The SCG Dallas Open showcased some interesting developments in several formats. Eddie takes stock of new technology and logs the changes to his portfolio in response.

Another week of Guilds of Ravnica, another set of recommendations. Eddie provides the latest moves in his portfolio, including some Modern breakouts and a few odd foils.

Welcome back for the December metagame update. This month saw two large-scale Grand Prix delineate an extremely diverse metagame. Perhaps it’s just my own personal bias, but I believe Modern is in a great spot right now—healthy, diverse, with interactive games and relevant decisions in deckbuilding and sideboard construction. This is the “metagame to beat” as […]

Dredge is a deck that ebbs and flows in popularity quite a bit in Modern. At some points in time, you would struggle to find many Dredge lists in a tournament center, and at others, it is the leading archetype. The reason for this is well known: the archetype preys on the format when people […]

A week ago, if you asked anyone down on the street what the most dangerous deck in Modern was, two times out of ten you would get “Grixis Death’s Shadow” as your answer. The other eight would have no idea what you were talking about, and point you in the general direction of the nearest […]

I’m not one to play the “best deck.” Usually, that’s because I’m packing some form of control, tempted by the cruel mistress that is card advantage. Oftentimes, this obsession translates directly into uphill battles and short Saturdays, but that’s neither here nor there. Still, my time spent attacking the format from the outside has given […]

As I said last week, an opinion is worthless without evidence. This means that I have to actually test whether my initial opinions about Amonkhet cards are valid. I am starting to think I need to keep my pen quiet more often, as this is now a much bigger project than I envisioned. Last week I […]

Welcome back for another metagame update. I’m calling today’s the “February update,” even though it encompasses a week-and-a-half of March data as well. As we had extended last month’s data, it made sense to do so this month too in order to avoid a three-week metagame with scant data. The astute reader will notice that […]

On January 9th, Wizards of the Coast brought the heavy weight of the banhammer down upon Modern, attempting to target several linear decks that ranked among the best-performing archetypes during 2016. On the one hand we had the aggressive, explosive creature combos with a gotcha! element, headlined by Infect. On the other hand we had Dredge, taxing […]

With Dredge now officially (re)axed, Infect presumably hindered as well, and a new set in the mix in the form of Aether Revolt, Modern Magic as we know it is primed for a potentially significant change from the norm. The relatively stable Modern landscape we’ve become accustomed to has suddenly transformed into the Wild West, […]

The first major event after a new set is released is both very significant, and yet worthless for the analyst. On the one hand, this is the first glimpse the world gets at where the wider metagame is heading. On the other, it is a single data point in an entirely new experimental condition. In […]

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, […]