Top 5 Modern cards from Adventures in the Forgotten Realms

RPG was with me in significant parts of my life. As much as I love eccentric systems, where you represent colors, rats and Brazilian TV presenters, the simplicity of a good D&D game is charming in itself, with its taverns, warriors and wizards. It's comforting.

A Dungeons & Dragons-inspired Magic set has been something I've been speculating for some time now, and now that we have its cards, we can finally see what it's all about.

We had a lot of extremely fun and flavorful cards, but unfortunately, it's still a set of cards that support the most basic game strategies and maintain some existing metagame archetypes, but no cards that are extremely oppressive or that will shape the game around them. Still, Adventures in Forgotten Realms has its share of good surprises for other formats. Today we will see the Top 5 cards of the new set for Modern.

Here we have a blue card that have what it takes to be one of the best Planeswalkers in the game. He raises his loyalty two by two as he draws cards and drops unwanted pieces at the moment to the bottom of the deck, creates huge Tokens and has an overwhelming final ability, which even allows you to combo to victory with cards like Thassa's Oracle and Jace, Wielder of Mysteries. All this added to a good body, starting with five loyalty, not to mention the beautiful dog in the artwork.

The downside of Mordenkainen is its cost. Costing six mana, not five, works almost like a nail in his coffin, since with six lands in the deck he would play in Modern, UW Control, you're already in the final stretch of your game, starting to use Celestial Colonnade's ability to start your round of aggression against the opponent.

With one more mana, which makes a huge difference in the Modern that is heading more and more to be Legacy's younger brother, both in power and speed, Mordenkainen unfortunately won't see much gameplay. Still, it's a pretty strong card for your Commander and Standard, and one of my favorite cards from this new set.

Returning to the logic that Modern is going to be ever faster and more efficient, here we have a card that can slow this pace a little against decks like UR Prowess and Burn. Sphere of Annihilation is perfect against very aggressive decks, destroying creatures and small planeswalkers like Wrenn and Six.

Also, it targets both the board and the graveyard, exiling according to the counters on it, making it a great way to deal with Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger and Ox of Agonas, as well as decreasing Tarmogoyf, Dragon's Rager Channeler's power and weakening anything on the field that deals with the graveyard.

This Card depends on paying an X cost, but thanks to the Modern's current state, even if you pay a low mana to supply that cost, you will most likely be able to cancel most threats your opponent will offer you.

When Minion of the Mighty was revealed, a lot of thought was given to how to combo it in Standard, but the easiest way to take advantage of it is here, in Modern, with an old Infect acquaintance, the card Scale Up. With this spell, you can achieve the power needed to trigger this creature's ability, allowing you to fetch a dragon from your hand and put it into play. Normally, this choice will be a Terror of Mount Velus, which not only has Double Strike, but can also conceive this ability to your Kobold who not only has Menace but is now a 6/4 Wurm thanks to the Scale Up, ending the game with a total of 21 damage in the second turn.

You can also use any of the other dragons available in Modern, allowing you to conjure the right creature for every situation or simply creating fun combinations for your board and playing your favorite creatures if you're not that competitive and aren't so fixated on winning in the second turn.

Minion of the Mighty might be a real new threat, giving us a new combo, or it might do absolutely nothing. My predilection for exaggerated combos and monstrous creatures prefer to view him optimistically, but I still know his deck isn't done beyond the first three cards I've already mentioned here. We can only wait and see what happens.

This card is a powerful white shield. Wizards is starting to re-acknowledge the existence of old abilities with phase-in and phase-out mechanics, which at their launch were considered frustrating because they crippled their cards for entire turns, treating them as non-existent on the field. On the one hand, there was the benefit that your cards were protected from the opponent's interactions, on the other hand you couldn't use them either, and this was one of the ways Wizards found that players like to use the cards they cast.

Since 2017 with Teferi's Protection, it's visible that the development team is allowing itself to create interesting effects, but that don't stop your game rhythm, using the phase switching mechanics. Even the infamous Oubliette had its text changed to include the mechanics, rather than using an extensive explanation.

Through this new way of thinking we got Guardian of Faith, a white creature that protects all your creatures whenever you want. The best thing about this effect is the ability to use it at instant speed, on your opponent's turn, responding to a Wrath of God or after making extremely favorable blocks, which won't damage your creatures and leave your opponents to see ships. The best thing is that when used on the opponent's turn, your cards return to the field at the beginning of your next upkeep, minimizing the time you spend without them and nullifying the flaw we mentioned earlier, which leaves the Guardian of Faith even stronger and more dangerous.

Affinity returned to Modern in more than one way. The most popular is very reminiscent of the one we have in Pauper, starting with small artifacts and gradually scaling up to cast high-value cards with Affinity for Artifacts. We also have the evolution of the Hardened Scales deck with the addition of new creatures with Modular in Modern Horizons 2, and even a new deck version with Urza, Lord High Artificer and The Underworld Cookbook.

They all have the potential to continue evolving and growing in the metagame, and one of the tools that will help this is the Treasure Vault, which in addition to counting as an artifact, later in the game splits into more, helping with cards like Cranial Plating, growing creatures like the Golems that come from Urza's Saga and Urza, Lord High Artificer himself, and of course, helps with the Affinity mechanic itself.

The only problem coming from this card is the mana cost to proliferate it into new treasures, which for some more aggressive artifact deck builds can be a huge issue, so, for example, for you to make two treasures you will need four mana and the land istelf, totaling five, which can bea bit heavy when you only have lands; which isn't ideal in the super aggressive traditional Affinity and Hardened Scales, but is more workable in Urza's Kitchen, as Urza himself allows you use artifacts to generate mana.

But even so, it allows immense support for decks focused on this type of card, adding extra value to your plays, and helping decks of this type to boost themselves, and the best part, it is also not legendary, which allows to have more than one copy on the field, adding even more value to that card.

Treasure Vault is just not in the first place for one reason: while the land will help artifact decks move up in the meta, Demilich will not only help old strategies make their way back to the top, it will also help keep strategies that are already at the top today.

With Demilich, Izzet Blitz decks can keep up every turn with a spell coming from the Graveyard, your Storm isn't lost if you don't combo the first time you tried, your Arclight Phoenix deck can reemerge again.

This creature not only comes in for cheap or even for free, it will allow you to recycle useless cards in your graveyard, and, like Arclight Phoenix, it can also come back from the dead and reuse the very cards you spent to cast him for cheap.

Demilich was born from Standard straight to Modern. It's a card that will build on existing strategies and revitalize others that have suffered over time, and the best card from Adventures in the Forgotten Realms for Modern.

That's all for today.

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Thanks for reading.