Pro Tour Bilbao’s just two weeks away. Soon, all eyes will be on Modern, the now-beloved alternative to Standard and Legacy. And perhaps for the first time as a true replacement for those formats. Wizards has shown us unequivocally that they plan on supporting this format whole-heartedly—with tournaments; with reprints; with heavy-handed (and largely successful) […]

Modern used to come under fire in its early days for how focused its decks were. The format’s many linear decks gave onlookers and format dabblers the impression that Modern was but a mess of such decks “passing in the night,” like “two ships.” But focus isn’t everything, and dilution has its merits. As perception […]

Yesterday, Eli Shiffrin spoiled Blood Sun, a new card from Rivals of Ixalan. Modernites were quick to give the internet a piece of their mind, with thoughts ranging from the expectant “Wizards squandered an opportunity to nerf Tron” to the meme-level “I don’t want to be THAT guy, but this card will probably need a […]

Every year has its ups and downs, and so does every card. While this year blessed Modern with untold diversity, a few cards seem to have been left by the wayside. This article explores some of them in detail, reasoning why certain spells are perhaps best left in 2017. #5: Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet Amonkhet […]

A couple weeks ago, I wrote a strategic guide to mulliganing with Colorless Eldrazi Stompy, a deck I’ve championed on Modern Nexus for almost two years now. Today’s follow-up piece focuses on the deck’s second-most-challenging (and important) aspect: sideboarding. This article covers build variations and possible sideboard includes before jumping into the matchup guide. But […]

One important part of brewing is knowing when to plug holes in an existing deck. Sometimes, plugging such holes leads to new decks entirely, or into Frankenstein mashups of multiple decks. Today’s brew falls into the latter category. While messing around with various Death’s Shadow and Bedlam Reveler decks, I had the kooky idea of […]

I’ve written that the average Magic player is too afraid of taking mulligans. That goes double for Modern, where card advantage matters less than in other formats, and triple for Colorless Eldrazi Stompy, which is built to mulligan aggressively into lean, powerful openers. Whether it’s because of my own results with the deck, the attention it’s […]

Deep in the Modern annals lies a deck called Boremandos. This deck was the format’s first to feature Delver of Secrets, and was wildly successful in its heyday. It paired Delver with Steppe Lynx, Remand, and a hearty dose of burn spells to gently disrupt opponents and kill them quickly, and eventually inspired the blueprint […]

I’ve been singing Modern’s praises for, well, ever. At one time, I thought I was either the format’s single biggest proponent or just some kind of insane zealot. But as time goes on and Modern steadily grows in popularity, articles like PVDDR’s “The Problem with Modern” start looking hopelessly dated, and are met with a […]

Modern’s detractors have long cast the format as a writhing mess of linear decks, all ignoring each other or skillfully opening sideboard hosers all the way to each hyper-aggressive Top 8. But until recently, Modern’s pound-for-pound fairest deck—Jund—has commanded more metagame shares than almost anything else. That deck’s resignation as king gave way to a variety […]

Another SCG Regionals is in the books. I had to change that link, by the way—in some crazed stupor, I accidentally waded through the results of the Season One Regionals tournaments from February (yes, the ones I even placed in) and wrote a 3,000-word article about all the rogue decks at those tournaments, which I […]

In “What’s in a Goyf? Benchmark Creature Playability in Modern,” I considered the bar creatures must meet to make the cut in this format. Aether Revolt gave us Fatal Push, and that bar has since changed—but no creature has felt the shift like Tarmogoyf. Today, we’ll zone in on Goyf’s fall from lofty heights and examine the […]

Ever since I wrote a piece on Chart a Course in Counter-Cat, I’ve conducted routine searches on decklist websites for the card. My motivation was to unearth some sweet new applications for Chart in Modern to further inspire my own brewing. After weeks of the card only appearing in Vintage Delver decks, it started showing […]