Looking over the Top 32 lists from last week’s Modern Open, I realized I hadn’t studied Wizards’ 5-0 lists in some time. My wake-up call? Andrew Schneider’s deck, which revolved around a Guilds of Ravnica card that immediately piqued my interest when it was spoiled six weeks ago: Arclight Phoenix. A careful review of each […]
Rob starts the week with one of the biggest gainers from Guilds of Ravnica on today’s segment!
Adam had an impressive finish at a local RCQ with UR Phoenix in Pioneer. This week he goes over which cards were the hotness and what lessons were learned.
Who ordered the hot wings? Adam comes in spells a-blazing with this red (and blue) hot Historic Phoenix deck! Now with 100% more Ledger Shredders.
Daniel’s here fresh off of two high event finishes to discuss the deck that brought home so many wins.
We all thought Consider and Faithful Mending would see Jeskai Phoenix rise again from the ashes. Why hasn’t it, and what will it take for the bird to fly again?
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Despite recent bannings, the targeted decks are rising up again, reinventing themselves in novel ways. Axing Once Upon a Time from the format heralded an imminent paradigm shift for Amulet Titan, an enduring archetype that had redesigned itself around the free cantrip so drastically as […]
Modern is vast and diverse enough to make metagaming a frequently terrible idea. However, sometimes it is warranted. With Izzet Phoenix, followed by Dredge, consistently dominating the big tournaments in a way that Modern hasn’t seen in years, it makes sense for the first time in a long time to actively target the top decks. How to […]
Each tournament, Izzet Phoenix’s impressive, sustained numbers start to look less like an outlier and more like a pattern. Patterns like these have a history of being addressed by Wizards via the banlist. So how does Izzet Phoenix stack up against past offenders? Do the deck’s decriers have a case for caging the bird? Let’s […]
Instant/sorcery support? Cost-reduction mechanics? Cheap card draw for aggressive strategies? Light Up the Stage, a card with spectacle spoiled from Ravnica Allegiance this week, hits all my soft spots, yanking me from a haze of Inkling up-smashes and Richter side-specials to brew anew. Today, I’ll share my findings on Light Up the Stage in what […]
Between my banlist testing series and Thanksgiving, it’s been a heavy few weeks. For something lighter, this week I’m investigating the in-game mechanic known as velocity. Velocity is old news to Modern, but recently, a number of high-velocity aggro decks have gained prominence. Why is no mystery, as there is tons of red looting in […]
Aiming to revitalize Standard, Wizards has changed when bannings can occur. But the new system carries grave implications for larger formats.
Pioneer continues to frustrate efforts to understand it. However, David E. may have the answer after examining the apparent best deck of the format.
