Good call. The jury’s still out about Storm, but UR Thing definitely wants a critical mass of cantrips. And agree that Shoal works well there. Worth looking into!

Since the reprinting of Opt it occurred to me that this deck may yet have some life in it still. My feeling is that in order to protect its namesake threats, one can employ a playset of [[Disrupting Shoal]] in the same way that Infect is currently doing, to claw back into the metagame. shoal pitching a cantrip counters 90% of the removal you’d see in your average modern tournament, and pitching a second shoal or a Thing counters many of the most dangerous two-drops that might be played (such as Chalice of the Void).

I like the idea. it actually seems very good in the current meta.

All potentially true, but that’s not what I was referencing. Opt is Preordain adjusted to instant speed, and Wizards is leery of too many cantrips boosting combo. This probably shuts the door on Preordain ever coming off the banlist, regardless of what my data may or may not say.

In line with their diversity goals, Wizards prefers when multiple spells battle for the same deck slots. The Push printing was a wild success on this front. Sleight, Opt, Serum all fight for card selection slots.

Releasing Preordain goes against this card diversity goal by invalidating all three in decks with only four slots to spare. It’s strictly better than Sleight and Opt and better than Serum in almost every scenario, since it’s the same card but with immediate selection rather than delayed.

That’s not to mention the potential power/color/archetype imbalances Preordain might cause. Right now Modern is plenty healthy and diverse, another reason I doubt Wizards unbans such a powerful card—they probably don’t want to mess up a good thing, and are likely to be more cautious about format health after the last Standard season.

Agree. I think Jeskai decks stand to gain the most from Opt’s arrival, and it’s not even close.

I don’t know if the selection is enough in Shadow. That deck heavily relies on Serum to fix its openers, so that card isn’t going anywhere. But Ari Lax has popularized a build with Sleight of Hand and 17 lands, so Opt may find its way into that build.

The problem with Opt there is that Shadow doesn’t usually want to represent cards on the opponent’s turn. If it’s going to cast Kolaghan’s, it’s going to cast Kolaghan’s. Denial only costs one mana and Sleight is better at finding one immediately. Sleight’s also better at sculpting openers, as described in the article. Basically, if you’re going to be casting your cantrips at sorcery speed a good deal of the time anyway, Sleight is superior. I think Shadow falls into that boat more often than not. Opt will mainly be better in game states where they’re stuck on two lands, but again, Sleight is better at fixing those game states by finding that crucial third land.

Honestly, one effect of Opt coming to Modern might be that a bunch of players try to jam it, realize it’s worse than Sleight in multiple shells, and then come around to running Sleight when they weren’t before. I’ve always said the card is underrated, and Opt might be the instigator it needs to be taken seriously.