Another banlist announcement is just around the corner. While the last few announcements have proven unfruitful, I believe this time will be different; after all, it is January, and Wizards has a history of shaking up Modern around this time. I’m anticipating at least one unban, and wouldn’t be surprised if a ban occurred as […]
Jordan Boisvert
Jordan is Assistant Director of Content at Quiet Speculation and a longtime contributor to Modern Nexus. Best known for his innovations in Temur Delver and Colorless Eldrazi, Jordan favors highly reversible aggro-control decks and is always striving to embrace his biases when playing or brewing.
*Editor’s note: at the time of writing, Pteramander’s English name had not been spoiled. This article’s title refers to the card as “Salamander Drake.” Spells-matter decks perform admirably these days, but my favorite Human Insect rarely inhabits them. Last week, I mused about what Delver of Secrets would need—both card-wise and metagame-wise—to again be a player […]
As a lover of aggro-control and specifically thresh decks in Modern, which I consider the removal spell format, my focus when it comes to building decks of this type has always been on threats. Putting together a new brew? I first ask myself which threats to include. Glossing over recent decklists? My eyes first go […]
Editor’s note: from Humans to Ironworks to Arclight Phoenix, 2018 saw Modern’s power level rise dramatically. This year, deckbuilders learned to balance tension in their brews to devastating effect. Today’s article is a re-run of what I consider my most relevant article to that metagame development. Happy holidays! The Modern community is ruthless in its […]
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 […]
When it comes to Modern, I’m always up for a surprise. I penned an article last week declaring the death of midrange as a Tier 1 strategy in an aggro-combo metagame. But it seems the meta has already corrected itself: last weekend’s GP Portland Top 8 featured a finals between Grixis Death’s Shadow and BG […]
It’s easy to identify with Ravnica’s guilds. The plane owes much of its popularity to that simple fact. In Modern, where color fixing is better than any other constructed format, players have more often aligned themselves with shards or wedges, such as Jund and Jeskai. But these days, decks tend to be defined less by […]
Monday’s article examined the recent resurgence of blue-based aggro-control brews in Modern. A number of these decks have put up strong finishes on Magic Online lately, despite the continued presence of better-known aggro-control decks like Jund Rock and Grixis Shadow. More exciting still, these decks appear to be breaking out in a format already polarized […]
New aggro decks in Modern tend to be streamlined synergy machines full of critters. But “goodstuff”-style creature decks à la Jund, which wield Modern’s known best cards, do slip through occasionally. Perhaps the best-known example of this phenomenon is Traverse Shadow, a deck that blew Modernites away when it first reared its head over a […]
After a lengthy hiatus from playing the deck, I brought Colorless Eldrazi Stompy to SCG Regionals last weekend, and duked it out with around 250 players over nine rounds of Modern. I ended up finishing in 9th place. Despite my Top 8 miss, it was exhilarating to again play Colorless at this level. This report […]
Creeping Chill has been sanctioned for a month now, and Dredge is steadily regaining its former status as format boogeyman. David’s article from last week met the deck’s rise with an optimism I’m no longer sure I can personally espouse: despite the hate, Dredge put three copies into the Top 32 of GP Atlanta and, more […]
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 […]
Birthing Pod may have held the title for a good while, but Splinter Twin takes the cake as Modern’s most controversial ban ever. Even today, players debate its place on the banlist ad nauseam, a discussion seemingly reinvigorated with each new deck and expansion; Twin’s defense league has persisted to the extent of literally becoming […]
