Prohibit is a bad card. It's always mana parody or more then what you countered. It'll join the conditional 2 mana counterspells that are worse then logic knot family. Force of negation (They really could have picked a better name) and flusterstorm are sideboard cards. I also haven't seen ANY good removal in this set yet beyond edict. Usually these supplemental sets are flush with good removal.
That feel when the most recent standard set has more modern impact then a set called "Modern" Horizons. The reason they gave is complete horse crap too. "We didn't want the reprints to outshine the new cards." Here's a thought, PRINT BETTER NEW CARDS. To think the card counterspell would even have any kind of sizable impact on modern is out and out laughable. If COUNTERSPELL is outshining the new cards in a set designed for eternal formats (Commander, modern, and legacy), then there is something fundamentally flawed with the sets design. We're 90+ cards into spoiler season and the cards you have good lands, two to three cards that might, MIGHT warrant testing, a bunch of sideboard cards, and chaff. It's not even interesting chaff. I wasn't expecting modern welcoming legacy staples and power-creep up the yin-yang like some people seemed to want, but I was expecting more innovation then dime-store bootlegs of legacy staples, random reprints of cards past there prime, Joke cards that feel more at home in an un-set, and snow (Who the heck wanted snow as a returning mechanic?)
I'm an older player. I've played this game close to twelve years, have legacy, modern and commander decks, and enjoy fun complicated draft formats. I was honestly excited to play with modern horizons cards because it felt like a set designed for someone like me. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop and them to reveal more interesting cards for draft, more powerful cards for modern and legacy, and commander cards that are actually fun in a multiplayer setting and not oh that's a cool commander, but if you can say "We didn't want the reprints to outshine the new cards." with a straight face when talking about counterspell, freaking counterspell, then I'm beginning to realize it's never going to. I do sincerely hope I'm wrong, but currently this set feels like a joke with us as the punchline and the canopy lands as the cash grab. Not. A. Fan.
Getting any basic for sure puts this at the power-level of the other fetches in modern. Makes for a significantly less painful draw in a lot of situations where otherwise you'd be forced to fetch-shock to get the color you need.
I mean, to be fair, it isn't all that hard to make this guy a better baleful stryx. Just replace the normal basics in your deck with snow basics. It's not like you don't actively get them with fetches, fields of ruin, and path, not to mention the new fetch that searches any basic you need. If they also give us snow duels, he becomes the best ambush viper ever made.
I'm actually kind of surprised it wasn't just a flat ban in all standard formats. For tournament play this card is horrific. Last major standard tournament I went to reclamation was everywhere, and as a result every round went way past time, like almost old eggs levels of past time. Add in the fact that the card itself is only available as a buy a box promo to make very VERY hard to obtain, and you have a recipe for a really toxic card. Also probably should have been flat banned in arena, cause even in traditional, the way the client is set up, someone can just loop without a wincon infinitely.
I don't know why people are surprised. KCI had the axe swinging over its head for a wide variety of reasons. I'm honestly more surprised nothing else hopped off the banlist. Usually Wotc's MO is to unban a few new toys after they ban something.
I actually really like best of one for limited, in all honesty. Sideboarding is marginal to completely pointless, die roll isn't as important, and you don't really have dead cards. The free mulligan takes away some of the feel bad of not opening a functional hand (Which is half the reason people lose limited games).
Rhythm of the savages might push this card into a new standard archetype. The idea of going turn 1 elf, turn 2 Rhythm, turn 3 this sac elf for a two drop seems really strong. The explore engine props it up nicely, for your 2s and threes, and their's no shortage of good 4s, 5s and 6s in those colors.
Interesting thing to note is that Addendum is a cast trigger a la cascade and the eldrazi. So even if the spell is countered, the addendum is still enforced. In the instance of the timetwister, pushing a busted permanent like Teferi through countermagic sounds pretty good.
To be fair, golgari midrange is actually slightly advantaged. Explore, midnight reaper and the powerful planeswalkers match jeskai's card advantage reasonably well, your lands buy back threats that buy back other things, and carnage tyrant is... carnage tyrant. I've played a bunch on both sides, and I prefer golgari's side, especially after sideboard.
Back to the card itself, I don't know which i prefer between this and contempt. Contempt costs more, but it also exiles and sort of pays you back for the loss in tempo with life. As for blowing up artifacts, I can think of three; gateway, map and immortal sun; that I would even care about. Mardu might play it if it becomes a deck, but I don't think this is a toy jund would want, not enough to add red at least.
Against esper it usually ended with an explosion to deck them out. This came up in both game 1s of the esper match, and oddly enough, against tokens. If you save your counterspells for the fight over explosion, usually by the end of the match both players have so many lands in play that explosion for 8 on them to deck them out with like 3-4 counters as back up. Having them main deck means you functionally have more countermagic pre board then they do, and can recover from counter battles better. Against tokens, they had gained so much life that making them draw 21 cards to deck out was more effective then trying to kill them with damage (End of turn make him draw 10, your turn make him draw 11, deck out). He had the flipped land that pumps out 1/1s and an active orazca that kept finding lords and I was running out of sweepers to protect my walkers. Had the game kept going I would have lost. Against Abzan, I used expansion to copy a vraska's contempt on my teferi to exile his Vivian. I remember explosion killing something and drawing 4 cards after that, but I forgot what.
Even against the aggro deck I copied my own justice strike to kill two things on turn 4. It wasn't fantastic, but it was more useful than another random draw spell.
I might give shivan fire a try over seal away, mostly because Justice strike worked better as a catchall and seal away didn't synergize well with anything else in the deck (And left me open to enchantment removal). Shivan Fire with Expansion seems like a good way to make expansion//explosion better against aggro game 1.
Managed to bust out a 5-0 in a competitive league on magic online with this list. Played against Boros aggro, GW Tokens, Abzan Midrange, and 2 esper control decks. Really liked Expansion//Explosion a lot. Card won me several game all on it's own, some I had no business winning.
Just a few questions.
How with that Mana base? 11 sources of white? Is it hard to cast your settles and and novas?
Why sabotage over ionize?
No Shivan fire? Are the Justice strikes really over performing that you'd want 4 of them?
Throughout the league I did notice a need for a bit more white mana, probably gonna ditch the one of mountain for a clifftop retreat and one island for a plains. I didn't really ever have an issue with casting blue or red spells though. Sabotage is just a better card. I acknowledge Ionize is easier to cast, but surveil 1 is just amazing. As for justice strike, the card has been fantastic in everything that requires killing creatures.
I'm playing both Clarion and cannonade Captain. Expansion//Explosion was fantastic against everything that wasn't hyper aggro. It works great as a win con. I usually used the first two for utility, then either fireballed (or decked) my opponent with the third. Fire ball only really came up post board.
I'm an older player. I've played this game close to twelve years, have legacy, modern and commander decks, and enjoy fun complicated draft formats. I was honestly excited to play with modern horizons cards because it felt like a set designed for someone like me. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop and them to reveal more interesting cards for draft, more powerful cards for modern and legacy, and commander cards that are actually fun in a multiplayer setting and not oh that's a cool commander, but if you can say "We didn't want the reprints to outshine the new cards." with a straight face when talking about counterspell, freaking counterspell, then I'm beginning to realize it's never going to. I do sincerely hope I'm wrong, but currently this set feels like a joke with us as the punchline and the canopy lands as the cash grab. Not. A. Fan.
Back to the card itself, I don't know which i prefer between this and contempt. Contempt costs more, but it also exiles and sort of pays you back for the loss in tempo with life. As for blowing up artifacts, I can think of three; gateway, map and immortal sun; that I would even care about. Mardu might play it if it becomes a deck, but I don't think this is a toy jund would want, not enough to add red at least.
Even against the aggro deck I copied my own justice strike to kill two things on turn 4. It wasn't fantastic, but it was more useful than another random draw spell.
I might give shivan fire a try over seal away, mostly because Justice strike worked better as a catchall and seal away didn't synergize well with anything else in the deck (And left me open to enchantment removal). Shivan Fire with Expansion seems like a good way to make expansion//explosion better against aggro game 1.
Throughout the league I did notice a need for a bit more white mana, probably gonna ditch the one of mountain for a clifftop retreat and one island for a plains. I didn't really ever have an issue with casting blue or red spells though. Sabotage is just a better card. I acknowledge Ionize is easier to cast, but surveil 1 is just amazing. As for justice strike, the card has been fantastic in everything that requires killing creatures.
I'm playing both Clarion and cannonade Captain. Expansion//Explosion was fantastic against everything that wasn't hyper aggro. It works great as a win con. I usually used the first two for utility, then either fireballed (or decked) my opponent with the third. Fire ball only really came up post board.