Breaking Once Upon A Time In Modern

Free cantrips are broken. Bryan Gottlieb had it nailed from basically the first day Once Upon a Time was previewed.

The London Mulligan was a total overhaul to how you should be playing Magic. We had Modern Horizons drop and Faithless Looting get banned this year, and you can still argue the London Mulligan was the biggest change to the Modern format in 2019.

It makes game play super repetitive, and it makes you spend way more time mulligaining than you already did. It also changed game play where cantrips that cost mana are almost unplayable and thats annoying to me as I like playing with them

— Zach (@A22en) December 19, 2019

Serum Visions went from one of the more crucial cards in Modern to actually unplayable. It wasn’t forced out on power level like a lot of the cards we played with in 2018 Modern, it just wasn’t a functionality decks needed anymore. Why pay a mana to partially fix your hand when it was just free to get an even better hand fixing effect at the start of each game? 

But just like having additional ways to fix your hand at a cost was important for the Vancouver Mulligan, having additional free ways to fix your hand is a huge upside in the London Mulligan world. The fail rate of your deck starts rounding to zero, and that’s frankly absurd when you consider some of the things you can use Once Upon a Time to enable.

Remember when Ancient Stirrings was such a core broken pillar of Modern a year ago? Once Upon a Time is that pillar now.

Amulet Titan and Mono-Green Tron were just the first, most obvious places to play Once Upon a Time. It just took a month or two for people to dream up the less obvious ones.

Even More Primeval Titan

Amulet Titan is definitely the most “classic Modern” of all the Primeval Titan + Once Upon a Time options, with the greatest peak power and breadth, but a couple of key factors are driving other decks into potential consideration.

The first is the same thing we saw in Standard and Pioneer with Field of the Dead. Oko, Thief of Crowns takes up some absurd portion of the Modern metagame right now, largely because there are multiple good ways to cast it on Turn 2 and multiple other things to do with that mana boost. Oko has also driven a lot of the incidental combo out of the other Oko decks in the same way that Jund mirrors strip down to raw crunchy midrange advantage and not combo setups. Even if the Simic Urza variants are all Mox Opal decks, they have evolved into Jund-y midrange masquerading as artifact decks. If one thing has ever stood a chance of holding midrange Oko decks in check, that is Field of the Dead ramp. 

The more disruption was referencing this decks ability to ignore it, since your non land permanents are all pretty much meaningless, and the most common land hate, D-Sphere, does nothing.

— Kellen Pastore (@TheOddEngineer) December 20, 2019

The second is Damping Sphere, and this is what makes it so Amulet Titan isn’t just the best Field of the Dead deck. Sphere is almost a given for all these Oko decks as a way to handle Mono-Green Tron, the perennial most threatening midrange eater in Modern. Amulet Titan can sometimes beat Damping Sphere, but the key word here is “sometimes.” These newer Once Upon a Time variants are mostly devoid of lands shut off by Damping Sphere, and we are back to the old paradigm of needing very different hate for each Modern big mana deck.

I built this deck this week and I think it's the best way you can build RG TitanShift by a wide margin. I unfortunately went 2-3 in the Modern Challenge today (beating Infect twice comically), but @stainerson managed to win the whole thing with the same 75. pic.twitter.com/3fzS7GkWk6

— Jacob Nagro (@JacobNagro) December 15, 2019

The first of these decks is Once Upon a Time TitanShift, which won the most recent Modern Challenge in the hands of Tommy Ashton, aka Magic Online master stainerson. 

The premise is simple. If Field of the Dead is really good, that means Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle is less relevant. You can then dive into some of the heavier green tools that let you jam a Turn 3 Primeval Titan in the same way Amulet Titan did, with a Turn 1 ramp spell, a Turn 2 ramp spell, and a Castle Garenbrig being the easy way to do that. The choke point in this sequence is the Turn 1 ramp spell, which is just Arboreal Grazer or Search for Tomorrow. But adding Arboreal Grazer and Castle Garenbrig is the turning point where Once Upon a Time provides relevant draw fixing, with multiple unique ramp spells to find in addition to Primeval Titan or Sakura-Tribe Elder.

This deck has the bare minimum number of Mountains and Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle to make Scapeshift lethal. You can notably sideboard out your Scapeshifts and go pure midrange in matchups where the combo is unneeded, but Modern is still partly old Modern and clean kills against other combo decks do work. The big thing I would caution is that old Valakut heuristics are generally tossed out here, since you need Castle Garenbrig and two other green sources by your fifth land to get that boost. You are more likely to fetch a basic Forest early just to lock that up with minimum damage. The low Mountain count also means killing with “natural” Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle is difficult and your Scapeshift targets are a choke point when executing the combo, another reason to consider leaving Mountains in your deck.

My big concern having played this deck should be fairly predictable. If you skew away from the combo that actually kills your opponent to some anti-midrange predation, and skew away from the faster midrange predation of Urza’s Tower, if the Globetrotters of Modern show up you are going to get styled on. I struggle to imaging this deck beating Infect or Dredgevine or really even Humans. If Arboreal Grazer can carry the balance you might steal a win against Soul-Scar Mage decks, but even Infect has Blighted Agent to dodge that fight. If everyone is showing up with the agreed upon top-tier strategies like Eldrazi Tron and Sultai Urza you will ram through them, but Once Upon a Time TitanShift is a fairly narrow tool even compared to prior TitanShift decks.

Grade for Once Upon a Time TitanShift: A rocky C+. Definitely a worthy attempt to push an archetype forward, but only optimal under very specific constraints that the format is currently under.

With some tweaks suggested by @ZKiihne I managed a trophy in my second league with Oko Titan. The TWest was great, and search does help cast a turn 3 Titan. I think this deck has potential, and right now the board isn't great. Choke might be bad, might want Cavern instead. pic.twitter.com/pqL6n5NM5h

— Kellen Pastore (@TheOddEngineer) December 20, 2019

Taking this a step further is Kellen Pastore’s Simic Field of the Dead list. If my issue with the previous TitanShift deck was a lack of interaction, this sure isn’t going to solve it. That’s concerning, but I see a lot of promise here.

But maybe we can in other ways. The Cryptic Command + Mystic Sanctuary combo is a huge part of how Sultai Urza decks combat the creature decks that bypass spot removal, and if you get both that combo and Oko, Thief of Crowns you might have options against creature plans both tall and wide. 

What are the odds we can fit a couple more Islands in this deck? How many do you honestly need for this combo with all the land searching, and how many of those Islands can be named Hallowed Fountain or Watery Grave?

Really, my point is to illustrate that there are just enough flex spots here to fit in the precise interactive card you were looking for, especially if that card replaces itself. I don’t quite know what that is, but that’s the puzzle to solve if you want to play with excessive numbers of Field of the Dead in Modern.

Grade for Simic Field: D for now, but you get to retake the test and try new answers in the flex slots for a much better grade.

Once Upon an Eldrazi Temple

Once Upon a Time finding an Eldrazi Temple is far from assured. It isn’t Eye of Ugin. But if you add some other layers of things to find, it tries really hard to get close.

Leading into the Players’ Championship, Zach Allen was testing Simic Eldrazi and the deck was performing well. While he ended up abandoning the deck due to a horrendous Humans matchup, the same thing that drove Bant Eldrazi out of the metagame two years ago, I was extremely impressed with the archetype and the developments made in this list. 

The raw consistency of this deck doing something powerful early on was higher than I expected, and the same with its ability to keep pushing out threats. You have eight good cantrips that find mana or threats at low cost, redundant mana acceleration, and redundant routes to an early threat via Thought-Knot Seer and Oko, Thief of Crowns. 

Waterlogged Grove is also a big part of the ability to keep pushing out threats, partly because it lowers the fail rate of your cantrips by giving you lands that do something was a fallback to find. If anything this mana might be too good, and I would love to find more ways to extract value from it, even if that means just playing some less painful but worse lands.

Compared to the stock Magic Online Simic Eldrazi lists, Zach was missing a couple of ubiquitous cards for differing reasons.

Gilded Goose is a great card, but the Lotus Petal aspect of it doesn’t play well when you are aiming to cast four-drop Eldrazi into five-drop Eldrazi and not just a lone Oko, Thief of Crowns or Urza, Lord High Artificer that carries you to a win. Birds of Paradise is a worse card but pairs better with Thought-Knot Seer and Reality Smasher.

My opponent on MODO just tapped 2 Eldrazi Temple on Turn 2, then cast Matter Reshaper, and I'm now unsure the English language actually has the right words to describe varying degrees of relief.

— Ari Lax (@armlx) December 19, 2019

Matter Reshaper is not a great card. It has basically no relevant game properties and should not be a part of 2019 Magic. Eldrazi Skyspawner is two Elks or makes relevant mana. Matter Reshaper gets stolen by Oko and does nothing.

This is also part of moving away from Elder Deep-Fiend, a card with basically no good fuel in the deck, to Drowner of Secrets. I may be underestimating sacrificing a Birds of Paradise to make Elder Deep-Fiend cost the same as Drowner, but the ability to sacrifice Eldrazi Scions over multiple turns has been important against Death’s Shadow, as has the ability to make eleven power of Elk-Drazi.

Grade for Simic Eldrazi: B but falling. Very powerful, but I still haven’t fully evaluated if Simic Urza shells don’t do the same thing better. Also, Ice-Fang Coatl trending up is bad news.

Inspired by @stainerson's remark from a few days ago, I tried to see how far you can push the 2019 power crept cards 🤔🧐 pic.twitter.com/b7mpf2GoPo

— Jonathan Zhang (@finalnub) December 18, 2019

Eldrazi Tron was already Tier 1 in Modern, Johnathan Zhang had already qualified for the Players’ Tour with it, but a list from last week’s Magic Online Challenge prompted a significant upgrade to the deck in Once Upon a Time.

I honestly had to look up what “stock” cards were cut to fit Once Upon a Time, and that’s because they were all bad filler. They weren’t core Eldrazi or core Tron. Now you just have better mulligans to broken mana. I’m not certain the remaining one-of cards are the right ones, but they are also the worst cards in the deck, so fiddle as you wish.

There isn’t a lot to say here. This is a great deck that just added four copies of Once Upon a Time instead of its worst four cards and got even better. 

If I drew a hand with 1 Eldrazi Temple and no plan on T2 better than Reshaper, I would mulligan. If I couldn't reasonably mulligan more, I would hope to not have to keep Matter Reshaper in my hand over a card with real impact.

— Ari Lax (@armlx) December 19, 2019

If only there was some way to cut Matter Reshaper for a real card that protects Karn, the Great Creator it would be flawless. My mind goes to Phyrexian Revoker, but that isn’t quite a clean fix.

Grade for Once Upon a Time Eldrazi Tron: Solid A. This is one of the best decks in Modern and just got better.

None-ce Upon a Time

The last deck this week is one that has cut Once Upon a Time and a good example of why the card isn’t totally ubiquitous.

Despite the namesake Hedron Crab being the best card to draw by miles and a lot of enabling pieces being creatures, Once Upon a Time is horrible in Crabvine. The deck is too dependent on density of hits once you start self-milling, and Once Upon a Time is more blank air then. Mana and castable card density early is also crucial, and Once Upon a Time is similarly blank to draw then when your deck is already Creeping Chill-flooded.

The removal of Once Upon a Time means you have to be very strict with your mulligans. Hands with a single self-mill spell are rarely good, and just having a couple of small-ball ones is iffy. You are really looking to mill ten or more cards and need Hedron Crab, Glimpse the Unthinkable, or some deep mix of smaller effects to make that work.

There are a number of options for the flex slots, but the only one I’ve felt is actively good is Gurmag Angler as a way to bolster subpar mills with power. Carrion Feeder was just a way to hit the back side of Stitcher’s Supplier, and Merfolk Secretkeeper is just low-impact. You need a density of one-cost creatures for Vengevine so Bloodghast is probably out of range, but I’m open to other suggestions.

I’ve also tried the fourth Memory Sluice, but multiples of that card are bad and even when you conspire it there are weird timing issues with the card resolving four mill at a time and Prized Amalgam that make it even a bit worse than it looks. Note that Hedron Crab plus fetchland looks like it has similar issues, but you can let the mill resolve and fetch in response to a Narcomoeba trigger to see if the next mill hits Amalgam.

That all said, I struggled to find definite reasons this deck was better than Dredge. It’s half a turn faster in the best case scenario, but it’s severely limited. So many of the things you need to race get Conflagrate’d. Crabvine requires a large card density for one combo burst versus Dredge’s small investment to see your whole deck, making managing sideboard hate much harder. Dredge can reliably mulligan for Nature’s Claim and a Dredge setup, while Crabvine can’t do that. If you really gotta go fast but no one is playing full lock graveyard hate I would consider Crabvine, but otherwise Dredge is the better deck.

Grade for Crabvine: C-. The deck is better than my initial evaluation of solid F, but it is largely a worse Dredge for the gain of a faster true nut draw.

More Work to Be Done

If you want to try to adapt another shell for Once Upon a Time, look for decks that have clear great hits, yet also redundant good hits across roles, and have some flexibility in both mana utilization and card utilization.

Oko, Thief of Crowns may be the card getting all the broken hype from Throne of Eldraine, but Once Upon a Time is easily as absurd. Just like we saw a couple of obvious decks open up into a spread of great archetypes, expect a bunch of future Modern decks coming down the pipeline exploiting the best cantrip in the format as long as it remains legal.