Harbinger of the Seas – Modern Horizons III
Date Reviewed: June 4, 2024
Ratings:
Constructed: 4
Casual: 4
Limited: 2.5
Multiplayer: 4
Commander [EDH]: 4
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
I heard a rumor about a blue Magus of the Moon being leaked, but didn’t quite believe it was real until the full set reveal. It’s an interesting tool to give to blue, not least because if the Magus and the original enchantment are still good cards, this one will almost certainly be good too. (Aside: I remember when people complained about fighting Jund by transforming its lands into Islands, because it was supposedly a sign of blue being so bad in Standard that nobody wanted to control Islands. It was also a sign of forgetting about cards like Magus of the Moon.) You’ll have the same slight risk of helping people cast their blue spells, though I doubt anybody is going to be jamming Archmage’s Charm in their decks in the hope they face Harbinger of the Seas. Even so, it is worth remembering that just as some decks don’t much mind Magus of the Moon because they’re casting Lightning Bolt, others won’t much mind the Harbinger because they’re casting Counterspell – and Counterspell will mess up a different set of gameplans than Lightning Bolt does.
I’m not sure how much of a boost this card gives to things like Legacy Merfolk because their islandwalk lords are already active in a lot of matchups anyway, but if decks like Eldrazi and Tron are around in Modern, they’ll hate facing it. That might just be enough.
Constructed: 4
Casual: 4
Limited: 2.5
Multiplayer: 4 (as always, be careful in multiplayer formats – effects like this tend to attract attention)
Commander [EDH]: 4
Merfolk do love making everything proper moist, and Harbinger of the Seas doubles as a clever lateral take on Magus of the Moon and…well, making everything shades of wet. The effects of this are twofold: it can help crunch out decks that rely heavily on their nonbasic mana sources (and can near-instantly win the game in a couple of match-ups), and it also can enable the islandwalk of several of the Merfolk tribal lords. Spreading Seas has long been a nifty bit of tech in their decks for those reasons, but this is another way to turn the tables that way. It’s an unimpressive body that has trouble being splashed into places, but this is quite the vicious hate card that can auto-win several match-ups out of nowhere. No idea if it’ll be enough to get Merfolk a foothold in Modern again, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it helped.
Constructed: 4
Casual: 4
Limited: 2.5 (no real payoffs for Merfolk or reasons to hate on lands, and the body just isn’t good on its own)
Multiplayer: 4
Commander [EDH]: 4
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