Over the past 13 years Modern has become one of Magic's most popular formats from its humble beginnings back in 2011 to record breaking 4,000 player tournaments to the Modern Horizons field monstrosity it is today this is the complete history of the Modern meta the Modern format was born in 2011. At the time Magic had three primary formats Standard which featured the most recent 2 years worth of cards, Extended which featured four years worth of cards and then Legacy which featured cards from across Magic's entire history but with a relatively big ban list, but two of these formats face pretty major problems. First Extended just wasn't very popular; players just didn't want to play the format and then Legacy featured cards from the '90s that were on the Reserved List and by this time some of these cards like the original dual lands had spiked in price to cost hundreds of dollars a piece which which meant that buying a legacy deck would cost players thousands and thousands of dollars so many players were priced out of playing the format at all. To solve these problems then Magic Pro and now WOTC senior designer Gavin Verhey created a fan-made format called Overextended. The idea of Overextended is it would be like Legacy - a non-rotating format featuring a ton of cards - but it would cut out the sets from the '90s that featured the reserved list to hopefully get rid of the big price barrier. Shortly after after Gavin announced Overextended Wizards would announce Modern which was essentially the official version of his overextended format. And with this announcement the complete history of the Modern meta begins 2011 Splinter Twin The first Modern Pro Tour took place in Philadelphia in September 2011. After 3 days of battling the event came to a conclusion with Samuele Estratti's Splinter Twin combo deck taking down Josh Utter-Leyton's Cunter Cat Zoo deck in the finals staking Splinter Twin's claim is the first best modern deck. The idea of Splinter Twin was pretty simple: flash in either a Deceiver Exarch or Pestermite at the end of your opponent's turn, untap and place Splinter Twin on your creature this would give you a Deceiver Exarch or Pestermite that you could tap to Splinter Twin's ability to make a copy of the creature and then using the creature's ETB trigger you could untap the creatures and you could tap it again to Splinter Twin. Essentially this would give you infinite hasty attackers to win the game on the spot. What made Splinter Twin as an archetype so strong was a combination of having a consistent turn four combo kill which at the time was actually considered to be pretty fast for modern and the archetype's flexibility to play like a is it tempo deck to the point where some Twin players would eventually start sideboarding out the combo itself in some matchups and just try to win like a weird control deck. What cemented Splinter Twin's place a top the format during its earliest years was its ability to dodge bannings. Even though Twin won the the first ever Modern Pro Tour when Wizards handed down the first two batches of modern bannings in the coming months they were mostly focused on decks that Splinter Twin had beaten in the tournament take Pyromancer Ascension Storm for example, the only non-Splinter Twin deck to put two players into the top eight of pro tour Philadelphia. While Storm never managed to grab the title of best deck in modern this isn't because the deck was bad rather it was because seemingly every ban list update Wizards would ban a card from Storm whether the deck really deserved it or not. In the first ever modern ban list update which came out just after the pro tour almost every single deck that managed to make the top eight got something banned from it storm lost Ponder and Preordain and Rite of Flame. Cloudpost died with its namesake Cloudpost being banned. Green Sun's Zenith hit on the Counter Cat Zoo and Infect lost its primary finisher and Blazing Shoal. While Ponder and Preordain were played in Splinter Twin they weren't essential to the deck's plan which allowed the deck remain at the top of the meta for the next year. Need some Modern cards while you can snag them all from Card Kingdom over at www.CardKingdom.com/mtggoldfish 2012 The Rise of Jund While Twin remained at the top of the meta some new additions to the format brought a new deck to the very top of the format in 2012 Jund Midrange. Jund was well known in the magic community thanks to its dominance in standard a few years earlier in the first iterations of modern Jund looked to mimic the Standard deck's midrange success. Jund looked to combine the best and most efficient creatures and removal together in the same deck and trust that raw card quality from then GOAT two-drop Tarmogoyf with card advantage from Dark Confidant and Bloodbraid Elf and powerful one-mana disruption like Lightning Bolt and Thoughtseize would overcome the deck's slack of synergy. While the deck was part of the format from the very start its rise to best deck in Modern came with the release of Return to Ravnica in 2012 the community was incredibly hyped for the release of Return to Ravnica. the original Ravnica released in 2005 was considered to be one of Magic's best ever blocks and this was before we had visited it for the 20th time to solve guildless murder mysteries or whatever so players are really hyped for a Return to Ravnica which promised more of what players love from the plane guilds multicolor, cards hybrids, and more. The way that Magic spoilers worked a decade ago is that Wizard spoiled all the cards themselves unlike today when they hand out previews to a bunch of creators and websites. Each day they would spoil a few cards on their website and then on the last day of spoiler season they would just essentially dump any cards that were left on their website. This big spoiler dump was mostly the janky cards and commons but usually a couple of rares slipped in as well. For Return to Ravnica the most impactful Modern card from the set showed up in the dump the one mana planeswalker Deathrite Shaman. The ability to not only be a mana dork thanks to the preference of fetchlands in the format but also hate on graveyard, gain life against aggro and burn and even work as a finisher in some matchups quickly made Deathrite Shaman one of the best cards in the entire format and the best home for Deathrite Shaman was Jund Midrange where it gave the deck something it had never really had before the ability to ramp into its strongest plays a turn earlier without playing an underpowered manad dord. With the addition of Deathrite to the format Jund became the deck to be in Modern which led to it being targeted by multiple bannings with Bloodbraid Elf being banned in January 2013 and then Deathrite Shaman itself being banned a year later in early 2014 which finally knocked the deck off its pedestal. While Jund would remain the clear best deck in Modern up until the Deathrite Shaman banning it's worth mentioning that it was actually the infamous Eggs combo deck that won Pro Tour Return to Ravnica itself. Named for The Uuncommon egg cycle of artifacts from Odyssey that sacrific themselves to make mana and draw cards even though the deck didn't play any literal Eggs instead of relied on cards like Chromatic Sphere, Chromatic Star and Elsewhere Flash to serve a similar purpose. The idea of the deck was to loop these artifacts from the graveyard with the help of cards like Faith's Reward and Second Sunrise in this massive 30 minute long combo turn that would eventually end with looping a single Pyrite Spellbomb from the graveyard enough times to actually kill the opponent. It was a miserable play experience to the point where Brian Kibler once wrote F6 on a piece of paper - F6 is the Magic Online hotkey for "I'm not responding to anything this turn no matter what, do your thing" during the top eight of a feature match and then just walked away from the table while his opponent continued to combo off and here he goes Brian I would normally say put on your seat bels but loosen up the seat belt and the F6 puts an F6 emblem into play oh that's great he's like okay can you beat me yeah and uh judging from what I've seen so far from Nathan Holiday's hand it looks like he can although it's very early in the combo process and there's certainly a chance that he Fizzles as we say meaning that attempts to uh to win the game in this turn and then doesn't and I don't think I we won't subject you to all three games of this match I think I think we'll try I think we'll try to move over but you know if we if we start a top eight and we don't start on a br match I mean I like hibler as much as an next guy thankfully the lifespan of Eggs was pretty short in May 2013 Wizards banned Second Sunrise to kill the deck not so much because it was too strong but because it was so miserable to play against that everyone hated it 2014 the Rise of Pod With Jund nerfed with the Deathrite Shaman banning in January of 2014 the next deck to rise to the top of the format was Birthing Pod combo. There's actually a couple different versions of Ood one simply used birthing pod for value by sacrificing things like Kitchen Finks to find finishers like Siege Rhino which was legitimately one of the best creatures in modern at the time. The other was a more combo focus build looking to use Pod to assemble the infinite combo of Archangel of Thune and Spike Feeder. With both on the battlefield you could remove a counter from the Spike Feeder to gain a life which would trigger the Archangel of Thune to put a counter on all your creatures which would replenish the counter on Spike Feeder to let you activate it again so you could do it again and again to gain infinite life and make an infinitely huge board full of creatures. But what made pod the best deck in modern is it actually had multiple infinite combos if you couldn't win with Spike Feeder and Archangel of Thune for some reason you could always tutor up Melira, Sylvok Outcast a two-drop that makes it so creatures can't get negative -1/-1 counters and then the four drop Murderous Redcap which deals two damage when it enters the battlefield and has persist so if it dies it normally would come back into play with a negative -1/-1 counter but thanks to Melita couldn't get that counter so it would just be a normal version again which means with a free sacrifice outlet like Viscera Seer here you could just sacrifice your Murderous Redcap an infinite number of times to deal infinite damage to your opponents and having these multiple lines of attack being a really good fair Siege Rhino deck along with having multiple infinite combos allowed Pod to dominate. Over the next year Birthing Pod would win more Grand Prix than any other deck in Modern and also take home the largest percentage of the meta which would eventually lead to it being banned in January 2016 although in reality it lost the title of best deck in modern a couple of months before it was actually banned later in 2014 Treasure Cruise Delver when Khans of Tarkir dropped in September 2014 the set brought back the delve mechanic which is especially powerful in modern thanks to the prevalence of fetchlands to fill the graveyard well many delve cards from Khans of Tarkir here had an impact on Modern - Dig Thought Time, Treasure Cruise, Tassifur, the Golden Fang, Hooting Mandrils and Gurmag Angler - one in specific sort of broke the format in Treasure Cruise. The idea of Treasure Cruiseis if you can fill your graveyard fast enough with cards to delve away you essentially get a sorcery speed Ancestral Recall one of Magic's all-time strongest cards players realize that if you back Treasure Cruise with cheap spell focus threats like Delver of Secrets, Monastery Swiftspear and Young Pyromancer and then cheap spells to fill the graveyard like Thought Scour and Gitaxian Probe and the end result was an almost unbeatable deck. Just weeks after Khans of Tarkir dropped Treasure Cruise Delver emerged as the clear best deck in the Modern format helping Patrick Chapin win the title at Worlds 2014 so much so that Wizards banned Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time in the same January 2015 ban announcement that got rid of Birthing Pod even though both cards had only been in existence for like 4 months, that's how utterly dominant the archetype was! 2015 Bloom Titan Cheats its Way to the Top With both Pod and Treasure Cruise band 2015 was one of the most wideopen years in Modern's history with no deck taking up more than around 10% of the metagame old favorites like Jund and Splinter Twin were still strong. Affinity and Zoo were the best aggro decks in the format and Abzan was super popular thanks to Rhino of all things but beneath the surface of the format a new contender for best deck in modern emerged with an absolutely wild origin story: Bloom Titan. Bloom Titan was basically the first version of today's Amulet Titan decks with the idea being mostly the same play an Amulet of Vigor on turn one so you can untap your bounce lands play some bounce lands they generate a ton of extra mana and use it to play a Primeval Titan as fast as possible and trust that Prime Time will lead you to victory although Bloom Titan got to play one really powerful card that today's Amulet Bloom decks don't get to use at all in Summer Bloom. The three exra land drops that Summer Bloom offered meant that if you played an Amulet of Viger on turn one, a turn two Summer Bloom with a bounce land would generate enough mana to let you play Primeval Titan on turn two and then you could give it haste with the lands it tutors up smash your opponent for some damage get even more lands and essentially just win the game on turn two. The person most responsible for promoting the archetype was a player by the name of Steven Speck who had a massive amount of success with the deck on the GP circuit so much that he actually qualified for a pro tour only to get caught at the pro tour palming the perfect opening seven. It turns out that Speck was actually cheating his way to the top but it also turned out that Bloom Titan was so strong that even without cheating it was simply too good for the format after having multiple turn two kills on camera towards the end of 2015 Wizards decided that the deck needed a band which they did on what might be the most infamous B&R update in Modern's history. A modern Pro Tour was coming up alongside the release of Oath of the Gatewatch in February 2016 Wizards was afraid that Modern might be a little bit boring in stale and they wanted something that was fresh and exciting for viewers so about a month before Pro Tour Oath of the Gatewatch they had a ban list update where they announced the banning of Summer Bloom but also infamously banned longtime modern all star in Splinter Twin for, according to Wizard's words, the "interest of competitive diversity." At the time Splinter Twin was a top tier deck but not even the most played deck in Modern regardless nothing at the time made up more than 10% of the meta so at least from the outside Modern looked pretty diverse and little did Wizards know just how much this banning would backfire. 2016 Eldrazi Winter with Bloom Titan banned everyone wanted to see what would happen at Pro Tour Oath of the Gatewatch. Well, it turned out that the event would unleash upon the meta one of the most dominant modern decks of all time in Eldrazi. Eldrazi had been in modern for years as big finishers like Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre but in Oath of the Gatewatch Wizards released a bunch of cheaper more efficient Eldrazi like Thought-Knot Seer, Reality Smasher and Matter Reshaper. Back when Wizards first printed Eldrazi half a decade before in Rise of the Eldrazi they decided that players would need a way to ramp into these mostly 10+ mana creatures so they printed two different lands that essentially made two mana for Eldrazi in Eye of Ugin and Eldrazi Temple. Whilethese cards were pretty fair when your Eldrazi cost 10, 11, 12, or 15 mana it turns out that they're pretty busted when your best Eldrazi costs between zero and five mana. After a historically dominant Pro Tour Oath of the Gatewatch Eldrazi became essentially the only deck in modern for the next few months a perod known as Elrazi Winter until April when Wizards banned Eye of Ugin to help power down the archetype 2016 Infect. With the banning of Eldrazi modern was once again wide open and an unlikely deck rose to fill the void in Infect. Remember back at pro tour Philadelphia in 2011, the first modern Pro TourJ? A strange monoblue Infect deck actually made the top four of the event the deck looked to exile Progenitus or Dragonstorm to Blazing Shaol to generate enough poison counters to kill the opponent in just a single attack from a Inkmoth Nexus or a Blighted Agent but after the event Wizards banned Blazing Shoal and Infect mostly faded from Modern altogether, but suddenly in the Eldrazi-free world of 2016 modern Infect became the best deck in the format winning GP Lilli in 2016 and putting three players in the top eight of GP Dallas and winning the World Magic Cup for Greece all within the course of like 3 months. The deck's game plan was similar to the old Blazing SHoal version of the deck: play cheap infect creatures, target them with pump spells, and try to win with poison counters in just one or two attacks, but gone were the janky uncastable cards like Progenitus and Dragonstorm replaced with much more consistent and efficient spells like Become Immense, Might of Old Krosa and Mutagenic Growth. This made Infect ne of the best removal check decks in the history of modern. Either you had the removal spell to kill your opponent's turn one or turn two infect creature or that creature was probably going to kill you the next turn in a flurry of pump spells. 2016 Dredge. Infect's time a top the format was relatively short lived; by the end of 2016 a new deck took the throne in Dredge. The story of dredge in Modern is actually kind of unique the best Dredge card Golgari Grave-Troll was pre-banned in the Modern format thanks to the brokenness of Dredge in its dominance in other formats. But remember that ban announcement back in 2015 where Wizards banned Birthing Pod, Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time? For some reason during that same update they also unbanned Golgari Grave-Troll. Dredge hadn't been a real threat in Modern sense of format's creation so Wizards figured H it's probably safe to unban it and for a time they were right. For all of 2015 and even most of 2016 Dredge and Golgari Grave-Troll were perfectly fine and didn't really do much of anything in modern, but suddenly towards the end of 2016 this change with Dredge shooting up from the depths of Modern to briefly become the best deck in the format. The idea of Dredge is to simply get a card with the dredge keyword in the graveyard and then every turn rather than drawing a card you use the dredge mechanic to swiftly fill your graveyard with cards that'll return to play for free like Bloodghast and Narcomoebia. What suddenly made Dredge so strong back in 2016 were some new additions from a return to Innistrad in Shadows over Innistrad and Eldritch Moon like Prized Amalgam giving the archetype another free recursive threat along with Insolent Neonate and Kaladeh's Cathartic Reunion which give the deck a way to fill the graveyard that also will draw cards to trigger dredge. This allowed Dredge to have a huge performance at the World Magic Cup towards the end of 2016 with three of the top eight teams playing the deck in modern. "wow gives you an idea of the explosive starts that this deck can have and yeah when you look at them individually 1/1 flyer couple of three threes with no no abilities once they're on the battlefield doesn't look that great but we're talking about turn two here that's a lot of power and toughness out on the battlefield already which led to wizards quickly reversing course on the Golgari Grave-Troll unbanning. In January 2017 Wizards rebanned the card alongside Gitaxian Probe making Golgari Grave-Troll the only card in Modern's history to be banned twitch. 2017 Shadow With Infect and Dredge powered down by bannings it was time for a new archetype to emerge it's the best deck in Modern and it ended up being one that very few players expected Death's Shadow. The story of Death's Shadow in Modern is a pretty odd one. All the pieces of the best deck in modern existed in the format for many years but no one managed to put them all together perhaps because people viewed Death's Shadow itself as more of a meme card than a real competitive threat, but in 2017 the plan of aggressively lowering your own life total with fetchlands and shocklands and Street Wraith to turn Death's Shadow into the biggest one-drop in the format ended up being the best thing going in the modern format. 2017 Affinity while Shadow would remain near the top of the modern meta for years towards the end of 2017 one of the OG modern archetypes finally got its time to shine in Affinity. Affinity actually made the top eight of the very first modern Pro Tour back in 2011 and it had consistently been a tier one or tier 2 deck in modern over the coming years but it never really stake its claim for the title of best deck in the format but this changed it GP Las Vegas and 2017. In a field of more than 3,000 players - one of the biggest modern tournaments in history - the artifact aggro not only won the event but put two more players into the top four. Named for the infamous affinity for artifacts mechanic that destroyed Standard back in the early 2000s and led to endless bannings the 2017 Modern version of the archetype ironically didn't play any literal Affinity cards. Instead the deck was essentially artifact aggro some players even called it Robots instead of Affinity looking to flood the board with artifacts and then kill the opponent by building a massive threat with Cranial Plating or Arcbound Ravager I mean look at this turn one Vault Scourge plus seal overse world ta ta has a cranial plating too and an arcbound ravager this with a vault Scourge game is just over like this game is this game is flat over The problem with Affinity is that it's built exclusively around artifacts and it's pretty easy to hate on artifacts if you want to so whenever Affinity shoots up to tier one or best deck in the format players just start packing more Shatterstorms or Kataki's War Wage to keep the deck in line which paved the way for a brand new deck to emerge is best in the format in early 2018 2018 Humans 2018 is a unique year in modern not a single card was banned in the format in 2018 which is a rarity in the history of modern in fact the only changes to the band list in 2018 were two infamous enemies being unbanned in Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Bloodbraid Elf. A decade earlier both cards hit been monsters in the same standard format. Jace had never been legal in modern WOTC was so afraid it would break the format that it was pre-ban like Golgari Grave-Troll by Bloodbraid Elf of course had been banned for the last four years after unfairly taking the fall for Deathrite Shaman in a futile attempt to stop Jund's dominance. Whilel there was a lot of fear and angst in the community about the unbanning with players worrying that the cards were going to break the format it turns out that neither Jace or Bloodbraid Elf was really all that impactful while players spent most of 2018 trying to figure out the best way to use these unbanned cards in the current ERA of modern they mostly had mixed success and it was a previously unknown tribal deck that quickly rose from the depths of YouTube to the very top of the modern forbat in Humans compared to other tribal decks Humans have one massive advantage which is Wizards loves printing Humans if you look at the list of how many cards of each creature type are printed Humans pace field by a huge margin because they show up in pretty much every set. Eventually players realize that if you match all the best cheapest Humans together and back them with Aether Vial for ramp you of a very powerful aggro deck they could also disrupt the opponent thanks to cards like Meddling Mage, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and the newly printed Kitesale Freebooter. Even better since there's so many Humans in existence and more and more being printed all the time the tribe had the ability to answer pretty much any problem it might face making it an extremely flexible aggro deck which quickly turned it into a tournament force and gave it the title of best deck in modern 2018 KCI the problem with Humans is it's a pretty fair deck sure it's disruptive and powerful but at its heart it's about playing and attacking with creatures when fair decks become too heavily played in a format will often see an unfair deck rise up to knock them off their pedestal and that's exactly what happened later in 2018 when Matt Nass unleashed the horrors of KCI on the Modern format remember Eggs the deck that one Pro Tour Return to Ravnica back in 2012 the deck that made Kibler write F6 on a paper and walk away from the table mid feature match, the deck that everyone hated thanks to its 30 minute combo turns, the deck that WOTC quickly banned because it was just such a miserable addition to the format? Well KCI is basically the return of Eggs but with Krark Clan Ironworks as its mana engine in scrap trer to recur artifacts from the graveyard in place of the band Second Sunrise it would eventually win the game by making enough mana to hard cast a single Emrakul, the Aeons Torn after playing solitaire for 20 or 30 minutes the deck was genius abusing some obscure timing roles but also incredibly miserable to play against thanks to its seemingly endless looping combo turns and Matt Nass was incredibly good at playing the deck the gym shorts aficionado used the deck to come in third place at GP Phoenix in 2018, followed it up by winning GP Hartford with the deck a month later and then taking down the nearly 3,000 player GP Las Vegas in 2018 two months after that, a ridiculously impressive run. While the deck was the best deck in modern it was never the most heavily played deck in modern mostly because it was absurdly hard to play KCI correctly. A skilled KCI pilot could beat pretty much anyone and easily win tournaments, but if a random player picked up the deck they were likely in for a hard time and now he's saying look I can do this again and again sack that get back this and the other thing and then do that again and what the end result is is that mattas will be able to draw his whole library and he'll be generating Mana each time he does it as well so the star will make red mana and the pirate spell bomb will ping him for two right you just keep doing that forever right but after Ben Stark used the deck to come in second place at pro tour 25th anniversary later in 2018 WOTC decided they'd had enough and in January 2019 they banned KCI effectively killing modern Eggs for a second time 2019 Hogaak 2019 is the year that modern change forever with the release of Modern Horizons the first ever set that printed cards directly into the format bypassing standard. While modern Horizons was full of cards that had a huge impact on Modern - Force of Negation Wrenn and Six, Urza, Lord High Artificer, Yawgmoth - the list is incredibly long, right after the set dropped it was a single card that dominated modern to an unprecedented level Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis. Hogaak, according to Wizards, was designed to be a Commander card but but players swiftly realized that the combination of convoke and delve made it pretty easy to not only build a deck that could cast the 8/8 trampler on turn two but with the help of cards like Altar of Dementia possibly combo off and win the game on turn two or turn three! By getting back a massive board full of Vengevines or making a million Bridge from Below tokens and then sacking them all to Altar to mill the opponent out of the game. The deck was borderline unbeatable to the point where players were running a full playet a Leyline of the Void in their main deck to try to slow it down and it was still the S tier deck in the format. As a result Wizards decided to ban... Bridge from Below in an attempt to power down the deck but this did basically nothing even without Bridge from Below Hogaak was still the tier zero deck of the meta a couple of months later with several major events most notably Grand Prix Vegas 2019 which had five Hogaak decks in the top eight being ruined thanks to the deck's dominance with Wizards finally went for the head shot in band Hogaak itself at the end of August in 2019 with a band list update that also freed Stoneforge Mystic for the first time in Modern a development that'll be important in the future 2019 Tron finally gets its time. Speaking of longtime modern archetypes Tron had been a big piece of modern nearly since the format start once Cloudpost was banned in the first ever modern B&R update back in 2011 Tron became the go-to combo-ramp-control deck of the format known for consistently playing Karn Liberated on turn 3 with the help of this seven Mana that Urza's Tower, Power- Plant and Mind can make. In 2019 though something happened they turned Tron from a very good modern deck into the best deck in the format, at least for a few weeks, the printing of Karn, the Great Creator in War of the Wpark. War the Spark released right around the same time as Modern Horizons so initially Karn was over overshadowed by the utter dominance of Hogaak but once Hogaak was banned Tron quickly rose to the top of the meta thanks to Karn, the Great Creator's ability to tutor Mycosynth Lattice from the sideboard and hardlock the opponent out of using any of their lands with Karn shutting down the activated abilities of opponent's artifacts and Mycosynth Lattice turning everything into artifacts. This gave Tron an autowin on turn four which greatly increased the power of the deck although its time at the top of the format would be pretty short. What could Wizards possibly print that would be better than using Tron to power out Karn to tutor up a lattice on turn four? 2019 Oko Urza the answer to this question of course is Oko, Thief of Crowns in 2019 Throne of Eldraine Wizards release the planeswalker that would go down is the most broken in the game's entire history Oko, which did literally everything it played offense and defense it was a win con, it was disruption and it did all this super well and with super high loyalty for just three mana. While Oko was literally everywhere towards the end of 2019 the most dominant oo shell in Modern was the Oko Urza. Remember the Tron trick we were just talking about with Karn tutor up Mycosynth Lattice from your sideboard to hardlock your opponent? The Oko Urza deck could do that as well with the oodles of Mana that Urza, Lord High Artificer can make and a deck full of cheap artifacts but it also got to play the best planeswalker in Oko, Thief of Crowns which you couldn't really play in Tron because Tron has so many colorless lands not only that but it also had like Mystic Sanctuary, Cryptic Command loops it was essentially a who's who list of the most broken cards at the time. By the end of 2019 Wizards realized that this modern format driven by turn four hard locks and the most broken planeswalker in the game's history was simply unsustainable so in January 2020 they banned Oko, Mox Opal and Mycosynth Lattice to shake up the meta but little did we know that even more broken cards were on the horizon early 2020 Uro Pile in early 2020 Wizards released Theos: Beyond Death and along with it Uro, Titan of Nature's wrath with the three Mana 6/6 card advantage and land-drop generating threat quickly taking over modern and various three and four color value pile decks which mostly look to kind of play the control game by simply out grinding their opponents with card advantage from Uro and various planeswalker. While the Uro Pile deck was the best deck in modern and early 2020 strong enough that Lurrus of the Dream-Den and the rest of the companions actually dropped during this time and Uro Pile was still the best thing in the format it wasn't until Zendikar Rising released with Omnath, Locust of Creation in September 2020 that the deck found its final form. Uro's ability to make extra land drops worked really well with Omnath's hunger for lands entering the battlefield and both worked really well with Field of the Dead's desire to have a bunch of different lands on the battlefield and combining this all together made for an overwhelming pile of value that was incredibly difficult to defeat. Well, at least until players started dropping seven mana planeswalkers and Eldrazi like Emrakul, the Aeons Torn on turn one... 2021 two weeks of Tibalt's Trickery in January 2021 Kaldheim Wizards released a chaotic little red counter spell in Tiblat's Trickery with the idea being it would offer red Commander decks a way to interact on the stack that was similar to what Chaos Warp did for permanents on the battlefield. The plan was actually a good one but the execution was let's say a bit off players quickly realized that the true power of Tibalt's Trickery was using it to counter your own spells in hopes of spinning into something massive for free toss in some fast mana from Simian Spirit Guide and cascade spells to consistently find Tibalt's Trickery and the end result was a deck that would regularly drop Emrakul, the Aeons Torn on turn two the deck was absolutely absurd - fast, consistent ,powerful - so much so that it only last in Modern for two weeks before Wizards ban Tibalt's Trickery along with Field of the Dead and Uro from the Uro pile decks make it one of the all-time fastest bannings in the game's history 2021 Hammer Time. Remember when I said that the Stoneforge Mystic unbanning would be important eventually well this is the time From the ashes of Uro Pile in turn one Tibalt's Trickery kills emerged a new best deck in Modern in Hammer Time. When Colossus Hammer was first printed in Corset 2020 people assumed it was a meme card sure it gave a massive amount of power but with such a high equip cost what that could even use it slowly but steadily players realize that thanks to cards like Puresteel Paladin in the card a it was possible to build a deck that ignored the equip cost on Colossus Hammer altogether and the reward for building such a deck was you could get incredibly fast kills as fast is turn two by throwing a Hammer to on an evasive creature like Ornithopter or an Infect threat like Inkmoth Nexus. Stoneforge Mystic was key to add consistency to the deck and I'd be remissed not to mention Lurrus of the Dream-Den here well companion is undoubtedly the most impactful mechanic in Modern's history at least in the last few years specifically Yorion, the Sky Nomad and Lurrus of the Dream-Den both of which eventually ended up being banned in the format it's hard to associate the best companions with any specific deck because they were literally played in every deck this led to some awkwardness where we're talking about the best decks in Modern but we don't actually end up discussing some of the best and most impactful cards in modern modern so shout out to Yorion and lurrus here which helped give Hammer Time and about a million other decks a late game card advantage engine at a minimal cost which is part of a Hammer Time rose from being a funny Against the Odds archetype to literal best deck in the Modern format but all good things must come to an end 2021 Izzet's Revenge Ever since the bannings of Splinter Twin in Treasure Cruise more than 5 years before is it had been regulated to the fringes of Modern but this was about to change with the release of the second direct to Modern set in Modern Horizon 2 the set was full of many of the most powerful and played cards in the entire modern format Crashing Footfalls, Shardless Agent, Dauthi Voidalker, all the free evoke Elementals I can go on for the next 20 minutes listing busted Modern Horizons 2 cards well Modern Horizon 2 would go on to dominate the Modern format in an unprecedented way for the next two years and in all honesty it still is today the earliest winners from Modern Horizons 2 was actually is it thanks to cards like Dragonrage Channel or Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer and Murktide Regent mashed all together and backed by the best removal encounters blue and red had to offer created a monster in the modern format the best tempo-control decks and Splinter twin if you're looking through the modern meta you'll see that the rest of 2021 and nearly all of 2022 was dominated by is at Murktide being by far the most play deck in the format 2023 Creativity during the first months of 2023 Izzet Murktide retained its dominance remaining at the top of the modern meta but midway through the year a new challenger emerged in Four-Color Creativity. The idea of Creativity was to play zero actual creatures in the deck outside of Archon of Cruelty but use cards like Fable of the Mirror-Breaker or Dwarven Mine to make creatures or artifacts that you can blow up with Indomitable Creativity to find the Arcon of Cruelties to win the game why did Creativity suddenly rise even though most of the cards in the deck had existed in Modern for a couple of years without having much success the biggest reason was the printing of Leyline Binding which offered the deck a huge reward for being four or even five colors this and also Modern players eventually waking up to the powers of standard all-star Fable the Mirror Breaker by May of 2023 Creativity managed to topple Izzet Murktide to become the most played in the best deck in the Modern format but its time at the top of the meta would be short lived 2023 Rakdos Scam how do you stop your opponent from winning by resolving a single indomitable creativity how about just taking creativity from their hand along with pretty much everything else before they ever get a chance to use it! Das comes back take the binding and I'd say we are probably way ahead this game uh their head is land land land counter spell we have a 4-3 medicine blood in the middle of 2023 came the release of Lord of the Rings which brought with it one of the most powerful card Advantage engines the game had ever seen in The One Ring a couple of months after that Wizards released Up the Beanstalk designed
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to be a signpost uncommon for Wilds of Eldraine draft and it quickly joined The One Ring is one of the strongest card advantage engines that we had ever seen in modern before Up the Beanstalk was swiftly ban things to its power alongside the free evoke Elementals in the cascade mechanic combine this with creativity and the modern meta was full of these slower value heavy decks with massive haymakers to counter these archetypes Rakdos Scam developed a deck designed to strip your opponent's hand on turn one or turn two by evoking and reanimating a Grief to get multiple Thoughtseizes but what if the opponent was playing aggro instead of some mid-range? Wll then you do the same thing but with Fury to wipe your opponent's board back this up by Orcish Bowmasters in a huge pile of the best Modern Horizons 2 cards in the rose colors and Scam quickly became the best deck in the modern format a various points make you up way more than 20% of the modern meta an almost unprecedented meta game share remember when Wizards banned Splinter twin for the sake of the diversity of the meta Splinter twin made up less than 10% of the meta after months of dominance and endless complaints from players Wizards finally targeted Rakdos Scam with a banning but rather than hitting Grief - the primary scam piece - they banned Fury instead. While this did help power down the archetype to some extent if you look at the Modern meta today in early 2024 Rakdos Scam is still the most played deck in The Meta just instead of being 24% of the meta it's like 14% of the meta and that brings us to where we are today today with Rakdos Scam being the best deck in the modern format so where does Modern go from here? We're going to find out in a few months when Nodern Horizon's 3 releases the first two Modern Horizon sets have changed modern forever for better or for worse and it seems likely that Modern Horizon 3 will do the same at this point it's impossible to say which deck will dethrone Rakdos Scamfor the title of best deck in modern but it's a pretty safe betat it will involve some absur cards from Modern Horizons 3 anyway that's the complete history of the Modern Magic the Gathering meta thanks for watching everyone I hope you enjoyed it and if you're looking for even more magic make sure to check out the video where I talked about the best spell from every single year of the game or maybe the one where I explain the MTG Iceberg
