A major ban announcement took place yesterday, and players are already looking ahead towards the future of the Modern format. With
Violent Outburst
Violent Outburst
Cascade (When you cast this spell, exile cards from the top of your library until you exile a nonland card that costs less. You may cast it without paying its mana cost. Put the exiled cards on the bottom in a random order.)
Creatures you control get +1/+0 until end of turn.
out of the picture, lots of people are hopeful that Cascade shells will die down a bit. After all, both
Crashing Footfalls
Crashing Footfalls
Suspend 4—{G} (Rather than cast this card from your hand, pay {G} and exile it with four time counters on it. At the beginning of your upkeep, remove a time counter. When the last is removed, you may cast it without paying its mana cost.)
Create two 4/4 green Rhino creature tokens with trample.
and
Living End
Living End
Suspend 3—{2}{B}{B}
Each player exiles all creature cards from their graveyard, then sacrifices all creatures they control, then puts all cards they exiled this way onto the battlefield.
decks have made up a huge chunk of the Modern metagame over the past few months.
The thing is, even with Violent Outburst gone for good, it’s hard to imagine Cascade variants, especially Crashing Footfalls decks, faltering too much. Obviously, what made Violent Outburst so strong was the ability to get your Rhino tokens at Instant speed. In conjunction with
Force of Negation
Force of Negation
If it's not your turn, you may exile a blue card from your hand rather than pay this spell's mana cost.
Counter target noncreature spell. If that spell is countered this way, exile it instead of putting it into its owner's graveyard.
, the opponent would often need multiple pieces of interaction on their own turn to stop Crashing Footfalls from taking over.
That being said, there are other three-mana Cascade cards in Modern that can fill the void quite nicely. One of them, in the span of just a few hours, rose in price significantly. Players are already having success with it, so for those wishing Cascade decks would ultimately die off, you may be out of luck.
Ardent Plea Price Spike
The card that rose in price a ton, unsurprisingly, is Ardent Plea. Ardent Plea is an Enchantment with a minor effect on the game while in play, but still successfully fills the void that Violent Outburst left. Players were seemingly quick to identify that it would be a much stronger replacement than Demonic Dread in Crashing Footfalls shells. As such, almost immediately after the ban announcement, sales for Ardent Plea on TCGPlayer began to rise tremendously.
Within a couple hours, players began pointing out that the card was likely bought out on TCGPlayer. According to TCGPlayer market price history, the Alara Reborn version of the card has sat between $2 and $4 throughout 2024 until we neared the announcement. Soon after the official announcement, the card was consistently on sale for $20+. We’ve now had over 24 hours for the prices to adjust, but according to TCGPlayer market price, the card still holds a hefty price tag of just over $15.
This is close to a 500% price increase on an uncommon. It’s certainly worth monitoring any price variations over the next few days, as well as the overall metagame share that the new versions of Modern Cascade decks represent. One thing’s for sure, though: Cascade is far from dead, and players are invested in making the necessary adjustments.
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Adjusting to Change
Speaking of making requisite changes to Cascade archetypes, right off the bat, a Crashing Footfalls deck went undefeated in a Magic Online Modern Preliminary event post-ban. As expected, a playset of Ardent Plea makes an appearance. We also get to see the combination of
Leyline of the Guildpact
Leyline of the Guildpact
If this card is in your opening hand, you may begin the game with it on the battlefield.
Each nonland permanent you control is all colors.
Lands you control are every basic land type in addition to their other types.
and
Scion of Draco
Scion of Draco
Domain — This spell costs {2} less to cast for each basic land type among lands you control.
Flying
Each creature you control has vigilance if it's white, hexproof if it's blue, lifelink if it's black, first strike if it's red, and trample if it's green.
continue to make waves in the format.
While it’s clearly still early in this “reborn” format’s existence, one noticeable trend is that players seem to be focusing more heavily on Crashing Footfalls shells than Living End. This makes a lot of sense early on, especially given the manabases of the two decks. The manabase has changed a little to better support Ardent Plea, but the Domain Rhinos decks were already utilizing white mana for
Leyline Binding
Leyline Binding
Flash
Domain — This spell costs {1} less to cast for each basic land type among lands you control.
When this enchantment enters, exile target nonland permanent an opponent controls until this enchantment leaves the battlefield.
.
Living End decks, on the other hand, were base-Temur. The presence of Violent Outburst as another green card in addition to
Shardless Agent
Shardless Agent
Cascade (When you cast this spell, exile cards from the top of your library until you exile a nonland card that costs less. You may cast it without paying its mana cost. Put the exiled cards on the bottom in a random order.)
and
Generous Ent
Generous Ent
Reach
When this creature enters, create a Food token. (It's an artifact with "{2}, {T}, Sacrifice this token: You gain 3 life.")
Forestcycling {1} ({1}, Discard this card: Search your library for a Forest card, reveal it, put it into your hand, then shuffle.)
made it much easier to enable
Endurance
Endurance
Flash
Reach
When this creature enters, up to one target player puts all the cards from their graveyard on the bottom of their library in a random order.
Evoke—Exile a green card from your hand.
and
Force of Vigor
Force of Vigor
If it's not your turn, you may exile a green card from your hand rather than pay this spell's mana cost.
Destroy up to two target artifacts and/or enchantments.
out of the sideboard. In this sense, switching to Ardent Plea comes at a more significant cost than for Crashing Footfalls decks.
In fact, even though Violent Outburst being an Instant was quite important, Ardent Plea does have some areas in its favor. Having another card that pitches to Force of Negation and
Subtlety
Subtlety
Flash
Flying
When this creature enters, choose up to one target creature spell or planeswalker spell. Its owner puts it on their choice of the top or bottom of their library.
Evoke—Exile a blue card from your hand.
certainly helps make them more consistent. The Exalted ability that Ardent Plea provides isn’t worth nothing, especially alongside Scion of Draco. Furthermore,
Teferi, Time Raveler
Teferi, Time Raveler
Each opponent can cast spells only any time they could cast a sorcery.
+1: Until your next turn, you may cast sorcery spells as though they had flash.
−3: Return up to one target artifact, creature, or enchantment to its owner's hand. Draw a card.
can bounce Ardent Plea back to your hand to either recast or pitch to Force or Subtlety. All things considered, Crashing Footfalls decks still seem reasonably well-positioned.
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Another Relevant Price Spike
Another thing to note with regards to the ban announcement was that other top-tier strategies like Esper Goryo’s Vengeance decks and Golgari
Yawgmoth, Thran Physician
Yawgmoth, Thran Physician
Protection from Humans
Pay 1 life, Sacrifice another creature: Put a -1/-1 counter on up to one target creature and draw a card.
{B}{B}, Discard a card: Proliferate. (Choose any number of permanents and/or players, then give each another counter of each kind already there.)
combo decks remain fully intact. Yawgmoth seems like a big winner from the ban, but there’s also no denying how strong of a weekend Esper Goryo’s Vengeance decks had overall.
Over the weekend, Esper emerged victorious at the Regional Championship in China. Additionally, it put multiple players into the top eight of Sunday’s Regional Championship Qualifier $5k at SCGCon Philadelphia. As such, it doesn’t come as a big surprise that Goryo’s Vengeance saw a bit of a price spike recently, too. Goryo’s Vengeance rose from just over $5.50 in its cheapest traditional form at the end of February to just over $8 on March 9.
This isn’t a huge change, but it certainly signifies that the Esper Goryo’s Vengeance archetype may be getting a bit more respect. It’ll be interesting to see if the Modern metagame actually changes much over the course of the next few weeks. Cascade is alive and well, and for those that were quick to snatch up copies of Ardent Plea, you get to reap the rewards.
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