Following the release of Modern Horizons 3 on MTG Arena, the Historic format has been forever changed. Sadly, this change appears to have been for the worse, as the format has been stuck limbo recently. Much to the dismay of many, Historic is currently ruled by an incredibly powerful and dominant deck: Boros Energy.
Thankfully, this dominance should be ending soon as Wizards is rebalancing three Modern Horizons 3 cards with nerfs. These three cards are each new Energy staples from Modern Horizons 3 that’s kept the archetype winning consistently. Once the new nerfs come into effect on August 6th, hopefully, Historic will be in a significantly more balanced state.
Notably, these rebalances will only affect the Historic and Brawl formats. Since Timeless doesn’t use rebalanced versions of paper playable cards it won’t be affected by these changes.
A Terrible Trio
To fix the current plight of Energy decks in Historic, Wizards is nerfing Galvanic Discharge, Guide of Souls, and Ocelot Pride. Each of these cards is getting a slightly different change, however, they all serve the same purpose. Since Boros Energy is too fast and efficient, these three nerfs should slow the deck down significantly.
The nerf to Galvanic Discharge may be the most impactful change in that regard. Once the rebalance hits, Galvanic Discharge will only generate two Energy, rather than the three it used to. This obviously makes the card significantly less impactful as both a removal spell and an early Energy generator.
Considering Galvanic Discharge was one of the best Energy generators in the deck, this nerf is going to hit hard. As if that wasn’t enough, however, the ability cost of Guide of Souls is being changed too. Previously, you only needed three Energy to activate Guide of Souls’ ability, but now this cost is being pushed up by one.
While this change doesn’t affect the Energy generation of Guide of Souls, its offensive power has been dramatically reduced. Technically, it will still be possible to activate their ability on turn two, however, it’s now much less consistent. This should help to make Guide of Souls much less of a do-everything threat and more of a utility piece.
Last but not least, Ocelot Pride has simply had its cost increased by one generic mana. Once again, this will literally slow down Boros Energy’s explosive early game since Ocelot Pride is no longer a turn-one play. More importantly, it eliminates the possibility of deploying two of these token generators on turn two. This severely hampers the deck’s ability to flood the board with tokens and earn the City’s Blessing.
Balancing Beyond Boros
Considering Boros Energy comprised 58% of the Arena Championship 6 metagame, these nerfs were undeniably needed. That being said, Boros Energy isn’t the only deck that’s going to be hit by these changes. Since it’s basically the same deck, Mardu Energy is also going to take a serious power-level hit.
Alongside this, Jeskai Control has taken to running four copies of Galvanic Discharge. As one of the best Energy generators for Wrath of the Skies and removal to boot, this card was a no-brainer. Now that its effectiveness is being curbed this deck may need to pivot slightly to retain its effectiveness.
That said, much like Boros Energy, Jeskai Control could probably do with losing some of its potency. Hopefully, these nerfs will be enough to bring all Energy decks in check and promote more diversity in the format. Whether or not that will happen, however, remains to be seen.
More Nerfs Coming Soon?
Right now, it’s too early to tell if these Modern Horizons 3 nerfs will be enough to fix Energy decks in Historic. Even if they do fix the problem, there’s a non-zero chance that another dominant deck may pop up to fill the vacuum. Thankfully, Wizards has stated that they will “Continue to curate Historic to encourage deck diversity and a competitive metagame.”
To this end, Wizards notes that they “May need to make additional adjustments in the future.” We can only hope that these will happen sooner rather than later. Right now, the MTG Arena team appears to be sorely lacking support, as rebalancing doesn’t happen nearly often enough.
Evidence of these lacking aren’t hard to find. Most recently, the MTG Arena team reportedly had to pick between adding Bloomburrow’s Face Commanders or Courageous Critters due to limited resources. Alongside this recent problem, Alchemy is arguably due for a major rebalance too as Heist is horrible to play against.
Sadly, past precedent has told us that we may be waiting a long ol’ while for new rebalancing to happen. Thankfully, in the meantime, we can at least look forward to the release of Alchemy: Bloomburrow in a few weeks. Looking at upcoming events, this set appears to launch on August 20th and will hopefully further shake up Alchemy. As for Historic, we’ll just have to see what happens once these Modern Horizons 3 nerfs happen.
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