Top Trades: July 15-July 22

Welcome back everyone, and happy Thursday! The week's just about wrapped up, so you know what that means - it's time for Top Trades, where we check in and see what's been moving around the most here at Cardsphere. This week is a bit of return to form for our list, which is once again chock full of exciting cards from Modern Horizons 3. So, let's get into it!

Honorable Mention - Writhing Chrysalis

Number of Trades: 12 --- Number of Cards Traded: 16

Alright everyone, first off on our list is this week's honorable mention (and last week's second most traded card), Writhing Chrysalis. While this four-mana Eldrazi may be most well known for terrorizing the Modern Horizons 3 limited environment, that hasn't stopped it from making a splash in competitive constructed, most notably in Pauper, as well as Commander decks far and wide. So, what's so spooky about this Eldrazi?

For starters, it refunds half of the mana investment as a triggered ability upon cast, thanks to the two 0/1 Eldrazi Spawn creature tokens you'll create. Not bad - but then you realize that this card gets bigger as you sacrifice Eldrazi. So not only does it pay mana towards your next spell, but when you do use those Spawn creatures you'll get a +1/+1 counter too. Run multiples of these in the same deck, or any other way to create Eldrazi Spawn/Scion creatures, and Writhing Chrysalis will get big fast.

#5 - Harbinger of the Seas

Number of Trades: 7 --- Number of Cards Traded: 8

Coming in at number five on our list of Top Trades for the week is Harbinger of the Seas, a Merfolk that answers the question "What if blue had Blood Moon?" So, what exactly is this card?

For Harbinger of the Seas is a 2/2 Merfolk Wizard creature with a single line of text that reads "Nonbasic lands are Islands." See what I said earlier about Blood Moon? Well, here's Blue Moon. You have to pay an extra colored mana to get the ball rolling here - double blue as opposed to a single red - but in exchange for that you'll be getting a 2/2 creature with two relevant creature types, as opposed to an enchantment. Easier to remove than Blood Moon? Sure, but now you can attack, block, and fulfill all the typal shenanigans your heart desires.

Speaking of typal, Merfolk might not be the tier-one Modern deck oh-so many players want it to be, but that hasn't stopped Harbinger of the Seas from making waves. After all, Blood Moon but for blue is a pretty powerful effect (especially in a format as dominated by nonbasic lands as Modern), and attaching that to a Merfolk hasn't just meant that the Merfolk deck has gotten better - although it certainly has - but so too have more primarily, if not solely, blue decks begun to emerge at Modern's fringes.

#4 - White Orchid Phantom

Number of Trades: 8 --- Number of Cards Traded: 9

Flickerable land destruction, in Modern? Yes, you heard that right - the next card on our list is a creature with an an enter the battlefield trigger that lets you destroy a nonbasic land. Now that's something I haven't heard of in a long while. So let's break it down and see if we can figure out how broken White Orchid Phantom really is.

For , White Orchard Phantom is a 2/2 Spirit Knight creature with flying, first strike, and "When this creature enters the battlefield, destroy up to one target nonbasic land. Its controller may search their library for a basic land card, put it onto the battlefield tapped, then shuffle." Already, this is an incredibly efficient creature - we might not be talking Ragavan level here, but a two-mana flying first striker is a pretty good rate, especially in white. As for the triggered ability, two things immediately stick out - you can target a land controlled by any player, and, of course, you can blink this over and over again.

Starting with the option to destroy any player's land, the reason I bring this up is because of one key card: Flagstones of Trokair. If you destroy your own Flagstones, then you'll get a land back off of White Orchid Phantom's ability as well as any Plains off of the resolution of Flagstones' own destruction trigger. While I wouldn't build a deck around this, it is a very useful backup in the case of your opponent not controlling any lands worth destroying.

Finally, we come to the real best part of this card, the ability to loop it. Now, in sixty card formats this isn't as important - odds are you'll see multiples come up if you're playing a playset anyways - but in Commander, where blink is a very popular theme, the lack of restrictions on White Orchid Phantom's trigger make it all the more appealing. Blink it off of Brago, King Eternal, or any other of a myriad commanders, and voilá! You have a lock on your opponents' lands.

#3 - Malevolent Rumble

Number of Trades: 8 --- Number of Cards Traded: 17

Time to look over this week's Pauper standout form Modern Horizons 3, one with Eldrazi synergies, no less.

Malevolent Rumble is a sorcery that, for , instructs you to look at the top four cards of your library, put up to one permanent card from among them into your hand and the rest into your graveyard, and then create a 0/1 Eldrazi Spawn creature token.

While this might not be the most complicated card to come out of Modern Horizons 3 - nor the most self-synergistic - its certainly an all around useful and flexible card. Plenty of strategies exist in Pauper and beyond that seek to make use of the graveyard, so a sorcery speed Impulse that feeds your graveyard is certainly going to have an audience just for the extra graveyard fodder alone. Tack on the creation of a creature token to that as well - one that can be converted to burst mana acceleration down the line - and you have yourself an excellent toolkit of text. Whether you're burning your newly milled cards to a delve spell, reanimating something from among them, or even just looking for extra mana later down the line, Malevolent Rumble has got you covered and then some.

#2 - Guide of Souls

Number of Trades: 9 --- Number of Cards Traded: 9

Now for something a little exciting - the first tie for most traded cards in the brief history of this column! That's right, Guide of Souls might be the penultimate card on our list, but it's also one of our two most traded cards this week, neck-and-neck with our next selection both in terms of number of trades and in number of overall cards traded.

Alright, moving away from my excitement over a tie and onto the card itself, what exactly is Guide of Souls? Well, think of it like a Soul Warden but printed in 2024. That is, a card with a lifegain enter-the-battlefield trigger, the word "Soul" in its name, and so much extra text that it's both powercrept Soul Warden out of the Soul Sisters archetype and become a mainstay in a bevy of other Modern lists.

For , Guide of Souls is a 1/2 Human Cleric with "Whenever another creature enters the battlefield under your control, you gain 1 life and get an energy counter," as well as "Whenever you attack, you may pay three energy. When you do, put two +1/+1 counters and a flying counter on target attacking creature. It becomes an Angel in addition to its other types." So sure, this card does gain you the 1 life per creature, nearly the same as Soul Warden (note the key difference of the words "you control"), but its real strength is far from this incidental lifegain. Rather, it's all in the energy.

Guide of Souls does its best to bring energy counters wherever it goes - be that Abzan Yawgmoth or even some Bant Nadu builds - but the second you give it additional energy support then things can spiral quickly, and that's just what we're seeing in Modern. Boros Energy, Jeskai Energy, Mardu Energy, the list goes on. Guide of Souls may not be the sole reason these decks exist, but it is certainly a contributing factor.

#1 - Six

Number of Trades: 9 --- Number of Cards Traded: 9

Here we are! Our other most traded card from this week, a callback to the original Modern Horizons, and that's Six.

Six is a lot like a mini Muldrotha, the Gravetide, in that it lets you play permanents from the graveyard, but with some restrictions. At half the cost and a third of the colors - for Six versus for Muldrotha - Six is a 2/4 legendary Treefolk creature with reach and two self-synergistic abilities. The first is an attack trigger, which reads "Whenever Six attacks, mill three cards. You may put a land card from among them into your hand." The second ability - Six's imitation of Muldrotha - is a static ability that grants nonland permanent cards in your graveyard retrace during your turn. So, taken all together, while Six doesn't say "draw a card" anywhere on it, you will most definitely be gaining card advantage thanks to having this Treefolk in play. Afterall, even though the permanent cards in your graveyard will require you to discard a land card in order to cast them, Six is more than happy to go to combat and start digging for lands to discard, thanks to that attack trigger.

Wrap Up

Well, it seems like last week's break from Modern Horizons 3 was just a bluff for the time being - this set is still absolutely dominating our Top Trades. That being said, we're still seeing plenty of new cards popping up on our lists as people shift their attention between Modern, Pauper, and Commander, something that's really making Modern Horizons 3 the set that just keeps giving. Who knows, maybe with Bloomburrow on the horizon things will start to shift.