This week Sig examines budget, time, and enjoyment as three vectors of Magic finance that dictate how you should set priorities to get the most out of the hobby.
Opinion
The earth is round, the pope is catholic, and Destructive Revelry belongs in the sideboard of every Modern Burn deck. While the first and the second principle might be unbreakable, I’d like to smash the third one to smithereens. In this article I’ll explain why I think Destructive Revelry is overrated in Burn, and lay out […]
Chris has some thoughts on Guilds of Ravnica: Mythic Edition and its distribution model. How could this impact the future of Magic?
“What’s this card worth?” It’s a question Sig gets quite a bit. Pricing a rare or obscure card isn’t rocket science—it just takes some effort and reflection. Sig lays out his method.
Modern has at times been described as a format hostile to Spike, the player demographic in search of winning at any cost. Indeed, “spiking” tournaments as players do in other constructed formats—by playing the best deck and understanding the mirror—isn’t a reliable path to success in Modern. Rather, this format rewards players for picking a […]
The phrase “I know it when I see it” is rather clichĂ© and typically unhelpful. It is also frequently true: there are phenomena that are easy to observe and record, but actually defining them is a struggle. For instance, physicists cannot agree on a Grand Unified Theory despite broad agreement on its components; philosophical debates […]
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. […]
Since last Monday, it seems like Jace and Bloodbraid are everywhere. This should hardly be surprising. Exciting, powerful cards promote similarly excited brewing, and as the decklists reveal, players are actually following through. But this isn’t Eldrazi Winter, and the new decks aren’t obviously overpowered. There’s more going on. It will take a few months before […]
Bloodbraid Elf and Jace, the Mind Sculptor have been unbanned in Modern for a week now. Contrary to what we’ve heard since the announcement, the format is just fine, and perhaps even better: it’s fresher, to be sure, with new decks popping up abusing Modern’s newcomers and benefiting from the metagame warp. One development I […]
Wizards really dropped a bombshell on us Monday morning. Jace, the Mind Sculptor AND Bloodbraid Elf unbanned? Oof, didn’t see that one coming. I’d been outlining articles for the various cards that I could see getting banned or unbanned, but these two together were not on the list. Never even considered it. However, it happened. I’ll […]
This is the big one. It’s time to answer the question I’ve been dancing around all month: Is Bloodbraid Elf safe for Modern? Ought Wizards to rescind its banishment, to the delight of many? Or should Elf remain locked away, to the delight of many others? There have been a number of narratives running through this […]
Alright, time for the big reveal. With comment section chatter over possible unbannings increasing, it’s time for the hard data to make its own argument. I had less fun with this test than with previous efforts, mostly because I have a long and difficult history with Bloodbraid Elf. That said, the testing was comparatively easy […]
