I have to admit, I was a little surprised.

The combination of Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time has been so talked about, so hyped, so feared, that it was almost a foregone conclusion they would dominate both Grand Prix held last weekend.

And, in a way, they did. But not quite the way we expected.

Delver of Secrets and friends won both events, but they did not litter the Top 8. Instead, Siege Rhino did. As did Birthing Pod, which is in itself something of a surprise, though nowhere near as much as the fact that only a single Melira was to be found.

Simply put, what?

What is Modern?

A few months ago a few things we knew to be true.

• Pod was the best archetype but very beatable.
• The combo decks were good but manageable.
• The format was a bit dry in terms of innovation.

Then along came Khans of Tarkir, and everything went to hell. The initial terror was Jeskai Ascendancy, which was scary for a few weeks but seems to have faded away. In its place came the stream of Delve cards, and the rest is history.

As in, it may actually be history. All the talk of Pod players putting up their artifacts for Delvers may have been a bit presumptuous. Instead, they simply decided to max out on Abrupt Decay and out-value the Delver decks.

Honestly, I’m not sure where the format is at right now. But I can at least run the numbers on the Top 16.

• 23 Serum Visions
• 22 Abrupt Decay
• 16 Birthing Pod
• 15 Dig Through Time
• 15 Snapcaster Mage
• 14 Tarmogoyf
• 13 Siege Rhino
• 12 Scavenging Ooze
• 12 Treasure Cruise
• 12 Delver of Secrets
• 12 Young Pyromancer
• 9 Forked Bolt
• 9 Chalice of the Void
• 9 Thought Scour

That’s definitely some interesting data, and something we’ll get into in a bit.

How about our shiny new lands?

• 24 Scalding Tarn
• 23 Verdant Catacombs
• 21 Windswept Heath
• 17 Misty Rainforest
• 10 Flooded Strand
• 7 Marsh Flats
• 6 Wooded Foothills
• 4 Polluted Delta
• 3 Arid Mesa
• 0 Bloodstained Mire
•  23 Steam Vents

Okay… Now What?

There’s a lot to cover here, so I’ll keep it short and bulleted.

Things that immediately jump out at me from that Top 16.

• Serum Visions deserves its $7 (!) pricetag, but there’s no way this won’t be reprinted en masse somewhere within a year.
• Abrupt Decay is trending downward at $11 right now. This seems as safe as anything from a reprint given how recent it is, but I honestly wouldn’t be surprised to see this go to $20 within a year.
• Pod is down more than 50% from its peak back in the spring. I’m expecting a Modern Masters 2 reprint along with Spellskite, Probe ($2.50!), Surgical Extraction, Dismember and maybe even Gut Shot.
• Scavenging Ooze has got to be underpriced at $5.
• Siege Rhino is not here to stay. I certainly see it being good as a one-of in Pod, but the only reason it’s so huge right now is because of how much Delver and Burn have been going around. If anything, this shows how warped the format has become around those cards.
• Chalice of the Void has ticked up to $6, and I expect this to continue. $10 seems like a fairly easy-to-call medium-term target (the next eight weeks or so).
• I mentioned Thought Scour as a foil to watch a few weeks ago, and it’s at $3 and climbing. If things continue along this path that foil will be $10 before long.
• No matter how much you Delve away your graveyard, Tarmogoyf is still good, and so is Snapcaster. Go figure.

Delving In

Now we come to the big one. Was all the fear overblown? After all, we have no Ascendancy here, and only three Delver decks. Not exactly the boogeyman, right?

Wrong.

It’s not just Delver, and I don’t think you can evaluate these cards in a vacuum. It’s not Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time. It’s Treasure Cruise AND Dig Through Time. With the question of a ban on everyone’s minds, I believe these are going to be judged together.

And when you expand the scope a bit, the picture becomes less rosy. Even being generous and assuming none of the Burn decks were on the Cruise plan, we see that 83 of the 220 Day 2 decks made use of either Cruise or Dig. That’s nearly 50%, and while I don’t think that’s damning, it’s certainly not a good sign when you consider that these two cards represented four of the top eight decks that put pilots into Day 2. Those numbers rise to 50% and five if you count Burn.

Again, those aren’t damning numbers. But I don’t think it’s exactly a sign of a healthy format when you consider how warped everything else has become to compensate. When zero Dark Confidants Top 16 because Delving is just better, I think we have a problem. Moreover, when Modern begins to look exactly like Legacy, I don’t think there’s any question that’s a poor sign.

All of this is, of course, just my take with no true sense of which way the wind is blowing on a banning. And while I’m enjoying the ride (I have Forked Bolts, too), I’m not sure it’s going to stand. If you were ahead of the boat on Bolts or some of the other pieces, I think the best time to get out will be Worlds Week, when we’ll likely get some of these more camera time.

If a ban comes down, it won’t be until Fate Reforged, and that means you’ll have plenty of time to cash out at the height before the decision. Even if they stay unbanned, it also allows you to lock in some profits before running into reprint risks in an assumed Modern Masters 2.

Lands

There’s no doubt that the new lands, particularly Heath, are going to continue to apply downward pressure on Zendikar fetchlands. The manabase distribution you see above, with some variance on Tarns and Vents, is likely what the future of the Modern manabase looks like. Get used to it, and when you’re considering your fetchland strategy for the next few years, plan accordingly.

Steam Vents is easily the most desirable shockland at this point, because it’s the blue-red combo decks that most want to just jam four to fix their mana and not care about the shock. I don’t see this changing, and regardless of what colors the decks in Modern turn out to be, blue-red will always go the heaviest on shocks. I think all the shocks are decent grabs right now, but I like Steam Vents at $10 more than most.

Moving Forward

That’s my post-mortem on Grand Prix Madrid, and it will be extremely interesting to see where things go from here. The Delve strategies weren’t overwhelmingly oppressive, but they’re also pretty clearly better than anything else you can be doing in Modern right now. I think Worlds Week will go a long way toward determining any changes to the banlist, so keep your ear to the ground as we roll into December.

Thanks for reading,

Corbin Hosler

@Chosler88 on Twitter