Welcome to Innistrad: Midnight Hunt Exit Interview week!
If you missed Innistrad: Midnight Hunt First Impressions week, various members of the SCG Staff shared their thoughts on their Top 5 Innistrad: Midnight Hunt cards in each format before having the opportunity to play with them. With Innistrad: Crimson Vow preview season about to begin, we thought it would be fun to have those same folks update their lists now that they’ve had the opportunity to play with Innistrad: Midnight Hunt for the past month and share what they got right, what they got wrong, what surprised them, etc.
Yesterday we kicked things off with Standard, today we’ll knock out Historic, Wednesday will be Pioneer, and Thursday will be Modern. The same scoring system we had in place for Innistrad: Midnight Hunt First Impression week will be in place here so that we can get an idea of what card ranked in what place in the aggregate to close out each article. The scoring system is as follows:
- 1st — 5 points
- 2nd — 4 points
- 3rd — 3 points
- 4th — 2 points
- 5th — 1 point
Today, we begin things, once again, with Pro Tour Khans of Tarkir champion, Ari Lax!
Ari Lax
Previous List
- Consider
- Sunset Revelry
- Play with Fire
- Memory Deluge
- Smoldering Egg
New List
- Consider
- Outland Liberator
- Smoldering Egg
- Brutal Cathar
- ????
Well, got the obvious one right. Consider is by far the most important addition to Historic from Innistrad: Midnight Hunt because Izzet Phoenix always needs more good cheap cantrips. Smoldering Egg also makes the list almost entirely on the back of that deck, which now has a ton of flex in how aggressive or controlling its creature base can get between Dragon’s Rage Channeler, Young Pyromancer, Stormwing Entity, and Smoldering Egg. But not Delver of Secrets, because that card is the Luc Longley to Ponder’s Scottie Pippen and Brainstorm’s Michael Jordan”
Outland Liberator was an easy miss because it’s the kind of thing you just assume the format has. What do you mean there isn’t a Quasali Pridemage somewhere for the Collected Company decks? Liberator is even a bit better than that with the transformed side just eating artifacts and enchantments. I definitely didn’t have enough respect for the good creature piles in Historic, and should probably adjust that in the future.
It’s weird to me that Brutal Cathar has somehow displaced Skyclave Apparition in so many places, but it certainly makes sense in Historic. The addition of Thalia’s Lieutenant in Jumpstart: Historic Horizons made the card type Human super important, and the suspension of Memory Lapse seems to have made access to a Fiend Hunter effect important as creatureless control decks are on a decline.
This mention of Jumpstart: Historic Horizons is a perfect segway to the fifth place winner of ????. Historic just isn’t a format friendly to new Standard printings because there’s so much power just being dumped into the format via other means. Beyond that, there aren’t really even decklists or events for the format, so scraping together a retrospective list is tough because there’s nothing to retrospect unless you burn a bunch of time in the Historic queue for Arena ladder points, a form of Internet points with the same value as most other Internet points.
Somehow, it feels like Arena has come full circle from “Historic is trying to solve what to do with old Standard cards” back to “what purpose do any of my old Standard cards have”, and it’s a really dumb problem to have to solve twice.
Dom Harvey
Previous List
- Consider
- Memory Deluge
- Sunset Revelry
- Faithful Mending
- The Meathook Massacre
New List
- Consider
- Smoldering Egg
- Faithful Mending
- Pithing Needle
- Memory Deluge
It’s hard to compare our predictions with recent results because there haven’t been any relevant Historic tournaments. Without a Set Championship or MPL/Rivals League Weekends to showcase Historic and few notable independent tournaments, there was no reason at any level of competitive play to care about Historic. That’s due to change this weekend with the Arena Qualifier Weekend but there are no aggregate results from that to provide useful data moving forward — all you can do is make guesses from the celebratory tweets that pass through your feed.
With that in mind, the innovations we do see stand out even more. Izzet Phoenix gladly adopted Consider as expected but a bigger Phoenix list with Smoldering Egg and Archmage’s Charm from newly crowned World Champion Yuta Takahashi is picking up steam. I was surprised to see Egg as the backup threat of choice given the stiff competition for those slots, the high power level of Historic, and the deck’s focus on cheap spells for Arclight Phoenix but I had to correct for undervaluing Egg in Standard and may have to repeat that here.
Faithful Mending opens the door for combo decks in new colours even though that potential hasn’t been realized yet and adds redundancy to Faithless Looting for decks like Dragonstorm. Mizzix’s Mastery still lets you do messed-up things in Historic and I think it’s worth revisiting now as the format hasn’t settled and the deluge of graveyard hate I expected to fight Arclight Phoenix and Dragon’s Rage Channeler hasn’t really materialized.
Part of me assumed Pithing Needle must be in Historic already and I like those effects being available in every format as a strong but fair safety valve against random nonsense. Right now it’s not disabling some linear deck by itself but shutting off Cauldron Familiar or Witch’s Oven tricks against Jund Sacrifice is important as that deck once again rises to power.
The decks that Memory Deluge would fit in have suffered from the loss of Memory Lapse but I expect them to bounce back and Deluge will be a useful option for them if and when that happens.
Shaheen Soorani
Previous List
- Pithing Needle
- Fateful Absence
- Sunset Revelry
- Delver of Secrets
- Consider
New List
- Consider
- Smoldering Egg
- Brutal Cathar
- Fateful Absence
- Memory Deluge
At the time my initial list was created, Historic was all Jeskai Control. With the power of a mediocre counterspell of old, this control deck was dominating the opposition with relative ease. Memory Lapse, the pariah of the broken format, took the fall and all was well after. The format has been relatively unmoved and Izzet-based decks are just as oppressive as ever. If Jeskai Control is not running the tables, a similar villain will appear. When aggro decks run the world, many do not bat an eyelash for years, but when control is doing well, there are uprisings in the streets against a mediocre counterspell and a seven-mana sorcery. I’m dogging Memory Lapse a little, and I know it is quite good, but it isn’t the counterspell as most make it out to be.
My list has not changed much and those that fell off still have some chance for a triumphant return. Consider, Smoldering Egg, Fateful Absence, and Memory Deluge are pieces of the Jeskai Control puzzle. All these cards see play in the current Historic metagame and will continue to do so if the Izzet shell is strong. There are Arcbound Phoenix decks thriving, which lean heavily into Consider as another cheap cantrip with much more upside in the deck than Opt. Smoldering Egg goes naturally in this archetype, giving us a little Thing in the Ice nostalgia when it hits the battlefield.
The other two cards mentioned are traditional control cards that are floating around competitive play. Azorius-based control desperately needed Fateful Absence, so it will see play if folks like me are around. The two-mana removal was embarrassing before this, and I’m happy that it’s here to keep the dream alive. Memory Deluge has already proved its merit across the formats, and it’s no surprise that it has made it this far. I still see some clinging to inferior card draw options, but it is only a matter of time until this replaces all the competition for good.
The last card on there is a nod to Mono-White Aggro and Selesyna Company decks. Brutal Cathar is another utility creature that boosts aggro and midrange decks alike. Having these types of creatures is important to the beatdown strategy in older formats, giving them some complexity in the removal department. It feels bad to have too many spell-based disruption options with Collected Company, or in a creature-based deck generally, so Brutal Cathar makes the cut into the Top 5 most impactful cards in Historic.
Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa
Previous List
- Consider
- Fateful Absence
- Delver of Secrets
- Arcane Infusion
- Smoldering Egg
New List
- Consider
- Brutal Cathar
- Smoldering Egg
- Adeline, Resplendent Cathar
- The Meathook Massacre
Originally, I was hopeful for Innistrad: Midnight Hunt in Historic. This hope did not pan out. Realistically speaking, only my top card on the list — Consider — is actually a meaningful addition to the format (mostly in the Izzet lists, with or without Arclight Phoenix). Past that, there are a bunch of cards that may or may not be present even in the archetypes they’re supposedly good in. That said, the format is brand new — there hadn’t been any tournaments with Innistrad: Midnight Hunt and then they just banned/tweaked a bunch of cards, so I still have some hope that other cards from this card can end up seeing play down the line (particularly Fateful Absence, which I don’t feel justified in including right now but still have high hopes for as a very unique and Torrential-Gearhulkable effect in these colors).
In second place, we have Brutal Cathar, which is a better version of an effect that already existed and saw play in Collected Company decks. Unlike Fairgrounds Warden and Skyclave Apparition, it’s a Human (at least on the front side), which is a relevant thing now that Thalia’s Lieutenant is in the format, and it’s usually found in the maindeck of Selesnya Humans (or other, more multicolored Humans builds).
The third card on the list, Smoldering Egg, is part of some Izzet lists that I’ve seen. It isn’t present in all of them — in fact, I’d say it’s not present in most of them — but it does see some amount of play, including four copies in the first place of a relatively large Historic tournament in Japan. This is one tournament, so it’s not necessarily saying much, but that’s one of the few data-points we have on the format.
The last two cards are stretches, but they’ve seen some play, so they beat out the other cards in the set. Adeline, Resplendent Cathar is present in similar shells as Brutal Cathar, but it’s just a bit worse of a card — there are so many three-drops in the format that you’re usually looking for something better than just a big body, so it doesn’t stand out there, but it can battle for some of the slots. Then there’s The Meathook Massacre, which has seen play in some Cauldron Familiar lists; you get to maindeck a sweeper that has the potential to help killing them with the Cauldron Familiar + Witch’s Oven combos while being a powerful mirror breaker in the process (since you gain life when their Cat dies), so there’s at least some potential there and we might end up seeing more of it moving forward.
Todd Anderson
Previous List
- Delver of Secrets
- Faithful Mending
- Smoldering Egg
- Catharic Pyre
- Hostile Hostel
New List
- Consider
- Delver of Secrets
- Smoldering Egg
- Faithful Mending
- Sunset Revelry
I haven’t seen much impact in Historic from Innistrad: Midnight Hunt, but the competition is pretty stiff. I’ve seen a lot of cool Arclight Phoenix decks running around, including one by our current World Champion Yuta Takahashi, which just so happens to play some of my favorite cards in the set, so I’m just picking a bunch of those to talk about. Consider wasn’t on my original list, but I think it’s S-Tier card manipulation and will find plenty of places to call home in Historic.
Delver of Secrets is pairing nicely with Dragon’s Rage Channeler to give Izzet decks an early beatdown package that costs very little mana. That frees up room for two-mana interaction, though what that interaction happens to be is currently up for debate since the Memory Lapse’s suspension. Smoldering Egg is making an appearance in many of those builds, acting as Historic’s version of Thing in the Ice. It doesn’t work as well with Consider as it does with Memory Deluge, but pobody’s nerfect.
Faithful Mending keeps me intrigued, but I’ve yet to see it do anything spectacular just yet. With Faithless Looting in Historic, it’s seeing much less play than it is in Modern. Lastly, Sunset Revelry has been a phenomenal sideboard card for most white decks against all manner of Mono-Red Aggro. Not only does it provide you with some blockers, but that burst of life can invalidate a burn spell or two along the way. It ‘s better than Timely Reinforcements and does much the same thing for one less mana.
Cedric Phillips
Previous List
- Consider
- Delver of Secrets
- Champion of the Perished
- Fateful Absence
- Cathartic Pyre
New List
- Consider
- Smoldering Egg
- Brutal Cathar
- Memory Deluge
- Fateful Absence
Lets just call Innistrad: Midnight Hunt what it is — a set that could never impact Historic in the same way Strixhaven’s Mystical Archive did. Consider is incredible for Izzet Phoenix, but past that, there’s not much going on here. Smoldering Egg and Brutal Cathar are fine additions to their respective archetypes but neither are games changers like Brainstorm, Memory Lapse, or Time Warp. And when it comes to Memory Deluge and Fateful Absence, those are one-ofs (at best) in Azorius-based control decks. The only word that comes to mind is “meh”.
I took some shots with my initial list on Delver of Secrets, Champion of the Perished, and Cathartic Pyre, since cheap creatures and cheap modal spells are normally impactful in Constructed formats, but all three have mostly flopped. If given the chance, I’d take a flyer on all three again and perhaps in an alternative timeline, one of the three would matter. Alas, Strixhaven’s Mystical Archive is the timeline we’re currently living in, and until more of those cards get knocked out of the format, it’s going to be extremely difficult for any card from any new set to have much of an impact on Historic.
Without further ado, the SCG Staff’s Top 5 Innistrad: Midnight Hunt cards for Historic are now…
T-5. Outland Liberator, Memory Deluge, and Delver of Secrets — 4 points
4. Faithful Mending — 5 points
3. Brutal Cathar — 12 points
2. Smoldering Egg — 21 points
1. Consider — 30 points
Cya back here tomorrow to review Innistrad: Midnight Hunt’s impact on Pioneer!
