Summary
Reprints are the bread and butter ofMagic: The Gathering. With every set, there are a slew of returning cards, both extraordinary and mundane, that help make the player experience better and flesh out the set a bit.
Even with its prestige status, Modern Horizons 3 is no different, with plenty of reprints, especially in the four Commander decks. If you’re trying to decide which preconstructed deck has the best reprints in it, we’ve got them all for you.
10Skyclave Apparition
Creative Energy
This little spirit has put in tons of work since it was first released back in Zendikar Rising. For three mana you get to exile any nonland, nontoken permanent that an opponent controls so long as its mana value is four or less.
While it won’t work on bigger, bombier threats in Commander, it is fantastic at dealing with cheaper threats or even just minor inconveniences on the battlefield. If you have some way to blink it repeatedly, you can just keep removing problems one after another.
9Professional Face-Breaker
An all-around good creature, Professional Face-Breaker puts in a lot of work while also being small enough to fly under the radar most of the time. With the Face-Breaker out, anytime one or more of your creatures deals combat damage to a player,you get a Treasure token. It’s only once per combat, but with extra combat steps or even double strike, it can start to add up.
Then you can turn those Treasures into free cards by sacrificing them to the Face-Breaker. Late in the game, once you’ve generated a few Treasures, you can catch back up in the game by playing off the top of your deck.
8Mana Reflection
Tricky Terrain
Everyone likes free mana in Magic, so why not play cards that give you all the mana you could possibly need? With Mana Reflection, a six-mana enchantment, you get a neat way to catapult yourself ahead of your opponents.
Anytime you tap any permanent for mana with Mana Reflection out, you get twice as much of that mana instead. So if youtap a Sol Ring for two colorless, you’d instead get four. This works for anything that produces mana, so lands, creatures, and even Treasure tokens.
7Eldrazi Temple
Eldrazi Incursion
A slightly more niche card than others on this list, Eldrazi Temple is just one of those lands that if you’re playing an Eldrazi-based deck in any format, you’re going to want a few of these.
Normally, Eldrazi Temple produces just one colorless mana, but if you are planning on casting a colorless Eldrazi spell or activate any of their abilities, you can make two colorless mana. Don’t forget that with the devoid ability, tons of Eldrazi that normally would have a color association, are now considered colorless.
6Goldspan Dragon
The Creative Energy deck is designed around the Energy mechanic, an alternate resource that can be spent for extra effects, but it also has a solid number of Treasure-producing cards to help ramp you up to some of the more expensive spells.
Goldspan Dragon is one of the premier Treasure creatures, giving you a Treasure token anytime it attacks or becomes the target of a spell. As if pumping out Treasures wasn’t enough, Goldspan Dragon also lets you make two mana off of your Treasure tokens, getting you to those bulkier spells twice as fast.
5Selvala, Heart Of The Wilds
Graveyard Overdrive
An absolutely fantastic creature that provides an obscene amount of value over the course of a game, Selvala, Heart of the Wilds is both card draw and mana production all rolled into one card. Anytime a creature comes into play, its controller gets to draw a card if that creature has the highest power among all creatures in play. This works in your opponent’s favor too, but so long as you’re drawing more cards than them, it should be all right.
Then with Selvala, you can pay one mana to tap her and make mana in any combination of colors, with the amount you make equal to the greatest power among your creatures. If Selvala is your only creature, you’re still net positive on mana since she has a power of two. If you have an 8/8 creature out, you’ve got yourself a bonus seven mana in whatever color combination you need.
4Aetherworks Marvel
One of the best payoff spells foronce you’ve generated a ton of energy, Aetherworks Marvel is a fantastic artifact that lets you do practically anything you want once you’re on a roll. To help get you there, Aetherworks Marvel produces an energy counter anytime a permanent you control is put into a graveyard. This works wonders with fetch lands and Treasure tokens, but doesn’t work with effects that make you mill cards from your deck or discard cards from your hand, so keep that in mind.
Once you hit six energy, you get to spin the Marvel, looking at the top six cards of your deck and casting a spell from among them for free. Since Aetherworks Marvel casts the spell, you can make use of spells with a cast effect like some of the massive Eldrazi Titan spells.
3Eldrazi Conscription
One of the biggest Aura spells in Magic has returned in Modern Horizons 3, and this time it has a few upgrades. Falling in line with other changes to naming conventions in Magic, Eldrazi Conscription is now a Kindred Enchantment, specifically an Eldrazi Aura.
Once you slap this enchantment on a creature you give it a massive boost in power, giving it +10/+10, trample, and the Eldrazi ability of annihilator 2, which can be devastating to most players in any game.
2The Reaver Cleaver
Equipment cards sometimes feel either way too good, or not good enough in Magic, and The Reaver Cleaver is definitely in the ‘way too good’ camp. Anytime the equipped creature deals combat damage to a player or a planeswalker, you get to make that many Treasure tokens.
To help push that damage, The Reaver Cleaver gives the equipped creature a bonus +1/+1 and trample, letting you push past any smaller creatures to get that damage. Don’t be surprised if your opponents quickly deal with the Cleaver once it’s in play, so make good use of it while you may.
1Apex Devastator
Cascade is one of those incredibly powerful abilities that has to be carefully applied to creatures, otherwise it can be a bit too good to print. Or, if you’re Apex Devastator, you may just slap four instances of cascade on a card and see what happens.
To help balance this out, Apex Devastator costs a staggering ten mana, but that can be mitigated pretty easily with ramp spells and other cost-reduction effects. It also means that Apex Devastator can cascade into practically any other spell in your deck, from a eight-mana bomb or a lowly one-mana mana dork.
