Multiverse Set Review: MODERN HORIZONS 3 (PArt 1)
They Came as Three
JUNE 15, 2024 - By Nicholas Fair
Edited by Amber Fair & Realmwright
Welcome back, lore lovers, to the biggest event of the season! It’s been three long years since I reviewed Modern Horizons 2, and it seems WotC has been cooking a whammy of a follow-up with Modern Horizons 3. While my usual reviews are one-and-done, the Modern Horizons 2 review was split into four parts, and as luck would have it, Modern Horizons 3 is even bigger due to its commander supplement! Thus, I’ve decided to break this review into four entries as well, which you can find linked below. So strap in, one and all, and prepare yourselves for a ride through the multiverse in Magic’s latest expansion: Modern Horizons 3.
For those who are new to the Multiverse Set Reviews, my goal is to discuss new cards from the latest release and assign them to known planes in the Magic Multiverse. It usually starts with a card-by-card review followed by some discussion of set-specific art trends and themes. From here, we do a final count of planes represented and end with my hopes for future sets.
As with the other set reviews, I am only one person, and quite often I miss a thing or two (despite my best efforts!). We also owe an incredible amount to the community for crowdsourcing card origins and lore, so please feel free to send me your feedback or details on anything you think I may have missed at mtgmultiverse.feedback@gmail.com.
Interlude: the “Modern Horizons Canon” Problem
You may note that “colorless”, not artifacts, is its own section in this review. Eldrazi are back in a big way with Modern Horizons 3, and with them come colorless cards, colorless mana, and, funnily enough, a bit of a lore conundrum I want to address before we really get into the cards.
It’s always been standard operating procedure here on MtG-Multiverse to assess cards by their own merits and slot them into the various planes of the multiverse with the understanding that not every card is concepted by WotC as existing on a specific world. There are slews of “generic” and unassigned cards, many of which I’ve fondly sorted into my own “Unknown Worlds” section. The first example of truly “non-canon” cards in the world of Magic came from Planar Chaos. For those unaware, the set Planar Chaos (from the Time Spiral block) depicts a non-canon alternate reality where the color pie is different and so are the characters. Serra, for example, is agruably the most white-aligned planeswalker to ever exist, but in Planar Chaos she is blue-aligned and made sphinxes, not angels. This was truly a “what-if” kind of story that I and many long-time fans loved, and WotC even gave some of these cards a special frame to mark them as “alternate reality.” Simple, right? Well, even when Planar Chaos didn’t use the “color shift” frame on all of the shifted cards, it was at least a good frame of reference for what the entire set was about. This was the Magic you knew, but different.
Example 1: In Legions, Akroma was a white angel born from the mind of a blue mage, Ixidor. In the Planar Chaos alternate reality, Ixidor became black-aligned and thus Akroma was created as a red-aligned angel.
Even though I get emails about these cards to this day, it’s something that’s easy to shorthand: “Planar Chaos is a what-if set” and is non-canon. Case closed. Until, that is, we saw Timeless Dragon from Modern Horizons 1, and Lazotep Sliver from Commander Legends. Because cards from Modern Horizons and other expansion sets are usually canon; that’s the basis for this entire project’s existence. But those cards can’t be canon; and by WotC’s own admission, aren’t. So let’s talk about canon, because MH3 has a number of entries that follow in the footsteps of these problematic little cards. With Planar Chaos, we established that non-lore-canon cards can be printed, but now it’s up to us to decide what’s what when there’s no Planar Chaos frame to do it for us. How do we decide “canon” in a multiverse as broad as Magic, especially when we now have a crossover machine in the form of Omenpaths?
“We’re coming to take your canon, you foolosh Vorthos!”
The distinctive nature of the planes of Magic’s multiverse is what this entire project is predicated on. Worlds have unique flora and fauna, they have varying sentient species, they have unique magic systems, and some even have unique physical laws of space and time. This beautiful variety is why any of the official “Planeswalker’s Guides” are a great read. But people really like seeing discrete things mashed-up together because it’s a really obvious question to ask: “What if cool thing A and cool thing B interacted?”
This is a quintessential question throughout human cultural history, and so obvious because of how profound and powerful it is to imagine. The real world as we know it is the result of different cultures meeting and clashing over our entire history. The problem is that if we actually gave into this impulse with regularity in Magic, we lose what makes each world special; you end up with Magic’s equivalent of “pop culture” everywhere. And Magic doesn’t need its own pop culture: League of Legends already does that enough for everyone. Magic’s creativity and serious depth of world-building is what makes it special to so many people, and why I think there’s a lot of push-back against the latest “world of hats” art direction they’ve taken as of late. But that’s another article.
I’m not here to cry wolf about the death of Magic’s unique storytelling; the lore team over there are good folks, and I’m certain they have a handle on what’s getting made. After all, what are Lazotep Sliver and Timeless Dragon but really cool? If you’re bound by canon, you can’t make designs like these; you literally can’t push the mechanic “eternalize” and the card Eternal Dragon together to make the joke it’s clearly making. Because even though it’s a fun idea, Amonkhet canonically doesn’t have spirit dragons, let alone ones that look like Eternal Dragon.
Timeless Dragon is not only a cool design that’s really fun and balanced, but it’s an inside joke that veteran players will get a chuckle out of. And WotC should make these kinds of cards. We just have to be careful when we evaluate them, because it’s easy to say “Well it has eternalize, so it’s from Amonkhet,” when in a set like Modern Horizons, that’s not necessarily true. Slivers have never been to Amonkhet either, as far as we know, but I’m glad that card exists. So with each card here, I’ve made sure to double-check my references; sorting cards into planes is complex business and more than just “hedrons mean Zendikar!” (…although that is almost always the case).
So, where does that leave us for MH3? Well, this set has an Eldrazi/Colorless subtheme for limited, and in order to make cool cards that aren’t just “Battle for Zendikar 2.0” the set contains Eldrazi that have been themed for locations other than Zendikar. They have eldrazified things that make for cool mechanical cards, but it means that sometimes it’s clearly things that haven’t ever encountered the Eldrazi before. The Eldrazi have, for example, not been to Eldraine in any capacity we know of, but there’s clearly an eldrazified Faerie from Eldraine in the set. All of these will be marked as “Plane-Non-Canon” in the review, and they’ll be added to the planar pages too, I suppose, but in their own section… along with the likes of Serra Sphinx. Because if you want to include Timeless Dragon in your Amonkhet cube, I bet it’s going to be an amazing addition, but I want to keep this project as transparent as possible about the sorting process.
Alright, enough preaching to the choir? Let’s get to the cards!
MODERN HORIZONS 3: COLORLESS Cards
Zendikar
Starting us off is an Eldrazi right out of Oath of the Gatewatch. The three broods of Eldrazi have features that mirror their “sire” Eldrazi, and some larger ones exist as a combination of two sires. The mash-up of tentacles and obsidian “crowns” on this guy mark him as a mix of Emrakul and Kozilek’s broods.
ZENDIKAR
The “reveal from your opening hand” mechanic is one MtG does rarely, and it’s likely this is a call-back to the Chancellor cycle from New Phyrexia. But despite the mechanical tie, this seems like a fairly ordinary worm-like Eldrazi running amok on Zendikar during the Gatewatch saga.
INNISTRAD
During the Shadows Over Innistrad block, the eldrazi titan Emrakul came to Innistrad, and with her came horrific biological mutations. These Eldrazi were different than “true Eldrazi” that were extensions of the titan’s forms, instead showcasing a “reformatting” of biological life. Trilobites, funnily enough, seem to be extinct on Innistrad according to the flavour text here, but I love the concept of Innistrad’s pre-history.
Zendikar/The Blind Eternities
This beautiful and abstract piece is a fabulous rendering of what it must be like to try and behold the reality-warping nature of Kozilek himself. Although the art doesn’t have a “location” and I wouldn’t normally classify it as plane-bound, the fact that we’ve only ever seen and interacted with Kozilek on Zendikar means this card can go there without issue.
ZENDIKAR
Similar to Breaker of Creation, the Eldrazi Ravager here is a blend of two broods: in this case the obsidian crowns of Kozilek and the more humanoid forms of Ulamog. This is also a great upgrade to Deathless Behemoth.
INNISTRAD
One of the three great Eldrazi Titans, imprisoned long ago by the planeswalkers Ugin, Sorin, and Nahiri, Emrakul was lured to Innistrad by Nahiri after she was freed and there she began to warp organic life into Eldrazi forms. The entire set, Shadows Over Innistrad, was a cosmic horror themed story, and there was a pretense of mind-control all over the set. Giving her the madness mechanic is a great call-back to that set, which famously brought back the fan-favorite ability for the first time since the Time Spiral block.
ZENDIKAR
Even without a Hedron every four feet, I think this card can easily be placed on Zendikar. A Kozilek-brood eldrazi (thanks to the telltale obsidian crown), this little guy probably raked the flesh of a ton of allies before being burned into oblivion by Chandra and Nissa’s excellent team-up channel//fireball.
INNISTRAD
What do you get when a Balefire Dragon is infected by a cosmic entity? You get Herigast here! The dragons of Innistrad have a beautiful and unique design, with long and serpentine bodies with stained-glass like wings and beak-like mouths, which Herigast here fits perfectly (give or take a few tentacles). Looks like he’s under the influence of Emrakul, like so many during Eldritch Moon.
ZENDIKAR
General Tazri, referenced in the flavour text of this Eldrazi “lord”, is one of the heroes of Zendikar’s war against the Eldrazi. She’s got three legendary cards, and wears the halo of a defeated angel around her neck. She was nearly unmade during Kozilek’s Return, but her halo protected her. You can read about it in the story “The Blight We Were Born For.”
ZENDIKAR
One of the three great Eldrazi Titans, imprisoned long ago by the planeswalkers Ugin, Sorin, and Nahiri, Kozilek and his brood turn reality to a colorful bismuth display as they reformat the places Ulamog has already stripped of mana. He’s a living “lie” and warps reality ambiently around him, and although technically not plane-bound, we’ve only ever seen him on Zendikar during the timeline of Magic.
ZENDIKAR
Where there is Kozilek, there is command. Plus there’s a hedron in the artwork, so that’s good enough for me!
Fun fact: the obsidian “crowns” on Kozilek’s brood, like the one in the center of this art, are actually reality voids, not physical objects.
Tarkir (if anything)
According to MaRo’s podcast Drive To Work, initially there were four “Elemental Blasts” submitted for Modern Horizons. White, Black, and Green elemental blasts all functioned like their namesakes, Red Elemental Blast & Blue Elemental Blast, but were cut for being huge color pie breaks. Although the art here is fairly abstract and could be occurring anywhere, the hand of Ugin and the flavour text implies that this could be taking place during the showdown between Ugin and Nicol Bolas during Fate Reforged on Tarkir.
Lorwyn (NON-CANON)
The Eldrazi have never visited Lorwyn/Shadowmoor, but given how bizarre the elementals there are already, it makes sense they’d have an affinity for the Eldrazi. This, of course, is an eldrazi'fied Mulldrifter.
THEROS (NON-CANON)
Riddlekeeper is a hommunculus, but the Sphinx here has the hallmark braided beard (er, beards) of Theros’s sphinxes. Zendikar has Sphinxes that could fit the bill, but this poor guy has clearly been fused in a way similar to Brisela on Innistrad by the power of Emrakul herself. This is reinforced by the Emerge ability, only ever seen on Innistrad’s Eldrazi, and the maze pattern in the back is similar to the pattern on the wings of Sphinx Mindbreaker which is enough proof for me. As there have never been Eldrazi on Theros (thank goodness!) this guy is a fun little what-if?
ZENDIKAR
One of the three great Eldrazi Titans, imprisoned long ago by the planeswalkers Ugin, Sorin, and Nahiri, Ulamog and his brood turn reality to a chalky latticework reminscent of bone by consuming raw mana. He’s a big, hungry boy, and although technically not plane-bound, we’ve only ever seen him on Zendikar during the timeline of Magic.
Innistrad
So, although this card seems to be a mechanical callback to the Dominaria-bound Krosan Tusker, plenty of planes have truffle-loving boars, and the flavour text heavily implies that this little fellow fell asleep under the Emrakul-prison moon on Innistrad. I like to think of it as a sibling to Decimator of the Provinces.
Zendikar
For a little while I considered this card as non-canon because, well, how can an Eldrazi be a “Wizard”? But it’s a small enough wink/nod to the Battlemages from Alara and Dominaria that it takes its enemy-colored-kicker from that I think it works. Seeing a “Battlemage” with the “third” color being colorless is a really fun little design.
MODERN HORIZONS 3: WHITE Cards
Tarkir
Gearing us up for our eventual return to Tarkir, we have the return of the humanoid aven. “Support” as a mechanic first appeared in Oath of the Gatewatch but has returned in a few sets since, and plays nicely with the Abzan’s love of +1/+1 counters. The aven in the Tarkir block often used “bolster” but the mechanics are very similar, and besides the visual match, the pyramid in the background with inset triangles and the reference to the (likely Mardu) “Hordchief” really ties this card to Tarkir.
Alara (Naya)
To be fully honest, I wasn’t really aware that Ajani killed the Godsire during his time on Alara, but I love that this saga is a carving on what I imagine to be one of its tusks. Ajani was born on the Alaran shard of Naya, but was outcast due to his albinism. His brother, Jazal, was the leader of his clan, but ended up killed as part of Bolas’s plans to destabilize the shards and trigger Conflux.
Alara (Naya)
Ah, baby Ajani! I love the design of this card; in a lot ways it mirrors the flipwalker of Liliana Vess. Ajani’s brother, Jazal, was killed, and the rage Ajani felt causes him to spark (and add red to his color identity). The way they mechanically capture this in the card and call-back to his iconic Ajani, Vengeant planeswalker card is a fantastic piece of card design.
You can read the full webcomic “Flight of the White Cat” to get Ajani’s full backstory.
New Phyrexia (Norn’s Dominion)
Even though I wasn’t a huge fan of everything in Phyrexia: All WIll Be One, the idea of oil counters was one that made a lot of sense for the plane. This dais is certainly in Elesh Norn’s Dominion on New Phyrexia, possibly alongside her oil Wellspring as a religious altar to the glory of Phyrexia and her machines.
Thunder Junction
I love this card for a lot of reasons, and with some digging & community validation we have a plane for it! What does the card give us? We’ve got a rain of coins, though that’s normally metaphorical… but they are coming out of portals very remniscent of those found on Nexus of Becoming... The outfits and landscape, too, point towards Thunder Junction’s “gold rush” and “American Midwest” vibe, so that’s good enough for me.
Unknown
Umbra Armor is the renamed “Totem Armor” mechanic from Zendikar, though WotC seems to like it as it appears from time to time in supplimental sets. The umbra magic on Zendikar has a very distinct look, with the individual held within a glowing, monochrome version of the animal, and this depiction is a large shift from that. The magic at play here has the same ‘vibe’ as umbra armor, but when you also see the very odd clothing and clean environment, this is clearly not Zendikar. I’m betting it’s a wholly new plane.
Tarkir
Abzan in the flavour text, so Abzan it is! Even without the flavour, this card is a home-run for my favorite clan on Tarkir. They have a very iconic triangle-shaped armor that uses bleached dragonscales, and light green-white magic. The Abzan’s iconic ability, outlast, is how they demonstrate their tenacity. The card has an ability that is a twist on Abzan Battle-Priest with the use of modified instead of calling out counters directly, which makes it more flexible and fit in with the Modern Horizons limited archetypes.
New Capenna (-ish)
This card seems like it should be obvious to me, but it’s left me scratching my head. My guess is New Capenna, with the container being fairly art deco in design, although the depiction of “Halo” inside it differs from the rainbow liquid we saw on our last visit. Despie that, halo is literally bottled liquid angel (aka essence + reliquary) and given the quote from flapper Elspeth, I think it fits well enough.
Unknown/None
WotC has been returning to more abstract, non-plane-centric artworks for spells as of late, and I am a big fan of it. With lands and other permanent cards really “grounding” the physical battlefield, spells being more “vibes based” makes a lot more sense and spurs the imagination during gameplay. There’s a whole article in my head about “spells are verbs” but who knows if it’ll ever get written? As for the art of Expel the Unworthy, even if we assume this hooded knight (?) has been exiled, it’s really not obvious who they are or from where.
Ixalan
This art is exceptional, and reminds me a lot of the cycle of Epic spells from Kamigawa. But this isn’t Kamigawa, but Ixalan! If you zoom in on the artwork, the figure has a symbol emanating from their chest that reflects the Threefold Sun, and has a headdress that is very similar to the ones worn by the Sun Empire on Ixalan. This is very much a Sun Empire spellcaster visual for a spell, too, given how it’s a flare of light coming from within.
ZENDIKAR
I do love bestow, and it having cards that are actually agressivly costed has me quite excited to play with them. This is a clearly Zendikari card, with the Skyclave behind it being just behind hedrons and floating mountains in Zendikar’s iconic style. The landfall mechanic is also originally from Zendikar (and is really tied to the plane in a big way) though it being borderline evergreen at this point means that’s not that big of a deal for defining where it’s from. Normally enchantment creatures are only seen on Theros, but after their introduction to Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, WotC has announced that we’re going to see them more moving forward, and I love it!
TARKIR (Past)
Tarkir - I love manifest! Are you excited to return to Tarkir in a year? I know I am; easily one of my favorite sets of all time to draft and play. But what about this wooly fellow? There’s a few varieties of Loxodon (elephant people) in Magic’s multiverse, from Ravnica to Mirrodin, but few are of the wooly variety. Fittingly, wooly loxodon are from the tundra of Tarkir, and usually associated with the Temur clan that inhabits said tundra.
The manifest magic that this guardian is using is depicted as the swooshy orb on his staff. Manifest on Tarkir stems from Ugin’s colorless magic, and is a “prototype” of Morph/Megamorph that’s seen in the present/alternate Tarkir storylines. Though, to be honest, I’d love to learn if he’s a present resident of Tarkir, if only because I think manifest is a great mechanic that should come back en masse.
KALDHEIM
This is such an easy call, although I find it a little odd to see energy used on the Norse-inspired Kaldheim, I totally get it. Kaldheim has a canonical on-plane afterlife in the form of Valkyries that annoint the souls of heroes who fall in battle, and the guide here captures that flavour perfectly. Her outfit, too, matches the clerics of the plane very closely.
New Phyrexia
When we returned to New Phyrexia, I felt the absence of one of my favorite old creature types: Slith. Slith are a Mirrodin-only species as far as we know, and they are tied to the suns/moons of the plane. The second ability, that grants a +1/+1 counter on damage to a player, has been nicknamed “the Slith ability” because it unifies the creature type.
I’m quite glad that Modern Horizons has given us two slith in the form of an opposed pair representing the Mirran and Phyrexian factions. “Hexgold” is a unique armor that the Mirran Resistance developed to fight Phyrexians in the final chapter of the New Phyrexian arc, but it was too little, too late.
Ravnica (Orzhov)
If the symbol on the spirit’s staff wasn’t enough to tip you off about everyone’s favorite mafia-church, the Orzhov, there’s two other very clear nods in this card. The first is that afterlife is the Orzhov-specific mechanic from Ravnica Alleigance. The second is that spirits that the Orzhov control are ones that they control via contract magic. On Ravnica, mortals can get loans of money, power, or magic from the Orzhov, and if they don’t pay them off in life, they have to repay them by working as wage-slave labor in death. It’s one of the cooler parts of the Orzhov’s whole schtick, and the “indebted” part of Indebted Spirit’s name is a nod to that.
Kaladesh
It looks like Glint-Sleeve Artisan has gotten a bit of an upgrade! We have the art description for this card from a recent mothership article placing it square on Kaladesh, although I’m a little surprised to see so few of the iconic Kaladesh aether swirls in the environment or the design of the little Servo gauntlet.
UNKNOWN
This artwork implies a lot of cool things, but none of them are obviously related to a plane that I can find. The artwork appears to be a row of identically clothed people huddled and “asleep” in some capacity, with the one at the foreground jumping awake. There is implied magic (which may or may not be literal) in the shape of a heartbeat wave doing the waking, but otherwise there’s not a lot to go on. The clothing isn’t that distinct, but is unique enough not to be generic. What a puzzle!
NEW PHYREXIA
Today’s vocabulary word of the day is mandibular: meaning “relating to the lower jaw.” If you combine that with a kite, which is just a little flying paper plane, you get a terrifying image that essentially comes out to be exactly this card’s artwork. New Phyrexia didn’t have an association with teeth explicitly until our most recent visit, where they really leaned into the teeth motif from the initial “porcelain and blood” angle. It’s still creepy, but still reminds me a little of evil dentists, which is pretty hit-or-miss tone-wise. Even so, it’s no incisor glider. *shudder*
DOMINARIA
When Magic returned to Dominaria for the Phyrexians-versus-Dominarians rematch last year, the black-aligned praetor Sheoldred had been working in secret to plant sleeper agents among the Dominarian natives. The evangel, here, carries the Human and Phyrexian creature types of these sneaky agents of evil/perfection, and has all of the visual cues to match.
Unknown
There’s a part of the book Saviors of Kamigawa, where, in the penultimate fight of mortals versus spirits, samurai who are killed on the battlefield return to life to continue fighting after death. It’s a chilling and not-at-all ‘blessed’ kind of immortality, and instead very much a “this is what monstrous things happen when you fight your very nature” kind. The excellent flavor text on Yomiji, Who Bars the Way echos this sentiment, and I can’t help but feel that this artwork is somewhat related to that scene. The illustration is a little bit vague, but that was, for a while, my read on it, especially given that the crescent moon on the helmets is not the “fanged” helmets found on Ixalan’s Legion of Dusk. Zooming in, however, the swords are all wrong, as is the rest of the soldier’s attire, placing it as ‘vaguely European fantasy.’ I’d love to think I missed something, but this may just be another cool, albeit placeless, piece of art.
THEROS
The “nyxborn” are a type of being from the plane of Theros, and so named because they are born from the sub-plane known as Nyx, home of the gods. Nyxborn are primarily “children” of the gods for this reason, and spawned from the starstuff that makes up the celestial pocket plane where the leylines of divinity and belief converge. We’ve certainly seen unicorns on Theros before, so it isn’t hard to place our little friend there, too.
Ixalan
This one took some work. Let’s review: Ocelots are a species of wild cat, and the “smallest of the big cats.” These are Magic’s first ocelot, and appear to be in an overgrown jungle, inside a large statue’s mouth, likely a cat. This is enough information to place them on a few planes: The jungles of Kaladesh are too twisty from aether, there are literally no jungles on Amonkhet, there are certainly no lush tropics on chilly Innistrad, there’s no city so Ravnica is out, there’s no crystals so Ikoria is out, and so we’re really only left with Zendikar, Ixalan, Alara, and Dominaria.
On Alara, we’ve never seen ordinary cats; only Leotau (hoofed lion mounts) and the Nacatl cat-folk. But there’s no reason they couldn’t exist there as opposed to any of the other options. Dominaria has literally every biome, so that’s an easy include, but it’s the least challenging. The mesoamerican vibe of the artwork could easily put it on Ixalan, too, especially given the nature of the catfolk that we now know live on the plane. For that reason, alongside the “City’s Blessing” mechanic here that was designed for Ixalan’s initial outing, I think this is an Ixalan card.
KAMIGAWA (Past)
This is why I love Modern Horizons sets: the lore! Pearl-Ear is a character from the initial visit to Kamigawa, first featured in the short story “Eight and a Half Tales” by Rei Nakazawa. Pearl-Ear was a kitsune diplomat at the court of Konda, and was a maternal figure to his daughter and eventual ruler of Kamigawa, Michiko. The white-aligned kingdoms on Kamigawa are great mix of humans and kitsune, and kitsune being associated with auras is the kind of mechanical cohesion I love to see develop in sets like these.
UNKNOWN
Phelia is a corgi. Just a corgi. And she’s so, so excited to be here. Where is “here”? Who knows! But she’s having a blast, wherever she is.
Unknown (Debatable)
Look at that little rhino’s face! He’s so proud of himself, and doing such a good job hauling those insane crates. This card has a similar vibe to Trusty Packbeast from core set M19, but is in an environment that’s mostly arid desert. Most rhinos in Magic are “Rhox”, or rhino-folk, but there are plenty of planes that have the usual kind, including Tarkir, Kaladesh, Ravnica, and Dominaria. Given the environment, I think only Dominaria, Arcavios (Strixhaven), or Tarkir make sense, but the tusks+horns combo is really only seen on Ravnica’s ceratoks (a specific breed of rhinos)… so it’s quite hard to say. Given that the Abzan clan love both counters and carrying large amounts of supplies into the desert, but so do the animals used by the Lorehold college, I feel awkward placing it anywhere.
As an aside, why on earth isn’t Great-Horn Krushok a rhino???
Mirrodin
On the plane of Mirrodin, everything is infused with metal. Or, rather, it is a metal world where everything is infused with flesh. Razorgrass, as its name implies, is grass that is made of thin strips of razor-sharp steel that grows naturally in the plains of the world. The victim here is a nim; a zombie that is born when a humanoid is affected by the mephidross.
DOMINARIA
Previously printed in Conspiracy: Take the Crown, a supplemental draft set placed on Fiora, this new take on someone who calls common folk to extraordinary deeds takes place in New Benalia. With a similar vibe to the Brothers War era Recruitment Officer, this character can be placed thanks to two very careful visual notes. The first is her much more Serra Angel inspired armor, with the layered gold-and-silver in plates, reminiscent of modern Dominarian knights. The second visual clue is the floating chunk of land behind her. Although usually seen on Zendikar, we are now specifically seeing white-aligned floating islands on select cards on Dominaria as a visual reference to Serra’s Realm. As Benalia and the surrounding white-mana-aligned area grows and evolves, the presence of Serra’s effect on the world becomes more and more established, which includes creating magically floating temples in her honor. That background island is one of the key reasons I also believe this card isn’t from a similar visual plane, like Zhalfir.
Dominaria (new Benalia)
Queen Marchesa (long may she reign), the assassin-queen of Fiora, was one known as “the black rose.” She led a secret band of assassins and plotted to take the crown from the ghost-king Brago, evidently doing so by our second visit to Fiora. But despite this, this card is not related to Marchesa! No, this is a vey deep lore cut and a reference to House Rosecot, a clan in southeastern Benalia. Their sigil, a rose with seven thorns, can be seen on the armor of this knight, who is dressed in a similar style to many other modern Benalish knights.
unknown
Oh, it’s one of those rhox I was mentioning before, neat. Rhox are a great background species that can be found on many planes, especially on New Capenna (in slick pinstripe suits) and Alara (in robes or armor.) This Rhox is in a very interesting temple to the solstice, which is a real-world phenomenon that occurs twice a year on a day when seasons transition and have the most sunlight (summer) or least sunlight (winter). Magic hasn’t really referenced the solstice before, and the clothes on this guy seem fairly unique with their red-trim triangles, so for now he’s going in the planar orphan category. I have a hunch it may be from Beleon, but without any real information about the plane, it’s far from a lock.
unknown
Sometimes, as an art director, you don’t need to complicate artwork. You just need a magical sphere made of light-chains containing demon, so why dictate anything else to your artist and make it more complex for them? That’s what I think Static Prison likely was; it’s a somewhat generic demon in a cool but fairly un-plane-bound magical sphere. The effect somewhat reminds me of Gideon’s hieromancy in Magic: Origins before he forgot about it, but magical chains binding demons is a classic motif and can be seen on almost any plane.
Innistrad
The city of Thraben is the largest known walled city on the plane of Innistrad, and a bastion of humanity in the world of essentially unending horrors. The city and parish of thraben was the seat of Avacyn’s church during the time before her death, but after she was trapped in the Helvault it was turned to rubble. Getting overrun by zombies and later by eldrazi in one siege after another, Thraben has seen its share of war, and isn’t the better for it. The most famous citizen of Thraben, Thalia, is one of my favorite cards.
UNKNOWN
This is a unique looking angel, but not one we’ve ever seen the likes of before. Except, I suppose, the original “Miss America” aka Lightning Angel.
Alara (Bant)
Alas, poor Knight of the White Orchid, I guess he didn’t survive the Conflux. But he’s back, and stronger for it, and with a call-out to Ghost Quarter to boot. What a elegant and layered reference.
IKORIA
Spontaneous Flight, from Ikoria, was an unassuming but great card, and one of the best targets for it was Thieving Otter. The art and mechanical callback here really doesn’t leave any room for ambiguation; this is exactly that scene! The bright colors of Ikoria are hard to miss, as are the crystal structures, but seeing the otter directly is also a treat.
Innistrad
Witch Enchanter? Dis Enchanter! You know, like Disenchant.
…okay, there’s no way that pun is on accident, and I love whichever designer is responsible. But, on the lore side of things, this is a member of the Dawnhart Coven, the witches we were introduced to on our last visit to Innistrad, and one of the best additions to the Innistradi lore in recent memory.
The reverse side of this card references “Ghrin-Danu”, who is the ancient god that the witches of the Dawnheart Coven draw their power from. She predates the church of Avacyn by eons as Avacyn was only created ~1,000 years ago.
DOMINARIA
The flavour text here calls out Dominaria, so that makes this pretty open-and-shut, but it’s interesting what it depicts here. The very obviously black-aligned Phyrexians in the artwork mean it’s from one of the two invasions. I’d guess it’s from the more recent Sheoldred-led invasion given how alien the phyrexian is in the foreground, but it could easily be either.
DOMINARIA (Past)
Thankfully, most of the “full-art” alternate-art cards in Modern Horizons 3 have the same context and setting, but those that don’t, like Wrath of the Skies, have very obvious locations. This illustration still takes place on Dominaria, but it depicts one of Mishra’s war machines from the Brothers War.
MODERN HORIZONS: BLUE Cards
Kamigawa
So, Genku, the futurist in the flavor text here, is Tamiyo’s husband! So that makes this an easy Kamigawa card to ID. But, even if we didn’t have that to go off of, we have heard of The Futurists, a faction in modern Kamigawa. And, with the move to Kamigawa being the home of the most “modern” technology, including computers, we’ve also seen a lot of cyber-style artwork from the plane as of late. Re-imagining spells as bits of data, pixels, and data networks is all part of Kamigawa’s identity now, and the art style of this piece really does look like a data-shield blocking a fireball in cyberspace.
Eldraine
Magic has has “turn people into a frog” magic for a while, and it certainly had it before Eldraine was a canon plane, but because of the strength of the “princess and the frog” faerie tale, Eldraine has more-or-less taken ownership of the motif. The art here is more about the transformation than any of the specific details, but the art style by Omar Rayyan is very storybook, and fits in Eldraine’s art style perfectly.
Ravnica (Izzet)
I love Zoltan Boros’s work, and his robots and contraptions especially stand out among his peers due to his unique comic style. He’s done tons of work for Blizzard’s Magic competitor Hearthstone, drawing their little gizmos and robots, and although he’s done less of that genre of art for Magic, I hope this is a turning point. With that said, this a steam-powered tank of wild and wacky proportions inside a building, or at least on a tight street, which means it’s almost certainly an izzet invention and to be found on Ravnica.
Kaldheim (Cosmos)
Brainsurge here is clearly a reference to one of Magic’s most famous cards: Brainstorm. But despite the mechanical connection, this is a card from Kaldheim, revealed on the flavour text. The visuals in the art are referring to the cosmos between branches of the world tree, seen by Alrund, God of the Cosmos and very few others.
unknown/None
Knights. Birds. Castles. A sad old man reflecting on his life and what he never achieved. This is a great piece of abstract artwork, but it’s really not grounded in anything other than really, really classic Arthurian fantasy.
New Capenna
Let me tell you about cephalids, or rather, about octopuses, as of Modern Horizons 3, they’re the same creature type. Cephalids are a type of octopus-folk found in two varieties: in their less humanoid forms on Dominaria circa Odyssey block, and in their more humanoid forms on New Capenna. Cephalids are a sneaky and beguiling species no matter where they’re from, but the tentacle-faced versions also happen to sometimes be shapeshifters. On top of that, Copycrook uses the connive mechanic, which was created for the Obscura on New Capenna specifically.
Zendikar
Alas, this poor shapeshifter. Once a proud, uh, well, Jwari Shapeshifter or (more likely) Glasspool Mimic, who are literally the only two shapeshifters we’ve ever seen on Zendikar, it’s now horribly warped by the effects of all three Eldrazi titans. Tentacle legs from Emrakul, Bifurcated arms and bones on the right side from Ulamog, and eyeball-biceps and obsidian crown pieces on the left from Kozilek. What’s wild is that this is a mechanical reference to Primal Plasma, which was made as a reference to Primal Clay. We’re going deeper down the rabbit hole, gang!
unknown
This artwork, and by extension, the outfit of the mage, is really, really cool looking. It’s like a single, moulded metallic carapace with a high-glam collar, and yet I have no clue what it reminds me of. It sort-of looks like the kind of armor worn by Esper mages on Alara that was designed to emulate the appearance of Etherium, but even that seems like a stretch. And this is the first we’ve heard of archmage Jeven, which is the last lead we had.
Zendikar
A blue-aligned eldrazi and a hedron in the background? Phew, no real explanation needed here.
unknown
Beautiful whale becoming the sky and a bunch of clouds is the kind of artwork I’d expect from old Lorwyn, except there’s some issues. First, it’s a lot more pleasant looking than Lorwyn’s elementals, and second, Lorwyn canonically has no oceans, just endless rivers. So what else is there? Sometimes you’re just a cool whale, but also a dream. What a wasted opportunity not to make it an Illusion too, though.
unknown
Magic has a few “-zoa” jellyfish in its past, but they all seem to span a number of different planes. Avizoa (literally “air jellyfish”) is on Dominaria, Esperzoa is on Alara, Blisterzoa is on New Phyrexia, and many species of Gomazoa are from Zendikar. The lightning in the art of the electrozoa is vaguely remniscent of Esperzoa, but it’s likely more just a homage to the energy mechanic as I don’t see any etherium on this jelly. It feels too loose to claim Alara… for now.
Eldraine (NON-CANON)
That flavor text rhymes and it’s in iambic pentameter. I think. So, needless to say, I love this card, but I also know that no eldrazi has ever been to Eldraine (or Lorwyn), and this fae seems very much akin to the Eldraine kind of fae.
unknown
I had initially pegged the Flare cycle as all abstract artwork, but after uncovering the plane of the white Flare, I took another look at Flare of Denial here. The lightning reminds me of Rift Bolt for some reason, but beyond the little water globules floaing up to the mage, there’s nothing specifically unique about this scene. Into ‘unknown’ it goes!
Dominaria (-ish)
Say it with me: artist Andrew Mar does. not. miss. Seriously. I’ve been following him since his sketchbook days on Tumblr, and seeing him do Magic art is such a cool feeling. The colors in this piece are beautiful and really show a literal rainbow without it being overbearing or obnoxious, which is a really hard thing to do, at card-size or otherwise. Despite that, the scene is fairly nondescript, with Mar focusing his energy on the magical effects instead. Probably for the best, but beyond a possible nod to Fountain of Youth I can’t see much else here. If that’s enough for you, to Dominaria it goes!
Dominaria
Everyone knows that this card is a mechanical reference to Blood Moon and likely to the fact that Merfolk love islandwalk and turning lands into Islands. But what folks may not know is that almost every modern plane’s merfolk have legs! There are two prominent exceptions: Dominaria, and Lorwyn. The “merrow” of Lorwyn have a very fish-amphibian like face that’s unique to their world, whereas Dominaria has a vast array of fishy folk with all manner of mermaid makeups. Given that, and given the conch in the art, which is a motif also seen on the Dominarian legendary merfolk Tatyova, I think this is an easy shoe-in for Dominaria.
Alara/Ixalan (NON-CANON)
Magic has had its fair share of “coatl” over the years. A species of winged serpent inspred by Aztec mythology, they’ve cropped up wherever Mesoamerican inspiration leaks into Magic art direction, namely Alara, but also on Ixalan. With that said, the Eldrazi have never visited either, so into non-canon we go!
Zendikar
One of the earlier entries in this project was the card Sarkhan’s Unsealing, a card that captured the moment when the planeswalker Sarkhan unleashed the Eldrazi while he was enthralled to the dragon planeswalker Nicol Bolas. The mechanical callback here is obvious, as the card is an obvious paralell, but what are the little Kozilek spawn unsealing? That is a question I want answered.
Ravnica (Izzet)
Weirds are one of those creature types that are only found on a single plane, so seeing them tells you exactly where the card is from. A unique kind of creature, a weird is a sentient mass of energy that is born from two conflicting elements fused together, and often erupt or dissipate due to their conflicted nature. This makes them sort-of elementals, but not really, and the jokes involved with “Weird” as a type are too fun to ignore. They are defined by their contrasting nature, and are unlike elementals in the same ways Aetherborn are. This is the kind of variety I love in Magic.
Zendikar
Blue eldrazi, you know the deal. This guy is from Ulamog’s brood, as his bifurcated limbs and skull-mask clearly indicate, but did you know that Petrifying Meddler here is also the first mono-blue creature with reach? Odd, right? Generally when designing Eldrazi, WotC tries hard to make all the designs feel “off” in some way, and besides mismatched P/T and niche abilities, this is another way they achieve that.
Zendikar
The “Roil” erupts. You can go into it. It has its own elementals. But what is the “Roil”? The Roil is Zendikar’s planar immune system. A response from the soul of the plane itself to having three eldritch beings trapped within it for thousands of years (yay, Eldrazi!) the plane lashed out and constantly shifted, its mana becoming wild and unpredictable. Even with the Eldrazi now gone, the roil persists, a permanent state of heightened chaos, which the flavour text of this cartographer matches perfectly.
Innistrad
This is Modern Horizons, so anything is possible. The art of this card, and flavour, are interesting, and are evocative of the cult of Emrakul from Innistrad. They were primarily based around the ocean at a location called “The Drownyard”, and the obvious call to the Blind Eternities in the flavour of this card matches as well. Given that, the staff, and the cold-weather clothes, I think Innistrad is the most likely home for this wizard.
Ravnica (Azorius)
As a callback to the card Serum Visions, I really, really wish this card had art from Mirrodin. Mirrodin was the plane vedalken were invented for, after all, albeit in a more boxy form than modern Vedalken, so having this be clearly on Ravnica is a bit of an odd choice. I imagine the “serum” in this card’s name is metaphorical and not the actual blinkmoth-derived serum that the original card references, of course, as blinkmoths are all long gone.
For reference, this card depicts an Azorious lawmage, identified by the blue-and-white robes with Azorius-coded blue jewels and cool triangle helmet. The pre-criminal flavour text is likely referring to when the planeswalker Dovin controlled the guild and instituted a pre-crime division.
It’s still weird being the only non-Mirrodin serum-named card, though. Just saying.
Amonkhet
The illustration on this card is so, so good. It’s one of the ones that feels made for the retro frame.
With that said, this takes place on Amonkhet. The scepter and the lines of the skirt both are obvious call-outs to the “Bolas Horns” found all over the plane itself, and the “Second Sun” is a part of the promise in Amonkhet’s fake religion as a sign of the end of days.
Kamigawa
Kami, as referenced in the flavour of Sink into Stupor, are the spirits of Kamigawa (ha, the name of the plane even says it.) The figure depicted here is one of the Orochi; a species of four-armed, no-legged snake-kin unique to the plane. The orochi of Kamigawa are easily the race closest to the kami, having given up their legs in order to retain the great forest’s blessings.
Ravnica(-ish)
Huh, an inverted Swan Song, how cool! A “strix” is a real-world type of owl, and also a mythological owl-demon, but it’s also a cool word and used a lot in Magic. There is, of course, the school of Strixhaven, which is named after the strix, as well as various types of strix on Dominaria, Thunder Junction (from another plane), Ravnica, and Alara. The owl depicted in the art looks a lot like Sky Theater Strix on Ravnica, but that’s because they’re literally the same species of owl, so for now I’ll leave this card as open-ended.
Kamigawa
Man, I miss Tamiyo. I’m glad she got one last hurrah from this set. Tamiyo is a Kamigawan-native moonkfolk wizard and researcher, and has been involved in some of the multiverse’s greatest mysteries. But she’s not an adventurer, she’s a researcher, and she loves to learn and gather stories from across the multiverse. To that end, Tamiyo’s story circle was a small group that swapped stories from across the multiverse. Members included Narset, Elspeth, Ajani, Jace, and Vraska.
Fun trivia: The object inthe art here is known as an Orihon, which is a type of Japanese codex that’s somewhere between a scroll and a book in terms of modern binding technology.
Kamigawa
Look at her. Perfect. So full of life. And not even a drop of Phyrexian oil near her.
Well, at least her husband and children are alive and safe, and she lives on (sort-of) as a hologram.
Ixalan
A flavour-text reference to a "golden city? A legged merfolk with red-tipped fins and jade adornments? A whirling tempest of water? That’s an Ixalan card, baby.
Theros
“Triton” is what the merfolk of Theros are called, so even if this little guy wasn’t an enchantment, we can very clearly see he’s a follower of Thassa. The design for the triton is especially cool because they have a dorsal fin on their heads that is similar to a mohawk, like those seen adorning the helmets of some classic Greek carvings.
Kamigawa
Fun fact: this is the moment when Tamiyo sparks! She sparked learning from the kami about the existance of the multiverse, a very blue-aligned way to ignite. The kami are aware of the multiverse thanks to the efforts of the kami the Myojin of Night's Reach. She, during the Great Kami War, took advantage of the weakening of the walls between worlds after the ringing of the Apocalypse Chime, and used it as an opportunity to travel and learn the secrets of the multiverse.
Extra trivia: This card is an anagram of “Attune with Aether”, the first 1-mana card to generate two energy.
Zendikar
As I’m unaware of Ugin ever being bound (only dead or almost-dead in a Schrödinger's cocoon), this card is likely depicting Ugin using his colorless magic to seal away the three eldrazi titans on Zendikar. The story of that is long, but essentially, back when they were all-powerful oldwalkers, the planeswalkers Ugin, Sorin Markov, and Nahiri teamed up to seal away the eldrazi. Ugin used his colorless magic to counteract the effects of the Eldrazi’s reality-warping influence, Sorin used his life-draining magic to weaken them, and Nahiri used lithomancy to make the hedron array and trap the Eldrazi using the leylines of Zendikar.
Zendikar
Look at our boy, Kozilek, telling you impossible truths and/or lies! Anowon, the Ruin Sage, was a minor pawn of Nicol Bolas’s on Zendikar, and was used to draw together three planeswalkers at the Eye of Ugin to awaken the eldrazi. It’s fun to see he has a new job now, though.
Zendikar
Oof, getting reformatted into Ulamog’s wastes-bone-lattice as all of the mana is stripped out of your very body. Rough way to go.
UNKNOWN
This card is part of a cycle across all five colors to showcase a reserved list card from Magic’s past using energy to emulate the initial design, which I happen to think is rad as hell. This guy is a call-back mechanically to Gilded Drake. Drakes are very poorly defined as far as species go in Magic, with the majority of them being “small dragon with only two legs” and that being the end of it. But that’s fine: I love some mystery left in things.
UNTIL NEXT TIME
Phew, better late than never! This has been part one (of four) entries for Modern Horizons 3, so keep your eyes peeled for the next entries coming in the next week or two. Once all four parts are live, you’ll be able to find all the cards on their home planes as part of the MtG-Multiverse, but until then, let me know your thoughts via email.
Cheers!
-Nick