I love to brew, and build upwards of ten Modern decks every week. Most of them aren’t very good, which is why I’ve only written about a few on Modern Nexus; I think brewing is a numbers game, so as long as decks like Temur Delver and GRx Moon emerge from a sea of goofier ideas like Temur Rogues, […]
Brewing
Look, I get it. Sideboarding isn’t sexy. Even if I throw numbers at you, like the fact that close to 66% of the games you play involve a post-sideboard 75, you’ll still work to perfect that starting 60, then find 15 cards to “fill in” a sideboard and call it a day. I’m guilty of […]
Magic is not an exact science. Playstyle, both players’ shuffling techniques, deck composition, and mistakes are just a few variables that you’d need to control or eliminate to get a truly rigorous scientific analysis of deck performance and winning probability. Instead we tend to focus on results and how a deck will play over multiple […]
Testing. It is the soul of tournament play. Honing and crafting your deck and play, optimizing them to dominate the competition. The eternal quest for the glory of victory on the back of your own creation! It is this siren’s call that keeps us playing and the dream that drives us forward. Of course, anyone who […]
Let’s clear the air. I want to write about a pet card 1,000 times (Ă la Day’s Undoing) about as little as you want to read about it. To quote one of the funnier comments on my umpteenth Day’s Undoing article, “This series is like watching a bubble burst in slow motion.” Funny, yeah, but fun for no […]
Some play Magic to win, and others play to have fun. Most players move up and down the spike scale depending on context—the casual nature of certain tournaments provides a perfect backdrop to test wacky ideas. With this principle in mind, I good-naturedly brought a neutered Eldrazi deck to FNM last week that splashed blue and green for playsets of Tarmogoyf, […]
Today I will be focusing on Grixis Control. Where it came from, the challenges it faces, how it can respond to the new Modern landscape we find ourselves in, and what role it will play moving forward. For those unfamiliar with my opinions on this deck, you can brush up here, here, and here. While […]
Welcome to the second week of the new Modern era! If the chatter in discussion threads and the various articles from the past week are any indication, everyone is happily brewing away with the new toys from Wizards. Control mages are eagerly waiting for Ancestral Vision to tick down and aggro players are happily ruining it by […]
By now, we’ve all rejoiced at the Eye of Ugin banning and rejoiced even harder at Wizards’ reparations. It seems the banlist moderators understand that actions speak louder than words, so instead of issuing a plodding “we messed up!”, they actually gave us some new toys. Apology accepted! Readers know I’ve spent some fine afternoons […]
IT HAS BEGUN! It is, at last, coming to FRUITION! They laughed at me, said it was impossible, said I was wasting my, SAID IT WOULD DRIVE ME MAD! MAD! Do you remember, DO YOU REMEMBER IT, Morgenthau? Remember how they said that the Storm itself was perfect, that attempting to harness it and turn […]
Congratulations to Scott Vezina for his piece being featured under the Volunteer Contributor program at Modern Nexus! If you’d like to submit your own work, just head over to the Contribute Articles page to get started. Spring cleaning is upon us, Modern mages, and this past weekend I finally made the decision to organize my entire collection. No […]
I’m sure I speak for many when I say my favorite part of spoiler season is paging through new cards and looking for ones that fit into my pet decks. The leaked Shadows over Innistrad spoilers revealed Invasive Surgery and the delirium mechanic. As a Tarmogoyf enthusiast, this keyword spoke to me on a competitive and […]
Ideas are incredibly insidious things. You have them all the time and mostly they just flit through the mind before disappearing forever, as ephemeral as Martin O’Malley’s presidential run. Sometimes though, they get stuck and won’t allow you to forget them. It’s like a bad itch that you can never scratch sufficiently, not even with […]
