In the weeks since Bloodbraid Elf and Jace, the Mind Sculptor became legal in Modern, Wizards has posted some novel and interesting decklists from Magic: Online. As a lover of attacks, blocks, and interaction, the Wild Nacatl decks intrigued me. I’ve never been a fan of the disruption-light Revolt Zoo variants, nor the activated-ability-centric Knight […]
Brewing
As the metagame continues to adapt to the recent additions of Bloodbraid Elf and Jace, the Mind Sculptor, we have seen lots of the expected: Bloodbraid bolstering Jund, and Jace slotting in nicely as a finisher for controlling blue decks. Temur Midrange was also a concept that was bandied about, and is currently seeing play. […]
So, a new set released and I haven’t addressed it at all. It’s not that I didn’t want to, or lack things to discuss. I was just a bit busy with a far more important project. And then with watching a Pro Tour. And then with chaos. I realize that talking about Rivals of Ixalan is […]
Last weekend’s unbans were met with mixed reactions from the Magic community. I found myself a little conflicted, as well; I generally like shake-ups and “fresh meat,” but the back-to-back Pro Tour and GP weekends, which featured incredibly diverse metagames, had just proven Modern to be a format smack in the middle of its golden […]
Thanks to Wizards’ bombshell unban announcement, Modern is on the cusp of a great age of experimentation. Established and rogue archetypes alike will be examining their 75s in efforts to either combat or incorporate the format’s latest newcomers, and I fully expect some new archetypes to appear in the wake of these powerful additions to […]
I’ve long considered myself a Delver die-hard when it comes to Modern. But I haven’t been on much Delver at all since the Gitaxian Probe ban. Rather, the deck I’ve come to be known for in Boston is Colorless Eldrazi Stompy. In past weeks, I’ve reacted to local and online enthusiasm for the deck by […]
New sets often pique the interest of Modern players. My last article discussed about how Rivals of Ixalan has brought quite a bit of excitement for Merfolk in Modern. This time around, we’ll see how the set’s tribal theme might have improved archetype that has been biding its time in Modern for a long while. Vampires have received […]
I am always amazed at how often people make relatively simple tasks hard for themselves. There just seems to be something in all of us that gets suspicious whenever anything is unexpectedly easy. We are ready for conflict. We prepare for projects, lessons, and assignments to be hard. When they’re not, we don’t know what […]
A couple weeks ago, I wrote a strategic guide to mulliganing with Colorless Eldrazi Stompy, a deck I’ve championed on Modern Nexus for almost two years now. Today’s follow-up piece focuses on the deck’s second-most-challenging (and important) aspect: sideboarding. This article covers build variations and possible sideboard includes before jumping into the matchup guide. But […]
One important part of brewing is knowing when to plug holes in an existing deck. Sometimes, plugging such holes leads to new decks entirely, or into Frankenstein mashups of multiple decks. Today’s brew falls into the latter category. While messing around with various Death’s Shadow and Bedlam Reveler decks, I had the kooky idea of […]
Hello, Nexites, and welcome to a new edition of Deck of the Week. I must admit that MTGO player 1310HaZzZaRd has been one of my favorite deck brewers, and he was at his best again last week. The deck we’re looking at today is a radical new look for Living End, hybridized with an As Foretold […]
I’ve written that the average Magic player is too afraid of taking mulligans. That goes double for Modern, where card advantage matters less than in other formats, and triple for Colorless Eldrazi Stompy, which is built to mulligan aggressively into lean, powerful openers. Whether it’s because of my own results with the deck, the attention it’s […]
Deep in the Modern annals lies a deck called Boremandos. This deck was the format’s first to feature Delver of Secrets, and was wildly successful in its heyday. It paired Delver with Steppe Lynx, Remand, and a hearty dose of burn spells to gently disrupt opponents and kill them quickly, and eventually inspired the blueprint […]
