Ever since I wrote a piece on Chart a Course in Counter-Cat, I’ve conducted routine searches on decklist websites for the card. My motivation was to unearth some sweet new applications for Chart in Modern to further inspire my own brewing. After weeks of the card only appearing in Vintage Delver decks, it started showing […]

If you’re like me, most of the excitement surrounding Standard revolves around which of its cards break into Modern. The worlds-apart nature of both formats guarantees that many Standard all-stars don’t make it over this way, and some Standard duds boast impressive utility in Modern. Every so often, though, a card makes a big splash […]

The past month has been odd for me. I have been advocating UW Merfolk forever, but almost every other Fish player is mono-blue. It made sense. Perfect, painless mana all the time is really appealing. Then Ixalan happened and everyone is experimenting with other colors. I’m not complaining but it feels weird. The fact that they’re still not […]

When Opt was spoiled for Modern, I wrote a piece about how I didn’t think the card would see much play. That didn’t stop me from putting together a bunch of decks with the card. During those experiments, I took a literal “walk” on the wild side, following a tangent deep down the rabbit hole […]

Confession time: one of my pet cards is Smallpox. That might seem weird coming from an attacks-loving aggro-control enthusiast such as myself, but Smallpox has a lot of the elements I prize in a card: its symmetry makes it innocuous; its floor is low, and its ceiling miles high; its conditions ask pilots to build […]

I’ve been a little distracted from Magic lately, and not even grinding the PPTQ season as planned. But all it takes for that to change is a well-timed spoiler from Wizards. Ixalan’s been delivering plenty of those, and between the dripping-with-flavor new cards and the juicy-looking Magic: Arena, I’m back on the proverbial horse—the brewing […]

Rest in Peace wasn’t always a Modern staple. For a long time, its status was similar to Blood Moon’s: the card was relegated to the sideboards of decks fringe and unreliable for the reason that they themselves lacked powerful graveyard synergies, and kept down by synergy-shredding strategies like Jund Rock. But Modern has changed, and […]

The Oracle at Delphi was always correct. Every ancient Greek source confirms this truth. No matter what you asked the Oracle, the answer would accurately foretell the future. However, thanks to surviving prophecies, we now know she owes this accuracy to vagueness. The Oracle answered questions in ways that could mean anything. When asked about the outcome of a battle, […]

As I said last week, an opinion is worthless without evidence. This means that I have to actually test whether my initial opinions about Amonkhet cards are valid. I am starting to think I need to keep my pen quiet more often, as this is now a much bigger project than I envisioned. Last week I […]

Two weeks ago, I considered As Foretold’s applications in Modern control decks. My starting points were Pillow Fort and UB Control, but by the end of the article (and, incidentally, the time I prepared to publish it), I’d turned my attention to integrating the Amonkhet highlight into Modern’s longest-standing control deck: Jeskai. Over the past two […]

To celebrate the impending release of Amonkhet, I thought it’d be fun to put our brewing caps on this week. I’ll get back to metagame/decklist analysis soon, I’m sure, but recently I’ve been taking a look through the Amonkhet spoiler in the hopes of finding something that tickles my interest. Overall, I haven’t been that enthused. […]

Amonkhet spoilers have been in effect for a couple weeks now, but nothing’s stood out to me as Modern-playable until recently. Cut // Ribbons seems like a solid include in BRx attrition decks like Grixis, while Cast Out could make a decent addition to reactive draw-go shells like UW Control. But the card that has […]

Greetings, Nexites. We have some exciting things in the works this week, but today I merely get to bring you another Deck of the Week. Much as I wanted to highlight something novel from Grand Prix San Antonio, it seems an avalanche of Death’s Shadow and Affinity decks were the going fare throughout much of […]