The first major event after a new set is released is both very significant, and yet worthless for the analyst. On the one hand, this is the first glimpse the world gets at where the wider metagame is heading. On the other, it is a single data point in an entirely new experimental condition. In […]

Today finally brings an update to the metagame breakdown, with data from December. I know many of our readers have been very disappointed to see these fall by the wayside—I want to explain briefly why I’ve been lagging on them, and reassure you that they will be back in full force for 2017. I recently began […]

This week, I’m dodging all the “Year in Review” and “Best of 2016” cliché topics, opting instead for pure, clean, fun craziness. 2016 has been a wild ride to say the least, and the hits just keep coming. For now, I’m throwing my hands in the air. No more theory, no more statistical analysis, no […]

There’s a lot to love about Modern, including its incredible deck diversity, large card pool, and plethora of powerful interactions. An often-understated quality of the format is its dynamism. Modern metagames shift subtly at a much faster rate than sites like Modern Nexus can document—a rise in Infect leads to a rise in Jund, which […]

Everything we talk about today will be controversial. No, we’re not discussing if Donald Trump’s political appointees will kill us all, or whether more credit is owed to chocolate or peanut butter, or whether the Tampa Bay Buccaneers will be destroying or getting destroyed by the Dallas Cowboys this Sunday Night under the lights. I […]

The RPTQ weekend is over and many players are now off to try their hand at achieving their Pro Tour dreams. I will not be one of them, unfortunately. Hopefully Jordan will be (I’ve heard nothing yet). The fact that the PPTQ system requires you to get lucky twice rather than once to actually get […]

Every few weeks after a Modern Nexus metagame update, I start to get a little restless. I spend nights prowling sites like mtgtop8 trying to form my own metagame picture. Even if local metagames are slow to change, and those are the ones I play in the most thanks to their ubiquity, I always like […]

I’ve had a theory for a while about the supposed health of Modern. Diversity is a big talking point for people who want to play Modern or Legacy over Standard, and I’m not sure it’s quite as diverse as people want to think. It’s diverse in the sense that a lot of people play a […]

I just remembered something: the RPTQ I qualified for is next week. For some of you, it’s this weekend but for me, that’s GP Denver. As a result, Standard has unfortunately taken up almost all of my Magic time recently. I know many people think that Modern is broken and unhealthy, but I assure you: […]

Looking solely at the Top 16s of recent events, observers might argue that Modern has become shockingly interactive. Todd Stevens’ Sun and Moon, a white-red prison deck with a midrange slant, just won a Star City Games Open in Knoxville, headlining a Top 16 packed with more Sun and Moon, Skred Red, and Jund. Earlier this month, […]

Recently, there’s been a lot going on in the world “non Magic-wise.” The Cubs finally overcame the hundred-year curse, South Korea got really weird, and America proved that polling actually is absolutely worthless. If you’ve been too busy staring at supermoons and lamenting the end of society as we know it, fret no more. Everything […]

Modern breaks from time to time, and there was significant concern in recent months that the format had become dominated by linear aggressive decks. If you weren’t beating down, you weren’t trying. More and more articles and tweets have been popping up calling for bans, unbans, and even overhauls, though recent Modern results have demonstrated […]

It’s crunch time. You’ve known this was coming. You had weeks to prepare. You had plans to put on pants, go to FNM, run the Modern gauntlet, and test for Grand Prix Dallas. Instead, you sat on your couch, binge-watched Friends and eating Cheetos off your own bare chest. Now you’re scrambling, wondering what to […]