All Out of Faith

Monday's Banned and Restricted announcement came with more surprises than I think most people anticipated. While everyone expected Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis to get banned, the additional banning of Faithless Looting and the unbanning of Stoneforge Mystic are going to have a drastic impact on the format moving forward. As much as an impact Stoneforge Mystic is going to have, the banning of Faithless Looting is going to warp the meta and completely change the modern environment. While I am upset that Faithless Looting is banned since my first and favorite deck is Hollow One, which is no longer a viable deck, I can see why Wizards of the Coast felt the need to ban it.

As stated in the article by Ian Duke, over the past couple years, many of the top and most winning-est decks have played Faithless Looting. The card itself seems quite harmless at first glance, allowing you to draw two, but also discard two. Many have compared Faithless Looting and its power to that of Brainstorm in Legacy, which is a format staple. However, there is much more to this card than a simple draw and discard.

First and foremost, being able to sculpt your hand for one mana is powerful in and of itself. No matter what stage of the game you are at, Faithless Looting is a powerhouse. In the early game, it allows you to keep riskier hands and pitch unnecessary cards or lands, helping you to better react to the opening plays of your opponent. Island then Serum Visions or Sleight of Hand should indicate that maybe your Lightning Bolt or Fatal Push is no longer necessary, which Faithless Looting allows you to discard and potentially draw your better threats against control or combo. A little light on lands? No problem, cast Faithless Looting and draw the 1 or 2 lands you need while discarding dead or expensive cards.

Outside of the early game, the flashback ability on Faithless Looting really elevates the card to being worthy of a ban. For 3 mana, you can cast it again by exiling it from your graveyard. The flashback means that you have the ability to cast 8 Faithless Lootings in a game, essentially guaranteeing you will find all of the right cards at the right time. Additionally, the ability to pitch other Faithless Lootings to "save for later" by getting them into the graveyard, make this card much more versatile as well as resilient to hand disruption. It also adds another level of value for cards that reward your for casting non-creature spells, such as Young Pyromancer, Thing in the Ice, Arclight Phoenix, or Monastery Mentor.

Perhaps the most broken aspect of the card is the amount of graveyard interactions the card enables. Faithless Looting can fill your graveyard with creatures that gain a benefit from being in there, whether it's Bloodghast, Arclight Phoenix, or any dredge creature (Stinkweed Imp, Golgari Thug). Maybe creatures isn't your thing and you want to fill up your graveyard with dredge spells, such as Life from the Loam to ensure you can finish off your opponent with a Conflagrate. Additionally, with the printing of Unearth, being able to put powerful cards, such as Lightning Skelemental or Ranger-Captain of Eos into the graveyard on turn 1 and then bringing them back on turn 2, with mana left for removal or other spells can quickly turn a game in your favor.

So now that Faithless Looting is gone and many of the most powerful graveyard decks are powered down or even unplayable, such as Dredge, Izzet Phoenix, Mono Red Phoenix, Mardu Pyromancer, Hollow One, and the Hogaak Scourage, what will happen? Faithless Looting kept in check decks that used another powerful draw card, Ancient Stirrings. Now, traditional Tron will reign supreme because the format will have slowed down significantly. While an 8/8 trample on turn 2 was too power, is a more consistent Wurmcoil Engine or Karn Liberated on turn 3 much better? Additionally, now that the format will slow down, more artifact based decks will be better positioned, such as Hardened Scales, Affinity, and Urza, making sideboards more focused on combating artifacts with cards such as Collector Ouphe or Stony Silence. Also, many of the more midrange decks will have a better change to develop their game plan, such as Jund, by not having to maindeck so much graveyard hate.

The future of Modern is uncertain right now, but many believe it will be better in the long run. So far, there is no good replacement for Faithless Looting so I may have to say goodbye to Hollow One for good. Which decks will now dominate the meta? Will Stoneforge Mystic bring a resurgence to variants of the Clawbalde decks or will more established decks make room for a Stoneforge Mystic shell with the cards that were reserved for graveyards? Share your thoughts below!