Dean Tolmachoff took 5th place at an SCG States tournament this week running Miracles, of all things. Miracles was a deck in Standard when the sometimes-busted Entreat the Angels and Terminus were format legal and netted then tournament newbie Alexander Hayne a 1st place win (beating down Jon Finkel in the finals, no less). The […]

Wizards made a lot of promises when it founded Modern. Some of these were explicit, like providing a new non-rotating format for high level play. Others were implicit, such as actively supporting Modern with new cards that could improve existing decks. And others were so confusing we are still trying to figure out what Wizards […]

With a mostly refined and complete list in tow, I finally felt confident enough to bring Elves to a daily yesterday. The matchups were R/G Tron, a strange U/B Merfolk list, Grixis Delver, and Affinity. See what happened in the video below. The list is a little different than last time, as I’m still missing […]

I’m a big fan of using MTGO data to analyze deck performance. But one of the biggest issues with data available on the Wizards website is it’s incomplete. We only see 4-0/3-1 decks, we only see one event per day, and we have no idea what matchups happened on the way to those finishes. Although […]

With Avatar of the Resolute now available on Magic Online, I took a renewed Stompy list to the daily queue this week to test the deck’s mettle. Below is what I ran. The sideboard is pretty much what I mentioned last time, except I’ve included extra Aspect of Hydra. As I mention in the video […]

Aggro took the latest SCG Open by storm, and Mike Lanigan is here to pore over the decks, as well as offer a glimpse at some novel Modern decks.

It’s impossible to prepare for every matchup in Modern; there are just too many viable decks and too many fringe strategies out there. And for the most part, it’s okay not to worry about having a positive win chance against every deck in the format. You’ll dodge some, get lucky against others, and lose one […]

Last week I went in-depth on Collected Company in Elves, and threw together a strong starting brew for what I believe could be the best way forward for the little green guys (and gals). Today I put that list through some preliminary testing in the MTGO tournament practice room to get a feel for the […]

It’s time for our second metagame update since launching our site! Although there haven’t been any major Modern Grand Prix or SCG Open events since the last article, the format has seen dozens of regional and local events in that time (not to mention all those juicy MTGO dailies). As with all metagame updates, data […]

Elves was once one of the best decks in Modern, thanks to the high power level and consistency afforded by Green Sun’s Zenith and Glimpse of Nature. Once they got the banhammer, things took a nosedive and the archetype has been struggling ever since. Sure, we saw nice aggro lists do well here and there […]

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on April 1, 2015. As in, this April 1.  Modern is broken. I’m a statistician, so you can trust me when I say the numbers prove how screwed the format is. Did you see the attendance at Starcitygames’ Modern event this weekend in Richmond? 178 players?? What, did […]

The great Thomas David Baker, in his infinite wisdom, came up with the “metagame-breaking” Legacy deck he named “36 Bears” back in 2009. Exploiting the broken synergy between Forests and cards with the “Bear” subtype, he attempted to take down the 128 man “Win a Piece of Power 9” tournament at Worlds that year. Below […]

It doesn’t have to be, but Modern certainly can be an expensive format. Even if you’re a spike with a reasonably large budget, after dropping $1,800 on Junk, you maybe don’t want to drop another $1,200 on Twin. Or maybe you get sick of Affinity, but don’t want to start from scratch to play something […]