If you’ve been keeping up with Magic: the Gathering on the various social media identities, you’ll know that leaks have been absolutely everywhere. Modern Horizons 3 is the most anticipated set of the 2024 year, and its not surprising to see why. Both previous iterations of Modern Horizons have completely warped formats, while simultaneously introducing cards that are so powerful that they get the ban hammer in various formats.
Modern Horizons 3 spoiler season was supposed to start around May 21. According to a recent article written by Blake Rasmussen on the WOTC mothership, this was done to allow players some time to just enjoy Outlaws of Thunder Junction. Sadly, appear to have decided to speed up spoiler season of their own accord.
Thanks to this, Wizards of the Coast has released an article addressing the situation, and have uploaded official images to the main site. This means that anything appearing on their main site has been officially confirmed as cards appearing in Modern Horizons 3 later this year.
A Mountain of Official Reveals
Consistent readers of our site will know that Modern Horizons 3 leaks have been everywhere, and a mountain of cards previously leaked have been confirmed to be coming to Modern Horizons 3. As Rasmussen states in his article “leaks of the magnitude we’re seeing with Modern Horizons 3 are tough to ignore outright.”
If you’re the type of player, like us, who wants to grasp every piece of information as early as they possibly can, you’re probably pretty on top of all the Modern Horizons 3 leaks. You’re also aware that some of these leaks had the traditional awful quality attached, forcing players to make sense out of blurred images.
Since Rasmussen is addressing the leaks, he is also addressing some feedback that Wizards has received when these leaks happened in the past: “that there is a significant contingent of our fans who prefer to engage with previews without the fuzzy, distorted potato camera photos getting in their way. We definitely prefer it.”
So, we now have some beautiful artwork confirming a variety of leaks, and even offering some spoilers, to the upcoming Modern Horizons 3 set. Flare of Denial, arguably the leak getting the most attention, as pictured above, has also been officially confirmed.
The amount of players flooding in to take a look at this article are wild. As a result, at the time of writing, the Wizards of the Coast site appears to be having some problems. Regardless of that, let’s now take a look at some of the more interesting cards revealed in this article.
Fixed Staples
A lot of Modern Horizons 3 leaks appeared to emulate historically powerful cards. Necrodominance was an obvious calling card to Necropotence. Volatile Stormdrake offers players an alternative to Gilded Drake that, honestly, is almost as good as the original in Commander. Chthonian Nightmare is obviously a fixed attempt at Recurring Nightmare.
The cards, more or less, work the same. Recurring Nightmare wants to exchange an existing creature for a dead one and returns to your hand afterwards, allowing you to do it all over again should you cast it. Chthonian Nightmare also does this, but for one less mana, and utilizing Energy as a resource.
While the mana value of the creature you resurrected was unrestricted, Chthonian Nightmare demands players to pay Energy equal to the mana value of the returning creature in order to target it with the effect. This can still easily enable some Thassa’s Oracle self mill shenanigans, but Underworld Breach already exists.
Since there are already better tools in Modern for what this card could be capable of, its difficult to assess just how good Chthonian Nightmare really is.
Tron and Commander Land
Tron could certainly use more mana… said absolutely no one. Ugin’s Labyrinth fits into the existing Modern archetype like a glove. Exile any larger, colorless payoff from your hand to start tapping for two colorless mana. Considering the Urzatron lands make seven colorless mana together, this is a rather easy deckbuilding restriction to consider in the context of Tron. You can even get your payoff back once you can cast it with your other lands.
As good as this card is, the goal of the Urzatron deck is ultimately to assemble Tron. While Ugin’s Labyrinth seems hand-picked for the archetype, the goal of the deck will likely remain the same. That said, this land is powerful enough to stir up the archetype significantly. Being able to cast a turn 2 One Ring without any Tron lands is already insanely powerful.
Creatures for Lands
Wight of the Reliquary is yet another spin on an existing powerhouse: Knight of the Reliquary. While that card became stronger with lands in the grave, and allowed for an exchange of lands, Wight of the Reliquary gets stronger with creatures and can turn other creatures into a land of your choice.
This is a rather bizarre ability, but there should definitely be ways to use it. The obvious application is to turn creatures being targeted by removal into lands, but Wight of the Reliquary cannot sacrifice itself, so it may just end up becoming removal food before other things do. I personally think that this card has more potential in Legacy, but whether or not it will even see play there is a question that I cannot answer. Commander, on the other hand, seems like fair game for this card.
Winter Moon
This is a rather disturbing effect to have brought to Modern. This is an obvious callback to one of the most hated cards in all of Commander: Winter Orb. While Winter Orb could easily cause some lock situations in Modern alongside Urza, Lord High Artificer, Winter Moon seems to play fair. Providing a hate piece for decks that are a little too greedy with their mana bases, Winter Moon will slow down nonbasic lands a fair bit. If you expect a lot of Leyline Binding decks in your future, Winter Moon will be a great tool for taking those decks off the map.
Disturbing Reprints Confirmed
Alongside some new Modern Horizons 3 cards and some confirmed leaks, some reprints that were rumored to be appearing in the set were also confirmed. Kappa Cannoneer, a card that was spiking recently thanks to speculation, has now been confirmed to appear in Modern. The same can be said for Meltdown and Orim’s Chant.
Even though Wizards of the Coast has released a majority of Modern Horizons 3 to everyone, they’ll still be doing the same spoiler release song and dance in the coming month. Things kick off May 21st if you still want to experience the Modern Horizons 3 spoiler season in the traditional way.
While this article does address a ton of the Modern Horizons 3 leaks, it doesn’t address everything we’ve seen. Brainstorm, in particular, is a rather startling potential reprint that was not revealed here. As a result, there is still the chance that some Modern Horizons 3 ‘leaks’ we’ve seen aren’t the real deal.
If you want to see more of Modern Horizons 3, this article just scratches the surface. There are tons of new cards now confirmed to appear in the set that offer all kinds of bizarre effects. We’ll be sure to highlight the most exciting of these cards in the coming days.
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