Rest in Peace wasn’t always a Modern staple. For a long time, its status was similar to Blood Moon’s: the card was relegated to the sideboards of decks fringe and unreliable for the reason that they themselves lacked powerful graveyard synergies, and kept down by synergy-shredding strategies like Jund Rock. But Modern has changed, and […]

The “Death’s Shadow is the best deck” narrative we saw emerge in force around Grand Prix Vancouver has now split, with some claiming Eldrazi Tron is in fact the best deck. I tend to agree with the former, and will softly make a case for that inclination in this article. Regardless, we can surely agree […]

Last weekend, I attended the SCG Season 1 Invitational in Roanoke, VA. The tournament was a blast, and I learned a lot: Zombies is a worse Monument, speeding in Virginia is a criminal offense, and most of all, people love Modern! Most of my Invitational opponents (and the tournament’s winner) were Modern fanatics, and the […]

Preparation means something unique to everyone, and each player has their own pre-tournament ritual. Mine tends to vary depending on how invested I am in the format, and what other stuff I have going on. The SCG Roanoke Invitational will be underway by the time this piece goes public. In this article, I’ll describe how […]

GP Las Vegas has come and gone, but excitement surrounding Modern still pulses through the community. Vegas saw some very interesting decks make the Top 8, and not only are Hour of Devastation spoilers providing plenty to discuss, but Ixalan’s contraversial rare sheet leak has given format aficionados an unprecedented amount of new information to […]

SCG Charlotte is in the books. Grixis Shadow and Eldrazi Tron were the tournament’s clear winners, both in terms of representation and apparent power. But while everyone was distracted by that onslaught of under-costed threats, a smaller tournament was underway. Despite being won by Grixis Shadow, the Charlotte Classic yielded a few especially sweet brews, […]

I’ve had my mind on the Modern banned list a lot lately—in December, I optimistically wondered at the possibility of a Preordain unban; more recently, I wrote up some general thoughts on format health. In the conclusion of that article, I offered, “Blue and white do continue to struggle relative to the other three colors, making me think now’s […]

I like winning as much as the next guy. Maybe even more. That’s why, since even before the Gitaxian Probe ban, I’ve brought Colorless Eldrazi Stompy to three local tournaments a week. In doing so, I’ve racked up more store credit than I know what to do with, and gained a reputation around Boston as […]

Since the Golgari Grave-Troll banning, the Modern banlist hasn’t been updated. But the format has changed dramatically, welcoming Fatal Push into its upper crust and appropriating Death’s Shadow for a Probeless era. Of course, the format’s recent stability hasn’t stopped detractors from clamoring for bans or unbans. Today, we’ll explore what makes a format healthy, and why the notion of metagame health […]

When Amonkhet spoiled, Vizier of Remedies sparked interest among Modern players as a possible redundancy boost to Abzan Company, the grandchild of beloved Modern archetype pillar Birthing Pod. It’s been nearly a month now since the set was released to Modern, and Vizier seems to have succeeded in improving Abzan Company… as well as in spawning some Company variants […]

Immediately following its mainstream introduction to Modern by Josh Utter-Leyton and his crew at GP Vancouver, Death’s Shadow gained significant footing in the metagame. The explosion of Jund Shadow onto the paper scene at roughly 10% has since cooled, with the deck taking a more reasonable 8% share when lumped in with Abzan Shadow builds. Part of the reason for […]

For all their clickbait connotations, “best of” lists have always resonated with the Magic community. Something about us—perhaps as spell-slingers, or maybe just as humans—simply adores scrolling through a list… whether that scrolling induces nods of agreement, disapproving tsk-tsks, or furious keyboard mashing. Modern Top 5 is a series I’m starting today in honor of that infatuation. It will cover […]

April 24th came and went, and besides some misguided grumbling about Death’s Shadow, most Modern players were content. Without one deck consistently surpassing 10% of the metagame, a “no changes” banlist announcement was easy to predict. But Wizards went the extra mile with this particular announcement, including a blurb about Modern despite choosing not to shake it up. […]