Magic: The Gathering has been teetering on the brink of broken card design unlike anything we’ve seen since Urza’s Saga nearly destroyed the game. Games are getting faster, or being decided earlier. Free spells are being printed with abandon. Yet, not everything is being power crept.
With the upcoming release of Modern Horizons 3, the lack of powerful discard spells is apparent. And for good reason in MTG’s view.
Mark Rosewater, Head of Design at MTG, reminded players why in a post yesterday. Read his question and answer about discard abilities below.
This isn’t the first time Rosewater went out of his way to let players know MTG doesn’t want powerful discard spells in their game. In 2016, he told everyone they were actively trying to eliminate the archetype from competitive play, and had done so successfully.
In the year before this blogpost by Maro, 8-Rack was a popular niche deck in Modern. The deck, piloted to fame by Tom Ross, primarily revolved around quickly using discard spells to narrow down your opponent’s hand and finishing them off with damage through The Rack and Shrieking Affliction.
It was never an Evoke/Scam deck level threat to the format, but its success drew the ire of many players who disliked playing against it. To make these decks less effective, MTG actively printed spells that punished discard abilities, such as Obstinate Baloth and Loxodon Smiter.
Then came Modern Horizons 2 in 2021. MTG thought they were safe when they printed Grief, a four-mana discard creature with an alternate cost that requires exiling a card from your hand.
Sounds fair, except the designers didn’t consider how powerful it would be with blink effects like Not Dead After All, which gave the card two ETB triggers and leaves you with a 4/3.
After the deck won Pro Tour LOTR with Jake Beardsley at the helm, players increasingly grew frustrated by getting double Grief’d turn one. Eventually, MTG decided to ban a key component of the deck. Which oddly, wasn’t Grief itself, but Fury for being oppressive against creature-based decks in the format.
After this brief dance with powerful discard, it’s evident MTG is going out of its way to avoid power creep. MH3 doesn’t have a single black discard spell spoiled in the entire set. And the free spell this time? It just causes players to sacrifice creatures or planeswalkers.
While everything else is experiencing power creep in formats like Modern and Commander, it’s clear that discard is not something players should expect to see as much of in the future.
READ MORE: Shilgengar, The Godfather of Magic’s Vampires, Gets MH3 Card
