Modern RCQ Season: Legacy Problems Without Legacy Answers
Written by James Nease
Underworld Breach was banned from the Modern format at the beginning of April 2025. Surely, the is flush with interactive gameplay rather than a 'two ships passing in the night,' experience, right?
While that might be true for Dimir midrange players, data from the most recent challenges and current Regional Championship Qualifer (RCQ) results (many more to come) reveals a different pattern. Three of the five most played decks that are ranking in the Top 4 slots are deterministic combo decks. The remaining two are Modern Horizons III (MH3) precons that gatekeep the format by virtue of power creep:
Let's review these archetypes to determine why they drive the format toward a combo-centric meta post-Underworld-Breach ban.
Boros Energy
Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, Ocelot Pride, Guide of Souls; Boros Energy is a soup of the strongest one-drops ever printed that demand an immediate answer. If left unchecked, they snowball via card advantage, board presence, or life gain.
Boros Energy contains value engines like Phlage, Titan of Fire's Fury, Ajani, Nacatl Pariah, and Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, which are difficult to engage with on board; blocking a cat transforms Ajani, any interaction that moves cards to the graveyard feeds Phlage.
The White-Red color pairing offers some of the strongest catchall removal and hate pieces available: Static Prison, Galvanic Discharge, Path to Exile, Deafening Silence, Stony Silence, Blood Moon, etc., capable of negating effective answers. Try to Supreme Verdict on time against a turn-two Blood Moon.
Boros Energy oppresses other creature-based strategies. Boros Energy's creatures might not be bigger, but they’re so cheap, go so wide, and/or have built-in value that playing anything else not named Psychic Frog is moot.
How Do We Fix It?
By making combat math matter and not demanding every deck run sweepers and Fatal Push, other decks should be able to effectively block a cat without risking Ajani, Nacatl Avenger on the other side or getting comboed a turn later via Goblin Bombardment.
Amped Raptor was banned because of the card advantage and free mana provided — the Cascade mechanic is problematic, who knew? Wizards of the Coast (WotC) likely needs to ban Guide of Souls, Ajani, Nacatl Pariah, or both — hit an energy enabler and/or a combo enabler; Boros Energy shouldn’t have access to both.
Amulet Titan
Amulet Titan has been a problem for a long time. The meme is, “Well it’s hard to play!” Is it? If so, it shouldn’t have multiple pilots topping leagues, challenges, and RCQ locals. This deck receives the most amount of tools year over year.
Boseiju, Who Endures offers an uncounterable answer to hate like Ensnaring Bridge or Torpor Orb. Boseiju is easily fetchable and replayable in the Amulet Titan lands package. Aftermath Analyst and Lumra, Bellow of the Woods enable solitaire-style play patterns of dumping lands into the graveyard and looping them with Mirrorpool and Echoing Deeps for infinite creatures, mana, and tutors.
Green Sun's Zenith's (GSZ) unbanning plus Summoner’s Pact provides 12 effective copies of it’s signature creature, Primeval Titan. Urza’s Saga plus Mycosynth Gardens enable multiple paths to Amulet of Vigor with relative ease.
The entire deck comprises Demonic Tutors for its key pieces. WotC frequently prints land tutors, creature tutors, and ways to recur lands and creatures from the graveyard. Achieving Amulet Titan's gameplan of putting Primeval Titan on the stack early is trivial if an Amulet of Vigor or Urza's Saga is in their opening seven.
Combatting Amulet Titan requires enters the battlefield hate, artifact hate, land hate, and graveyard hate. The deck hasn’t been tagged by a ban since Summer Bloom.
How Do We Fix It?
Some of Amulet Titan's lines need to go. it can’t a 50%-tutors-self-mill strategy that wins through the graveyard.Either Aftermath Analyst or Amulet needs to go. If not, tutors and fast mana enablers should be removed from Modern.
Eldrazi Ramp
No surprise Sowing Mycospawn and Sol lands gatekeep slower strategies out of the format. The Eldrazi Ramp would be fine if was Eldrazi of yesteryear — Thought-Knot Seer and Reality Smasher — but it’s not. It’s game plan revolves around rushing out Sowing Mycospawn to Strip Mine opponents and tutor any land from their library, including utility lands like Ghost Quarter, Bojuka Bog, Surveil Lands, etc.
Sowing Mycospawn effectively Time Walks while ramping mana toward a gigantic Kozilek’s Command, which ramps further, removes threats, nukes graveyards, or functions as the best card selection in the format, allowing pilots to stack their library.
Unlike Tron, which requires three pieces and is limited by it’s colorless or mono-Green nature, Eldrazi Ramp is Temur — Sowing Mycospawns, Nulldrifters, other colored Eldrazi, and a varied sideboard (more flexible than a Karn, the Great Creator plan).
Eldrazi Ramp sometimes adds multiple Stone Rain effects to double down on the Ponza plan or Consign to Memory and other countermagic depending on matchup demands. It leads to rancid play patterns that require almost every deck capable of running four Consigns to Memory to do so, which greatly dilutes the meta into fast combo and heavy blue tempo that can leverage Harbinger of the Seas. Anything else gets ran over by Eldrazi cast triggers.
How Do We Fix It?
As was the case in Legacy, Sowing Mycospawn must be banned in Modern. It’s gameplay is rancid, gatekeeps spells that cost four or more mana.
Belcher/Storm
Players resort to degenerate combo strategies since they are not soft to Sowing Mycospawn. They can ignore land destruction since they are flush with mana from ritual effects. Fast combo has good matchups against Boros Energy because they largely ignore the board.
MH3 added fast mana enablers to the format via Ruby Medallion and Ral, Monsoon Mage, and more blue modal-double-faced cards (MDFC) evolving Goblin Charbelcher strategies from glass cannon combo to quasi-combo-control via Flare of Denial, Sink into Stupor, Pact of Negation, Force of Negation, etc.