#Modern Horizons 3 Commander Decks

[haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted]

Spawnbed Protector by Maxime Minard

[dbarenzu626-mtg]

Most people start off their new year by trying to resolve something new for themselves. As a Commander player, I can see people doing similar within their own playing styles: maybe stopping slotting in not as good cards or curbing spending so much on decks.

Me though? Aside from saving for Final Fantasy in June because by lord, my JRPG nerd self will die on that hill, my resolution has been apparently to add a few new weird lil' guys to my Commander arsenal for future decks. That has included these two:

People tell me Slivers and Eldrazi are really fun and yet in terms of weird alien-looking Magic critters and their decks, I only stuck to Phyrexians for some odd reason, building around Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider and Atraxa, Praetors' Voice. As characters, I always hear stories of these two in lore: Slivers basically being dimensionally adept insects where you don't really want to disturb their hives and then Eldrazi being eternally hungry invaders, Emrakul especially being one who corrupts and manipulates whatever living things her tendrils get their hands on (which led to her getting sealed away in the moon... that'sroughbuddyLOL). Building around these two is going to be interesting, that's for sure... bugs and jellyfish. What a strange combination~

[markrosewater]

I'm really struggling to understand this:

Assassin's Creed didn't get Commander precons and instead got two 60-card starter decks to introduce them to 60-card formats.

While Modern Horizons 3, a set that is dedicated to possibly the most popular 60-card format, got Commander precons?

Universes Beyond can function as a good entry for new players, so we made starter decks for them.

Modern Horizons sets are for players who like high complexity and nostalgia. Many Commander players fall squarely into that audience.

[imperatorcaesaraugustus]

When I was in college, I got my girlfriend to start playing Magic: the Gathering.

            To be fair, I wasn’t the one to first introduce her to the game. We had several mutual friends who played, and they’re the ones who taught her how, but it was because of me that she actually decided to get into it.

            Her first deck was one that I built for her. A life gain deck, with Oloro as the commander. Her second deck was the Ur-Dragon preconstructed deck from C17. But for her third deck, we built it together. It was, loosely speaking, an eldrazi tribal deck with a gates subtheme. And the commander of the deck was Golos, Tireless Pilgrim.

            I have very fond memories of that Golos deck. I remember going through my collection to find cards that I thought might be good. I spent the better part of year trading for any card I saw that seemed like it would be fun in the deck. When I had a massive stack of cards assembled, she and I sat down and went through them all, finding which ones she liked and which ones she wasn’t thrilled about. And the deck that resulted at the end of it all was super fun. It always did something big and splashy, although what exactly that was would vary quite a bit.

            When she broke up with me, she left all of my stuff that was still at her place with a mutual friend of ours for me to pick up. In with it was her three commander decks. I had, after all, given her almost all of those cards. And she had, after all, played the game because of me.

            Of the three decks, Golos is the one I left alone for the longest time. It sat on a shelf for months before finally I picked it up, made a few small edits to it, and started playing it again. One of those edits was swapping out the commander for Kenrith, the Returned King, because shortly after the two of us had broken up Golos had been banned.

            The Kenrith deck started out basically the same as Golos had been, but over time it of course changed. And then, when Modern Horizons 3 came out, it changed a lot. With actual five color eldrazi commanders available, the deck was converted to center around Azlask, the Swelling Scourge. It felt good to have something in the command zone that really fit with what the original idea for the deck was meant to be.

            Recently, control of the commander format passed from the Rules Committee to Wizards of the Coast. As part of the announcement, WotC said that they would be looking at the ban list for the format and potentially unbanning some cards. Speculation abounds, and no one knows exactly what will come of this, but upon hearing that my thoughts turned to Golos.

            I still have Golos. I could not bear the thought of getting rid of him. But I no longer have his deck, not really. I have something that used to be his deck, but it has changed. Golos no longer fits in it. If they were to unban him, I would be glad and hope that many others could have the fun with that card that I once had. But as much as I reminisce on times gone by, I myself cannot go back.

[magicwithclass]

Squandered resources is a powerful card with a powerful effect. I am actually shocked that this card flew under the radar for as long as it did especially since there was a blog, site, or other form of media that carried the name squandered resources. The card was actually under a dollar until the end of 2016 so there was a time since prices were formally recorded that you could have picked up this card for absolute bulk prices. If every good card on the reserved list has been picked dry and there is nothing left to speculate on then how do you explain squandered resources being 60 cents less than ten years ago? Did no one see the potential in a 2 mana ramp card that is also a free sacrifice outlet. There are many decks that want lands in the graveyard or can easily recur lands so a free sacrifice engine is absolutely paramount for those decks to function. Zuran orb and sylvan safekeeper are cheaper options but redundancy is important and this offers the effect on an enchantment. The payoff is also stronger. Never underestimate extra mana even at the cost of a resource especially if you can easily get the resource back or you are using that sacrifice to you advantage. Many decks can make excellent use of squandered resources in their combos. The gitrog monster, muldrotha the gravetide, and lord windgrace decks all benefit from having lands enter the graveyard and can put them right back into play. Even so, the number of commander decks that use this card on edhrec is astonishingly low. I would think any landfall deck that utilizes combos that sacrifice all lands only to bring them back with aftermath analyst or world shaper would need to use squandered resources. Very few cards let you sac all your lands in a single turn and leave you mana positive but squandered resources has combos and synergies. The card was five bucks after 2016 and reached almost 20 dollars during the initial buyout of 2018. By 2021 the card was about seventy five dollars as a all time high. So why is the cars going up now? Why is there a renewed interest on a reserved list card that has spiked a number of times? In short, the necrobloom. The necrobloom is the second strongest commander released in modern horizons 3. A little birdy can tell you what the strongest commander in the set is. The necrobloom is also highly competitive and is potentially cedh. The card wants lands in the graveyard to dredge and some decks have a land in graveyard theme. Is it any wonder that squandered resources can fit into a necrobloom cedh deck? Desert decks and a jund graveyard commander deck also got a boost in 2024 so it was a good year for squandered resources. Currently, the card is approaching fifty dollars. That is higher than in 2018 but I do not think it will reach its market high. However, this has become a soft staple in necrobloom decks, appearing in over 20 percent of decks. That deck is competitively viable, popular, and new so I think squandered resources will probably hold onto a higher price tag for the foreseeable future. Will it go back down when the hype dies or will you have to squander your resources getting a copy of this card?

[dailymtgflavortext]

I had to search stores all over the country, but I completed my set of Modern Horizons 3 MDFC lands!

Look, I love the idea of MDFC lands. I think they're really cool, and having a slightly sub-par spell on one side of a slightly sub-par land leads to some interesting deck decisions. But some of these ones seem a little too good. Especially since the mono-colored ones can come in untapped by paying life (previously a feature of the mythic rare cycle). There's not a whole lot of reason not to play these.

Like, a lot of these are removal. Or card-draw. Or recursion. Really good effects! Why wouldn't you want them stapled to a land just in case?

Maybe worth noting, I'm speaking purely from the perspective of someone who plays Commander. Y'know, the target audience of Modern Horizons 3.

[bittenrabbit]

Six Deck Tech :> Decklist can be found here: Six Baubles (now with six baubles!)

hello! I'd like to talk about one of my commanders, a card with a really unique effect from Modern Horizons 3 who has yet to see the variation in deck building that they probably should!

But before I get to that, I'd like to talk about one of my favorite decks from magic history, Eggs! Eggs is a deck that revolves around the same game pieces regardless of format: 1 and 0 mana artifacts that you can "crack" for a card and an effect of some kind. You win by using some kind of mana engine to draw your entire deck. one card at a time. Once you've thinned your deck, you can achieve a loop of some kind to end up winning the game. It's the ultimate power trip!!! Taking a ridiculous amount of game actions just to lose to not drawing the exact piece you need, choosing when/when to not shuffle becomes a game of percentages at the slot machine it's fantastic lol If you have yet to watch Pro Tour Return to Ravnica's finals, it's definitely worth a watch! The winning list ran Lotus Bloom as its mana engine of choice and won by cracking eggs (and lands through ghost quarter!) and then reanimating them + Lotus with Second Sunrise/Faith's Reward before cracking everything again to get ever closer to an empty deck and then win by looping a single Pyrite Spellbomb :>

So who's at the helm of my deck? As I went into MH3 spoiler season, Six really stood out to me! I love wide open cards that let you brew in a billion different ways :>

Six (of Wrenn and Six fame) is a 3 mana 2/4 Reach who reads:

Reach Whenever Six attacks, mill three cards. You may put a land card from among them into your hand. As long as it’s your turn, nonland permanent cards in your graveyard have retrace. (You may cast permanent cards from your graveyard by discarding a land card in addition to paying their other costs.)

Most Six lists so far on EDHREC run stuff like Spore Frog and Sakura-Tribe Elder + Sacrifice effects to accrue value/discard lands and then end the game through cards like Avenger of Zendikar/landfall effects + mass land reanimation spells!

I took a bit of a different spin on Six, one that no one seems to have replicated yet (side tangent um. being the only deck running this stuff on EDHREC is so funny, you can literally see my deck on the website!) I made an eggs list! With Six out on the field, cards like Conjurer's Bauble and Mishra's/Urza's Bauble read "discard a land to draw a card" With any mana discount, Chromatic Star/Sphere and a bunch of other eggs read the same :D

My gameplan is to get Six out and protected and then draw a whole bunch of cards and gain a tooon of value with cards like Glaring Fleshraker, Turntimber Sower and Sarinth Steelseeker

If you can keep hitting lands off your eggs, your storm count'll go way up recasting your baubles which you can use to cast cards like Sprouting Vines to cast MORE BAUBLES!!!! Or win through typical storm payoffs like Aeve & Aetherflux Reservoir to blast em all for super lethal damage >:D (or you could just win by simply having more cards and tokens than opponents can handle!)

Anywaays that's my deck tech i think! lmk if i missed anything maybe i'll rewrite this at some point and make a video? :>

[thecornwall]

Cornwall's Random Card of the Day #1102: ArnaKennerud, Skycaptain

Arna Kennerud, Skycaptain is a mythic rare from Modern Horizons 3.

So, modified was a batching mechanic from Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, which counts any creature that has a counter on it or has an enchantment you control on it. I would really have thought that W/U/G or W/G/R would have been the colour trio that cares about that, but as is often the case with guys obviously built for commander(and remember, every set has large parts designed for commander, Maro said it himself), I'm not sure what the design pressures and intents were which led to making this guy.

He does double all your modifications, which is nice. Of course that leads to you just having to kill him on sight cause that is frankly insane in any deck that would have him. But he's a commander, so he can never be permanently removed, so you have to just kind of keep pitching cards and removal to get rid of him forever before dying to the massive card advantage he's gotten your opponent. Fun.

[niuttuc]

My Favorite Cards of 2024: Modern Horizons 3

The year is pretty close to over, so let’s go back over the sets released this year (with new cards at least), and go through a few of my favorite cards from that release. I’ll group together stuff released together, in this case it’ll be Modern Horizons 3 and its commander cards. I’ll probably go through one set a day for the next week, though I might skip some days for personal reasons.

With Modern Horizons 3 being as pushed and full of sweet designs as it is, this will be a long post, I apologize in advance.

To get them out of the way: Yes, more MDFC lands is very nice. We got some pretty universal ones in this batch of them, as well as some more niche, but all of them give more options for manabase and allow decks to comfortably go up to 40 lands or more while maintaining a good amount of action.

I recommend Chthonian Nightmare for basically every black deck with creatures in commander at this point. It's a powerful card and a fun card all in one, and it fixes the most egregious parts of Recurring Nightmare, the uninteractability first among them. I love Chthonian Nightmare and hope it remains reprinted and cheap forever.

Phelia is a good dog! The ability to blink away blockers, your own cards every turn on a two drop, any nonland, or to politic by giving an opponent an etb trigger again, all of that in one package with flash, makes this card both very powerful and very versatile. I love having options, and Phelia comes with a bunch of them.

In a format like commander where the vast majority of the Commanders decks are built around are multicolored, giving Null Elemental Blast to every deck that'll reliably have colorless mana is pretty great! Allows some stack interaction to mostly monocolor decks that wouldn't have it, or efficient removal of commanders. Beyond that, it's a good option to exist, even though other formats don't have multicolored cards as everpresent.

Six has made its way into many of my green commander decks since MH3 released. The ability to reuse permanents infinitely as long as you have lands, on a card that fills the graveyard and digs for lands, is just very good for three mana. Yet it doesn't seem to bring too much anger from a table when it is around, at least compared to other powerful cards in the format.

Phlage had a really difficult job, to live up to Kroxa and Uro but without breaking everything. For now, it seems to have succeeded. Maybe a bit too well, it might yet get to the "breaking everything" part in Modern as it's seeing a LOT of play, but it's for the most part a fair card even if it's powerful.

Repeatable ramp for free on three mana is excellent, and Rampant Frogantua provides just that. It's a bit higher variance and slower than something like a Wood Elves, you do need to untap with it and mill lands, but three cards is enough that it typically works out, and it doesn't take much for this to outperform those. I will say, despite putting it in several decks, I've yet to see it in action much because I simply haven't drawn it most games. We'll see longer term!

Proliferating is one of the most versatile mechanics in Magic, and Metastatic Evangel completes the trio of creatures that allow you to proliferate easily, in green, blue and now white. Doing counter stuff is generally very fun! And the nontoken restriction ensure it doesn't go infinite trivially (it can go infinite, but you need to put in some effort.)

Speaking of going infinite with Metastatic Evangel! In the proud lineage of Eternal Witness, Evolution Witness is pretty low, only getting permanents and requiring five mana to do so. That is, in any deck that doesn't have synergy with it! If you are a deck that cares or can manipulate counters, suddenly Evolution Witness becomes an engine by itself. Great cards at common that only power up select archetypes are a great place to be.

Overlapping a bit with Six, and Frogantua, and Evolution Witness, and... But Barrowgoyf stands on its own as a great creature from its body alone, often being a three mana 4/5 deathtouch lifelink. And then it starts drawing you a card every turn while fueling any graveyard card. This one is VERY powerful and has shown up in competitive formats it's legal in as well! Getting more variations on Tarmogoyf was a fun thing in that deck.

Some cards are just here because they're funny. Is Hope-Ender Coatl the best counterspell, or even the best counterspell on a body? Definitely not. But the Force Spike text is always entertaining because it finds somewhere to work and makes the opponent feel very silly for lacking that one precious mana.

Also a very powerful card across format, Springheart Nantuko is not just a very efficient version of the landfall token effect, but also a way to create token copies of a creature at a playable rate! Copies are always fun to play with, and that lets me overlook all the Nadu crimes this Nantuko has wrought. Let's be honest, it's Nadu's fault.

Of this entire land cycle, Arena of Glory is my favorite. Getting haste at no immediate mana cost on anything you want from the mana base on a land that'll usually enter untapped is just excellent, and allows "slower" effects like attack triggers and tap abilities to be viable in a world of ETBs and required immediate Value. Using it to escape Phlage in Modern is the cherry on top.

Of all the Flares, Flare of Malice gets my top spot (followed closely by Flare of Duplication). Free spells that are powerful but not cheesy or oppressive are hard to do, and Flare of Malice is the one that takes advantage of its alternate cost the best. Not only is black the color that will mind saccing a creature the least, but since this Flare is an instant, you can negate that cost even further by saccing a creature an opponent just tried to remove in response to their removal, making flare essentially completely free by negating the card disadvantage from the sacrifice. Flare of Duplication can also do something similar by saccing to copy said removal, but it's dependent on it being an instant or sorcery removal. Blue and White flares do it less well, given that you ideally want them to protect what you're doing, so there's more of a cost to giving up the thing you'd want to protect, and the green one is a sorcery.

Notably, all the flares except the blue ones are currently available at around $1 or $2, and that's pretty sweet for free spells.

Neither a Birthing Pod nor a bad card, Birthing Ritual just gets you a bit of free value every turn. Or if it doesn't, it doesn't cost you anything. It's a sweet card to play around with in creature decks, and after the initial hype, it fell down to reasonable prices, which is always a plus.

I was waiting for them to release a colored 3 mana rock in white that was exciting, and this one I've found myself going back to a few times since. It's just a nice bit of late game upside in basically any deck, and doesn't require much effort to use. It's not an all time high mana rock for me, because it's a pretty bad draw late in the game, but it's solid enough to get onto this list!

Wight of the Reliquary is both a neat callback and a really good card. Free ramp every turn as long as you have fodder would already be absurdly good on a two drop, but it's ALSO a giant threat with vigilance AND it tutors your deck for nonbasic lands, not just basics. This is a bit too much if you ask me, and it should have been three mana like its counterpart. But it hasn't broken anything yet, so I give it a pass for now, and a spot in basically all my decks that can run it.

Finally, some reprints I loved to see in the set. Cursed Mirror is my favorite red card in commander period, and even if it wasn't expensive or anything, I always love to see it in more places, and this introduced it to Modern and Arena. It always has something good to do, and it's always something different.

Recruiter of the Guard was in dire need of a reprint, and this one did its job, crashing its price by over three quarters to under $5. It's also a really fun card to play in any creatury deck in white, even if you don't specifically build around it, be it to use once, blink, reanimate with a sun titan or more. It's also in a better color for it in competitive formats than the red of Imperial Recruiter, so adding it to Modern alongside Imperial Recruiter adds a new fun option for the format for white creature decks.

[toaster-77-mtg]

Modern Horizons 3 - Commander Spoilers as of 5/9

Here's all the cool cards of MH3! This will include powerful cards that I like or dislike and cool cards that I like, even if they aren't very powerful. Also, I'm primarily an EDH player, so I'm not coming at this from a modern player's perspective. Anyways, without further ado, the commanders of MH3:

Kudo, King among Bears.

For anyone who witnessed my rant on main that made me make this blog, you know my opinions. However, if you didn't see that rant just know it's a BS card. Too cheap (2 CMC? Really?) and too powerful. Combos way to well with Ayula, making anything you want to be a bear and removing any kind of creativity you could put in an Ayula deck. Now you just find big blocks of text and Kudo tells Ayula that no, actually, that was a bear not an Eldrazi. Kudo will also combo WAY to well with Elesh Norn Grand Cenobite, board wiping any creatures your opponents play if they can't put counters on them or banner effects as they enter the battlefield. Kudo also combos too well with other STAX and hatebear pieces for me to like him. It's a cool card in concept, but to powerful in my opinion.

Herigast, Erupting Nullkite.

Cool card! I love the concept of giving your stuff emerge, because emerge is a really cool mechanic! It does nothing if you sac a token, but if you get rid of a big mana piece you get a significant discount. It's a cost reduction mechanic that, on its own, is actually fair. That being said, I wish it had been in Rakdos rather than mono red, because it would've given more sacrifice synergies with cards like Mahad, Juri, Rakdos (OTJ version), and others. It would've also given access to al manner of graveyard shenanigans. But I still like the card, even if I don't agree with the colors it was printed in.

Phelia, Exuberant Shepard.

Not sure why it has flash tbh. Also didn't think we needed another mono white flicker commander, but here we are. It's a pretty fair card overall, maybe even weak. It only gets counters from cards that it flickered, not from any flickered card. As well, it doesn't have anything like trample or fist strike, so its harder to make this into a commander damage card. And then outside of commander I don't think it really does anything. Could be wrong about that though, so don't quote me on it.

Ajani, Nactal Pariah // Ajani, Nactal Avenger.

Pretty cool card and excellent flavor. He might be too powerful though. He's cheap and pretty easy to flip, and you can use his ultimate pretty fast. And that ultimate is BRUTAL. A near full wipe on turn 3 or 4 is quite the prospect to be facing down. And his +2 being a counter rather than a banner effecct until eot or end of next turn. Still though, its in Boros, so maybe it won;t be the most broken thing ever. Could be wrong about that though.

Personally, if I was desigining this Ajani, I would've made it a {2}{w} rather than {1}{w}, and had the token it creates be a legendary token with his brother's name that gives Ajani +1/+1, becuase that theming goes along well with the flavor text. His transform condition is perfect, it's right on theme, so no changes there. Then as far as his planeswalker side goes, make his +2 a +1 instead, have it be Cats you control get +1/+1 until eot. I think that balances out his ultimate and gives another player more time to respond. Then his 0 ability is also good, because it encourages the player to balance the amount of red and white in their deck.

Overall the four new commanders are getting a solid B from me. Herigast is dope. Kudo is too OP. Ajani needs a minor nerf and then he's a really cool card. Phelia just seems useless.

[haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted]

Tarmogoyf Nest by Filipe Pagliuso

[jeskaim]

Bloomburrow: No Humans Allowed

Boy has it been a busy season for Magic. We just had Modern Horizons 3 come out with Universes Beyond: Assassin's Creed a week away from release and we're already getting previews for Boomburrow and Duskmourn. Some of these we've had for a while but I think it's time for me to talk about them. When I first found out this would be the first set in Magic history without any humans I didn't know what to expect but now that we have more cards I have to say I'm excited. One of the cards I'm most excited for was one of the first ones we saw with Bria, Riptide Rogue. I've always liked cards that revolve around casting instants and sorceries and Bria fits right in. Almost all of the pages for spellslinger commanders I have on EDHREC have this card as recommended and it's not even out yet. Right now I'm not sure if I'm going to put it in any of my decks but if I do it'll probably go in Adeliz (wizard tribal) because it has the perfect balance of creatures and noncreature spells. Mabel, Heir to Cragflame is also interesting. Mice are an underrated tribe and Mabel is the perfect commander for them. I can also see it being played in decks that revolve around equipment with her ability that creates a Cragflame token that gives the equipped creature +1/+1, vigilance, tremple, and haste.

With the spoilers from Magiccon we got some more information on what to expect from the uncommon lands of the set. With no humans in this set it's not surprising there are a ton of animals with each getting their own color combination. From the looks of it bats are going to be WB, Birds are going to be UW, Mice are going to be WR, Rabbits are going to be GW, Frogs are going to be GU, Otters are going to be UR, Rats are going to be UB (this one is the most surprising since a lot of rats are red), Lizards are going to be BR, Racoons are going to be RG, and Squirrels are going to be BG so one animal type for each color combination. I'm super excited for Mudflat Village as an addition to my new Totentanz, Swarm Piper deck. From the looks of it rats are going to be getting some love in this set.

And last but not least Lumra, Bellow of the Woods. Bears are already a good creature type but I can see this one seeing a lot of play in commander, especially in landfall decks like Omnath. Six is a bit high for a cost but if there's one thing green is good at it's putting out mana dorks.

That's all for Bloomburrow. I know more cards have been spoiled but I'm waiting for them to officially be spoiled before posting about them. My next post will be about Duskmourn because there wasn't enough room on this one.

[overgrown-estate]

Aetherdrift releases on Valentine's Day 2025. It's a set about a multiplanar race across three planes. The prize is the Aetherspark which Chandra intends to win for Nissa. Let's review the three cards that have been previewed for the set.

I really like these two cards. Earthrumbler's ability is pretty good if you don't have enough creatures to crew it or if you don't plan on bringing back a creature or artifact from your graveyard. Plus, Vigilance and Trample is just sweet. The Brood must be the insect race in the set. Brightglass Gearhulk is nice too if you want to put something small into your hand from your library. Multicolor gearhulks are a cool idea.

Aetherdrift will see the return of Daretti to a standard set. It sucks that he's yet another desparked planeswalker and that art is awful. Daretti is a known character, formerly a planeswalker. He has a distinct look and this ain't it. Whoever was the art supervisor on this, dropped the ball. As for his abilities on this card, he'll want an artifact heavy deck with expensive artifacts if you want him to have a high power level. If you have plenty of artifacts, you can sacrifice one whenever he attacks to return one in your graveyard to the battlefield. Yes, it explicitly states you must choose the artifact in your graveyard before you sacrifice an artifact to bring it back.

Let's take a look at some cards that pertain to racing in the cardname. There is no card with 'racing' in the name, though.

First, we have Reckless Racer from the set, 'Aether Revolt'. A discard/draw tool, he can help fill your graveyard with artifacts for Daretti. Having First Strike helps him stick around, too. It's not legal in Standard but is everywhere else.

However, Arms Race is legal in Standard for a little while longer since it came out in Brothers' War. Pay four to put an artifact card from your hand onto the battlefield. It'll gain haste but be sacrificed at the beginning of the next end step. Again, another way to enable Daretti as the artifacts he returns from the graveyard has no limit on mana value.

Racecourse Fury is a card from 'Return to Ravnica'. It enchants a land and that land gains an activated ability to grant a creature haste until end of turn. Sweet. Legal in Pioneer but not Explorer which kind of sucks. Racers' Ring came out with 'Streets of New Capenna'. It enters tapped, let's you tap it for red or green, and you can pay four to sacrifice it and draw a card.

And finally, here we have two vehicles with Racer in the cardname. Flywheel Racer was released in March of the Machine so it is currently Standard legal. Filigree Racer was printed in a Modern Horizons 3 Commander deck. They're both good to have around. Both are only crewed with 1 power. I wonder if Energy will return in Aetherdrift, though.

There you have it. As you can see, 'racing' is mostly in red at the moment. It'll be interesting to see what Aetherdrift has in store for other colors.

[markrosewater]

For the Modern Horizons 3 Commander set, were there any ideas for an eldrazi commander that could get around color identity restrictions but only for cards that are colorless? (i.e. Devoid, Land, and Artifact cards with colored activated abilities) I think some players have the idea that color identity in commander restricts the use of Devoid eldrazi spells in Eldrazi themed decks a lot, but cards like Ulalek or Azlask having almost no restriction on what cards they are allowed to play feels "cheap" (as seems to be the perception of many legends with WUBRG in their text box)

I don’t think there’s a way for a Commander to change how color identity works.

[leafdrake-haven]

So like, the Modern Horizons 3 Commander decks….. are they modern legal?

[magicwithclass]

There has been some talk about ante cards over the past week or two on mark rosewater's blog, blogatog. Some have argued for the return of ante on a card or two in sets like modern horizons 3 since they resuse a lot of older mechanics and throwbacks to older cards. I am not sure if anyone is actually serious about wanting ante to return or if it is just a meme dream but I do not know a single person that has ever played for ante or with ante cards. The ante cards and rules remind me of the battle city season of Yu-gi-oh where everyone had to gamble their rarest card in each duel. From a legal standpoint I can see why a card game would not want to pursue this idea as this is very close to gambling. While, wizards of the coast does not acknowledge the secondar market, all cards have some value and you do not want kids losing their property. All of the snte cards are basically banned in every format including commander so what is the point of discussing them at all? First, it is interesting to see the mindset of designers in the early days. Imagine is ante had been popular instead of being the most hated mechanic of all time according to Mark Rosewater. We could be putting our blinged out serialized cards on the line! Now I can see why ante contradicts certain aspects of the game. If I want to bling out my deck or show off all my rare cards in one deck that does not push me to want to play for ante. I would construct decks with the least expensive cards with the highest probability of winning games. Deck construction would be totally different and non-intuitive as you would not want to play the strongest cards for fear of losing them and having to face them in subsequent duels. Instead, you would put easily replaceable cards in your deck. Imagine if you had to ante reserved list cards? I do not think ante cards are fun in any way. Randomly losing an expensive card or even a card with sentimental valuer is backbreaking and I think would lead to a lot of people leaving the game frustrated and unhappy as the best cards get plucked away. This would also lead to situations where people with a lot of money would prey on those willing to invest less in the game. games are already pay to win so this would make it seem more like who can afford to replace cards. I am going to discuss all the ante cards separately but I did want to talk a little about the ante mechanic as a whole. Maybe we see an ante card in an unset? Amulet of Quoz actually has some lore behind it which is a real reason to discuss some of the reserved list ante cards individually. The amulet of Quoz was used by someone in the Carthalion family to banish Tevesh Szat from dominaria. So, what does this card do? In a hypothetic world where every duel was for ante would you play this card? I don't think you do. for 6 mana your opponent either antes another card or the opponent can choose to end the game immediately by deciding the outcome with a coin flip. If the opponent is losing or does not think they can win they will likely just have the game decided with a toss of a coin. However, if the game is even or the opponent thinks they can win then this does nothing to help you actually win the game for 6 mana. Albeit, getting extra cards for a victory is tempting and if you really need to end a game because you have to go home then you can use this. Should commander be played with ante? maybe we can start a commander format with ante that gambles reserved list cards for fun.