Welcome Magic lovers!
In just over three short weeks, the Magic: the Gathering world will be tuning in to watch Pro Tour Amsterdam, which promises to be a fantastic tournament as it will feature many new cards from the upcoming Modern Horizons 3 set, which drops on June 14th. For those who may not know the difference between a set like Modern Horizons and a more typical set like Outlaws of Thunder Junction, while cards from typical sets are legal in every sanctioned, constructed format, the cards from the Modern Horizons sets are only legal for play in the Modern, Legacy and Vintage constructed formats.
This means that the strengths of the individual cards in a set like Modern Horizons are typically boosted in order for said cards to be potent enough to see play in the higher-power environment that very large formats like Modern and Legacy provide. To that end, the upcoming Modern Horizons 3 set has been fully stocked with huge, bomb-level cards and powerful engine pieces to potentially facilitate new decks and diversify the relatively established Modern meta game. However, with only two weeks to brew, test and tune new decks between the set release and the Pro Tour looming at the end of the month, many players are madly trying to figure out which of these new additions to the format will have the most impact on existing decks, or perhaps provide the foundation for a new, sleeper deck with which to take the tournament by storm.Of course, many of the players only slinging spells on Magic Arena may wonder why they should care about a paper format where the vast majority of the cards don't even exist on the digital client. The answer: Modern Horizons 3 will also be coming to Magic Arena, and the cards it contains will be legal in the Historic and Timeless formats found there.
This means that a lot of the ingenuity and new deck lists that will assuredly be unearthed in the upcoming Pro Tour may be potentially portable into the digital-only formats found on Arena, making this a relevant tournament to tune into if one is serious about Timeless and Historic.
While no one knows quite yet what the new shape of the Modern meta game will look like, its abundantly clear that the new Modern Horizons set has been specifically stacked with many powerful creatures that are capable of enabling some very degenerate combinations and infinite loops with many of the cards which already exist in Modern.
Without further ado, lets go over the most potent combo creatures to build around in the upcoming Modern Horizons 3 set!
The Monsters
If there's one thing that goblins and zombies have in common, its that both groups absolutely love to sacrifice themselves every chance they get, so having both a zombie, a goblin and a sacrifice outlet all in one card is quite powerful. A creature like Gravecrawler simply gets sacrificed every turn, coming back over and over again with Soultrader in play. It fits nicely into the Yawgmoth Combo decks that already exist in Modern, and putting one under an Agatha's Soul Cauldron can put the opponent in a relatively terrifying position. It can be cheated into play with Collected Company or Chord of Calling in a green shell, and its token-making ability can be further abused with cards like Academy Manufactor or Peregrin Took. Throw in a few ways to deal damage when things get sacrificed, like the new Marionette Apprentice, and its not hard to see how one can create an infinite damage loop with this powerful little zombie goblin wizard.
4. Sorin of House Markov // Sorin, Ravenous Neonate
Ah, the iconic planeswalker is back…in creature form! While the ideal Sorin of House Markov deck may not yet exist, the fact that Sorin simply asks one to gain a lot of life, allowing it to transform then immediately minus its loyalty to shoot the opponent for potentially lethal damage makes it an interesting conundrum to solve. White-based lifegain decks like Soul Sisters did exist in the distant past of Modern, and utilized cards that can also be very potent when combined with the scion of House Markov. Martyr of Sands is one such card, potentially revealing enough white cards in hand in order to gain the life necessary to one-shot the opponent.
Combo decks based around Heliod, Sun-Crowned and Scurry Oak can easily gain enough life to go off with Sorin of House Markov and win the game, so slotting in one or two in that shell might be an interesting proposition. Hopefully Sorin can give new…life…to a lot of these tier 2 decks.
Despite being a very difficult card for many players to parse, Springheart Nantuko is a very powerful two-drop. In the Amulet Titan deck, playing a turn one Amulet of Vigor into a turn two Arboreal Grazer to put an additional land into play (in the form of a green bounce land), allows the pilot to float two mana from the bounce land before it gets returned to hand. Next, using the two floating mana, the pilot can cast Springheart Nantuko by bestowing it on the Grazer. Playing the bounce land again as the land drop for the turn, while floating the mana before bouncing it again, allows the pilot to creature a copy of Arboreal Grazer using the bestowed Nantuko's ability. The new Grazer allows the pilot to replay the same bounce land again to repeat the loop and now the deck is creating infinite Arboreal Grazers. The last step is fetching up an Oran-Rief, the Vastwood to create an infinitely large Grazer in order to end things. Springheart Nantuko also does this with Dryad of the Ilysian Grove, as each new Dryad allows the pilot to make another land drop, which triggers the bestowed Nantuko, which bounces the land, which…well, you get the idea. With a Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle in play that's another way to make infinite damage happen. Bestowing onto a Primeval Titan will wrap up the game very quickly, and at the low opportunity cost of just one slot in the deck, since Summoner's Pact can easily fetch up the Springheart when its time to combo off. Simply having one copy of the insect monk in the deck enables several new ways to combo off, as well as makes it much easier to combo off in other ways. There are even strange lines one can take with this card, like playing it on the opponent's creature. While you won't be able to make a copy of the opponent's creature, simply make a non-stop stream of 1/1 insect tokens can be too much for some decks to handle, especially if they have to kill their own creature in order to stop the flood.
While everyone is focused on the flashy, new, giant eldrazi, like Emrakul, the World Anew and Kozilek, the Broken Reality, it may just be that the tiny Basking Broodscale becomes the highest-impact eldrazi in the format. If one combines it with a card like Rosie Cotton of South Lane, it can create infinite mana, infinite creatures and one infinitely large attacker, and that's with just two cards. Due to the fact that these pieces are so cheap, it means one can go infinite as early as turn three. That's as quick a kill as any of the tier 1 decks currently seeing play in Modern, and demands to be respected. With so few hoops to jump through in order to create the loop, and no drawback for doing so, this combo will almost certainly be slotted into several different lists.
Well, this is it. The undisputed most-powerful creature in the entire set according to most players. Its hard to overstate just how broken this bird wizard is. On rate, its excellent, being a 3/4 evasive body for only three mana, which conveniently dodges Lightning Bolt, while also drawing a card if the opponent does point a removal spell at it. However, with any free or cheap way to target one's own creatures, like with an equipment that can attach itself to a creature for zero mana such as Lightning Greaves of Shuko, Nadu can effectively draw the deck, putting all the lands into play untapped, in order to combo off and win the game. In fact, because Nadu draws a card twice off of each creature, and those triggers stack for each casting of Nadu, it means one can simply cast a new Nadu to legend-rule the old one and keep resetting the triggers in order to keep drawing and playing lands.
As if two-card combos that can come down in the early turns weren't bad enough, this is just a one-card combo plus engine intertwined and that is something that's almost unprecedented in modern day Magic: the Gathering. Get ready to see a LOT of Nadu, Winged Wisdom at any Modern events near you...
