What an absolutely wild week for Modern. Playing with Bloodbraid Elf and Jace, the Mind Sculptor legal has been incredibly exciting and exhausting. With so many shells to try, and so many changes in deck-building philosophy (particularly for control decks) I feel like I’ll never have enough time to explore all the avenues! Today’s Blue […]
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So, a new set released and I haven’t addressed it at all. It’s not that I didn’t want to, or lack things to discuss. I was just a bit busy with a far more important project. And then with watching a Pro Tour. And then with chaos. I realize that talking about Rivals of Ixalan is […]
Last weekend’s unbans were met with mixed reactions from the Magic community. I found myself a little conflicted, as well; I generally like shake-ups and “fresh meat,” but the back-to-back Pro Tour and GP weekends, which featured incredibly diverse metagames, had just proven Modern to be a format smack in the middle of its golden […]
Thanks to Wizards’ bombshell unban announcement, Modern is on the cusp of a great age of experimentation. Established and rogue archetypes alike will be examining their 75s in efforts to either combat or incorporate the format’s latest newcomers, and I fully expect some new archetypes to appear in the wake of these powerful additions to […]
Wizards really dropped a bombshell on us Monday morning. Jace, the Mind Sculptor AND Bloodbraid Elf unbanned? Oof, didn’t see that one coming. I’d been outlining articles for the various cards that I could see getting banned or unbanned, but these two together were not on the list. Never even considered it. However, it happened. I’ll […]
It’s only February, and we’ve already seen the most high-profile Modern event of the year. Pro Tour Rivals of Ixalan went totally according to plan: no Eye of Ugin shenanigans; no team of baby-genius-pros breaking the format in half; no flurry of bans raining down on the winning deck. So, business as usual, right? Wrong! […]
Pro Tour Rivals of Ixalan, the first Modern PT in two years, is in the books! And I’m feeling kind of flat about the whole thing. This is probably because I didn’t watch the live version. It’s not the coverage team’s fault. However, I have no interest in watching live drafts, and trying to watch […]
I’ve long considered myself a Delver die-hard when it comes to Modern. But I haven’t been on much Delver at all since the Gitaxian Probe ban. Rather, the deck I’ve come to be known for in Boston is Colorless Eldrazi Stompy. In past weeks, I’ve reacted to local and online enthusiasm for the deck by […]
I’ve largely avoided repeating decks for this series to keep the content fresh and interesting. That said, I think the Humans deck has gone through a slew of changes, and while the core of the deck remains the same, the gameplay can be quite different. On top of that, it seems we still haven’t found […]
The 2018 Star City Games Team Constructed Open was held in “Philadelphia” (the location of the event was about a half hour drive away from the actual city) this past weekend, and given that it’s the first major paper tournament that’s been held within an hour of me in a long time, I resolved to […]
This is the big one. It’s time to answer the question I’ve been dancing around all month: Is Bloodbraid Elf safe for Modern? Ought Wizards to rescind its banishment, to the delight of many? Or should Elf remain locked away, to the delight of many others? There have been a number of narratives running through this […]
Last weekend was SCG Dallas, a Team Constructed Open that again featured Modern experts duking it out on the big stage. As one of the last datapoints before the upcoming Pro Tour, Dallas gives us a few interesting bits of information to work with. Today, we’ll focus on the cooler deckbuilding choices made by some […]
Alright, time for the big reveal. With comment section chatter over possible unbannings increasing, it’s time for the hard data to make its own argument. I had less fun with this test than with previous efforts, mostly because I have a long and difficult history with Bloodbraid Elf. That said, the testing was comparatively easy […]
