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The company where I work has a sweet rewards and recognition system. If you go above and beyond your day-to-day work and go that extra mile, and if someone takes notice and remembers to thank you, you may receive a small gift card. It’s immaterial compared to your salary, of course, but the little extra goes along way in cheering up and feeling appreciated.
When I receive these rewards, my default gift card choice is Amazon—they have dozens of other options but honestly, what do they have that Amazon doesn’t already offer? Besides, most of the time I’m looking for new books, video games, and of course, Magic cards. Amazon carries all three!
When I received one of these rewards recently, I shopped around on Amazon and decided to try my luck at a draft set (three boosters) of Modern Horizons for $20. This set was released nearly one year ago, yet these boosters are still selling for under MSRP?
This inspired me to dig deeper into this set. Are boosters worth cracking? What are the best cards to open? What cards have upside potential? Let’s dive in!
Magic Lottery Tickets
I knew I was gambling a little bit when I chose to spend my gift card on Modern Horizons boosters. While there is plenty in the set worth opening, there’s also a fair share of garbage rares that could render a booster pack worth less than a quarter, like any given booster pack.
Using Trader Tools’ set browsing feature, I was able to quickly locate the cards that would net you immediate profit via buylist if you pay around $6.50 per booster.
In total, I count 13 cards you could crack from a $6.50 booster pack of Modern Horizons and immediately ship to a buylist for profit. These 13 cards break down further: 3 rares and 10 mythic rares. In total, the set has 53 rares and 15 mythic rares. That means if you open a rare, you have a 6% chance of buylisting it for profit immediately. If you open a mythic rare, it’s a 66% chance. If we assume rares occur twice per sheet and mythic rares appear once, we can combine rares and mythic rares together to estimate that each booster pays off on a roughly 13.2% frequency.
I don’t love those odds. They’re better than scratch-off tickets from your local gas station, but at $6.50 a pop I can’t say I’m inspired.
It gets worse. There are around 32 rares from Modern Horizons—more than half—that buylist for less than $0.50! If you buy a booster pack of this set, your odds of opening cards worth less than a dollar are greater than 50%. At that rate, you’d be better off cracking two Ikoria boosters, in my opinion.
Feast or Famine
There are certainly some gems worth opening from this set, especially in foil. And if you’re after key Modern Horizons cards, I highly recommend buying those singles directly. Some of these have solid upside, too.
For example, until they’re reprinted Prismatic Vista and Force of Negation are going to remain expensive.
These two rares see play in multiple formats. The former offers terrific mana fetching flexibility and the latter act as Force of Will five through eight in Legacy and Vintage, not to mention mana-less counterspell protection in Modern.
Perhaps the Mythic Rares offer the greatest upside potential here. Wrenn and Six and Urza, Lord High Artificer remain top of the heap for good reason: they see play in multiple formats. On the casual side, players love their swords and slivers, so Sword of Truth and Justice and The First Sliver surely offer upside potential.
Then, of course, there’s Morophon, the Boundless, which I thought had more upside potential since day one.
Foils are even rarer and offer greater upside as this set continues to age.
But I must reiterate that these singles should be purchased individually. To attempt to crack these in packs is a fool’s errand. They say “a fool and his gold are soon parted” and Modern Horizons is the epitome of that moral. Learn from my experience, and take a look at the rares I opened in my draft set and their top buy prices:
Collector Ouphe: $2.50
Spiteful Sliver: $0.22
Tectonic Reformation: $0.15
(Aside: I am surprised Tectonic Reformation isn’t worth anything. Cycling made a huge comeback recently. Also, I have a budget mono-Red Commander deck where this could shine to help me avoid drawing excess mountains).
Pretty pitiful, right? In total my $20 worth of booster packs netted me $3 in trade credit. Ouch. And the scary part is, I could have done worse. Force of Rage, Future Sight, Nether Spirit, Marit Lage's Slumber, and Reap the Past all have top buy prices of a lonely nickel. If you needed any more convincing not to gamble on Modern Horizons packs, this data should just about do it.
A Glance Back
Interestingly, this isn’t the first time I’ve written about Modern Horizons. I also discussed the set and its opportunities back in November. Let’s take a quick look at my recommendations to see if any have gained traction since that article’s publishing.
Altar of Dementia and Eladamri's Call were the first two cards I mentioned, both as popular reprints. I mentioned that the former was under a buck and the latter was under $2. Nowadays both these cards buylist for $2.50, so these would have been profitable (though nothing to write home about unless you purchased large quantities).
I also mentioned Genesis as a bulk play, though those haven’t paid off just yet (I’m still waiting!). I also mentioned Wrenn and Six, Force of Negation, and Urza, Lord High Artificer, but expressed caution from buying back then. All three of these follow roughly the same pattern: they dipped from November through the winter but have recently rebounded. The bottom on all of these are in…until they’re reprinted of course.
Lastly, I talked about Prismatic Vista and the Horizon Canopy cycle of lands. About these, I said:
“You have Prismatic Vista at $30 and the five Horizon Canopy lands. These will all experience dsustainable demand in time, but are suffering from soft demand in the short term. Eventually these will be a buy—you just need to pick the price you’re comfortable paying and be content to wait a while.”
These all appear to have bottomed, and I’d say now is a good time to pick up copies you need for play. They should all offer an attractive risk-reward profile now.
Wrapping It Up
When I wrote about Modern Horizons back in November, prices were dropping rapidly and packs were selling below MSRP. Fast forward seven months and that trend may have finally stabilized. Packs still sell for below MSRP, but by a smaller margin. And prices may have finally found their bottom. This means that from here on, there could be some upside on the most played copies of cards from this set. I’m keeping my eye on a few.
Force of Negation, Prismatic Vista, and Urza, Lord High Artificer have really established themselves as tournament playable and offer plenty of upside. Foils will be especially pricey. Some casual favorites including The First Sliver and Sword of Truth and Justice could move up slowly over time. And let’s not forget Morophon, the Boundless and Serra the Benevolent, two personal favorites of mine.
But I must advise that you purchase the singles you want directly. Do not play the Modern Horizons lottery—there are too many awful cards you could open, rendering your purchase nearly worthless. I’ve got the odds of making your money back at around 13%, which does not make for an attractive bet. You’d be better off betting on the New York Jets to win the Superbowl.
Lurrus's inclusion in Burn represents perhaps the most straightforward path for any companion post-nerf. Just as Burn was able to free-roll the companion with no mainboard changes, I imagine Lurrus will 
We saw some Burn decks 
Once opponents dealt with the first Lurrus, BGx would turn to Unearth to give the Nightmare Cat another of its nine lives and keep the value train rolling. This Unearth-Lurrus package is appealing in BGx for the same reason that Snapcaster Mage has always tempted Golgari mages with a blue splash, except that bringing back permanents tends to be more high-impact than recovering instants and sorceries. Without the companion restriction, mainboard Lurrus boasts an even higher ceiling, letting players recast the likes of Bloodbraid and Liliana.
Prowess decks without high-costed permanents will definitely want to run Lurrus in the sideboard, just as the Burn decks will. But there's less of a reason to go that route post-nerf, and Bedlam Reveler should make a compelling comeback in the coming weeks. In any case, while Mono-Red Prowess should remain a top-tier deck, I do believe 
Don't worry, 80-card enthusiasts: Yorion, Sky Nomad isn't going anywhere, either! But the nerf should significantly loosen the card's stranglehold on blue-based midrange.
These decks may change very little, but Yorion is nonetheless a less attractive plan than it used to be. As it costs more mana, it's not as flexible as it once was, which should draw some players back to 
Lurrus and Yorion may have occupied much of the discourse surrounding companions in Modern, but other such creatures were in fact printed! I expect these to suffer varying fates.
Obosh, the Preypiercer found its way into 
Instead, Wizards issued functional errata as a nerf to companion as a whole. Wizards 
While the move to rework an entire mechanic after release is unprecedented, it wasn't completely out of left-field. As early as 
Companion is now a tutoring mechanic. Rather than directly cast a companion from exile, players must tutor it for three mana. Therefore, it's no longer a complete freeroll, and significantly impacts playability.
better than not having Lurrus. The only thing Lurrus did for Burn was mitigate flooding out. Lurrus is less efficient now, but it does still give Burn something to do when it has no burn. Therefore, I'd expect Burn decks to soldier on as if nothing's changed. Storm and Humans may keep running Jegantha, the Wellspring for similar reasons. However, Jegantha being so much more expensive than Lurrus makes that outcome less likely, as these decks were casting the 5/5 far less often than Burn would Lurrus.
turn thereafter. That cannot happen anymore. For the typical low-land Prowess or GBx decks (Lurrus's primary homes), this means that Lurrus has been delayed by a turn. They can tutor on turn three and play Lurrus on four. Of course, spending turn three tutoring is far from the gameplan of either deck.
Pros
"If you print it, they will built it," or however that old adage goes from Field of Dream-Den. Nowhere does it ring truer than in 
Prowess is accommodating Lurrus at any price; usually, that means splashing black, 
Here to diversify the aggro section is 
The standard 
Secondly, the category is somewhat deceptive. The Prowess deck is showing considerable variation, some of which are close to entirely different decks. I've been categorizing decks based on their strategic characteristics and not stressing deck composition variance as long as decks share a recognizable gameplan. This is why Jund and Rock are lumped together as GBx Midrange while Temur Urza and Temur Reclamation are separated. The Prowess decks had been mono-red and distinguished from Burn by Soul-Scar Mage, and I've kept that definition going. The end of week 4 saw divergence as some Prowess decks started running black for discard spells. This week, there was a more even mix of BR and Mono Red, but they're still too strategically similar to separate.
The numbers are fairly clear. There remains not only deck diversity but strategic diversity. Unlike in 
For Magic purposes, consistency this refers to a deck's ability to play out its gameplan reliably. Burn is a very consistent deck because it has many cards that do similar things. It can't play the exact same way every game, but it is able to play one out that is very similar, recognizable, or predictable. Lightning Bolt and Rift Bolt are very different cards, but do close enough to the same job 
guarantee of seeing any four-of in a deck in a given game. It may never be drawn, and even if tutoring is available, it may be incorrect to choose that card. Thus, certainty has never had a place in constructed, only consistency.
This makes perfect sense if the nature of Commander is considered (and makes me think that Wizards doesn't get why Commander is popular). There is no consistency in Commander. The deck is 100 cards, and every nonbasic land is a singleton. Games can be, and usually are, wildly different from each other for that reason. This is a large part of the appeal. However, this also means that the risk of non-games are higher. Low consistency means high variance and high variance means more risk of non-games. Commander is, more than any other format, 
This was 
However, it doesn't have to be that way. Players like self-expression, which is a large part of what makes Commander great. Had the companions been made with that in mind, it may have been a success. Compare Lutri, the Spell Chaser to Yorion, Sky Nomad. The former requires considerable sacrifice, turning a consistent constructed deck into an inconsistent Commander deck. In return, there's a certainty boost. This makes Lutri a fun reward for outside-the-box deckbuilding and adds spice and variety to formats.
The older the format, the more broken Bridge from Below seems to become. Moden has been unseated as the freshest non-rotating format by now, but I still think its graveyard enablers and payoffs are sparse enough to warrant a return for this enchantment.
With Hogaak gone, though, Bridge remained on the banlist, even though it was banned to weaken the now-demolished Hogaak deck. 
I do think Bridge would see play if unbanned, specifically in Dredge. But I also don't think Dredge would suddenly become broken. The deck was fine pre-Hogaak, and would certainly be fine now; the deck has 
Fire was axed to lend a helping hand to tribal aggro decks featuring stat-buffing lords. In today's Modern world, Humans is the closest analogue, but that deck's main purpose is not to increase board presence using lords; it's to disrupt opponents with powerful enters and static effects.
Most other decks with x/1s and x/2s are fast enough to overwhelm the engine, but I can see Fire becoming something of a common tech for midrange mirrors; it keeps Bloodbraid Elf, Dark Confidant, and Lurrus off the table, I supposed. Even then, I expect its applications to prove slim, or far from polarizing.
Critically, other cards Wizards considered for the ban were Ancient Stirrings and Mox Opal, the latter of which was the most important to Ironworks Combo---it accelerated the deck by an extra turn, giving it the speed needed to compete in Modern.
Ironworks would again spearhead its own deck, but that deck would prove extremely fringe; to give a reference point, I think it would wind up in the competitive bracket occupied by Norin Soul Sisters, Doran Rock, and other outdated Modern decks from the format's earlier years. That's just what Ironworks is now, an outdated deck---without Opal giving it the speed it got by on, the strat would be DOA in Modern.
Which brings us to the risk: what if Ironworks did prove problematic? That's the worst-case scenario, but my solution here is simple: just re-ban it.
There are other cards on the banlist I think could maybe come back to Modern, or are worth thinking about returning even as a thought experiment. And yes, those cards include Splinter Twin!
