Spoiler season is rolling on. However, my prediction at the end of last week’s article has been holding: Core 2021Â spoiled the obviously Modern-playable cards early. Sure, there have been plenty of interesting cards, but they’re all role-players or interesting build-arounds rather than massive shake-ups. And that’s rather welcome, considering how often Modern’s been churned up […]
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Last week, I wrote about the possible directions companions go in Modern now that their rules have been changed. It seems there has been plenty of stretching to make companion work despite the nerf, and today, we’ll take a look at some of the breakout decks wielding Yorion, Sky Nomad. Here’s a quote from my […]
In these uncertain times, it is only natural to seek stability and comfort in the familiar and predictable. Which is a convoluted way of saying that the world may be burning, but spoiler season has returned on schedule. It’s not much relative to everything else, but even small comforts are important. In the past, Core […]
In the wake of the companion nerf, in which Wizards announced the creatures would cost an additional 3 mana to tutor from the sideboard, David penned a piece discussing the pros and cons of keeping companions as companions given their hefty new price tag. Today, I’ll expand upon that idea, looking more closely at where […]
Here we are again: another set, another set of problems, and another banning… oh wait, nothing’s getting banned in Modern. Awkward. And more to the point, a waste of a perfectly good rant setup. Why am I even bothering… oh right, something else happened this time around. And it is consequential. Though not in the […]
“Comp-letely Nuts,” or the apparent consensus surrounding Ikoria’s flagship mechanic. Two weeks back, we looked at the interesting new decks popping up using companion, because why wouldn’t they? Today, we’ll explore the rest of May’s entrants in a final goodbye to companion in Modern as we know it. Mo’ Mana, Mo’ Problems You of anyone […]
Another week of data, another update to the Ikoria metagame. The trends had been moving towards companion stabilizing in Modern. Last week, the individual companion cards seemed volatile in terms of usage, but the mechanic itself appeared to have achieved saturation. We observed some signs suggesting that companions might be been fading in Modern, which […]
Discussing the Modern banlist has always been a favorite pastime of the format’s aficionados. In times like these (and I don’t mean COVID-19, but that other c-word), player attention is turned towards what needs to be banned; pundits have suggested all the companions eat the bullet, or that Wizards implement sweeping errata. But personally, I’ve […]
When working with data, scale is everything. Just as an area looks very different when using Google Streetview versus Google Maps, the context, meaning, trends, and ultimately the conclusions reached from the data will depend heavily on the scale it’s examined on. This is the reason that economics is split between micro and macro level […]
Okay, so companions are everywhere. But looking past that acknowledged reality, I see a Modern bursting with possibilities, and even applying the different companions in brilliant, unpredictable ways. Let’s take a look at what May’s first half has had to offer us in terms of Modern ingenuity! One Tribe… Or Two One unexpected (at least, […]
In the absence of data, speculation and rumor thrive. It’s time to correct that problem with a deep data dive. I have been collecting metagame data for the past month, and today I’m going to share my findings. The rhetoric about companions has been flying thick since they were revealed, but their actual impact was […]
Days before the impact of companion on Modern was impressed upon me, I came across an article over at Good Grief Games by Kenan Diab on his RG Prowess deck. The idea was simple: take the persistently successful Mono-Red Prowess deck and cover for some of its glaring weaknesses by accommodating green creatures, in this […]
Modern is on fire. I’ve come to expect this declaration every time there’s a noticeable shift in the format. Sometimes it’s justified. Sometimes it isn’t. And sometimes its semi-literal. Burn appears to be dominating Modern at the moment. Red decks have been doing well since Oko, Thief of Crowns was banned, but it was Prowess […]
