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Happy (semi-early) birthday to us! It was one year ago to the week we made our debut as "Masters of Modern" on Reddit and other social media. It was also one year ago to the week that our readers took a chance on a couple of relatively no-name Magic players and their vision of a Modern site for Modern players. Our name might have quickly changed, but our promise to deliver high-quality, data-driven, Modern-specific content has continued to be the core of our site's purpose since last year. Some of you played Magic through school as an escape from classes and tests. Here at Modern Nexus, I'm proud to say we will never let you escape the statistics, tables, and evidence-based analyses you have come to expect.
March 16 of 2015 saw us publish our first "Metagame Breakdown" article, and I'd like to hope the ideas of Tier 1, Tier 2, and Magic metagame analysis have never quite been the same. Today, I want to not only thank our readers and community for all your support and participation in the site, but also to give some reflections on where the site has been and where we plan on heading over the next year. This can also be a place for you to drop us some comments about what you want to see more of, less of (so long as that "less of" isn't statistics!), or what you want us to change.
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With that in mind, here are some Long-Term Plans as we forge ahead into our second year of operation.
- Thank the readers
We wouldn't be here today without our dedicated fans, commentators, audience members, current/former contributors, and overall community. Critics and outright trolls included! All of you have made the site possible, both in big things like reading and little ones like disabling ad-blockers, and I know I speak for our small but committed team when I thank you all for your involvement in Modern Nexus. Over the course of 2016, I want to think of ways to thank our readers and give back to them. This might take the form of more participatory articles such as a "Deck Doctor" series, community contests with snazzy prizes, reader-request articles, and more. Our readers rock and they deserve that explicit recognition.
- Expand the staff
I love our small Nexus team, but I am also aware of the limitations this places on our site growth. Just taking my own writing as an example, a week where I write 2-3 pieces and update all the metagame numbers on a daily basis is a week where I lose hours to test another Stoneforge Mystic vs. Insert-Tiered-Deck-Here article. There's also significant value in adding new perspectives to the team, particularly those with more tournament involvement than I have. I'm very much on the academic side of Magic and Modern, and although there is value to that in the game as much as in non-gaming spheres, it's important to maintain a balance. In 2016, I want to work to expand our staff through reaching out to new authors, strategic partnerships, guest appearances, and other arrangements to ensure we're giving you the latest and greatest in Modern content. I'm hoping you see the first wave of this by summer, but it could well be earlier!
- Post more videos
I'm an old-school writer and analyst more than I am a YouTube man, and I'm much more comfortable in RStudio than I am in Adobe Premiere. That said, I know our readers want to see more video offerings, and I'm aiming to get more of these added in the next six months. There's a lot of potential around not just conventional deck breakdowns, but also set reviews, event recaps and reports, financial advice, and other Modern topics.
- Add a real deck and metagame database
If we get absolutely nothing else accomplished in 2016, we're going to a) defeat the Eldrazi, b) get a meaningful unban and not another Golgari Grave-Troll, and c) integrate a proper database into Modern Nexus. I'm a man who's serious about his spreadsheets, but we're not reaching our potential when we're stuck on a Google Sheet with a manually updated Top Decks page. That doesn't provide the ability to search for decks, filter results, and tailor custom queries to create your own metagame analysis. There are plenty of deck databases on the Magic internet, but none capture the sheer number of Modern decks we do, none conduct the analysis like Nexus offers, and none are as accurate with respect to just Modern alone. I want to bring that to our readership and I'm going to work hard to add it by this time next year.
I've also heard murmurs about other ideas in emails and comment sections: a Modern-focused forum, "Legacy/Standard Nexus," hosting paper or online tournaments, in-person coverage of Modern events, and many more. These proposals and all the other bold suggestions I've heard and mused on aren't necessarily off the table, but I do want to prioritize the four goals above before getting too ambitious.
Keep your eyes open for some more announcements over the next month. Although these more administrative postings (not to mention the work that happens behind the scenes) might cut into the 2500+ word articles you've come to expect (eagerly anticipate? dread?) from the Sheridan Monday-Wednesday days, it will be worth it in the end if it means a more robust, informative, and enjoyable Modern Nexus.
Thanks for reading and a big thanks again to all of you for your continued support and reading. I'll be responding to all of you in the comments, so feel free to take questions, ideas, concerns, worries, and all other feedback there. You can also always email me at sheridan@quietspeculation.com, and although I have been inconsistent in responding to emails in the past month, I'll be back on top of it as we push into this new phase of growth.
-Sheridan
Editor in Chief
Has it been a year already? How time flies! Keep up the good work, gentlemen.
Time flies when you’re having Modern fun! Except for the last month and a half, which has dragged on endlessly… Thanks for all your support, Roland, and we’ll keep seeing you around the comments!
As someone just getting into Legacy, a Legacy version of this site would be amazing. Mostly because I’m lazy and having to go to one site for everything is awesome.
Thanks for all the great content.
There was a time when I played a lot of Legacy, but I made a switch to Modern in 2011. Maybe one day we’ll see a Legacy Nexus or something similar, but I’m also much more committed to this format now, even if it has some major issues. Glad you’ve enjoyed the content!
This site has become my favorite web site (period) by far. Great job Modern Nexus crew. The only thing I would like to see more of is more content in general. It is just so good. Enjoyable reading, meaningful dialogue, critical thinking, and statistics. Lots of glorious statistics. This place has everything!
Happy to hear you’ve enjoyed all the content! I also want to see more articles, videos, discussions, and general Modern offerings, and hope to deliver on this over 2016. Especially statistics. MOAR STATISTICS!
What are your thoughts on contributed articles, particularly those that cover topics that transcend the weekly/monthly metagame (mostly strategic/theoretical articles, not tuning/deck/metagame articles)?
We are probably going to be launching a “Contributed articles” program very soon. Unfortunately for writers, this would not be paid as it is not in the budget, and as a writer I value being able to pay our current staff for regular work. “Exposure” is not compensation. That said, I know there are players, authors, and readers who wouldn’t mind submitting something just for that exposure and to support the site, so I want to make that option available for those who are interested.
I absolutely love this site. I’ve been reading your articles since the Masters of modern days and as a primarily modern player there is no other website that gives me the kind of statistics driven analysis and overall format love like you guys do. I look forward to every new article. Even during this eldrazi winter.
Happy birthday Modern Nexus! Keep up the great work. Modern Nexus is an awesome name by the way. I’m glad you had to change it!
So happy you’ve enjoyed the content, even during the horrors of this Eldrazi Winter. We’ll keep delivering in 2016 and I too am happy we changed the name. Modern Nexus, forever!
Speaking of content, as a relative newbie to your audience, I’ve got a question: do you folks do spoiler reviews? I love spoiler season, but so many places talk about the new cards almost exclusively in the context of Standard. My mind is brimming with Modern questions (like “How good of a Madness card would have to get printed for Zombie Infestation to be good?” or “Can something be done with Relentless Dead, Tidehollow Sculler, and Viscera Seer?”) but I can’t find anybody talking about this stuff. Do you write that kind of stuff in spoiler season? If not, you should! 😀
Fear not! We will have spoiler articles coming up this week. I think Jordan will do something Friday, with Trevor potentially joining on Thursday. I’ll also be doing something Wednesday. You can expect a bunch more of these as we get closer to April 4.
I’ve been a daily reader since June of last year, thank you for all of your hard work and effort! This site has also helped me solidify my decision on investing in Modern as the format of choice! I look forward to seeing how this site will progress this coming year.
Thanks again!
Thanks for reading, and I’m also really looking forward to seeing where we can go over 2016. Let us know if you have any suggestions!
Hey, you must know I am way to lazy to post any comment, ever. But after reading this article I tought: “why not? After all it’s been a year since we can get access to premium level content for FREE.
So, gotta tell you guys, that here in Argentina, many players follow Modern Nexus. We even talk and discuss your articles at my comic shop FNM. 😉
Keep up the good work and happy birthday to you!
So happy to hear you all have enjoyed the content! We’ll keep producing and let us know if there’s anything else you want to see. Thanks for the (first-time) comment!
this is thr only site i visit for modern, everything i need to know about the format is here. i love the articles. congrats to mr Sheridan Lardner and staff for the one year mile stone.
It’s too bad there aren’t other quality Modern sites out there, but we’ll keep providing the content you guys expect. Thanks for the props and see you around the comment sections!
Your articles has been great. Every single one I’ve read. But most articles not written by you has been mediocre, with a few exceptions. I don’t say that to be mean, it’s just a fact for me that if I had to pay to read most of their articles I’d cancel my subscription in a hurry. So new writers would be greatly appreciated.
I’ll continue to keep my addblock disabled for now 😉
Best of luck.
Appreciate the honest feedback. Can you remember any non-Sheridan articles you enjoyed? It would be helpful for me to give that feedback to the authors and let them know which ones may have been stronger than others. Let me know and thanks for the comment/adblock disable/support!
Sure.
https://quietspeculation.com/whats-with-eldrazi/
That’s a recent one that I could dig up in a hurry. I thought it was great.
I guess I should clarify that I don’t think they’re mediocre in the sense that they’re poorly written, just that they don’t appeal to me personally. Which is why it’d be nice with a well rounded staff that can cover all angles.
So if I blew out all my candles with one breath I’d wish for more articles like the one I posted. To be honest, SCG / CFB keeps running every deck through videos/articles on a regular basis, and articles that aren’t about a tier 1/2 deck that has been discussed endlessly by platinum pro’s is always appreciated. I’d love a series of articles that covered the history of Modern and what led up to it. Looking at how the decks developed through the years and which decks disappeared along the way.
Also if you could get an interview with Forsythe at some point and push him to talk about their intentions concerning Modern, I’m sure that’d be very interesting indeed.
You guys are awesome!
Thanks! It’s been fun doing all this Modern-focused stuff for a year. Here’s to many more!