The Burnout

Nearly everyone has something they enjoy doing, whether it’s collecting stamps, criticizing movies, or, my personal favorite example, playing Magic: the Gathering. Though the more we do the things we love, the more we grow tired of it. It happens to a lot of people; we slowly lose interest in the thing we love the most in the cruel world. As many of you have probably noticed, I’ve been away for a while, nearly three weeks. That’s right, I too am susceptible to the dreaded burnout.

There are so many things I love about Magic, like the always-changing metagame and the interesting card interactions I have the pleasure of discovering. Sadly, nothing could get me out of my slump. I would watch Magic footage, but I wouldn’t enjoy it. I would play commander with friends, but I wasn’t invested in the game, usually spending time between turns on my phone. I was stuck. I spent my time that I would be playing Magic or caring about it in general re-watching old Marvel movies or swiping left on Tinder. That’s when I had an epiphany of what could possibly be my shining moment as a Magic player. Every competitive player has a dream to build the next breakout deck and make a name for themselves, regardless of what game they’re playing. I don’t think I did that, but I do think I made a serious improvement to one of the better decks to come out of the most recent Banned and Restricted announcement. This is what got me excited about Magic again.

Mono-Red Prowess has been around since before the bannings, and it only got better in a world without Faithless Looting and Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis, but I don’t think anyone ever considered one of the most broken cards to be printed in WAR that wasn’t a planeswalker. I’ve scoured the internet and I can’t find anyone playing this card right now and I think it’s stupid broken, especially with the lack of graveyard hate in modern at the moment. I’m talking about Dreadhorde Arcanist.

In a deck like Mono-Red Prowess, Arcanist is dumb. You’re naturally filling your graveyard by casting tons of spells and drawing a lot of cards. Arcanist can flashback those spells and continue to grow your team even after you’ve run out of mana. In the builds with Mutagenic Growth, it gets better because that means you can flashback Manamorphose and Light up the Stage for even more ridiculous value. The built-in trample means that even just Arcanist and Mutagenic Growth is 5 trampling damage. That may not sound like a lot, but that is a quarter of your opponents starting life total. Pretty impressive if I do say so myself. Below is the list I’ve been working on in its current form, but I’ll probably make a change or two over the next few weeks.

An already strong deck gaining the ever-so-powerful 2-drop from War of the Spark is sure to bring a much needed kick to modern. I plan to do further testing and I have big plans if this change is as efficient as I’m hoping.

Well anyway, I think that’s it from me today. Before we close it out today, remember to follow me on Twitter @TwoBlueUntapped and the site @MTGOracle. This is Blue, signing out!