The nerfed Natural Order and a color-shifted Donate are getting a lot of attention already. Find out what Ryan thinks of these cards for Modern.
Strategy
Mike looks at current Standard cards that are well positioned as we move into the Eldritch Moon release. These are his top 10 picks for gainers.
It’s remarkable to think how far both the game of Magic and the culture around Magic have grown recently. What was rare and remarkable yesterday is common today, and old technology and edges are just part of the game. Likewise, old lessons have become integral to how we understand the game, but you’d be hard-pressed […]
Eldritch Moon previews start today, but before we know a single card Sheridan is here to point out some hot spec targets.
When I began tuning Monkey Grow, the biggest surprise among peers and opponents was my sworn dedication to Disrupting Shoal. Certain players couldn’t believe that countering a spell was worth losing a card, citing Force of Will’s status in Legacy as a check to degenerate combo decks that usually gets boarded out against fair strategies. But […]
In between acing some online leagues with Ad Nauseam and running into back-to-back Infect rounds in others, I’ve been watching and playing more Legacy than usual. Last weekend’s Grand Prix Prague and Columbus led to such an uptick in Legacy coverage that I couldn’t help it. How else am I supposed to get value out […]
In my continuing effort to simplify and explain the complicated nature of sideboarding in Modern, I’ve fielded a number of questions about techniques and specific strategies. This makes me happy, since it shows that my readership is engaged, thoughtful, and inquisitive, everything that I could ask for as an author. What has made me less […]
Before Ancestral Vision was unbanned in Modern, it struck me as one of the more deserving cards on the list. Given the choice between playing against Jace, the Mind Sculptor in a format where tapping four mana at sorcery speed can often just leave you dead, and a Treasure Cruise analog that required an investment […]
In the Pro Tour: Oath of the Gatewatch quarterfinals, the Eldrazi-toting Luis Scott-Vargas mulliganed to four against Pascal Maynard’s Affinity. The match announcers were baffled when Luis shuffled away an admittedly unexciting five of Ghost Quarter, Blinkmoth Nexus, Wastes, Matter Reshaper, and Endless One, but after some thought, realized Luis had correctly identified that hand as too slow. The ability to take […]
Alexander presents Part 2 of the Eternal Masters draft primer alongside Limited experts Bing Luke and Matthew Watkins.
On the eve of Eternal Masters’ release, Alexander enlists the help of two expert drafters to break the set down and get a bead on the winning strategies.
Sideboarding is a skill-intensive and essential component of competitive Magic. While it isn’t an “Easy to learn, hard to master” skill, it feels very close. Sideboarding guides can be useful to overcome this learning curve, but they can also become a crutch and actively harmful to your chances of improving. Last week I went over the basics […]
It’s become a perennial fixture of spoiler season. Some card with a variant of the “punisher” mechanic (the classic example being Browbeat) is spoiled and the collective Magic community flips their lid. Forum posts are awash in bold claims about its greatness, labyrinthine explanations of how “both sides are good,” and wild overestimations of the card’s […]
