Core Set 2020 July update
Flash +1 (to 1)
We’ve been watching Flash-Protean Hulk combo for a long time due to its power, speed and difficulty for opponents to interact with. It has recently proven itself with a large tournament win. Various 6cmc combinations for the Protean Hulk trigger have been innovated, making it more difficult to sideboard against. These things combined have resulted in the committee putting a point on Flash.
No other changes.
In our discussions over the last few months we have considered pointing or unpointing different cards. However, Modern Horizons adds a lot of cards that could potentially impact the format, and in the end we concluded that it would be good to see how they actually play out rather than trying to preemptively point cards.
Late in our discussions, Scheming Symmetry – the Imperial Seal-like card in M20 – was spoiled, and certainly merits significant monitoring. However, our policy is not to preemptively point anything which is not a functional reprint (or better) of an existing pointed card.
The London Mulligan rule is now in effect for all events. This is going to encourage combo decks. We’re aware of this and we’ll be keeping an eye out, although we would like to acknowledge that typically new combo decks (or old) are good when people don’t have the right sideboards worked out so we will be giving the sideboard meta time to catch up if that happens.
Gifts Ungiven has appeared to be quite good but also clunky. It seems okay to stay at 0.
WATCH LIST
Scheming Symmetry: With Vampiric Tutor and Imperial Seal being 3 points each it makes sense to keep a close eye on this. Scheming Symmetry does require some more effort as you usually have to draw the card and “go off” that turn otherwise your opponent will draw their tutored card first and potentially have the perfect piece of disruption, or will “go off” themselves. Having many ways to draw immediately is not too high a cost to pay in terms of deck construction. We will have further discussions once we have a better feel for its power, for now it will get its time in the sun.
Enlightened Tutor: We’ve opted to keep this at 1 (rather than -1 to 0) and see how the London Mulligan and MH1 impact the format. Finding 4-point cards like Time Vault and Black Lotus is very powerful. The cheaper the tutor, the earlier the ‘critical turn’ becomes for a consistent combo deck.
True-name Nemesis: TNN is incredible when you’re ahead, at parity, and when you’re behind. It easily slots into Control decks with no real deck-building requirement (unlike most 1-point cards). Over the last 1.5 years TNN has the best conversion rate of any 1-point card, although it had a poorer performance at Masters.
Library of Alexandria: With Strip Mine at 1, helping aggro and tempo decks come out of the woodwork we may be poised for this potential change.
Dack Fayden: Strongly influences the playability of artifacts in the meta. Little deck building cost. The loot ability makes him powerful enough to run even without artifacts to steal.
Wrenn and Six/Strip Mine: Strip locking people out of the game is very much not fun, and Wrenn helps this plan significantly. It’s unclear to us at this stage if this is at ‘needs a point’ power level, or which of the planeswalker and the land need the point.
REMOVED FROM WATCH LIST
Birthing Pod has been removed from the watch list; with continued success from a small number of people playing the card, and those people indicating that their win percentage is very high when pod resolves.
Gaea’s Cradle has been removed as well. It is a powerful card, but has made no waves while we’ve been keeping an eye on it.The quality of creature control is very high, and with stripmine at 1 and field of ruin seeing plenty of play we do not think this needs a point.