Hello blue mages,
today I want to write an article about one of the most painful topic of Modern blue mages: Cantrips!
Differences between format
In Modern, more or less, you've acces to these 3 cantrips:
Let's compare these 3 with other 3 cantrips, that are legal in Legacy and in Pauper:
I think that there's not so much to say: cantrips in Modern suck, a lot! Please,don't stretch your manabase for including them and don't sacrifice raw power for them!
Why I hate them
So, I hate them because, after a year of Legacy UWx (usually Miracles and Stoneblade), spending 1 mana in doing one of three modern cantrips is pretty ridicolous! You can argue that you're improving threat density, because you're lowering the card count of your deck to 60-4*n, where n is the number of cantrips that you're playing, instead I've to say that you're lowering it, because you're threat density will become (assuming 24 lands) t.d.= (36-n)/(60-n), that is lower than t.d.=36/60= 0,6. So, with cantrips, you're virtually increasing land count than number of threat.
Moreover, you can say "I'm smoothing the draws!", it's partially true, because comparing number, we can see that: assuming that 75% of opt is scry bottom, usually with every Opt you see 1,75 card before drawing, with Serum Visions you can scry only after drawing, so the draw is blind and you can smooth only later draws and with sleight of hand you always see 2 cards, but one of them go bottom! Compared to Ponder, that let you to see always 3 cards and sometimes 4 cards while you choose to shuffle, with Brainstorm you can improve you hand shuffling away the bad cards paired with fetchlands, and with Preordain you can see up to 3 cards, there is no competition.
Where to play them
I think that cantrips in modern only in decks that relies in some specific card to win. For example, in Grixis Death Shadow you've a really high cantrips count for 2 reason:
1) You want to find a Death Shadow or a Gurmag Angler as soon as possible;
2) They're "mana" for delve ability of Gurmag Angler;
3) Sometimes you want to cast a T3 Snapcaster for starting the beat, so you need a lot of CMC 1 spell;
4) Virtually increase land count.
To continue, another deck that use a lot of cantrips are Ad Nauseam, because they want to find all the combo pieces (so Ad Nauseam and Angel's Grace/Phyrexian Unlife) and Storms, because cantrips increase storm count and help you in finding the missing key of the puzzle (Past in Flames, Gifts Ungiven or Grapeshot).
Moreover, Opt has nice interaction with Miracles card, letting you to cast some very powerful effect at instant speed for less mana (cough cough, we're talking about you, Terminus!).
Where not to play them
In other decks, that doesn't have the mentioned prerequisites, cantrips suck! For example, if you're playing Stoneblade, I would prefer topdecking some gas instead of a Opt, moreover sometimes you can't even chain Opt with a second spell for a lot of reasons (low mana count, low blu mana count, etc..,). Moreover, with Opt you're more susceptible to chalice on 1, that is pretty popular right now because G-Tron and E-tron are pretty popular!
You can say "Cantrips sinergize very well with Snapcaster Mage", well, I think that a 3 mana 2/1 that lets you to draw a card is not a big deal. Another argument could be "I need some 1-mana spell to cast on turn 1", well, using as example again Stoneblade, sometimes is better to play a tapped shockland than paying 2 life for using an Opt!
Final Thoughts
These are my thoughts about Modern cantrips, I think that they don't deserve to be so much played by blue mages, and playing 4/5 cantrips between the mentioned above is only a habit when UW lacked of threat, so you were using them because you didn't have access to better spell. But now, with T3feri, Spell Queller, Narset, Stoneforge Mystic, removals, counters, etc... you can spend your first turns in casting very powerful threat, instead of playing a cantrip that could be a tempo loss play!
What do you think about? Are you using a full set of Opt or are you trying something different?
Regards
Vito
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