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Another eventful week of War of the Spark spoilers is in the books, and with it, another batch of wrapped-up brewing projects. As always, I've got some insights to share on that front today; this time dealing not with planeswalkers, but utility creatures. Dreadhorde Arcanist, for all its Snapcaster/Confidant imitations, struck me as a potential Modern-playable the moment I saw it. I've spent the past week refining a Delver shell that integrates the Zombie Wizard.
Evaluating Dreadhorde
In this section, we'll compare Dreadhorde Arcanist to its obvious foils and see how it lines up.
Dreadhorde vs. Snapcaster Mage
Far and away the most common parallel I've encountered is between Dreadhorde and Snapcaster Mage. True, they both dig instants or sorceries out of the graveyard, but the two are miles apart in terms of play. Snap provides a small burst of value and gives players the card immediately, while Arcanist makes them wait, but promises further resources down the road. Additionally, Snapcaster charges for the flashbacked spell, while Arcanist casts it for free if it lives for a turn cycle. And finally, the blue Wizard has flash, ensuring it remains a contender in control shells, while Arcanist seems destined for aggro-control.
Dreadhorde vs. Dark Confidant
This is a comparison I haven't heard anywhere, but I think Arcanist is much closer in function to Dark Confidant than it is to Snapcaster. It provides a recurring source of card advantage as of the turn its controller untaps with it, and until opponents find a way to deal with it: in Confidant's case, by attacking its pilot's life total; in Arcanist's, by either killing it or sticking a blocker. This key difference is one of a few that differentiate Bob from the newcomer.
Dark Confidant requires two things of pilots. Deckbuilding-wise, their deck must be sparing with high-CMC spells, lest the creature outright kill its controller by revealing something like Tasigur, the Golden Fang. Arcanist has a similar condition: it demands players run a critical mass of one-mana instants and sorceries. While that condition is more specific and harder to meet than Bob's, it also allows players the wiggle room to run high-cost spells should they so desire.
A nuance to this point is that Confidant rewards players for running many lands, a habit increasingly looking suspect in Modern as even the dominant rock decks are starting to trend Turbo Xerox in their construction (cantrip-heavy, land-light shells which increase consistency over long games, e.g. Grixis Shadow). On this deck construction metric, I think Arcanist slightly wins out over Bob, as cantrip-stocked decks have proven themselves better than land-heavy ones in this metagame (and, perhaps, in Magic).
Moving beyond deck construction, we can examine Confidant's second requirement: life. The Human taxes players life points for cards, and stops working when players run low on that resource. Conversely, Arcanist asks players to have one-mana instants or sorceries in the graveyard, something significantly tougher to achieve for most players, but perhaps trivial in the right shell; otherwise, it too stops working. On the plus side, though, choosing from a makeshift toolbox of cheap spells probably beats drawing a random card, especially when some of those spells are cantrips with tacked-on library manipulation. Arcanist's effect has a higher ceiling.
Life is usually in short supply down the road but in abundance early, and the inverse is true of spells in the graveyard. So I'd assess that overall, Confidant is better early-game, while Arcanist has the upper hand later. There are exceptions, of course; Arcanist is stronger against Burn; Confidant is more reliable against Rest in Peace; etc. Similarly, I think a deck can be built to consistently ensure Arcanist resembles Dark Confidant as of turn two.
Arcanist has one additional condition, though, that Confidant lacks: it needs to attack to activate its effect. That means that staring down the likes of Tarmogoyf, the 1/3 can't even help pilots find answers to such a game state, while Confidant is happy to draw players out of board stalls. This condition is perhaps tougher to account for. It helps that Arcanist is red, the color of direct damage spells. These cards remove blockers, but also maintain relevance against players lacking creatures, which is the kind of versatility we'll need from an effect Arcanist incentivizes us to load up on.
The final point of comparison is stats, which I evaluate as about even. 2 power is twice as much as 1 when it comes to bringing the beats, but Arcanist's surgical selection somewhat makes up for its lower damage output; it can flashback Lightning Bolt, after all. As for toughness, 3 is much greater than 1, especially since every point matters in Modern these days. Confidant dies to literally everything, including Gut Shot; Arcanist survives Stage 1 creature removal like Collective Brutality, Magma Spray, and Pyroclasm, which is ideal for sniping early-game threats that would otherwise put players on the back foot. Besides Bolt, it mostly just dies to the heavy-duty stuff reserved for Tarmogoyf, Crackling Drake, and other Stage 2 creatures: Fatal Push, Lightning Axe, Path to Exile, etc.
Play Parameters
Given how the metagame has congealed around Arclight Phoenix, I decided to construct the Dreadhorde Arcanist deck in a way informed by that shape. After all, most of my testing would be done using free online clients, presumably against meta-conscious opponents. The most recent data I had access to identified Lightning Bolt as the most-played mainboard card and Surgical Extraction as the likeliest sideboard include, so my build set about mitigating the impact both those cards would have on my gameplan.
Beating Surgical
As I've written, UR decks not featuring Arclight Phoenix are already quite good against Surgical Extraction. To keep from being a much worse version of the established best deck, though, I retained its other threat, Thing in the Ice. Thing gives us ample game against go-wide and combo-oriented creature decks alike, allowing us to point most of our burn at opponents.
Beating Bolt
That leaves Lightning Bolt, a card that conveniently trades up on mana against Dreadhorde Arcanist. Also convenient, except for us this time, is the Zombie's high toughness; Mutagenic Growth saves it from all kinds of stats-matter removal spells, including Bolt and even Flame Slash. Protecting Confidant while tapped out is a powerful, if unreliable, gameplan I tried four years ago in "Some Bobs With Your Bugs: Confidant in Delver." Mutagenic asks far less of us than Disrupting Shoal did, although it only works against stat-based removal.
Alongside Arcanist, Mutagenic has additional utility. It can pump the 1/3 from the hand and then be flashed back, giving us a 5-power trample for the turn. And a buffed Arcanist can flash back pricier spells than just one-drops.
While Mutagenic Growth is an elegant answer to Lightning Bolt, and plays nice with Arcanist otherwise, I wanted it to do more in this shell. Maximizing the instant meant employing a Stage 1 combat creature that also fades Bolt with some help from the pump; the 2 damage from Growth would need to add up somehow. I settled on Delver of Secrets, although Monastery Swiftspear is also probably worth a look. Since Delver is a Wizard, this choice opened the door for Wizard's Lightning, a powerful option that can even be re-used by Arcanist when it's 3/5 or larger.
Thing in the Ice also interacts nicely with Growth. The instant saves Thing from spells run in Modern specifically to kill it, such as Flame Slash, Dismember, and Lightning Axe. But the instant's real appeal is its propensity for flipping thing early, or while tapped out.
Here's the list I landed on:
UR Delver, by Jordan Boisvert
Card Choices
Snapcaster Mage: While I think Arcanist is better in this deck overall, we can only run 4, and I still like the utility Snapcaster provides. Between the flash, the immediate flashback, and the body, no other card in Modern does all this creature does. Bouncing Snap with Thing also occasionally comes up and is nice.
Thought Scour: One of Modern's best cantrips, Scour's issue is that running it often means dipping deep enough into a graveyard strategy that enemy hosers become serious threats. Just as I've found Grim Lavamancer to assuage this conundrum, Dreadhorde Arcanist fills a similar role. Scour is great at stocking the 'yard for the Zombie.
Opt: My additional cantrip of choice after Serum Visions and Thought Scour. I tried Faithless Looting in small numbers, but was more impressed with the raw card advantage offered by a self-replacing cantrip alongside Arcanist.
Vapor Snag: A way to quickly clear lager threats so Arcanist can crash through. Combined with the creature, Snag makes for a potent removal engine. If opponents only have one big beater, we can bounce it, swing, flash back a cantrip, and next turn swing and bounce all over again; when multiple targets are in play, we can bounce two in a single combat step, and before blockers to boot. I didn't want many of these because of its redundancy with Thing, but the instant tested very well.
Spell Pierce: Pierce has no synergy with Arcanist, but I hold that it's terrific right now, and in the tempo-sensitive Modern generally. It was also important to me to have some dedicated stack interaction available. Our many cantrips help find Pierce before something critical like Through the Breach or Ad Nauseam can resolve.
Other Possibilities and Closing Thoughts
UR Delver featuring Mutagenic Growth was actually the third of a few decks I tried with Dreadhorde Arcanist. I also tested a more dedicated Wizards shell, and a midrange build in Grixis colors. Neither of those strategies were fast enough to race Tron, though; Lightning, Pierce, Growth, and Delver all help with this matchup, as do the Damping Spheres. But it's fully possible my deckbuilding biases are at work here, as they often are in my articles, and Arcanist is better suited in a deck without Delver. As always, I'll happily receive advice and opinions in the comments; until then, happy spoiler season!
Based on past experience, it seems like new Teferi should be very good, because the last card with that static ability was very good. Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir proved a critical card for Time Spiral-era Mythical Teachings control, and 
His other abilities are also pretty mediocre. The main reason to play sorceries at instant speed against not-control is to Supreme Verdict during combat or end of turn, and when Terminus can already be miracled as an instant, it's not a very useful upgrade. There is something to be said for playing Serum Visions and sorcery speed card advantage as instants for the mana advantage and flexibility, but since they don't see much play in the first place I think it's marginal at best.
There's also the question of relevance. It makes sense that countering critical spells is good for control, but I'm not certain that it actually translates into wins. Modern UW Control wins 
The problem was that Teferi didn't do anything. He's like Null Rod's flavor text but worse. Teferi came down and shut off opposing counters. And then I could downtick him to bounce Search for Azcanta and draw a card at best, but typically I could only tick him up. And I could tick Teferi up indefinitely at no penalty to my opponent or meaning for me because I only had 2 Serum Visions and Time Raveler has no ultimate. Meanwhile, my opponent could simply ignore Teferi and start slamming threats until I cracked. And despite having counters I often did crack because I'd spent a card on Teferi. He also frequently made me spin my wheels with Cryptic Command, which unlike the other counters still had text. The nail in the coffin was that Time Raveler doesn't interact with planeswalkers nor can he keep up with their card advantage. He was simply outclassed.
Ultimately, this is the problem with all the new static planeswalkers. The static abilities are very relevant, but if the rest of the planeswalker isn't, what's left is a worse enchantment. Consider Teyo, the Shieldmage. At three mana, he provides the same effect as Leyline of Sanctity. Teyo always costs three mana, while Leyline is zero or four dependent on having it in your opening hand. The advantage there is unclear, but being an enchantment is a big advantage for Leyline, because it can only be removed with Assassin's Trophy or actual enchantment removal. Teyo can be Bolted or attacked. For that reason, Leyline is often game over against Burn, while I would guess that Teyo is mildly annoying at best.
As another example, consider Davriel, Rogue Shadowmage. He's been 
Karn in Colorless
Karn's most obvious draw is the utility he provides. CES already runs a suite of niche-use artifacts in the sideboard to help with certain matchups; nonpermanent spells, often being colored, are rarely an option for us. The planeswalker affords us access to those bullets as early as Game 1 of a match. To run Karn, we'll want to tweak the sideboard so it offers maximum versatility.
Modern features some strategies that are very difficult for us to defeat. Chief among those is Whir Prison, which sets up what amounts to a hard-lock with Ensnaring Bridge protected by Welding Jar. Since Karn shuts off activated artifact abilities, Jar no longer works, forcing Whir to search up Pithing Needle to counteract the Ratchet Bomb we now have access to before siding.
So that's Relic and Ratchet. But what other artifacts should we run in the sideboard? Since artifacts still don't give us any head-turning sweepers, I think the 
Liquimetal Coating. A sort of mini-Mycosynth Lattice, Coating turns enemy lands into artifacts so Karn can tick up to destroy them. It's slower and less decisive than Lattice, but we don't have to worry about finding the mana to cast it. Coating does monopolize our Karn activation, making it harder to find time for fishing out more bullets.
Batterskull. Perhaps a solid anti-aggro option, my beef with Batterskull is its mana cost. And everything answers this card. With Karn resolved and active, we're not going to have much mana to throw around bouncing, recasting, or equipping Skull, which makes me think the card might as well die to Fatal Push. That said, it's possible Skull promises the tempo swing we need in aggro matchups. Wurmcoil Engine is another option, but I think it's too pricey.
Crucible of Worlds. Crucible, too, is immensely powerful in the right scenario, but woefully anemic in others. Karn removes the guesswork and grants us access when we want it. Of course, the artifact's chief purpose is to rebuy Ghost Quarter so we can decimate an opponent's manabase or manlands to keep the pressure on. Still, there are some neat plays we can make with Crucible on the field, such as Quartering our own Temple and replaying that Temple from the grave to generate extra mana, or doing the same with Zhalfirin Void to net extra scry triggers. In fact, tutoring Crucible with Quarter in play guarantees that we'll make land drops up to six without needing to draw more: turn four tap out for Karn; turn five drop Crucible, Quarter our land for a wastes, play that same land; turn six play Quarter from the 'yard, slam Lattice.
Some of our tougher matchups catch a break, too. The Karn-plus-Lattice plan is extremely threatening for UW decks, which 
More interesting for me is Burn and Tron beating out Dredge. For the past several months, Dredge has been following in Phoenix's wake as not necessarily the number two deck, but typically close behind and second in Top 8s. Being this far behind Phoenix is a notable change. I'm also 
metagame I don't see why Fatal Push and Assassin's Trophy are better for this deck than either running extra Anger of the Gods or Abrade. The sideboard Slaughter Games and graveyard hate I can understand, but stretching the mana for a couple removal spells is very strange to me.
Also, in this case, a ~3% drop off is hardly earthshaking. If Phoenix had started off at 5% and dropped to 2%, we'd have a more significant decline percentage-wise. However, it's a move of ~21% down to ~18%. I'd still call that a dominating metagame share. It's also still 8.5% higher than the next individual result. It would be disingenuous at best to say that Phoenix's decline this weekend indicates a relinquishing of position.
Our uncertainty is made worse by questions about the starting population. If Calgary's initial attendance was reported, I couldn't find it, but I would guess that it wasn't anything special. From what I understand, Calgary is not exactly a tourist mecca; it's also early spring, Calgary is quite far north, and when even those in 
Settle the Wreckage as sweepers, Detention Sphere as backup, and Celestial Purge in the sideboard. The UW deck in the MCQ was still running Supreme Verdict, although it arguably compensated with a full set of Relic of Progenitus maindeck. Otherwise, it's mostly tech 
focusing on that rather than on the threats is a repeat of Grixis Death's Shadow's trajectory in Modern. There, players learned to accept that they would be hit with discard early. This led them to stop keeping speculative hands and just play more robust decks. Once its attack became less potent, Grixis naturally fell off.
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