Given my poor Standard performance in Columbus this weekend, I got to experience my first foray into the new Modern format at the Star City Games Classic. No Gitaxian Probes, no Golgari-Grave Trolls, and some Fatal Pushes peppered into a handful of decklists. David Ernenwein did a solid job of breaking down the published winning decklists, […]

At some point last year I was killing time between rounds and a friend of mine asked if I wanted to jam some Modern. I didn’t have a deck on me, but he had both Jund and Blue Moon. “Gimme that Jund deck. I’ma smash you.” He was really into Blue Moon, but the deck […]

I knew they were going to take actions in Standard with the new banlist update—especially with it being moved up to this week. The pessimist in me expected that Modern would be left untouched. To be fair, I enjoyed Modern prior to this announcement, much unlike Miracles Legacy, though I’m very happy that action was […]

If you liked “dies to Doom Blade,” you’re gonna love “dies to Fatal Push!” Few are more surprised than I to see a great black removal spell grace the Aether Revolt spoiler page, though initial evaluations largely seem to be calling the card something it’s not. It’s a solid card with a role to play, […]

Three of the sixteen players at the Star City Games Players’ Championship piloted Grixis Delver for the Modern portion of the tournament. Kevin Jones was basically a lock to play it, but it’s telling that he was able to get teammate Jim Davis onto the deck, and that the two were able to rope Brad […]

When you talk to players about their Modern decks, most of them can tell you why they like their deck. Perhaps the play patterns fit their style or they have good things to say about the deck’s relative power level. This is good information to have—but identifying a deck’s weaknesses is more important when it […]

When you first get into Magic, you’ll undoubtedly have a lot of questions to ask. As you traverse your way through your early Limited and Constructed endeavors, you’ll only find the number of questions increasing for a time. Magic is a very difficult game, after all. Eventually though, if you want to see competitive success, […]

Last week I found myself playing a head’s-up Cube match against my friend Mike. I was handily crushing him (obviously) and our other friend Kevin asked me, “Do you always just draft blue/red?” It’s not my fault! They’re the best cards, after all. Throughout the history of Magic there is some truth to there being […]

Last week I went against my better judgment and wrote about the Modern banlist. The piece seemed to be generally well received, though as one would expect, there were disagreements. Most seemed to be with regard to levels of understanding or differences of philosophy, though there was one commonly expressed sentiment that I felt deserved its […]

Banlist discussion has become all the rage in recent years. The people who manage the banlist understand that changes should be made rarely and with good reason, though as we all know you can’t please everybody. Players still complain about the banning of Splinter Twin, and there is plenty of discussion over what could be […]

Modern breaks from time to time, and there was significant concern in recent months that the format had become dominated by linear aggressive decks. If you weren’t beating down, you weren’t trying. More and more articles and tweets have been popping up calling for bans, unbans, and even overhauls, though recent Modern results have demonstrated […]

About a month and a half ago I presented a Jeskai Delver build that I had been tinkering with, and today I have some changes to discuss. I was able to play a 61-person event last weekend, piloting an updated version to the semifinals of the event, where I was ultimately felled by Jund, which […]

When they unbanned Golgari Grave-Troll in Modern, we all knew it was only a matter of time. For about a year we heard little from the Zombie hoard, until the release of Shadows over Innistrad brought us Prized Amalgam and Insolent Neonate. From there it didn’t take long for Grave-Troll decks to start popping up […]