Winter Moon
Modern forum
Posted on June 16, 2024, 10:57 a.m. by Icbrgr
So as time goes on I'm realizing that I'm absolutely terrible at card power level evaluation and I want to ask people what they think about Winter Moon?
Is this card....just...bad?
I bought a playset the other day and I'm kinda just regretting it... my best thoughts on where this card would belong would be in a Skred Red/Red prison shell supplemented by Blood Moon and Trinisphere or something like that; but does the card really do anything to impactfully slow/disable an opponents game plan?
Just curious what other people think about the card in general (maybe im brewing with it wrong or something).
thats kinda where im at with it at this point... its doesnt really lock anyone out of play...Its not even overly amazing against early fast lands like Copperline Gorge until or unless they do not have any basic lands... Big mana decks like Tron and amulet seem like they would still be.... annoyed maybe but still just kill you with there plan.
I guess i only see it REALLY SHINING if you supplement the card with Ghost Quarter and Molten Rain type cards to try to eliminate the opponents basic lands....assuming in Modern the number of basic lands in most strategies is 2-4... maybe thats the play with this card?
June 16, 2024 12:44 p.m.
I see it as the successor to Void Mirror in the "Not an effective hate card" category.
June 16, 2024 1:02 p.m.
wallisface says... #5
There’s theee things worth noting here:
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Modern is a format with a lot of 1-drops. Even with this card in play, your opponent’s going to be able to do things most turns.
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Modern is a format with efficient removal. If your opponent has drawn a way to remove the Moon, they’ll likely be able to cast it almost immediately.
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Modern is a format with fetchlands, and these cards entirely invalidate the Moon by allowing the opponent to just grab basics. Unless it’s already in the lategame and the opponents got a bunch of nonbasics in play, the Moon is super easy to play around.
The card will likely be a 1-of in Karn sideboards for late-game-positions where it can buy the Karn player a few turns.
I myself do plan on trying to build a deck around Winter Moon at somestage, but I think it will be an uphill-challenge. The main obstacle to overcome will be ensuring the opponents fetchlands are turned-off asap (either Ashiok or Arbiter could potentially be good for this).
June 16, 2024 3:36 p.m.
My take here is that it's more of a budget equalizer. Let's say you started playing a few months ago, you have a decent small collection, but you haven't starting investing in fetch lands, shocklands, triomes, or whatever. You have a pile of basics and some Crystal Grottos and Geothermal Bogs. Your friend has been playing for decades, and does have all those cards and more. They can make whatever Modern base they want. Winter Moon will balance the game a little more in your favor until you can catch up.
I don't think Winter Moon will be a must-have in higher competitive brackets. I think it's supposed to help bridge the gulf between new and established Modern players and help them get a footing. It's a cheaper, less restrictive Back to Basics, and may have a fringe role in helping mono-color decks.
June 16, 2024 5:28 p.m.
wallisface says... #7
legendofa the problem is that Winter Moon by itself won’t equalise anything. The most common kind of land top-tier decks have are fetchlands - it’s trivially easy for such decks to fetch up whatever basics they want to entirely circumvent Winter Moons effects (they can even fetch up a single nonbasic without issue). At best you might occasionally cut them off one mana.
Winter Moon played without any cards other to support a lock/prison of some kind will only ever trip-up inexperienced players, imo.
June 16, 2024 8:13 p.m.
wallisface Sure. I don't disagree with you, but I'd like to find some reason this card got made, aside from minor mana disruption. Fetchland -> basic is a very simple way to work around Winter Moon, and stuff like Blood Moon, Assassin's Trophy, and Field of Ruin made sure every top-end Modern deck can run with only basics. It's just not quite good enough at its most obvious role for the meta-defining decks, and it's a pretty niche effect, so I'm just trying to take a guess at what the developers intended. It's not a great card, but there's some reason it exists.
June 16, 2024 8:26 p.m.
wallisface says... #9
legendofa my best guess for its creation is, as mh3 is a nostalgia set, they wanted a new version of Winter Orb, but toned down for Modern - and went a bit too far in weakening it. Its worth noting that there will be garbage rares/mythics in every set, and horizon sets are no exception to this - there’s a very real possibility that wotc knew this card would see no play when they created it.
My suspicions is that the developers of this card expected it to be used as a fringe/niche sideboard piece, as opposed to a mainboard card. There are a few decks (domain, living end, tron) which would find having to play around Winter Moon awkward and potentially debilitating. But with the percentage of decks that won’t care about Winter Moon, and mh3s re-invigoration of mono-coloured decks (mono-U-merfolk, mono-R-storm, mono-G-elves, mono-W-taxes) I can’t believe they expected Winter Moon to see actual mainboard play.
I think its intended design is to excite the Timmys and invoke nostalgia, while it’s only application is likely a niche sideboard option for fighting particularly land-greedy decks.
June 16, 2024 10:28 p.m.
This is the list I came up with for Winter Moon if anyone is interested.
MH3 Skred Red
Modern
2 VIEWS
i really tried to tailor the deck to make winter moon feel like it was pulling its weight/doing something.... SOMETIMES this card feels decent.
June 17, 2024 1:31 a.m.
wallisface says... #11
Icbrgr Yeah Winter Moon feels odd here in that it normally won't be doing a lot. None of these cards particularly shore-up any of Winter Moons shortcomings. And some cards will make Winter Moon appear even weaker than it is (particularly, it feels like land-destruction weakens the impact of Winter Moon, as it means that there are less lands the opponent is forced to have tapped. I'm probably wrong on that thought though).
Personally if I were trying to make a Winter Moon brew today, it would either be in a mono-white tax list with stuff like Leonin Arbiter and Archon of Emeria, or a mono-blue build with stuff like Ashiok, Dream Render and Vedalken Certarch... I haven't got any further in my own thought processes than that (i really think this card needs to know the meta its fighting to know how to fight it, so i'm waiting a few months for the post-mh3 meta to stabilize)... But I think however a Winter Moon deck is built, it has to cover for the cards shortcomings so that its actually reliably useful on-board.
June 17, 2024 1:45 a.m.
just to be clear the land destruction spells are primarily being held/aimed at there basic lands; rather than preventing the search for the basic my thought is to outright get rid of them because typically Modern decks run 2-4 basics on average?
totally get where your coming from though with the prevention of the search angle I can definitely dig that approach... as far as the meta goes I honestly have no idea how fast or even if my LGS will change/adapt after MH3/assassins creed I'll have to wait and see.
June 17, 2024 2:02 a.m.
wallisface says... #13
I might try brewing something up over the next few days.., if I do i’ll post it here. I expect my first draft to be pretty bad
June 17, 2024 8:09 p.m.
oh i look forward to it! no worries/judgment from me I'm always interested in seeing new brews (My deck is virtually just Kevin Mackey's GP winning deck from 2016 with Pillage and Winter Moon put in and a janky Chandra, the Firebrand) so im very much so looking forward to what you come up with!
June 17, 2024 8:28 p.m.
I think Ethersworn Canonist, Isochron Scepter, Silence, Orim's Chant, Winter Moon, and Counterspells would be a decent shell to annoy your opponents because they can't play magic.
June 17, 2024 8:52 p.m.
wallisface says... #16
My initial thoughts are this… however it feels super janky. It also likely just loses to anything mono-colour
June 17, 2024 8:53 p.m.
Nobody did, that's the only world where I see it actually being viable in today's meta though, completely locking them out of the game.
nbarry223 says... #2
Honestly, with the power-creep of low to the ground threats, and the increase in aggro strategies, mana denial is not as powerful as it used to be. I wouldn't say it is a bad card, it just doesn't hit a lot of the more powerful decks in a meaningful way currently. Even Amulet Titan, which you would think it would be good against, can essentially ignore it, since they don't need to untap their lands to produce a lot of mana.
June 16, 2024 11:32 a.m.