The first deck I specialized in, playing the old Magic: The Gathering deckbuilder Shandalar, was white weenies. A whole diluvian flood of cheap white creatures that were individually nothing much, but combined into something that would drown you like everyone Noah wasn’t related to. It’s one of the oldest archetypes in Magic, and one that remains competitive today. Ask me about my deck stuffed with Recruitment Officers and Brutal Cathars. It’s quite annoying!
Magic’s next expansion is Modern Horizons 3, which as the name suggests will focus on reprinting cards to bring them into the Modern format. Where Legacy is the format where most of your unbalanced old cards can come out and play, and Standard is the rotating format where only cards from the last couple of years are valid, Modern splits the difference and allows cards from 2003’s eighth edition onward. It’s full of powerful cards without being quite as wild and wooly as Legacy—there are fewer turn-one game-winning combos, and so it’s popular with Magic’s more competitive players.
One of the cards being reprinted in Modern Horizons 3 is Recruiter of the Guard (with new art by Eric Wilkerson), which was originally released as part of the Conspiracy: Take the Crown set back in 2016. She’s a lovely little addition to a white weenie deck, or in fact any deck where you might want to tutor in a cheap creature.
(Fun fact! Tutoring, which is what card game gronks call the ability to search your deck for a specific card to put in your hand, comes from the ancient Magic card Demonic Tutor. As someone who learned the concept from Gwent, it was a shock when I realized this was yet another bit of CCG slang that comes from Grandaddy Magic.)
Recruiter of the Guard is a classic tutor. She lets you pull in a creature with a toughness of 2 or lower like, for instance, Spellseeker. Spellseeker also happens to be a tutor, only she lets you pull in an instant or sorcery card that costs 2 mana or less. Like, say, Demonic Tutor, which is of course also a tutor, only one with no restrictions on what card it lets you pull from your deck into your hand. We can keep doing this all day, and if somebody lets me I will.
Other shenanigans, like using Recruiter of the Guard to draw a Palace Jailer and send somebody to prison, are also fun options. Basically, it’s a classic card that looks humble but is actually a great addition to a variety of decks, not just the nonsense I enjoy running. Here’s hoping that Modern Horizons 3 contains many more like it.
Modern Horizons 3 will be available from June 14. Pre-release events start on June 7, and you can find them at your local WPN store.