In “High Water Fire Mark,” Mike Flores pays respects to the great unsung quality of quality creatures: toughness. He identifies toughness as supremely important to successful deckbuilding designs, writing, “In many constructed formats, we can point to a particular number, say two or three, with the knowledge that that number represents the amount of damage done […]

Last month, Patrick Chapin went 8-1 on Day 1 of GP Oklahoma with Temur Prowess, and the deck hasn’t been talked about much since. I find this very odd, since The Innovator’s decks usually see much press and emulation. Not so this time. I thought this was odd enough that my video series this week […]

September 2015 will always be remembered as the month where Lantern Control won a Modern Grand Prix. If that’s not the sign of a diverse metagame, then I don’t know what it is. The last month saw a lot of movement around our tier 1 and tier 2 decks, all of which you can check […]

Last weekend was the not-so-eagerly awaited Modern debut of Battle for Zendikar. Man-oh-man did it meet its lack of expectations. Although the SCG Standard Open in Indianapolis saw some exciting performances by Bring to Light and five-color manabases, Modern was much less hospitable for our newest set. Only two of the Top 16 decks played any cards from […]

Hey guys! Welcome to Episode 3 of our Modern Nexus Video Series, where we pick a sweet list and run it through some matches on Magic Online. This week we have Patrick Chapin’s 64th place Temur Prowess deck from Grand Prix Oklahoma City in mid-September. With Battle for Zendikar coming to Magic Online next week, I figured […]

Since Origins was spoiled I’ve been tuning iGrow, a Delver deck abusing Day’s Undoing to crush the midrange strategies that have historically oppressed my buggy buddy since Abrupt Decay’s printing. It worked, but at the cost of dedicating an entire sideboard to beating the aggressive decks that benefitted from my mainboard set of Undoings. With today’s […]

Since Modern’s inception, converge decks have periodically been attempted, modified, dropped, and eventually forgotten. While the mechanic has just recently been named, we all know converge is basically a rehash of domain/sunburst, and Modern is no stranger to strategies looking to take advantage of excellent fixing to support powerful spells in multiple colors. With Battle […]

Hey guys! Welcome to Episode 2 of our Modern Nexus Video Series, where we pick a sweet list and run it through some matches on Magic Online. This week we have Phil Silberman’s 1st Place  UW Blink deck from the SCG Premier IQ in Milwaukee. For those viewers that offered suggestions on article format last […]

I have always loved the GBx archetype since it uses discard, removal, and efficient creatures to battle the entire format. Through tuning and experience nearly any matchup is winnable, a rarity in the rock-paper-scissors style of Modern. Within GBx, there are two popular variations that attack from different angles: Jund and Abzan. Abzan tends to […]

Praise be to Wizards! The 9/28 B&R Announcement went live this morning, yet again demonstrating Wizards is a competent and conservative manager for our beloved format. As in the July 2015 announcement, this is easily one of the best “No Changes” updates we could have asked for. Hopefully Wizards keeps these updates coming because I […]

Last week, I expressed disbelief at Battle for Zendikar’s lackluster first half. Naturally, the day that article went public, Wizards spoiled the set’s other half. Its better half. Its playable half! Ha, ha. I’m just kidding. Never mind “ingesting:” BFZ sucks. [wp_ad_camp_1] Flavor I’m not sure I can do a better job on this bit than Paulo Vitor Damo da […]

So let’s get the cold hard truth out of the way early; Battle for Zendikar stinks. Not in a “reminiscent of Innistrad scenario, where every card looks poor on paper but incredible synergies prove us all wrong” kind of way. Almost half of the cards in this set are giant, hulking Eldrazi Limited bombs. Most of […]

My expectations weren’t high when I went to open the full Battle for Zendikar image gallery. Like Jordan, I wasn’t thrilled to see the first half of BFZ over the past few weeks, and was worried about what the rest of the set would hold. After seeing all 274 cards, I’m officially joining Jordan in […]