Magic: The Gathering Modern Horizons 3 review ⏤ Everything old is new again

When it comes to my reviews of Magic: the Gathering sets, I mostly draft these days. I would keep in mind that my thoughts are from a drafters perspective. Why am I mentioning this with Modern Horizons III? Every set serves multiple masters, each set is a draft environment AND a pool of cards being added to their respective format. In this case Modern Horizons III is adding new (and some old) cards to Modern. This is a difficult balance for the designers at Wizards of the Coast as Modern is a very high powered and complicated format. The designers want these cards to find homes in existing constructed decks, but they also do not want these new cards to overpower the existing environment. Usually this doesn’t warrant mentioning, but as Modern is one of the premier formats for Magic; Modern Horizons III importance as an expansion set was always going to take precedence over it being a draft set. Wizards of the Coast doesn’t really make “bad” draft sets, but you can tell when a draft environment comes as a second consideration. I can’t speak to how MH3 will shake up Modern, but it’s one of the best draft formats I’ve seen in a long time and that is doubly impressive.

Set Mechanics – Twisted Riddlekeeper

Normally I’d describe what a set’s new mechanics are, but MH3 doesn’t have any. Modern Horizons sets are built from the existing bones of Magic: The Gathering. MH3 has a LOT of mechanics within it (around 40 according to Wizards), but I will highlight ones that help define its draft environment. The big three themes are Energy, Eldrazi, and Modified. Energy is an additional resource cards can generate and you can use that energy for additional effects. Energy tends to support aggressive strategies in MH3. The Eldrazi are back, these Cthulhu inspired beings are associated with colorless mana and have high mana costs for very powerful creatures. The Eldrazi here represent decks that want to ramp their mana and play the long game so they can get their powerful creatures out. Modified isn’t any one specific mechanic, but is a game term for any creature that has a counter, is equipped, or has an aura attached to it (from its owner.) There’s a whole slew of creatures within MH3 that use counters for additional effects and these decks focus on manipulating their creatures to outpace their opponents. There’s a smaller theme around artifacts and blue based control deck, but you really have to steer yourself into those two for them to come up. Those three big themes are what you’ll commonly draft when playing with MH3.

On an individual card level MH3 has also added a lot of interesting new card cycles. While these cards are more important for Modern, they are still a ton of fun to play with in draft. MH3 adds five new modal double-faced cards for beloved planeswalkers. I don’t know why, but child Sorin makes me laugh, he’s even more broody as a child than I thought possible. There’s five “Flare of…” (Ex. Flare of Duplication) cards that add to the pool of “free” spells. There’s all kinds of new land cycles for mono, dual, and tri color. MH3 is a deep pool of interesting card designs and if you’re looking for deeper dives into its cards I recommend the Limited Resources podcast. There’s so much to explore here that I can’t even begin to do it justice.

Pros – Amped Raptor

So I said this is one of the best draft formats I’ve experienced. Why is that? The cards feel carefully constructed to create fun decks to play. On a broad level I find nearly every draft archetype fun to play. This isn’t the case for all sets. Everyone has a preferred play style, but with MH3 I found myself happy to explore whatever colors the draft was throwing my way. The three big themes create a variety of gameplay that’s just fun to explore. Once winning strategies get identified in draft environments, you can come across too many of those decks making gameplay stale. Here that hasn’t happened for me and the wide variety of opponents kept the fun going. The individual cards within MH3 are interesting, fun to play, and powerful without feeling unfair. You can encounter aggressive decks attacking on turn one, normal “midrange” decks that hit their stride after the first few turns, or decks trying to hold out into the long game in hopes of casting those high cost Eldrazi.

The other big thing that helps define this draft format for me is the mana. Within MH3 you have an incredible amount of flexibility in your mana. The allied color fetchlands received a reprint here, but there are also multiple new land cycles. There are the brand new “Landscapes” which seem innocuous, but are incredible designs. These lands tap for colorless and can be sacrificed to find a tapped basic land in one of three colors, and they also cycle for one of each of those colors. Sitting alongside those lands are new modal double-faced lands that can be played as a land or as a spell and then there’s just new mono colored lands with powerful abilities. I know these don’t sound super exciting, but having these around help players into specific colors during draft. This in turn helps players signal during a draft and theoretically end up with better decks. In addition, if you’re struggling in a draft, these lands can be a lifesaver offering you the mana flexibility you need in that moment.

Cons – Expel the Unworthy

I don’t have much to criticize with MH3. My main criticism is its price tag. Magic products intended for Modern usually have a higher price tag and MH3 packs sell for about $8. This is almost double the price of sets intended for Standard. I’m not a fan of this higher price, but I suppose the theory is that the cards in Modern command higher secondary market prices and thus Wizards can charge more for the packs. Is that how Magic should be? I’d say no, but I also don’t run Wizards of the Coast.

My only other “criticism” is that MH3 is a wordy and complicated set. As a set being printed into Modern players basically expect that, but it’s worth mentioning that MH3 is a terrible starting point for new players.

Artwork/Theming – Bountiful Landscape

As MH3 isn’t tied to any particular plane it has cards from across the Magic multiverse. I usually have nothing but praise for the artwork in Magic and this set is exceptional even for Magic. If you’re invested into the Magic multiverse like I am, seeing new bits and pieces of various planes is just a joy to experience. MH3 also has many cards that are clear call backs to older cards that no longer see play. If you’re an old man Magic player like me you’ll recognize some of them and potentially get a kick out of these new evolutions. I was initially worried that these callbacks would feel too self indulgent, but there aren’t enough of them to take over the flavor of the set. I know that I get more out of the artwork of MH3 than the average player, but it’s nice to see Magic recognize its own vast history.

As for special artwork and treatments, MH3s borderless cards are particularly beautiful. I’m just going to leave a link to the Scryfall page for MH3. Just go look at some of them and imagine that they were instead a painting on a wall. You’d never even know it’s actually on a Magic card. Many of the legendary creatures in the set also receive special side portrait borderless frames too. Despite being very good, the side portrait versions are the ones I like the least. There’s also old border style cards too which I don’t personally care for. The old border frames make someone happy and that’s fine, but I like the “cleaner” look of the current card frames. Maybe that’s where MH3 felt too self indulgent for me.

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