On February 15, 2021, Wizards banned a card near and dear to my heart: Simian Spirit Guide. The Asking-for-It Ape was featured prominently in my go-to Modern deck, Colorless Eldrazi Stompy, which must mutate dramatically if it is to keep pace in the format. With a week of testing under my belt, I’m ready to […]
colorless eldrazi stompy
Just when I figure out an Oko shell I like, Wizards drops the hammer on the card I’d built around! Not that I think Oko was particularly balanced in Modern; I did endorse the walker as my candidate of choice as face of the 2020 metagame, after all. Fortunately for me, plenty more Modern game-changers […]
Hogaak has been nerfed by a Bridge from Below ban, but the deck is still out in force. While its apparent volatility may contribute to a plummeting of metagame shares in the near future, I personally know many players who continue to swear by the strategy. And Dredge is also on the upswing, profiting from players’ […]
It’s maybe been said to the point of platitude at this point, but Modern is a format that rewards deck mastery. At least for me, it’s also way more fun when you can find a deck that ticks all your preference boxes. I’ve been playing Eldrazi Stompy since Thought-Knot Seer was spoiled, and Counter-Cat since […]
A year ago, Colorless Eldrazi Stompy received a potent new tool in Zhalfirin Void. I described the card’s potential for the archetype in detail, cursing Karn, Scion of Urza under my breath in the intro paragraph. In War of the Spark, the deck is all set to receive yet another potential game-changer, if a less […]
Is Modern solved? Is Modern stale? Any amount of time spent on a Magic forum or subreddit these days seems to offer countless arguments from both sides of the debate. Indeed, this Phoenix/Dredge/Stirrings (in that order) metagame has proven the most divisive I can remember since Siege Rhino briefly served as hyper-acting format manager in […]
Four weeks after proposing a UR Delver shell with Ptermanader, I’ve got some insights to share. And I also have more than a few words on Wizards’ newly-proposed mulligan rule, which has considerable implications for Modern—and for Colorless Eldrazi Stompy. ‘Manders As soon as “Salamander Drake” was spoiled, I set to work on UR Delver, […]
After a lengthy hiatus from playing the deck, I brought Colorless Eldrazi Stompy to SCG Regionals last weekend, and duked it out with around 250 players over nine rounds of Modern. I ended up finishing in 9th place. Despite my Top 8 miss, it was exhilarating to again play Colorless at this level. This report […]
Along with Affinity, Burn and Infect once made up the Holy Trinity of blitzing wins in Modern. Times have certainly changed. The Affinity we knew now relinquishes most of its shares to Hardened Scales; Infect’s loss of Gitaxian Probe and inherent softness to Fatal Push put a serious dent in its former reign; Burn has […]
“Control is dead” has long been a mantra of those unsatisfied with Modern. But UWx control decks have had impressive showings lately on the competitive circuit—just last weekend, both Jeskai Control and UW Control made Top 8 at GP Prague and SCG Baltimore, respectively. Thanks to Search for Azcanta and Teferi, Hero of Dominaria, it’s […]
Many remember the new Pod-less, Cruise-less Modern as one of the format’s golden ages. In those days, the Twin vs. BGx metagame was defined as much by its helming midrange decks as by the “Big Three” aggro-combo strategies that forced players into so much interaction at all: Infect, Burn, and Affinity. Affinity has always boasted […]
Mardu Pyromancer and Ironworks are wildly successful Modern decks right now, and for good reason: the former attacks from multiple angles while making excellent use of the format’s premier abusable resource, the graveyard; the latter is an artifact-based combo deck that’s at once tricky to disrupt and unintuitive to play against for most opponents. So […]
Another SCG Regionals is in the books, and SCG Con is just days away. It’s an exciting time to be a Modern player, or at least a Modern data hound. Today, we’ll look at some of the cooler lists from Regionals, and I’ll give my thoughts both on the recent success of Colorless Eldrazi Stompy […]
