Happy New Year! At least, I’m assuming it’s the new year. Hard to say; I’m typing this article from the bottom of what used to be a barrel of eggnog. Anyway, let’s not let less-than-optimal writing conditions get in the way—it’s Bloodbraid Month! Which is an excuse to hold off revealing the data from the […]

David is out for the holidays until next week. In the meantime, please enjoy his article from earlier this year where he presented results from the Preordain ban test. These results were originally presented in two separate articles (here and here), but I’ve divided them into parts for the purpose of easier reading. Part 1: […]

It begins, gentle seekers of glory. Today is a day of great opportunity and gangrenous rot. The pallid sun meekly illuminates the great ravenous hordes as they linger, eager and anxious, waiting for their moment, when they shall be unleashed upon the world to slack their unending hunger for inadequately-proportioned sugary confections. For those whose […]

The October 17 banlist announcement came and went, and no changes were made to Modern. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to glean. Wizards dropped some juicy information this announcement, and today we’ll deduce which cards the company has their eye on unbanning. Wizards’s latest “No changes” gave us some valuable insight into how they’re […]

The time has (finally) come to actually reveal the results of my latest banlist test. Looking back, testing two different decks made this harder than it needed to be. Focusing just on Storm would have yielded more satisfying data, though not a more significant result. As you will see, it appears that Preordain would not […]

This week, I’m doubling down. Modern is returning to the Pro Tour, and with that, banned list discussion is certain to resurface. I’ve chosen to get out ahead of it; my article last week speculated on a potential opportunity for Wizards of the Coast to “solve” the banning problem once and for all. Unsurprisingly, this […]

Modern Magic’s history under the lights has been… complicated. As a format, it was born into fire in 2011 with Pro Tour Philadelphia, and since then, the format has bounced from darling to redheaded stepchild to orphan and back, faster than strobe lights at a Skrillex show. Bannings, Pro Tours, more bannings (as a result […]

Modern’s had some year. Star City Games kicked off its Modern-heaviest SCG Tour schedule yet, Modern Masters 2017 dropped containing a slew of much-awaited reprints, and multiple pros came around on the format (with some even calling Modern the “The Greatest Format”). And—most recently—Wizards of the Coast announced Modern is back on the Pro Tour. Wait, […]

I was planning to write a general guide to beating the top decks in Modern, as alluded to last week. However, my discussion kept circling back to Death’s Shadow. Every time I talked about how various decks were constructed, it inevitably involved Shadow. The strategy discussion? Even as I described picking apart Counters Company with Lightning […]

Tilt is quite a mighty thing. Re-reading my fevered scrawlings from last week proved deeply concerning. I knew I was unwell, but I didn’t know how unwell. While I’m better now, I may need to refocus before things get worse. Therefore, it’s time to torture myself by beginning another Banlist Test. In Moby Dick, Ishmael goes to sea […]

Publication does not mean that an experiment is complete. Oftentimes readers see trends or have insights that never occurred to the author. Other times feedback leads to epiphanies which requires additional investigation. As a result, in academia it is important to revisit old papers and reexamine conclusions. Therefore, I’m going to spend today following up on […]

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. […]

At last, the time has come to reveal the data about my Jace testing. As a reminder, these data come from 500 matches, well over 1000 individual games played over five months. I publish my methods so that you can replicate my experiment if you disagree with the results, but I have to warn you […]