Modern Horizons 3 Timeless & Historic Decks & Set Review (Part 3)

Hey everyone! With Modern Horizons 3 dropping on Arena in less than a week now, I’m continuing with my in-depth Timeless and Historic set review analyzing some more very powerful cards along with a bunch of decklists I’ve been theorycrafting in preparation for the big release. If you’ve missed part 1 or part 2 I definitely recommend checking them out since there’s a lot of really powerful, high impact cards covered in those, as well as some decklists that I think are likely to be big players post-MH3.

I’ll also be putting together an article that compiles all of my theorycraft lists in one place early next week so you’ve got a resource with a wide selection of decks ready to try on day 1, and then once the set drops I’m going to be playtesting a bunch and should hopefully have some full deck guides out once I’ve had time to figure out what’s working and had time to refine some of these ideas. I’ve never been more hyped for a set before and there’s so much potential for new decks to emerge in both formats so let’s dive into it!

Primal Prayers

This is a really cool card that I think could birth a new archetype in both formats. On its face this is a pretty powerful effect if you’re using it fairly enabling you to immediately cast two 1-3 drop creatures at instant speed, and potentially even more if you’re running other energy producers. However this card seems strongest as a combo enabler alongside another new card in Guide of Souls.

Guide of Souls

Guide of Souls is another card that is pretty powerful on its own so having two of the main combo pieces also being decent when you don’t have the combo itself should be a huge bump to consistency. This Soul Warden style effect is already appealing for a few Historic decks such as Amalia combo and Heliod Combo so Guide of Souls providing the same effect with the upside of giving one of your attacking creatures evasion, and having 2 toughness so it doesn’t die to Orcish Bowmasters means that this is just a strict upgrade in both of those decks.

As I mentioned though this combos really well with Primal Prayers since if you cast this, and then another creature you get an energy back allowing you to then cast another creature for free which enables a lot of different looping shenanigans. I think the best way to use this is alongside Ominous Traveler since if you have Guide of Souls and Primal Prayers in play and you cast Ominous Traveler you get to conjure a card from its spellbook and then get an energy back, then cast the spellbook card (assuming it costs 3 or less) bouncing the Ominous Traveler and getting you another energy allowing you to recast Ominous Traveler again etc and looping repeatedly.

This not only provides you with infinite life and infinite creatures but it also wins the game the same turn since you can get Champion of the Perished off the spellbook which grows as you cast other Zombies from the spellbook, then get multiple Dominating Vampire to steal all of your opponent’s creatures and use the final Dominating Vampire to give Champion of the Perished haste (which will almost certainly have over 20 power at that point) to attack for lethal.

If you’ve played either of the Goblin Trapfinder decks in Alchemy or Historic that utilizes this loop to win then you’ll know the big downside is that you can time out if you don’t play fast enough (since each player has a 5 minute time limit for each turn no matter how fast you’re taking actions), however the loop in this variant should be a little faster since you don’t need to generate mana off Ashnod's Altar which would require extra inputs each loop, and you’ll sometimes be able to use Guide of Souls to give Champion of the Perished flying for lethal which avoids you needing to steal all of your opponent’s creatures.

The one difference here compared to previous iterations of the combo is that you can brick in theory if you pick a creature that costs more than 3 but that would only happen if you hit exactly Wolfkin Outcast, Howlpack Piper, and Heron-Blessed Geist as your three choices which is very unlikely. Overall since Ominous Traveler works as a one card enabler and win condition alongside Guide of Souls (whilst also being an okay card on its own in long grindier games) I think it’s much better than alternatives like Greenbelt Rampager that require another piece like Satoru, the Infiltrator to win, and can fail if you have too much energy.

Recruiter of the Guard

Another new card that I think is a perfect fit for this archetype is Recruiter of the Guard which can find both of your combo pieces, can be cast off Primal Prayers, and can search for 1 ofs as part of a toolbox if you need an out to a specific scenario such as Solitude as a way to kill a creature, or Witch Enchanter if you need to kill an artifact or enchantment, or need a land.

Outside of that this card seems like it should be great in blink shells alongside Ephemerate and Phelia, Exuberant Shepherd, finding Phelia, Exuberant Shepherd itself, or a variety of other creatures with ETBs you can blink such as Solitude, Grief, Juggernaut Peddler, Skyclave Apparition etc.

Malevolent Rumble

One final new card I think could work well in this shell is Malevolent Rumble which can find Primal Prayers and ramp into it, as well as finding Guide of Souls, Ominous Traveler, or a land if you need it.

Outside of Primal Prayers combo this seems like a card that other ramp decks could be interested in as well – in Historic devotion for example a lot of lists are running Invasion of Ixalan or Up the Beanstalk in the Oath of Nissa slot and this could work very well there as a way to dig towards your key cards whilst also ramping into them, so this is one I’m definitely going to be thinking about when building ramp and combo decks in future.

This is my initial list for this combo – this is a Timeless variant utilizing Solitude but the rest of the list outside of the manabase is legal in Historic so this should be relatively easy to port over there, and will probably be more powerful due to the relative lower power level.

The key card in this list that I’m excited to try out is Cabaretti Revels which has worked very well alongside Ominous Traveler in the past, and seems nice here since if you have Cabaretti Revels and Primal Prayers, if you cast Ominous Traveler you’re guaranteed to hit Guide of Souls which lets you then combo off.

Additionally your more expensive creatures like Recruiter of the Guard can help you find Ominous Traveler more easily via Cabaretti Revels, and it’s a nice way for you to turn Solitude from card disadavantage to card neutral when you evoke it.

One issue with Cabaretti Revels is that you do need to run a high creature count for it to be effective or you can be left in spots where you have it in play but no creatures to trigger it which often forces you to run a low number of non-creature spells but we have a few ways to mitigate that in this list.

Firstly Witch Enchanter is a really nice way for us to run a higher creature count without cutting anything else since it’s a land early on that we can cast as a 4 drop to trigger Cabaretti Revels or kill an artifact or enchantment later in the game, plus it can be pitched to Solitude and searched by Recruiter of the Guard.

Secondly we’ve got Malevolent Rumble which is not only great at finding our key enchantments, but can be used to grab creatures once we have Cabaretti Revels, and the Eldrazi token can help us cast the creature we find immediately too.

One other downside of using Cabaretti Revels to consistently enable the combo is that we can’t run any other 1 drops outside of Guide of Souls, however that’s not as big of an issue since we still have access to good quality acceleration in Utopia Sprawl which is usually much more resilient than mana dorks (although this is one area where convering this list to Historic may be difficult since it’s tricky to have enough Forests and mana of your other colors without fetchlands).

I think there’s a decent chance that there could be a better build that doesn’t run Cabaretti Revels (especially since I’m still a bit unsure if my current creature count is high enough), but it has a lot of nice synergy here so I’m excited to try this out. Either way I definitely think this combo is likely to be good since all of your pieces outside of Ominous Traveler are good on their own which is a huge bonus for consistency.

Planar Genesis

This is a really interesting card that is somewhat reminiscent of Impulse and Growth Spiral, and I think there are a number of decks in both formats that will be very interested in this card.

This basically feels like a modal card to me where you’ll almost always want to ramp with this if you cast it on curve but is great as an Impulse style effect later in the game when you have the mana and are looking for specific cards so this will likely be excellent in combo decks that also need specific lands or want to be accelerating.

Three Timeless decks that I think will be very interested in this are Wilderness Reclamation, Indomitable Creativity, and Show and Tell utilizing the new Shifting Woodland.

This seems like a great fit in Wilderness Reclamation decks since it accelerates to four lands on turn 3 to enable you to start utilizing your namesake card earlier, and then is great at digging towards specific cards once you have Wilderness Reclamation online such as Mana Drain, Memory Deluge, or Nexus of Fate for example.

Because of this I imagine more combo focused variants will like this a lot since it makes it easier to chain Nexus of Fate together, but in my recent testing with the archetype I’ve preferred more conventional control variants with Nexus of Fate as a 1 of to give you inevitability on longer games since your overall card quality is higher (due to having fewer Nexus of Fate which are awful to draw early), and lets you utilize Mana Drain mana better.

One card in particular that works very nicely alongside Mana Drain is Shark Typhoon since the extra mana enables you to either hardcast it early which a lot of decks really struggle to beat, or channel it to produce a big flyer and then still have mana open to interact the following turn.

My issue with running Shark Typhoon in control is that it’s a pretty mediocre card when you don’t have the extra mana from Mana Drain, but I think that changes with Wilderness Reclamation where Shark Typhoon is actually a really nice way to use the extra mana which Wilderness Reclamation provides you.

Overall I’ve been having reasonable success with a less combo focused version of Wilderness Reclamation recently and I think Planar Genesis is likely to be a very nice upgrade there for sure.

Another combo deck that really values getting a third land into play before their turn 3 is Indomitable Creativity since it enables you to crack a red fetch for Dwarven Mine and use Indomitable Creativity to cheat a big creature like Atraxa, Grand Unifier into play on turn 3 which is really powerful.

The only real alternatives we currently have for setting this up is Growth Spiral or Explore which both require higher land counts and are much worse in the mid-late game, and pure ramp effects like Into the North which is significantly worse in the mid-lategame so Planar Genesis being a big step up on all of those cards means that Creativity decks now get a nice boost to speed without losing card quality.

Shifting Woodland

Another deck that I think can utilize Planar Genesis well is Show and Tell utilizing another very powerful new card in Shifting Woodland, and this is definitely the one I’m most excited about out of all three.

Show and Tell was the boogeyman of Timeless for a good while recently – it’s definitely fallen off since then due to the big increase in blue tempo decks that have emerged since the addition of Mana Drain, and with the addition of Grief coming in Modern Horizons 3 (which I expect to be very popular) I was expecting Show and Tell to be in a really rough spot, but I think Shifting Woodland has the potential to completely change that dynamic.

This is one of the most powerful lands I’ve ever seen which enables you to copy any permanent from your graveyard for 4 mana if you have delirium online – note this is not a tap ability so you can tap Shifting Woodland itself to pay for this although the copy you make will be tapped if you do so. This has a lot of utility and I could see this being used in multiple shells but the ceiling on this card is using it to copy Omniscience which will usually win you the game that turn.

This is a really big deal for Timeless Show and Tell decks since it gives the deck a way to win which can’t be disrupted by discard spells or counterspells, and both of those points of interaction will also help fuel your graveyard for delirium, so this now gives the deck a secondary angle of attack that really nullifies the main points of interaction that people used to stop Show and Tell itself.

This now means that having one angle of interaction isn’t going to be enough – if you have discard spells or counterspells then they can use Shifting Woodland, if you have graveyard hate they can use Show and Tell, and even if you have Surgical Extraction for Omniscience you can still lose to Show and Tell into Omniscience, or Show and Tell into Atraxa, Grand Unifier if you successfully extract Omniscience.

Having said that there are a number of extra deckbuilding restrictions that need to be met if you are to enable Shifting Woodland consistently such as getting delirium online and getting Omniscience into the graveyard, whilst still running enough cantrips and card selection to be able to consistently win once Omniscience is in play.

I don’t think getting delirium online will be as big of an issue as it might seem initially since you won’t want to use Shifting Woodland unless Omniscience is already in the graveyard, so you only really need three other card types which should be fairly easy to achieve via lands, instants, and sorceries without needing to run cards like Mishra's Bauble that are awful when you’re trying to combo off with Omniscience.

Getting Omniscience into the graveyard whilst still having a high density of ways to win with Omniscience is a little trickier and basically forces you into running either black or red as a third color since you really want cards which loot immediately so they can both discard Omniscience into the graveyard, and help you find your win condition when going off with Omniscience which you don’t really get access to in other colors.

Black was definitely the more appealing of the two since you get Thoughtseize which provides you with some interaction, is an early sorcery in the graveyard for delirium, and provides you with another way to discard Omniscience in a pinch, plus you get some really nice sideboard cards like Abrupt Decay which answers basically every hate card the opponent can run against you.

If eight looting effects are sufficient then black should work as a splash since you get both Tainted Indulgence and Sultai Charm (which also provides you with another way to answer hate cards), and I’m optimistic that 8 should be enough since you have a lot of other ways to dig towards them via cards like Brainstorm and Planar Genesis.

Speaking of which Planar Genesis seems really nice here as a way to both accelerate and find Shifting Woodland early on, then seems great at digging for combo pieces, and then digging for your win conditions once you have Omniscience in play.

Overall if this list can get delirium online, pitch Omniscience into the yard, and win once Omniscience is in play consistently then I’m concerned that Show and Tell could rise back up again as one of the best decks in the format even in the face of Mana Drain and Grief.

Fanatic of Rhonas

This is another card that looks very powerful to me – obviously 2 mana dorks need to come with significant upside to be played over their 1 mana counterparts but potentially tapping for 4 mana is absolutely insane and can lead to some very explosive starts.

The eternalize also mitigates one of the biggest weaknesses of mana dorks in that they’re weak to interaction since if the opponent does kill it, you can bring it back as a 4/4 for 4 mana which then enables its own ferocious ability enabling it to tap for 4 mana if it survives.

I don’t think this has a natural home in Timeless yet but it seems really good in Historic Mono Green Devotion since that list already wants to be running a decent number of creatures with 4 or more power to trigger Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner and should enable some crazy curves even if you don’t have a turn 1 accelerant.

For example if you cast Fanatic of Rhonas on turn 2 and it survives (having 4 toughness should help with that against red decks like Wizards), then on turn 3 you can cast an Old-Growth Troll or Polukranos Reborn which turns on ferocious, you can then tap Fanatic of Rhonas for 4 mana, spend 3 of that to cast Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner and untap Fanatic of Rhonas with the -1 and then cast Cavalier of Thorns!

Additionally if you didn’t have Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner you can still cast Outcaster Trailblazer on turn 3 which produces a mana and turns on ferocious which enables you to cast Cavalier of Thorns the same turn as well.

The eternalize also seems very nice in Devotion since if you lead on turn 1 Utopia Sprawl into turn 2 Fanatic of Rhonas and the opponent kills it, you can immediately eternalize it on turn 3 which makes the opponent’s removal a lot less punishing.

This is where I’ll be starting with Historic Devotion post-MH3 – this is one of the decks I’ve had the most success with in Historic recently mainly due to the great addition of Outcaster Trailblazer, and I think Fanatic of Rhonas will provide an additional boost to speed, and more importantly consistency since one of my issues with the decks is your early mana dorks dying can leave you stranded with expensive cards in hand and the eternalize seems huge to help fix that.

I’m really liking Wingbane Vantasaur in my current list since it works really well with Outcaster Trailblazer, it helps a lot against Wizards, and having maindeck interaction is really helpful, but I think going forwards you probably want to prioritize 3 drops so you can consistently get ferocious on turn 3 to tap Fanatic of Rhonas for 4 mana so I’m maxing out on Polukranos Reborn here instead.

Vexing Bauble

This seems like a very important hate cards in the format since it stops a number of cards that I expect to see play such as the pitch elementals, the flare cycle, and Omniscience to name a few.

Typically these sorts of hate cards are relegated to the sideboard for specific matchups and can never be brought in in the mirror but the fact this can cycle to draw a card changes that since you can always redraw with it if it’s not good in the given matchup, and in the mirror you can play it to lock out your opponent’s free spells, and then crack it when you’re ready to cast yours.

The fact that this is colorless is also huge since it means any deck can play it, but having said that I imagine it will most likely be relegated to the sideboard unless the format gets really warped around free spells.

One issue I have with Vexing Bauble is that it’s too slow to stop both Grief and Flare of Cultivation if you’re on the draw, so I think the main applications of this initially will be in the sideboard of creature decks against Up the Beanstalk to stop Fury and Solitude, and also probably against scam to stop Fury and Grief assuming they don’t use it turn 1 on the play.

I’m not sure how effective this will be as a tool against Show and Tell since they have both Veil of Summer and Abrupt Decay post-sideboard which stop it, as well as potentially Sultai Charm maindeck if my above list ends up working out.

Overall this is definitely a card I expect to have some applications initially, especially in decks that are weak to Fury and Solitude, but it’ll become much more impactful as more free spells get added to the format.

Disruptor Flute

This is another really interesting hate piece we’re getting that seems very potent against a lot of decks.

Firstly the ability to tax a spell by 3 will be huge against any deck that relies on casting the same spell repeatedly such as storm decks like Underworld Breach by naming Dark Ritual, or the new Primal Prayers deck by naming Ominous Traveler, but it can also be very useful in spots where you know the opponent’s hand via Grief or Thoughtseize and can lock them out of casting a particular card, or against a combo deck like Show and Tell by naming their key combo card.

Then the Pithing Needle part of the card seems very big as well – Pithing Needle already sees a good amount of sideboard play to shut off cards like Necropotence, Yawgmoth, Thran Physician, Oko, Thief of Crowns etc. and will have new targets to name from MH3 like Shifting Woodland.

Being 1 mana more expensive is obviously a downside but having flash will definitely make up for that in certain spots, for example if the opponent casts Necropotence you can flash this in in response which will just lock the opponent out of drawing for the rest of the game whereas if you cast Pithing Needle at sorcery speed they would just choose not to play the Necropotence.

Overall this card seems like a great upgrade to Pithing Needle for your sideboards since the taxing ability increases its utility even further and makes it useful in a bigger variety of matchups.

The Creation of Avacyn

This card is really interesting and seems potentially very powerful to me, essentially acting as a 1 card way to tutor and cheat a big creature into play without having to worry about graveyard hate stopping your reanimation spell or removal stopping your Natural Order or Indomitable Creativity for example.

The big downside of The Creation of Avacyn compared to the previously mentioned ways of cheating big creatures into play is that you have to wait two turns to get the creature which is pretty slow if you don’t cast this before turn 3, especially in Timeless.

The other two significant downsides to this are the life loss off chapter 2 which can often lose you the game especially against decks like Zoo and Burn, and the fact the the opponent can kill the enchantment before chapter 3 meaning this will essentially become 3 mana deal 6 or 7 damage to yourself so there are very real risks here too.

Out of the two formats I think I’m most excited for this in Timeless since it provides you with another very strong turn 1 play off Dark Ritual, whilst still being decent to cast on turn 2 off Deathrite Shaman.

I don’t think you can afford to play this alongside Necropotence since losing life off chapter 2 is such a big drawback when your life total is incredibly important for Necropotence, but I could see it being very nice alongside Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord since you don’t necessarily need to spend slots in the deck on big creatures to cheat into play that are awkward to draw like Atraxa, Grand Unifier when you already want to be running powerful vampires like Vein Ripper and Saint Elenda to cheat into play with Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord.

This is my initial build of The Creation of Avacyn alongside Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord and I’ve chosen to run it alongside the Reanimate package and Death's Shadow since there’s a lot of nice cross-synergy between them.

Losing life off chapter 2 of The Creation of Avacyn is usually a big downside but it can also be used as a way to get a big Death's Shadow down quickly, and alongside Thoughtseize, Bitter Triumph, fetch lands and shock lands, and Reanimate, this list should be good at applying pressure with Death's Shadow very quickly.

As mentioned in part 1 of the set review I’m a bit skeptical on the viability of Death's Shadow post-MH3 if Solitude sees a lot of play since I think it’ll go hand in hand with Swords to Plowshares and both are really punishing for Death's Shadow, but there are so many nice synergies here that incidentally involve losing life that it seemed like a great fit.

This deck has multiple really powerful turn 1 and 2 plays such as Dark Ritual into The Creation of Avacyn, Dark Ritual into Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord into Vein Ripper / Saint Elenda, evoke Grief into Reanimate, and cycle Troll of Khazad-dûm into Reanimate (a lot of which also set up for a quick Death's Shadow afterwards) so this deck looks like it should apply pressure very quickly.

Saint Elenda seems nice here as a 1 of which will be useful to get off The Creation of Avacyn if you feel your life total is a little too low and you don’t have Death's Shadow whilst also increasing your chances of finding a big vampire to cheat into play via Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord.

Then outside of Grief and Troll of Khazad-dûm you can use Reanimate to bring back your big vampires like Vein Ripper and Saint Elenda because we have multiple discard outlets to get them into the graveyard such as Bitter Triumph, Phyrexian Scrapyard, and Thoughtseize which represents another powerful line.

My main concerns with this list though is that without Deathrite Shaman you might be too reliant on Dark Ritual to cast your three drops, and 5 vampires might not be enough for Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord to be consistent in which case you could drop the Death's Shadow and Thoughtseize to run Deathrite Shaman and max out on Saint Elenda as shown in the list below.

I imagine this will probably be the more consistent of the two mainly because it makes Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord a lot more consistent, but I do think that The Creation of Avacyn and the Reanimate package alongside Death's Shadow is definitely worth exploring.

Ripples of Undeath

This seems like a nice tool for decks with heavy graveyard synergies, with the best immediate home probably being ‘dredgeless’ dredge in both formats since it enables your graveyard synergies and also lets you rebuy lands if you’re missing land drops, and any self mill cards that you mill over like Glimpse the Unthinkable to set up even faster and ensure you don’t run out of gas.

I’m even more excited for this in Timeless where you can run dredge alongside Flare of Denial as a free counterspell which you can sacrifice Narcomoeba, Prized Amalgam, and Merfolk Secretkeeper to enable.

My issue with Flare of Denial in these lists is that cutting enablers for it makes your proactive gameplan less consistent, and cutting mill payoffs for it makes your mill cards less effective – essentially you’re more likely to mill over Flare of Denial than draw it which means it might be worth running more payoffs instead.

Ripples of Undeath could help change this dynamic somewhat by allowing you to rebuy Flare of Denial that you mill over which actually makes it quite a lot better since you’re able to dig for it a lot more effectively, so I’m really excited to try it out in the list below.

As mentioned in part 1, Flare of Malice could also be a nice option in the sideboard against creature decks which Ripples of Undeath could also help you find more consistently, but I imagine graveyard hate will be fairly prevalent in sideboards so I think dredge will probably continue being a best of 1 only deck going forwards.

Buried Alive

This is a card that has the potential to enable some pretty broken synergies but I don’t think we have enough tools to really maximize this yet. The main use I see for this is pitching three Arclight Phoenix into the graveyard to ideally bring back straight away.

Unfortunately we don’t have many free spells so the best we can do in Timeless is turn 1 Strike It Rich into Dark Ritual into Buried Alive, (or turn 1 Dark Ritual into Buried Alive into Surgical Extraction but using Surgical Extraction in the maindeck just as a free spell will lead to real consistency issues, and if you are on the play and don’t have a fetch land you’d have to use Surgical Extraction on your own Arclight Phoenix which would completely defeat the point).

Without having extra tools like Gut Shot or Manamorphose I think it’s going to be a difficult deckbuilding puzzle to enable those fast starts whilst still having a functional deck with an average draw, plus this sort of deck will be incredibly vulnerable to graveyard hate which means it’s probably only suitable for best of 1.

In Historic we don’t have Dark Ritual but the format is slower so there’s a chance that a Phoenix build running Collected Conjuring could work – this is a pet deck of mine that has always been so fun to play but has never been good enough and it wouldn’t surprise me if that continues to be the case post-MH3, but the line of Collected Conjuring hitting Buried Alive to pitch 3 Arclight Phoenix and another sorcery, and then immediately bringing them all back does seem potentially powerful to me so it’s definitely worth at least trying.

As previously mentioned I think these sorts of decks are too vulnerable to graveyard hate to be viable in best of 3 so this will most likely be a best of 1 only deck. From my experience the main tension when trying to build with Collected Conjuring and Arclight Phoenix is having enough 3 mana sorceries that you get consistent value off Collected Conjuring, whilst also having a high enough density of 1 mana spells so that you can still bring back your Arclight Phoenix normally when you don’t have Collected Conjuring which is why I’m running just 1 and 3 mana sorceries.

Another new card that helps with this dynamic is Sundering Eruption which acts as both a 3 mana sorcery for Collected Conjuring, and an untapped land if we draw it that’s really nice against Ugin's Labyrinth, Utopia Sprawl, Belcher, and any greedy multicolored deck.

The final 3 mana sorcery I’m running here is Pieces of the Puzzle which is great at finding Collected Conjuring and ensuring you don’t run out of gas if you cast this in the early game, and is potentially a high impact hit off Collected Conjuring if you happen to bin some Arclight Phoenix off it.

Then for the 1 mana sorceries we have Sleight of Hand as a cantrip with good selection, Faithless Looting as a way to pitch any Arclight Phoenix that we draw, Thoughtseize to disrupt the opponent which is very important against combo decks who can goldfish faster than us, Shove Aside as cheap interaction, and Strike It Rich to accelerate into our top end cards like Collected Conjuring, enabling us to bring back Arclight Phoenix on turn 2 via Faithless Looting, and enabling us to cast A-Demilich from the graveyard after Collected Conjuring.

Speaking of which Buried Alive letting us put any creatures into the yard allows us to run some useful 1 ofs such as Ox of Agonas that’s great at refueling us when we’re low on resources, and A-Demilich which can be cast from the graveyard after Collected Conjuring if we hit Buried Alive and Strike It Rich, or we cast another spell before Collected Conjuring.

The manabase is pretty painful here though, having to run Mana Confluence alongside shock lands and the new MDFC which represents a lot of damage, and there’s a very good chance that a list like this won’t be able to keep up post-MH3 but Collected Conjuring is one of my favorite cards so I’ll definitely be trying to make this one work if I can.

This is probably the most unhinged theorycraft list I’ve made in this entire series since it’s super all-in on having crazy fast starts but there’s also a lot going on.

Firstly we’ve got the aforementioned combo of Strike It Rich, Dark Ritual, and Buried Alive for the turn 1 triple Arclight Phoenix start but I felt like I needed another payoff for running 4 Dark Ritual and have chosen to also run The Creation of Avacyn alongside a couple of Atraxa, Grand Unifier to provide another very strong turn 1 play.

Strike It Rich also seems very nice here at both enabling Arclight Phoenix to return on turn 2 via Faithless Looting, and also being another way that we can ramp into The Creation of Avacyn on turn 2.

Since I’m running Atraxa, Grand Unifier alongside Buried Alive and Faithless Looting which can pitch it into the graveyard, I’ve also chosen to run Reanimate so that we can also potentially Reanimate Atraxa, Grand Unifier.

With there only really being 1 good reanimation target that we’re running as a 2 of, we can’t afford to run Reanimate in high numbers since it’ll be dead a lot of the time so I’m running it here as a 1 of that we can tutor with Gamble when we can set up Atraxa, Grand Unifier lines, whilst also being able to search for other cards in other scenarios.

Typically I don’t like Gamble at all because it’s card disadvantage and the downside is way too risky but in this list we have a number of other cards that we don’t mind discarding that we’re happy to search like Arclight Phoenix and Ox of Agonas. Speaking of which we have a singleton Ox of Agonas as both a Buried Alive and Gamble target that can help refuel, and another 1 of in Surgical Extraction which is a Gamble tutor target if we need graveyard hate or a third spell to bring back Arclight Phoenix when we have no more mana.

I’m not massively optimistic about this one since it has a number of red flags for inconsistency (eg. running Dark Ritual but only having 8 cards in the deck that you can use it with, having two or three different gameplans where there isn’t always cross synergy within the setup cards, and having to run cards like Gamble etc.), but this list also has a lot of incredibly powerful fast lines and these sorts of all-in decks that mulligan a bit more aggressively do often work well in best of 1 – either way I’m very excited to try it out.

Invert Polarity

This is a really difficult card to evaluate since if you win the flip this is really good, and if you lose the flip this is pretty overcosted for both formats, so the question is whether this is worth running in your deck over more efficient options.

In Timeless my guess would be that this is probably too slow since 3 mana counterspells like Archmage's Charm have felt pretty clunky ever since the format began, and there have been spots where 2 mana counters have felt too slow on the draw as well so I’m skeptical this is fast enough for Timeless.

In Historic where the format is a little slower I’m more optimistic about this – Archmage's Charm has been pretty good in the past and while this loses its utility, I think it will usually win you the game on the spot when you win the flip so this actually seems like it could be worth running there.

Having said that we do now have a nice selection of decent 2 mana counterspells in Historic like Reprieve, No More Lies, and Change the Equation, and the format is likely to speed up a lot with the addition of MH3 so 3 mana counterspells might end up being too slow, but if not this is definitely one to consider.

On a bit of a tangent I never normally like to talk about design when doing set reviews or building decks since I’m normally purely focused on trying to figure out the best way to use a card, or the best deck with the cardpool we have, but I really don’t like the design on this card and hope that it doesn’t end up being good enough because it’ll be really rough to play against in a competitive setting.

I don’t mind coin flips being part of the game if the difference between a heads and a tails is fairly minimal and you just get a small bonus if you get lucky, but designs like this where the difference between heads and tails is either falling behind because you’re paying for an overcosted spell, or often winning the game on the spot because you steal their permanent from the stack with no real in between and no counterplay seems like it’ll lead to a lot of rough gameplay experiences, and like I mentioned it does seem strong enough that it could potentially see competitive play in Historic.

I have no issue with this in a more casual setting but losing to this card in high stakes games is really gonna suck so I’m kinda hoping this one doesn’t end up being good enough.

Consign to Memory

On its face this seems like a pretty nice sideboard tool against Ugin's Labyrinth decks where you can cast this and replicate it to counter both a colorless permanent like an Eldrazi and counter its triggered ability too so if Ugin's Labyrinth decks do start to take off, this is one you should definitely bear in mind in your sideboard.

You could also potentially run this as a way to scam a creature like Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath into play in a similar way to how people have used Stifle in the past – out of the two Stifle is definitely the more maindeckable card since it can stop the opponent’s fetch lands but this seems like a particularly nice option in the sideboard of Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath decks since it can also be used proactively.

Outside of that it can be used to stop ETBs on creatures like the evoke elementals but that doesn’t seem particularly good to me since they still get the creature so I think this will mainly be a way to counter top end cards from Ugin's Labyrinth decks.

Conclusion

So that’s another part down and the more I dive into these cards and think about different decks and builds that are possible when this drops, the more excited I get for this set! It’s really gonna have a massive impact and will probably enable more new decks than we’ve seen from any set in the past including the big Jumpstart sets which is so exciting.

As mentioned above I’ll also be putting together an article that compiles all of my theorycraft lists in one place early next week so you’ve got a resource with a wide selection of decks ready to try on day 1. Thanks a lot for reading!