It may have launched two months ago, but Moden Horizons 3 is all the rage once again. This follows the release of Mark Rosewater’s latest State of Design article for 2024. In this article, Rosewater highlighted the successes and failures of the set, including singling out two broken cards.
As players reflect on this set, the topic of conversation has once again turned to how it’s completely warped Modern. Almost all the best decks in the format a largely made of Modern Horizons 3 cards at this point. Considering Rosewater claimed that Modern Horizons 3 had learned its lesson, it seems something has gone very wrong indeed.
Ultimately, it appears the problem wasn’t Wizards, but instead the very nature of Modern Horizons sets.
The Pursuit of Higher Power
While Rosewater claimed Modern Horizons 3 should be better, we all knew what was going to happen. Since the first Modern Horizons was released, the trend for this series was set in stone. For better or worse, power sells and it’s going to keep selling whether or not people actually like it. Unsurprisingly, this makes Modern Horizons sets ludicrously successful.
Proving this fact, Rosewater has recently stated that “Modern Horizons 3 is also doing very well,” at the moment. While The Lord of the Rings is still the best-selling set of all time, Modern Horizons 3 is clearly no slouch. This sales success means that Modern Horizons 4 is basically inevitable at this point.
Even with Universes Beyond sets crowding the release calendar, Modern Horizons sets are too good to ignore. At the end of the day, Wizards of the Coast is a business so they’ll print what makes them money. Alongside this, however, there have been plenty of players asking for powerful MTG sets.
Prior to the first Modern Horizons, Rosewater claims “there was a lot of requests for us to make sets of a higher power level, so we did.” This desire is completely understandable, especially back in 2019. Before the conscious power level increase in Throne of Eldraine, it was exceedingly rare for new cards to break out in Modern.
Ultimately, this lack of innovation left the format feeling very stale, even if it was stable. Wanting to spice things up with a higher power set made set, and thus Modern Horizons was born. In hindsight, this set may have leaned too far in the right direction, but there’s no denying it was successful.
The Inherent Conflict Within Modern Horizons
As mentioned, the trouble is that power sells. Not only does it sell because it’s exciting, but it sells because people need it. In order to keep up with the metagame, you need the latest and most powerful cards. Whether you’re playing Modern, Commander, Legacy, or even Vintage, you’ve got to pay for Modern Horizons 3.
This demand for powerful cards isn’t voluntary since if you don’t keep up you get left behind. As yoggh777 points out on Blogatog, this can make solely looking at a set’s financial success misleading. Not only are some players forced to keep up, but there are also Commander players after new staples too.
Thankfully, the player feedback that Wizards collects should provide some clarity on this matter. That being said, there’s still a fundamental issue with Modern Horizons sets that Wizards and Mark Rosewater are well aware of. Some players like high-powered Modern Horizons sets, while others hate the forced format rotation they facilitate.
“There is an inherent conflict between old cards staying relevant and us printing new cards of a higher power level. The challenge is there are players that prioritize each over the other. Can we make both groups happy at the same time? We’re trying, but it’s complicated.”
Mark Rosewater
As much as Wizards may be trying, these two groups are fundamentally opposed. If the inevitable Modern Horizons 4 is underpowered, people will complain it’s not impactful enough. At the same time, if Wizards goes too far and creates another format-warping set, players will complain all the same.
Thanks to this conflict, it seems there will never be a Modern Horizons set that makes everyone happy. It’s likely this won’t stop Wizards from making another set, however. This conflict between players has been known since the first Modern Horizons released, and it’s only grown more disparate. If it hasn’t stopped Wizards from making sequels before, it seems there’s little reason they’d stop now.
A Fixed Forced Rotation
Even if everyone isn’t happy with them, it seems near-guaranteed that Modern Horizons sets will continue to exist. With this in mind, it’s arguably more important to discuss when these sets should be released. If we have to put up with a forced rotation of Modern, then it definitely shouldn’t happen too often.
Currently, the longest time between Modern Horizons sets has been the 3 year wait between MH2 and MH3. While this wouldn’t be an awful rotation schedule, Modern Horizons aren’t the only powerful MTG sets. It’s hard to forget the impact that The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth had on Modern.
This set was so powerful that Mark Rosewater even highlighted The One Ring and Orchish Bowmasters as problematically powerful cards. In isolation these cards are just an overpowered mistake, however, this mistake could be repeated. Looking ahead, we have two major Universes Beyond sets releasing in 2025 and every year after that.
While there’s no word on the power level of these sets, they’re likely all going to be direct-to-Modern releases. Due to this, there’s a non-zero chance that each one may contain one, if not a few, incredibly powerful cards. Whether or not they will, however, remains to be seen, but power does sell.
If worst comes to worst and each Universes Beyond set contains a new The One Ring, then we’re in trouble. The cycle of Modern’s forced rotation will be moved up from once every three years to a bi-yearly basis. Thankfully, this is just a worst-case scenario that may never come true, but it’s nonetheless a cause for concern.
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