Happy new year, Moderners! It’s good to be back to the Nexus, even if I expect I’ll do far fewer articles in 2017 than I did last year. Between personal and professional developments, it’s been a very busy few months for me, but I’m excited to return and plunge into Magic’s newest set. No promises […]
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Today finally brings an update to the metagame breakdown, with data from December. I know many of our readers have been very disappointed to see these fall by the wayside—I want to explain briefly why I’ve been lagging on them, and reassure you that they will be back in full force for 2017. I recently began […]
Many factors determine creature playability. When a format’s most popular removal spell is damage-based, toughness becomes one key yardstick. In Modern, x/3 creatures that don’t trade with Lightning Bolt at parity, or that can’t fulfill one of a few other roles like casting a spell, are said to fail the Bolt Test. As such, they possess limited use […]
Recently I’ve been putting a lot of thought into what could be coming down the pipeline in Modern Masters 2017. A lot of players are drooling over the new Masterpieces in Aether Revolt—and I don’t blame them—but now is the time to think critically about the reprints we might see this spring. We’re still three months away from […]
If you liked “dies to Doom Blade,” you’re gonna love “dies to Fatal Push!” Few are more surprised than I to see a great black removal spell grace the Aether Revolt spoiler page, though initial evaluations largely seem to be calling the card something it’s not. It’s a solid card with a role to play, […]
Welcome to 2017! Hopefully you’ve recovered enough to actually face the new year, because we have a new set and a banlist announcement on the way. It’s time once again for wild speculation and unrealistic expectations to flood the internet. Brace yourselves. We at Modern Nexus will do what we can to temper this and provide more grounded opinions […]
Even if Modern is the sole format you follow or play, by now you’ve almost certainly heard of Frontier. This format is the newest craze in the Magic community, leading to all sorts of excitement, debate, and taking of sides. I’ll start out by saying that I don’t really have any stake in Frontier, although […]
Since the rise of Dredge, Modern has undergone some frightening changes. Linear aggro-combo decks have experienced a renaissance to fight off the Grave-Troll menace. Toting Eldritch Moon sleeper Grim Flayer, Jund has secured additional metagame shares as it combats these strategies. And Tron, never a favorite against pump-based aggro, has experienced perhaps more shifts than any of Modern’s archetypes […]
This week, I’m dodging all the “Year in Review” and “Best of 2016” clichĂ© topics, opting instead for pure, clean, fun craziness. 2016 has been a wild ride to say the least, and the hits just keep coming. For now, I’m throwing my hands in the air. No more theory, no more statistical analysis, no […]
Three of the sixteen players at the Star City Games Players’ Championship piloted Grixis Delver for the Modern portion of the tournament. Kevin Jones was basically a lock to play it, but it’s telling that he was able to get teammate Jim Davis onto the deck, and that the two were able to rope Brad […]
Due to complications in my holiday plans, I didn’t have time to write an entirely new article this week. As a replacement, please re-enjoy the final results of my Stoneforge Mystic testing with some additional commentary that I left out from the original run. I promise to have something new to start 2017. Here it […]
There’s a lot to love about Modern, including its incredible deck diversity, large card pool, and plethora of powerful interactions. An often-understated quality of the format is its dynamism. Modern metagames shift subtly at a much faster rate than sites like Modern Nexus can document—a rise in Infect leads to a rise in Jund, which […]
This one isn’t going to have much analysis. You could call it an opinion piece, but really there isn’t an opinion I’m arguing here. Rather, this week is just one unfiltered voice, from one Magic player to another. Call that a disclaimer if you want, but today I’m going to be talking about some of the […]
