And so it begins. I want to start with a general thank-you to everyone who helped out. This was an enormous undertaking logistically and took much longer than expected. Even considering the deck I was using for testing purposes. Thank you for putting up with this insanely ambitious project. And please, please, pleeeease be willing to […]

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 […]

I’m very annoyed. I had an entire article on Aether Revolt’s Modern impact planned when, without warning, all my Magic-related social media exploded. Wizards had moved up the Banned and Restricted Announcement to Monday. Oh well, looks like all that effort was wasted—time to analyze some implications! Not that I’m actually complaining about the bans, […]

Today finally brings an update to the metagame breakdown, with data from December. I know many of our readers have been very disappointed to see these fall by the wayside—I want to explain briefly why I’ve been lagging on them, and reassure you that they will be back in full force for 2017. I recently began […]

Welcome to 2017! Hopefully you’ve recovered enough to actually face the new year, because we have a new set and a banlist announcement on the way. It’s time once again for wild speculation and unrealistic expectations to flood the internet. Brace yourselves. We at Modern Nexus will do what we can to temper this and provide more grounded opinions […]

Due to complications in my holiday plans, I didn’t have time to write an entirely new article this week. As a replacement, please re-enjoy the final results of my Stoneforge Mystic testing with some additional commentary that I left out from the original run. I promise to have something new to start 2017. Here it […]

As the year, for better or worse depending on your perspective, draws to a close, I find that I have unfinished business. Or rather, I have business I thought was finished but others disagree. Specifically, players just won’t accept that Bloodbraid Elf is not a serious consideration for unbanning. Despite addressing the issue several times, […]

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 […]

The year is winding down. Players are looking forward to presents in the coming year. For many, that seems to include new bannings in Modern. Banlist mania always heats up as a new set release nears, but traditionally it’s been worst at the end of the year. Previously this was because the Modern Pro Tour […]

My article about testing Stoneforge Mystic generated a lot of conversation, both here on Modern Nexus and elsewhere. Judging by the reaction, people really do want some actual data and scientific method brought into discussions of the Modern banned list. Which means that I’ve got a lot of work to do. But I also know […]

Every three months a new set is released and people get really excited for Standard. Moderners get excited too, but not for the same reasons—each set release brings the possibility of an update to the Banned and Restricted list. Most of the time the entire article amounts to “no changes,” but every once in a while […]

Here it is. The actual data from my investigation into Stoneforge Mystic. After well over 600 matches with my Abzan test decks, I can finally give a decidedly data-driven answer to whether or not Stoneforge deserves its place on the banlist and how it would impact Modern. I tried to be as clinical and scientific […]