Splinter Twin – Rise of the Elrazi
Date Reviewed: January 9, 2025
Ratings:
Constructed: 4.50
Casual: 3.25
Limited: 3.00
Multiplayer: 4.13
Commander [EDH]: 4.13
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is bad. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
There is one particular subreddit you may have heard of, whose most popular long-running joke is calling for Splinter Twin to be unbanned in Modern. Right now, they are either very happy or not sure what to do next. That’s because Splinter Twin used to be an absolute menace. People were afraid to cast spells because the deck could win out of nowhere, with half of the combo being playable at instant speed (Pestermite or Deceiver Exarch). Even if they did hold up some kind of interaction for Twin, the combo player could use the creature to disrupt their mana and just win anyway. This didn’t work every single time, but it was enough to get the deck banned. So it should all happen again, right? Those Redditors will be plastering victory banners all over their site, right? Well . . . maybe, but Twin’s original heyday was before the Modern Horizons series created a bunch of new decks and changed the way Modern is played. If you’re updating a traditional Twin deck, you now have to deal with answers like Solitude and Force of Negation which nobody could have dreamed of back then. You have to be ready to interact with hyper-aggressive energy counters and an actual Necropotence variant. But after thinking about all those decks and how they interact with Splinter Twin, I think the little meme that could has what it takes to be part of Modern again – it may turn out that it was merely ahead of its time, and the field is level now!
Constructed: 4.5
Casual: 3.5 (there is some scope to play it beyond just infinite combos, but it’s debatable whether it’s the most interesting of this style of effect for non-degenerate uses)
Limited: 3
Multiplayer: 4
Commander [EDH]: 4
Splinter Twin may be among the most infamous cards to ever have been part of, and then not part of, Modern. At first, Splinter Twin looks janky and cute…and then you realize that it forms an infinite (and lethal) combo with the likes of Pestermite, Deceiver Exarch, and so many more cards since then. Those two were the backbone of the Splinter Twin combo chains that were a part of Modern (and sort of present in the Zendikar/Scars of Mirrodin Standard, because you can use a tapped-out opponent on turn 3 to immediately end the game the following turn. Splinter Twin wasn’t an unbeatable deck, and Splinter Twin itself was a resolutely okay card…but in 2016, it was a deck that was everywhere in Modern’s metagame, and the call was made late to ban Splinter Twin to ease pressure by disabling one of the most reliable “turn 4 kill” decks of the format.
I know I’ve been talking about Splinter Twin combo for a while, and it’s for a good reason: it’s the reason the card got infamous. On its own, it’s a fairly cute enchantment: copy something for one turn, do it again until they get killed…basically an aura version of Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker. I believe Kiki-Jiki tried to replace Splinter Twin in that deck for a time, but it never quite got the same footing, thanks to its higher and more color-intensive mana cost. It’s very much a cute-seeming card that looks a lot less cute in practice when you’re staring down 420 copies of Pestermite on your opponent’s turn, all of whom thirst for your blood.
That all being said, Splinter Twin’s exile ended in December 2024, returning to Modern after 8 years outside of it. The format isn’t nearly as “soft” to the deck as it was then, with far more zero-mana answers to Splinter Twin and creatures that makes it even less likely that tapping out on turn 3 is no longer a death sentence against the Izzet (or Jeskai) shell you’re playing into. Make no mistake, though: Splinter Twin is still a powerful spell in this day and age, and while it’s not as game-ending as it may seem at first, it’s still a threat any deck worth their salt will need to be prepared to answer decisively.
Splinter Twin is a card that is fairly underwhelming when used fairly and…a powerful backbone to a lethal deck when used with the right toys. Sounds about right.
Constructed: 4.5 (it won’t be Tier 0, but it will still be a force when all is said and done, I suspect)
Casual: 3
Limited: 3 (I do not believe either of its two outings had the tools to go infinite, so this is more cute than good)
Multiplayer: 4.25 (420 Pestermites should be lethal against multiple opponents)
Commander [EDH]: 4.25 (limited to one copy here, but still can kill them all dead in one turn with the right set-up)
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