Introduction

For the past few months, Modern has been completely revolving around the Energy decks, both straight-up Boros versions and three-color ones splashing for Black.

The combination of a fast, resilient clock, 《Phlage, Titan of Fire’s Fury》 and 《The One Ring》 pushed all other fair decks out of the format, and all that remained in addition to Energy were various combo decks that tried to ignore it. Many of these decks played 《The One Ring》 themselves, too.

Player numbers started dwindling down and even people who usually love the format felt like the format was in a terrible place.

On Monday, the players got what they wanted. Not only were three cards banned from the Energy deck, a bunch of old favorites were unbanned to boost other archetypes!

Banned:

《The One Ring》
《Jegantha, the Wellspring》
《Amped Raptor》

Unbanned:

《Mox Opal》
《Green Sun’s Zenith》
《Faithless Looting》
《Splinter Twin》

Renewable Energy

Weirdly enough, I think the Energy decks are still very viable choices despite these bans. 《The One Ring》 was never really a key part of the deck – it was at its best in the mirror match and you often boarded it out against other decks, which made it feel more like a forced addition for the mirror match arms race than a card you actually wanted to play.

To be fair, a part of that is caused by the fact that the other decks that 《The One Ring》 would’ve been good against could simply not be played in the metagame.

《Jegantha, the Wellspring》, on the other hand, was more like an afterthought in the deck. Sure, it came up every once in a while, but for the most part Modern games are too fast for a Colossapede to matter much. Similar to 《The One Ring》, the one matchup where Jegantha was actually useful was the mirror match. Thus, I don’t think either of them will be greatly missed.

The banning of 《Amped Raptor》 is interesting. On power level I think it’s tied with 《Bridge from Below》 for the title of the worst card on the banlist. Just like the 《Bridge from Below》, I think it’s obvious that the 《Amped Raptor》 got banned for the sins of other, more powerful cards.

Wizards wanted to make the Energy decks less powerful, but not unplayable, and therefore 《Amped Raptor》 died to save the mythic rares in MH3. Not what I would’ve personally done, but the intention behind the ban is clear.

After playing a few matches, this is how I would build the deck for the new metagame:

Mardu Energy

I wanted to replace the 《Amped Raptor》 with other red permanents, because without them your red permanent count for 《Ajani, Nacatl Pariah》 would be low enough to make it significantly less powerful.

Fortunately, 《Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer》 and 《Fable of the Mirror-Breaker》 fit into the deck very cleanly. 《Fable of the Mirror-Breaker》 also gives you some additional grinding power for long games, which is sorely needed now that you don’t have 《The One Ring》 anymore. Otherwise you would be overly reliant on 《Phlage, Titan of Fire’s Fury》.

Due to the importance of 《Phlage, Titan of Fire’s Fury》 in the mirror matches, I’ve added a couple of 《Emperor of Bones》 to the deck as well. Maindeckable graveyard hate is valuable against many other decks too – especially against those that play 《Atraxa, Grand Unifier》 or 《Archon of Cruelty》.

Another nod towards the importance of 《Phlage》 is 《Prismatic Ending》. Previously it was quite costly to play since it was often a blank hit from 《Amped Raptor》, but now you don’t need to worry about that anymore!

Who Let the Mox Out?

One thing to note about the unbans is that aside from 《Splinter Twin》, they’re all very open-ended, synergistic cards that work in many different shells. This must have been a conscious decision to breathe some fresh air into the format and shake up the metagame. Most importantly, all of these cards are fun to play with!

Out of the four cards, I think the most potential one by far is 《Mox Opal》. Fast mana is simply one of the best things to do in Magic, and there’s a reason why cards like 《Sol Ring》 and 《Black Lotus》 are among the absolute best picks in Vintage Cube too.

Don’t get me wrong, 《Faithless Looting》 and 《Green Sun’s Zenith》 are good too, there’s nothing wrong with them. I’m sure 《Faithless Looting》 at least will see a lot of play. However, they don’t get me as excited about the prospect of trying to break them as the 《Mox Opal》 does.

《Splinter Twin》 seems like a bit of an outlier here, as I think it’s unlikely to make a big impact on the format. It is an iconic Modern card for sure, but I feel like it should’ve stayed on the ban list so the fans could reminisce about how cool it was back in the day. Now it’s likely going to be like a retired athlete trying to return to the sports courts, only to be eclipsed by younger stars at the height of their powers.

Covering all of the possibilities for these cards would be quite a lot for one article, so I’m going to focus on what I’m the most interested in: the 《Mox Opal》 decks.

《Mox Opal》 Decks

Breach Combo

The first and most obvious option is the 《Underworld Breach》 combo, as it was powerful enough to be a competitive deck during Energy’s heyday even without the Mox. It does lose 《The One Ring》, but the addition of 《Mox Opal》 should make it dangerously fast and consistent.

Being able to play both 《Mox Opal》 and 《Mox Amber》 gives you incredibly explosive starts. I also love combo decks that get to play 《Urza’s Saga》, as it both enables your combo and acts as an alternative win condition.

I think this seems like a good home for 《Faithless Looting》 as well. The deck plays a lot of cards where the first copy is great, but the subsequent ones are not useful. 《Mox Opal》 and 《Mox Amber》 are the most glaring examples of this, but the same can apply to the legendary creatures as well. The deck has graveyard recursion too, and milling over a 《Faithless Looting》 with 《Malevolent Rumble》 is just free value.

The surge of artifact decks will of course also lead to a rise in the amount of hate cards people will have for you in their sideboards, so in the post-board games you have to be careful of cards like 《Meltdown》 and 《Stony Silence》.

Against 《Meltdown》, you have 《Spell Pierce》 and 《Force of Negation》, and against 《Stony Silence》 I like 《Boseiju, Who Endures》 quite a lot. It’s a low cost card that you can bring in even if you’re not sure if they have it, and you can find it off of 《Malevolent Rumble》.

Lantern Control

Next, we have good old Lantern Control:

This deck hasn’t seen much play since 《Mox Opal》 got banned, but it has gotten a bunch of new cards since those days, making me interested in the possibility of its return.

The inclusion of 《Urza’s Saga》 and 《The Mycosynth Gardens》 actually made me try it even before 《Mox Opal》 was unbanned, but it felt too slow, and also had significant weakness to 《The One Ring》. The Mox will undoubtedly help with the speed issues, and the bans helped with the other one. Maybe it’s time for Lantern to return?

《Urza’s Saga》 is a funny card in this deck. At the same time, it’s a really good Saga deck and a really bad one. It’s great at making the Construct tokens big, and the tutor ability is absolutely fantastic here as you’re trying to assemble a combination of 1-mana artifacts as quickly as possible.

At the same time, though, you’re not really trying to attack otherwise, and you even play 《Ensnaring Bridge》 to lock creatures out of combat. However, the Constructs do provide a valuable clock in matchups where the Bridges are bad.

《The Mycosynth Gardens》 is a card that looks innocuous, but has been very impressive in testing. Being able to copy 《Ensnaring Bridge》 gives you insurance against topdecked artifact removal spells, and copying the 《Millstone》 effects means you get to lock people out of the game much faster than you used to.

Hate cards are definitely issues for the Lantern deck as you can’t even sideboard in a way that would make you less reliant on artifacts. As a mitigating factor, you do have 8 discard spells in your deck to snag them out of the opponent’s hand before they get to cast them, and your entire game plan is centered around preventing them from drawing their best cards.

《Stony Silence》 is the easiest one to beat, as it doesn’t affect 《Ensnaring Bridge》 and you can sometimes remove it cleanly, but 《Meltdown》 can be a hard one to overcome.

Affinity

Last, but not the least, we have Affinity! This is where I’m at with it:

Here the 《Mox Opal》 enables some busted aggressive starts. 《Patchwork Automaton》 on turn 1 and 《Urza’s Saga》 churning out tokens starting from turn 2 are a lot scarier than the same things happening a turn cycle later.

What I like the most about this deck is how it plays against the hate cards. 《Kappa Cannoneer》 is the star of the show there, as it’s very hard to kill, and 《Emry, Lurker of the Loch》 lets you rebuild after a 《Meltdown》.

The threats of the deck ignore 《Stony Silence》 quite efficiently too. 《Kappa Cannoneer》 and 《Metallic Rebuke》 even let you tap 《Mox Opal》 for “mana” through 《Stony Silence》! And speaking of 《Metallic Rebuke》, the counterspells also give you game against the hate cards.

Conclusion

What these decks showcase is the highly versatile nature of 《Mox Opal》. From a pure combo deck like Breach to a quirky control deck like Lantern and a powerful beatdown deck like Affinity, 《Mox Opal》 enables it all. And these were just a few of the possibilities – there’s also Hammer Time, Scales, Broodscale combo and more!

Modern players are truly spoiled for choice now as there are so many fun things to try out – not just 《Mox Opal》 decks but the 《Faithless Looting》, 《Green Sun’s Zenith》 and 《Splinter Twin》 decks as well. You get to use your creativity to find the best possible ways to use all these powerful tools.

The period after unbans is always one of my favorite times to play Magic, and I hope you get to enjoy it as much as I do!

Until next time,

Matti Kuisma (X)

Cards Featured in This Article

《Mox Opal》

《Underworld Breach》

《Lantern of Insight》

《Kappa Cannoneer》