This is a sad day for Quiet Speculation.

The “Death’s Shadow is the best deck” narrative we saw emerge in force around Grand Prix Vancouver has now split, with some claiming Eldrazi Tron is in fact the best deck. I tend to agree with the former, and will softly make a case for that inclination in this article. Regardless, we can surely agree […]

Preparation means something unique to everyone, and each player has their own pre-tournament ritual. Mine tends to vary depending on how invested I am in the format, and what other stuff I have going on. The SCG Roanoke Invitational will be underway by the time this piece goes public. In this article, I’ll describe how […]

I was planning to write a general guide to beating the top decks in Modern, as alluded to last week. However, my discussion kept circling back to Death’s Shadow. Every time I talked about how various decks were constructed, it inevitably involved Shadow. The strategy discussion? Even as I described picking apart Counters Company with Lightning […]

Niels takes a closer look at EDHREC.

I’ve had my mind on the Modern banned list a lot lately—in December, I optimistically wondered at the possibility of a Preordain unban; more recently, I wrote up some general thoughts on format health. In the conclusion of that article, I offered, “Blue and white do continue to struggle relative to the other three colors, making me think now’s […]

This week, I plan on doing something unique. Event analysis has long been my preferred approach when it comes to writing—and reading—about Magic, and I feel strongly that my skills in methodically sifting through data, testing hypotheses, and arriving at conclusions is one of my biggest strengths in Magic, both as a writer and as […]

Since the Golgari Grave-Troll banning, the Modern banlist hasn’t been updated. But the format has changed dramatically, welcoming Fatal Push into its upper crust and appropriating Death’s Shadow for a Probeless era. Of course, the format’s recent stability hasn’t stopped detractors from clamoring for bans or unbans. Today, we’ll explore what makes a format healthy, and why the notion of metagame health […]

The Oracle at Delphi was always correct. Every ancient Greek source confirms this truth. No matter what you asked the Oracle, the answer would accurately foretell the future. However, thanks to surviving prophecies, we now know she owes this accuracy to vagueness. The Oracle answered questions in ways that could mean anything. When asked about the outcome of a battle, […]

Tilt is quite a mighty thing. Re-reading my fevered scrawlings from last week proved deeply concerning. I knew I was unwell, but I didn’t know how unwell. While I’m better now, I may need to refocus before things get worse. Therefore, it’s time to torture myself by beginning another Banlist Test. In Moby Dick, Ishmael goes to sea […]

The line between genius and madness is indistinct. The line between epiphany and world-class tilting-off is blurry. I’m in something of a fugue, and uncertain of where I stand anymore. While I am personally certain of the veracity of my forthcoming statement describing the Modern metagame, my ability to perceive normal reality is compromised. I’ll […]

Publication does not mean that an experiment is complete. Oftentimes readers see trends or have insights that never occurred to the author. Other times feedback leads to epiphanies which requires additional investigation. As a result, in academia it is important to revisit old papers and reexamine conclusions. Therefore, I’m going to spend today following up on […]

April 24th came and went, and besides some misguided grumbling about Death’s Shadow, most Modern players were content. Without one deck consistently surpassing 10% of the metagame, a “no changes” banlist announcement was easy to predict. But Wizards went the extra mile with this particular announcement, including a blurb about Modern despite choosing not to shake it up. […]