“The Standard metagame is stagnant and unhealthy at the moment, and has been for months. Jace, the Mind Sculptor is appearing in winning deck lists an alarming percentage of the time, with Stoneforge Mystic appearing almost as often. To back him up and give you some understanding of where Tom is coming from, here’s Director of Magic R&D Aaron Forsythe on the issues Stoneforge Mystic (and Jace, the Mind Sculptor) presented when they were both legal in the Standard format (before Modern as we know it was a format). “ We prefer to just ban this card rather than risk yet another format dominated by Stoneforge Mystic.” – Tom LaPille, 2011

Here’s Tom LaPille’s, a former Magic: The Gathering developer simple reasoning for keeping Stoneforge out of the format. Stoneforge along with Jace, the Mind Sculptor were banned in Standard and then when the Modern format was announced, were moved across to the Modern banlist. This may surprise some newer players, but Stoneforge Mystic has actually never been played in the Modern format. Before we jump into possible archetypes and deck lists, let’s look a little into the history of the powerful 1/2 Kor Artificer and its relationship with Modern. This has been a pretty common talking point within the Modern community for the past few years when it came to the Magic the Gathering banned and restricted announcements and I personally (as a huge fan of fair magic) couldn’t be happier with this outcome. Stoneforge Mystic has been unbanned in Modern. Does Stoneforge Mystic give Modern Maverick Hope?

Mtg modern meta history