Aggro took the latest SCG Open by storm, and Mike Lanigan is here to pore over the decks, as well as offer a glimpse at some novel Modern decks.
Modern
It’s impossible to prepare for every matchup in Modern; there are just too many viable decks and too many fringe strategies out there. And for the most part, it’s okay not to worry about having a positive win chance against every deck in the format. You’ll dodge some, get lucky against others, and lose one […]
Last week I went in-depth on Collected Company in Elves, and threw together a strong starting brew for what I believe could be the best way forward for the little green guys (and gals). Today I put that list through some preliminary testing in the MTGO tournament practice room to get a feel for the […]
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 […]
Elves was once one of the best decks in Modern, thanks to the high power level and consistency afforded by Green Sun’s Zenith and Glimpse of Nature. Once they got the banhammer, things took a nosedive and the archetype has been struggling ever since. Sure, we saw nice aggro lists do well here and there […]
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on April 1, 2015. As in, this April 1. Modern is broken. I’m a statistician, so you can trust me when I say the numbers prove how screwed the format is. Did you see the attendance at Starcitygames’ Modern event this weekend in Richmond? 178 players?? What, did […]
The great Thomas David Baker, in his infinite wisdom, came up with the “metagame-breaking” Legacy deck he named “36 Bears” back in 2009. Exploiting the broken synergy between Forests and cards with the “Bear” subtype, he attempted to take down the 128 man “Win a Piece of Power 9” tournament at Worlds that year. Below […]
It doesn’t have to be, but Modern certainly can be an expensive format. Even if you’re a spike with a reasonably large budget, after dropping $1,800 on Junk, you maybe don’t want to drop another $1,200 on Twin. Or maybe you get sick of Affinity, but don’t want to start from scratch to play something […]
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 […]
Slivers has long been thought of as a broken deck by casual players and a joke deck by tournament players — such is the eternal divide between Magic players. The intention of this article is not so much to make a case for Slivers as a strong, competitive choice in Modern, but to make an […]
I’ve always had a soft spot for Infect. It was the first deck I played in Modern, the first deck I built on MTGO, and the first Modern deck that proved to me how awesome Modern was going to be (rock on, Blazing Shoal!). Infect has changed since those early days of 2011 Modern, but […]
Budget decks have a bad name, and somewhat deservedly so: most lists are based on top tier decks and sacrifice a lot of their power, preventing them from winning enough to be fun (if you’re a spike, anyway). Well, it doesn’t have to be that way: Modern has a very large catalogue of cards, which […]
Wizards came, Wizards saw, and Wizards left the format untouched. The March 23 B&R Announcement is in, with no changes made to Modern. No bans, no unbans, and now almost four months until we start the whole circus over again. All things considered, this was exactly what I expected. Modern Nexus predictions are batting 100% […]