Morning on the Riesengebirge by Caspar David Friedrich (1810-11).

Mowu, Loyal Companion by Kimonas Theodossiou.

I hadn't bought a box in a while, but something about Modern Horizons called to me. I don't play Standard, and I don't even play Modern, but I kept coming back to the fact that I and many others jokingly referred to this set as "Commander Masters". Modern Horizons has a ton of great cards for Commander players. It even has cards for the cEDH crowd, though they're unlikely to buy a box just to try to pick up an Urza, Lord High Artificer or Sisay, Weatherlight Captain.

Writing every week about Commander is an awesome challenge and some weeks I find myself struggling to come up with good ideas for upcoming columns. A few weeks ago I decided I would support my local game store, feed my love of cracking boosters and turn opening a Modern Horizons box into a new column idea. I would see what kind of Commander deck I could build using only cards from a single box of Modern Horizons boosters. I would add basic lands out of necessity, but otherwise I would only be allowed to use cards that I opened.

This past weekend I lived that dream.

I'm not sure "dream" is really the best word for it, but let's wait to pass judgement on the wisdom of this grand plan until I've told you how it turned out.

The Pulls

Anytime you open an entire box, you wind up with dozens and dozens of commons and uncommons. I'm only going to spotlight the Rares, as those are the most important cards I had to work with. If nothing else, those rares would include all of my potential commanders.

I'll list them by color so you can get a good idea of what my options were and I'm going to leave the legendary creatures for last.

In White I opened Astral Drift, Wings of Abandon, Giver of Runes, and Force of Virtue. Not bad, and some of those will definitely slot into decks I run. Giver of Runes will definitely put in work in the right build.

Blue gave me Marit Lage's Slumber, Mirrodon Besieged, Mist-Syndicate Naga, and Bazaar Trademage. I already have plans to move my Dark Depths into a new deck and it will be joined by Marit Lage's Slumber, but I'll leave that build for another week.

My Black rares were Force of Despair, Dead of Winter, Cabal Therapist, and Cordial Vampire. I'm still stunned that Cordial Vampire isn't a $5 card because of all the Edgar Markov decks out there, but MTG Finance isn't exactly my strong suit. Force of Despair is fantastic.

Red had a surprise. I got Force of Rage, Planebound Accomplice, Goblin Engineer, Spiteful Sliver, and both a regular Aria of Flame and a foil Aria of Flame. I'm not sure how often I'd want to give all of my opponents 10 life unless I had just used Zedruu the Greathearted to gift them with Transcendence, but the two Aria of Flames were in the same pack. That was unexpected, and I have to wonder if it was intentional.

Last but not least, my Green rares included Force of Vigor, Genesis, Crashing Footfalls, and Collector Ouphe.

Modern Horizons had its share of multicolored and colorless rares and I got a few nice cards out of those.

My multicolored cards included Reap the Past, Unsettled Mariner, Lightning Skelemental, and Collected Conjuring. There were two colorless cards: Mox Tantalite and Sword of Truth and Justice. Both are pretty sweet and will find homes in my decks. I also opened five lands: Prismatic Vista, Fiery Islet, Nurturing Peatland, Silent Clearing and Waterlogged Grove.

So far so good, but what legendary creatures did I find in my Modern Horizons box?

I opened Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis, Kess, Dissident Mage, Pashalik Mons and Yawgmoth, Thran Physician.

I had been hoping for Morophon, the Boundless, The First Sliver or Urza, Lord High Artificer. For this project I was especially hoping for Morophon, but luck was not with me.

I opened 37 rares and got four legendary creatures and four Mythic Rares - Kess, Yawgmoth, Mox Tantalite and Sword of Truth and Justice. I don't think I got my money's worth out of the box. That probably happens more often than you'd like, but it's the chance you take when you decide to buy a box in the first place.

Choosing Commander(s)

Modern Horizons is a set full of interesting tribes and plenty of shapeshifters that can act like glue to help bring a deck together when otherwise you'd be a few creatures shy of a playable build.

My first thought was to look through the Slivers I had available. With a decent little stack of ten different Slivers including the rare Spiteful Sliver, I was really disappointed that I didn't crack open a pack with The First Sliver in it. I also didn't open up a Morophon, the Boundless so my ideas of having some fun with some weird tribes went out the window.

I did open up a legendary Goblin - Pashalik Mons.

Looking through my Red commons and uncommons I found Goblin War Party, Goblin Champion, Goblin Engineer and Goblin Matron. That's not exactly a wealth of options to help build a Goblins deck in our format. Modern Horizons is a set full of changelings, but when I checked through my cards for any pseudo-Goblins in Red or colorless I only found Universal Automaton. I could run Volatile Claws, Amorphous Axe and Birthing Boughs but that would still leave me well short of what I would want to run in even a half-decent Pashalik Mons deck, so he was out.

Next up was Yawgmoth, Thran Physician.

I was initially optimistic. It would be fun to build around a new legendary but upon going through the cards I opened I only had 22 unique creatures and 10 unique noncreature spells in Black. I usually build a little on the lean side with my land base, but I couldn't see going with a deck that would run 33 non-lands and 67 lands. It would be a waste of my time, my opponents' time and most importantly, it would be a waste of your time, dear readers.

That left Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis and Kess, Dissident Mage. Kess would pull from my Instants and Sorceries and Hogaak would care about creatures, so I tentatively decided to build them both. The new Hogaak would let me pull from two colors - Black and Green, and Kess, a reprint, would let me build a three color deck. Yawgmoth could go in Hogaak and Pashalik Mons could theoretically fit into Kess if I really needed to squeeze some extra creatures into the mix.

I had a plan and I had my work cut out for me.

Experiment Hogaak

As it turned out, I was able to cobble together 31 Black spells and 29 Green spells to fill out a full 100 card list. I had a few cards that cared about snow permanents so I threw in 7 Snow-Covered Forests and 8 Snow-Covered Swamps.

At first glance the list definitely seems to lack in cohesion and synergy, but that's to be expected. There are some strong cards and while it has a little of everything I had the feeling that it didn't have quite enough of anything important.

Experiment Hogaak | Commander | Stephen Johnson

• Commander (1)
• 1 Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis

• Creatures (39)
• 1 Azra Smokeshaper
• 1 Bellowing Elk
• 1 Cabal Therapist
• 1 Carrion Feeder
• 1 Changeling Outcast
• 1 Collector Ouphe
• 1 Conifer Wurm
• 1 Crypt Rats
• 1 Excavating Anurid
• 1 Feaster of Fools
• 1 First-Sphere Gargantua
• 1 Frostwalla
• 1 Genesis
• 1 Gluttonous Slug
• 1 Graveshifter
• 1 Headless Specter
• 1 Krosan Tusker
• 1 Mother Bear
• 1 Murasa Behemoth
• 1 Nantuko Cultivator
• 1 Nimble Mongoose
• 1 Ninja of the New Moon
• 1 Putrid Goblin
• 1 Rank Officer
• 1 Rime Tender
• 1 Saddled Rimestag
• 1 Silumgar Scavenger
• 1 Sling-Gang Lieutenant
• 1 Spore Frog
• 1 Springbloom Druid
• 1 Throatseeker
• 1 Treetop Ambusher
• 1 Twin-Silk Spider
• 1 Undead Augur
• 1 Venomous Changeling
• 1 Wall of Blossoms
• 1 Warteye Witch
• 1 Webweaver Changeling
• 1 Yawgmoth, Thran Physician

• Instants (9)
• 1 Defile
• 1 Diabolic Edict
• 1 Elvish Fury
• 1 Force of Despair
• 1 Force of Vigor
• 1 Mob
• 1 Thornado
• 1 Umezawa's Charm
• 1 Weather the Storm

• Sorceries (11)
• 1 Crashing Footfalls
• 1 Dead of Winter
• 1 Glacial Revelation
• 1 Mind Rake
• 1 Ransack the Lab
• 1 Return from Extinction
• 1 Scale Up
• 1 Shatter Assumptions
• 1 Trumpeting Herd
• 1 Unearth
• 1 Winding Way

• Enchantments (2)
• 1 Squirrel Nest
• 1 Treefolk Umbra

• Artifacts (2)
• 1 Fountain of Ichor
• 1 Talisman of Resilience

• Lands (36)
• 10 Forest
• 10 Swamp
• 7 Snow-Covered Forest
• 8 Snow-Covered Swamp
• 1 Nurturing Peatland

Buy This Deck Export text format

This list really brought into focus how much I normally rely on staples. The lack of any real ramp is glaring, though traditional ramp won't actually help with this deck because you can't actually use mana to cast Hogaak. A proper build would identify what Hogaak wants and needs, and would build to those needs. This just felt like a bunch of cards thrown together, which is basically what it was.

Kess and a Mess

I knew that I had enough Instants and Sorceries from Kess, Dissident Mage's color identity to be able to build a deck. Much like with Hogaak, the qualifier wasn't to build a good deck, just to see what I could throw together and then see how it would play.

To my surprise, the pile of noncreature spells I was able to throw into this list wasn't terrible. It just didn't have a plan or any real direction behind it. It was a mess.

Kess and a Mess | Commander | Stephen Johnson

• Commander (1)
• 1 Kess, Dissident Mage

• Creatures (23)
• 1 Azra Smokeshaper
• 1 Bazaar Trademage
• 1 Bogardan Dragonheart
• 1 Changeling Outcast
• 1 Eyekite
• 1 Goblin Champion
• 1 Goblin Matron
• 1 Ingenious Infiltrator
• 1 Kess, Dissident Mage
• 1 Mist-Syndicate Naga
• 1 Ninja of the New Moon
• 1 Oneirophage
• 1 Ore-Scale Guardian
• 1 Pashalik Mons
• 1 Pondering Mage
• 1 Putrid Goblin
• 1 Quakefoot Cyclops
• 1 Rank Officer
• 1 Sling-Gang Lieutenant
• 1 Thundering Djinn
• 1 Venomous Changeling
• 1 Warteye Witch
• 1 Watcher for Tomorrow

• Instants (21)
• 1 Choking Tethers
• 1 Defile
• 1 Diabolic Edict
• 1 Everdream
• 1 Exclude
• 1 Fact or Fiction
• 1 Fists of Flame
• 1 Force of Rage
• 1 Lava Dart
• 1 Magmatic Sinkhole
• 1 Mob
• 1 Phantasmal Form
• 1 Prohibit
• 1 Rain of Revelation
• 1 Rebuild
• 1 Spell Snuff
• 1 String of Disappearances
• 1 Twisted Reflection
• 1 Umezawa's Charm
• 1 Urza's Rage
• 1 Volatile Claws

• Sorceries (16)
• 1 Collected Conjuring
• 1 Firebolt
• 1 Geomancer's Gambit
• 1 Goatnap
• 1 Goblin War Party
• 1 Mind Rake
• 1 Pillage
• 1 Pyrophobia
• 1 Reckless Charge
• 1 Return from Extinction
• 1 Scour All Possibilities
• 1 Shenanigans
• 1 Smiting Helix
• 1 Stream of Thought
• 1 Throes of Chaos
• 1 Unearth

• Enchantments (1)
• 1 Aria of Flame

• Artifacts (4)
• 1 Amorphous Axe
• 1 Fountain of Ichor
• 1 Mox Tantalite
• 1 Sword of Truth and Justice

• Lands (35)
• 10 Island
• 10 Mountain
• 10 Swamp
• 1 Barren Moor
• 1 Fiery Islet
• 1 Forgotten Cave
• 1 Lonely Sandbar
• 1 Prismatic Vista

Buy This Deck Export text format

To my slight surprise, the average CMC of this list was under three. It makes sense that a Magic set created to be draftable and would have a decent mana curve on its own. I had never tried to build a deck out of a box before so I wasn't sure what I'd end up with. If nothing else, I was happy that neither list would probably fail because its spells were too expensive.

The Proof is in the Pudding

With my two new decks sleeved up and ready to go, I headed to NexGen Comics in Pelham, New Hampshire to try my luck on our weekly "casual night". We have a few spikes in the local meta so it's not uncommon to have games where casual decks get trashed, but I figured I'd just be honest about what I was playing and would see how things turned out.

My goal was to get in four games, two with each deck, but after one game with each of these lists I gave up. I was desperate to play a normal deck. I'm not going to give a full play-by-play but I'll do my best to sum up how both games played out.

Game 1

In my first game I decided to go with Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis. I kept a decent hand and in the early game it was almost like I was playing a normal deck. I got out a creature or two and was able to play and rebound Trumpeting Herd to assemble a pretty nice little boardstate.

As I was struggling to do all of this and hoping to maybe, just maybe be able to cast my commander, the Krenko deck was blowing up like crazy. I was clearly not the threat. The Oloro player was doing the usual obnoxious Oloro things - shooting his life total into the stratosphere and making us all dread the inevitable appearance of Aetherflux Reservoir.

Sheoldred, Whispering One made an appearance, cheated into play by the Yidris player if I remember correctly. It was Oloro's Sheoldred. The Oloro player apparently didn't hear or didn't care about my request that we play tamer decks than usual.

When the Oloro player dropped a Grand Arbiter Augustin IV, my hopes of playing my commander diminished even further. I did have the presence of mind to sacrifice my non-token creatures to the Sheoldred triggers so that I could exile them from the graveyard to try to cast my commander at least once before the game was over. At the rate the Krenko deck was blowing up, it didn't seem like it would be long.

The Krenko player was mainly going after the Oloro player, and with the help of some buffs and lords, he eventually accomplished that task. I was finally able to cast Hogaak but it wasn't a turn or two after that before the Yidris player and I were overrun by Goblins.

A well-tuned Krenko deck can be a real headache even for a good non-cEDH deck. My cobbled-together experiment of a Hogaak deck was ridiculously outclassed and if I hadn't been killed by Goblins I would never have had a way to keep up with the Oloro deck's life gain.

Game 2

In the second game it was Kess, Dissident Mage's turn. I liked my chances of having some impact on the game, but I wasn't overly optimistic.

We were joined by a fifth player. The Krenko player switched to Jodah, Archmage Eternal. The Oloro player and the Yidris player stayed with their decks. The new player was on Grand Warlord Radha.

The Jodah player mentioned that he had gotten rolled by the Radha player a few weeks before, so it seemed likely that the Radha player's deck wasn't exactly precon level, but I was going to try to make the best of it.

I was able to get some random creatures out early including Pashalik Mons and some Goblin tokens, but my lasting memory of the game was looking over at the Jodah player's board and realizing he had a Candelabra of Tawnos on his field. It wasn't long before he had found a way to make infinite mana, but he didn't yet have a way to turn it into a win. It was one of those games. One or both of his infinite mana combo pieces got blown up, but not by me.

The Oloro player was able to get out a Serra Avatar and when the Grand Warlord Radha player failed to leave back any blockers, he took a 61/61 Serra Avatar to the face for his mistake. I think he had blown up some of the Oloro player's stuff earlier, so there was some sense of retribution in the attack.

Again I was basically left alone but I did have an impact on the game. The Yidris player was blowing up as we got into the late game and had a Thousand-Year Storm and a Paradox Engine out. He swung at the Jodah and Oloro players with enough to kill them and when the Oloro player tried to fog with Holy Day I was able to counter his fog so the attack would go through. I didn't wind up having any answers for Yidris, though and he closed out the game fairly easily.

I had planned to play each deck twice but I couldn't bear to play either one again. One with each was enough.

Final Thoughts

I don't regret this experiment but I definitely wouldn't do it again. If the proof was in the pudding, while the pudding might have been brown, it most assuredly wasn't chocolate (or hazelnut, or caramel, or... well, you get the idea).

I probably could have predicted how it would turn out. There are a lot of reasons to NOT try to build a deck out of a single box from pretty much any Magic set. In a singleton 100-card format it's simply too hard to wind up with anything even vaguely playable when you're building with that kind of restriction. If I had opened a Morophon or The First Sliver I have to wonder if my experience would have been much better.

I still think that if you were able to get some buddies to all go in on their own boxes and you each built a deck, you might be able to have some real fun. You wouldn't find yourself getting overrun by a tuned Krenko deck, looking across the table at a Paradox Engine and Thousand-Year Storm or fighting the temptation to touch a tablemate's Candelabra of Tawnos.

Balanced games with a decent chance to have a shot at the win are always much more fun than getting crushed and that's what happened to my two experiment decks.

My bad night was probably more my fault than I'm making it out to be. I could have insisted that everyone play their worst deck, though many players' worst decks would have still made for some un-fun games.

If I've spared any of you from the temptation of trying this experiment, then I've done some good today. That's all I've got for you today. Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!