The Modern Meta After RC Vegas

With RC Vegas behind us, there’s a lot to discuss about the Modern meta game, and the state of its financial potential. The Top 8 lists and matchup matrices with Boros Energy having the highest conversion rates, and Amulet Titan winning the finals match. 

Let’s take a look at some of the key financial movements from the last of the old guard in Amulet Titan and some surprising pieces of the eighth place deck list that stand out from the rest of the pack. 

Amulet of Vigor

Realistically, Amulet Titan has always been one of the top performers in the format, but with an exceptionally high skill floor that often suppresses what might otherwise be the most powerful deck in the meta from obtaining a higher meta share. RC Vegas was no exception. Amulet Titan was the third most-presented deck on Day 1 and had the sixth highest conversion rate going into Day 2. 

The Day 1 meta also heavily favored Amulet Titan with Izzet Affinity and Izzet Prowess collectively making up almost 15% of the field, while also being some of Titan’s best matchups. Jeskai Blink making up roughly 18% of the field on Day 1 also bodes fairly well for Titan, which they have a neutral-to-favorable matchup against. While Boros Energy traditionally has a much stronger matchup against Titan, Titan saw a wider field of more positively-slanted matchups in spite of this. 

All this is to say, Amulet Titan once again has more or less established itself as the deck to beat and is singularly responsible for the uptick in the market prices of many of its staples, including cards like Scapeshift, which I discussed in my previous article. 

Amulet of Vigor itself has accordingly climbed in price, representative of the uptick in adoption of this deck at the highest levels of tournament play. Currently, this single card sits at $50 a piece on average–the highest it has ever been. The natural question is, can this get much higher? (Pun fully intended.) Possibly, but not in leaps and bounds. 

Amulet Titan has such a demanding learning curve that it’s tough for me to imagine a world where its meta share jumps significantly even after this win, but it could see its share tick up a bit all the same. All this is to say, I don’t think $50 is the ceiling. Keep an eye on this single and the dialogue around this deck.

Amulet of Vigor	CardKingdom $59.99	TCGPlayer $56.15
Amulet of Vigor (Borderless)	CardKingdom $74.99	TCGPlayer $65.00
Amulet of Vigor	CardKingdom	TCGPlayer $49.00

Primeval Titan

The complementary component to Amulet of Vigor is, of course, Primeval Titan. The primary engine for the deck, Primeval Titan evokes a certain nostalgia for a time in Modern’s history that existed before the Modern Horizons-induced meta cycle. Primeval Titan even more so has a storied history outside of Modern with its infamous banning in the Commander format to boot. A card beloved by some, and hated by others is moving with the market and the meta all the same. 

Unlike Amulet of Vigor, the market for Primeval Titan seems much less bullish, and more volatile. Both the market and average prices for Prime Time sit around $11 each, and shockingly seem to be trending downward or perhaps even bottoming out. 

This brings us to the other half of the story: potential bannings. WotC has indicated that Amulet Titan as an archetype is something that it's keeping an eye on, so that could bring some worry to the market for key staples. Realistically, though, Primeval Titan is the least problematic of the cards in the deck as far as tournament criticism can go. Cards like Aftermath Analyst, Lotus Field, and Amulet itself likely draw more ire for the loops and play patterns they create. The arguments for a ban of any of Amulet Titan’s key pieces are twofold: 

1. Amulet Titan as a deck is exceedingly difficult to interact with and struggles to be “hated out” by comparison to Affinity, Belcher, or other archetypes that have more obvious interaction points or exploitable vulnerabilities

2. While Amulet Titan has deterministic win lines, it also has many non-deterministic lines that have to be played out and cannot be short-cutted. This makes for higher potential draw rates, long tournament rounds, and other cumbersome issues that burden tournament logistics overall (similar in nature, but not in scope to Nadu or Second Sunrise Eggs)

Perhaps some of the price dips we’re seeing are reflective of market pessimism that’s not manifesting in the higher-end staples like Scapeshift or Amulet of Vigor. Realistically, there’s no reason to fear any key pieces being banned in Amulet Titan yet, so Primeval Titan at its current market price presents a reasonable opportunity for speculative purchasing in the short-term. So long as Amulet Titan continues to see an uptick in play, then Primeval Titan will necessarily swing back up in price to represent an increase in demand holding all else constant. 

Primeval Titan	CardKingdom $7.99	TCGPlayer $11.25
Astral Tiran - Primeval Titan (Showcase)	CardKingdom $6.49	TCGPlayer $5.00
Primeval Titan (494)	CardKingdom $12.99	TCGPlayer $16.13
Primeval Titan	CardKingdom $16.99	TCGPlayer $19.00
Primeval Titan	CardKingdom $6.49	TCGPlayer $7.12

Peer Past the Veil

Okay, now let’s go backward from the first place overall to the eight place. The sole “other” category deck that made the Top 8 of RC Vegas: Jeskai Ascendancy Combo. Functionally a manual storm deck with an exceptional amount of layered synergies between Jeskai Ascendancy itself, Cori-Steel Cutter, and a myriad of free spells. 

Somewhere between Izzet Prowess and Izzet Affinity is this shell, which dips its feet into the best of both worlds, and gets to play Jeskai Ascendancy and some neat combo lines with Retraction Helix and a free artifact to make your creatures infinitely large, while drawing your entire deck. With infinitely large creatures, you can just play your Cori-Steel Cutters and equip them, and an infinitely large creature can gain trample and haste, which wins you the game. 

An interesting tech piece that caught my eye in this deck is Peer Past the Veil, a nice little bulk rare from Duskmourn: House of Horror. This four-mana spell causes you to discard your hand and draw cards equal to the number of card types in your graveyard. In a deck that can play four copies of Mox Opal, it’s not hard to get to four mana at critical points or turns in the game. With cards like Emry, Lurker of the Loch, Chart a Course, and Jeskai Ascendancy itself, it’s exceptionally easy to churn through your deck, while filling your graveyard with every card type the deck has in it.

Typically, when Peer resolves, you’re likely drawing four cards, and in less common cases, five. The benefit of this card in particular is that the shell itself plays a ton of cheap and free spells to trigger Cori-Steel Cutter and Jeskai Ascendancy, which oftentimes cause you to empty your entire hand. Peer Past the Veil allows you to dump your hand, and refill with one single card. Really neat tech for a shell like this! 

It is a bulk rare for what it’s worth, and it’s tough to gauge where this card’s utility and the Jeskai Ascendancy shell itself goes in the future, but it’s an easy, cheap pickup that has minimal risk, and significant upside. 

Peer Past the Veil	CardKingdom $0.49	TCGPlayer $0.25
Peer Past the Veil (Showcase)	CardKingdom $0.49	TCGPlayer $0.25

Jeskai Ascendancy

This old-school enchantment used to be a dedicated combo piece… Of course, it’s still a combo piece, but now, it’s also more of a value engine that stretches the power and toughness of the tokens created by Cori-Steel Cutter while buffing the rest of your board as well. It also creates some really interesting synergies and play patterns. 

For instance, using Emry’s activated ability to recast a Mishra's Bauble from your yard will trigger Jeskai Ascendancy, allowing you to untap Emry, draw, discard, tap her again, and recast Mishra's Bauble. In theory, you can infinitely tap/untap Emry, and recast Mishra's Bauble, which will result in you drawing your deck, and at some point discarding a Steel Cutter to your yard with Ascendancy, which can be recast with Emry, and equip it to her. Of course, once this is done, you have a big Emry that can swing for lethal damage.

Other Emry synergies can also involve playing Opal, tapping it for a mana, and then using Emry to cast another Opal from your yard, triggering Ascendancy, untapping Emry, letting you draw and discard, and giving you a fresh Mox Opal (sacrificing your old one due to the Legend Rule)-this line draws your entire deck and makes infinite mana, too. 

You can also use Retraction Helix or Banishing Knack with a hasted creature you control (Steel Cutter helps with this) to infinitely pick up and recast zero-cost artifacts, which when recast trigger Ascendancy, allowing you to untap your creature with the granted ability of Retraction Helix, which can be used to loop said zero-mana artifacts and lead to infinitely big creatures that can swing for lethal and your entire deck likely in your hand. 

Thanks to the unbanning of Mox Opal and introduction of Cori-Steel Cutter to the format, Ascendancy has a second wind in competitive viability that makes an old-school combo player like myself incredibly excited. It’s no surprise that Ascendancy has crawled out of bulk status and looks to keep climbing likely due to the splash this deck has made. 

Keep an eye on this one! I fully expect it to continue climbing its way up going forward.

Jeskai Ascendancy	CardKingdom $2.29	TCGPlayer $1.79
Jeskai Ascendancy (Foil Etched)	CardKingdom	TCGPlayer $8.00

Going Forward

To echo the sentiment of my previous article, Modern is largely in a good spot. Amulet Titan is maybe drawing a little bit more ire from the player base, but nothing that comes near the level of previous problematic archetypes, though it’s worth keeping an eye on the dialogue and tournament data to see how Amulet Titan’s share in the meta continues to evolve. 

Seeing an off-meta deck like Ascendancy Combo make the Top 8 also is incredibly encouraging as far as the space to brew in the meta goes. Speculate safely!

Read More:

The Financial Aspects of Amulet Titan