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A Beginner’s Guide to Looping: The Bath Song in LTR

This week Rob rekindles his love for old-school control as he analyzes looping in LTR. Find out how to build the deck that might be the best in the format.

Choosing The Right Bullet: A Beginner’s Guide

It’s time, once again, for a return to The Beginner’s Guide to Modern. This my long-running but periodic series where I cover the fundamentals of Modern for those new to the format. Though, as happens with a series that’s four years old at this point, I’ve already covered all the fundamentals and obvious misconceptions long […]

Fighting Jund: A Beginner’s Guide

Well, this is rather unfortunate. I was intending to start building a new metagame dataset with SCG Baltimore this week. However, COVID-19 has led to basically everything for the next month being cancelled. Which means I’ll need to rely on online data for the foreseeable future. The problem is there isn’t enough non-League data to […]

Fighting Control: A Beginner’s Guide

The Beginner’s Guide series offers advice to new to Modern players and dispels common myths about the format’s workings. This week, inspired by some consistent misplays I’ve observed, I am going to be tackling Modern’s control decks. There appears to be a perception that they’re something to tread carefully around. But control is just another […]

Answering Combo: A Beginner’s Guide

The Modern PPTQ season begins at the end of July. For consummate grinders like myself, this is a call to break out the tech and start polish decks. It’s also a call to start playtesting, both to understand how my own deck works and to understand how other decks operate. One of the greatest challenges […]

Choosing Sideboard Cards: A Beginner’s Guide

Happy (almost) Independence Day America! For Fireworks Day Eve, I have been inspired to go back to the Beginner’s Guide. Recent spoiler discussions and in-game observations made me realize that I have a lot more Modern basics to cover. I’ve danced around this a few times, but never actually discussed building a Modern sideboard. I’m […]

Repositioning and Counterboarding: A Beginner’s Guide

Nothing is harder to see than the obvious. This is the problem of teaching Magic to new players. Whether you humiliatingly miss an on-board win, or your “missing” keys are on the table right in front of you, it happens to everyone. It can even apply to knowledge. It is easy to forget how daunting […]

Insider: A Beginner’s Guide to the MTGO Marketplace, Part I

Whether this is new information for you or a refresher, Kyle’s guide to MTGO trading can help us all save a few tix on Magic Online.

The Unusual Decks: A Beginner’s Guide

Here we are, the final category of decks! Well, I say category but it is actually categories. You see, there are a number of archetypes that are either rare or derivative of the other ones and so don’t really require separate articles. This is not to deride their value to Modern or their power. It is simply […]

The Ramp Decks: A Beginner’s Guide

Nearly there! Welcome to the penultimate entry in the deck guides. Next week I’ll finish up with the remaining deck types and we’ll finally be done with all the archetypes of Modern! Then I’ll finally be free to write about other, more topical things again. Ramp decks occupy a weird place in Magic. Arguably the […]

Fair Combo: A Beginner’s Guide

Welcome, once again, to the Beginner’s Guide. My quest to explain the general deck types in Modern is winding down, with only the Ramp and unusual archetypes to come. As you no doubt surmised either through pattern recognition or just reading the title, this week is about the fair combo decks. Hopefully this will not come as […]

Unfair Combo: A Beginner’s Guide

Welcome back to the Beginner’s Guide. I’ve had a bad habit of leaving many week-long breaks between these articles. This is unacceptable and I’m going to finish off the deck-type articles over the next few weeks. This is especially important given that the I’m onto the combo decks, which fall into distinct categories that aren’t […]

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