Modern Metagame Post MH3 - July 2024

Modern Horizons 3 has been legal for over a month, and a new Modern Metagame has settled in. Between the Pro Tour, Magic Online Challenges, and various other Paper tournaments the new top decks are Bant Nadu, Jeskai Control, Boros/Mardu Energy, Mono-black Necro, Tron, Ruby Storm, and Living End. There are of course plenty of other playable decks, even my passion Yawgmoth has won multiple challenges. 

Bant Nadu: What does it do, How does it win?

Bant Nadu is a combo deck reliant on the new Modern Horizons 3 Card Nadu, Winged Wisdom. The card grants every creature you control the ability to Ramp/Draw whenever they are targeted for the 1st and 2nd time each turn. This deck looks to ramp and deploy a Nadu with a free targeter like Shuko or Outrider En Kor to draw their deck and put all their lands into play. With Springheart Nantuko it is made almost completely deterministic because a land entering gives you a creature (two Nadu triggers) and a fetchland gives you two creatures (four Nadu triggers).

Once you play your entire deck a Thassa’s Oracle wins for Magic Online players, but for in paper tournaments the Thassa’s Oracle is unnecessary. Instead, the deck wins with complicated Endurance loops that generate infinite mana and with Otawara & Boseiju allow your Nadu opponent to destroy and bounce every permanent you own. The biggest problem with Nadu is if the combo is interrupted your opponent still maintains a very strong position as they have likely already drawn cards and ramped. 

Jeskai Control

Jeskai Control’s presence is due to the great Nadu matchup. The deck is very powerful and the current iterations stem from Javier Dominguez’s Modern Pro Tour top 8 with the deck. The deck is a control deck that is simply playing the most powerful answers in the format. Counterspell, Galvanic Discharge, Wrath of the Skies, Subtlety in addition to the powerful card draw spell The One Ring allow the deck to slow the game down and then take control as it masses resource advantages.

Phlage, Titan of Fire’s Fury is another key addition to the deck. Phlage acts as a removal spell that also stabilizes your life total and the Escape is insanely powerful late-game value. The deck is super cool and Javier did a great designing something to take on the metagame of great cards and even better players that he faced at the Pro Tour. 

Boros / Mardu Energy

The core of the Boros and Mardu Energy shells are the incredibly powerful one and two mana creatures printed in Modern Horizons 3. Guide of Souls, Ocelot Pride, Ajani, Nacatl Pariak and Amped Raptor are all new cards that demand an answer. Guide of Souls turns any creature into a threat, Ocelot Pride is an army in a can, Ajani is 2 for 1 that can turn into a powerful planeswalker, and Amped Raptor is a just a 2 mana 2/1 first strike that will cast something else with it almost everytime. Almost the entire deck is build of MH3 cards, similar to UR Murktide.

The Mardu builds of the deck also add in four Thoughtseize, four Orcish Bowmasters and usually one to two Chthonian Nightmare. This deck gets out very quickly and looks to overwhelm the opponent with its powerful interaction and amazing creatures. Some players are evening back to old classic, Pyroclasm, as a way of dealing with the aggressive capabilities of the deck. 

Mono-Black Necro ( RB )

Mono-Black Necro was the choice for team Channel Fireball for the Modern Pro Tour and for good reason. The new Modern Horizons 3 enchantment iterates on Necropotence, one of the most powerful enchantments ever made. The 3 black mana enchantment allows you to pay any amount of life and draw that many cards. This sheer card advantage is especially great with March of Wretched Sorrows and Soul Spike, Black cards that trade cards for power. Soul Spike being able to be cast for free by pitching 2 black cards is a negligible cost when you have so many cards in hand from Necrodominance and will have to discard them anyway. March of Wretched Sorrows provides a Scaling version of the effect that can’t target the opponent's face but still gains life. For only a single black mana allowing your opponent to pitch every card they would discard otherwise and gain tons of life, further enabling their Necrodominance. The deck also is able to just play the best black cards in the format. Grief and Thoughtseize protect the Necrodominance, The One RIng and Sheoldred are additional engines that give the deck consistency and Orcish Bowmasters is a powerful clock and interaction piece. 

Tron & Eldrazi Tron

Tron & Eldrazi Tron have also been around recently because of the existence of multiple new and powerful MH3 cards, primarily Ugin’s Labyrinth. They gain additional lands that produce more than two mana. In the two decks, they have anywhere between 16-20 lands that can produce more than one mana. The 20 consists of 12 Urza’s lands, 4 Eldrazi Temple, 4 Ugin’s Labyrinth. Devourer of Destiny provides important digging and card selection aswell as removal in the late game. Not only that but the deck also got Kozilek’s Command, a kindred Eldrazi spell (so Eldrazi temple can tap for two for it) that has a myriad of great modes. Allowing the deck to ramp incredibly well, dig, deal with graveyards, and exile creatures. 

Ruby Storm

Ruby Storm is a deck I mentioned when I discussed the spoilers of the set. I didn’t expect it to have the breakout performance it had early on in the MH3 meta. The deck looks to use Ruby Medallion and Ral, Monsoon Mage to reduce the cost of Cantrips and Impulse draw effects to storm off and eventually kill with Grapeshot or a Wish for Empty the Warrens. At this point, because Storm has so many powerful lock pieces to beat it is not doing well. Right after the release when no one expected it, Ruby Storm was farming leagues and challenges. Once the metagame adapted it started to perform very poorly. At the Pro Tour, it had a winrate in the low 40% range, because people were prepared for it. 

Living End 

The last deck is a mainstay of the Modern format: Living End. The deck looks to use cascade spells in Ardent Plea and Shardless Agent to cascade into Living End. Living End swaps the graveyard and battlefield. To ensure the graveyard is chok-full of creaatures they use cyclers to put big creatures in the graveyard for only 1 or 2 mana and keep their hand full. The deck crushes Nadu making it a great choice in the metagame. A simple plan with depth hidden just below the surface and a great matchup against the best deck. What not to love!

I hope this helps you going into the Modern RCQ season! Nadu is gonna be a menace unless it gets that ban hammer soon! Post Nadu I would reccomend Mono-Black Necro and Energy as cool fun archetypes that improve in Nadu’s absence.