With the tournaments now over for more than a week, I’m doing the last of my lazy Gerry Thompson impressions before everyone forgets about SCG States altogether. (Really) old rogue strategies like Blue Moon and Eternal Command saw some success at States, but I’m primarily interested in the tournament’s brand-new midrange decks. I’ve divided the decks in this article into two categories: […]

I’m deeply ambivalent about Modern these days. We’re seeing both one of the most open fields in the format’s history (Hulk Combo got T16 at an Open!), but also one of its most linear (Hulk Combo got T16 at an Open…). Whether at SCG States, the big events, or the smaller regional venues, aggressive decks […]

StarCityGames has done a lot to support Modern in the past year, and their support doesn’t get much better than the October States circuit. Whether you’re a player who got to enjoy some Modern action or a format aficionado who got to enjoy 50+ Top 8 standings, States was an exciting midpoint between GP Oklahoma […]

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 […]

Modern offseasons lead to weird metagames. Following the nonstop action in the June Grand Prix circuit, Pro-level Modern mostly wound down for the rest of the summer, a lull broken only by the SCG Modern Open in Charlotte. August saw a ton of PPTQs, IQs, and other regional events, but each had a different local flavor and […]

This past weekend was an exciting one for Modern. While the SCG Invitational was Standard/Legacy, and the World Championships was what felt like every format invented ever (sidebar: really hoping for a Tiny Leaders/Commander Pro Tour next year) Modern still got some love in the form of four rounds of the 24 best players in […]

I’m a big believer in using metagame data to inform tournament decisions. Whether you use the information to guide your deck choice, change around some maindeck cards, or determine your sideboard bullets, players who are aware of metagame trends are much better prepared than those who are not. Unfortunately, it’s not always clear how a […]

We don’t get a Modern Grand Prix until September; if you were as pumped about summer Modern as I was, GP Oklahoma City can’t come soon enough. Thankfully, Modern has continued to evolve in the wake of our June GP gauntlet, and the metagame hasn’t looked this open in years. Since our last metagame breakdown […]

The last time I had such an exciting month of Modern was March 2014, back during GP Richmond. And that was just a single GP without any major set releases co-occurring. June saw not one, not two, but three Grand Prix tournaments, along with the Magic Origins spoiler, the MTGO Modern Festival, an SCG Modern Open, and […]

We’ve seen some interest in Saturday articles for a while now, and with the MTGO Modern Festival Finals coming up on Sunday, July 5, there hasn’t been a better time to fire off a pre-event article to prepare players for Sunday’s showdown. The tournament winner goes home with one copy of every single Modern-legal set, […]

It’s a great time to be a Modern player, and as the summer starts, there’s a lot to look forward to. The offseason is almost over! Modern Masters 2015 is driving down prices! GPs, IQs, and PPTQs are coming! New decks are everywhere! With all these factors at play, it’s more important than ever to check […]

The Deep Dive dataset is back! In three earlier articles, I analyzed a collection of MTGO dailies to determine the matchups and win rates of different top-tier decks. Unlike the publicly published MTGO dailies used to inform the Top Decks page, our Deep Dive dataset includes all finishes from a sample of dailies, not just the 4-0/3-1 ones. It also includes […]

May is here and that means we are a few weeks closer to Modern Masters 2015, a month closer to the sweet GP blitz of June, and ready for another metagame update from Modern Nexus. My last metagame update, covering the 3/1-4/1 period, saw subtle metagame changes including downticks in Abzan, Twin, and Burn, the beginning […]