I’m trying very hard not to say, “I told you so.” Grixis Death’s Shadow, days after I touted it as the best deck to play heading into the competitive weekend, took down the SCG Open in Baltimore that I hoped on attending, crushed the field at GP Copenhagen, and took third place at Grand Prix Kobe. […]
Tournaments
A lot can change in a week. I was all set for SCG Baltimore this weekend, and then two things happened. First, some family issues came up that would unfortunately prevent me from traveling to play Magic. Second, Devoted Druid and Vizier of Remedies spawned a new(ish) archetype that, well, changed everything. What was good […]
It’s been a while, but it’s time for another tournament report! TCGPlayer States was last weekend and I never miss the chance to prove my skill in front of the as much of the community that didn’t attend the Standard LCQ. It’s annoying that Star City has cut States entirely, but it’s actually a nice throwback to […]
Fresh off the back of a Modern-packed weekend in the form of the SCG Regionals, Modern lovers worldwide have been blessed (or cursed) with another weekend jammed full of Modern data to analyze. Grand Prix Brisbane, Grand Prix Vancouver, the SCG Modern Classic in Baltimore—we’re getting to the point where there’s almost too much information […]
Buckle up. The Star City Games Regional event decklists are here, and all of a sudden we have a ton of Modern results to sift through. Today’s goal is to speculate as little as possible—instead, I plan on taking an analytical, systematic look at the data we have available, to provide a framework upon which […]
A couple months ago, I took Counter-Cat to an RPTQ and had my ass handed to me on a silver Shriekhorn. The lesson I learned: bring only a deck you’re intimately familiar with to an event you want to do well in. While I’ve put in plenty of games with Counter-Cat during my Modern career, I […]
With Dredge now officially (re)axed, Infect presumably hindered as well, and a new set in the mix in the form of Aether Revolt, Modern Magic as we know it is primed for a potentially significant change from the norm. The relatively stable Modern landscape we’ve become accustomed to has suddenly transformed into the Wild West, […]
Given my poor Standard performance in Columbus this weekend, I got to experience my first foray into the new Modern format at the Star City Games Classic. No Gitaxian Probes, no Golgari-Grave Trolls, and some Fatal Pushes peppered into a handful of decklists. David Ernenwein did a solid job of breaking down the published winning decklists, […]
The first major event after a new set is released is both very significant, and yet worthless for the analyst. On the one hand, this is the first glimpse the world gets at where the wider metagame is heading. On the other, it is a single data point in an entirely new experimental condition. In […]
I don’t know about you, but I plan on 2017 being anything but business as usual. In the coming weeks, expect some changes to my column here on Modern Nexus (hopefully for the better!) This week, I’m taking one of my new year’s resolutions—to get organized—and applying it to Modern Magic. Too often over this […]
There’s a lot to love about Modern, including its incredible deck diversity, large card pool, and plethora of powerful interactions. An often-understated quality of the format is its dynamism. Modern metagames shift subtly at a much faster rate than sites like Modern Nexus can document—a rise in Infect leads to a rise in Jund, which […]
Last weekend I played in my first RPTQ. What a tournament! I’d never played in a room full of players on or above my level before, and to say I was underprepared is a huge understatement. My car full of Boston grinders left after the third round, all of us beaten to shreds by the competition. […]
The RPTQ weekend is over and many players are now off to try their hand at achieving their Pro Tour dreams. I will not be one of them, unfortunately. Hopefully Jordan will be (I’ve heard nothing yet). The fact that the PPTQ system requires you to get lucky twice rather than once to actually get […]
