Modern: One Ring to Rule Them All

When originally revealed in one of the first previews of the Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-Earth set, The One Ring was the expansion's most debated and discussed card for a long time until Orcish Bowmasters took the spotlight as the best format-defining staple.

Its mix of an extra pseudo-extra turn with a recurring source of card advantage earned it space in several Modern strategies in the first week of its launch, making it, over time, a staple of decks such as Amulet Titan, Tron, Four-Color Goodstuff, among others capable of using the artifact in favor of their game plan - often, plans that required just one more turn and a few draws to take over the game.

With Modern Horizons 3, The One Ring gained more notoriety: 46% of Pro Tour decks used at least one copy of the artifact in their lists, and the reason is that the Metagame has changed, more unfair strategies are on the rise again and the format has entered a state where this “extra turn” provided by the artifact is precisely what some archetypes need to work.

By placing five copies of its deck in the Top 8, Nadu, Winged Wisdom has already become the main target for potential bans on the community's radar, making it much more a question of when the creature will be banned than if it's going to take the hammer - and with The One Ring's dominant presence in Modern's premier competitive event of the year, would it be timely for the most iconic piece of J. R. R. Tolkien's trilogy to also leave Modern?

When I wrote my spotlight on The One Ring, months before the Lord of the Rings set came out, I made the following statement: “This artifact is Ancestral Recall and Time Walk in one slot. For four mana. For any deck.” It may seem like hyperbole, but in a vacuum, that's accurately what the card offers for most strategies where it's present.

To begin with, the ability to offer Protection against Everything by casting is the equivalent of a Time Walk against several Modern strategies: Aggro cannot attack you, certain combos such as Ruby Storm cannot end the game, you cannot be targeted by Grief or any other card aimed at breaking your game plan, and you become immune to an immeasurable number of spells. Of course, you don't untap your lands or gain new combat phases, but for practical purposes, The One Ring gives you time to stabilize the game or gain another turn to complete your combo.

This is where the second part comes in: the artifact allows you to draw cards equal to the number of counters on it. With two activations between the turn it came into play and the turn you gained with protection, The One Ring offers three extra draws - three new chances to find an answer, complete a combo or find a key card without any additional cost.

It's a lot of value for a single slot, which also has some micro-interactions within the game itself: sacrificing the first The One Ring to the Legend Rule when casting the second basically “resets” its drawbacks and gives more breathing space to its controller, not to mention the possibility of returning it to its owner's hand with Teferi, Time Raveler to repeat its abilities, or being able to cast it earlier and unimpeded with Delighted Halfling.

In short, the Metagame has changed and strategies that take more advantage of the artifact have become more popular.

According to our database at Cards Realm (which, like all other databases, is out of date due to the lack of results from Magic Online in recent weeks, which has been addressed after the writing of this article), the most played decks with The One Ring in Modern today are: Amulet Titan, Eldrazi Tron, Tron, Gruul Eldrazi, Jeskai/Azorius Control, Bant Nadu, Mono Black Necropotence and Four-Color Goodstuff, in addition to appearing occasionally in some variants of other Control decks or combos like Golgari Yawgmoth.

Except for the Control lists and the Four-Color Goodstuff, the above archetypes fit into the category of strategy that aims to make some absurd play where, normally, the player will add a game-breaking amount of value and/or win the game instantly.

The rise of the card is due to changes in the Metagame that favored Eldrazi as a deck to be tested and put Control back on the radar, but the potential risk is in place because not even a ban on Nadu, Winged Wisdom will change its position in the Metagame, especially if we consider how the format can adapt after this intervention.

The ban on Nadu after its notable results on the Pro Tour is inevitable. If the card itself is not banned, Shuko and Outrider en-kor will pay the price for his sins and players will probably find other ways to take advantage of the new creature, but how would the Metagame adapt in a universe post-bans?

Magic Online's next Creators Cup in the Modern format on July 13th will be played with Nadu, Winged Wisdom outside the format and will give us our first impressions of what things might look like after August - including the possibility of other preventive bans.

When considering the Pro Tour MH3 win rate table made by Frank Karsten, the archetype that seems to benefit most from a format without the problem card of the moment is another that has another recently released problem: Mono Black Necrodominance.

The same table would therefore point to the rise of the following strategies to prey on the “new best deck”: Golgari Yawgmoth, Izzet Murktide and Mono Black Evoke, with Jeskai Wizards being an option that, however, has a bad matchup against several other archetypes.

The combination of Necrodominance with The One Ring has been a recurring debate among deck enthusiasts after Noah Ma reached the Top 8 of the Pro Tour using the version with Sorin of House Markov and a more proactive game plan, being potentially less reliant on the enchantment, while Seth Manfield made use of a playset of both permanents, where the “Lock” of enchantment draws is mitigated while the protection of the Ring allows for slightly more daring plays.

The Big Mana of the format also had a bad match against Nadu, but their result against Necrodominance wasn't very encouraging either. Eldrazi Tron is probably the best among them in the current Metagame, especially given the high variety of builds and proposals that players have experimented with.

In short, the possibility is that Modern would adapt in the following way to the Metagame without Nadu:

In this case, banning The One Ring could help Aggro stay in the Metagame, especially dealing with Big Mana through fast combat, but their matchup against Jeskai Control would still look bad.

The Accessibility and Reprint Problem

At the time of writing this article, The One Ring already has an average of $120, with MP copies of the Bundle being found on marketplaces for up to $100.

Modern staple spikes are far from new to the game. From Nourishing Shoal to Soul Spike, cards skyrocket in price frequently due to whatever presence they have in the Metagame, and The One Ring, being the most important staple of the Pro Tour, has leveraged along with it.

But like many other cards from Universes Beyond, reprinting The One Ring requires a specificin-universe theme, just like cards from Secret Lair: Stranger Things or many others in The List slots of boosters - and one that is difficult to acquire and unlikely to significantly reduce the card's price.

Financial factors, however, are not considered by Wizards of the Coast when deciding to ban a card (otherwise, Legacy would not exist as a format at all), but the limited number of copies of this artifact available may, in the future, cause problems in acquiring it by new players and creating a “bubble” around Universes Beyond products - something that, in theory, the company would like to avoid outside the Secret Lair segment.

And, after all, should The One Ring be banned?

In theory, the artifact's high numbers in the Pro Tour should put it in a critical position in the Metagame, but, at the same time, players have already pointed Nadu, Winged Wisdom as the troublesome key card for the format today.

In its absence, it is likely that Necrodominance will take over as the best deck for a few weeks, and it will be up to the Metagame to adapt to the archetype in the best possible way - and if it also breaks the format, it is likely that the problem lies within the enchantment itself than in the way The One Ring complements the deck's game plan.

In Big Mana strategies, this artifact has seen play since the release of Lord of the Rings and has never proved too troublesome. Perhaps the exception is Gruul Eldrazi with its combo around Through the Breach, but the Metagame seems to have the pieces to adapt, including another strategy that made good use of the artifact: Jeskai Control.

Therefore, the circumstances, despite the excess of copies, do not seem to point to the need for a ban on this card. We didn't call for bans on Lightning Bolt or Tarmogoyf when they were the most played cards in Modern, and despite The One Ring's power level being well above average, it does not present itself - at the moment - as the troublesome staple of troublesome decks.

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With the Creators Cup where Nadu, Winged Wisdom will be banned, we will have a more fixed idea of ​​how the format should adapt after the end of August, when the next banned and restricted list comes out.

Depending on the results of other decks and the presence of The One Ring in the Metagame, it is possible that this perception will change, and it will become clear that the artifact needs to leave Modern for the collective good of the game and the viability of other strategies, especially if the environment remains focused on “who makes their most unfair play first” and how the artifact interacts with this proposal.

Wrapping Up

That's all for today!

If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to leave a comment!

Thanks for reading!