And so it begins. I want to start with a general thank-you to everyone who helped out. This was an enormous undertaking logistically and took much longer than expected. Even considering the deck I was using for testing purposes. Thank you for putting up with this insanely ambitious project. And please, please, pleeeease be willing to […]

As of this writing, a playset of Ancestral Vision will set you back 140 tickets on MTGO. Sure, some of that is finance garbage due to Snapcaster Mage and fetches being in MM3, but even before that the card was 25+ tickets. Corey Burkhart (and now Shaheen Soorani) have been in the spotlight in recent […]

Fresh off the back of a Modern-packed weekend in the form of the SCG Regionals, Modern lovers worldwide have been blessed (or cursed) with another weekend jammed full of Modern data to analyze. Grand Prix Brisbane, Grand Prix Vancouver, the SCG Modern Classic in Baltimore—we’re getting to the point where there’s almost too much information […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Here it is. The actual data from my investigation into Stoneforge Mystic. After well over 600 matches with my Abzan test decks, I can finally give a decidedly data-driven answer to whether or not Stoneforge deserves its place on the banlist and how it would impact Modern. I tried to be as clinical and scientific […]

This week, I want to focus on SCG Orlando. While it’s true that Kaladesh will be out shortly, bringing with it a possible shift in Modern, discounting a whole high-level event’s worth of data due to the fact that the format might change soon sounds a little foolhardy to me. I plan on discussing Kaladesh spoilers […]

The banned list is one of the hot Modern topics whenever a new set is released. Everyone is speculating about what, if anything, will get the ax or be unleashed upon the world. Speculation this time is focused on Infect and/or Dredge taking a hit and Bloodbraid Elf coming off the list. I’m not here […]

Welcome once again to the Beginner’s Guide. Back in May I laid out some basic rules and recommendations for how to construct a Modern sideboard. The intention was to provide guidelines for building a sideboard in Modern. The time has come to explain how it’s actually done. Everyone likes to complain about Modern. I don’t […]