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 […]

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, […]

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, […]

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 […]

I just remembered something: the RPTQ I qualified for is next week. For some of you, it’s this weekend but for me, that’s GP Denver. As a result, Standard has unfortunately taken up almost all of my Magic time recently. I know many people think that Modern is broken and unhealthy, but I assure you: […]

Last weekend, top players from nations worldwide gathered in Rotterdam to wage war for their respective countries. The battlefield? Team Unified Modern, with a little Limited thrown in. With so many players from every corner of the world turning their eyes to Modern, the results of this tournament were anticipated to have a larger effect […]

It’s crunch time. You’ve known this was coming. You had weeks to prepare. You had plans to put on pants, go to FNM, run the Modern gauntlet, and test for Grand Prix Dallas. Instead, you sat on your couch, binge-watched Friends and eating Cheetos off your own bare chest. Now you’re scrambling, wondering what to […]

Last month we saw three major Modern Grand Prix around the world post a metagame breakdown that mirrored almost exactly the one established in July. Paradoxically, September had both far fewer high-profile events and much more significant shifts in share percentage. I believe these were the result of careful and systematic re-positioning by Modern players, with the intent […]

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 […]

Well, it may be painfully late, but it’s here: the August Metagame Breakdown. This month we saw a rash of major events culminating in the triple Grand Prix weekend confirm what the metagame had tentatively established in July. There were no changes in the Tier 1 lineup from July to August, and we actually saw some […]

Good news, PPTQ grinders! We have data for you. As if the monthly metagame update wasn’t enough for you, this week we have the SCG Syracuse Open to look at, and Jordan will be talking about his PPTQ experience later in the week. Here’s to making informed decisions based on actual data! Dredge won the […]