Fury – Modern Horizons 2
Date Reviewed: November 23, 2023
Ratings:
Constructed: 5.00
Casual: 3.75
Limited: 4.25
Multiplayer: 3.00
Commander [EDH]: 3.88
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
I’m sure there’s some kind of joke to be made about holiday gatherings and double strike and the name “Fury”, but Season’s Beatings kind of did it over a decade ago. Regardless, this card is a big part of the reason why Modern Horizons 2 was able to shake up Modern as much as it did. The entire cycle is actually much more impressive on average than the Force of Will cycle from Alliances that they reference, with Fury having a set of abilities that are above efficient even when you cast it for its full mana cost. And its evoke cost barely even pretends to be making a disadvantage, especially in an era when there are about a hundred ways to keep it in play and/or double up on the trigger. Even if you don’t use such a thing, the ability to take out an early creature in such a flexible way saves you enormously later in the game in terms of extra damage dealt or removing problematic abilities.
Constructed: 5
Casual: 4
Limited: 4
Multiplayer: 4
Commander [EDH]: 4
It wouldn’t be Thanksgiving if I didn’t find a way to have a card whose links to the holiday are torturous at best, right? I’m sure Fury, while fitting, is something you’re not keen on seeing at the table, and it actually didn’t get a review with Modern Horizons II, so it seemed like a good way to right a relative wrong and keep up my trend of “awful” Thanksgiving cards.
In the actual gameplay sense, though, Fury certainly isn’t awful…it’s one of the most popular and played cards from Modern Horizons II, contending with Ragavan, Urza’s Saga, and the other “pitch elementals” from its cycle. The main value here is that both versions of the card, the sorcery-speed Pyrokinesis and the warm body with an attacked damage spread, are very good; Fury’s 4 damage is enough to off a lot of small utility creatures and most of Modern’s cast of played and playable planeswalkers on its own. That’s not to mention how well it pairs with spells like Ephemerate, which can respond to Fury’s evoke trigger to get it on the field for good and get 4 more damage. Three cards and 1 mana for 8 damage (with 4 more potentially if you used Ephemerate) is excellent as far as value propositions go, and you even have a 3/3 with double strike. Dying to Lightning Bolt isn’t great, but you should usually get the value out of Fury through its removal, and if it does live, it’s even better.
Fury is an interesting confluence of effects that plays even better than it reads…and it doesn’t read bad, so you know it’s going to be a threat. Zero mana removal is sometimes at a premium and can be an excellent way to throw an opponent off their game, and this can be a lot more than just free removal. It plays well with Modern’s bag of tricks (and hasn’t been irrelevant in Legacy), and I definitely think it’s one of the stars of a set that already was bursting at the seams. It’s not hard to make this a very back-breaking play, and even if you need to play it “fairly”, it’ll do the job just fine.
Constructed: 5
Casual: 3.75
Limited: 4.5
Multiplayer: 3
Commander [EDH]: 3.75
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