The Deep Dive dataset is back! In three earlier articles, I analyzed a collection of MTGO dailies to determine the matchups and win rates of different top-tier decks. Unlike the publicly published MTGO dailies used to inform the Top Decks page, our Deep Dive dataset includes all finishes from a sample of dailies, not just the 4-0/3-1 ones. It also includes […]

Jund is back. After months of neglect at the hands of Abzan players everywhere, Jund has returned to the spotlight as a tier 1 deck. We made this official in early May, classifying the deck as tier 1 based on its consistent paper and MTGO performances, and we have continued to see it succeed in […]

May is here and that means we are a few weeks closer to Modern Masters 2015, a month closer to the sweet GP blitz of June, and ready for another metagame update from Modern Nexus. My last metagame update, covering the 3/1-4/1 period, saw subtle metagame changes including downticks in Abzan, Twin, and Burn, the beginning […]

One of the more frustrating limitations of Wizards-published dailies is the lack of matchup information. You get lists, you get standings, you get win percentages, but you don’t actually know which decks beat which decks en route to their finish. This is fine if you just want to describe the Modern metagame, but far less helpful […]

Delver lives. As anyone who has been playing MTGO, following the results of SCG and TCG States events, or reading this site knows, the rumors of Delver’s death have been greatly exaggerated. Although the traditional UR Delver deck did fade into obscurity following the (in)famous banning of Treasure Cruise, another Delver and another delve card […]

In last week’s article, we took a deep dive into the world of unpublished MTGO dailies, capturing performance by both the 4-0/3-1 decks and the 2-2 or worse finishers. This dataset gives us a chance to look at a deck’s performance throughout an event, not just in the winner’s bracket. MTGO statistics in action! We […]

I’m a big fan of using MTGO data to analyze deck performance. But one of the biggest issues with data available on the Wizards website is it’s incomplete. We only see 4-0/3-1 decks, we only see one event per day, and we have no idea what matchups happened on the way to those finishes. Although […]

It’s time for our second metagame update since launching our site! Although there haven’t been any major Modern Grand Prix or SCG Open events since the last article, the format has seen dozens of regional and local events in that time (not to mention all those juicy MTGO dailies). As with all metagame updates, data […]

Back when Monastery Mentor was spoiled, Modern players weren’t sure how the card would affect their format. Or even if the card would affect it. But on February 22, a rising Japanese pro player named Yuuki Ichikawa teamed up with Monastery Mentor to take down a 214 player Modern event. I stumbled across that Esper Midrange Mentor list while doing my metagame spreadsheet […]

In last week’s article on MTGO statistics, I took a deep dive into the numbers to see if Mono U Tron was really the “best” deck on Magic the Gathering: Online. There was a pretty strong case to be made for Mono U Tron’s power, but we can go even deeper to see if we missed […]

It’s that most wonderful time of the year again: Modern banlist updates. There is no topic in Modern, and arguably no topic in Magic (with one strong contender…), that is so controversial and polarizing as the Modern banlist. Ever since Wizards laid out its vision in two inaugural articles, Modern has been defined by its […]

MTGO daily data is awesome. If you like Magic and like numbers/statistics/math in any way, it’s hard to look at the mothership’s dataset and not nerd out. It’s updated daily! It has full decklists! It’s presented in a consistent format! It has average game win percentage for decks! Although there are certainly ways Wizards coould […]

The January 2015 bannings of Treasure Cruise, Dig Through Time, and Birthing Pod changed Modern as we knew it; Delver was sure to fade away; BGx attrition strategies were likely to return; Burn would have to stop splashing blue, and blue-based combo was going to suffer. Oh, and Pod was dead. Whether you loved the […]