Thalia, Guardian of Thraben comparisons are useful in one sense – this is much closer to Thalia than to a dedicated hate card like Drannith Magistrate or Ethersworn Canonist in that you want to draw this naturally and expect it to be at least decent, instead of searching for it and expecting it to define the game. The name and play pattern suggest Death and Taxes, but if Five-Color Humans makes a long-awaited return to Modern, this is a promising option there too.
We are still working through the fallout from Modern Horizons 3, and Bloomburrow previews are already in full swing as I write this, but Assassin’s Creed deserves this quick look before the next new thing steals our attention.