Next week is Grand Prix Oklahoma City, the biggest Modern event before the Pro Tour. And this week, there is a Modern Open alongside the SCG Invitational. These events should generate a lot of useful data. It will be tempting to wield this data and metagame your deck ahead of the Grand Prix. I am […]
Sideboard
Nothing is harder to see than the obvious. This is the problem of teaching Magic to new players. Whether you humiliatingly miss an on-board win, or your “missing” keys are on the table right in front of you, it happens to everyone. It can even apply to knowledge. It is easy to forget how daunting […]
Modern remains wide-open, which carries implications for deckbuilding. Last week, I talked about mainboard flex slots. This week, we’ll tackle a significantly thornier topic: sideboarding. Due to Modern’s wide variety of linear decks, and the relative lack of powerful catch-all answers that you see in formats like Legacy or Vintage, ours is a format that puts […]
Modern Top 5: Utility Spells kicked this series off, and in my eyes, it was hugely successful. Not only did it present a measurable way to analyze cards that I’m quite proud of, but the article also inspired a lively debate in the comments. Today, we’ll revisit the series, focusing on some of Modern’s most […]
Mike’s here today with both buylisting and tournament reports from GP Pittsburgh.
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 […]
With the conclusion of SCG Richmond last weekend, we are set up for a weekend of Team Sealed in Louisville. It’s not exactly the most exciting tournament for a reader of Modern Nexus. The following weekend, however, is a Star City Games Open in my home city of Orlando! I’m working on a tweak to an existing […]
I get a lot of questions and comments pertaining to Grixis Delver, with a lot of the focus being on the sideboard. My sideboard notably doesn’t take advantage of the sorts of hammers that you see in many Modern decks. I’m not about “destroy all artifacts” or “exile all cards in graveyards” cards, and instead have […]
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 […]
The last thing we need in Standard is more Bant. Though perhaps you’ll find this non-Company build more bearable.
In my continuing effort to simplify and explain the complicated nature of sideboarding in Modern, I’ve fielded a number of questions about techniques and specific strategies. This makes me happy, since it shows that my readership is engaged, thoughtful, and inquisitive, everything that I could ask for as an author. What has made me less […]
Sideboarding is a skill-intensive and essential component of competitive Magic. While it isn’t an “Easy to learn, hard to master” skill, it feels very close. Sideboarding guides can be useful to overcome this learning curve, but they can also become a crutch and actively harmful to your chances of improving. Last week I went over the basics […]
Welcome to the second edition of Beginner’s Guide, the article series where we help Standard players make the transition to Modern. Two weeks ago I talked about the importance of choosing and then mastering your deck. This week we discuss sideboarding, easily the hardest and most essential part of Modern. In my experience, players moving […]
