Buckle up. The Star City Games Regional event decklists are here, and all of a sudden we have a ton of Modern results to sift through. Today’s goal is to speculate as little as possible—instead, I plan on taking an analytical, systematic look at the data we have available, to provide a framework upon which […]
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Modern has kept me busy lately. Fatal Push generated a metric ton of buzz, Dredge and Infect terrorized Modern and were subsequently nerfed, and most recently, I’ve had my heart set on building entire decks around the improvise mechanic or Smuggler’s Copter. All these developments have prevented me from writing about how Aether Revolt’s less obvious cards have worked their way into […]
Today I’m bringing back a series I started earlier on some general financial knowledge geared towards the Modern community. As the title implies, I’m going to discuss the best and most cost-effective methods I’ve found for shipping cards. Modern cards by and large change hands quickly, are in high demand, and have pretty good profit margins. Whether […]
Confession time: I’m a Cheeri0s guy. No, not the cereal, although I’ve been known to start off the day with a bowl of Honey Nut goodness. I’m talking about Modern Cheeri0s, the speediest combo deck in the format. The blistering fast engine combo has been my back-burner deck since 2013 when Paladin was running solo. Then Aether […]
Welcome, once again, to the Beginner’s Guide. My quest to explain the general deck types in Modern is winding down, with only the Ramp and unusual archetypes to come. As you no doubt surmised either through pattern recognition or just reading the title, this week is about the fair combo decks. Hopefully this will not come as […]
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 […]
A couple months ago, I took Counter-Cat to an RPTQ and had my ass handed to me on a silver Shriekhorn. The lesson I learned: bring only a deck you’re intimately familiar with to an event you want to do well in. While I’ve put in plenty of games with Counter-Cat during my Modern career, I […]
With so many new changes to Modern recently, every assumption we’ve previously held regarding the format as we know it is suspect to change. Mono-Green Stompy is back, Zur the Enchanter is finally poised to take the format by storm, so prepare yourself for Vexing Devil mirror matches every third round. Now that we’re all […]
Magic cards don’t take much to catch fire, huh? If you’ve been following along online, a bunch of people have been working on a new version of a combo deck called “Cheeri0s.” If not, let’s take a look at why this is one of the hottest new decks in Modern and what the most optimal […]
Welcome back to the Beginner’s Guide. I’ve had a bad habit of leaving many week-long breaks between these articles. This is unacceptable and I’m going to finish off the deck-type articles over the next few weeks. This is especially important given that the I’m onto the combo decks, which fall into distinct categories that aren’t […]
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 […]
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, […]
