Welcome, once again, to the Beginner’s Guide. My quest to explain the general deck types in Modern is winding down, with only the Ramp and unusual archetypes to come. As you no doubt surmised either through pattern recognition or just reading the title, this week is about the fair combo decks. Hopefully this will not come as […]

On January 9th, Wizards of the Coast brought the heavy weight of the banhammer down upon Modern, attempting to target several linear decks that ranked among the best-performing archetypes during 2016. On the one hand we had the aggressive, explosive creature combos with a gotcha! element, headlined by Infect. On the other hand we had Dredge, taxing […]

A couple months ago, I took Counter-Cat to an RPTQ and had my ass handed to me on a silver Shriekhorn. The lesson I learned: bring only a deck you’re intimately familiar with to an event you want to do well in. While I’ve put in plenty of games with Counter-Cat during my Modern career, I […]

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 […]

Magic cards don’t take much to catch fire, huh? If you’ve been following along online, a bunch of people have been working on a new version of a combo deck called “Cheeri0s.” If not, let’s take a look at why this is one of the hottest new decks in Modern and what the most optimal […]

Welcome back to the Beginner’s Guide. I’ve had a bad habit of leaving many week-long breaks between these articles. This is unacceptable and I’m going to finish off the deck-type articles over the next few weeks. This is especially important given that the I’m onto the combo decks, which fall into distinct categories that aren’t […]

I had initially intended to bring you the January metagame update today, but looking over the data and consulting with Sheridan, we decided to wait a week in order to incorporate more post-banning data, including Star City Games Regionals. Instead, we’ll be covering one of the early changes that has resulted from Wizards’ recent format shake-up. The […]

Forbidden fruit tastes the sweetest. No Ban List Modern and even Vintage have a certain allure to many players, myself included, as they promise the opportunity to play with the best cards ever. In Yu-gi-Oh, I spend most of my time playing Traditional Format, the unpopular Vintage analog wherein banned cards are restricted. And even today, I […]

Adam explains how Modern is reacting to Aether Revolt and the recent bannings, plus some of the opportunities that have come up in response.

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 […]

I have a secret to tell about the Aether Revolt prerelease a few weekends ago: I didn’t play. Sure, the format was Limited, and I didn’t know the cards, and the days are getting longer—we can sit here and make excuses all day. What I was actually doing was playing Star Wars: Destiny, which, as […]