When you talk to players about their Modern decks, most of them can tell you why they like their deck. Perhaps the play patterns fit their style or they have good things to say about the deck’s relative power level. This is good information to have—but identifying a deck’s weaknesses is more important when it […]
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As the year, for better or worse depending on your perspective, draws to a close, I find that I have unfinished business. Or rather, I have business I thought was finished but others disagree. Specifically, players just won’t accept that Bloodbraid Elf is not a serious consideration for unbanning. Despite addressing the issue several times, […]
I’ve come up with a new idea on how to present some information about decks when the amount of actionable information for the finance side of Modern Magic is low. Once in a while I’m planning to write, what I’m going to call, a “Financial Deck Tech.” In these articles I’ll discuss the costs of buying […]
Last weekend I played in my first RPTQ. What a tournament! I’d never played in a room full of players on or above my level before, and to say I was underprepared is a huge understatement. My car full of Boston grinders left after the third round, all of us beaten to shreds by the competition. […]
Everything we talk about today will be controversial. No, we’re not discussing if Donald Trump’s political appointees will kill us all, or whether more credit is owed to chocolate or peanut butter, or whether the Tampa Bay Buccaneers will be destroying or getting destroyed by the Dallas Cowboys this Sunday Night under the lights. I […]
When you first get into Magic, you’ll undoubtedly have a lot of questions to ask. As you traverse your way through your early Limited and Constructed endeavors, you’ll only find the number of questions increasing for a time. Magic is a very difficult game, after all. Eventually though, if you want to see competitive success, […]
The RPTQ weekend is over and many players are now off to try their hand at achieving their Pro Tour dreams. I will not be one of them, unfortunately. Hopefully Jordan will be (I’ve heard nothing yet). The fact that the PPTQ system requires you to get lucky twice rather than once to actually get […]
Every few weeks after a Modern Nexus metagame update, I start to get a little restless. I spend nights prowling sites like mtgtop8 trying to form my own metagame picture. Even if local metagames are slow to change, and those are the ones I play in the most thanks to their ubiquity, I always like […]
This week, we’re digging into Modern decklists from the SCG Invitational in Atlanta, along with the Modern Classic event, looking for sweet tech, spicy brews, cold-hearted killers, and everything in between. Did Atlanta bring with it some harbinger of things to come? Will it instead fall to the groupthink hype propping up its slightly above-average […]
Last week I found myself playing a head’s-up Cube match against my friend Mike. I was handily crushing him (obviously) and our other friend Kevin asked me, “Do you always just draft blue/red?” It’s not my fault! They’re the best cards, after all. Throughout the history of Magic there is some truth to there being […]
Not every tournament is going to go your way. Sometimes no matter how well prepared you are or how well you play you just can’t win. That does not mean that the tournament is a failure as long as you utilize it well. Every game you play is an opportunity to learn something. Something about your […]
I’ve had a theory for a while about the supposed health of Modern. Diversity is a big talking point for people who want to play Modern or Legacy over Standard, and I’m not sure it’s quite as diverse as people want to think. It’s diverse in the sense that a lot of people play a […]
I’m preparing for an RPTQ, but it’s hard to stop brewing. Whipping up decklists full of pet cards is just too fun. Even when those pet cards are literal pieces of trash. Ross Merriam’s recent Legacy article reminded me of one pet card I’d long forgotten, four copies languishing in my Modern collection with the other rejects. I don’t expect to break […]
