The Pact cycle from Future Sight is pretty good for the most part. Technically, they are all "free" spells. While they have a pretty big drawback of having to pay a certain amount of mana during the next upkeep or you lose the game, they are usually worth it. Pact of Negation, Slaughter Pact, and Summoner's Pact are all cards that see play in Modern and other formats.

Even Intervention Pact sees occasional play and saw a spike when Madcap Experiment decks began to be brewed. But the red Pact, Pact of the Titan, hasn't seen much play since being a part of some Hive Mind Legacy lists back in 2011 to 2013.

What Hive Mind does is make a copy each instant or sorcery spell that a player casts for each player. With the Pact spells, if you cast a Pact that the opposing player can't pay for during his or her upkeep, that player instantly loses. All the Hive Mind player had to do was cast the Pact that the opposing player had no way of being able to pay for. It's a mean way to win. While Pact of the Titan wasn't close to the best of the 5 pacts for this purpose, it did see play in some lists.

Hive Mind decks aren't really much of a part of the Legacy metagame anymore, so Pact of the Titan went by the way side. It's easily the weakest of the Pacts. While creating a 4/4 creature at instant speed for no mana sounds awesome, having to pay 4R at the next upkeep is rarely worth it. However, when Pact of Negation, Slaughter Pact and Summoner's Pact were reprinted in the original Modern Masters sets, Intervention Pact and Pact of the Titan were not. This meant that their supplies have remained relatively low.

So it was only a matter of time before Intervention Pact's price spiked. But while that spike make some sense, when Pact of the Titan was bought out on TCGplayer on 10/29/16, many heads were scratched. The TCG Player mid price hit almost $7 before falling to about $6 a couple days later. But no one is really biting at this price, which means it's pretty clear that this was an intentional buyout for speculative purposes.

Is this card ever going to be good enough to justify more than its original price of about $1? It's doubtful. This was really just a case of someone buying out a card that had low supply that may see play again at some point. This card is fine for what it does, but it's not something that most decks want. Some Commander decks will play it, but it's not something that you're going to see on a regular basis. This is one I'd sell high on if you happen to have any copies laying around. There should be a race to the bottom sooner or later, but this card will now always be worth more than it was before.

June 2017 Update: Pact of the Titan still has a market price of almost $5 on TCGPlayer. I would still recommend selling this card, as I can't see it maintaining this high of a price long-term. Although, after being at this price point for a long time, it's not anything you have to sell in a hurry.

Haste Stake (M14 Standard)
 
Creatures (12)

4 Hellrider
4 Ogre Battledriver
4 Young Pyromancer
 
 Non-Creature Spells (24)

4 Intangible Virtue
4 Faithless Looting
4 Gather the Townsfolk
4 Lingering Souls
4 Krenko's Command
3 Burn at the Stake
1 Reforge the Soul

 
Land (24)

4 Blood Crypt
4 Clifftop Retreat
4 Sacred Foundry
3 Plains
2 Dragonskull Summit
2 Godless Shrine
2 Mountain
1 Mutavault
1 Isolated Chapel
1 Slayer's Stronghold

Sideboard

4 Wear / Tear
4 Legion Loyalist
2 Rakdos' Return
2 Assemble the Legion
2 Ratchet Bomb
1 Electrickery

There's a lot of good  stuff here, but since no one in the world is playing this Standard format anymore, we'll have to port it over to Modern. Can we do that and still have it be effective? Also, you may notice that there is already some Black mana in here. We'll be taking advantage of that in a bit.
 
First, let's see what made this deck work!

The Mana Base
 
The mana base in this deck is a bit complex. The combination of buddy and shock lands are crucial in allowing this deck to constantly have access to the colors which it needs to win consistently. The 4 Blood Crypts, 2 Godless Shrines, and 1 Isolated Chapel are in here to mainly be able to flashback Souls as well as provide black for the two sideboard Rakdos' Return,
 
The inclusion of a single Mutavault I find to be a bit perplexing, There's no tribal theme to this deck, so it seems to be in here only to act as one more cheap creature if you need it for whatever reason.
 
Slayers' Stronghold is a great utility land that gives a target creature +2/+0 vigilance and haste until end of turn. While it won't be used all that often, used on the right creature, it can force an awkward block or two, and if your creature survives, it will still be untapped and able to block..
 
Deck Strategy and Sideboard
 
The main goal of this deck is to get out Young Pyromancer along with the many token-producers in the deck. Having out Intangible Virtue makes those tokens scary very quickly. You also have Hellrider to make them ping upon attacking and Ogre Battledriver to give them haste and an extra 2 power until end of turn.
 
Burn at the Stake becomes almost an alternate win condition, as your tokens may often be enough to finish the game on their own.
 
The sideboard has some interesting cards in it that definitely help in some popular match-ups, Wear / Tear is a fuse card that would eventually see tons of play in Modern. It's very powerful in that it can for just 3 mana destroy both an enchantment and artifact, Either side of the card is powerful enough on its own, so it easily makes a good play against artifact and enchantment heavy decks. It's also an instant, which is quite good.
 
The play-set of Legion Loyalist is an interesting and relevant inclusion. It's good in aggressive match-ups where giving your many tokens first strike and trample can really matter. With your tokens becoming bigger through Intangible Virtue and Ogre Battledriver pumps, alpha strikes suddenly become a bit less risky for you.
 
The 2 Rakdos' Return take advantage of the black mana already available in the deck, and provide a way for you to both discard your opponent's hand and deal some damage to their face, They were great against control match-ups and decks like mono-green and Naya Blitz in past standard formats that depend on combat tricks in hand to do a bunch of their damage. Some of these types of decks still exist in Modern, as well.
 
Assemble the Legion is another nice way to make tokens, although I'm not sure of the exact match-ups in which boarding this in would be helpful.
 
Ratchet Bomb is a tricky card in this deck. Since your tokens are all 0-drops, you can set this at one easily. If you find you have to set it to two, keep in mind you'll lose your Young Pyromancers and Intangible Virtues. However, you may find board-states where losing Pyromancer and Virtue actually don't matter if your token army is big enough.
 
Budget Friendly?
 
If you already owned most the mana base for this deck, you could easily build it under $100 in either paper or online. The dual lands are the biggest investment. At the time, this definitely qualified as a budget deck. However, besides Pyromancer, Battledriver, and the shock lands, most of this deck as useless in Standard past October 2013.
 
At the time I first reviewed this deck, I felt that a Modern brew of this deck may work. We've never seen a widely successful version really emerge. There was a Mono-Red Tokens deck built by Corbin Hosler, however. It only runs one copy of Burn at the Stake in the mainboard, and I've refered to this build in trying to port this strategy over to Modern. Still, there is hope that we can keep the core of Haste Stake intact while speeding up the deck to keep its flavor.
 
What Needs to Go and What Can Stay
 
Young Pyromancer is awesome and proven in Modern. These guys are staying no matter what. In fact, in that Mono-Red tokens deck we just mentioned, they were the only creatures! Hellrider is a great creature, but he's a bit too slow for Modern at 4 mana. That's not where you want to be in an aggro deck. Also, Ogre Battledriver proved to be a bit too slow even for Standard except in the sort of md-range strategy that Haste Stake was going for. It was mildly effective in that format, but Battledriver simply isn't fast enough for Eternal play. Both of these guys have to go and be replaced with swifter options.
 
In rebuilding this deck, I considered going a Goblin-oriented route. Legion Loyalist is a Modern playable card. Goblin Guide is proven in Eternal formats. Reckless Bushwhacker from Battle for Zendikar could do a bit of what Battledriver did. Goblin Bushwhacker is a nice complement to that strweatgy that could take the place of Hellrider. I even considered Goblin Rabblemaster. But forcing your Goblins to attack every turn isn't where I want to be at all with this deck. I'd be better off just running Goblins! 8-Whack, which has that name for the Bushwhackers, is actually a decent Modern deck. But that's not what I was trying to build.
 
We still want to have Burn at the Stake, as that's our main win condition. As 5-drops, we have to consistently build up to these. Reforge the Soul can stay, since it has Miracle and won't always cost us five mana.
 
Intangible Virtue is fine in White Black Tokens, but not going to work in a strategy that really needs to streamline and focus on building up as much Red mana as possible as quickly as possible. In that line of thinking, as much as I want to keep Lingering Souls, we really don't want to be splashing black for just them. To keep our mana base more consistent, the deck really ends up building itself in a mono-Red direction.
 
After making all of these cuts, I figured adding 4 Lightning Bolt  and keeping a white splash for Raise the Alarm (an instant speed Token producer) and 4 copies of Boros Charm (one of the best spells in Modern in my opinion).
 
The sideboard had to change entirely. I used Corbin Hosler's board from his Mono-Red version because it has some great things going on in it.
 
2 Crumble to Dust
3 Defense Grid
3 Gut Shot
3 Relic of Progenitus
4 Shattering Spree
 
Crumble to Dust hits greedy mana bases by exiling nonbasic lands and potentially cutting off a player from one of their colors. Defense Grid makes it near impossible to have opponent's counter our shenanigans during our turn. Gut Shot deals with problem 1 toughness creatures by being able to pay 2 life instead of 1 mana. Shattering Spree can kill a lot of artifacts at once, making Affinity sad. We can tweak the sideboard as we see how this deck needs to cover its weaknesses.
 
The other way I was going was to go straight combo. We would add in Manamorphose and Battle Hymn to speed up card draw and mana production in place of the Bushwhackers and Faithless Looting. We would also cut the burn for more card draw in Gitaxian Probe and Infernal Plunge will trade a token for 3 more Red mana.  Also, we'd be cutting Raise the Alarm and Boros Charm to go straight Mono-Red. In the process we'll add 2 copies of Hordeling Outburst, which costs 3 mana but gives us 3 tokens. The other 2 slots will go to a card from Hosler's deck, Haze of Rage, which not only has Storm to make itself more powerful, but Buyback, as well!
 
As it turned out, I brewed and playtested three different versions. The first version was an 8-Whack sort of build and it was really not sure what kind of deck it actually was. My second build was about the same as Corbin's, except it had 3 Burn at the Stake and only one Reforge the Soul. I also kept a Boros mana base by keeping Sacred Foundry and adding Inspiring Vantage from Kaladesh. This way I kept in Raise the Alarm, but cut the Bolts and Charms.
 
At first, I found this build did a LOT better. It won the first match I played with it two games to one. Manamorphose and Gitaxian Probe were awesome. While I didn't get an actual kill with Burn at the Stake, I did deal 15 in one game and finished off the game with tokens. The other game I won I won with all tokens. I won the next match with just beating down with tokens. I kept drawing my Reforge the Soul in my opening hand or off of Manamorphose/Gitaxian Probe, which was extremely annoying. But I did cast it once off of a Battle Hymn. Infernal Plunge was awesome too, helping me to continuous ramp into more token producers. This deck seemed really solid!
 
But then it started drawing the wrong half of the deck and it kept losing.
 
My third attempt was to go mono-Red and basically do what Corbin's deck is trying to do, except with 3 copies of Burn the Stake and only 1 Reforge the Soul.  With this deck I just drew my Stakes and not much else.
 
I really wanted to keep the spirit of Haste Stake. But it really wasn't happening. So in the end, I ended up with Corbin's original deck.
 
Mono-Red Tokens
 
Creatures (4)
 
4     Young Pyromancer        
 
     
Non-Creature  Spells (38)

4     Battle Hymn     
1     Burn at the Stake     
4     Dragon Fodder  
4     Faithless Looting       
4     Gitaxian Probe   
2     Haze of Rage      
2     Hordeling Outburst   
2     Increasing Vengeance    
4     Infernal Plunge      
1     Krenko's Command
4     Manamorphose
2     Past in Flames
4     Reforge the Soul
 
 
Lands (18)

18     Mountain

Sideboard

2 Crumble to Dust
3 Defense Grid
3 Gut Shot
3 Relic of Progenitus
4 Shattering Spree
 
Corbin Hosler's Mono-Red deck can make a lot of tokens and a lot of mana. When I playtested it, the deck relied too much on comboing off, either by getting the one copy of Burn at the Stake, or making more tokens than your opponent can handle. I found too much inconsistency, which is why I wanted to make my own brew in the first place.
 
Basically, if you want to play a Burn the Stake deck in Modern, Corbin Hosler's build seems to be the best. It can win spectacularly, but lose horribly too, especially when you draw no lands or draw all the wrong cards. But Corbin builds great decks and I've seen what it can do when it's running well. Sharp play, plus a little bit of luck, will let this deck win more than it loses.

Faerie Artisans is one of the more interesting takes that I've seen on a clone effect. I think it's pretty good, especially when you consider that the copy that they make is an artifact in addition to its other types. It definitely makes opponents be more cautious about what they play, especially creatures with enter the battlefield abilities. Having only one copy at a time to me seems fine, and with doubling effects you can actually get two or more copies of each creature an opponent plays.

Yes, this ability isn't optional, but I think that it being mandatory is what actually makes this card so good. This sort of copycat effect gives the card a lot of flavor, and a 2/2 flyer isn't a bad body on a 4-mana creature with this kind of ability. The Artisans are already seeing play in a great many Commander decks, especially alongside the Commander that they come with, Breya, Etherium Shaper. This is one creature to watch from this set.

With all the talk of how Magic is a game breaking barriers, this is a huge step for making Magic a more modern and inclusive game. We’re working on breaking diversity barriers,  but there is still more to work on. We’ve also had Ashiok and Alesha, breaking barriers connected to gender identification. We’re moving forward, bit by bit.

I think this is one of the amazing things about Magic: the Gathering. They make conscious effort to include characters that are outside of the norm. Many other games make no effort to do this, having a non-diverse cast of characters.

This is important because there are people that do not have anyone to identify with. There is no one like them. If that is the way it is, less people will be drawn in because they feel different. They feel like they can’t identify with the characters in the game.

Even though the Magic player base is mainly constituted of heterosexual white males, that is not the ideal composition of the Magic player base. I believe that the ideal player base is one that resembles or I daresay is identical to the composition of the global or national population. That is what we should strive for.

I feel like I could write an entire post on the introduction to this post, and maybe I will, but let’s talk about the core topic of the article, which is one of the new Commanders spoiled in Commander 2016, Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis.

I was not only  excited by their effect, I was also excited by the story behind them and what it meant for the Magic community.

Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis portrays a interracial, homosexual couple. Their flavor text being: “Look what we fought for. Look what we built together.” These two were originally portrayed in Theros block as the Guardians of Meletis.
​

Their flavor text was: “The histories speak of two feuding rulers whose deaths were celebrated and whose monuments symbolized the end of their wars. In truth they were peaceful lovers, their story lost to the ages.” This solidifies the idea that they are indeed a homosexual couple, the first one portrayed in Magic: the Gathering.

So what does this mean for the future of Magic? Sure, homosexuals will feel more welcome and included, which is obviously a boon, but what other resonating effects will this have? You must remember that Commander 2016 is a mass market product, in bookstores and toy stores all over. This means children walking down the toy aisle with stop and see this. They will ask their parents about it, sparking discussion and creating more acceptance of homosexuals.

If this is the media that our children see, if homosexuals get more media exposure, we will morph into a much more accepting and inclusive community, starting with our youth. It will not only help us a Magic: the Gathering community grow more diverse, it will also help the world grow more accepting and inclusive, step by step, leap by leap, product by product.

Kudos Wizards! You have done a exemplary job doing your part in making the world and the Magic community a better place.

An alternate time-line version of the Ankle Shanker from Khans of Tarkir, Vial Smasher the Fierce is a Commander with the Partner mechanic with a powerful, but random ability. At first glance, it's clear that Vial Smasher  is really good at throwing a lot of damage around.

Whenever you cast your first spell each turn, including on your opponent's turns, Vial Smasher deals damage equal to that spell's converted mana cost to a random opponent. Because this damage is random, she is probably not going to be very popular creature in a multiplayer Commander game. Vial Smasher is really more of a nuisance than anything else, but you can get a ton of value out of this ability.
 
In a one-on-one Duel Commander game, however, Vial Smasher is extremely powerful. Since the ability is always going to hit your opponent, it can become a very short game. Duel Commander starts with a much lower life total. It used to be 30, but this amount was lowered to 20 in September 2016. This could be one of the best commanders in that format.
 
Keeping this in mind, could Vial Smasher even be Legacy and/or Vintage playable? Keep in mind, casting a Force of Will, even for its alternate casting cost of exiling a blue card from your hand and paying 1 life still has a converted mana cost of 5. As Vial Smasher is only 3 to cast, it's possible she could be a way to finish off a game in what's usually quite a fast format.

It also seems possible that Legacy Burn may want a copy or two of Vial Smasher. Even an extra 1 or 2 damage goes a long way in those decks. In Vintage, there are some big spells that get cast, so Vial Smasher can win the game if she's on the board when they are. This seems like a card that could show up occasionally in these formats.
 
As a Partner, Vial Smasher not only gives access to Red and Black mana, but also gives a way to deal a lot of damage out of nowhere. While it's rare that she'll just kill a player out of nowhere, spreading the damage around just for you casting spells is an extremely efficient way to close a game out quickly. I think this gal is going to see a lot of play as a lone Commander, a Co-Commander, and as one of the 99. And if Vial Smasher is as good as she looks, she may even pop into competitive Legacy or Vintage!

Meowth is one of the most recognizable Pokemon around. In Pokemon Sun and Moon, there is an alternate Alolan Form which loses its original Normal-type and gains the Dark-type. Apparently, since Meowth isn't native to the Alolan region, those that exist are feral descendants of spoiled brat cats who once belonged to Alola's now-defunct royalty.

Having Meowth as a true Dark type is actually pretty cool. There's also an Alolan form Persian, but I'm not as thrilled with the design as I am with Meowth's. It will be very interesting seeing what Meowth's move set will look like now that it is no longer a Normal-type at all.

I never thought I would actually be seriously writing about Rattata and Raticate, but here I am... The Rattata and Raticate in the Alola region of Pokemon Sun and Moon are now Dark-type in addition to their original Normal-type. This adaption came from living mostly in urban areas, where the Raticate act as sort of mob bosses and treat the Rattata as their minions. It's a cute story, but what's more important is that retyping.

Raticate always could use Dark-type moves, but now they get STAB (Same Type Attack Bonus) whenever they use those attacks. While you'll hardly see these guys in the competitive arena, it does give them an added edge if you decide to train one for your adventuring team in Sun and Moon.

While today people aren't too thrilled with Rattata and Raticate, at one time they were very useful Pokemon because they can learn so many different moves through the use of TMs (Technical Machines) and HMs (Hidden Machines). Since this is still the case, it's nice to know that they can get an added Dark-type attack boost in case this is who you choose to round out your team with at any given point. Also, since today TMs are able to be used as many times as you like, you won't feel bad at all using them on an Alolan Raticate.