A Second Look at Horizons #1
What’s happening everyone MoxAmethyst here and with the end of Hogaak Summer finally official, and some pretty big shakeups to the format, we aren’t wasting any time. We’re going to be starting a new series looking at Modern Horizons decks and cards that were overshadowed by the 0 mana 8/8, as well as some of the new decks that our beloved Stoneforge Mystics’ release has allowed.
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Now that’s all out of the way, let’s get started with today’s Modern Horizons card that has seen some success even through the Veil of Hogaak Summer, Urza, Lord High Artificer!
Now this card, to the surprise of noone after it was spoiled, is incredibly powerful. And personally, I’ve been playing the Urza deck for the past few weeks due to it’s favourable Hogaak matchup and extremely interesting playstyle. But it’s not just a favourable matchup against the broken decks that makes this my choice for modern right now. Urza’s innate power level and the consistency and power of the rest of the shell is what catapults this deck to the top of my list.
Most of you are probably quite familiar with the Urza lists that have been floating around, and you probably don’t need it spelling out for you so today I’m going to give you my list that I will be testing over the coming weeks and tomorrow I’ll release my sideboard plan to go with it.
Urza’s New Groove
Creatures:
3x Goblin Engineer
4x Urza, Lord High Artificer
Planeswalkers:
1x Teferi, Time Raveler
Instants:
1x Galvanic Blast
3x Whir of Invention
Artifacts:
4x Mox Opal
4x Mishra's Bauble
4x Arcum's Astrolabe
2x Chromatic Star
1x Grafdigger's Cage
2x Pithing Needle
1x Pyrite Spellbomb
1x Ichor Wellspring
2x Welding Jar
4x Thopter Foundry
2x Sword of the Meek
1x Ensnaring Bridge
Lands:
4x Snow-Covered Island
1x Snow-Covered Mountain
1x Snow-Covered Swamp
1x Breeding Pool
1x Hallowed Fountain
1x Steam Vents
1x Watery Grave
1x Spire of Industry
1x Inventor's Fair
4x Scalding Tarn
4x Polluted Delta
Sideboard:
2x Assassin's Trophy
2x Ceremonious Rejection
1x Damping Sphere
1x Ensnaring Bridge
3x Fatal Push
1x Nature's Claim
2x Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
3x Thoughtseize
So here we have it, this is the 75 I’ll be running through my LGS for the next couple of weeks in preparation for the European Modern Finals in a couple of weeks. As you can see not much has changed, but I’ll highlight a few things worth noting.
1 Piece of Graveyard Hate
This is the thing that I expect a lot of people will disagree on, but I’m fairly confident that cutting the less powerful hate pieces is correct for this new meta. Grafdigger’s Cage is still a very powerful effect and we have a lot of ways to tutor it. Whilst I do expect Dredge to make a resurgence over the coming weeks I believe a combination of Ensnaring Bridge and racing to the combo is the best way to combat the deck, and cutting the Nihil Spellbombs that we’ve seen in the past gives room for more silver bullets, such as;
1 Teferi in the main
Last week I completely cut Teferi from my 75 in favour of more Chromatic Star/Wellspring effects. I’ve only been very impressed with the 3 Mana Walker in UW matchups and similar attrition based games. Having more cheap cantripping artifacts was important for racing the Gaak but now we can squeeze in a Teferi to help play the attrition game against decks like UW, who now have Stoneforge to add to their arsenal, and Jund who are trying to interrupt our board advancement, and I expect both of these decks to make a huge showing going into the new format.
No Instant Win Button and 1 Bridge main
I haven’t been a big fan of the Spine/Grid/Trawler slot that we are used to seeing, and the reason for that is they are very unimpressive when you haven’t got the combo. Fortunately you don’t really need to occupy this slot, as there are few if any widely played decks that can both kill your combo and deal you infinite damage before they are swarmed by a near infinite army of 1/1s. The bridges I’ve chosen to split because I expect considerably less Surgical Extraction in the immediate future, and with 6 ways to tutor it I can’t see a good reason to have it take up 2 slots anymore. I keep the second in the board for decks like humans and dredge where finding a copy quickly can completely turn a game around that you may have had no right winning otherwise.
Why 5 Colors?
I’ve mostly played the Grixis splash W build of this deck since I first picked it up, but I’ve decided to add the G splash for some permanent removal out of the board. The big reason i can see for taking this route is that people are going to have this deck on their radar, so whilst I wouldn’t expect every deck to packing a playset of Leyline of the Void, I do expect a reasonable amount of Stony Silence and Rest in Peace/Leyline of the Void to show up, and with how consistent the manabase of this deck is, it seems almost free to add the 5th color. Also having access to removal for Batterskull has just got a whole lot more important!
Well that’s it for today guys! Pop back tomorrow around midday to see my Sideboard Guide for this deck, and dont forget to keep an eye out for the second part in this series towards the end of the week, where we will take a look at a couple of decks using a small White creature from fresh out of Banlist prison that’s got some heads turning. For now this is MoxAmethyst Tapping Out.