I had initially intended to bring you the January metagame update today, but looking over the data and consulting with Sheridan, we decided to wait a week in order to incorporate more post-banning data, including Star City Games Regionals. Instead, we’ll be covering one of the early changes that has resulted from Wizards’ recent format shake-up. The […]

Forbidden fruit tastes the sweetest. No Ban List Modern and even Vintage have a certain allure to many players, myself included, as they promise the opportunity to play with the best cards ever. In Yu-gi-Oh, I spend most of my time playing Traditional Format, the unpopular Vintage analog wherein banned cards are restricted. And even today, I […]

Cost reduction mechanics are among Magic’s most powerful—delve and affinity have terrorized many a constructed format, and the legendary moxen remain among Magic’s most fabled examples of “Power” to this day. Granted, Enraged Giant is no Black Lotus. But improvise may very well be Modern-playable. This article is the one I had planned to write last week, before Wizards announced its […]

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 […]

Kaladesh block has been very intriguing. There have been a lot of cards and even new decks that looked Modern-playable, and yet the impact so far has been limited. I’m not sure if that is the fault of misplaced expectations or the cards themselves, but only Blossoming Defense has had a noticeable impact. The enemy fastlands […]

When Wizards banned Gitaxian Probe on Monday, many players reached out to me to express their condolences and ask where Temur Delver goes from here. Probe was an integral part of my Monkey Grow deck, and starting games by paying 2 life for the sorcery was some of the most fun I ever had playing Magic. I will […]

This week, I’m dodging all the “Year in Review” and “Best of 2016” cliché topics, opting instead for pure, clean, fun craziness. 2016 has been a wild ride to say the least, and the hits just keep coming. For now, I’m throwing my hands in the air. No more theory, no more statistical analysis, no […]

I’m preparing for an RPTQ, but it’s hard to stop brewing. Whipping up decklists full of pet cards is just too fun. Even when those pet cards are literal pieces of trash. Ross Merriam’s recent Legacy article reminded me of one pet card I’d long forgotten, four copies languishing in my Modern collection with the other rejects. I don’t expect to break […]

I’ve written on a variety of different topics since August, including Kaladesh standouts, brews, and Temur Delver. But each week I’ve brought the same exhilarating deck to my weekly locals: Colorless Eldrazi Stompy. I introduced that deck’s Eyeless update three months ago and have been tuning it since. With Pascal Maynard’s recent blurb renewing interest in […]

I’ll be honest with you. There’s a Standard GP coming up in my hometown and preparing for that has dominated most of my recent Magic time. I haven’t had time to come up with anything new for this week. What I do have are updates on several Modern projects that I just realized I’ve left […]

Well, I realize it’s been a long hiatus since our last Deck of the Week, but we’re back nonetheless. I spent much of the weekend tuned into coverage of Grand Prix Dallas, and if most of the on-camera archetypes were boring mainstays and known quantities, the deck that took it down most certainly was not. […]

In an article last month, I looked at a couple of my unsuccessful concoctions to see what went wrong. One deck I dissected was a Jeskai Aggro deck that used Honor of the Pure to get around Mantis Rider’s measly 3 toughness. My conclusion was that the deck would be better off with Mutagenic Growth and a […]

Every time spoiler season rolls around, I eagerly pore over the commons, searching for Modern-playable… Rogues. Everyone has their guilty pleasures, their sick addictions. When it comes to Modern, mine is the interaction between tribal spells and Tarmogoyf. And my favorite tribal spell? A one-mana Impulse called Thieves’ Fortune. Just as Ancient Stirrings, powerful as it […]