The One Ring DOMINATES Modern: $100 Price Tag and No Counters in Sight

Last updated on October 30, 2024

The One Ring – Illustration by Veli Nyström

After months of being the most popular nonland card in Modern, The One Ring‘s 44% playrate has now surpassed even the most popular lands.

In some recent tournaments, The One Ring often features in 6 of the Top 8 decks, with all archetypes from aggro to control including it as a main-deck card.

The Ring's market price jumped from $87 to $109 right after WotC's latest Banned & Restricted announcement spared The One Ring while banning Nadu, Winged Wisdom and Grief in Modern, and has been steadily climbing ever since.

This makes the Ring the most popular and most expensive card in Modern, roughly double the price of multi-format staples like Sheoldred, the Apocalypse and Orcish Bowmaster.

Souce: MTGStocks.com

The Pre-Horizons 3 Meta

Just a few months after the release of The Lord of the Rings, Wizards of the Coast acknowledged in their Banned and Restricted Announcement from August 7 last year that: “The play rates of brand-new cards in The One Ring and Orcish Bowmasters as the number-one and number-two cards, respectively, is something we rarely see in high-level Eternal tournaments.”

By the end of 2023, though, WotC's concerns about the Ring had diminished. They mentioned the legendary artifact only in passing in their Banned and Restricted Announcement from December 4 while highlighting Orcish Bowmaster as the more problematic card.

And the Modern Meta in early January did match the picture that Wizards painted. According to Frank Karsten's January Metagame Mentor article, these were Modern's top archetypes and their respective Winner's Metagame Share:

1. Rakdos Grief 15.3%

2. Golgari Yawgmoth 13.8%

3. Temur Rhinos 12.4%

4. Izzet Murktide 9.4%

5. Amulet Titan 7.6% *

6. Living End 4.6%

7. Hardened Scales 3.9% *

Of these seven decks, only Amulet Titan and Hardened Scales played The One Ring, while Orcish Bowmaster was a 4x in both Rakdos Grief and Golgari Yawgmoth.

Fast-forward to July this year, and the picture is radically different: the post-MH3 meta indeed “rotated” Modern:

1. Bant Nadu 18.0% *

2. Jeskai Control 10.7% *

3. Boros Energy 9.7% *

4. Mono-Black Necro 9.4% *

5. Mardu Energy 8.3% 

6. Eldrazi Tron 5.8% *

7. Esper Goryo's 5.0% 

8. Gruul Eldrazi 3.6% *

9. Dimir Murktide 3.1% 

And in the post-MH3, pre-Nadu-ban meta, The One Ring had become the King. In July, six of the eight decks shown above (*) now run the legendary artifact.

Banning Nadu at the end of August solidified this trend: as of Sept 10th, 43% of all Modern decks play The One Ring according to current data from mtgtop8.com, making it the most popular card in Modern bar none – lands included:

Source: mtgtop8.com

What's more telling is that all sorts of decks want it. As an example from four days ago:

Source: mtgtop8

In the $10K RCQ @ SCG CON Tampa, 6 of the Top 8 decks played the Ring, with five of those six being completely different decks. Sauron's favorite trinket has no problem fitting everywhere. The notion that the Ring is a time-buying tool that allows slower decks to survive against aggro is outdated: now archetypes from the most aggressive decks (Boros Energy) to combo and control all find it useful.

What Needs to Be Done?

Having dodged a ban in the last B&R, the Ring (which has one of the strongest colorless ETB effects in the game) will be Modern-legal at least until December 16th, when WotC will release their next B&R.

It's impossible to deny that the post-Nadu meta has pushed the Ring to the fore, and it has become an auto-include for half of the meta. As noted by u/I_furthermore_grace on Reddit, “[The Ring is] as a card advantage engine and asks very little of you for deck building constraints. It’s basically never the wrong choice to register TOR over any other option if you are playing for the mid-late game.”

Price is also an issue. Off the cuff, a Modern deck costs about $1200-$1500, with a Ring playset amounting to 25%–30% of the budget. Some players had even suggested that WotC may be unable to reprint the Ring due to contractual reasons, but Magic's Head Designer, Mark Rosewater, has clarified that they can not only reprint it but even make in-universe equivalents. He did not specify when that could happen, though.

Perhaps instead of outright banning it, The One Ring should become the first restricted card in Modern. 

The Ring uses its legendary supertype as an advantage by allowing players to reset the burden counters if they play a second copy. Restricting it to a single copy per deck would remove this advantage.

Needing to buy a single copy rather than four would also make it easier on Modern player's budgets (while still giving them a reason to open packs, which is probably what Wizards wants us all to be doing…).

And going Highlander on the Ring would be a massive flavor win. It's The One Ring, after all.