Modern Horizons

Modern Horizons is a Magic booster set which was released on June 14, 2019. Modern Horizons was the Innovation Product for 2019, and was designed to be drafted.

Set details
Modern Horizons contains 254 cards (5 snow-covered basic lands, 101 commons, 80 uncommons, 53 rares, 15 mythic rares ), and includes randomly inserted premium versions of all these cards. In addition, there is a Buy-a-Box card numbered #255/254. This set introduced new cards into Modern without them ever being legal in Standard. It contains 209 new cards and (excepting the snow basics ) only reprints which previously weren't legal in Modern. For this, it was rigorously playtested by Play Design. The Buy-a-Box card is also a new-to-Modern reprint. The powerful new card options, some with old mechanics, are mixed with flavorful updates for favorite characters. The snow-covered basic lands appear in the land slot of Modern Horizons boosters.

Modern Horizons was originally dubbed as "Timespiral / Planar Chaos 2" in concept due to set complexity. Mark Rosewater has called it a "love letter" to the Time Spiral block. It isn't an entry level set because of its many returning mechanics. There was no story support for the set.

Marketing
Modern Horizons was sold in slightly larger-than-usual 17-card boosters (one card being a double-faced token, and one being an art card ), and in a Draft Pack. The boosters feature horizontal artwork from Ayula, Queen Among Bears, Serra the Benevolent and Urza, Lord High Artificer. The set was printed for as long as demand held. It was released on Magic Online on June 13, with a booster price of $6.99 (regular booster packs cost $3.99). It was not featured on MTG Arena.

Prerelease
Prerelease events took place on June 8–9, 2019.

Promotional cards

 * Buy-a-Box: Flusterstorm (non-foil, because it was expected to see tournament play and most tournament players prefer non-foil cards. )
 * Preview (prerelease participation promo card): Astral Drift

Tokens / Emblem
The sixteenth card in the boosters is a double-faced token creature card or an emblem: One out of every four tokens is foil (but not double-sided).
 * 1)  2/2 Shapeshifter creature with changeling for Irregular Cohort and Birthing Boughs.
 * 2)  4/4 Angel creature with flying and vigilance for Serra the Benevolent.
 * 3)  1/1 Bird creature with flying for Battle Screech</c>.
 * 4)  1/1 Soldier creature for Recruit the Worthy</c>.
 * 5)  1/1 Illusion creature with flying for Moonblade Shinobi</c>.
 * 6)  20/20 legendary Avatar creature with flying and indestructible named Marit Lage for Marit Lage's Slumber</c>.
 * 7)  2/2 Zombie creature for Rank Officer</c>.
 * 8)  1/1 Elemental creature for Seasoned Pyromancer</c>.
 * 9)  3/1 Elemental creature with trample and haste for Force of Rage</c>.
 * 10)  1/1 Goblin creature for Goblin War Party</c>, Pashalik Mons</c>‎, and Sling-Gang Lieutenant</c>.
 * 11)  2/2 Bear creature for Ayula's Influence</c> and Mother Bear</c>.
 * 12)  3/3 Elephant creature for Generous Gift</c> and Trumpeting Herd</c>.
 * 13)  4/4 Rhino creature with trample for Crashing Footfalls</c>.
 * 14)  1/2 Spider creature with reach for Rotwidow Pack</c> and <c>Twin-Silk Spider</c>.
 * 15)  1/1 Squirrel creature for <c>Deep Forest Hermit</c> and <c>Squirrel Nest</c>.
 * 16)  1/1 Spirit creature with flying for <c>Kaya's Guile</c>.
 * 17)  0/0 Construct artifact creature with "This creature gets +1/+1 for each artifact you control" for <c>Urza, Lord High Artificer</c>.
 * 18)  3/3 Golem artifact creature for <c>Splicer's Skill</c>.
 * 19)  1/1 Myr artifact creature for <c>Mirrodin Besieged</c>.

Modern Horizons Art Series


The seventeenth card in the boosters is an art card with horizontal full art from one of the regular cards in the set. The card back is mostly blank, with some collector's info. There are 54 different art cards.

Themes and mechanics
There are no new mechanics in Modern Horizons. Instead, the set features more than forty non-evergreen returning mechanics. R&D decided that the set could use any mechanic already in Modern up to Dragons of Tarkir.

A major mechanic is changeling, used to make a cohesive set (like it was used in Lorwyn previously). Snow is also a major mechanic.

With <C>Splicer's Skill</C> and <c>Everdream</c>, the set introduces a long-awaited variant from "splice onto Arcane" with "splice onto instant or sorcery" (As you cast an instant or sorcery spell, you may reveal this card from your hand and pay its splice cost. If you do, add this card’s effects to that spell.).

Other returning mechanics are: anchor words, battle cry, buyback, cascade, convoke, cycling, dash, delve, devour, dredge, echo, entwine, evoke, evolve, exalted, exploit, fateful hour, flashback, hellbent, hideaway, hybrid mana, kicker, level up, manifest, modular, monstrosity, morbid, ninjutsu, outlast, overload, persist, pitch spells, proliferate, protection, rebound, replicate, retrace, shroud, storm, suspend, threshold, totem armor, undying, unearth, the untap symbol, and vanishing.

Like in Future Sight before, the set features some "mix-and-match" cards, combining two different non-evergreen keywords on the same card: <c>Feaster of Fools</c>, <c>Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis</c> and <c>Throes of Chaos</c>.

Modern Horizons features the following limited archetypes:
 * Blink (<c>Soulherder</c>)
 * Ninjas (<c>Ingenious Infiltrator</c>)
 * Goblins (<c>Munitions Expert</c>)
 * "Lands in graveyard" matters (<c>Ruination Rioter</c>)
 * "Creaturefall" (<c>Good-Fortune Unicorn</c>)
 * Changelings (<c>Etchings of the Chosen</c>)
 * "Drawing two cards" matters (<c>Thundering Djinn</c>)
 * Graveyard (<c>Rotwidow Pack</c>)
 * Slivers (<c>Lavabelly Sliver</c>)
 * Snow (<c>Abominable Treefolk</c>)

Card types

 * Modern Horizons introduces the Serra and Wrenn planeswalker types.
 * Slivers are a major tribe. They are depicted in their pre-M14 form.
 * Rare types like Coward, Goat and Trilobite get new support (<c>Pyrophobia</c>, <c>Goatnap</c>, <c>Scuttling Sliver</c>), reinforced by the changeling mechanic. Ninjas see a return as a draft archetype, as well as goblins.

Cycles
Modern Horizons has nine cycles, two of which are double cycles.

Pairs
Modern Horizons has one mirrored pair.

Mega-mega cycles
The Mirran swords mega-mega cycle gets its first allied colored additions. Though, the cycle is not complete with Modern Horizons.
 * <c>Sword of Truth and Justice</c>
 * <c>Sword of Sinew and Steel</c>

The Morphlings mega-mega cycle was completed.
 * <c>Endling</c>

Reprints
About 15% of the cards in the set (45 total + 1 Buy-a-Box) are reprints. Except for the 5 basic snow lands these cards are Modern legal for the first time.

Functional reprints

 * <c>Phantom Ninja</c> is a functional reprint of <c>Phantom Warrior</c>, save for creature types.

Notable cards
Modern Horizons was a set that completely shifted the meta of eternal formats especially in modern and slightly in legacy. This included the banning of both older and newer cards which led to the collapse of several older decks that were part of the main modern meta.


 * <c>Morophon, the Boundless</c> has a five-color color identity, and can be used as a commander for various tribal Commander decks.
 * <c>Ayula, Queen Among Bears</c> is a bear lord that is a prototype bear.
 * <c>King of the Pride</c> is a cat lord.
 * <c>Throes of Chaos</c> is a sorcery with no spell ability.
 * <c>Force of Negation</c> is a powerful three-mana blue spell that was an attempt to port the popular <c>Force of Will</c> from Legacy into Modern. Initially, it was little used (mostly in Azorius control decks and Infect decks) and through most of 2020 actually saw more play in Commander than modern. However, the card is still a powerful sideboard card in both modern and legacy, acting as extra Force copies in unfair matches and a serviceable Negate variant in fair ones.
 * <c>Urza, Lord High Artificer</c> is an incredibly powerful artifact-based payoff card that spawned and revived several long-form artifact-based decks (unlike Affinity). It originally started with a variation on the <c>Thopter Foundry</c>-<c>Sword of the Meek</c> combo deck which began to put up large wins especially in a meta test with no Hogaak. Despite the <c>Mox Opal</c> ban the deck still could function perfectly well, given Urza's combo with <c>Whir of Invention</c> getting lock pieces. Urza still stands as one of the stronger foundations of Modern decks, and only with the bannings of <c>Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath</c> and <c>Arcum's Astrolabe</c> has its share been lowered.

Banned and Restricted cards

 * <c>Wrenn and Six</c> is the second, much more successful attempt to print a balanced two-mana planeswalker, limiting its abilities to rebuying lands and pinging. While successful in Modern, as it revived Midrange Jund as a deck while not being overwhelming, access to repeatable <c>Wasteland</c> was enough to warrant its ban in Legacy by November 2019.
 * <c>Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis</c>, is a unique creature that can only be cast via the usage of the delve and convoke mechanics and may also be cast from the graveyard. As it turned out, two creatures and five cards in the graveyard was so trivial in Modern that a second-turn Hogaak was a little over a third to occur per game. This resulted in the event know as Hogaak Summer around the time of Mythic Championship IV whereby the Hogaak Bridgevine decks (using Vengevine, Bloodghast, and Bridge from Below) completely dominated the modern meta. Banning <c>Bridge from Below</c> simply forced superior tuning of the deck, and while it was underrepresented in the Top 8 it was known to be a victim of its own success. It ultimately also took a ban shortly after, in August 2019.
 * <c>Arcum's Astrolabe</c> is one of the only Snow-casting spells in Magic, designed to support Snow decks in draft formats by filtering off-color Snow land mana into any color. Ported to Constructed, however, it let four-color mana-bases run <c>Blood Moon</c> without any hesitation, turning formats into "four-color soup" decks, and its Artifact typing enabled various ways to abuse it in any format. It was hence banned in October 2019 (Pauper), July 2020 (Modern), and February 2021 (Legacy).