For the first time this year, welcome to The Beginner’s Guide! For those new to this series, I am trying to simplify Modern to make it more approachable and comprehensible for those players new to the format. Previously I’ve covered sideboarding strategies, deck diversity, and an in-depth look at the aggressive strategies. Today, it’s time […]
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It’s been an exciting week for Modern. Fatal Push was sanctioned last Friday, and the SCG Columbus Classic gave players a highly anticipated datapoint for the new metagame. A linear combo deck won that event, and a purely reactive control deck just missed the Top 8. Combo and control are famously underpowered archetypes in Modern, giving us […]
I have a secret to tell about the Aether Revolt prerelease a few weekends ago: I didn’t play. Sure, the format was Limited, and I didn’t know the cards, and the days are getting longer—we can sit here and make excuses all day. What I was actually doing was playing Star Wars: Destiny, which, as […]
Given my poor Standard performance in Columbus this weekend, I got to experience my first foray into the new Modern format at the Star City Games Classic. No Gitaxian Probes, no Golgari-Grave Trolls, and some Fatal Pushes peppered into a handful of decklists. David Ernenwein did a solid job of breaking down the published winning decklists, […]
Now that we’re living in a post-ban world, I’m ready to do another financial deck tech for players new and old looking to change up their Modern deck. This time I’m going to try not to touch decks that are likely to be affected by the newest bans because there is likely too much churn […]
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 […]
Cost reduction mechanics are among Magic’s most powerful—delve and affinity have terrorized many a constructed format, and the legendary moxen remain among Magic’s most fabled examples of “Power” to this day. Granted, Enraged Giant is no Black Lotus. But improvise may very well be Modern-playable. This article is the one I had planned to write last week, before Wizards announced its […]
At some point last year I was killing time between rounds and a friend of mine asked if I wanted to jam some Modern. I didn’t have a deck on me, but he had both Jund and Blue Moon. “Gimme that Jund deck. I’ma smash you.” He was really into Blue Moon, but the deck […]
Kaladesh block has been very intriguing. There have been a lot of cards and even new decks that looked Modern-playable, and yet the impact so far has been limited. I’m not sure if that is the fault of misplaced expectations or the cards themselves, but only Blossoming Defense has had a noticeable impact. The enemy fastlands […]
I don’t know about you, but I plan on 2017 being anything but business as usual. In the coming weeks, expect some changes to my column here on Modern Nexus (hopefully for the better!) This week, I’m taking one of my new year’s resolutions—to get organized—and applying it to Modern Magic. Too often over this […]
When Wizards banned Gitaxian Probe on Monday, many players reached out to me to express their condolences and ask where Temur Delver goes from here. Probe was an integral part of my Monkey Grow deck, and starting games by paying 2 life for the sorcery was some of the most fun I ever had playing Magic. I will […]
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, […]
