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We are now firmly into the new year, so it's time for another metagame update. This one is arriving a little later than normal, but that's what happens when the month begins on a Tuesday. I just don't have time to gather and process the data and then complete the write up in 24 hours. And it's not like I'm missing anything major in the world of Magic by talking about this instead of any new development.
Modern has been in an odd state since last July. On the one hand, there has been considerable innovation, churn, and general change within Modern since the release of Modern Horizons 2. On the other, it has remained remarkably static: Hammer Time has held firmly onto the #1 spot in the metagame, with the same few decks hanging around Tier 1 as well. Will the new year yield a new metagame? Let's dive in and see!
January Metagame
To make the tier list, a given deck has to beat the overall average population for the month. The average is my estimate for how many results a given deck “should” produce on MTGO. Being a tiered deck requires being better than “good enough;” in January the average population was 6.88 setting the Tier 3 cutoff at 7 decks. Which is back where it's been for most of the past year.
Tier 3 begins with decks posting 7 results. Then we go one standard deviation above average to set the limit of Tier 3 and cutoff for Tier 2. The STdev was 12.52, which means that means Tier 3 runs to 20 results. Again, it's the starting point to the cutoff, then one above for the next Tier. The STdev was lower this month, though still on the high end of normal. Therefore Tier 2 starts with 21 results and runs to 34. Subsequently, to make Tier 1, 35 decks are required. Which, again, is on the high end of normal for post-MH2 Modern.
I should note that it will look like there are several outliers in January's data. But they are not in fact outliers. Rather, an unusual number of singleton decks in the data skewed the numbers. And even if the decks were outliers, removing them doesn't change anything about the tier list's composition, so the outliers wouldn't affect the conclusions.
The Tier Data
Total decks fell in January. This is not January's fault, however. Wizards failed to post the January 29 Challenge, and so there's a minor gap in the data. This happens periodically; I'm guessing the auto-updater bugs out. There were also almost no non-Wizards events in January. I have no idea why. As such, the data consists of 502 decks down from December's 528 decks. Had the missing Challenge been posted or there been more non-Wizards events, it would have beaten December easily.
The unique decks were up with 73 unique decks in January to December's 67, just over a third of which were singletons. I've had updates with more in total, but this is high percentage-wise. Not sure how that happened, but it is what it is. Consequently, the number of decks is also a bit up from December's low of 13 at 18, which is back in the normal range.
| Deck Name | Total # | Total % |
|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 | ||
| Grixis Shadow | 67 | 13.35 |
| Hammer Time | 60 | 11.95 |
| 4-Color Blink | 44 | 8.76 |
| Tier 2 | ||
| UR Murktide | 31 | 6.17 |
| Cascade Crashers | 29 | 5.78 |
| Burn | 27 | 5.38 |
| Jund Saga | 24 | 4.78 |
| Tier 3 | ||
| Amulet Titan | 16 | 3.19 |
| Belcher | 14 | 2.79 |
| 4-Color Control | 13 | 2.59 |
| UW Control | 12 | 2.39 |
| Mill | 11 | 2.19 |
| Yawgmoth | 11 | 2.19 |
| Mono-Green Tron | 10 | 1.99 |
| Ponza | 8 | 1.59 |
| Blue Living End | 8 | 1.59 |
| Dredge | 8 | 1.59 |
| 4-Color Bring to Light | 7 | 1.39 |
I hope my into was taken as the foreshadowing it was, because Hammer Time has finally been dethroned... by 2017 boogeyman Grixis Shadow. The more things change, the more they stay the same. However, don't rejoice too loudly yet. I don't know if this is a real metagame shift or a hiccup. Grixis has a lot of nostalgia going for it, and that may be the reason it has dethroned Hammer Time after seven months.
Adjustments
Not to say that Grixis didn't do it on merit, mind. Dress Down is extremely powerful against Hammer Time and many other decks. To say nothing of old standby Kolaghan's Command's effectiveness. Add in discard's power against slow strategies and the fast pressure of Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, and Grixis has game against the field.
Which may be why I'm seeing a lot of change within the other top decks. Some Hammer Time lists are dropping Sanctifier en-Vec from maindecks because it matches up so poorly against Dress Down. Instead, it's moving to more equipment like Nettlecyst and Kaldra Compleat, which means giving up Lurrus of the Dream-Den. Others are branching out into more colors. Red gives reach and Ragavan, black has discard and Dark Confidant, while blue gives Meddling Mage.
Meanwhile, 4-Color Omnath piles are continuing to evolve. The value blink version with Ephemerate was the most popular, but that was thanks to early-month dominance. By the end, the control version with extra counters and answers for Death's Shadow was the most played. I don't know if this will continue or was linked to a specific streamer's results. We'll all have to see.
Power Rankings
Tracking the metagame in terms of population is standard practice. But how do results actually factor in? Better decks should also have better results. In an effort to measure this, I use a power ranking system in addition to the prevalence list. By doing so, I measure the relative strengths of each deck within the metagame. The population method gives a deck that consistently just squeaks into Top 32 the same weight as one that Top 8’s. Using a power ranking rewards good results and moves the winningest decks to the top of the pile and better reflects its metagame potential.
Points are awarded based on the population of the event. Preliminaries award points for record (1 for 3 wins, 2 for 4 wins, 3 for 5) and Challenges are scored 3 points for Top 8, 2 for Top 16, 1 for Top 32. If I can find them, non-Wizards events will be awarded points the same as Challenges or Preliminaries are depending on what the event in question reports/behaves like. Super Qualifiers and similar higher-level events get an extra point and so do other events if they’re over 200 players, with a fifth point for going over 400 players. There were two 4 points events in October and no 5 pointers.
The Power Tiers
Unlike with population, the total points were down slightly in January, but would have easily beaten December if Wizards had posted the missing Challenge. There are 872 total points in January compared to December's 889. A single Challenge adds 56 points, for the record. There were a lot of very large Preliminaries in January which pushed up the points despite the number of events being down overall.
The average points were 11.94. Therefore 12 points makes Tier 3. The STDev was 21.95, which again is on the high end of normal. Thus add 22 to the starting point and Tier 3 runs to 34 points. Tier 2 starts with 35 points and runs to 57. Tier 1 requires at least 58 points. The number of decks making the power tiers was down from 18 to 16. Because Ponza and 4-Color Bring to Light just don't win events.
| Deck Name | Total # | Total % |
|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 | ||
| Grixis Shadow | 119 | 13.65 |
| Hammer Time | 99 | 11.35 |
| 4-Color Blink | 84 | 9.63 |
| Tier 2 | ||
| UR Murktide | 57 | 6.54 |
| Cascade Crashers | 48 | 5.50 |
| Burn | 44 | 5.05 |
| Jund Saga | 37 | 4.24 |
| Tier 3 | ||
| Belcher | 28 | 3.21 |
| UW Control | 27 | 3.10 |
| Amulet Titan | 24 | 2.75 |
| Mill | 24 | 2.75 |
| 4-Color Control | 22 | 2.52 |
| Mono-Green Tron | 20 | 2.29 |
| Yawgmoth | 16 | 1.83 |
| Blue Living End | 13 | 1.49 |
| Dredge | 13 | 1.49 |
It's unusual that the top tiers stay the same between population and power, but here we are. There's a lot of movement in Tier 3 and none in the other two. It makes sense as with fewer overall results the effect of a few good placings will be exaggerated. Belcher being at the top of Tier 3 is important because the deck is very well positioned, and I'm surprised it's not more popular online. In a metagame this fair and warped around beating fair decks, you'd think the extremely unfair deck would be the right metagame call. I don't know why that isn't happening.
Average Power Rankings
Finally, we come to the average power rankings. These are found by taking total points earned and dividing it by total decks, which measures points per deck. I use this to measure strength vs. popularity. Measuring deck strength is hard. There is no Wins-Above-Replacement metric for Magic, and I'm not certain that one could be credibly devised. The game is too complex, and even then, power is very contextual. Using the power rankings certainly helps and serves to show how justified a deck’s popularity is. However, more popular decks will still necessarily earn a lot of points. Which tracks, but also means that the top tier doesn't move much between population and power, and obscures whether they really earned their position.
This is where the averaging comes in. Decks that earn a lot of points because they get a lot of results will do worse than decks that win more events, indicating which deck actually performs better. A higher average indicates lots of high finishes, where low averages result from mediocre performances and high population. Lower-tier decks typically do very well here, likely due to their pilots being enthusiasts. So be careful about reading too much into the results. However, as a general rule decks which place above the baseline average are overperforming and vice versa. How far above or below that average determines how "justified" a decks position on the power tiers are. Decks well above baseline are therefore undervalued while decks well below baseline are very popular but aren't necessarily good.
The Real Story
When considering the average points, the key is looking at how far-off a deck is from the Baseline stat (the overall average of points/population). The closer a deck’s performance to the Baseline, the more likely it is to be performing close to its “true” potential. A deck that is exactly average would therefore perform exactly as well as expected. The further away the greater the deviation from average, the more a deck under- or over-performs. On the low end, the deck’s placing was mainly due to population rather than power, which suggests it’s overrated. A high-scoring deck is the opposite.
| Deck Name | Average Points | Power Tier |
|---|---|---|
| UW Control | 2.25 | 3 |
| Mill | 2.18 | 3 |
| Belcher | 2.00 | 3 |
| Mono-Green Tron | 2.00 | 3 |
| 4-Color Blink | 1.91 | 1 |
| UR Murktide | 1.84 | 2 |
| Grixis Shadow | 1.77 | 1 |
| Baseline | 1.74 | |
| 4-Color Control | 1.69 | 3 |
| Hammer Time | 1.65 | 1 |
| Cascade Crashers | 1.65 | 2 |
| Burn | 1.63 | 2 |
| Blue Living End | 1.62 | 3 |
| Dredge | 1.62 | 3 |
| Jund Saga | 1.54 | 2 |
| Amulet Titan | 1.50 | 3 |
| Yawgmoth | 1.45 | 3 |
Congratulations to 4-Color Blink, the best performing high tier deck and therefore the best deck of January 2022! It's interesting though instructive that Grixis Shadow was right at baseline, indicating it's performing as expected while Hammer is well below. Not that Hammer's average points have been anything special for a while now. I'd also expect a deck undergoing a redesign to underperform. It isn't fully optimized anymore, how is it going to dominate?
On that note, the baseline is quite high by the standards of the past few months. This is not an indication of a shift in the winds but rather the result of a quirk from all the singletons. For some reason, they did very well in a number of Challenges Super Qualifiers and having multiple 3+ point winners skewed the average higher.
Paper's Back
Normally, that would be the end of the metagame update. However, clearly that's not the case, and that's because I have a promise to keep. In the December update, I announced that paper would be returning to the data, and it has. You may rejoice!
Now cease rejoicing, because this will be underwhelming. There's not a lot of data to work with for paper. I can only work with results that get reported, and the only place that has said reports is MTGTop8.com. Over there, nearly every event is reported as just a Top 8, and sometimes even less data is given per event. The data is therefore extremely lacking in granularity or dynamism. Additionally, not every store that is running usable events is posting so my results reflect a few major stores more than any other. Specifically, Hareruya is responsible for about a third of the data. Keep that in mind as I report the data, and if anyone knows of other sources, please let me know. I'm mildly desperate.
The Paper Metagame
There were 293 total paper decks posted in January, which is roughly 3/5's of the online metagame. As such, the data is less robust and reliable. It is what is it is, and an analyst must work with the available data. Given that almost all the results were just Top 8 results (and many were less) and also didn't the number of players or final records, I'm not doing a power metagame. I don't have enough information to assign points, so even if I did one, it would not look sufficiently different to population justify the effort.
However, this data is significant for backing up a long-held belief. Despite having significantly fewer results than the online results, the paper metagame consists of 66 unique decks, just 7 less than online. It has always been assumed that paper is more diverse than online, and this data backs up the assumption. We'll see if further results corroborate these ones and prove the belief true. That said, only 15 decks made the paper Tiers. Again, lots of singletons in the data set.
| Deck Name | Total # | Total % |
|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 | ||
| Grixis Shadow | 28 | 9.56 |
| Burn | 21 | 7.17 |
| Hammer Time | 20 | 6.83 |
| 4-Color Blink | 20 | 6.83 |
| Tier 2 | ||
| Amulet Titan | 15 | 5.12 |
| UW Control | 15 | 5.12 |
| UR Murktide | 14 | 4.78 |
| Tier 3 | ||
| Cascade Crashers | 11 | 3.75 |
| Blue Living End | 10 | 3.41 |
| Jund Saga | 7 | 2.39 |
| Yawgmoth | 7 | 2.39 |
| Mono-Green Tron | 6 | 2.05 |
| Eldrazi Tron | 6 | 2.05 |
| Ponza | 5 | 1.71 |
| Humans | 5 | 1.71 |
Of course, for all that, Paper Tier 1 looks extremely similar to Online Tier 1. Burn being more popular in paper was a huge surprise. The assumption has always been it's overrepresented online, but that appears to be untrue. In fact, the overall composition of these tiers is quite similar to online's tiers. I have no idea if this is normal or not.
Composite Metagame
At would logically follow to combine the two lists into one. It is what we did in the old days. However, that's not going to work. The math the old system used doesn't work without major paper events. Maybe when Wizards gets Organized Play back together that will change but for now, I can't use it. I can't just combine the two because the online results vastly outweigh paper and will obscure the "true" result. So for now, I'm just going to report their average Tier. This reflects the differences between paper and online play sufficiently well to demonstrate the relative power of decks and the differences between paper and online.
| Deck Name | Online Population Tier | Paper Population Tier | Aggregate Tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 | |||
| Grixis Shadow | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Hammer Time | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| 4-Color Blink | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Burn | 2 | 1 | 1.5 |
| Tier 2 | |||
| UR Murktide | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| Cascade Crashers | 2 | 3 | 2.5 |
| Jund Saga | 2 | 3 | 2.5 |
| Amulet Titan | 3 | 2 | 2.5 |
| UW Control | 3 | 2 | 2.5 |
| Tier 3 | |||
| Yawgmoth | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| Mono-Green Tron | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| Ponza | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| Blue Living End | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| Belcher | 3 | N/A | 3.5 |
| 4-Color Control | 3 | N/A | 3.5 |
| Mill | 3 | N/A | 3.5 |
| Dredge | 3 | N/A | 3.5 |
| 4-Color Bring to Light | 3 | N/A | 3.5 |
| Eldrazi Tron | N/A | 3 | 3.5 |
| Humans | N/A | 3 | 3.5 |
Unsurprisingly, the best decks from online are still solidly Tier 1 in aggregate. Burn moves up by a half tier, reflecting that it's #2 overall in paper but Tier 2 online. Those decks that didn't show up on one list but did the other get an N/A, which is treated like a 4 for math purposes.
Just the Beginning
I've got a lot of bugs to work out with the paper results. I didn't really know what I'd have, and so failed to make solid plans prior to gathering the data. If anyone has advice, I'm all ears, but until then, this is the metagame we faced in January. And may still be facing next time. We have to wait and see.
hoping that this is the last metagame update whose data comes entirely from MTGO. I wanted to keep my data consistent during 2021 and stuck to just MTGO data despite paper kinda coming back in March. In truth, even if I had included the paper results, it wouldn't have changed anything until recently. There haven't been many paper events over the past year, but the number has been increasing, so I'm going to start tracking those too. And hoping that there are enough to balance the MTGO data.
The average is my estimate for how many results a given deck “should” produce on MTGO. Being a tiered deck requires being better than “good enough;” in December the average population was 8.95 setting the Tier 3 cutoff at 9 decks. This is the highest the cutoff has been in months and is a mark we haven't hit since 
distinct decks and homogonizes the format. I hoped that something would happen in December to stall or reverse this trend, but as the data shows, it didn't happen. Which was the concern hanging over my mind when I was making the 
that consistently just squeaks into Top 32 the same weight as one that Top 8’s. Using a power ranking rewards good results and moves the winningest decks to the top of the pile and better reflects its metagame potential.
strength vs. popularity. Measuring deck strength is hard. There is no 
I've never had the baseline be this low before. 1.50 is extremely low and really highlights just how poorly positioned Amulet Titan was to be the only deck below the baseline. However, given again how high the STdev's were thanks to the huge number of singletons versus the Big Three, it does make sense. It's just unfortunate. In any case, here's your headline: as the Tier 1 deck with the highest average points, Grixis Death's Shadow was the top deck of December 2021!
There's no way to know exactly what, if anything, will get banned in 2022. Where once it was a simple case of violating the 
I covered the broad issues with all the bannable cards 
As I mentioned 
These two are purely speculative, and as I'll be detailing below, require the right new cards to spell trouble. But the possibility is foreseeable, so I'm including them. I've gone into detail on Urza 
Neither card is actually dangerous in Modern right now. Urza 
Wizards will need to make a mistake for either card to become remotely banworthy. Design has taken a pounding over the past several years and appears to have learned, judging by the past year's Standard. However, anything is possible when designing around artifacts.
First off, let me be unequivocal: The State of Modern is good. I addressed this back 
Diversity: If number of distinct decks is the only measurement, then I don't think it's possible for Modern to be more diverse. The average number of decks I record per month is ~70, with an average of ~17 making the tier lists. While that's great, diversity isn't just the number of decks, but also the variety of strategies. And Modern has also done quite well there. Over the course of the year there have many different midrange, control, aggro, and tempo decks. Modern has consistently lacked combo decks, particularly unfair combo. Fair combos like Heliod Company, 4-Color Indomitable Creativity, and Living End have had their moments, but all fell off. Modern could use more consistency from the fair combo and unfair combos like Ad Nauseam to truly round out the metagame.
There's also a lot to like qualitatively. Remember how players complained for years that Modern was just ships passing in the night, was far too linear and/or combo driven, or just lacked interaction? That is decidedly not the case 
Now, this reality is not without detractors. The loudest grumbling is that it required a glut of free spells to happen. Players wanted interaction and fairness to happen, but not like this, or in this way. What I get from that is that they wanted 
expensive hobby. Complaining about the price of entry may be valid, but that's how it is for every format these day. The price of success is high demand for product and that will drive up prices. This is the reality for Magic players now.
That said, I do see storm clouds on the horizon. The storm isn't guaranteed to make landfall, and it could even dissipate entirely. But I can definitely envision this metagame swerving south into unhealthy territory. And worse, it could do so without help from new cards. There's always a risk that a new card will break everything, and I can't predict that happening. What I can do is look at the current trends and see if there's anything heading in dangerous directions or that may cause problems. And I'm seeing three pressure points in the data which make me very worried.
The problem is that Lurrus is crowding out a lot of cards. Permanents costing three-plus mana aren't seeing play in decks where they used to, and that's entirely down to Lurrus. Look at 
The problem I have is that many of those arguments were made in favor of Splinter Twin and Deathrite Shaman, both banned cards. The problem is that just like Shaman, unanswered Ragavan generates in insurmountable mana advantage. 
but it's simple on MTGO. I do encourage any Wizards employees reading this to advocate for another Gauntlet and to push for similar events.
However, the 
There was a time that discussing unbans was simple. When Wizards created Modern a lot of cards were 
doesn't think that any cards are sufficiently fine now to take the risk. Once bitten, twice shy, as the saying goes; Wizards really doesn't want a repeat. When Stoneforge Mystic was 
And now to address the big question hanging over everything. Given Wizards' inclinations, Modern's reality, and the cards actually on the 
As such, it's important to remember that every unban is a risk vs. reward question. If the risk of overpowering a current deck is higher than the rewards of adding the card, the unban shouldn't occur. However, as Grave-Troll showed, sometimes it's not the current Modern that's the risk but the future. Sword of the Meek did nothing in Modern until Urza, Lord High Artificer was printed. Wizards knows what's actually coming down the pipe and there may well be cards in the near future which might bust a card that seems innocuous. Therefore, we need to be careful about what cards we consider.
Blazing Shoal was 
pandemic Mythic had space for around 70, but they took away all the tables during lockdown and don't want to overcrowd the store now. Which again, makes perfect sense. We hit the cap, but only 47 actually showed up. I'm not sure why, but it might be a case of players double-booking stores to ensure they get a space. I say this because most of the players actually there were people I'd never seen before, not at Mythic Games nor pre-pandemic. I'm guessing that a general changing of the guard is happening. On that note, Wizards provided Arbor Elf promos for each store, but for some reason only sent Mythic 40. So to make up the deficit they handed out FNM foil promo packs because Mythic basically swims in the things. I got one of the packs and it more than paid for my entry. Thank you, Commander players and your love of foil mythics.
I don't know how the Top 8 shook out. Or who exactly made it. I didn't stick around to find out. However, thanks to the Companion app, I do know who the best-placed player was, and I know they were on Belcher. Well done to them! And given what I said above, it isn't surprising. The room was primed for exactly this to happen. The metagame was extremely 
it does become necessary, most decks just don't have much to fight combo. Even Jund Saga has been cutting targeted discard recently, and lacks Liliana of the Veil to maintain pressure on combo hands.
lone outlier last time but this time both UR Murktide and Hammer Time are being excluded. Every month I check for outliers and am sometimes surprised when I don't have any. I really thought Hammer Time and Murktide were outliers 
And there's the main reason that Hammer Time and UR Murktide shouldn't be considered Tier 0: they're both under the baseline stat. Murktide is just below, which means it's effectively tied and thus performing in accordance with what I'd expect from a popular deck. Hammer Time slightly underperformed. That's a sign that Hammer is very popular online, but also very beatable. More than it's given credit for. Meanwhile, the best performing high-tier deck and thus the deck of November is UW Control. Nobody tell 
I realize that everyone has complained about this already, but it's critical to keep up the pressure. There was no official coverage of MTG Las Vegas. At all. The closest thing was twitter updates from 
Now, I don't entirely blame ChannelFireball for the lack of coverage. Commentators everywhere were complaining that lack of streaming or video coverage is unacceptable in 2021. And I understand where that's coming from given how omnipresent cameras and YouTube are today. However, I know from friends in filmmaking that professional setups are ruinously expensive. The equipment to pull off the coverage Wizards used for Grand Prix and Pro Tours cost thousands to purchase, the bandwidth isn't free, and there's also paying the broadcasters. But the silent killer is that all of that also needs to be insured. No matter how thoroughly everything is secured after every shoot, how organized the crew is, how vigilant the producers are, or aggressively threatened the interns are, equipment disappears every time a film crew films. And what doesn't disappear eventually breaks. Filming just isn't profitable.
Titan is technically off-meta, though it put the most decks into Top 8. Only Jund Saga and 4-Color Control are expected meta decks. It is interesting that Scales was able to Top 8 despite all the splash damage from Hammer Time sideboarding.
Paper vs. Digital
I idly speculate that someone's done that already because grad students have paper quotas to meet. In any case, I have neither the knowledge nor inclination to write an article detailing all the math around deck size. Nor is it strictly necessary.
The first dedicated objection to the limit came from the 
Having a companion means having a specific card 
board and there really isn't a way to double up on them to improve the math. I've watched a lot of Yorion Cascade players at FNM and MTGO lose helplessly as they fail to draw the right spells at the right time and just die.
The first one is easily the most straightforward. Eruth, Tormented Prophet turns every draw into Harnfel, Horn of Bounty. Which is already a Modern-legal card, but Eruth costs less mana, and that does make a huge difference. Whether that's made up for by Eruth being a more vulnerable creature is hard to say. The bigger benefit to Eruth is that there's no need to get the ball rolling with a card to discard; every draw exiles two cards. Harnfel is an integral piece of 
The question: why bother? Eruth's card advantage doesn't actually put cards into your hand for later. It's use it or lose it, and that really limits her home to combo. Storm isn't really viable anymore and even if it was, why would it bother with Eruth over Expressive Iteration? In fact, why would any deck bother with Eruth over Iteration? And that's ultimately the problem. Eruth has the potential to just snowball out of control in a single turn, but what is she building towards and how is that better than existing options? She feels like a card that could eventually find a home that doesn't yet exist.
Headless Rider is meant to be to Zombies what Xathrid Necromancer was to Humans. The problem is that the Rider is even less necessary in Zombies than Necromancer has been for Humans for years. Gravecrawler, Geralf's Messenger, Relentless Dead, Diregraf Colossus, the list goes on of Zombies that let Zombies shrug off mass removal. Rider does nothing new and isn't needed.
Still, Rider does have combo applications. Zombies often includes sacrifice combos, and Rider doubles the fodder for said triggers. Why Zombies needs to double its fodder isn't clear, but this could push the deck in a more directly combo direction. Which might help the deck actually see play because it has never had much traction in Modern. No matter how good the beaters have been, without disruption, it just can't keep up. Perhaps going more for sacrifice combos is what is needed and if so then Rider is a perfect Zombies card.
Wizards clearly intended for this Drake to be enchanted. However, it has flying instead of hexproof, so there's no chance of it being a big Bogles payoff. Kor Spiritdancer is better in that context. However, the potential for this card to draw your entire deck certainly exists. The problem is that it won't be easy. Given the name, the obvious pairing to make Stormchaser Drake absurd would be the storm mechanic. The problem is that there 
There is the option to just target Drake with lots of spells like Kiln Fiend-style 
Just like with Headless Rider, Torens, Fist of the Angels has the potential to create utterly absurd boards. Unlike the Rider, Torens is a value play. Humans has been playing Adeline, Resplendent Cathar, and Torens can make far more tokens in a turn. However, I really don't think that such a fair use is Torens' destiny. Rather, Torens combos with Memnite and Ornithopter to just flood the board with dorks. I'm not sure how such a turn would be set up, but it wouldn't be unheard of for some 
Vow has a cycle of cards that exile a graveyard card on entering the battlefield and then get some value from the card type. And for the most part they're mediocre at best. Yes, even Cemetery Gatekeeper. It's no Eidolon of the Great Revel; it's just too easy to play around. Remember how Harsh Mentor worked out?
of setup, especially since nothing like Sensei's Diving Top is legal. But there's a chance for a lot of value.
given Izzet being quite proactive and the dig being a great way to set up a continuing value chain. Any Izzet deck looking for a dig spell would be well served.
It's a decent though not exceptional body that fits into white-based creature decks and fills a hole in many of them. Card draw has been getting increasingly easy to get and is necessary, after all. Thus, she's a very solid addition. But that's not enough. Despite being gracious to others, Welcoming Vampire doesn't do anything alone, and her stats aren't exceptional. The ability doesn't trigger on itself, only others, and that's a huge strike against playability. It also doesn't disrupt the opponent or have tribal synergy with anything. The deck that wants Welcoming Vampire is a grindy Wx Valuetown style deck, and that hasn't been viable in Modern in years. Thought it would be very strong in such a deck.
and why they won't see play, is Graf Reaver. A 3/3 for two with a drawback 
Any deck that untaps with Hullbreaker Horror, instants in hand, and a way to get more will win the game. Simply put, no relevant spell is going to resolve, and the board will soon be clear for good. Uncounterability doesn't impact this reality. The catch is that since Horror costs seven, it will be quite hard to meet those conditions the turn it comes down. Solitude being the most played removal for big creatures, Force of Negation is no help. UWx can do it, but why should they bother when what they're doing now is so successful?
Wilderness Reclamation decks, on the other hand, often hit the needed mana early and then have plenty to spend protecting Horror and riding it to victory. It would be quite trivial for such a deck to float the needed mana, untap on end step, and then cast and protect Horror. However, Reclamation is not a good Modern deck. When everything comes together, it's very powerful right now, but the problem is actually getting everything to come together. The whole deck is built around resolving a four-mana enchantment and keeping it in play until end step. That's not easy as-is, and Horror does nothing to help. So I don't see it working out.
However, as Modern has evolved, the weaknesses of Tokens have become too exploitable, and the 
But then something weird happened. Towards the end of the month, UW began falling off, and Hammer Time was able to pull away. Given UW's performance up until that point it didn't make much sense. This was coupled with a resurgence of UR Thresh, but I think that UW's drop off led to Thresh's comeback, not resulted from it. I've been looking for some explanation to why this happened on MTGO and I got nothing. It may be that pilots got bored or there was a subtle sideboard tweak that changed everything.
The highest placing high tier deck is 
that informed decision is only as good as the information that informs the decision. Information that is somehow lacking is very unlikely to produce a good final decision. That doesn't mean that poor information is useless or if data is thin guessing will produce better results. It does mean the less there is to go on, the more likely it is that an unknown variable will ruin everything. Less complete data provides a worse basis for decision-making than more complete data. And sometimes thin information is all that's available. In those cases it's better to use the data than not. However, it's critical to acknowledge the weakness and plan accordingly.
metagame does inform paper's metagame. As I've said, the MTGO data is the only data anyone has to work with. Thus it's everyone's starting point. Everything else is based on how they react to that metagame. If they do at all.
Level 0: What Do I Have? This is the most basic level where you're only thinking in terms of what you actually observe. In other words, what do you know based on the things you can control?
Consequently, you drew conclusions based on incorrect assumptions and ended up playing a game that only existed in your own head. As a result, you're highly likely to play around cards that aren't even in the opponent's deck. And they didn't have to do anything; you just out-thought yourself. Therein lies the great danger in leveled thinking.
wins the game based on the read we have on our opponent. Only to fail when that read was wrong. And often lose because the flashy play required giving up a board state that was otherwise winning. We've all leveled ourselves because at some point we weren't as smart as we thought. I'm not excluded.
The casuals are likely to be thinking about their deck selection on Level 0, which is what decks they actually have. The competitive players will be operating on at least Level 1, which is the known metagame. In other words, the more competitive players will be aware of the metagame data and making decisions from it. Whether they'll be operating on Level 2 or higher is impossible to say.
Modern has always been about maximum efficiency. It's a competitive Constructed Magic format. They're all like that. It's just a matter of degree. Standard can never hope to match Vintage's mana efficiency and velocity, but it can be as efficient as its cardpool allows. Modern was no exception, but it wasn't until recently that velocity was really possible. Ponder and Preordain were banned early on and Wizards just didn't print good one-mana cantrips. Thus, Modern players had to focus more on individual card impact than quantity of spells played to win the game. The cardpool also meant that more power was tied up in higher mana costs. Storm was always partially an exception (played more cantrips than anyone else, relied on four mana cards), but for the most part Modern was defined by
The first good non-Storm deck to bring the Legacy-style of gameplay to Modern was Death's Shadow. Both 
This rewriting of Modern's rules was hard to see because it only applied to one deck at a time. Whenever Phoenix or Prowess was good, Shadow wasn't, and vice versa. 2020's Companion Spring changed that. Having an extra card in hand was 
Of course, this is just one part of the metagame. There's a lot more going on throughout Modern than just Lurrus vs Expressive Iteration. However, this conflict is definitely at the forefront of most player's thinking and discussions. UW Control is performing very well on the basis of it being reworked to better deal with the Lurrus and Iteration decks. Burn is also making a resurgence thanks to the drop-off in rival Prowess decks driven by MH2 changes and the meta's evolution. It is telling that the latter still sometimes runs Lurrus even though Bauble is long gone.
their pet deck is good... no matter how unrealistically drastic the measures would need to be. (5-Color Gifts Reanimator Control is, always has been, and always will be bad <redacted>. Let. It. Go!) Naturally, these are personal opinions. We'll require something more concrete to go on.
decks are possible, then the 5-deck metagame would be fairly narrow. There's no way to definitively say how many decks are possible in a format like Modern (and may not even be possible for Standard). Fortunately, another reasonable way to measure diversity is whether there are a large number of decks with distinctive gameplay.
strategies rise to answer existing decks, succeed, and are in turn challenged by new decks. Static formats get boring quickly, since there's no answer to the best decks, and things settle around the best established strategy and its counters.
excruciatingly boring to another (now looking at you, Lantern Control). Consequently, the most important consideration is not one that can really be argued over and is even harder to quantify and critique. Consequently, every metagame has its detractors and simply saying that not every player enjoys the format the same is unhelpfully meaningless. Because no duh, they don't!
By which said players almost always mean that Modern feels more like Legacy now. And while I don't necessarily agree, I understand the sentiment. Legacy has always been the format of tempo and card selection. Brainstorm, Ponder, and Preordain are all legal, and consequently 
By contrast, for a long time none of that was possible in Modern. Raw card advantage was more expensive and cantrips were few and far between, so decks had to be more redundant. Modern decks weren't going to see too many cards each game, and so they had to maximize the impact of each individual card. It's why 
aforementioned players, being who they are, routinely do well with decks that nobody else can. In fact, I remember it being a joke in the Pro community that only Wafo-Tapa can win with Wafo-Tapa decks. However, this latest iteration is a deck that doesn't require complete mastery to run well while simultaneously being very well positioned.
bash in any amount of damage. Prowess needs its creatures to stick around, and so the current format is very unwelcoming.
relative strengths of each deck within the metagame. The population method gives a decks that consistently just squeaks into Top 32 the same weight as one that Top 8’s. Using a power ranking rewards good results and moves the winningest decks to the top of the pile and better reflects its metagame potential.
Expanding into white allows the deck to run everyone's favorite multipurpose removal spell in Prismatic Ending, and I actually think that's a greater argument for going Jeskai than even Faithful Mending. The old decks often struggled against non-creature, non-planeswalker decks and now they have a multipurpose answer to everything. Hole closed.
up for a big swing turn two. Consider binning Phoenix into Manamorphose and Mending (pitching two Phoenix's) and Gut Shot is the main line for a big swing turn, and that's improbable.
spells into one big payoff, and afterward they didn't really do anything. Now there's a reason to keep the deck churning so Demilich can keep building its card advantage wave.
At the same time, Phoenix is also running Ending, harkening back to a different banned deck. Remember Krark-Clan Ironworks? The problem with that deck 
This logic extends to the sideboard as well. White has always had the best sideboard cards and Phoenix can finally avail itself rather than just being victimized. I imagine a lot of players focus in on the Path to Exiles against creature decks, but the bigger addition is Wear // Tear. This is by far the bigger pickup simply because it's one of the best sideboard answers around. No other piece of artifact and enchantment removal can remove two permanents for three mana, and more importantly, fuse lets it get around Chalice of the Void. This is where I think there's a lot more value to be derived than what Spike managed, and would be interested to see more development of the sideboard.
sideboard cards where Sanctifier en-Vec is the most common form of graveyard hate thanks to it's phenomenal positioning against UR Thresh. Phoenix can answer Sanctifier, but it also relies more on blue and white cards than red ones to fuel its engine, dodging most of the hate.
need them. Thing in the Ice was the primary backup threat and worked perfectly well under Rest in Peace. Similarly, Crackling Drake's power was unaffected and provided a solid backup to Thing. While the other option, Bedlam Reveler, doesn't strictly need a graveyard to function, paying full price for that card is a losing proposition.
And that's not even discussing the fact that the big strength I mentioned is also a weakness. By being slower, Phoenix is able to snowball and overwhelm the fair decks and thus win in a relatively fair metagame. However, it can't effectively race anything anymore unless it has an abnormally good hand. Phoenix's biggest strength before was that its clock kept pace with the best combo and aggro decks while being too fast for control to contain. Now it has to win the hard way, and that is a much bigger problem. Creatures have gotten bigger and Thassa's Oracle gives combo a sneaky way to win. The latter is not currently much of a problem, but a slower value deck having to contend with 8 power of rhino on turn 3 certainly is.
Consequently, I've played players that haven't updated their decks since 2019. And they're doing well with them. This would not happen online; there's too much incentive and pressure to constantly adapt. Therefore, I'll argue that while the online metagame is very clearly bending knee to Dragon's Rage Channeler and Lurrus of the Dream-Den, Modern is much broader than it appears and there is considerable space for older decks to survive and even thrive. It simply requires having the mastery of the deck to correctly pilot. And/or the stubbornness/poverty to refuse to change with the times.
Thing is, I can't explain why it's doing relatively well for me. Spellstutter Spite is quite mediocre outside of the Cascade and Thresh matchups. However, when I replaced it with Snapcaster Mage to improve my rates against everything else (especially important when Cascade went on a downswing), my actual results cratered. I haven't been hitting a significantly different metagame, nor did the cascade decks come roaring back. It just has consistently worked better to have the more narrow card even in matchups where Sprite is bad. And I don't know why.
suddenly ruined the deck. And this despite T3feri being actively bad in the metagame I was facing. It's like the deck was as it wanted to be and was rejecting any changes. It's just baffling.
the rest of the game. And it's working. Hammertime, UR Thresh, Cascade Crashers, and Elementals have been 
Specifically, Cathar Commando and Outland Liberator fill well-known holes for several decks and will be adopted by at least some sideboards. See, the biggest hole in Humans has always been its weakness against Torpor Orb. The deck is built around creatures with enters-the-battlefield triggers, and Champion of the Parish is unplayably bad under the Orb. This weakness is compounded by Humans lacking Qasali Pridemage in-tribe. Humans can go outside the tribe for some answers, but Pridemage's cost was prohibitive due to its creature types. All the other options were similarly answered by Orb. Humans finally has two options to defeat the Orb or any other prison piece it needs to.
Liberator's front face is worse than Commando's mainly because flash is so powerful (an extra point of power never hurts, though). However, the potential of flipping Liberator into Frenzied Trapbreaker makes up for that weakness to the point that I'd expect Humans to adopt Liberator over Commando. True, Trapbreaker doesn't synergize with Humans, but it doesn't need to itself. Liberator has that covered and any +1/+1 counters will carry over when flipped. It's one thing to Pridemage 
away a threat; it's another to be able to swing into Urza's Saga constructs with confidence. Also worth noting: Saga itself is a target. Liberator even makes Gavony Dawnguard more playable by getting Day/Night tracking started.
The next two are far more speculative, but I can definitely see their niche. Typically, control mirrors devolve into staring competitions followed by a frenzy of activity as one deck goes for it. Malevolent Hermit offers a pretty solid way to reposition and possibly steal games 2 and 3. A 2/1 beater isn't anything special, but Hermit's front face does provide a better Spell Pierce which stays active under Teferi, Time Raveler. And also can't be countered by Force of Negation. That's a pretty great way to pressure opponents/planeswalkers and keep up the shields.
However, it's the back side that can run away with games. Having a creature that can return from the graveyard is solid as it's card advantage. A flying creature that moots opposing counterspells is better. The only problem with Benevolent Geist is actually getting it into play. Casting it is no different than going for Teferi, but Geist can only be cast from the graveyard. This means that Hermit has to be cashed in first, which is no bad thing, or killed. The problem with the later option: most control removal exiles. However, that does leave the door open for looting effects if rushing to Geist is a thing. In either case, control players should be aware of the Hermit's power.
This has led a lot of players to point to Curse as the answer to Crashing Footfalls and Living End. And they're not wrong; delaying either deck's main gameplan until turn 5 is quite strong. However, the catch is that both decks have ways to answer the enchantment and still go off turn 3, with Brazen Borrower being the most common. This does not disqualify Curse as a sideboard card, but it does mean that it needs support to be effective. I'd argue that since Curse only delays the named card, it's not a general answer, but a taxing card, and that would limit play to tempo and aggro decks that actually put the delay to good use.
The final card is tricky to evaluate. It has one clear home, but that home is already occupied. Sunset Revelry is a cheaper Timely Reinforcements with a bonus. For one less mana it makes one less token and gains two less life. There's also a third clause that's unlikely to be relevant for a control deck against Burn, which is where Timely sees play. Being cheaper is usually the best way to see play and that's led to speculation that Revelry has made Timely obsolete. I'd be more cautious.
However, that cantrip potential might open up more space for Revelry. Timely never sees play outside of control vs aggro, but I could see Revelry being played by aggro against aggro. Being on the draw is quite hard for any creature deck, and getting on the back foot early can be fatal. Revelry can help a stalling aggro deck get back in against a better board. 4 life and 2 humans isn't going to do that, but those things plus a cantrip might. The latter is the most important part since it digs for more threats and may actually be valuable against midrange for that reason. That Tarmogoyf will hold off the humans perfectly fine, but I'm getting another chance to hit a real threat and you'll have to keep the 'Goyf back a turn or two. I'll certainly be testing it.
Similarly, Memory Deluge is a good card that I don't think is good enough. Picking the best two cards from the top four is decent and such digging and selection is especially important for control and combo decks. Four mana is a steep enough price that I think Deluge would be limited to control. The problem is that for less colored mana, Fact or Fiction digs five cards deep. Anyone who's played with or against Fact knows that the caster always gets what they want, so that's not a knock compared to Deluge. The big attraction is the flashback which makes Deluge Dig Through Time with minor discount and no delve. Of course, paying full price for Dig limits it to the late game, and considering that Fact isn't really seeing play, I don't think Deluge has a chance.
I want to acknowledge Willow Geist as a great build-around card. It can grow impressively large alongside Wrenn and Six, Lurrus of the Dream-Den, and to a lesser extent Murktide Regent. However, I have no idea if that's something viable in practice or what such a deck might look like, so I'm leaving Geist to Jordan if he wants it.
Meanwhile, there are a couple more enablers being suggested for graveyard decks. Phoenix primarily, again. Otherworldly Gaze is the main one, as filtering the top three cards and filling the graveyard on turn one is a decent way to set up Phoenix. However, 
Cathartic Pyre also sees 
Finally, there are two cards that would be very playable in a deck that does not and maybe cannot exist in Modern. The zombie tokens in IMH have decayed, which makes the fairly useless except as bad Shocks. As a trade-off, they can be made more efficiently than normal, reusable Zombies. Maro confirmed that Wizards wants them either to be 
In that specific circumstance, Jadar, Ghoulcaller of Nephalia becomes a keystone card. Making a decayed zombie every end step is great when said Zombie is going to be fed to something every turn. In such a deck it would be trivial to trigger Jadar every endstep. He's as fragile as they come, but that also makes him something to feed to the engine and replace. However, the real standout in that deck would be Startle. Sacrifice engine decks tend to be a bit slow and vulnerable to aggro. Startle buys time and makes more fodder for the engine without costing a card. It's priced right for Modern, but again, without a hungry sacrifice engine the effect is too weak. If one exists, then we're talking.
So as I was saying, Wizards is printing more graveyard enablers in IMH, and consequently there will be an upswing in graveyard decks soon. And they won't be in the expected colors, so stop relying on Sanctifier en-Vec. Specifically, it's a new Faithless Looting. Which is multicolor, an instant, and has lifegain tacked on so it can be white. Meaning that it's actually not very much like Looting at all beyond sharing some text. But it does explain why Careful Study wasn't in MH2, disappointing plenty of Phoenix hopefuls. And s
decks that don't normally get card velocity. A two mana UW velocity card is competing with far more than Looting did, which will limit playability.
reanimation may be their chance to win. Mending offers the deck a way to burn through the air and set up for another attempt. However, it doesn't make the deck faster. The lifegain makes being slow less problematic against aggro decks, but I don't know if that's enough.
And now for something completely different. Glimpse of Nature has been banned since 
other creature combo deck, but it might be something to build around with flash and Collected Company. It also has flashback, but that costs enough that it's a late-game desperation move. Rite also triggers off enchantments, only lightly broadening the scope of which decks can play it. Enchantress already draws all the cards, it doesn't need a temporary boost. So, again, what's the big deal? Simple. Rite is white rather than blue.
gameplans. And I'm also not certain that Storm- or Elves-style combo is viable in Modern, and if it is, that it's better than existing Company decks.
Speaking of Humans, there are a number of Humans cards with potential in IMH. Which makes sense. This is the plane that spawned Champion of the Parish, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, and Thalia's Lieutenant, after all. The catch is that, so far, most have catches to their playability. The biggest problem is that almost all are three mana or more. They're very good three mana cards, but cost is a huge factor in playability.
quite good and I know from experience that it will be easy to make live. The problem is that I doubt it will ever save Sentinel from removal. Smart players will just kill the other creatures first. Or sweep the board. It would be very good at breaking board stalls, but those are very rare. In other words, it's a good card for a different metagame.
Chaplain of Alms is another one that might be playable in the right metagame and the right deck. A 1/1 with first strike and ward 1 isn't much, but disturb makes me want to get down with that sickness. Getting a dead creature back transformed is decent value, and protecting every creature with ward 1 is pretty good. It's very fragile and costly, but in a very grindy meta it might work out.
catch is that Dawnguard doesn't trigger on entry. Instead, the trigger is tied to the Day/Night werewolf mechanic and only triggers when night becomes day or day becomes night. Which means that Dawnguard can trigger multiple times, but unless it was already night when she entered, it will be down the line.
However, it's not too far from possible. There are a number of new Day/Nightbound werewolves that would get the ball rolling for Dawnguard. Tovolar, Dire Overlord is the most playable creature so far, but it is quite early. And there are a few non-creatures that reference day and night, so there may be enough cards to get the ball rolling for Dawnguard. In an actual werewolf deck she'd be quite strong, but such a deck is likely a bad Domain Zoo and more for Standard than Modern.
The average is my estimate for how many results a given deck “should” produce on MTGO. Being a tiered deck requires being better than “good enough;” in July the average population was 6.44, meaning a deck needed 7 results to beat the average and make Tier 3. This means that the cutoff is the same as 
But unlike June, August's total decks were more like 
squeaked over the line to Tier 2. Creativity has distinguished itself from predecessor Lorehold Turns by keeping the strategy of Indomitable Creativity into big creature but ditched the turns package to just win with Emrakul, the Aeons Torn and sometimes Iona, Shield of Emeria or other big finisher. Which seems like a huge upgrade to me.
BG Yawgmoth beatdown/combo was the best average deck. This is probably because of it just barely making the population Tier 3. A lot of good results not getting spread around much does that. However, I think Cascade Crashers must be declared August's Best Deck. It outperformed not only the baseline but other Tier 1 decks by quite a bit. The winner of both the Population and Power standings, Hammer Time, is pretty average here, though the baseline is really low thanks to all the singletons that only earned 1 point. And Grixis Channeler still managed to fall way under the baseline. A clear underperformer.
Phoenix decks. 
What Went Wrong
And on that front I have good news. According to MTGGoldfish, the only commonly played MH2 card that we didn't talk about at all is Foundation Breaker. It turns out that Living End really likes having an evoke Naturalize to fight through hate cards. And I think we missed it thanks to fatigue. Every time there've been cycling creatures or sacrifice effect creatures we've said something to the effect of "it may find a home in Living End." And we're often right. However, having done this for so many years, it just slipped our minds. We'd said it so often that it started losing meaning to us and we overlooked a key card in a popular deck.
gushed too early. Tide Shaper was spoiled after I wrote that article and did what Merfolk needed much better. There was no way I could have seen that coming and nothing that made me expect that Dockhand would be superseded. And I did walk my assessment back a 
I'm also not going to compare the constructed formats to limited. It really isn't a fair comparison. In my experience, most competitive players will say their favorite format is booster draft, with a caveat. In said experience, players tend to extoll booster draft the concept as the most skill-intensive format and also most fun. Winning requires format knowledge, deck building skill, play skill, and luck more than other formats because you're building your deck as you go. However, the more this general opinion is investigated, the more exceptions, exclusions, and complications arise. Certain sets are more popular to draft than others. Draft participation also swings wildly from introduction to rotation. Thus, the exact timing of a study will wildly affect the data on limited, and it makes sense to cut it.
This study is limited to data from MTGO. Sadly, there aren't enough paper results to draw any real conclusions. The few events that are out there don't really compare well to each other and they're not distributed evenly. Pre-pandemic, this whole project would have been easy since there were plenty of events of all levels in all formats. Plus, these events usually published their attendance numbers so comparing that would have fairly definitively answered the question. That isn't possible now.
The various social media pages that kept track of weekly events have not been updated, and a number of stores went bust while others opened during the pandemic. Finding all the stores doing in-person events and asking them about attendance is far more work than I'm able and willing to do on my own. (With the right funding, on the other hand....)
With Vintage, it was purely a judgement call. Vintage has accessibility issues which keep newer players out. The cost of Vintage cards is so high that it really can't be played in paper. Thus, Vintage players have mostly moved online. However, the lack of overlap between Vintage decks other formats means that it's hard to transition to Vintage naturally. There's more overlap between Standard and Modern cards than Legacy and Vintage, for example. It's an enthusiast's format, and I was told by several sources that the community is quite static. While it'd be a reasonable comparison point for the other, more variable formats to compare to the old-timer, I decided that the extra effort wasn't worthwhile just to learn that Vintage is a fairly insular and stable group compared to other formats.
Preliminaries fired each week. The sample included each complete week in July and the first week of August. I'll then compare the average Preliminaries per week to the theoretical max to indicate the most popular Preliminary format.
That's another point in Modern's column. It not only had the highest average in absolute terms with 4.8, but the highest percentage. Both Modern and Pioneer had 8 Preliminaries scheduled, so 4.8/8=60% of Modern Preliminaries fired versus 1.8/8=22.5% for Pioneer. Legacy records 2.8/6=46.7% for a strong second place.
Modern has the largest Challenges, followed by Legacy. Pauper has the least, with 150 points separating it from Modern. It's clearly not a highly played format right now. Though I'd actually argue Pauper is actually the best value for entry. It only took 6 points to make Top 32 of several of these events, which is two match wins. That's not a very big hill to climb to get prizes. I thought Legacy would be higher since the Legacy crowd tend to be vocal, but the stats don't lie, it's just above Pioneer and well below Modern.
from 
strength vs. popularity. Measuring deck strength is hard. There is no 
As previously mentioned, Heliod Company did perform very often. But when it does, it does very well and took the top slot, indicated that it was quite underplayed in July. Thresh and Hammer Time appearing in the middle of the pack is actually fairly worrying for them, as it again suggests that they were more popular than actually good. However, they're enough above baseline to say that their population is justified.
therefore constitute overplaying. A tempo deck using Remand is appropriate since all it wants is to delay the opponent. Lots of 
Does the card stand on its own or require help? A card that is good by itself in a wide variety of contexts is no parasite. However, if a card absolutely needs others to be good, let alone playable, then it is one. This isn't a problem by itself, as tribal cards are inherently parasitic and there's no issue with their playability. The problem comes when a card is a parasite but the parasitism isn't obvious. Champion of the Parish is highly parasitic but nobody would ever run it without support, meaning it will only see play in the right context. Thus, it wouldn't meet my definition of overplayed.
than the alternative? No card is ever actually a free include. There's always an alternative that could be played and therefore there is always an opportunity cost to every card. However, a card with a low opportunity cost will either have few alternatives or be significantly better than said alternatives. For a high one, the opposite is true. To wit: the opportunity cost of Lightning Bolt is its alternative, Lightning Strike (same effect, different cost). As Bolt is cheaper, that opportunity cost is very low. However, in the context of removal spells, Bolt may be quite high, as there are a wide range of one-mana kill spells and depending on metagame context, it may prove expensive to include Bolt over something else.
Force of Negation is a good card, and at times it has been a necessary card. It's the most flexible free counterspell in Modern. Disrupting Shoal never saw much play because it's hard to use. So Force is the only means most decks have of protecting themselves against opponent's the turn they tap out. This is very important against control and combo decks. The problem is that Force is only actually free on the opponent's turn. Even then, you only want to counter really important spells, and only if absolutely necessary. There's a reason that Force of Will gets cut in fair matchups in Legacy.
It was watching a UW Control deck Aether Gust a Primeval Titan three times and then die once it resolved that got me thinking about overplayed cards in the first place. Gust is a tempo card that somehow mostly sees play in non-tempo decks, primarily control decks. Which want to permanently remove things, not delay them to be answered again. Were Gust seeing play in UR, there'd be no problem. But it's the high control play that earns Gust it's spot.
First up is the earliest and most definitive Go-Away-Artifacts card in Magic, Shatterstorm. Both 
Shatterstorm does exactly one thing: sweep the board of artifacts. This is only relevant against decks that flood the board with artifacts. There are quite a few of them right now, but it's not universal. Against many deck with few artifacts, such as Eldrazi Tron, decks are better off with Spree since it's far cheaper.
There are 
The cards a specifically mentioned see play in many decks. However, almost every deck has some land that's worth naming with Moon: Inkmoth Nexus, Fiery Islet, manlands, and utility lands are everywhere. It's not always necessary to Moon every deck to win, but the fact that Moon has value against the vast majority of decks gives it huge versatility points.
This is Modern. The graveyard is an 
There are a lot of decks which Rest is very important against. However, there are plenty of others against which Rest has no utility. Not every deck has graveyard synergy, and some that do have so little that Rest is overkill and Soul-Guide Lantern is more appropriate.
Why is it that Path is seeing 
However, they were spoiled before MH2 was. And that set killed their playability. There is no reason for 99% of decks to run Hole over Prismatic Ending. Ending is forever, but a hole is escapable. It's just a cheap Banishing Light in a format where Assassin's Trophy and Abrade saw considerable play and now Ending is everywhere. Ending also scales to hit more things than Hole. Hole 
The biggest potential winner form AFR are artifact decks. I'm sure exactly which artifact decks, but the highest concentration of playable cards are all artifact synergies. I've already mentioned Portable Hole, but the card that I think will see more adoption is Treasure Vault. Between the ETB tapped artifact lands in MH2 and now the untapped Vault, I'm suspicious of Wizards testing the waters ahead of unbanning the original artifact lands. I've never been clear why they needed to stay banned once Krark-Clan Ironworks was banned, but we'll see. Vault is an upgrade on the MH2 artifact duals only because it enters play untapped. Power Depot is seeing play in the 
on a lot of AFR cards, so it looks like they've finally started taking the potential for abuse seriously.
On the subject of AFR cards already seeing play, Tasha's Hideous Laughter has replaced Mesmeric Orb in 
The last card is also the most speculative. There's never been a wish this broad before. Appropriate really, since Wish is as definitively and broadly named as possible. Which again makes sense since it's from D&D and predates the Magic wishes. While normally this would open a wide range of possibilities for almost every deck to exploit, Wizards seems to have considered that and Wish works differently from other wishes. All the other options place the wished-for card into the hand to be used whenever. With Wish, the card must be cast in the same turn. No sandbagging, no stockpiling value; just get a sideboard card and cast it the same turn. This is balanced somewhat by Wish never specifying the card that must be played, so the caster can revaluate their choice if something happens after Wish resolves.
Every metagame update has its own weirdness. June's is high volatility. Again, Modern Horizons 2 released and with it came a flood of cards that are 
This is one of the lowest baselines ever at 1.43. Which makes sense given how many decks were in the overall sample. When most decks only earn one point, the average will be very low. Keep that in mind when considering how many decks are above the baseline this month.
Voidwalker fundamentally alters the way rock plays by giving it access to a dimension previously claimed only by 
That doesn't mean that dungeons are unplayable. Incremental but building advantage is definitely playable; just look at Search for Azcanta or most planeswalkers. The key question is whether there are venture cards that fit into Modern. Just being a decent venture enabler is not enough; the card needs to be Modern playable in a vacuum. Learn is the 
Ellywick Tumblestrum, on the other hand, has potential. And a very silly name. Which D&D bards are 
Of the dungeons, the Lost Mine of Phandelver is the best for starting out. Scry 1 is much better more of the time than losing or gaining a single point of life. This indicates that this dungeon is designed with incidental value in mind and that Wizards expects players to stroll rather than barrel through. And for the strolling player, there's some decent value to be had. Scry 1 is decent, though not especially powerful, as shown by Opt. From there the path really depends. The drain in the Dark Pool is a good failsafe condition with the +1/+1 counter option being the most powerful. The main problem is that the big payoff is a cantrip. Not horrible, but it really makes me wonder if this dungeon was worthwhile.
This is the dungeon that I expect most players are going to try and blitz. Which makes perfect sense; it's the 
I will be stunned beyond words if it is actually possible to blitz Dungeon of the Mad Mage in normal Modern games. It takes seven venture triggers to get to the end! That would require either a huge number of enablers or one that can be activated multiple times a turn. The former would probably win the game on their own while the latter is likely to be targeted at Commander rather than Modern, but we'll see.
The key to tuning any deck is remembering what the deck wants to do and the cards that make that happen. I realize that this seems obvious, but I've made the mistake of over-tuning my deck before, just like everyone else, so it bears repeating. Every deck has some core of cards that define that deck and are critical to its identity, strategy, and metagame position. Any changes made to that core are risky, though potentially rewarding, as 
I process a lot of decklists to make the 
The other key to remember with Humans is that there is a reason that 5-Color Humans has been 
Thus, the first question when dealing with Humans post-Modern Horizons 2 is whether it's even worthwhile to change the deck. The template from 2017 is still quite solid, which is probably why it's the most 
The deck runs as well today as it ever has, so why change everything? I was running Prelate anticipating lots of Prowess, control, and cascade. There was a lot of control present, but I didn't hit any. In fact, I only drew Prelate once against Burn where I was mana screwed. Had I cast Prelate, I probably win that game, but I couldn't and don't. The deck was still solid in the open meta, my sideboard was broad enough to cover the field, and a blistering Humans attack was still very strong. There's no compelling reason for me to change up the formula.
The Big Strength
That said, it is definitely worth trying to make Agent work because Humans has forever longed for a card advantage creature in grindy matchups. Militia Bugler 
The Big Weakness
However, Tide Shaper means that I don't have to settle. Shaper is actually the answer to a problem Merfolk's long had, but I never expected would be answered. The problem is that Spreading Seas is necessary, but undesirable. It's very good mana disruption, and more importantly it turns on islandwalk, which is critical against any creature deck. However, Seas doesn't swing, and unless played late is just a huge tempo hole. I usually cut it against any aggro deck as a result. Shaper is just a 1/1 for one, and Merfolk of the Pearl Trident is not playable. However, the option to kick Shaper into a 2/2 Spreading Seas makes that humble creature extremely playable. As such, I've decided against running Dockhand in Merfolk and instead have fitted Shaper as the new one-drop.
Svyelun has proven to be difficult. Her stats are above average and Curiosity 
-positive threats, so I maxed out both. Being a cheap deck means that Lurrus is available as a companion, though most of the time I've used it more as a lifegain speedbump than an actual card advantage engine. Unsettled Mariner and the maindeck Chalice of the Void are both targeting Prowess but are quite solid against the control decks I tested.
I really liked the deck. Tutoring for Magus of the Moon was relevant a surprising amount of the time, far more than the other maindeck bullets. Prelate is quite good in certain matchups, but this being Modern, she lacks the hard-lock edge she frequently offers in the more one-drop-centric Legacy. The biggest downside is that I can't chain Flickerwisps by flickering Recruiter, a line that is frequently backbreaking for opponents in Legacy with Recruiter of the Guard. It made me want to go lower to the ground with Charming Prince, but Flickerwisp is better enough outside of chaining Recruiter (hits harder and has evasion, mainly) that I didn't go that route.
Lavinia doesn't synergize with Thalia; here, the latter was cut so Lavinia could actually counter cascaded spells. Sentinel is still very good here because I'm targeting combo decks that like to cantrip and tap out. It's also good because it digs for counterspells. Dockhand is in a similar position, where it does an excellent job slowing down combo decks and makes it harder for them to pay Sentinel's tax. The current sideboard is meant to hit the cascade decks, but can easily be tuned.
Wizards printed three blunt-force anti-Tron cards and three more which interact favorably with Tron. And by blunt, I mean that Break the Ice, Obsidian Charmaw, and Void Mirror might as well have explicit rules text saying "use this against Tron." Void Mirror is the most obvious, as it counters any spell that was cast without any colored mana. Tron is a deck famous for casting colorless threats. You do the math. Mirror is also effective against all the suspend cards in MH2, almost as if Wizards was providing extra incentive for players to play the card. It is also quite potent against normal Tron's cousin, Eldrazi Tron, as if it wasn't obvious enough.
Break and Charmaw are similar in that both are intended to destroy Tron lands. Technically, Charmaw destroys any nonbasic land, which means it is likely a shoo-in for Ponza. However, the cost reduction of Charmaw is targeted at colorless lands, and again, what deck besides Tron uses lots of colorless lands? The fact that it can hit Tron turn three on the play cannot be an accident. Meanwhile, Break costs two specifically to prevent turn three Karn Liberated. Again, it specifically targets lands that make colorless mana. It also hits snow lands, but that hasn't been too relevant since Arcum's Astrolabe was banned. Though it is worth noting that snow-covered basics are not always strictly better than regular basics anymore.
Shame it's going to fail at that, then. I hate to burst any bubbles, but there is very little chance of Tron being uniquely hated out by anything in MH2. It might lose some popularity initially, but Tron will easily recover and continue to fun-police all over midrange and prison. Mainly because the dedicated hate is easier to avoid than it appears. Mirror doesn't counter colorless spells (which actually would be devastating), just spells that weren't cast with colored mana. Thus it's easily defeated so long as Tron has out a Chromatic Star or a forest. It wouldn't surprise me if Tron started running Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth for this very purpose, giving them a way to tap even their colorless lands for G and empty their hand of said Stars for multiple big-mana plays. Break the Ice is black and can be beaten with Veil of Summer. Overloading Break is a win, but at that point, Tron was unlikely to win anyway. And Charmaw is only good disruption on the play.
However, that's not entirely the cards' fault. The answer lies in the mirror. How many players have seen all the new hate, will assume that Tron's going to be hated out and/or dropped, and will cut their Tron hate? Be honest, you've at least thought about it. That's the main reason that Tron 
Burn, enough that I expect it to overtake Timely Reinforcements as the sideboard card of choice. Thanks to it granting hexproof without restriction, it's less powerful but more versatile than Veil of Summer, and therefore counters Mill's Glimpses, Hedron Crab triggers, and Archive Traps. Otherwise known as their most damaging spells.
At Your Peril
I'd also like to note that all combo decks that don't win via Thassa's Oracle will be hit by Blossoming Calm, Storm being the hardest hit: Gifts Ungiven targets opponents, so Calm both counters the Gifts and protects against Grapeshot for a turn. If Calm is adopted as widely as I think it should be, then Storm and similar decks will have to rebuild. MH2 has provided a number of options for Storm to move into green, though I have no idea if that's ideal. Is Caleb Scherer still around? Somebody ask him.
Power: 4
HELLO?!?!! This is so good!! You have 100% control over getting one or the other. Harvest is always the better of the two.
One archetype that doesn't have its early game curve tied up and is known to have tons of mana to throw around during the game is control. Currently, these decks are built with flooding in mind, and pack insurance like Celestial Colonnade. But I can envision a world where control decks want green, and in that world, Harvest presents an alluring alternative to running mana sinks. These control decks will seek to put the game away a bit faster than what we now see out of UW or Esper, 
True, Ragavan doesn't draw a card every turn. Even in the mirror, it will sometimes flip a land. But it draws a card sometimes, and by drawing once, it has already paid for itself in terms of card economy. I'll also argue that in many instances, it has already paid for itself just by generating a treasure. That extra mana means it also ramps into the opponent's payoffs; I've played one game where I was able to cast, from my opponent's library, turn two Teferi, Time Raveler (which met Force of Negation) and then turn four Jace, the Mind Sculptor (which resolved and won me the game).
So Ragavan is the best creature ever printed. Will it be banned in Modern? Obviously, it's far too early to tell. It's not like we lack answers to a 2/1. Hexdrinker, too, is a massively pushed aggressive one-drop that 
Decks will splash for this card. They will splash for this card like crazy. By which I mean they will be rebuilt to accommodate Ragavan alongside the best red spells that play to its bottom line (AKA Lightning Bolt). Imagine it out of control sideboards when all your Pushes are in the board. Scaaa-ry! But not every deck, or even every red deck, will want Ragavan.
Jund Rock: Hexdrinker was good enough for BGx players 
Power and flexibility will be rated by considering both a card’s floor (the least it will do) and its ceiling (its best-case scenario). For example, 
Power: 3
Much of Saga's power lies in its reliability, and the above constitutes what I'd consider a pretty comprehensive plan for a card whose floor is literally being a land that taps for colorless. One strike against Saga is that it will be traded in for an artifact every time; there's no option to keep it around as a land. But because of how saga enchantments work, players can still float a colorless in the main phase of that last turn to make their big play, and the mana it would normally cost to cast a one-mana artifact is on the house—if we're talking raw mana numbers, Saga is a Sol Ring on that final turn. I've found that being smart about which turn Saga is deployed, rather than just slamming it right away, allows for enough planning that trading it for a choice one-drop is almost always a big benefit.
The natural next question: how good is Construct? Without any other artifact support, that lifelinker (and its partner blocker) will be a 3/3 on the turn it crashes into the red zone. With just a single additional artifact, even Darksteel Citadel, it grows to the 
Basilisk Collar
Here's where the points come rushing in. Modern deckbuilding has always been about striking a balance between artifact hate, enchantment removal, cards that interact well against planeswalkers, etc. Being able to target any permanent is the crux that brought Brazen Borrower into the fold of format playability despite its clear drawbacks. And it's the condition that ensures Prismatic Ending will go down as one of the most fearsome pieces of removal in the format.
The same amount of mana spent by opponents (in terms of tempo, Ending is almost always a wash)
In terms of straight-up effects, Fury can often have the most impactful, offering casters a pair of Forked Bolts. These can dismantle an enemy board with the utmost precision, dealing one to a dork, two to a creature, and another two a minused walker, for instance; all the excess damage goes to the dome, of course, which makes Fury very low-commitment. Indeed, I imagine it will often be cast as a kill spell with some trample.
Aether Gust has proven itself a fixture of the Modern tournament scene, popping up in sideboards everywhere even now that Uro's long gone and Tarmogoyf has been 
Seal of Removal: Seal of Fire was already played in prowess decks, and I imagine storing Unsummon on a get-it-now prowess trigger will be very exciting for those same mages. After all, Unsummon is a more reasonable Modern card than Shock. (Don't @ me. Just cuz I've always wanted to say that.)
Suspend: Temporary removal, just like Unsummon. Except it's not quite like Unsummon, because the creature can't be cast the following turn; delay-wise, it's more like Reflector Mage. Of note, the creature gets haste when it returns, and opponents don't have to spend mana recasting it, making it worse than Mage or Unsummon when it comes to sapping tempo. I'd say most of Suspend's potential comes from its interaction with Teferi, Time Raveler, which forces the card to just stay exiled. Very likely to see play in decks that both a) run Teferi and b) might want to hit their own creatures with Suspend to double up on ETB triggers or protect against removal.
Bone Shards: Very flexible removal spell that is sure to see use in strategies that like discarding (Hollow One, Dredge, etc.). Off the bat, Shards strikes me as a significant upgrade to Lightning Axe. Sacrificing a creature seems like a steep cost, but since discarding remains a possibility, it's straight upside over Axe. You can drop a 1/1 Elemental token for this thing and keep that Bedlam Reveler in hand!
Vindicate: The known and feared Vindicate, at last in Modern. Goodbye, Malestrom Pulse! And goodbye, Steam Vents!
Bone Shredder: Fleshbag Marauder upgrade for creature toolbox decks.
Mishra's Factory: The best manland comes to Modern, giving Mutavault a run for its money in decks that don't need the tribal synergy. Granted, that's not many, but Factory also gives Blinkmoth some competition in Affinity and related artifact decks. I mean, it's juts so big!
All that support don't come for free. Leave it to Wizards to rain on our fun. Or, rather, give us the tools to rain on someone else's.
Void Mirror: Tron can still cast their spells using Forest, or the mana from Chromatic Sphere. But they need to tap Forest to cast another Chromatic Sphere, so I'm not sure this card is totally blank against them. Granted, it's much better against decks like 
Blessed Respite: Gaea's Blessing, meet Fog. Soothing Rest, meet The Sideboard. Rest is a versatile card that ironically fails to fulfill a key goal of Gaea's Blessing in the decks that side it where it's legal, which is to not lose against Mill. We'll miss the cantrip, too.
Flame Blitz: So you hate planeswalkers. Boy, have we got the card for you! Blitz is the one-mana walker sweeper that just keeps on sweeping. And if opponents don't have any, it can just be cycled. Value! Or if you already resolved one. Value! Or you could just cast that second one and deal 10 to all the walkers every round. You do hate planeswalkers, don't you?
Lonis, Cryptozoologist: Lonis investigates whenever a creature enters the battlefield, which isn't the toughest condition to meet. With that being said, it's a lot harder than existing options (see below). Where the Legend really shines is with its tap ability, which converts those many clues, formerly mana sinks, into mana and card advantage, flipping the script on their usefulness and letting players cast an opponent's cards for free.
Fae Offering: Generating one of each token is exactly where those serious about this archetype will want to be. Given Modern's wealth of versatile options, including Mishra's Bauble, Manamorphose, Noble Hierarch, and the like, it won't be too tough to meet Offering's condition on most turns, turning this unassuming enchantment into a potentially value-laden enabler.
Academy Manufactor: Um, let's start over: generating three of each token is exactly where those serious about this archetype will want to be. Manufactor turns Fae Offering, and especially simpler set-up cards, into nightmares for opponents to dismantle; in other words, it gets the ball rolling big-time.
Existing options: Modern has its share of cards that play nice with these theme. I'd say best of all is the already-played Tireless Tracker, which combines with fetchlands to pump out a grip of clues. I wonder if Standard all-stars like Goldspan Dragon and Galazeth Prismari won't be suitable payoffs here too, given their absurd potential when combined with these newer cards. Overall, though, the token theme strikes me as a little cute and a little durdly, and if it comes to be, will be floated mostly by Ragavan.
Sterling Grove: The first reprint on our list, Grove gives players access to a toolbox element, and as we know there's no shortage of surgical enchantments in Modern. That means Grove is something of a themed Demonic Tutor, and it also provides the buff of granting shroud to important pieces in a lockdown. At two mana, it's sure to be a staple in the deck, at least in its early stages.
Enchantress's Presence: Another reprint, Presence is the classic draw engine for Enchantress decks, taking its name from Argothian Enchantress (at this time, still not in Modern). At two mana, this one is sure to be a staple in the deck well into its old age. When Presence stops being good, the deck itself stops being good. And yeah, this is the hyper-aggressive, hyper-punishing Modern, so that may or may not be out of gate.
Sanctum Weaver: At last, a newbie! Weaver is Serra's Sanctum on legs, with the added benefit of making any color mana. Of course, Sanctum is much better, as it costs no mana and can't be Bolted; Modern may well be on its way to becoming Legacy-lite, but not without the caveat of Wizards deciding which cards to exclude from the format. I wouldn't hold my breath for Sanctum and its cycle-mates Gaea's Cradle and Tolarian Academy (okay, this last one is banned even from Legacy).
Sythis, Harvest's Hand: And here's our Argothian Enchantress retrain! I'd say losing shroud in Modern definitely hurts more than the lifegain helps, but we can't call this two-mana Nymph quite a strictly-worse version. In multiples, that life gain will surely add up into a win a nonzero percentage of the time.
New deck? Affinity? New deck? That's right, folks: 
Ethersworn Sphinx: Cascade is a lot better than draw 2. Right? Right...? Well, maybe not! In the build of post-MH2 Affinity I've been seeing pop up in casual online rooms, Sphinx tends to cascade into a mana rock or an Ornithopter. After all, the deck is mostly made up of cheap enablers. The value is still potentially there, and it does replace itself at worst. But I anticipate the main draw to Sphinx will be the slight velocity it provides (you might as well be drawing most of the time) and the massive 4/4 flying body.
Existing options: I mean, you know them—Ornithopter, Memnite, Frogmite. The decklist practically writes itself. The tuning is where things will start to get interesting: Chromatic Star & company, or no? Dispatch vs. Glavanic Blast? Do we run Sphinx at all? How about them tapped artifact lands? Uh... can Wizards unban Seat of the Synod already?! Is Cranial Plating even worth casting in 2021? (jk.)
Inevitable Betrayal: This one may find its way into all Suspend sideboards, as it can steal key creatures out of Tron or other big mana strategies. Wurmcoil Engine or Emrakul, the Aeons Torn sure beats making a pair of 4/4s off Crashing Footfalls, and potentially anything else the Suspend deck wants to be cheating.
Glimpse of Tomorrow: New dimension #1, and in my eyes the most likely to spur a new build into being. Glimpse wants players to commit a ton of permanents to the board (mana rocks, etc.) and then cheat out the title card to effectively cascade into Emrakul, Omnipotence, or whatever else. So it's literally Warp World, an eight-mana sorcery that 
Gaea's Will: New dimension #2, Gaea's Will is a retrain of Yawgmoth's Will, one of the most broken spells ever printed. We may see Will at the heart of a Storm-esque deck with an Electrodominance package or even as a way to just generate a bunch of value in the mid-game for other Suspend decks. I'm the most excited about the possibilities with this one. Of course, it may also end up being a flop.
Resurgent Belief: New Dimension # 3: A suspended Replenish. Belief also has combo potential, albeit in a totally different kind of shell. This deck could run self-mill or enchantment Entombs to set up a lock, or even just tempo- or value-generating enchantments like Omen of the Sea and Seal of Removal, or perhaps a mix of both. An interesting thing about Belief is that its Suspend mode actually isn't so much to ask, costing just two mana and charging two upkeeps before resolving, so it may see play without Electrodominance and the like to push it out early or on demand.
Both of these mechanics have seen Modern play on the most powerful cards respectively featuring them: Tribal Flames; Traverse the Ulvenwald; Grim Flayer; Wild Nacatl; Tarmogoyf. Er... okay, so the last two technically lacked the keywords, but you get the idea. Since the mana is so good in Modern thanks to the fetch-shock norm, and delirium is relatively easy to splash thanks to enablers like Bauble and Manamorphose, all of these cards are liable to see some play, both in and out of dedicated decks.
Scion of Draco: Two mana for a 4/4 flier that gives all your creatures useful keywords? Talk about pushed. Players will need all five basic types to pull that off, but given that Tribal Flames has incentivized Zoo decks to splash every color 
Dragon's Rage Channeller: Which brings us to delirium. Four card types is a lot to ask on a 
The Underworld Cookbook seems fine to lock in a discard outlet. You can thank this card (
Damn: Black-heavy control and midrange with access to white. That means you, Esper Control! On power level: it's past due Wrath of God received an upgrade. And black some no-questions-asked two-mana removal. Two birds with one stone.
Defile: Anything Swamp-heavy. 8-Rack? Urborg, welcome into the fold!
Esper Sentinel: Humans. Not very aggressive, so potentially a sideboard card, but extremely powerful a lot of the time, especially with built-in synergy to grow it. I've seen "Rhystic Buddy" thrown around as a potential nickname; co-sign.
Flame Rift: Burn. I will note that in this more-combo-oriented-than-Legacy Modern format, 4 damage to each player might not be optimal; in racing scenarios, it's often less impressive than even Skullcrack, which provides a 3-point swing compared to Rift's 0-point swing. (Lightning Helix is king in these scenarios, generating a 6-point swing; Helix-or-Rift metagames, anyone?)
Shardless Agent: Suspend, but also random UGx midrange decks, and maybe Urza shells. This card will be find a ton of homes. Run with 4 Bloodbraid Elf for Modern 
These are very likely to see play in some capacity, but in newer shells, or in ways we haven't yet seen. Reverse-alphabetical this time. U mad?
Ignoble Hierarch: I'm itching to see the shells Ignoble Hierarch inspires. Mid-sized Jund aggro? Good ol' Jund Rock, but with dorks? Who knows! All that's for certain is that this evil (not to mention smelly) Noble Hierarch will see heaps of play.
General Ferrous Rokiric: Hexproof from monocolored spells means he's immune to Bolt, Push, Path, and even Collected Brutality. Then he's making huge bodies whenever a multicolored spell gets cast, including Manamorphose and, like, Burning-Tree Emissary. Oh, and Mantis Rider. Yeah, this guy's a Human! Maybe he should be in Shoe-Ins.... or maybe he'll helm a new multicolored aggro deck more focused on getting opponents dead than disrupting them. Think Voice of Resurgence and Siege Rhino. And Jegantha, the Wellspring!
After all I've said, there is a temptation to declare Izzet Prowess Tier 0, something I've never done before. I will resist this temptation and everyone reading should do so too. Izzet Prowess is nothing like Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis or Eye of Ugin-powered Eldrazi. The deck is slightly different from the previous few months when it was Tier 1, but not outstandingly so. Plus, it's taking over the top slot from another deck that just spiked out of nowhere. There's no reason to think that this spike won't also go away.
to the baseline. And May's baseline average points is 1.58, meaning that Izzet's performance was slightly below average given its population. To be Tier 0, I'd expect any deck to take down sufficient Top 16 or higher slots to stay above the base. Not necessarily sky-high, but well above the baseline.
Observation #1: Red decks are popular online
Observation #4: There is a correlation between price spikes and decks falling off
Finally, we come to the average power rankings. These are found by taking total points earned and dividing it by total decks, which measures points per deck. I use this to measure strength vs. popularity. Measuring deck strength is hard. Using the power rankings certainly helps, and serves to show how justified a deck’s popularity is.
I know I'm not the only one who began frantically searching Gatherer for Vampires when they spoiled Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord. Nor the only one crestfallen to discover that the best threat to cheat out was actually Morophon, the Boundless, which doesn't do much on its own. But man does it do much paired with a whole tribe.
all-Merfolk, all-the-time plan, Cursecatcher was a solid creature and piece of disruption. Over the years, the creatures got better and the spells got cheaper and suddenly Cursecatcher just didn't do much anymore. To have a chance, Merfolk needed something interactive at one mana, not more beef. The lords had that locked down.
That out of the way, how does being on a creature affect Port's power and playability? On the one hand, the ability to keep opponents off mana is powerful in Modern too. By which I mean Porting Tron. Porting Tron lands is awesome, and will feel far better than Porting Cloudpost in Legacy because it will happen more often. Dockhand isn't a land, so it doesn't tie down your own mana as much as Port. Thus, Dockhand won't harm your own board development as much as Port. However, this comes at the price of being a creature and therefore far more vulnerable than a land. Relying on Dockhand to save you is asking for heartbreak.
Grief can only ever be used to disrupt opponents, not to advance one's own unfair gameplan. But critically, evoking Grief creates card disadvantage. Thoughtseize is a 1-1 trade whose value comes from trading up on card quality and mana value. An evoked Grief is -1 card (the exiled black card), then the discard is a 1-1 trade. It's harder to say if a 4-mana 3/2 menace is better than the discarded card. Free is much better than costing something, but that only actually matters if you then do something with the mana that's saved. And given the density of black spells that will be necessary to make Grief reliably free (using Force of Will 
Which is why Unmask never saw much play. The reason that Reanimator and Dredge are the only decks that consistently play Unmask in Legacy is that they don't care about throwing away cards. All that matters is setting up their broken thing, and if that happens, they should win. Thus, it's worthwhile to 2-for-1 themselves to ensure their opponent can't disrupt them or to get the needed card into the graveyard. Fair decks have never made use of Unmask because they have to care about resources. Records are thin because Unmask is from before the internet was widespread, but I could only 
Still, that strikes me as the best-case scenario, and constructing a deck to do so consistently makes me question how well it functions outside of that specific play pattern. The 
Immediately after Grief was spoiled, there was speculation that it was part of a cycle because it was an incarnation. That's a 
Cabal Coffers: Another Odyssey block reprint. It's much better now that Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and Dryad of the Ilysian Grove exist and let Coffers see play outside of mono-black decks. It's much, much worse because the opportunity cost of playing lands that don't make mana themselves is so high in Modern.
me to ask why you need to use Dakkon to cheat in the artifact rather than just cast it? Or Refurbish it several turns earlier? Surveiling every turn is decent, especially as a way to set up graveyard synergies, and exiling creatures is very good. But is either enough for Dakkon to see play?
Parsing the Modes
Kolaghan's Card Advantage
Summing Up
caveat that it's only legal in one constructed format. Talk about a risky marketing move. As an early preview that can be played, what happens if it proves too good before it's even released? Or worse, not good enough? The former would make players dread the set; the latter would turn them off. It's a very fine line, and I'm not sure how it is playing out.
The single most powerful usage, and where I think a lot of players are leaning towards, is using Harvest to guarantee land drops. A one-land hand with a cantrip is better than one with no cantrip, but it's still a risky keep. Replace that Opt or Serum Visions with Harvest, and this risky keep becomes a snap-keep. Theoretically. So long as Harvest resolves and you name land, you will make your next land drop. Will it be an optimal land? Who knows. But it will be a land, and that's most important. For most decks, this is no problem; one land is as good as another. In decks that require specific lands, lack of choice may be a problem. As such, I suspect that many players will try to
deck. Which means that 
Jund is decidedly midrange while Gruul is on the slower side of aggro, more like 
Brainstormed cards. I'm certain that players will try anyway, but if Historic Dreadhorde Arcanist lists 
I'm certain that (if the old paper crowd returns in June, anyway) I'll be facing numerous decks rocking full sets of the definitive way to say NO! I know a lot of dedicated control players, and they'll be overjoyed to use Counterspell in Modern. However, it's not entirely news.
there's already typically a slot for four two-mana counters. They're just split between multiple counters. It's outside of Esper and UW Control that I'm skeptical. Do tempo decks or aggro-control want to hold up double blue? Plus, even in the control decks, there are the utility spells to consider, and a lot of them overlap with Counterspell.
First things first: the addition of Counterspell does not uniquely make control viable. It already is, as constantly evidenced by the 
expensive ones (Cryptic Command and Archmage's Charm) have too much flexibility to drop. Force of Negation is free, and that will keep it in rotation. Remand will also stay, as it's too potent a tempo tool and doesn't see play in hard control much anyway.
All that being said and from personal experience, the only way that Sanctum Prelate sees play in Legacy is a maindeck one-of as part of Recruiter of the Guard packages. Death and Taxes is most common, but 
The data’s down from 
This is a pretty standard average 
relative strengths of each deck within the metagame. The population method gives a decks that consistently just squeaks into Top 32 the same weight as one that Top 8’s. Using a power ranking rewards good results and moves the winningest decks to the top of the pile and better reflects its metagame potential. Of course, the more popular decks will necessarily earn more points, but the difference in scale between the
The baseline is up from March, which is consistent with the higher population and point totals. As usual, the top slots are occupied mainly by Tier 3 decks. However, Niv 2 Light was very close to Tier 2, which further muddies the waters of it apparently being replaced, especially when 5-Color Scapeshift is just above baseline. Burn being the second-best deck was also surprising, but makes sense in retrospect since Eidolon of the Great Revel is quite strong against Prowess. I'd also like to call attention to Boros Prowess's utterly abysmal showing. The deck is 
This combo is similar to one 
Cue this new build of 
Preamble terminated! What we have here is 
Like Lumimancer, both Leonin Lightscribe and Nivmagus Elemental generate big swings with cheap storm spells, in this case Ground Rift and Flusterstorm. The pricier Lightscribe buffs all the creatures, while Nivmagus stays big in future turns, giving each its niche in the deck and bringing the functional number of Lumimancers to 12.
New to the tribe are Unsettled Mariner, coming in at the full four copies, and Realmwalker. Mariner's been seen in Merfolk, Humans, and Spirits, so it's no big surprise to see the changeling supporting this tribe. Slivers used to play Diffusion Sliver, which asks a higher tax of opponents at the cost of weaker stats and less relevance overall; Mariner also deals with spells targeting the player, including discard and direct damage, and that extra size really matters in a world of Lava Dart and Wrenn and Six. As for Realmwalker, this newer changeling offers the tribe a card advantage engine stapled to a body—look, Ma! No Collected Company!
However, these decks are the exception. Of the 
Right before the ban, UR Fiend had moved away from a single-shot deck towards a midrange deck. Earlier versions had little recourse but to slam down their threat and hope it survived to serve as a cannon to funnel their hand into damage. And that it would be lethal. These later versions could sit back and let Thing in the Ice do the work for them. This was before Fatal Push, meaning that a 0/4 was fairly hard to kill and a 7/9 was vulnerable only to Path to Exile. As the game went longer, Bedlam Reveler would refuel the deck and be a very dangerous threat. All while the threat of sudden death by Kiln Fiend was maintained.
What is typically happening is players start with a typical 
Boros Charm is a little expensive by Prowess standards, but it does a lot of damage and can make Lumimancer lethal with double strike. Which makes it far more confusing that those decks that have tried it do worse than these lower-work versions.
The first thing to discuss is that, unfortunately, learn and lessons didn't 
happen, but given the quality of white's sideboard cards, I don't really want to sacrifice them for a mediocre effect just because I can tutor for them.
Which when I point out that we've been down this road before. The proposed play pattern (dumping your hand into a single massive swing) is less like current Prowess decks and more like the 
The headliner is Elite Spellbinder. I'll admit, when I first saw Paulo's Championship card, I was confused. The ability is like nothing we've had before. And the lack of flash seemed to really hurt playability. However, as I've thought about it, I think that Spellbinder will be a very solid card. Humans could always use another way to look at opposing hands for Meddling Mage, and another 3-power flier can't hurt. The disruption is harder to assess. The card that Spellbinder takes (and it's any nonland, for once) is still technically in the opponent's hand (assuming they don't forget about it) unless they cast it and pay the tax. This is pretty mediocre against cheap spells and pretty devastating against expensive ones. This screams sideboard card for DnT against control, combo, and Primeval Titan.
Speaking of Meddling Mage, Strixhaven brings a new one. Kinda. Silverquill Silencer doesn't actually stop opponents from casting the named card. It just punishes them severely. And for a fast aggro deck like Humans, that might be enough. Three life and a card to cast a spell is no small price in a vacuum, and worse when on a short clock. This is balanced by the named card still being castable, so unlike Mage, Silencer doesn't actually stop sweepers nor prevent a combo turn. It just ups the price. As a result, Silencer will never replace Mage, which is probably why it gets an extra point of power. I also have doubts that it would see play in decks that wouldn't play Mage in the first place. However, it makes sense as extra Mages. Which makes me wonder how to fit the new cards into Humans, which in turn suggest that the deck needs a rebuild.
On that note, the main decks that I can see Proctor being good against are land decks. I'm specifically excited at the thought of Vialing in Proctor in response to Scapeshift and taxing all the triggers. Killing Proctor with the first trigger accomplishes nothing, too, since its taxes all go onto the stack first. However, I'm conflicted about using it against Amulet Titan. On the one hand, it hits Primeval Titan and Amulet of Vigor, seriously hampering the deck's ramping and gameplan. On the other, it also hits the Karoo bounce trigger, which can be a positive or negative depending on the intended sequencing. I want it to be good there, but I'm not sure it will happen.
Of course, not all Jund Shadow decks run Scourge of the Skyclaves. Wait... they don't? I don't know about you, but that's not a development I'd personally have predicted! Scourge's failings as the metagame develops are twofold, however:
a huge chunk of data to lose. I was genuinely worried that all of March's data would be lost and I'd have to skip the update just like in February. Even when the glitch was fixed, the gap was large enough to bring validity into question. Fortunately, it didn't come to that, as others were as frustrated as I. 
The signature mechanic is technically a split mechanic. Strixhaven introduces Lessons, which are instants and sorceries with the lesson subtype. This subtype doesn't mean anything on its own, impacting functionality only flavorfully. Rather, the marker is for usage with the learn keyword found on some spells. Learn seems to be used in place of "draw a card" in Strixhaven, as it's just on cards as an additional effect. Said cards are all flavored around the many parts of academic life (I'm feeling very seen by Pop Quiz), but that's the only connection. That said, learn has a lot of potential because it either lets you wish for a Lesson or just cycle (discard a card to draw a card).
The one possible exception is Academic Probation. This card is incredibly niche, but in certain matchups it might be backbreaking. Preventing a single card from being cast for a turn is way too narrow to see real play, and Azorious Arrester already exists and never sees play. However, as a wish target, Probation might be a decent bullet. I can see it being strong against combo decks by naming the right card. I'm seeing Past in Flames or Grapeshot against Storm, Thassa's Oracle against Ad Nauseam, or Living End just to buy the turn needed to finish the game. There's some (questionable) utility in naming Supreme Verdict to again buy time for an aggro deck to close the game too. Were it an instant, it'd be potentially devastating against many combos, which is probably why it's a sorcery in the first place. But when opponents are on the verge of combo-ing off, it reads a lot like Time Walk.
cantrips, cost reducers, or Gifts Ungiven to generate 20 total storm. Instead, there's a chance that red's mana production alongside green land search and black card draw can do the job with only ten spells. I'm not sure that's actually better than traditional Izzet Storm, but it's something to explore.
Next is ward. Ward is a new name for a mechanic that I first remember seeing on Frost Titan. 
That could have been the end, mainly because the MDFC's spoiled so far are the college's deans, and none of them are Modern playable. However, also spoiled is the first MDFC planeswalker ever: the twin walkers Will and Rowan Kenrith. Both sides have Goblin Electromancer's cost-reduction ability, and Rowan is cheap enough that I could see her seeing play. Will might too, but he'd be an afterthought at five mana. However, Rowan does have two problems. At three mana, she's more expensive then Electromancer or Baral, Chief of Compliance, which would price her out of Storm. Plus, Storm doesn't always play a full set of either creature, so why play a three-mana version? 
Secondly, she's fragile, with only two starting loyalty and a +1 ability. Wizards actually learned from War of the Spark, apparently.
to you. Since the data from the limited source is further choked off, its much easier for weak observations to guide thinking and/or lead players astray. It may be that Heliod Company is the best deck right now. However, it may also be a self-fulfilling prophecy caused by MTGO players 
Few decks have ever epitomized "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts" more than Company combo decks. While most of these creatures are at least reasonable Modern cards on their own (which is a 
or a Duskwatch Recruiter to find the Ballista killed. Chord of Calling and Company were essential to actually make it all happen. The combos in Heliod Company all require just two cards, which is far easier to pull off. With Heliod out, Feeder goes infinite immediately. A Ballista with two counters given lifelink also kills with Heliod.
What grinds my gears is lapses in knowledge. This is when a player discusses and/or makes a really dumb play having previously demonstrated that they know better or that they really should know better. There are two scenarios for this, and encountering either triggers me. The first is the equivalent of studying a specific question, writing the correct answer down on a study guide, checking that guide before the test, and walking out of class and commenting on that right answer. And yet when the test comes back you still answered that exact question wrong. There's no explanation or excuse; just brain stop no think good me make oops.
The second, which I find more offensive in many respects, is ignorance. They should know better; they've seen it before, there were resources available from which to learn, and/or they were told to be wary and they just. Didn't. Bother. It's the equivalent of walking into a test completely unprepared and just staring at the questions and guessing. Did you just blow off studying or did you incorrectly think you wouldn't need it? It was all there for the taking, and you punted it away.
lost to Tron after they mulliganed to three. Maybe more than once. And yet plenty of Tron players still settle for hands that can't hit Tron on turn three. Even 
(No, I can't link a specific one because I can't remember who it was and I've already spent an embarrassing amount of time looking for the vods.) The problem seems to be complacency. Infect doesn't show up as a top tier deck on 
And the coast isn't clear for unequivocal removal either. Players forget that Infect runs 6-8 of Vines of Vastwood and Blossoming Defense with a few Snakeskin Veils for good measure. Playing any removal during combat is an invitation to let the opponent not only counter your spell but get in extra, potentially lethal damage. And players complain about Veil of Summer.
So the most obvious question is the power. Is Hypergenesis too strong for Modern? On the one hand, the 
That said, Hypergenesis's win rate would unequivocally have been lower if I wasn't running Chancellor of the Annex. From Legacy experience I knew the card would be very good. There's nothing better at defending against a Force of Negation turn 1 than a revealed Chancellor. However, that was only relevant against 4-Color Omnath, and only occasionally. It also protects against turn 1 discard, but that similarly was a niche use in the test. The real benefit is the general disruption. A revealed Annex Mana Tithes everyone's first play, which puts every deck off their curve. While there are work-arounds, including just throwing away a spell, it was a huge benefit and bought significant time against every deck.
What I didn't expect was how devastating Annex was against Amulet Titan specifically. The 
other players, and they confirmed feeling similarly. DnT said they found being on the draw terrifying, and not just because Demonic Dread was more likely to be live. They'd already boarded out Giver of Runes just to make Dread less useful.
The lesson from Tibalt Cascade is what really got me thinking. Toward the end of their reign, the number of Gemstone Caverns were 
However, that is true if and only if unfair combo can't win on turn 1 too often. Winning then occasionally is fine, but even Legacy doesn't like consistent turn 1 combos. My data showed that Hypergenesis would win turn 1 more often than Neoform could. I have reason to believe that Hypergenesis' real turn 1 rate should have been higher. And may have increased since the test. My testing also showed that sideboard cards were usually too slow to make or break the matchup. Thus, I believe that unbanning Hypergenesis brings a huge risk to Modern's health. I would recommend keeping it banned out of concern of early wins rather than power level.
Guide often gets a rap as a combo enabler that lets decks win a turn early. But while lower-tier decks like Neoform and Ad Nauseam do indeed wield it that way, I'd argue that most of its uses are decidedly more fair.
Then there's 
The data shows that Hypergenesis won a statistically significant percentage more than Neoform. P is so tiny that it is functionally certain that any variation is the result of the test and not natural variance. In other words, Hypergenesis did better than Neoform by a large enough degree that I can be certain the result is valid.
that's just getting disrupted. Failing to finish the combo because of poor draws is. And this never happened to Hypergenesis. If it played a cascade spell, it cast Hypergenesis. That didn't always translate into a win, but that was thanks to opponent's action, not deck failure.
surprising. Regardless of the overall results, 
This result is statistically significant at p<.05. The likelihood that Hypergenesis doesn't outperform Neoform is less than 5%, so we can be confidant in the result.
were so
record the results, and then statistically analyze the results to see if adding the tested card made a statistically significant change. I also record the overall gameplay experience and any interesting details that come up during testing, because raw data doesn't tell the full story.
The sideboard features a key difference from previous builds in its bid to run a full set of Sorcerous Spyglass. Previously, I'd bounced between employing Spyglass (which gets around Chalice and offers a bit of extra information) and Pithing Needle (which is importantly one mana cheaper) in CES depending on the metagame. Either way, though, the effect never merited more than 2 slots in the sideboard. Things changed with Kaldheim. Suddenly, every deck and its grandmother seemed to feature the power-play of 
Biggest of all changes here is my move to 26 lands. I abandoned Endless One and Matter Reshaper, 
Running so many lands had another positive effect on the deck that I hadn't anticipated, although in hindsight it makes perfect sense. We often get low on cards in the mulligan stage, and having many "spell-lands" in the deck rather than actual spells reduces the pressure on those leaner hands. At 26, we can keep more hands that are light on mana and feel confident the deck will deliver what we need. Plus, there are some matchups where more lands—any lands—are preferred over other cards such as Copter or Dismember (Burn, for instance), and we lack the sideboard space to optimize a plan (these matchups tend to be favorable already).
CES always had two kinds of openers to find with its mulligans: nutty Temple hands and turn one Chalice hands. Scourge represented our third 
That's not to downplay the fact that turn one Chalice put away games by itself. And Smuggler's Copter is no turn one Chalice. But with that out of the way, Smuggler's Copter is nonetheless phenomenal against basically everything. Removal-heavy midrange decks? Bask in the tempo-sucking warmth of 
Besides 4 Blast Zone and 4 Mutavault, other changes to the manabase include cutting Scavenger Grounds entirely (we play 4 Relic now) and maintaining Gemstone Caverns at 3. I did try 4, both with a sided copy and a mainboarded one, but found that it was overkill; the legend clause can really bite us with that many (or else I'd max it fa sho), and there are some matchups where starting "on the play" at the cost of a card isn't even worth it unless we happen to have Scourge (e.g. against attrition decks such as Rakdos Midrange). Caverns is at its best against linear combo and aggro decks, where the speed boosts from Simian are most sorely missed.
Simian Spirit Guide powered Colorless Eldrazi Stompy's most impressive openers, leading to utter nonsense like turn one Chalice (common) and turn two Reality Smasher (with some luck). Heck, I've even turn one'd a Smasher!
With that, onto the banned cards. Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath getting axed is not at all surprising. It's been 
Ad Naus and Neoform as we knew them are dead. The traditional kill required a minimum of five mana on the kill turn, with a three mana investment in Phyrexian Unlife, and then three mana to cast Storm on turn four. While it's not impossible for Ad Naus to adapt and play more artifact mana, it will make the Storm kill far harder. The alternate kill of Spoils of the Vault into Thassa's Oracle is still intact, so perhaps the deck will rebuild around them and drop the namesake. Neoform has been driven out already, but it had no way to make mana besides SSG, so I don't think it will survive in recognizable form.
The final ban was Tibalt's Trickery. And that's so much whatever. The card is clearly a mistake, but the deck was harmless. Consistency and power-wise, it was 
However, I don't begrudge Wizards. I don't think the ban is necessary, but nothing of value's being lost either. Either Trickery did nothing or was busted, and maybe valuing back-and-forth gameplay over "oops, I win" is good. The first irony of it is that all it takes for Trickery to be an interesting Polymorph variant rather than bannable is to change "Counter target spell" to "Counter target spell an opponent controls." The second, with the reasons given, is that banning Trickery probably obviates the need to ban SSG and vice versa.
It looked initially like Valki was another Jund card which may or may not pan out. Traditionally, Jund relied on Dark Confidant for card advantage. However, the rise of Wrenn and Six has made Bob too vulnerable. Valki looked like a potential replacement. For the same stats, Valki nets at least some value by looking at opposing hands before getting removed. If Valki takes a creature and isn't killed, best-case scenario is Valki becomes a turn 3 Uro. Which is a huge upside when it happens, though mostly it's just a Peek.
I'll note that this is the lowest threshold I've had so far. Then we go one standard deviation above average to set the limit of Tier 3 and cutoff to Tier 2. The STdev was 11.21, so that means Tier 3 runs to 18, and Tier 2 starts with 19 results and runs to 30. Subsequently, to make Tier 1, 31 decks are required.
Let me just say: we've come a long way from the days of Savannah Lions. White weenies are more pushed than ever, with today's marquee example being Usher of the Fallen, a W-costed 2/1 with relevant typing and a token-generating effect that's sure to come up over the course of a tournament.
First up is Port of Karfell, a tapland which produces blue mana. Later in the game, so long as players have black mana kicking around, it sacrifices itself to reanimate a creature. Reanimate a creature! On a color-producing land!
Like Port of Karfell, Surtland Frostpyre seems most at home in combo-control decks, but it has a much more forgiving color requirement. 2 damage to each creature is often enough to dismantle a board out of creature combo decks, so once Frostpyre hits the battlefield, opponents are likely to be wary of how they deploy threats. In this way, the land generates a tempo advantage without necessarily being sacrificed, which can compensate for entering tapped.
Skemfar Elderhall has got to be a consideration for Elves going forward. A tapland in Elves? You betcha! The deck certainly floods if its lords are removed, so having lands around to channel into board presence will be greatly appreciated. And it also mulligans into dorks, making Skemfar a good way to claw back into the game.
The flagship new mechanic in Kaldheim, and mostly serves as a layaway-plan service for pricey spells. At least, given Dream Devourer and the large amount of unexciting three- and four-drops, it seems like that's how Wizards intended it: players can pay 2 mana when they have it, and then "complete" casting the spell at a later date. In some cases, the process leads to landing your four-drop a turn early, but it was still overpaid for in terms of mana (none of these cards have a very impressive rate). 
Right Back Atcha
Weathered Runestone does come off as a Cage retrain; it costs an extra mana, which given Damping Sphere seems like the price point Wizards is comfortable with for colorless lock pieces. Still, it's not necessarily strictly worse than grandaddy Cage. While Cage only prevents creature permanents from entering the battlefield from graveyards and libraries, Runestone prevents all nonland permanents, which extends to planeswalkers, artifacts, and enchantments.
Up next is Masked Vandal, a standard two-drop that pops an artifact or enchantment when it enters the fray. Also worth noting is that Vandal exiles the target, which in this day and age is a big upgrade over destroy.
Halvar is a four-mana 4/4 that grants double strike to the pilot's equipped or enchanted creatures. As a bonus, it attaches one of those already-attached cards to another creature at the beginning of combat, should players want. While that second ability's nothing to write home about, the first one definitely is, especially considering the equipment that's currently played in Modern.
Egon is a three-mana 6/6 with the drawback of taxing players to self-exiles from the grave each upkeep. By itself, Egon would be severely outclassed by Rotting Regisaur, which 
Birgi, God of Storytelling is the most combo-slanted of the Gods, and both sides seem tailor-made for a deck 
First up is 
Jund never really goes away, even though we've heard about the tried-and-true Rock strategy recently 
Deploying at instant speed so players can keep up mana for countermagic
Way back when, before Modern was even announced, I was just dabbling in Magic and aimlessly picking up cards I thought looked cool. Among them was a brand-new playset of Liquimetal Coating. There are tons of efficient artifact removal cards, after all, and what a trip it would be to gun down enemy lands with them!
an issue, of course I was going to play Spirits. I didn't know how to build Spirits for the current metagame, so I just copied MTGO Trophy grinder and Spirits specialist 
Modern playable. Double whammy of too expensive and too small an effect. There are also a few cards that benefit snow permanents, in particular Jorn, God of Winter. Problem is that Jorn is slow; Modern can already mass-untap permanents, and those effects don't see play. Which makes snow seem like a bust.
No other tournaments, just FNM. And he will, absolutely will, be playing Fumarole so he can kill something and drop Ensnaring Bridge or Karn, the Great Creator in the same turn. He will do so several times a match because that was just how those matches went. I can already feel my blood boiling with frustration and barely restrained rage.
playability. However, it also synergizes with Sheets. Lore will scry a max of five cards in a snow deck, meaning it can be used to draw the three cards you want/need on the opponent's end step and then set up a Sheets activation. Which is a bit niche but a huge card advantage swing.
First up, I'm certain that In Search of Greatness will see in play in Modern. Again, it's because I know a very specific player will play it against me assuming I ever see him again. He's tried to make 
as Magical Christmasland as one would imagine (I've seen those devotion decks do very nutty things surprisingly often). However, is Greatness an effect that such a deck needs? It's surprisingly easy to ramp into turn three Nissa as is, though doing so precludes also dropping Ugin the same turn. However, all of this is assuming that Greatness would actually ramp the deck. Greatness doesn't count itself, so there's no playing Greatness in a vacuum and getting a three drop. The only way to jump the curve is to have additional permanents besides Greatness, and the opponent will probably have something to say about that. And without permanents in hand at the start of upkeep that qualify, all Greatness does is scry 1. Which isn't nothing, but it's not good enough.
And immediately I saw a 
hook (I guess) is that a creature can only boast if it attacked. And only once per turn. So, it's in every way worse than just an activated ability. However, those restrictions allow boast abilities to be more powerful than a normal activated ability. As we 
land snow permanent that sees play is Ice-Fang Coatl. And that's been very limited 
The second one is the most interesting, especially given the currently known foretell cards. Foretold cards can only be interacted with via Riftsweeper and the Eldrazi processors like Wasteland Strangler. Also, remember that they're cheaper to cast via foretell than from hand on the turn they're cast. Which in turn means that foretell can be used in attrition matchups, particularly control mirrors, to overwhelm opposing mana. Casting a cheap(er) payoff and then having mana for more or to defend it seems like a good strategy.
Kaldheim also has the foretell counterspell Saw it Coming, which isn't good enough on its own, but a two-mana hard counter down the line is nothing to sneeze at. I'm seeing the potential of using Behold and Coming to out gradually build what's effectively a hand in exile and then wait to spring a trap.
around Christmas as a teaser, I noted that she has a weird number of abilities, but little more. She's a 2/1 that buffs an uncompetitive tribe and can find a dragon. Clearly destined for commander and nothing else; time to move on.
However, Four Horsemen is a legendary deck because it is one of two decks to be soft-banned. The decks are legal to play, except technically they're not, because they violate the 
But that's okay, as the rest of the combo is pretty bad, too. None of you remembered that Second Wind existed until I mentioned it five paragraphs ago. The first ability does nothing, actual nothing. And Magda dies to every removal spell. And the win condition is Goblin Cannon. But then, it's a combo deck, and those routinely play terrible cards because the whole is greater than the sum of their parts. And since this combo happens turn three, that might be good enough. It's similar to Splinter Twin, but faster, after all.
If you thought 12 big threats was a lot, wait until you've seen 
Here's a snowballing-value deck in the same vein as the regular Uro piles, but conspicuously lacking Omnath. 
Combo-control, eh? Who needs Islands and Forests at all? Certainly not 
Finally, we come to the average power rankings. These are found by taking total points earned and dividing it by total decks, which measures points per deck. I use this to measure strength vs. popularity. Measuring deck strength is hard. Using the power rankings certainly helps, and serves to show how justified a deck’s popularity is.
I say "sequence" because timing is everything. Flip those effects around and you have something at once powerful enough to run and safe enough to have in the format. That's right: I'm breaking 
Then there's 
The Return of the LGS
Without the LGS, Modern's spirit is broken. My biggest wish for 2021 is the successful reopening of these community hubs, and with it, some much-needed wind in Modern's sails!
I favor going after Lurrus over Bauble. Lurrus has the history on its side, and the companions were 
I choose Sphere of Resistance because it's the only non-legal artifact that I could think of or find that could see play and wouldn't just be a Karn, the Great Creator bullet, tribal engine, or simply busted. I don't think Cursed Scroll is good enough anymore, and Winter Orb violates rules 1 and 2. Sphere is also requires the most work to build around. Unlike decedent Thorn of Amethyst, there's no work-around to dodge the tax. The flavor text is very accurate. As the only way around Sphere is through, the typical home has been in decks with Ancient Tomb or Mishra's Workshop, using the mana advantage to power past the opponent.
Tron relies on cheap cantrips to survive, far more than any other Modern deck. Subsequently, playing Sphere would be pretty harmful to Tron's gameplan. Why bother with disruption when you can just drop a bomb? As for Titan, it really doesn't have a lot of extra mana to spare in the early turns when Sphere matters. It wants to play a one drop, ramp turn 2, then get out Primeval Titan. Sphere doesn't fit that plan.
And finally, on to the final entry. Karakas is the very obvious choice here, but I tried very hard for it not to be Karakas. There's a solid argument for it violating rule 3, as Karakas is the sort of card that could (but never would) be printed in Standard. Also, I think there's more danger here than appreciated. However, a surprising number of old standby lands have been completely outdated. Why bother with Thawing Glaciers when fetchlands or Lotus Field exist? Castle Ardenvale made Kjeldoran Outpost look silly. And that's not getting into the unfun, busted, or just plain weird lands out there. Yes, Wasteland is too good and Rishadan Port is too hateful.
Soaring Thought-Thief is a unique lord that advances the gameplan by milling opponents. While doing so can prove dangerous depending on what you face, a heavy reliance on Thieves' Guild Enforcer makes it all worth it: with Thought-Thief active, Enforcer is a one-mana, four-power creature with flash and deathtouch. Bloodchief's Thirst makes an appearance as additional copies of Fatal Push, although these can take out planeswalkers; Drown in the Loch forms the backbone of the interactive suite, handling anything opponents throw at the pilot and keeping with the mill theme.
Okay, so it's aggro-combo-control. But at its core, this greenless build of 
Here's the same package in 
I have very fond memories of Pact from when I was learning to play. The store owner at my first FNM played in the tournament, and was playing Odyssey 
doesn't cause loss of life, so it doesn't synergize with Death's Shadow. Plus, even as just a cog in a combo deck, it can't really search for a critical combo piece any better than a normal cantrip. Which will limit Pact's usage to fairer decks.
Red was really hard. For most of Magic's history, red was the color of four things: Land hate, burn, goblins, and janky enchantments. And while I'd love to really punish Uro decks with Price of Progress, it violates rule 2. And may not be healthy for Modern anyway. Modern already has most of the good burn, and Flame Rift is too good with Death's Shadow and Scourge of the Skyclaves. Most of the good-but-not-busted goblins are in Modern already. And jank is jank. I really had to dig deep and remember an obscure card that Extended players often discussed in hushed tones when I was starting out.
Blood Oath is a very strange card. It's straightforward to play, but the threat of it makes opponents play strangely. I heard a story somewhere that during a GP one player split a Fact or Fiction pile of five instants 5-0. Their opponent, being tapped out, saw that said player had four mana open and was playing red. Suspicious of a lethal Blood Oath, the pile of zero was selected. In something of a reversal of my list so far, Oath is an excellent card against slower decks, but not in them. Aggro decks empty their hands quickly, reducing Oath's effectiveness, but would love to punish those who hold cards.
Oops doesn't need a critical mass to go off, just one specific card, so it can't be effectively punished for resource accumulation. However, because Oops has no lands, the Oath call is easier. This is especially the case since 
I had a problem with green, too. A lot of green's good cards from early Magic are ramp spells or mana generators, and Modern definitely doesn't need more of that. Outside that there is lots of artifact destruction and fatties, but those aren't unique or interesting. Sylvan Library is a 
It's a 1/1 elf. Everything kills it, and the risk/reward in its ability makes removal an even more punishing possibility. While there is some chance that Ranger proves an unexpected mana boost and something breaks, it would be easy enough for the format to adapt and clean up the mess.
playing against the popular decks, which will cut into win percentage and results. This is has been particularly true for Omanth decks, with Boil coming seemingly from nowhere to take 15th on 
On that note, where'd all the Humans go? There were 45 results for Humans in 
Secondly, this can't be a list of just hate cards. Players complain about Blood Moon, but that's because they've never seen some of the color and nonbasic land hate lurking in Magic's history. The cards I pick need to be interesting and preferably build-around cards to encourage different gameplay or deck design. I'm looking for cards to make Modern better for brewing and diversity, not to reinforce or completely destroy existing decks. Plus, that'd be too easy.
The biggest plus to Land Tax in my book is that it encourages different styles of gameplay. I cannot think of any card that rewards going second as much as Land Tax. Even with help from Fieldmist Borderpost et al, Tax can be triggered turn three at the earliest in Modern when on the play. Without fast mana, there's no way to miss a land drop and have turn one Tax. And even then, the deck that could do that is effectively Belcher, so why bother? On the draw, given normal development, a turn one Tax triggers on turn two. This opens the door to decks that actually want to play from behind. The only constructed deck I can think of that has ever wanted that is Manaless Dredge.
Mana fixing has been under fire this past year, between Uro and Arcum's Astrolabe. Players are becoming frustrated with goodstuff pile decks, and adding another option to make them possible is not attractive. There is also the general risk of cards that generate a lot of card advantage for no additional input. Does Modern really need more card advantage engines?
Blue bears the burden of being a Legacy color of counters and cantrips. Modern can't have too many blue cantrips (especially not 
The main problem with Standstill is a gameplay one. Wizards 
boring (if tense) to play against. I get that, but that can also be said for Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle, and (until Dryad of the Illysian Grove, anyway) nobody seemed to have any problem with that card. Once Valakut hits its threshold, the game is likely lost for any fair and/or slow deck. It may even actually be over if it happens via Scapeshift and Valakut combos off.
So you've double-blocked Uro and gotten it off the table. Now what? Elementary, my dear Watson: it just freaking comes back! Escape lets Uro return again and again for more red-zone fun, be that walling all your swingers or punching holes in your defenses. And every time it comes back, it triggers, burying its resistance in cards, life, and maybe lands (and therefore, maybe Zombies—no small quotient of Uro decks pack Field of the Dead). Uro simply cannot be dealt with by regular means; peeling it from an opener with Thoughtseize or Inquisition of Kozilek only accelerates its battlefield terror, while burning removal spells on the 6/6 merely buys a tiny bit of time.
Many other decks simply splash Uro as a package or plan:
Cling to Dust: The one card here that didn't make "Modern Top 5: Graveyard Hate," on account of it not having been printed yet. While Cling only hits one card in the graveyard, it's a maindeckable option for all its utility; it can gain life or cantrip, and pilots often have the choice. At one mana, that's a bargain for a spell that also grants incidental graveyard hate to multiple decks in Game 1. Hitting Uro with Cling takes it out of the picture for good, forcing opponents to locate another copy of the Legend if they want to bring it out.
This build of 
The last time I even mentioned 
that this actually happened this time, but it could have successfully, unlike at an open event. Thus, deck choices should be viewed as potential reactions to the small population and anticipated opposing decks, rather than an accurate reflection of the Modern metagame at large.
For example, during the 
preferably the same or similar ones. I know from experience that the pairings are closer to random because League composition is pretty random and there isn't always someone else in matchmaking with a record even similar to yours. Each player gets 5 matches and earns prizes based on final record.
My opponent's first four turns play out as follows: play Indatha Triome, play Raugrin Triome, play Zagoth Triome, then do nothing twice. I have Vial, Thalia plus Vialed Giver, then Archon. The opponent's only impact on the board is to play a Teferi, Time Raveler to bounce my Vial after drawing a Forest. They then continue to do nothing until death.
Over the course of this game, my opponent will resolve Oath of Nissa six times. They will hit lands three times, find the first Felidar Guardian, and whiff completely twice. Given the 
If my first match is any indication, there is a perception that Uro piles are dominating the online metagame. However, my experience and 
Swiftspear's one-mana-haste-beater-with-upside-later blueprint is so good with Scourge that we've seen Bomat Courier creep into Rakdos Prowess decks this month as four additional copies. Bomat Courier! 
largely thanks to no Modern Championship events this month, meaning fewer Premier events to draw from. Preliminary attendance appeared to be up overall to compensate for the lower event total, and so the data is only down by 26 decks.
As for its loneliness, I think that's just a quirk. With so much population wrapped up in the top two decks, it's natural and expected that the rest of the standings would be a bit thin. Death and Taxes is literally just over the line for Tier 1, and a number of decks are just under getting out of Tier 3. I don't think there's anything to be worried about metagame-wise as a result.
The big change, and I suspect the reason for Rakdos Shadow overtaking all other options, is Scourge's combo with Temur Battle Rage. In case you don't know, if the opponent is at 15 life and Scourge's controller is at 10, then Battle Rage on Scourge is lethal: the first hit deals five, and the second deals 10. This is a much easier and lower-work kill than previous Battle Rage decks laid claim to. As Grixis Death's Shadow taught us well 
The only ramp comes from 2 Growth Spirals. The rest of the spells are interactive, with the only constants being 4 Path to Exile. Everything else is negotiable or a metagame call.
makes you dream about crushing opponents that thoroughly again. Which is my explanation for the deck's popularity; gotta chase that high (variance sequence).
Needleverge finds its stride in a deck like this one, that doesn't fetch but loves painless, flexible lands to smooth out its mana. Thanks to the new land, Ideal has little trouble stretching to splash red, which affords it access to heavy-duty land hate in Blood Moon and Boil.
Equipping on entry is huge by itself, but it also synergizes with Flickerwisp. Thus, it has functions as a combat trick, stalemate breaker, and a normal equipment. A very strong pickup.
Giver has always suffered from not being Mother of Runes. Gaining a point of toughness and the ability to protect from colorless cards is solid, but not being able to protect herself really let the side down. In a world where Jund was a big player, it was too easy for Step-Mom of Runes to die uselessly. In Legacy, Bolting an untapped, active Mom ensures a two-for-one since she'll protect herself from the first Bolt. In Modern, it's no risk to Bolt Step-Mom, then Bolt whatever she tries to protect. I kept running Thraben Inspector over Giver as a result.
I have a strained relationship with this card. On the one hand, it is the best hard-counter for search effects in white and phenomenal against Primeval Titan, Scapeshift, and Bring to Light. On the other, Mindcensor has a long history of making promises to me it couldn't keep, dating back to failing to prevent Dragonstorm from going off five times at 2007 Regionals. Mindcensor can't prevent the opponent just having it, and counting on it does just lead to heartbreak. I think that having a few in the 75 is a good idea given how the meta is moving. However, the body is fragile enough and effect narrow enough I'd keep Mindcensor in the sideboard.
Every mono-white DnT list I've seen is running 23 lands. A few Boros lists run 21-22 because they're swapping a Field of Ruin or two for Cleansing Wildfire, but they're outliers. The overall breakdown has also very consistently been 11 Plains, 12 utility lands. The utility lands are typically distributed as 4 Horizon lands, 4 Ghost Quarter, 4 Field of Ruin. Again, as of writing, this specific distribution is at least 90% of the lists I've processed, so I'd call it the default. The main deviations are whether to run Horizon Canopy, Silent Clearing, or Sunbaked Canyon, and it really doesn't matter.
Eiganjo does nothing against Lightning Bolt, rarely saves Thalia in combat, and requires two mana to stop a Lava Dart. It's a pale shadow of Karakas and I wouldn't bother.
To make the tier list, a given deck has to beat the overall average population for the month. The average is my estimate for how many results a given deck "should" produce on MTGO. To be a tiered deck requires being better than "good enough". For September, the average population was 8.37, meaning that a deck needed 9 results to beat the average and make Tier 3. Then, we go one standard deviation above average to set the limit of Tier 3 and cutoff to Tier 2. The Stdev was 9.71, so that means add 10 results and Tier 2 starts with 20 results and runs to 30. Another Stdev above that is Tier 1, meaning 31 decks or more.
Tier 1. Mono-Red did improve itself, moving from Tier 3 to 2 with ten additional results. However, that's still a net loss of eleven decks from the top three prowess decks. And unlike in August, I didn't record any other variants that just didn't make the Tierings.
Tracking the metagame in terms of population is standard practice. However, how do results actually factor in? Better decks should also have better results. In an effort to measure this, I've started using a power ranking system in addition to the prevalence list.
If Tier 1 was small and static, then it's Tier 2 where everything is happening. The power Tier 2 is larger than the population one, and is very different in rankings, too. This again indicates that power was more evenly distributed in September compared to August, and decks had a harder time outshining each other. I'd also like to draw attention to Ad Nauseam moving up from Tier 3 to being fourth place in Tier 2. The deck was clearly being underestimated in September and was able to rack up the points despite not being popular. Which may help to explain Humans's rise as an anti-combo deck.
Modern, meet 
Triggering two land drops in a turn ain't tough in Modern. Just play and crack a fetchland, and voila! To immediately be rewarded with Omnath's entire casting cost for doing so is a bit ridiculous—that's the payoff of two active Lotus Cobras. And it's not like this deck lacks for things to do with all that mana; it's got walkers, interaction, and more. Still, it's a shame RGWU doesn't cleanly cast Cryptic Command or escape Uro.
Rounding things out are Auriok Champion and Daxos, Blessed by the Sun to hose aggro, Walking Ballista to decimate creature-combo strategies, and Leyline of Sanctity to beat random combo decks and prevent engines from suffering the wrath of Thoughtseize. And oh yeah, some two-mana enchantments: Runed Halo, a pseudo-removal spell which 
First and foremost are the card selection rules. The original ones read thusly:
that were worth discussing. I said that players should:
point about artifact decks. However, banning Mox Opal has 
Potential Homes
My understanding of 
The primary thing I learned is that the deck is very weird. There are a number of ways for it to win on turn two. There exists a turn one kill too, but I never had that come together. However, if the fast kill doesn't happen, Belcher is actually quite slow. Most of the lands come into play tapped, the sculpting cards cost three, and until you go off, there's not much to do. Storm and Neoform have a lot of play to them because they cast lots of cantrips. I mostly just sat around playing tapped lands until I went off. On that note, the deck only wants to keep hands with at least one Valakut Awakening, Recross the Paths, or Goblin Charbelcher. The only cantrip is Manamorphose, so if the opening doesn't have a payoff, it's unlikely to draw one. As such, aggressive mulligans are crucial.
After testing, my conclusion is that Belcher is unlikely to be a format-breaking combo. At least in its current form, it's too clunky and slow to ruin Modern. Humans just eats it, and I doubt it can reliably race other combo decks. There's not enough here to recommend it over the premier combo decks like Ad Nauseam or Storm.
For its part, red is co-opted for Lightning Bolt (d'ac), Lightning Helix (porquoi pas?), and Rix Maadi Reveler (voila notre raison-d'être!). Rix is great for gassing up via Spectacle, and provides incidental looting otherwise. Kaya. Smallpox, and naturally all that reach help fulfill the Shaman's "lost life this turn" condition. Regularly re-stocking is a great way to pull ahead in a deck full of cards otherwise singularly focused on exchanging resources.
I fully agree with 
If Scourge was a card where I know exactly what it does, but I don't know where it's for, then this next card is one that I know exactly what it's for, but not what it does. On the surface, Nahiri's Lithoforming looks like a variation of Scapeshift, sacrificing lands then replacing them. However, cost notwithstanding, Lithoforming is worse than Scapeshift because it doesn't search for lands. Instead, it draws cards, and its controller may play lands from hand to replaced the sacrificed ones. Assuming they've drawn enough to replace the lost lands. And the new lands enter tapped. Which means that Lithoforming is far less likely to combo kill than Scapeshift.
However, there is a deck that doesn't mind sacrificing lands, doesn't care about comboing with the right ones, and likes to draw cards. Its name is 
bounce a land afterwards, they've at least ensured they'll have their next land drop. They can also resolve their Search for Tomorrow and not play another land that turn. With only one Conundrum out, this is a bit of a wash, and will only be relevant with several Conundrums out; indeed, fully resolving Search and triggering two Conundrums sets players back on mana development, making a fail preferable.
Against Jund and Wilderness Reclamation decks, Conundrum showed potential. Both decks play lots of fetchlands and like to use all their mana in a turn. Temur also runs acceleration sometimes. This meant that both had to really think about playing into Conundrum and reevaluate their gameplans. It was especially hard for Jund, given its 
At their most basic, the flipping cards are two-sided lands, giving players the choice of producing one of two colors for a game's entirety (as with Riverglide Pathway). This cycle aims to provide mana fixing, but fixing is already very good in Modern—we've got fastlands of every pair, Horizon lands, and of course the ol' fetch-and-shock. Nonbasic lands need to be quite powerful to merit inclusion in Modern decks, as players open themselves up to hate like Blood Moon and Field of Ruin for running them. I don't think the double-land cards are gonna make it.
Whether flip lands beat cycling lands depends mostly on how good the spells on the other side are. And they aren't great. For the most part, these spells are wildly overpriced for their effects, especially since they force players to run taplands.
Yet another cycle of flip lands is the most promising. At mythic rare, this final cycle lets players have the spell land enter untapped, but at the cost of 3 life. That might seem like a lot until one considers these cards have three modes: spell, tapped land, and untapped land. That flexibility makes the steep asking price worthwhile and even desirable in many scenarios.
Yes, that's Tarmogoyf, who effortlessly grows to 5/6 in this build and backs up our fragile landfall clocks by slamming opponents who Fatal Push them. And Monastery Swiftspear, the attacker 
Sea Gate Stormcaller
Hierarch, Aribter, Wildfire? Who doesn't want a cantripping Stone Rain? But then, what Hierarch-powered Christmasland scenario doesn't look awesome on paper? Cleansing Wildfire might take a bit more work to get going than Conundrum, but giving red a way to Field of Ruin opponents on a cantrip strikes me as a great way to start spreading nonbasic hate into different deck niches.
The first thing worth mentioning is that the power metagame is one deck smaller than the prevalence metagame. The missing deck is Goblins, which only mustered 13 points, just under the cut. Its omission suggests that while the deck may be a popular choice, it doesn't necessarily perform well in practice. Putting 10 results into the data is no small thing, however, as most results were 3-2's. We could therefore peg Goblins as perhaps overplayed relative to its strength.
Humans was second despite only being Tier 3. It might not come out often, but when Humans does, it comes to win. This suggests it's being underplayed overall. Temur Reclamation came third, which would confirm my earlier speculation: it may win many events, but it struggles to gain adherents. It's striking to me that most of the top performers lie in Tiers 2-3. Eldrazi Tron is the only other Tier 1 deck in the top 10 with 1.56. There may be no difference practically, but the meta is defined by decks that are popular, not dominant. In other words, we may be due for a meta overhaul!
It turns out that in Uro mirrors, ramping yourself while de-ramping opponents is the sauce, even if that's not to happen until the mid-game. Indeed, Bant Moss 
Didn't I tell ya? No Uro! Instead, 
The real clincher, though, is haste. The best of Magic's evergreen mechanics, haste is Time Walk on a creature, and compensates for Swift's low starting power. Even without any prowess boosts, Swiftspear has dealt 2 damage by the end of its second turn on the battlefield--the same amount as something like Savannah Lions. (Of course, it often deals much more.)
. With shock lands, 
Then there's the issue of Punishing Fire. I've long held that Wild Nacatl was an unneeded Modern ban, caught in the crossfires of a larger issue: the Punishing Fire-Grove of the Burnwillows combination. These cards together, coupled with the slower speed of the format a decade back, made it difficult for any aggro deck relying on x/1s or x/2s to break into the tournament scene. Nacatl was so important for aggro decks not only because it was very efficient, the reason given for its banning, but because it was the only Stage 1 creature immune to Punishing Fire. It's my belief that only banning Fire would have greatly decreased Nacatl's share among aggro decks by virtue of the move letting other x/1s and x/2s into the fold.
I've recommended 
cast. The mana base is geared to only cast Humans, and I either had to save an Unclaimed Territory or draw Ancient Ziggurat/Aether Vial to actually play the thing. I've recently switched to Izzet Staticaster, and while it's not as powerful, it has been more effective because I cast it more often and easily. Theoretical power is meaningless if it's too hard to cast.
Which is an elaborate way of introducing the fact that for the first time in 
that's mostly one-mana spells. It's the main reason that Eldrazi Tron's been relevant so long. Add to this Merfolk not playing many one-mana spells, and it's a huge beating. And Chalice is also good elsewhere.
Ponza is an accelerated beatdown deck. Its creatures are enormous, and it has plenty of removal between Bolt, Bonecrusher Giant, Glorybringer, and Chandra, Torch of Defiance. The mana from Utopia Sprawl and Arbor Elf let this ostensibly midrange deck play more like an aggro deck and just outmuscle Merfolk... in theory. But there's a reason we play the game, and it turns out that the matchup is a lot better than I thought.
The answer is a flat no. The reason that Souls is good against Jund is that it mutes Liliana of the Veil. Discarding Souls to Liliana is still positive value, and the tokens provide ablative armor against her downtick. Thus, Junk dodged Jund's best card while getting full value from its Liliana. It wasn't the tokens but their context that mattered. Yes, trading a Bolt for a Spirit token is poor value. However, that doesn't make it no value. It also ignores that the tokens are 1/1s facing huge Tarmogoyfs and Scavenging Oozes.
Metagaming is hard. It's really easy to fall into a trap and miss the subtleties of a deck or a particular matchup and focus on the wrong thing. The new tokens deck is making the same mistakes as the old tokens deck in thinking that going wide with 1/1s is enough to beat attrition decks. It isn't, and never has been. Token decks snowball well, but the ball breaks apart easily, and catching up is very hard. The mono-white version has an advantage in that it can get explosive with anthem effects, but that doesn't excuse the underlying weakness of needing to draw the right cards in the right order.
Space is so tight because of the combo components in play; Aid makes a return, but Palladin is replaced by Magnetic Theft. As an instant, Theft can save creatures from toughness-based removal, but its juiciest application is to end the game as early as turn two: Kor Duelist into Hammer and Theft yields a cool 20 damage. Inkmoth Nexus also threatens instant death when it hits with a Hammer, if not before turn three.
And then there were the games where I actually was behind. I've experience hopeless matchups before because I've lived through 
The blow from 
One thing I can measure is the manabase. Bant's is far more painful than UW, and in a world full of Prowess, that may be the killer. This is not unique to this era of Bant; it was 
While Prowler was great in matchups featuring x/1s, it was far from the one-drop Rogues needed, which would be closer to Delver of Secrets but on-tribe; an aggressive creature with some form of evasion that clocked adequately in a pinch. Then came Thieves' Guild Enforcer, a card compact enough to apparently merit inclusion in some actual Delver decks: 
Fourth Bridge Prowler: A card that 
Spell Pierce: Pierce is just so good in Modern. The noncreature-heavy decks walk into it at all points of the game, be it with big planeswalkers or just generally big turns, and a naturally-drawn Pierce beaks up early plans like nobody's business. It's mostly just bad against Zoo-style decks, which are more or less nonexistent right now. Against Prowess, the format's closest analogue, countering Manamorphose or Light Up the Stage is the truth.
The first and primary reason is that the old system simply isn't needed right now. It used a points-based weighting system in effort to smooth out the discrepancies between paper and online Magic. Paper results were given extra weight because they were more reliable. MTGO may be more accessible, but it also has a smaller player base. Millions play Magic, but only a small fraction are willing to maintain a digital collection. Those that do play MTGO tend to play lots of events and show up in results more often, leading to more outlier results. That just didn't happen in paper, so we added weight to the more accurate results. There are no paper events happening, just MTGO events. Thus the weighting system is meaningless.
Flying totally off the rails is 
Kamigawa Block Constructed was a 
Thus, the question of Modern viability. Jitte's been banned nine years, and Magic's changed a lot. Creatures are significantly better and the overall power level is much higher. Size up Jitte against Oko and there's little comparison, or so the argument goes. The argument for unbanning says that Jitte's time has passed. Getting Jitte online requires four mana and an attack, not to mention a removal dodge along the way. You then have three options that are a bit mediocre, making it inefficient and underpowered by modern standards. And so every time there's a 
So, Jitte is still backbreaking in the creature matchups. It gets more overwhelming the earlier it resolves. I was prioritizing finding Jitte more and more as testing went on, and started mulliganing aggressively for Mystic, especially against Humans, which is the matchup I played the most. And my opponent agreed with me. To the point that we spent an inordinate amount of time debating the merits of sideboarding in Collector Ouphe in addition to Deputy of Detention to answer Jitte.
The most surprising result was against Bant Snow. Jitte is normally just a pump spell against control, and useful mostly as a "combo kill" with Mirran Crusader in Legacy. Sometimes you get to pick off Monastery Mentor, but that's rare. However, 
Umezawa's Jitte is definitely Modern-playable. There's a joke that Deathrite Shaman is actually a one-mana planeswalker thanks to all its abilities. I think Jitte is in the same boat. It's a four-mana planeswalker, with abilities that are more relevant than I thought. It has a planeswalker-like effect of gradually building an overwhelming amount of virtual and real card advantage until it overtakes the opponent. Unlike real walkers, after all, Jitte activates multiple times per turn and at instant speed. Two mana to cast (or Stoneforge in) and then two mana to equip is not that bad of a rate for the versatility that Jitte actually provides.
Then there's Bauble's palpable synergy with Stormwing. As it does with Delver of Secrets, which Bauble 
When it comes to one-ofs and bullets in general, I think this deck is poised to take advantage of a wealth of options. Between Serum, Bauble, and Traverse-chaining Entities, we have access to plenty of library manipulation, making it quite achievable to find niche answers as needed.
Mutagenic Growth is a holdover from my original Stormwing Delver build. While it was phenomenal with Hooting Mandrills, it's still great with Stormwing and Goyf, and I really like the ability to dig for it with a landed Stormwing and a Serum, Manamorphose, or Bauble to beat Bolts.
However, those exist too. The most recent addition is Conspicuous Snoop and Boggart Harbinger, which I've already 
seeing lots of play on the basis of being new and exciting rather than necessarily good. Time will tell if Snoop was just a flavor of the month or the real deal.
Ignoring the superficial differences in color and combo, the gameplan is the same for both decks. Both Twin and Inverter are interaction-heavy control-combo hybrids playing a tempo game. Twin's is entirely reactive, focusing on counterspells, while Inverter has proactive discard, but their purpose is the same: break up the opponent's gameplan until the combo is assembled. These are primarily interactive decks; they just win via combos, rather than finisher-type creatures like Baneslayer Angel.
While I think the decks are viable and reasonable in Modern, the evidence does back up that "They all suck!" assessment from earlier, at least in comparison to what Twin used to be. The most common explanation I hear is that Modern has moved on. The other answers and threats are so much better now than in Twin's heyday that its style of Magic is simply outclassed. Fatal Push, Assassin's Trophy, and Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath didn't exist back then. This line of thought seems to conveniently ignore that Teferi, Time Raveler and Veil of Summer also didn't exist in 2015.
When I introduced GRx Moon to Modern Nexus, the deck didn’t have a proper analog in Modern. I’d adapted the deck from Skred Red after having adding green to that deck for 
Elephant in the room: Goyf! But why would this deck want Goyf? Not only is the creature 
Gone are the five-drops of Ponza, in part because I'm allergic to high land counts. We've still got mana sinks mostly, the back-ends on Pyromancer and Bonecrusher. But it's more of a backup than an inevitability. That's because GRx Moon wants to keep the hits coming, whether it's turn two Moon or some speedy attackers, and end the game a little earlier.
The aggressive bump gained from deploying Goyf early pairs nicely with Bloodbraid and Klothys, which sneak in plenty of extra damage. Backup plans for disruption are extremely reliable in this deck because Goyf is joined by Wrenn and Six. The planeswalker 
Goyf's Return... NOT!
Magus can also be tutored by Eldritch Evolution, a card that likewise grabs Winota straight from the deck. If it’s tributing Strangelroot Geist, the undying Spirit gets to swing right away with haste and trigger Winota on the same turn! And Birds both ramps into Eldritch/Winota and attacks to trigger it.
Among the included packages are:
There was a time when building an entire Modern deck around Notion Thief was nuts. But Narset, Parter of Veils gave the card some redundancy, and combined with the 
Here, 
Part of that has been on me. I play sloppier online than in paper. I'm not sure why, though the anonymity plays a part. In paper, if I mess up, I'll hear about it for weeks. Online, nobody knows you, so it's easy to just move on. I'm also doing nothing else when playing paper, and so focus more. I got a lot of other stuff distracting me on my computer. I've also had a run of terrible luck. Lots and lots of flood-outs and runs of terrible-but-fringe matchup after terrible-but-fringe matchup. Culminating in a League where I hit five Soul Sisters decks, flooded to death in each, and they hit multiple Path to Exile every game.
The data is from the two full weeks since the 
Oh boy, was I ever wrong here. I thought that Obosh Ponza would just keep on keeping on. Instead, only one deck kept the companion. I don't need to guess; I know why I was wrong. I thought the only card lost to Obosh was Chandra, Torch of Defiance, and that's not too burdensome. I forgot that Ponza ran Bloodbraid Elf before companions. Elf's a 
Unlike Stage 1 creatures, which are happy to trade at parity with removal, Stage 2 threats ask too much investment to incentivize such an exchange. As such, all of Modern's played Stage 2 beaters have built-in ways to sidestep Modern's most centralizing removal spell, if not card: Lightning Bolt.
But there's something to be said for how no-questions-asked Tarmogoyf is, plopping down on turn two pretty much no matter what and starting to apply pressure. Besides, not all decks play Fatal Push! I started with one copy, moved up to two, and recently trimmed the fourth Entity for Goyf #3. I'd finally felt like enough reps had been achieved that I didn't need to keep Entity at 4 for the sole purpose of grinding numbers with it, and I think the deck runs smoother with fewer birds; otherwise, they can clog in the early game, unlike Tarmogoyf.
you have an arbitrarily large number of Snoops.
However, slightly-worse-Twin is not an indictment. When it comes together, it's phenomenal. And plugs a strategic hole in Goblins. Whether in Modern or Legacy, Goblins is strong against slow decks, but folds to combo. Goblins's clock is surprisingly slow and can only really race with multiple Goblin Piledrivers. Instead, Goblins grinds with Mogg War Marshall, Goblin Matron, and Goblin Ringleader. My 
As for the combo, Harbinger was as poor as previously described. And also worse because it was clogging up my hand a lot. Goblins is already a top-heavy deck, and Harbinger made it worse. Not just by also costing three, but by making the card flow worse. Since Matron tutors to hand, it is actually card advantage, and more importantly leaves the chance to draw something you need open. Harbinger isn't card advantage, just delayed selection, and dictates your draw step. This isn't inherently bad unless you need to find a string of cards to get back in the game. Harbinger can be actively harmful in those instances. And shaving a Ringleader to stop drawing all my Kiki-Jiki's was a huge mistake.
This was not a good deck. It didn't have enough interaction to shut down opposing decks, and the threats were too weak to push through. It had to combo to win most of the time, and that didn't happen consistently enough. The problem is that outside the tribal shell, Snoop is just a 2/2 that can combo. It's far too anemic to be a threat on its own, and the goblin density is too low to consistently hit anything in a typical game. Harbinger is in the same boat. Perhaps in a Grixis list with cantrips it could work, but I can't imagine that deck being better than Death's Shadow.
While Urza 
Priest will see play in Modern because it has already seen play in Legacy and Vintage. In both formats, Priest is a huge beating against Dredge and nothing else, leaving decks free to exploit their own graveyards while hosing the most linear of zone abusers. Modern 
combining Priest with Eldrazi Displacer to snipe every opposing creature. Just never, ever, try to flicker your own creatures (except for Priest).
The next contender is yet another Teferi with a static ability. Because everyone just loves Teferi, Time Raveler. In fairness, this new one is not at all as obviously onerous as "T3feri," and was made before Wizards realized their mistake.
At the start of its controller's untap step, when normally nothing happens and no player has priority, it phases in, unless otherwise specified. It's not entering the battlefield because it never left, so no triggers happen. It simply "exists" again. Wizards is explicitly 
then wiping the board on the opponent's attack step. And that can happen, but I skeptically ask how that's in any way better than just playing Jace, the Mind Sculptor?
chance. However, See has a second mode. When cast from anywhere other than hand (read: exile, library, or graveyard), it draws three. Ancestral Recall is still a bargain at two mana. The trick is making it happen.
We saw some Burn decks 
Lurrus and Yorion may have occupied much of the discourse surrounding companions in Modern, but other such creatures were in fact printed! I expect these to suffer varying fates.
better than not having Lurrus. The only thing Lurrus did for Burn was mitigate flooding out. Lurrus is less efficient now, but it does still give Burn something to do when it has no burn. Therefore, I'd expect Burn decks to soldier on as if nothing's changed. Storm and Humans may keep running Jegantha, the Wellspring for similar reasons. However, Jegantha being so much more expensive than Lurrus makes that outcome less likely, as these decks were casting the 5/5 far less often than Burn would Lurrus.
Here to diversify the aggro section is 
Secondly, the category is somewhat deceptive. The Prowess deck is showing considerable variation, some of which are close to entirely different decks. I've been categorizing decks based on their strategic characteristics and not stressing deck composition variance as long as decks share a recognizable gameplan. This is why Jund and Rock are lumped together as GBx Midrange while Temur Urza and Temur Reclamation are separated. The Prowess decks had been mono-red and distinguished from Burn by Soul-Scar Mage, and I've kept that definition going. The end of week 4 saw divergence as some Prowess decks started running black for discard spells. This week, there was a more even mix of BR and Mono Red, but they're still too strategically similar to separate.
For Magic purposes, consistency this refers to a deck's ability to play out its gameplan reliably. Burn is a very consistent deck because it has many cards that do similar things. It can't play the exact same way every game, but it is able to play one out that is very similar, recognizable, or predictable. Lightning Bolt and Rift Bolt are very different cards, but do close enough to the same job 
However, it doesn't have to be that way. Players like self-expression, which is a large part of what makes Commander great. Had the companions been made with that in mind, it may have been a success. Compare Lutri, the Spell Chaser to Yorion, Sky Nomad. The former requires considerable sacrifice, turning a consistent constructed deck into an inconsistent Commander deck. In return, there's a certainty boost. This makes Lutri a fun reward for outside-the-box deckbuilding and adds spice and variety to formats.
The older the format, the more broken Bridge from Below seems to become. Moden has been unseated as the freshest non-rotating format by now, but I still think its graveyard enablers and payoffs are sparse enough to warrant a return for this enchantment.
I do think Bridge would see play if unbanned, specifically in Dredge. But I also don't think Dredge would suddenly become broken. The deck was fine pre-Hogaak, and would certainly be fine now; the deck has 
Most other decks with x/1s and x/2s are fast enough to overwhelm the engine, but I can see Fire becoming something of a common tech for midrange mirrors; it keeps Bloodbraid Elf, Dark Confidant, and Lurrus off the table, I supposed. Even then, I expect its applications to prove slim, or far from polarizing.
Critically, other cards Wizards considered for the ban were Ancient Stirrings and Mox Opal, the latter of which was the most important to Ironworks Combo---it accelerated the deck by an extra turn, giving it the speed needed to compete in Modern.
Ironworks would again spearhead its own deck, but that deck would prove extremely fringe; to give a reference point, I think it would wind up in the competitive bracket occupied by Norin Soul Sisters, Doran Rock, and other outdated Modern decks from the format's earlier years. That's just what Ironworks is now, an outdated deck---without Opal giving it the speed it got by on, the strat would be DOA in Modern.
The trend appears to have reversed. Lurrus is up 1.6% from the previous week, but companions overall are down by ~1%. This is a very small fluctuation and may represent normal variance rather than a genuine change, but it does still suggest that companions have achieved their maximum saturation. Yorion fell off by ~7% while Obosh surged by ~3%, which suggests that players are continuing to experiment with their decks and the metagame.
keep the beats coming, understandably gets the cut with Stoneforge to accomodate Obosh’s companion condition.
The mighty have fallen! Ponza and Bant Snow have been firmly kicked from the top slots. Now, Burn and BGx are king. It is worth noting that both are companion-heavy decks. All the Jund lists and nearly all the Rock decks ran Lurrus of the Dream-Den. Nearly all the Burn decks also had Lurrus. No deck archetype in this data that had companions did so universally. Every Hardened Scales list did have Lurrus, but since there were no Scales lists at all pre-Ikoria, I'm not considering them for analysis (yet).
The Umori, the Collector decks were both mono-creature decks, which makes perfect sense. One was a Toolbox deck and the other was Elves. The Elves deck was unremarkable except for the companion, while the Toolbox deck was an odd mishmash of creature combo decks and GW Hatebears. They were in separate weeks, so I'm chalking them up to luck. Similarly, the Gyruda, Doom of Depths combo decks came from the same event. I wouldn't read too much into them; anything can place once.
For one, it wasn't a cakewalk to cast. Lurrus would have been great in some games, but I found myself going full Yugi at the top of my deck, praying for Manamorphose to show up (it rarely did). Part of what makes companion so great is the creature's sustained presence in every game; we need to draw Manamorphose before ever casting the 3/2. Even though we'll break even on card advantage thanks to the cantrip, losing out on unrestricted access is a major drawback.
Sunofnothing really leaned into Lurrus with this deck. Cutting Eidolon of the Great Revel makes Burn pretty cold to combo, but doing so here was either a clever metagame call or simply necessary. The plan here is to maximize the recursive power of Lurrus, and that means a lot of extra damage off Eidolon which Sunofnothing decided they couldn't afford. Lurrus is guaranteed on turn three, but having something to replay is not. This deck represented a concerted effort to maximize Lurrus, and it seemed like an extreme push to do so. It even has Pyrite Spellbomb sideboard to beat the omnipresent Kor Firewalker.
I had planned for that to be the exclamation point on this whole discussion, and then to move on to discussing the merits of deck hybridization as the metagame repositioned. The hybrid Prowess/Burn decks didn't fully displace Bauble Burn as far as I could tell, but it was maintaining position in the metagame and sneaking into the data. It looked like this might be the new way of Burn. Given the 
The 
And now it loves Lurrus of the Dream Den, which provides a prowess trigger by recurring a used Bauble, potentially every turn. The upgrade has proved significant for the deck, which posted 
Next, it's got The Ozolith, which serves as an extra Hardened Scales when it comes to sacrificed modular creatures. Sparring Construct then becomes an attractive option.
As far as I know, 
Of course, it's not even necessary to adjust at all. Looking at the raw data is showing that decks with and without companions are doing comparably well. Despite what the most hyperbolic might claim, there's no indication that companions are necessary to win. I'm seeing plenty of decks right now that look the same as they did before Ikoria. And even those decks that have twisted themselves into knots accommodating a companion are recognizable evolutions from their pre-Ikoria counterparts. Or, in a few cases, are the same deck with only a sideboard slot changed.
I want to make clear that I don't know if companion is a problem or not. I haven't seen convincing evidence that it is, but I cannot prove that it isn't. That will have to wait on a reasonable data set, which should come together in the next week or two (assuming Wizards actually posts its results).
Normally, the solution to this problem is to fall back on the data. However, the data is very thin. All we have to work with are online results, which Wizards is not great about publishing.
More generally, decks built around Lurrus haven't worked because making the fit is artificial, contrived, and inefficient... or the underlying deck was just bad. The exception has been Hardened Scales. Lurrus recasting Walking Ballista or Hangerback Walker is indeed backbreaking. And that's not considering comboing with The Ozolith or Hardened Scales. The catch is that I have repeatedly punted into my face against this deck. I've done it all, from ruining turns mistapping mana to misclicks and just bad decisions. I don't know what's up, but I just can't play well against this deck. I wouldn't necessarily have won every game if I'd played well, but I could have neutralized Lurrus each time.
My problem with Yorion, Sky Nomad is not the card itself. Blinking permanents for value is incredibly powerful, and doing so en masse is absurd. Just ask 
I've seen a number of decks, from Tron to Humans, running Jegantha, the Wellspring. Not because it does anything special for them, but simply because they could. I asked. The fact that they had access to Jegantha didn't matter at all. Generating mana is nice, but all the players who responded flatly told me that it's just a 5/5 for five. And the Humans player was cold on Jegantha, since he couldn't run Auriok Champion. One Tron player said casting Jegantha is a desperation move in attrition matchups.
Almost every Bushwhacker build plays 1 Tarfire, an all-but-guaranteed way to grow Tarmogoyf an extra point. Almost no opponents will have tribal cards in their decks, after all! But I'm still surprised the tech is so universally accepted; there are just two Goyfs in the mainboard, and some builds seem to omit the other two even from the sideboard.
With less of an emphasis on land destruction, but plenty appetite for the mana generated by Arbor-Sprawl, 
Tarkir shard. Which always come into play tapped, and cycle for three. The only bicycler that has really seen play is Sheltered Thicket thanks to Scapeshift. Given that Modern's manabase has always been built around dual lands which can enter untapped, the bicyclers weren't needed. The tricycles are another story. There's never been a way to fetchably fix three-color mana.
Most Modern decks rely on 3 CMC or greater permanents, from planeswalkers to value engines and combo pieces. To the point that they're not easily replaced, and even when it's possible, it isn't necessarily desirable. My initial thought was that Lurrus fit into Collected Company combo quite competently. Devoted Company was already just mana dorks and two-drops, I thought. It should house Lurrus without any problems and I could write a nice, easy section about giving the fragile combo deck a grinding plan.
awkward duh moment seeing Street Wraith. Which, despite being used as such, is not actually a Phyrexian mana cantrip but a five-mana creature. And is rather integral to the strategy. Which means Lurrus was out and it was time to move on.
A key break from Ghostway is that Yorion blinks not just creatures, but permanents—including one of Modern's 
isn't countered because it was always a creature, not an aura, and can still resolve to the best of its ability. If the mutation successfully resolves, the card is placed over or beneath the target. The overall creature is the top card plus all the abilities of the bottom cards as well as any counters or actual auras it had before it mutated. It's the same creature, just with new abilities. If it dies, everything attached also dies.
successfully mutate, and that could be a tall order. I think that the mana cost to power ratios of the known cards, coupled with the risks of mutation, will keep all but the most aggressive cards out of Modern.
While on the subject of Izzet cards, Rielle, the Everwise strikes me as a card with combo potential. The intended fair usage of a high-power threat that makes up for Wizards's insistence that blue can only filter cards, not draw them, is not good enough at three mana. However, for a more combo-oriented deck, she looks like a strong boost of card advantage. It will only work once per turn, so it would need to be a big one to be worthwhile. Resolving Wheel of Fate and drawing 14 cards sounds absurd. However, I have no idea what such a deck would look like, and I'm not sure that any Izzet combo would want a three-mana do-nothing-on-its-own card like Rielle. I am certain, however, that someone will try to make it work. The upside is too high.
However, much like Archfiend, the new beasties are not going to make Living End good again. All the currently spoiled monsters that are at least as good as current options are actually worse because their cycling cost is higher. To make the deck good, Living End must cycle multiple creatures a turn, explaining its preference for the one-mana cyclers from Alara block. It matters little how powerful the creatures actually are; the key to the deck is lots of above-averagely sized creatures and drawing through the deck to find the cascade cards. Thus, the cycling cost puts a damper on playability.
each time it is cycled, making it more likely to find another Yidaro. Once Yidaro has cycled four times, that velocity cantrip suddenly turns into an 8/8 trampling haste creature. And it will continue happening until every Yidaro is dead.
Instead, the Ikoria humans make an argument for an entirely new deck. With the printing of General Kudro of Drannith, I count Humans having two traditional lords, and a third including Thalia's Lieutenant. Mayor of Avabruck has seen Modern play before, but he doesn't fit into the 5-Color Humans attack plan. Kudro, Mayor, and Lieutenant make a compelling case for a more traditional Human tribal beatdown deck. Given Kudro's Reprisal ability, it would make sense to play token makers in such a deck. This points to a midrange value-beatdown deck, which is appropriate given other cards like Dire Tactics.
There is one expection: Drannith Magistrate could easily find a home in 5-C Humans. Many lists have run Yixlid Jailer against graveyard combo and Dredge before. Magistrate isn't as directly hateful as Jailer, but it has far more applications.
The obvious cost to name is "odd," because all Modern's best spot removal is odd. Lightning Bolt, Fatal Push, Path to Exile, Reflector Mage, Deputy of Detention, and Teferi, Time Raveler would all be negated. Death's Shadow dreads this card. Also, Venturer could swing through Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath, or block it eternally. This safety comes at the cost of never being able to carry a Sword of Fire and Ice.
The first card to get my gears whirring was Sprite Dragon. Dragon brings a number of existing designs to the limit, combining Quirion Dryad and Stormchaser Mage into one pushed beatstick. Dryad was never menacing the turn it resolved, which Sprite patches up with haste; Stormchaser required multiple mini-combo turns from its pilots to output damage consistently, a requirement relaxed by Sprite's using +1/+1 counters.
It took the spoiling of Footfall Crater for me to turn my attention fully to Tarmogoyf. For years, I've been awaiting an easy-to-bin enchantment to help in my unending quest to 
We end up being okay against most other graveyard hate. While Grafdigger's Cage and Surgical Extraction deal with Uro, they do nothing in the face of Flayer or Goyf; similarly, Nihil Spellbomb and Tormod's Crypt can shrink our beaters, but a single Thought Scour is enough to get us back on track.
Jund is a deck that many players aspire to because it feels awesome to just 
Inquisition, Thoughtseize, and Denial keep the crippling Rest in Peace from resolving while answering whatever opponents might be bringing to the fray, and are joined by Brutality and Stroke post-siding for additional off-board disruption.
Here, SOIMBA_AIRWAVE fully invests in two of the sorcery's most potent targets, Seasoned Pyromancer and Rotting Regisaur. The former digs through the deck and dumps other targets, while Regisaur applies a ton of ground pressure and also helps put creatures into the graveyard. Collective Brutality helps get the party started without Faithless Looting here to turbo-charge the engine (and buff other decks enough that Unearth isn't even viable in the first place).
Last up is 
We'll kick things off with the classic 
of the 
The slots leftover from removing Once are filled with more interaction, including the elusive Delay; since Shadow decks enjoy an aggro-combo dimension with Temur Battle Rage, giving enemy spells suspend is often the same as countering them, as opponents won't ever get a chance to resolve that critical spell. Overall, though, the deck's composition remains unchanged.
A newer arrival is Kiln Fiend, which heavily pressures opponents trying to string together a value engine. Once Uro gets going, it can be hard for Burn-style decks to content with; the Titan walls everything, hits like a brick, digs pilots into more interaction, and even gains life! But it's also slow, leaving a window for Fiend to "Crash Through" and dent opponents enough that they can't recover.
First up is 
This build of 
In the late-game, Uro has us covered. The Titan is a card-advantage engine while also being the most imposing body on the battlefield, making it perfect as a win-con—Uro is even useful along the way, drawing and developing the manabase from the hand.
I 
In fact, they are more than good enough. 
All that being said, I still don't think either Titan is as good as their hype suggests. The fundamental problem with Uro and Kroxa is that for them to actually be creatures, they have to escape. There's no work-around. Evoke is clearly the genesis of the Titans, and they're meant to work in a similar fashion. However, Mulldrifter can be rescued from being sacrificed with flicker effects; flickering a Titan kills it. Spell Queller an evoked creature, and the creature lives if recast. Quell an escaped Uro, and it dies with the Spirit.
The first thing I want to do is ask if anyone knows Michael Bischoff so they can ask about his deck. Right now SCG is listing Lightning Elemental in his 
In a more general sense, what the Indianapolis SCG Classic results indicate is that the metagame has absorbed the recent shockwaves from the 
2. Veil of Summer
Cantrips, Type B: Filtering/Thinning
Mage and other one-shot destruction effects are not effective against Amulet. Field of Ruin was a beating for previous versions and made the matchup reasonable for UW Control, but Amulet has changed. Sakura-Tribe Scout always represents a chance to bounce the targeted land with Simic Growth Chamber, especially since Castle Garenbrig obviates the need to actually use Chamber for mana. Mage was previously critical for keeping Amulet off six mana, but now Amulet has too many land drops to keep it down forever. Garenbrig reduces the number of necessary lands for a Titan cast anyway, meaning clever sequencing by the Amulet player usually just dodges one-shots.The plan can still work by looping Mage with Thunderkin Awakener and Incandescent Soulstoke, but such a plan is by no means splashable.
Brutality is phenomenal against Burn for similar reasons. A fully-escalated Brutality kills a Goblin Guide, discards a burn spell, and drains to nullify most of another spell. This is a huge tempo swing against Burn. While making Prowess discard cards is fine, the rest of Brutality doesn't do enough. There is no guarantee Brutality will kill anything thanks to prowess, and even if it does, there will be more creatures. As mentioned, Prowess excels at dealing chunks of damage, so a drain can't provide the same cushion. All that's left is the discard, leaving Brutality as an overpriced Duress. The tempo swing is too low for Brutality to be a main plan against Prowess.
Normally, Fog effects aren't good in Constructed unless they're played in 
Hey, those are nice infinite combos there. Be a real shame if someone were to tax them all. Field shuts down all the combos by ensuring they can't go infinite and also taxes both decks' fetch-heavy manabase. It is vulnerable to Reclamation Sage, but the mana taxing slightly mitigates this problem. Linvala, Keeper of Silence is of course more robust against these decks, but she's also a harder fit for most lists and more expensive.
Which brings us to Yu-Gi-Oh!, a game that's had sporadic banlists for over five years. Indeed, the online community is constantly raging at the structure in place: Konami willfully allows Tier 0 decks to dominate for months on end, mass-reprints the broken product, and then issues bans once players have their hands on the cheaper versions, only to usher in a new Tier 0 format fueled by whatever new expansion has just released.
The pivotal factor distinguishing Modern and Pioneer from Legacy and Vintage is the 
Frankly, that is an absurd amount of Amulet Titan. I suppose this should come as no surprise, as SCG 
The only place where there are enough Modern events going on to develop a good data set is online. The problem with MTGO is that the data isn't entirely accurate. Wizards doesn't report the totality of League results, 
functionally the same as countering a Lava Spike, and Oko, Thief of Crowns prevented Burn from progressing its gameplan. Meanwhile, Prowess kills with big chunky turns of damage, a strategy that pushes through streams of food. Coupled with Light Up the Stage and Bedlam Reveler, Prowess had the gas it needed to stomach the feast, and was more successful.
During the 
Without Oko, the deck gets a makeover, immediately trading Noble Hierarch for Brazen Borrower. Delver decks of Modern's past have traditionally appreciated Vendilion Clique primarily for its status as a pre-flipped Insectile Aberration with flash, no joke in a permission-based thresh deck. While the additional effect was icing on the cake, it pales in comparison to Borrower's benefits: the flashy new Faerie doubles as a critical mode of Simic Charm, bouncing not just creatures but any opposing nonland permanent to disrupt a myriad of possible combos. What's more, its adventure typeline negates the card disadvantage of running bounce effects and gives the deck a reliable late-game mana sink: Once finding Borrower being cast as an adventure and then again from exile taxes pilots a whopping 7 mana! All that late-game energy makes it justifiable to skip out on running dedicated midrange cards in the sideboard, further playing to the deck's bottom line.
However, the combo still mills a whole library. And it costs less than Ad Nauseam, even if it is spread out over two cards. As Dredge 
Landing on Both Feet
The final change in this version is my total forsaking of Matter Reshaper. I've elected to relegate the grinding plan to the sideboard for Game 2, where it takes the form of a set of Relics. I think those will prove enough, at least as the metagame settles; we now have more anti-aggro tools with Abrade, and I find shaken-up metagames often default to aggro in their early stages. Reshaper, too, was appealing for role-compression purposes, but we may have those bases covered with Abrade; besides, Reshaper was always garbage against linear combo and other fast archetypes.
Of course, it's never tremendously impactful for its price, especially compared with Seer and Smasher; I can see going back to Reshaper if Fatal Push or Wild Nacatl decks start giving us trouble, but I'm not holding my breath.
The deck also enjoyed turning its mana dorks into actual threats. Also, Elking a friendly Spell Queller and then bouncing Queller with Jace or Teferi meant that the Quelled card would stay exiled forever. With Oko gone, Bant is back to being filled with dinky creatures and uninspiring payoffs, as it was before Throne of Eldraine. Stoneblade will still be around, but its shell needs an overhaul.
I don't disagree with the reasoning. Getting locked out of the game is horrible, but the deterministic nature of the Lattice lock is much worse. Against typical prison locks, you're only truly out of the game when you have no answers left in your deck. Lattice lock offers a one-time window to answer. Once Karn and Lattice are on the board, the only source of mana the opponent could have is Simian Spirit Guide. Unless enough creatures are on the board to kill Karn, that's the end.
"Other Satyrs you control get +1/+1 and have haste." Yawn! It's the rest of the text on Gallia that makes it interesting. Attacking with three creatures is par for the course in hyper-aggressive Zoo strains like 8-Whack, and that's exactly where I expect Gallia to end up. Even there, it's not realistically triggering until turn three. I still think that's enough to merit inclusion, as the looting effect is just bonkers in a deck that peters out so quickly.
Whirlwind Denial
Thassa's Intervention
Dream Trawler
First up is Mire Triton, which packs a ton of potentially relevant text into one sleek design. Triton gains pilots life, self-mills, swings for a passable 2 damage, and provides a deathtouch body on defense. On top of all that, it's a Zombie Merfolk, supporting two beloved tribes.
Speaking of two-drops, let's dive into escape, Magic's latest take on flashback. Omen of the Sea costs one more than the banned Preordain, but offers pilots flash; in instant-speed decks, spending mana on enemy turns can be quite similar to getting it for free. Additionally, Sea's extra effect lets pilots squeeze value out of the enchantment down the road, and its card type plays nice with certain mechanics (delirium, constellation, etc.).
Escape Velocity
To really make Breach shine requires building around it, and the 
But if all that's required is an inexorable clock against a control deck or Jund, she's not unreasonable. There will be plenty of non-land cards in a typical attrition match to guarantee two damage a turn for the whole game. I actually think that Klothys is better against Jund than against blue-based control, as the only way for Jund to kill Klothys is to discard her. UWx has counters and Detention Sphere and can always bounce Klothys with either Teferi.
Purphoros won't be cheating in Griselbrand or Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, but there are plenty of 
Emry, Lurker of the Loch has already proven itself alongside these enablers, generating infinite mana with a couple Moxen (an occurrence twice as likely with more cogs in the mix). Grinding Station rounds out the combo, threatening to mill opponents it comes together against. New to the party is Kethis, the Hidden Hand, who gives the deck inevitability against anyone trying to disrupt the combo over a series of turns. In the mid-game, pilots can simply slam Kethis, replay Moxen and Emry out of their graveyards, and go off that way. Unearth even functions as a Kethis should opponents strip it with Thoughtseize, and further bulletproofs the plan.
Who said Affinity was dead? The archetype 
Growth turns all those Mutagenic Growths we (well, I) would've played anyway into cantrips, but its real strength in this build is what it does for Rancor. The 
Rankle, Master of Pranks is the new face of Pox, at least according to 
complicated by there being a general decline in non-Infect decks in late summer, which may simply be a coincidence. The drop is integral to the predator-prey relationship being observably real, but again, I can't confirm that this wasn't some outside distortion making it look correct.
Perhaps the most devastating evidence against Twin's supposed policeman effect is Affinity. The 
Back in November, 
Since all eight of these disruption pieces also dig through the deck, I find this trajectory similar to Shadow's; after gutting their Jund Rock prototype, those decks had some space to fill, and they did so with cantrips ranging from Street Wraith and Mishra's Bauble (now longstanding staples there) to Traverse the Ulvenwald (still a necessity in green versions) to Manamorphose (more of a blip) to Once Upon a Time (which seems to have antiquated Manamorphose).
Magic is a game of resources, of which boundary-pushing card design ensures there are plenty of. Mana is but one such resource, if the most obvious; others include cards in the graveyard (Nimble Mongoose), land types in play (Wild Nacatl), life not had below a certain number (Death's Shadow), or number of cards discarded this turn (Hollow One).
Evasion keywords are becoming increasingly common on cheap combat creatures, but they often replace raw stats, a bad trade for our purposes. Hooting Mandrills and Delver of Secrets are the only one-drops in Modern with 3 or more power and an evasion ability.
Of course, some removal spells slaughter beaters regardless of toughness, which is where converted mana cost enters the equation. Fatal Push may have 
I have yet to be blown away by Reclaimer in Temur Delver, the shell I spent yesterday testing it in. But the Elf did have its moments. I'm up to 4 Scour, 4 Looting now in a bid to accelerate its development; so far, the additional cogs smooth things out considerably. They've also left me wondering if there's not a better creature to spend all that effort enabling; Pteramander 
For Round 1, I'm on the play against Mono-Red Prison. I have him dead on the next attack when he topdecks Ensnaring Bridge, Anger of the Gods, and Karn, the Great Creator in that order to shut me down. In Game 2, I mulligan for Aether Vial and am rewarded when he dumps his resources into an early Blood Moon. I draw my Plains so my development is unaffected and win easily.
But yeah, its effect, however superb in the right scenario, is quite narrow, mostly dooming Ouphe to sideboards.
But it still only works on the stack, and when opponents bring those kinds of effects to the table. This sort of card is inherently narrow in its applications.
2019 kicked off with the metagame being disrupted by an 
Ranger-Captain of Eos, a value-loaded three-drop from Modern Horizons, found its way into multiple Modern decks this year, including 
Iconicity: 3
Staying Power: 4
It is unlikely that Affinity would abandon this strategy if the artifact lands were unbanned. The creature-lands provide a considerable amount of resilience, and Inkmoth yields a shorter path to victory. Going back to classic Ravager Affinity allows for more combo potential and explosiveness, but it also means being more vulnerable to Stony Silence, Collector Ouphe, and Shatterstorm.
With Ironworks banned, one reason that Sunrise was banned is gone. While it is possible to build a deck that continuously cracks various eggs to draw cards, that deck lacks a mana engine. Constantly cycling Terarrions, Chromatic Stars, and Golden Egg can dig through a deck to find a win condition, but without a constant source of mana, there's no way to actually build toward an end, and the risk of choking on mana is very real. The best way to gain mana I can think of is by looping Moxen, but that's already in Modern via Emry, Lurker of the Loch and Jeskai Ascendancy.
Bump in the Night, bringing the list to five colors and maximizing the number of impactful burn spells: all 12 sorceries deal three for one.
over Shadow for its high roll potential with Oko in the picture, not to mention the many juicy hits in the sideboard. Congrats to ALTNICCOLO for topping the challenge with this spicy deck after 
The aforementioned late-stage TURBOGOYF builds ended up splashing blue for Scions alone, a card that supplemented Faithless Looting while pressuring opponents significantly as of the second or third turn. The walker's at its best when working with Wrenn and Six, the latter providing ample raw materials to loot away, and large creatures like Tarmogoyf. Those not only block to protect Scions, but can turn sideways, making full use of the walker's pseudo-Temur Battle Rage +1. Shadow benefits similarly from the pairing, as we've already seen 
Jund has solid matchups against Urza and Death's Shadow thanks to removal density. In particular, Jund has the same amount of discard as GDS, but a wider array of removal spells to deal with everything the two decks can throw at it. It also has access to excellent sideboard cards against both decks: Abrupt Decay and Plague Engineer are notable standouts.
Early on in his piece, Zvi establishes the power dynamic at work between cards of differing quality.
Another interpretation of the term does away with the notion of cards holding their own independently. When it comes to synergy, we're working with enablers and payoffs. A "messed-up" card could very well be an extremely efficient enabler (in Modern's case, 
Cheap planeswalkers are always 
Instead, I think that Oko will endure 
face of removal. Thus, the idea is to use Oko to turn the remaining 2/2 dorks into superior 3/3 dorks and keep up the pressure.
version into more creatures and go wide. Increasingly, decks are adopting Oko as part of that strategy. The change adds a value engine and option to turn dead artifacts and Sakura-Tribe Scouts, as well as food into an army, trumping the anti-Primeval Titan hate.
In terms of hate, artifact destruction is similarly mediocre against Urza decks. The only worthwhile targets are prison pieces and Thopter Foundry, each a dwindling part of the strategy. Abrade and company are still valuable in that respect, but should be regarded as speed bumps rather than an actual solution. In that vein, Stony Silence and Collector Ouphe are decent, but not exceptional; shutting down the Thopter-Sword combo is good, and turning off Engineered Explosives negates their main interaction, but most of the artifacts are just setting up the non-artifact spells. Urza cares about the quantity, not the utility, of its artifacts. Going deep in attacking artifacts is a good way to die with a hand full of dead cards.
This problem is exacerbated by how finicky the combo is. The pieces must be assembled in the right order, and if one is out of place, there is no combo. Without exactly Emry on the field, Jeskai Ascendancy doesn't combo off (though it can potentially generate a lot of value). Without Mirrodin Besieged, there is no instant win. It is possible to make the pieces decent on their own, but if Emry gets Bolted before Ascendancy lands, the combo fails.
Of course, cheap walkers weren't entirely new to Modern when War rolled around; Liliana of the Veil had spent many years representing for the card type. But it was pretty much just her. These days, despite 
Narset, Parter of Veils was an early hit from War thanks to the 
Continuing the daisy chain is Saheeli, Sublime Artificer, another player in Urza decks. Saheeli provides a Plan B to anyone casting noncreature spells, be they artifacts or instants and sorceries—indeed, we've seen this walker make a splash in decks as diverse as 
The additional announcement of the 
Stoneforge stood to be especially potent here since Sword of Feast and Famine is exceptional in a deck that needs to tap out for threats but is also packed with counterspells. However, despite 
Stoneforge package means cutting planeswalkers and answers, and those have always been the main advantages of UW. Stoneblade must get by on situational counters and Path to Exile. In practice, I always feel behind against everything and struggled to catch up unless turn-three Batterskull goes unanswered. At least with control I knew when I was actually winning.
However, that doesn't mean that it won't work. I took UW Spiritblade to an MCQ last month and it performed well, although I missed Top 8 on tiebreakers. The Stoneforge package, specifically Sword of Light and Shadow, was critical to wins over Jund and Esper Control. As a grinding tool, I've never found anything better that works consistently in aggressive decks. The problem is that you need to be doing a lot of grinding for it to really matter, as the aforementioned awkwardness is palpable in an aggressive deck. Over longer games, the initially dead cards become more relevant and playable, and what had been awkward bricks change to game winners. However, my meta shifted away from control and towards combo and big mana, so I cut the package.
While I haven't tested the above build of 
decks to disrupt, but it is usually the faster and more reliable combo. From what I saw, Drake benefitted from his opponents' more complicated decks clunking to varying degrees.
As 
One factor to address in GR is the absence of Eldrazi Displacer. We still need another Eldrazi to round out the curve and make Temple worthwhile. I'm currently on Matter Reshaper, with Obligator relegated to the sideboard. While the 3/1 haste has certainly put up numbers for the strategy in the past, I feel that with so much aggro and midrange in the format right now, Reshaper earns its slots. Obligator is high-impact, but also high-variance, only proving relevant in certain matchups. Additionally, it's more of a four-drop than a three-drop, and its ability requires a colorless source besides the first Eldrazi Temple. I didn't want to be locked into fetching Wastes every pre-board game.
The other problem alluded to above is that Prince lengthens Humans's clock. With a Vial, Image, and Mantis Rider Humans can swing for 6+ damage (board depending) on turn three. Replace Image with Prince, and only 3 damage is locked in. Given that Humans' niche is fast, disruptive aggression from not-especially-robust creatures, that damage difference may prove fatal. I've already lost games because I couldn't quite race Valakut, but would have with Image. However, this factor has proven relevant fewer times than Image's fragility costing me games against Jund and UWx.
But it doesn't run Unearth; only Claim // Fame, which targets neither of those creatures.
is an excellent finisher and sometimes the only route to victory. But Munitions Expert is the real all-star of the deck, and I recommend a full set. Modern being Modern, creature decks are everywhere, and Expert is instant-speed removal that synergizes with the deck. What pushes it over the top is the ability to kill planeswalkers. War of the Spark is casting a very long shadow, and not having to attack walkers away is extremely valuable. I had some good times in testing killing Karn, the Great Creator in response to Mycosynth Lattice, then attacking for lethal. Being RB also means that Gobins can run Thoughtseize if necessary.
particularly straight UW. The traditional route to victory for control isn't to actually win the game, but to make opponents concede once all hope is lost. Between Matron, Ringleader, and token makers, it is almost impossible to adequately exhaust Goblins.
The other issue is the clock. Prison decks have some impressive threats like Hazoret the Fervent and Stormbreath Dragon, but there aren't many of them. It's not uncommon for the deck to use most of its opener pumping out a lock piece and then have to win with a single Chandra, Torch of Defiance and some lucky topdecks. If that one threat is answered, the opponent receives plenty of time to draw out of the prison. Modern isn't Legacy: Decks play more basic lands and a variety of mana costs.
Vengevine's new incarnation combines multiple enabling engines with Stitcher's Supplier, here trending away from the pricey Satyr Wayfinder and towards Hedron Crab. Crab mills more, and faster; while Wayfinder provided Hogaak with explosive starts by also tapping for the 8/8, Crab gives the deck more of a turn two or three. Another blue one-drop, Memory Sluice, contributes to the count by milling four right off the bat, à la Wayfinder. The difference is Sluice can be copied by tapping controlled creatures, making it mill a potential eight cards. Rounding things out is Glimpse the Unthinkable, a no-nonsense mill-10.
lock opponents out of interacting on our turn; with that landmine dodged, the deck can be stuffed full of high-impact disruption.
cheap fliers carry Sword of Fire and Ice exceptionally well. Spell Queller is another goodstuff creature with no tribal affiliation, but plenty of strategic relevance to the deck's gameplan.
However, it remains a long shot. The cheap enablers, card drawing, and recursion are all there and have proven power, but 
The other big artifacts are the cycle of story-relevant legends. I've covered Embercleave already, and its playability hinges entirely on Stoneforge Mystic. The Circle of Loyalty is also plausible in the unlikely event knight tribal is playable. Anthem effects are always decent, but Circle would be particularly good because it makes more Knights, and in several ways. However, the remaining three are traps to avoid.
Mirror does nothing the turn it comes down and is slow to get going, which is not what 
Gryff has never had an impact in Modern. Torpor Orb sees a little play as a Whir of Invention target, but giving it wings didn't make it more playable. The increased vulnerability of creatures is a factor, but the the primary problem is that Gryff is a creature. Creature decks are frequently packed with abilities Gryff shuts down, so it's risky to run Gryff even if their opponent may be hurt more. Control decks generally want the harder-hitting and more versatile Vendilion Clique as a three-mana flier. If they really need the effect, they can just run the Orb. Tocatli Honor Guard is another option, but a 1/3 ground creature needs to be phenomenal to see play.
that at the same price, blue combo runs Gifts Ungiven. Gifts will be more powerful more of the time due to Past in Flames and finding multiple cards.
Eldraine seems intent on making Alliance work. The Royal Scions naturally curve out from Alliance and ensure a steady stream of Faeries.
So are these creatures worth it? In "
Removing Bolt made Snapcaster Mage less appealing, although I did like it alongside Thought Scour. But I soon swapped out the 2/1 for Mission Briefing. While Briefing lacks the tempo bonuses Snap brings to the table, it can retrieve a larger number of spells, since not using the flashback keyword forgives alternate casting costs. Archive Trap, Force of Negation, and Disrupting Shoal can all be cast for free from the grave with Briefing. Surveil also helps us piece together a gameplan.
That card was Drown in the Loch. Drown could act as removal or permission, giving it utility in every matchup on top of its clear synergy with our Plan A. Having a card that so dependably slowed the game's pace increased consistency in its own rite, since the longer the game goes on, the more cards hit the bin to feed our creatures. But dipping into black at all provided me with another missing link.
A couple of newer tech choices are Mystic Sanctuary (spoiled yesterday) and Temporal Mastery. Mastery can be searched up with Symmetry when we plan on not drawing the card this turn, such as to Trap opponents immediately. It's a great find when we've got a beater in play, as it significantly increases our clock. It can also be cast with an instant-speed cantrip on our opponent's turn.
The land can also be used to get back the best instant in the graveyard at a given time. That's sometimes Drown in the Loch or Force of Negation, both of which protect us from enemy topdecks; more often, it's Visions of Beyond, which chains into other copies of itself as did Treasure Cruise. Because of Sanctuary's Island requirement, I went from 4 to 2 to 0 Darkslick Shores.
There was a saying back in the day that whoever drew the blue half of their UW Control deck won the mirror. Before planeswalkers, blue provided all the card advantage and interaction that was actually relevant in the control mirror, where white was just creature removal. While this isn't as true anymore, blue's planeswalkers and counters are still more relevant than Path to Exile in the mirror. Mystical Dispute threatens to upend this strategic truism.
graveyard synergies is very good, even with 
I don't know if this card is good, but it seems like it could be. Free spells are frequently broken. However, Fires only allows for two spells, and only on your own turn. It's intended to be a weakened As Foretold, and can only really be used in a combo deck. It can't just go off like Experimental Frenzy or Mystic Forge. However, there's no risk of clunking out from a string of lands. You also don't really benefit from cheating it out, since those free spells are tied to your land count. There's no real point in cheating out 1-2 mana spells with a four mana enchantment. I have no idea what deck could use Fires or in what capacity, but I'm sure one exists.
Normally, Journey to Nowhere effects aren't Modern-playable except as niche cards in Enduring Ideal. However, unlike its forbearers, Glass Casket is an artifact. That means it's findable with Whir of Invention, the supercharger that guarantees Casket sees play.
most of the time, and the effect is repeatable and doesn't have to be used immediately. However, Robin is indiscriminately stealing cards, so there's no control over what you get. He also can't steal all the time, and you can't cast the spells unless you've attacked with a rogue. That's a lot of caveats.
Deafening Silence
Murderous Rider: BGx decks ran Hero's Downfall years ago. Nowadays, the card is better suited to greenless black decks, as Assassin's Trophy 
Wishclaw Talisman: With Whir of Invention-fueled combo decks on the rise, and Karn, the Great Creator increasingly 
Giant Killer: Killer may prove a bit niche in the end, but the utility of a one-drop Human that keeps an opponent's best combat creature at bay while offering the upside of sniping another one gives it potential in certain metagames. After all, we saw Big Game Hunter rear its head in 
Hypnotic Sprite: Another adventure creature, Sprite's front end is a bit pricey for traditional Modern play. The card could find more luck as part of a Faeries deck, though, as an all-in-one Snapcaster Mage, disrupting opponents and applying pressure without relying on the graveyard.
Stonecoil Serpent: Serpent enters with X +1/+1 counters, and has reach, trample, and protection from multicolor. Endless One and its ilk 
Throwing red into the mix for Robber complicates things quite a bit, although my first 
Collective Brutality is crucial here as a way to unclog hands, turbo-charge delirium, and interact efficiently with opponents while setting up our admittedly terrible gameplan.
Adamant is clearly meant to promote mono-colored decks in Standard, but the only reason that would happen in Modern is an aggressive white creature. Modern's mana makes it possible for Esper Control to run Cryptic Command alongside Damnation and Settle the Wreckage if so inclined. Therefore, a decent adamant spell could be run in any deck that wants it and is at least somewhat on-color. For example, a playable adamant blue instant could be run in anything from Merfolk to Grixis Control with very little burden, and the expectation that it will get the bonus almost every time. I expect that the front of such a spell can be a bit weak if the enhanced version is solidly playable.
Animating Faerie: I don't know why any deck would want to make their noncreature artifacts into 4/4s. Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas makes 5/5s repeatably and sees no play. However, Ensoul Artifact has been run in Affinity 
Embereth Shieldbreaker: Against any artifact heavy deck, Shattering Spree or Vandalblast will be much better than Battle Display for the same price. However, there will be plenty of times where such cards are overkill. If instead you want cheap, maindeckable hate, then Shieldbreaker is better than any other option I can 
little sister, and Manamorphose is an absurd card in 
The other possibility is for an adventure creature to be playable on its own, and the adventure part to provide the bonus. As of this moment, there aren't any examples in this category. Lovestruck Beast is close, but is too conditional; no deck wants to make a 1/1 Human token for G.
Savvy Hunter-This is more what I'm looking for. Hunter's stats aren't that great, but repeatable card draw in BG is very good (again, see Tireless Tracker). Hunter's main limitation is that she only makes one food a turn, and so can only draw a card every other turn. On her own, she's not good enough. However, pair with another repeatable generation and there's an engine here. It's still worse than Tracker since it's not self-contained, but for Tracker to generate more cards a turn requires fetchlands, which also require life payments. In a Burn-heavy meta, that's not insignificant.
The final mechanic, though not a formal one 
tough, mid-size creatures. Throw in Haakon, Stromgald Scourge and you've got a deck that will grind with the best.
it's a combination of the creatures being 1/1's, Burn existing, and the deck's difficulty to master. The power of the synergies is very good, but it takes so many to compete with other decks that it's barely worth trying.
adequate threats to compliment Tarmogoyf. From 
TURBOGOYF's strategic curve felt effortless. We'd keep hands with a mana dork or Wrenn, or with Looting in a pinch; that gave us 16 cards that okayed our openers. If our mana dork was killed, we could follow with Goyf/Wrenn, or with a removal spell and Looting/dork to set up for the next turn. If not, we had Moon, Pyromancer, and Rabblemaster to capitalize on the extra mana. Other games, we'd use Looting to set up the second turn, finding a second land or Goyf/Wrenn to begin clocking opponents.
Noble Hierarch is widely considered the best dork in Modern; in this deck, it plays second fiddle to Birds of Paradise. Exalted is nice, sure, but casting Pyromancer off Hierarch is pretty tricky. Birds gives us choice galore on how to spend our mana, and man does it carry a Sword.
Sorceries
While it's easy to say that Modern's lack of cantrips make this a no-brainier, that's not the real problem. Simply put, Legacy Stoneblade is a mediocre control deck, but True-Name Nemesis wielding a Sword is utterly busted. I argue that Stoneblade's strength isn't actually that it's a control deck with a proactive win condition or even its flexibility, but being really good at protecting True-Name. The closest creature Modern has is Geist of Saint Traft, which while a better clock is also blockable and vulnerable to Pyroclasm. Unopposed, Geist does kill faster. However, True-Name is far more likely to survive and actually get that kill.
I went a glorious 2-3 drop this time. Not having two byes anymore certainly hurt, but given how things went overall, I don't think having them would have substantially helped. See, variance was entirely against me. In all my losses I was against favorable matchups, but I mulliganed unkeepable hands into mediocre ones where my opponents were keeping good to great ones. Round 2 against Eldrazi Tron saw my opponent on the play go turn 2 Chalice of the Void, turn 3 Endbringer, then Reality Smasher in games 1 and 3. Those are far from typical starts. Game 2 was far more typical where he didn't have all the acceleration and I got some threats down. I also got to Field him out of the game.
While 1U is supremely reasonable, sticking Awoken Horror is a bit harder than its casting cost might suggest. Thing requires four instants or sorceries to be cast before flipping, making it among the least "castable" beaters here—before transforming, after all, it's not so much a beater as a poor man's Wall of Omens.
The problem is that graveyard hate is only useful against Hogaak under specific circumstances: if you can exile their 'yard after they've spent a ton of resources to fill it, but before they get any value from doing so. Removing the power cards in Hogaak and Vengevine with Surgical is good, but happens if and only if Surgical is in hand while they're in the 'yard. Given that you're only ~40% to have Surgical in hand and Hogaak can churn through its deck extremely quickly, the odds aren't in your favor. Drawing Rest in Peace later in the game isn't optimal, but is still useful since it still exiles the existing graveyard and shuts down recursion engines. Late Leylines or Surgicals do nothing. By going for the silver bullets, I was putting a lot of cards into my deck that were dead if not drawn at exactly the right time. When things line up, it does great; when it doesn't, I lose.
But seeing it 
Then there's the question of the rest of the hand. I suspect that, given how 
Sideboarding
Sideboarding
Dredge is a more polarized matchup than Hogaak, as less of our mainboard is viable; our Game 1 odds are worse, while our Game 2 odds are better. In this way, Dredge-Hogaak mirrors 
haste; probably, though not necessarily, enough to earn a concession. The most busted Eldrazi start called for Eye into four Eldrazi Mimics, then using Eldrazi Temple and Simian Spirit Guide to play Reality Smasher and actually win on turn 2. The problem for Hogaak is that it lacks the same consistency that Eldrazi had.
was incredibly powerful when everything came together, but when it didn't, the deck was anemic.
and a sacrifice outlet: Blasting Station for damage, or Altar of Dementia for mill. When a creature with persist dies while Solemnity is on the battlefield, it returns from the graveyard without a counter, letting pilots sacrifice it an arbitrary number of times.
top tables as a new strategy entirely. It revolves around Riddlesmith, a first-time-in-Modern creature that loots through the deck as pilots deploy artifacts. Crucially, this looting function dumps Echo of Eons into the graveyard so pilots can flash it back. Activating the shiny new Timetwister lets players refill on artifacts to cheaply deploy, keeping the cycle going and looting through the deck.
MC Barcelona
creatures, per se—those creatures entered the battlefield large enough. The name came, rather, from 
Huntmaster can take over creature matchups by himself, and at four copies is a highly reliable plan. Thought Scour is another instant-speed cantrip to support Brineborn, and this Temur shell funnels the extra binned cards into Magmatic Sinkhole, a card fast becoming the breakout removal spell of Modern Horizons.
Runed Halo is a very underappreciated card. The number of decks that rely on very few threats and can't remove enchantments is surprisingly high. I started running it just against Valakut decks, but it's proved to be far more versatile than expected.
The main argument against the walker is that it doesn't fit with our primary gameplan. Colorless Eldrazi Stompy wants to slam a lock piece and then clean up the mess with big dudes, applying pressure via raw bulk while disrupting the opponent. In this way, it offers a go-tall analogue to Humans' go-wide strategy. This point has been bolstered by the London mulligan, which lets players execute whatever gameplan they prefer with heightened accuracy. We used to open Temple most of the time; now, we open Temple all the time. So why dip into a Plan B at all?
This ban was laser-targeted at Bridgevine. 
Looking elsewhere is also trouble. Cutting enablers like Shriekhorn is out of the question, as is cutting the dredge package; they're what make the deck work. Lands can't be cut since Dredge already runs the bare minimum. Creeping Chill is critical to giving Dredge other angles of attack, and has significantly increased the deck's success since its printing. Darkblast is the weakest card in Dredge, so maybe cutting it and having Hogaak as a one-of is acceptable.
Modern Horizons marked my first prerelease event since Khans of Tarkir, and I went undefeated with a mono-green deck full of 2/2s (some of them even real Bears!). Besides 4 Savage Swipe, my deck's only noncreature spells were 3 Winding Way, and I was constantly impressed by its performance. Not enough to consider it for constructed, though, which proved the day's biggest mistake.
one-drop bodies. Asylum Visitor and Call to the Netherworld provide the card advantage missed from lacking Militia Bugler, and Thoughtseize does the heavy lifting on the interactive side.
here and there in Modern, but 
The deck is split between enablers/mana, tutors/bullets, goodstuff value components, and win buttons, including its namesake enchantment. Cutest of all, "the more, the merrier" doesn't extend to the sideboard, which features just 14 cards.
plans from the list to tighten things up, and subsequently allow for different builds depending on which engines best punish an existing metagame.
Field fixes most of the problems with Vale. It has hexproof to protect against Wasteland, enters play tapped, and requires two sacrifices even if you don't want it to stay in play. By itself, this is nowhere near playable in Modern, and probably not in Standard either (too much tempo loss). However, in conjunction with Amulet of Vigor, Field is potentially absurd. Two Amulets and a Field yield a turn-two Primeval Titan.
but generating large amounts of mana is nothing to sneeze at. The main problem I foresee is that such a deck would be very vulnerable to disruption. Humans is very strong against decks of this style, and it seems like a single counter on a Twiddle could upend a potential combo turn.
However, Scheming Symmetry is nowhere close to its predecessor. Wizards has nerfed the effect by first making Symmetry sorcery speed, and also by making it symmetrical. Playing Symmetry as-designed ensures that the opponent gets their card first, which is a great deal for them.
Combustion does have additional value since it triggers if creatures are targeted. This could be decent for a Goblins deck against midrange or control, but I suspect they'll just start leaning more heavily on sweepers and moot Combustion. Alternatively, they could just take some damage, remove Combustion first and then start killing creatures, so I wouldn't look to Combusting any prepared opponent out of the game.
The final card is a combo piece. Kykar, Wind's Fury makes the most sense in Jeskai Ascendancy as a backup plan in case Ascendancy gets hit by Surgical Extraction-style effects or called with Meddling Mage. Instead of outright winning, Kykar floods the board with fliers, which may be enough. If Kykar is out during the combo, he may help feed the combo by turning the spirits into red mana. How useful said mana might be is another question, but there's plenty of potential here.
Dreadhorde Snow
Here's Sleight of Hand again, but for different reasons. Compared with Serum, which admittedly does a nice job of setting up the combo, Sleight makes the combo more reliable while going off. We can undo and then find the pieces we need to chain another Undoing, or dump our hand into play before the next reset. The immediacy of Sleight also helps when we're under pressure, letting us find Path to Exile or Force of Negation for an opponent's critical turn. And it has the extra benefit of letting us dig while opponents happen to have a Narset of their own.
To preemptively respond to something I've been asked in person multiple times, Sephara, Sky's Blade is not going into Spirits. There's no constructed-worthy way to give spirits vigilance, so in playing Sephara for her alternate cost, the only reason to play her at all, pilots forego the opportunity to attack with four spirits, which almost certainly extends the clock by a turn. You're giving your creatures indestructible, which Selfless Spirit could already do, in exchange for giving the opponent another untap step. That's a bad deal. The only possible application I can think of is in mirror matches where the board's stalled out, and even then, why jump through hoops just for indestructible? She doesn't even benefit from tribal synergies. Leave Sephara for the BW Tokens dreamers.
a stat boost like Wanderer, it'd be in business. However, most of the time, all Sailor will be is a beater.
between Captain, Spell Queller, Geist of Saint Traft, and toolbox creatures like Deputy of Detention or Eidolon of Rhetoric. Captain and Queller are the reasons to play the deck, so Eagle is competing for flex slot space.
If any tribal deck is going to be viable, it needs cheap creatures that do something, usually hit hard. Those are 
Marit Lage's Slumber is a very interesting finisher. Against control it is terrible, since they have Path to Exile and two types of Teferi to deal with the token before it attacks. It also doesn't provide the continuous card advantage of Search for Azcanta, so you'd never play Slumber in a control heavy meta. Scrying several times a turn isn't good enough in those cases. Against combo and creatures, Slumber is far better, since it threatens to win the game next turn with a massive blocker. It does take a while to fire, but in a more counter-heavy version, time would be less of an issue.
actually utilize all the extra cards can be tough in Modern, and my shell is not very good against creature decks. If you dredge away any removal spells, you tend to lose to Humans. This is a solvable problem if the deck is worthwhile enough to keep refining.
how much more it could be, I think a new shell 
Replacing the chaff is a loaded acceleration package. Pentad Prism and Generator Servant join Simian Spirit Guide to give the deck plenty of ways to reach five mana a turn early. As permanents, these cards are more versatile than the Desperate Rituals of old, if also more disruptable via removal. On the plus side, they don't care so much about Damping Sphere and its ilk, which could previously shut down the Griselbrand decks.
requiring a re-tool and giving me the impression this deck could be improved.
Astral Drift is Slide with upsides, and with the unicyclers back there's potential for a resurrection. However, several problems need to be overcome. First and foremost, the speed problem must be solved. The old Slide deck was glacial, and a reborn version would still need to tap out for a three-mana enchantment that does nothing on its own. If you're still alive by then, you start cycling cards to dig you deeper and blink out attacking creatures.
I don't know how to break Engineer. A lengthy 
into turbo-charged Tarmogoyfs, TURBOGOYF has always had a problem establishing an adequate clock. I've looked to closers such as 
It turns out coming down a turn earlier than we're accustomed to for planeswalkers does a world of good for the card type's final ability. Superficially, it's one more turn of ticking up; practically, though, the walker sticks before many decks have a way to pressure it, making it that much easier for us to defend through disruption or distract from it by presenting other threats. I've activated Wrenn's -7 ability multiple times as a result, and it's always game-winning.
However, that doesn't appear to have happened so far. As of writing, roughly half the set has been spoiled, and nothing strikes me as overpowered. 
The first theme spoiled was the return of snow. 
To be a better Strix, Coatl needs a lot of snow, and by extension, playable snow permanents. But there aren't. Now, there is no opportunity cost for running snow basics over regular basics. They're necessary in a deck that cares about snow and identical to regular basics in a deck that doesn't. Therefore, a Coatl deck could just run a set of Coatls and tons of Snow-Covered Islands and Snow-Covered Forests and call it a day. However, this strategy would lose the mana fixing of shocklands. Since a normal Modern manabase only has ~6 basics, running Coatl puts a lot of pressure on the mana.
despite this because it couldn't disrupt the opponent. Merfolk runs counterspells and Spreading Seas, where Slivers just has creatures. This put Slivers in the same lane as the faster Affinity, and now means it competes with Humans.
So far, the new Slivers have all been buffers rather than disruptors. This probably means that Slivers will remain fringe. If that isn't the case, it will be because of Cloudshredder Sliver, though I'm skeptical. Haste and flying for two mana should decrease the kill turn, assuming Cloudshredder survives to attack. The ideal curve is probably turn one Aether Vial; turn 2 Vial in a one mana Sliver, cast Cloudshredder and attack for 2; turn three cast another one drop and Sinew Sliver, Vial in Predatory Sliver, and attack for 15. That could be lethal. However, any removal just kills that curve, and if that's not good, enough what is?
With part of the set spoiled, we at last have a pretty good idea of what Horzions is supposed to look like. In short, Wizards has taken to reinventing or updating older cards with contemporary text and refined flavor rather than just reprinting all-stars from Vintage and Legacy. The result is a batch of cards that generate nostalgia while providing a novel play experience. Flavor-wise, it turns out Cabal Therapist truly was a harbinger of things to come.
Morophon, the Boundless: Let's start with the card designed to help every tribe. Morophon strikes me as more of a combo card than anything else, and one destined for Commander at that. But I think we will see it poke its weird head out in Modern from time to time. Free mana is just too alluring to ignore, and the format features plenty of ways to get this down early.
Munitions Expert: On to the Goblin support. Goblin Matron is a bit pricey for Modern, 
The First Sliver: Slivers, though, are Horizons's most pushed tribe. This Sliver Queen update staples an ability to the body that's actually worth five mana, and has intriguing implications for building around; players can even fit an Ancestral Vision or two into their deck and guarantee that the next couple Slivers they cast also draw them three cards, for example. Besides, there's a relatively simple way to bust it out:
Dregscape Sliver: Besides the potential combo with The First Sliver, giving all the dead Slivers unearth makes Dregscape a heck of a comeback card. This creature mounts alpha-strikes from beyond the grave in the mid-game, so long as opponents can't remove it immediately. And if they can, Slivers still gets to reanimate one threat.
Cloudshredder Sliver: Both of those creatures pale, though, next to Cloudshredder Sliver, an update of the long-awaited Heart Sliver that tacks on the tribe's next-best creature, Galerider Sliver. Like Zombies, 
Scale Up: Let's be real—nobody's playing Wurm tribal. Scale Up is the most overt Infect support of all time. Perhaps pushing that deck is Wizards' answer to 
Scrapyard Recombiner: This one is more tentative, but I've heard players discuss it in Hardened Scales. It may have a home there as a tutor to multiple engine and payoff cards, as Modular helps forgive its steep price.
Prismatic Vista: Vista might help snow keep its head above water, and could shruggingly slot into two-color decks with plenty of basics like UW Control. But this card seems more to me like a budget consideration for players who don't want to buy the right fetches.
Canopy lands: As I see it, the Canopy lands—an enemy-colored cycle of lands with Horizon Canopy's effect—are the most important card spoiled so far. These will be run in decks across multiple archetypes, including midrange (BG Rock) and aggro-combo (Infect). While I don't expect the canopy lands to shake Modern up as a flexible answer or powerful threat might, they will have a sweeping, if subtle, effect on deck construction.
Regrowth: I imagine there's a deck in the market for Eternal Witness with little use for the body, but I sure as heck can't think of it. Regrowth may well find its way into a combo strategy down the road, though.
Genesis: Another great card without a home, Genesis may make it into fair deck sideboards as a value engine, especially alongside Faithless Looting. But there are probably better options in that role, colors depending. I'm excited to see where Genesis lands.
Flusterstorm: Move over, Force of Negation! Flusterstorm is one of the tools 
Nimble Mongoose: Speaking of thresh, here's the card that inspired me to build 
Force of Vigor: Another combo-breaker, Vigor has been noted for bailing players out of 
Goblin Engineer: This reference-packed mashup of Goblin Welder and Stoneforge Mystic is expertly-designed, setting up combos at a reasonable pace on its own or combining with the likes of Trash for Treasure to cheat fatties like Sundering Titan and Wurmcoil Engine into play early. If Engineer sees play outside of a Thopter-Sword build, where it super-tutors for the Sword, it'll be in its own deck, and I can't wait to see what that looks like.
Collected Conjuring: What exactly are we hitting with this? Serum Visions? Modern isn't exactly known for its high density of cheap, busted sorceries. At four mana, even ripping costless suspend cards like Ancestral Vision seems like more work than assembling a shell with As Foretold or Finale of Promise.
Mox Tantalite: I'm not one to dismiss nerfed moxen outright, having spent a good deal of time 
Aria of Flame: Yesterday, in an online Horizons room, my opponent stormed off as I occupied myself with other apps for a few minutes. He ended on Aria of Flame. Granted, I lost the game, failing to find a third land drop (or red source) to compliment my Arbor Elves and pair of Forests over something like six turn cycles. But with me doing nothing, it took my opponent six turns to kill me. I'll happily blame Aria. Storm doesn't need this card, and neither does anyone else.
Fire is a fairly brainless card, and once the engine gets going, the whole thing plays itself. On my end, everything became very rote and mechanical. Every turn: throw some Fire at something, get it back, none of my other cards do anything at this point so say go, repeat until the game's over. My opponents either just kept doing what they were doing (Tron, Ironworks, sometimes Spirits) or were gradually snowed under with nothing to do (Humans, the other times with Spirits). Those games proved frustrating, tedious, and boring for opponents.
Everything that I found atrocious about Fire's gameplay, he embraced. Ideally, he wants every game to be a lengthy, close, hard to win/easy to lose grind fest that taxes him mentally and physically to the limit. Which was the reality of his test matches. He says that on his end, it was like playing a combination of 3D Chess and a Rubik's Cube using 90's adventure-game logic. Winning was mind-meltingly hard, and the correct lines were non-obvious and convoluted. While it won't be majority, there will be plenty of players that would genuinely enjoy playing against Fire in Modern.
The Fire player has an untapped Grove and Fire in the graveyard. Their opponent has Extraction. The opponent can't just Extract the Fire, because in response, Grove will save it. Fire also can't just be retrieved, because there's only one Grove and one trigger. So both players enter into a standoff, trying to force an opening. The opponent is looking to force Fire to tap the Grove; Fire hopes to present a more pressing target for the Extraction. As a mental game, it is fascinating and enjoyable. However, it also tends to extend match length, since both players have to carefully and continually consider their moves and their opponent's counter moves while assessing whether to continue the dance.
Inevitability. This mode of LTV pressures opponents to deal with the walker by threatening something menacing down the road. That could be re-use of its initial mode, like Liliana of the Veil, or a game-winning ultimate, like Liliana, the Last Hope. Of course, a horde of Zombies might break a midrange slog wide-open, but decks like Storm could care less; therefore, the inevitability of a given effect varies depending on the matchup. Inevitability often takes the form of a "suspend X" effect (e.g. Ancestral Visions), wherein opponents may attack the walker to increase the suspend count.
This meant that games dragged on because Jund was rarely actually out. It could always draw another Grove or Fire and work its way back in. It was also rare for the other deck to be out, since a single Fire and Grove aren't much on their own. As a result, the games with Firey Jund took longer than the control games. I suspected this would be the case during exploratory testing, and kept track of how long each match took.
Coretapper Control
on controlled creatures. Evolve's other buggers either come down cheap and grow larger as the board develops, or create large bodies to enable the evolving threats. Undying creatures work especially well for this, including honorary Undying creature Voice of Resurgence, and especially alongside Pongify to blow them up at will and net a beefy 3/3 in the process. Following Raptor with Young Wolf and hitting Wolf with Pongify, for instance, grows Raptor to 3 power for its first attack.
The other flex spots are occupied by Flame Slash, a killer of Thing in the Ice, and a couple blue protection spells: Simic Charm and Lazotep Plating. Both of these save our threats from removal with upside. Simic's benefit is its flexibility: we can use it to soft-disrupt a combo by bouncing a creature, or to trample over an enemy blocker with Hooting Mandrills. Plating, too, is flexible, as outlined in 
As in, combo decks don't seem to have polarized the metagame, despite 
Other combo decks weren't as fortunate. I did catch 
Most striking about the new data is how familiar Modern looks. A range of archetypes continue to be present, and new tech choices keep cropping up, as they always do—this month, Kaya, Orzhov Usurper has made a name for herself, popping up in BW Tokens, Whir Prison, Abzan Rock, and Esper Control, 
A Chandra was dropped for a Jace, which was banned at the time; Sleight was nixed for Opt, which was also not legal. But the biggest addition to the deck was Electrodominance, which allows the combo to be more consistent. This introduction informs the other swaps: Leak was traded for Remand, a superior option when the combo is more reliable; with less need for Plan Bs, Bolts, Snaps, and Moons became Abrade, Flame Slash, and Tormod's Crypt, all better interactive cards for staying alive, and more copies of Greater Gargadon.
I'm optimistic about the London mulligan. We know Wizards is interested in going forward with it, or they wouldn't be taking so much testing time. This weekend's Mythic Championship is the final proving ground for the rule change. I think should the tournament's results reflect the trends explored here, or deviate minimally, there's a good chance the London is implemented. That being said, London has much higher stakes than Magic Online, and the world's best will be trying their darnedest to break the mulligan. But they 
Reversal copies an instant or sorcery, then returns the original copy to its owner's hand. As 
matter what. Reversal provides a way out of a counter war and can potentially defend against Thoughtseize. Pact of Negation will be better most of the time, but in a world where Veto is present, Reversal stands to be prime sideboard material.
and now there's a fixed version. I can't imagine Wizards would allow the two cards to coexist, since the fear of too much tutoring is very real. I was skeptical of an unban before, now I'm writing it off entirely.
Searching for non-green creatures puts Finale in competition with Chord of Calling. Chord is an instant, but it also costs one more green. However, convoke means it doesn't actually cost any more mana. Being an instant also opens the door for Restoration Angel tricks or Spellskite protection, which probably keeps Finale out of Kiki-Chord and similar decks.
There's no strategically sound reason to go that big in Modern. The clause only triggers if X is 10 or more, so it takes a minimum of 12 mana to happen. If I'm dumping twelve mana into a spell to find a huge creature, it should win the game anyway. Besides, I wouldn't cast Finale for 10GG or more in the first place. Tutoring for Ezuri, Renegade Leader or Craterhoof Behemoth accomplishes the same thing but cheaper and with trample.
Liliana's Triumph was one of the first cards spoiled from War, and got the ball rolling with a bullet; I'd heard players perk up at the idea of a Diabolic Edict reprint in Horizons, and here was a strictly better version: non-targeting and with some upside! While Triumph will be cast as plan-old Edict most of the time, its synergy with Liliana planeswalkers gives an additional buff to 8Rack and BGx. Being able to throw out Triumph during the opponent's draw step can essentially deny them a turn, much like Kolaghan's Command sometimes does.
I've long praised Destructive Revelry in Modern, and have included it in 
A card that I was initially very excited about but have since cooled on is Dovin's Veto. At first glance, the card seems amazing. For a slightly trickier mana cost, it's an uncounterable Negate. That's a huge boost for control. No more worries about Dispel or Pact of Negation winning the counter war: when Dovin says no, he means it.
However, it actually makes perfect since in context. Costing three certainly hurt, but Counterflux wasn't heavily played because of how good it actually was. It was the Last Word in a counter war and that was that. Because there was no waiting around to overwhelm the opponent with superior numbers of counters, players didn't bother trying. You should never fight battles you can't win given a choice, and Twin players chose to make Counterflux just a card rather than a mirror-breaker.
Angrath's Rampage is also a very good card despite being overshadowed. Forcing opponents to sacrifice a non-enchantment, non-land permanent of your choice is a very unique ability, and potentially very powerful. But that versatility is a ruse. The reason that edicts don't see much play in Modern is that creature and artifact decks tend to go wide, and there's often something weak or expendable. An aggro opponent will choose their weakest creature, while artifact decks will have Mox Opal or Springleaf Drum to feed the Rampage.
thopters. Given that control has a much harder time removing planeswalkers than creatures, I'd argue that Saheeli is better than Sai in context.
There's also the question of relevance. It makes sense that countering critical spells is good for control, but I'm not certain that it actually translates into wins. Modern UW Control wins 
Ultimately, this is the problem with all the new static planeswalkers. The static abilities are very relevant, but if the rest of the planeswalker isn't, what's left is a worse enchantment. Consider Teyo, the Shieldmage. At three mana, he provides the same effect as Leyline of Sanctity. Teyo always costs three mana, while Leyline is zero or four dependent on having it in your opening hand. The advantage there is unclear, but being an enchantment is a big advantage for Leyline, because it can only be removed with Assassin's Trophy or actual enchantment removal. Teyo can be Bolted or attacked. For that reason, Leyline is often game over against Burn, while I would guess that Teyo is mildly annoying at best.
As another example, consider Davriel, Rogue Shadowmage. He's been 
Liquimetal Coating. A sort of mini-Mycosynth Lattice, Coating turns enemy lands into artifacts so Karn can tick up to destroy them. It's slower and less decisive than Lattice, but we don't have to worry about finding the mana to cast it. Coating does monopolize our Karn activation, making it harder to find time for fishing out more bullets.
Crucible of Worlds. Crucible, too, is immensely powerful in the right scenario, but woefully anemic in others. Karn removes the guesswork and grants us access when we want it. Of course, the artifact's chief purpose is to rebuy Ghost Quarter so we can decimate an opponent's manabase or manlands to keep the pressure on. Still, there are some neat plays we can make with Crucible on the field, such as Quartering our own Temple and replaying that Temple from the grave to generate extra mana, or doing the same with Zhalfirin Void to net extra scry triggers. In fact, tutoring Crucible with Quarter in play guarantees that we'll make land drops up to six without needing to draw more: turn four tap out for Karn; turn five drop Crucible, Quarter our land for a wastes, play that same land; turn six play Quarter from the 'yard, slam Lattice.
Some of our tougher matchups catch a break, too. The Karn-plus-Lattice plan is extremely threatening for UW decks, which 
Our uncertainty is made worse by questions about the starting population. If Calgary's initial attendance was reported, I couldn't find it, but I would guess that it wasn't anything special. From what I understand, Calgary is not exactly a tourist mecca; it's also early spring, Calgary is quite far north, and when even those in 
Ghostly Martyr
This 
Bogles
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet, the latest cornerstone of 
Something Modern routinely comes under fire for is the high cost of its decks. Compared with many strategies the format offers, Izzet Phoenix ranks among the cheapest. Sure, the deck is $1000 now, but it wasn't a month or even a couple weeks ago; the announcements surrounding Modern Horizons, coupled with Phoenix's growing popularity, have significantly increased the price of certain Modern staples—most notably Scalding Tarn, the single most expensive card in Izzet by a mile. Add to that the fact that many players bought into Phoenix earlier than just yesterday, and lots of Modern players already own Scalding Tarns, and Phoenix becomes a very affordable option.
However, even if that does come to pass, it won't be for some time. It is critical for players to recognize the reality that Izzet Phoenix is everywhere at the big events and prepare accordingly. This may require players to 
The second, and I think more likely, probability is that perception and the nature of the events is at work. Arclight Phoenix 
Being that I'd already committed to Faithless Looting and a beefy graveyard, Grim Flayer seemed like a good fit, and would end up being the best threat in the deck. Flayer's obvious application: he's an undercosted, trampling body. Less so: dumping Arclight Phoenix and flash-backing Lootings for random plusses; growing Tarmogoyf. Perks that only hit home after a few days of experimentation: preventing us from ever again drawing Leyline of the Void; setting up killer Arclight Phoenix turns by stacking Manamorphose into one-drop. Flayer just does everything we want our creatures to do. It even operates passably under heavy-duty grave-hate, sifting past the dead stuff (Traverse, Tarmogoyf) and finding the heavy-hitters.
We've mentioned the Pushes already, but another card in large numbers here is Alpine Moon. Tron continues to pose a problem for this sort of deck despite our supposed speed, and the Moons round out that matchup.
Still, other players are opting for more direct approaches. Most of the UW players in the sample picked up on Phoenix's vulnerabilities and have Settle the Wreckage and Celestial Purge to complement Path to Exile. Exile solves recursion, and Settle's better than Supreme Verdict in a recursive world. There's also the option to think laterally: 
The deck reminds me most of the Heartbeat of Spring 
Wilderness Reclamation. The deck borrows heavily from the Turbo Fog archetype, most commonly represented in Modern by Taking Turns, by making use of flexible Amonkhet sleeper Haze of Pollen.
though, which makes churning through the deck significantly more difficult than it was with Ironworks, a deck that had a very low fail rate once it got going. All the digging in Anvil leads to setting up a combo with Grinding Station and decking opponents out, or re-casting Pyrite Spellbomb with Myr Retriever.
With all that mana, Node starts dumping large artifacts into play, including Wurmcoil Engine and Platinum Angel. The maxed-out Kuldotha Forgemaster searches out the best one in a given matchup, should it resolve and activate—Lightning Greaves, a card 
First up is the Lady Serra. It's interesting that Horizons is bringing back characters from Magic's deep past. Pure speculation suggests that there will be plenty of other throwbacks for the lore-junkies and dinosaurs. While I certainly appreciate references and throwback designs, I hope this isn't another Time Spiral in that only lore-junkies and dinosaurs appreciate the effort.
it's a great piece of surprise sideboard tech, but becomes a liability once the word is out. For example, when Burn remembers to pack the Destructive Revelry or Wear // Tear, they can just ignore the lock and win once an opening is found.
Then there's what Mark Rosewater has said so far, indicating that while this set may be designed for a more powerful format, it's keeping to Standard norms. He 
Actual comments by Matt Nass and Cassius Marsh as they pored over Cabal Therapist:
Cabal Therapist is too slow to disrupt opponents before their gameplan comes online and shockingly easy to interact with: one benefit of sorcery-typed discard spells is that they can't be countered by Fatal Push; another is that they don't have suspend 1. To benefit from the original Cabal Therapy's multiple casts, players must wait multiple turns and spend their precious early-game mana deploying creatures they will sacrifice the next turn. In a format 
As far as reprints go, Wizards probably had a few goals in mind. For one, they wanted to create a memorable draft experience with Modern Horizons. Some cards may appear as a result of their popularity or associated nostalgia—think Man-o-War or Sea Drake. Others may be included to enhance the Modern experience by adding new dimensions to its gameplay. This is the area that has most Modern players excited for reprints, as many have pined after Eternal-legal staples for years. It's also the area we'll focus on in this section, as I think a couple of paths could alter the format in a way players end up disappointed with.
While Force of Will is 
Less-warping answers would make ideal reprint targets, especially if those answers only fit into specific decks or ones with stringent requirements, such as Daze, Flusterstorm, and Innocent Blood. Utility creatures and floodgates make for interesting possibilities; take Containment Priest, Sanctum Prelate, or Back to Basics. In other words, more great stuff like Damping Sphere.
My biggest hope for Horizons is that it gives Modern players the tools they need to bring their brews to the next level when it comes to fighting off 
Third is consistency. A deck needs to deliberately do its thing in most games. Every deck has a god-hand; every deck has auto-mulligans. But the average hand will still do the thing that the deck is supposed to do, even if not very well. If a deck doesn't do anything unless specific circumstances are met, it won't remain Tier 1.
Pyromancer has several problems that contributed to its downfall. The first and most important was the deck was just clunky and slow. It was very good at disrupting the opponent, especially creature decks. Mardu is the wedge with the most creature removal and hand disruption. The problem was actually turning it into a win. Other than the eponymous Young Pyromancer, it doesn't have threats that really stand on their own and can take advantage of all the disruption. There were a lot of games where my opponent won the attrition war, and then did nothing for the rest of the game, allowing me to come back and win.
This doesn't mean that it cannot win, just that I wouldn't expect it to happen. Anything can win, and never count out the ability of an 
Sideboard: 2 Anger of the Gods and 1 Crackling Drake replaced by Spite of Mogis, Spell Pierce, and a third Abrade. Ah, here's that third Abrade! I hold that the Crackling plan is awesome in this deck, but 4 in the 75 were just too many. I'd sometimes clog on them while setting up a gameplan and have been happy on 3. At first I tried another Vendilion Clique in the extra spot, but ended up settling on Spell Pierce, a card I want as many of as possible in many matchups. This Spite was also Slash at first.
On its face, this rule is designed to smooth out openers even more than "scry 1," letting more players play more satisfying games of Magic. In Modern, it also plays to the idea of diversity. We've seen decks enter the format after receiving a critical redundant piece from a newly-released set: 
Frenzy vies for precedence over Affinity's other colored spell options, which include Master of Etherium and Thoughtcast. It's closest in role to the latter. In a format always interested in accessing powerful hate cards post-board, I like Frenzy's promise to tear through the deck once players untap with it.
plan. This deck is all about putting huge creatures into play really fast, and it runs the three beefiest free guys in Modern.
single nonland card gets pointed at the opponent's face. This gives it considerable game in any situation, and ensures it is always relevant.
This idea of refining tastes is one we'll continue touching on throughout this article, as it pertains to every topic herein. As it relates to PTW, though, "knowing thyself" in this way—or, deliberately choosing the Path of the Scrub—may actually prove more competitively sound than Sirlin would have us think. Letting preferences get in the way of the "correct" choice, he argues, counteracts the goal of winning. But what if, without the ensuing enjoyment, playing the game at all became unsustainable? What if playing a worse deck for a given metagame keeps players stimulated enough that they stick around and amass the reps necessary to succeed in Modern? These exceptions to Sirlin's rule explain what BBD means by the title of his article; fun is in fact paramount to competitive success so long as it incentivizes players to continue playing.
A younger version of myself also oops-I-moralized. In "
I, too, am impressed with and grateful for the work Wizards puts into making the game function smoothly. I feel that goes without saying; after all, I play Magic, and therefore consume Wizards’s product—my very participation in that cycle endorses the company’s efforts. I nonetheless disagree with some of their calls.
Of course, deliberately not paying for Pact with the intention of first seeing one's draw is cheating. But whether a player cheated or not is rendered ambiguous by this ruling, the decision in practice coming down not to what we know happened in-game, but to the capricious opinion of a judge. BBD argues that cases like these are inevitable in a game as dense as Magic, and there's nothing judges or the rules committee can do about their occurrence. He instead appeals to ethics, placing the onus on the player (in this case, himself), 
I'd argue that rules changes like the Pact one actually exacerbate this issue. I now have to worry about opponents exploiting a newly-ambiguous rule rather than knowing they will be held accountable for their mistakes. Ambiguous rules enable cheating. The more ambiguity we can eliminate in the rules, the less place ethics must hold in making Magic sustainable to play at high levels.
a marked drop in event attendance—Wizards is bound (inasmuch as "
Mage is such an insane card that it seemed like a no-brainer. The tempo swing is enormous and devastating in many matchups. Being unable to replay the creature for a full turn is often lethal in race situations, and a 2/3 is decent on both offense and defense. Being a Human just supercharges its power and playability.
Unlike 
Thalia makes Opal cost one more. Ancient Grudge blows it up. Stony Silence turns it off. But all those cards cost two mana! There is no meaningful way to interact with the mana acceleration provided by Opal in the very early game, which is when it comes online.
Landing Swordtooth on turn three and dropping an extra land helps ensure five mana a turn early, meaning even if the Dinosaur eats a removal spell on-sight, Through the Breach can resolve and wrap things up with Primeval Titan (Amulet of Vigor required) or Emrakul, the Aeons Torn (Amulet optional). The set of Breaches make Summoner's Pact all the more deadly, as granting Titan haste really does act like Time Walk in a deck whose interactions snowball so much during the combat step.
There is some precedent for unbanning Stoneforge Mystic on the grounds that its power level is now appropriate for Modern. This justification was used for 
artifact hate in Modern.
And that brings us to Trawler. If Ironworks is a busted deck, why not just ban Ironworks itself? Again, we can look for precedent—Wizards does not like to forcibly remove decks from Modern. They always seek to water them down so that they can continue to compete without dominating. Successful examples of this kind of ban can be found in Dredge, Amulet, and Infect; a notoriously unsuccessful example is Splinter Twin. But no matter the result, Wizards' aims have been made abundantly clear by their banlist announcements, with the company sometimes 
I will be focusing on Repudiate // Replicate for this section, but I have the same arguments for Modern prospects Incubation // Incongruity and Revival // Revenge. These are spells with decent effects and very attractive flexibility defeated by 
The only thing Repudiate has over Trickbind is that it could be played in mono-green decks. However, why would any deck want to? The effect is niche at best. 
The next card is a creature with multiple problems. Gruul Spellbreaker looks so close to making it in Modern. Being a three mana 3/3 with haste or a 4/4 without is close to playable in the right deck or with the right abilities, as demonstrated by Mantis Rider and Loxodon Smiter. But therein lies the problem. Spellbreaker's other abilities aren't relevant enough in Modern, and even if they were, the right deck for it is the wrong deck for Modern.
Finally, there's the newest broken-card-with-legs, Prime Speaker Vannifar. Time Spiral's Magus cycle of Vintage-cards-on-legs are Vannifar's direct ancestors. While Magus of the Moon and Magus of the Tabernacle have seen play, the Magi with activation costs (like Vannifar) have had no real impact in the format.
Being fetchable is no small thing, and neither is the manaless activation. However, the problem of being a creature still hangs on Vannifar; while I'm sure she'll see play in Modern, her true home 
Chording for Vannifar with the intention of going off after untapping would be a sound plan if it could be defended. However, that Chord requires seven mana, and while it's possible with two Birds of Paradise and a Wall of Roots on turn three, it doesn't leave any mana open to protect the Chord or the Vannifar. 
- The deck that wants this card does not exist because there aren't enough cheap multicolored spells to emulate Young Pyromancer. I'd like this not to be the case because the greater flexibility is very appealing.
I ended up settling on Grim Lavamancer. The four Scours ensure a constant stream of cards entering the graveyard, allowing Lavamancer to totally dominate the small creature matchups Delver has long splashed sideboard sweepers to beat. Its floor is much higher than Goyf's, for instance, as a one-mana 1/1 considerably trumps an off-color, two-mana 0/1. Finally, Lavamancer makes up for his lack of offensive power by letting us run 4 Wizard's Lightning comfortably. The instant adds oomph to our Bolt-Snap-Bolt plan and gives us additional ways to power through board-invalidating tech like Ensnaring Bridge and Terminus.
I rebuilt the deck from scratch in another five minutes, landing on a list almost identical to the UR Lavamancer one. In place of Wizard's Lightning, I added a smattering of random instants and sorceries that underperformed during initial tests. Then, I realized another of Pteramander's components: it's blue! That means the creature helps enable Disrupting Shoal, which I have again been pining after in this metagame of blazing-fast kills created by cheap spells. Shoal also does a fine job of protecting Pteramander from the likes of Fatal Push: at the stage of the game where Pteramander "flips," it's often trivial to hold up hard-Shoal mana, and Cancel is as strong as ever with a beater on the table.
Leaping Forward
garbage to not be keepable, because the reward for keeping is starting the game scrying three cards deep. That's deep enough that whatever that opening hand was missing will almost certainly be found, or at least make finding it plausible in a draw step or two. Good hands suddenly move towards ideal. In formats where opening turns matter as much as Modern, Sphinx could be broken.
Failing to open with Sphinx means that it can only be a 4/4 for four with flying. That's not a Modern-acceptable rate. Obstinate Baloth sees play because of its abilities rather than stats, and frankly there aren't a lot of four mana cards 
The other interesting revelation is that Wizards appears to want Aristocrats to come back. For those who weren't playing last time we visited Ravnica, Artistocrats was a Mardu deck that used token makers as resources to feed sacrifice outlets, primarily Cartel Aristocrat and Falkenrath Aristocrat. That deck 
In essence, Aristocrats cheats on mana by having cheap creatures and tokens serve as fodder for bigger effects. What is lost in individual power is made up with volume, with each card effectively acting like several. However, the effects haven't been big enough to actually make it, and in Modern, the combo cards are more easily answered by discard and permission than in Standard.
It would appear that Wizards also likes Aristocrats, because Allegiance is full of cards that appear perfect for the deck. The Orzhov mechanic afterlife creates 1/1 Spirit tokens when creatures die, which is what fueled the original Aristocrat decks. We've also (as of this writing) seen Aristocrats-specific payoff cards, namely Judith, the Scourge Diva and Teysa Karlov. Judith provides an additional benefit to sacrificing cards (though not tokens) and then boosts said tokens' power. Teysa makes additional tokens each sacrifice, and makes those tokens more useful. Given that we're just starting spoiler season, it feels like there may be a real chance that Aristocrats will finally be able to stand out.
Questions linger, however. The payoff cards aren't the most Modern-worthy stats wise, and are only good when actually synergizing with the engine. The old vulnerability to Rest in Peace is still there. There's also the problem that so far, the afterlife cards are still not very good. I know Tithe Taker has been looked at, but even if its ability were more relevant, trading the card for one token isn't a great deal.
Pyromancer was great 
The first ability is very weak compared to Teeg's. Stopping noncreature spells of four or more mana will hit all the same cards as Livinia, but there's no escape clause; Tron could play enough lands to drop Karn Liberated against Lavinia (assuming they're still alive) but not Teeg. Buying time is valuable, but Teeg does far more. In fact, he's so much more versatile that I can't imagine why you'd sideboard Lavinia over him.
By now, Traverse Shadow has decisively been reigned in. The deck's emphasis on micro-synergies makes it vulnerable to hosers that invalidate those synergies, especially graveyard hate like Rest in Peace and Nihil Spellbomb, despite that same focus generating a terrifying deck when left unchecked.
"Random," like all descriptors, can only exist in relation to its environment. And the opposite of random is consistent. So where does Hollow One sit on the random-consistent spectrum? Despite the literal presence of the word "random" in the rules text of archetype staples Burning Inquiry and Goblin Lore, I'd argue that the strategy is among Modern's most consistent, or least random, gameplans—and that its success in the format supports this theorem.
Running Stage isn't totally free, though; doing so requires some deckbuilding compromises to accommodate spectacle reliably. The direction I took involved maxing out on aggressive one-drops. These creatures start swinging out of the gate: Flameblade Adept has menace, ensuring a poke should it survive, and Monastery Swiftspear hits the turn it's cast to set up spectacle on the go. Both creatures hit like a ton of bricks for their cost, assuming a deck construction that keeps both in mind.
more copies necessitated an 18th land, which I oppose in this explosiveness-aligned build. Reveler in particular has some light tension with Stage in the early-game, where it's a dead exile like Phoenix.
Speaking of Modern Nexus banlist testing, David recently 
Those Who Must Not Be Named
with Digs in hand against a blazing-fast start from one of Modern's many aggro-combo strategies. And what decks would play it? UW Control, which is now falling out of favor?
We're mostly a red Eldrazi deck, so our white sources are limited. I'd add more if we had better options available (Battlefield Forge 5-8), and may trim a Mutavault for the fourth Sacred Foundry. Vault is the best utility land (besides Zhalfirin Void) in Colorless Eldrazi Stompy 
The main thing I noticed during the tournament was how decks are changing. The UWx lists were all running more creatures main than has been the norm; toward the end, the X-1 lists were all running a heavy Angel theme, though I don't know if it was main or sideboard. Given everything I said about observed shifts 
Frequently, a deck's velocity 
The fact that I'm running Remorseful Cleric maindeck is certainly a factor, but I'm doing well in matches where I never see Cleric. I've come to theorize that this difference is because I attack the enablers, and not the payoffs.
Ravenous Trap and Grafdigger's Cage come in as additional Dredge hate
to set up an explosive turn two with Heritage Druid. It just felt inefficient as a ramp trick.
Gemstone Caverns #3 also moved main to make room for another Spatial Contortion, a hedge against Humans and Spirits. It usurped the second Scavenger Grounds main, which I feel is too slow to reliably hose contemporary graveyard decks without Simian Spirit Guide or a fast Thought-Knot Seer as backup. Grounds is better against fair decks as a way to nerf Tarmogoyf, complicate Snapcaster Mage plays, or recur Eternal Scourge.
Game 3, W (Play; P 7 – M 6): I keep a seven with three Temples, Seer, and Reshaper, and soon draw a second Reshaper. My turn one Temple is chased by a second Temple and the Seer, which sees a bunch of lands and exiles Summoner's Pact. Next turn, I cast two Reshapers, and my opponent concedes when I attack him for 10.
Sideboarding:
Game 2, W (Draw): My opponent leads with Hierarch, and I respond with Temple, Mimic. He drops another Hierarch and an Inkmoth Nexus. I swing and hold up removal, but end up letting through 4 Poison in the air. I fail to make a third land drop, swing, and pass again. He boots up the Inkmoth and casts Might of Old Krosa in the main phase. I respond with Spatial Contortion, which meets Blossoming Defense. Spirit Guide exiles for R and I Dismember it, winning the counter-war; my opponent hits for 2 with Hierarch and passes. I cast Reshaper and beat my opponent to death with that and a Mutavault, finally making my third land drop on turn six or so.
The matchup was decided by Oblivion Stone and Ugin. Popping a single Stone wasn't always enough to stabilize thanks to all the tutors in Elves, but buying the space to cantrip into Ugin was still great. However, if Elves got in a strong enough hit before Ugin, it was far easier for the test deck to still win by tutoring for Shaman of the Pack. Grafdigger's Cage and Damping Sphere weren't major factors because both decks brought in artifact destruction and could just work through the hate naturally.
When the ban was announced, I and some other Modern devotees 
For its part, Dredge has adapted slightly to circumvent the hate. The major innovation we've seen in the last week has been its re-adoption of Golgari Thug, an additional heavy dredger. This inclusion makes the deck more resilient to targeting hate like Surgical Extraction, which can otherwise neuter its dredging abilities.
retrieve. At the time, Miracles won either through concession, Jace, or a single Entreat the Angels. The eventual solution was to become more aggressive by following Terminus with Monastery Mentor and winning before Goblins rebuilt.
new releases, but if I was going to change the sideboard, I figured I might as well alter the maindeck, too. I was also keeping a closer watch on the data this time so nothing surprised me again.
Strategic curving follows the same principle, but deals with limitations placed on cards other than their mana cost. Take, for instance, Thing in the Ice and Pyromancer's Ascension. These cards occupy the same notch on the strategic curve: pilots need to deploy them early and power them up with instants and sorceries cast after the fact. Until "turned on," the cards do nothing; if bounced or drawn late, they rot on the battlefield. Running full sets of both cards helps ensure players have one to cast on turn two, but also locks players into that slot on the strategic curve.
Creeping Chill is good in Dredge primarily because it provides uncounterable reach. Flipping Chill doesn't cast a spell, but rather triggers an ability. This means Dredge can "burn" out control decks through permission when Conflagrate would be useless. Because Chill is a drain effect, it's also useful against aggressive decks. Humans can be quite tough for Dredge because Meddling Mage shuts off Conflagrate as Thalia's Lieutenant grows the team past Prized Amalgam. Chill allows Dredge to get in some chip shots and buy time to find enough Bloodghasts and Amalgams to force through lethal.
However, on its own, Chill is meaningless. Decks must handle their life total carelessly to lose to 12 damage. Chill reinforces Dredge's linear graveyard strategy without actually changing anything.
There's also the classic playing-around-sweepers strategy. Holding extra creatures to rebuild the board after Wrath of God is a tried-and-true technique. However, it's extremely contextual. The trick is to use enough resources to force control's hand by actually threatening a kill. A common strategy is to use enough cards to put control dead on board, with leeway for a removal spell, and then hold back. Should control hit Terminus, aggro should be able to threaten lethal the turn afterwards. For this reason, counterspells and the aggro-control archetype have a 
Esper and Jeskai Control often have the advantage against UW because they can use discard and burn respectively to dictate the flow of the game. In the former match, the game becomes about card advantage, as Esper's discard either strips relevant cards from UW or clears the road to resolve its own spells, forcing UW to find the right answers or die. In the latter, life total matters, since Jeskai is able to gradually whittle down UW with burn spells. The onus is on UW to either change the field of battle or win first.
There's a prevailing idea in the Modern community that the format's counterspells are bad to the point of being unplayable. This argument is at last losing traction a bit now that UWx has risen to Tier 1 status, but the notion that Counterspell isn't only safe for Modern, but underpowered for the format, continues to reverberate around the game stores and online forums I frequent. Granted, Counterspellwouldn't magically solve the problems permission decks face. It's true that Modern permission isn't as powerful or as prevalent as it is in eternal formats, but it's far from weak—I'd venture that if anything, it's just balanced.
Another huge draw to midrange is its reliability. With their high land count, compact but streamlined threat suite, and similarly uniform disruption numbers, BGx decks are very good at executing their primary plan every game. Of course, that plan might not line up so well against some decks, and critically against the nut-draw from less consistent strategies. But it does perform adequately against many.
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something to cut, while Ondrej just thinks it's bad. And true, Rattlechains isn't very impressive in terms of stats; rather, it shines given the context, and I'd argue that this metagame is friendly to Chains. Against Jeskai, it's Spirits's best card, since that matchup revolves around two-for-ones. Even when that isn't the case, Rattlechains is powerful because it's a flash creature that makes more flash creatures, allowing the deck to play at instant speed.
Ratchet Bomb was once a card I once hated siding in against Burn, but had to for lack of something else to replace Copter and Dismember. That was before Ensnaring Bridge took off as a common tech for Burn decks against large creatures. We cannot beat a resolved Bridge except in niche scenarios, such as when opponents do have cards in hand and are at a low enough life total for manlands to tie things up. Even with Chalices on 1 and 2, Burn can take the game with Rift Bolt, Exquisite Firecraft, and Risk Factor should they have enough time to draw those cards. Bomb teams up with Thought-Knot Seer to prevent Burn opponents from cheesing wins. It also has the pleasant upside of killing a creature or two sometimes.
Burn can have a few different strategies after siding. For starters, the deck's colors can vary. Builds with green have a potent answer to Chalice of the Void in Destructive Revelry. If opponents search Stomping Ground in their first two land drops, they probably have Revelry in hand, and are also probably light on lands—otherwise, they'd wait to reveal the green until later. By fetching it fast, they're opening themselves up to Ghost Quarter cutting them off the color for good, although most Burn pilots don't recognize that we have access to this play.
Other tricks Burn can have up its sleeve include Searing Blood, which hassles Scourge and Mimic but thankfully isn't a very popular side-in from Burn players. Same deal with Grim Lavamancer. There's also Deflecting Palm, which makes Smasher scary for everyone and incentivizes us to peek with Seer before committing to big attacks into untapped Inspiring Vantages. Path to Exile is a card we're sure to see in game 2, but we can use it to our advantage by leading with Reshaper and Seer and making the most out of the extra land. Finally, Burn with Risk Factor has experienced 
That being said, between Viridian Corrupter and Dissenter's Deliverance, Infect actually has a number of mainboard ways to remove Chalice of the Void. Granted, that number is small (about two copies per deck), and a turn-one Chalice will slow the deck to a crawl regardless. But it's not utterly cold to the artifact, especially if the deck manages to plant an infecter or two first.
They don't always run it, but Infect's scariest card is Wild Defiance. Defiance turns off most of our removal spells and allows Infect to deal 10 in one attack much more easily, and while the deck is more strapped for cards. Fortunately, our board plan shifts Colorless dramatically.
Despite this, I actually expect Knight to see limited play. Its problem are the creature type and the cost. Dryads and Knights don't have any real tribal synergies at all, while Sage does; Elves doesn't have a reason to switch. Costing white and green means Autumn is far less splashable than Finks; Kitchen Finks can be played in mono-white or green, while Autumn must go in a two-color deck.
Against UW Control, Emmara is an army unto herself, and a priority removal target. UW Control 
without Vial, it proved easy to fall behind. D&T is also very weak to decks that can go wide and tall, which is a Humans specialty. Since then, Humans has adopted Izzet Staticaster, which wrecks the low-toughness creatures in Taxes. One available solution is to sideboard into a white control deck, but Humans is built to pick apart slower decks, so the matchup is just tough.
Inquiry against its controller with Smiters and Lieges. There's also the statistically implausible chance that we discard all three Lieges, there's no opposing Hollow One, and we crash in for 24 damage on turn one!
Version 2
The sideboard, too, is a work-in-progress. Lately, I'm wondering if Huntmaster of the Fells and Magus of the Moon can be cut. The former seems a little redundant as a bullet—if we've stabilized the board, won't Tireless Tracker or Smasher put the game away, even against small creature decks? As for the latter, are there decks besides Tron it's there for? If not, I'd rather have a third Damping Sphere.
The rest of the sideboard feels great. Dire Fleet Daredevil 
Bomat Courier is an incredibly powerful card and has certainly demonstrated that in Standard. It presents pressure in the form of inevitable card advantage that must be dealt with, all at the low cost of one mana. Despite its efficiency, the deckbuilding constraints Bomat Courier puts on a deck are fairly significant. To cash in on the card advantage machine, you need to have few, preferably zero cards in hand. The type of deck that wants this card will be emptying its hand quickly to prepare to reload. Not many decks can or are actively looking to do that, but the ones that do will be happy to have it.
Erayo, Soratami Ascendent may fit more under the category of pet card rather than secretly powerful card in Modern. Part of me just really wants this card to work, but I should still try to honestly evaluate this card. When looking at the power of a card, It is important to weigh the setup cost against the payoffs. If the payoff does not overcome the amount of setup required, then the card is not worth playing. If it feels like you are having to do too much to make a card work, than you almost certainly are.
Utopia Sprawl is a unique ramp spell in Modern. It is a one-mana ramp spell that is not a creature. If you want that type of effect in Modern, typically you would have to play Noble Hierarch or Birds of Paradise. Unlike those staple mana dorks, Utopia Sprawl isn't vulnerable to removal spells, which makes it more reliable. We've seen a little bit of Utopia Sprawl in Modern in decks like Ponza or Green Devotion, but I think it could easily spawn other archetypes.
Mausoleum Secrets is a bit of a bold prediction. This card could very easily never see play in Modern. It is a two-mana tutor though, and that is very exciting. Modern does not have many tutors on the cheap. Traverse the Ulvenwald requires too much setup to reliably be used in a combo deck. Time of Need is a bit too narrow to be effective. Summoner's Pact has been the most impactful in Modern, seeing play in Amulet Titan and Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle strategies. Mausoleum Secrets might fall into one of these categories, but I can’t really be sure without playing with it.
Not only is the strategy overall awkward, it is fragile too. One or two discard spells or any graveyard hate is often enough. All of that aside, Goryo's Vengeance on Griselbrand is a powerful combination that leads to a number of turn-two kills.
A customer needs a wooden table and chairs constructed from a pile of lumber. They have the option of using an automated assembly line or handing the wood off to a craftsman. The assembly line produces the exact same dining set every time. It is not particularly interesting to look at, but it is perfectly serviceable and built to last. The craftsman will produce a set equivalent to their skill, which the customer cannot measure. A master craftsman will produce a set of greater quality and beauty than a machine ever could; an average one will equal the mass produced set; a bad one will make a set worth less than the starting lumber. The lesson then argued that because most humans are risk averse, they would choose the mass produced product, all else being equal.
One component I've heard the new wave of Big Red players talk up is Rampaging Ferocidon. JOHOSO's only got a single copy in the sideboard, but the Dinosaur still makes an appearance in his decklist. Apparently, its combination of life-taxing abilities is quite potent in a shell that already draws Bolts away from such curve-toppers.
One apparent allure of the Rites plan is extracting more value from Faithless Looting. With all those juicy cards to discard, the draw spell has less of a drawback in matchups where card advantage actually matters, such as in midrange mirrors. With that being said, the cost of including this package includes trimming Bedlam Reveler, another card that dominates mirrors while taking advantage of Looting's drawback. And Modern's premier control deck, UW, is known for its many Path to Exiles, which trade off with a Rites target much more evenly than they do with a Reveler.
Seeing the impact of Ancient Stirrings in this context makes me want to look at some of the other card selection spells in Modern. Perhaps some of the two-mana ones that dig five cards deep are more playable than currently believed. Maybe cards like Peer Through Depths, Grisly Salvage, or Commune with the Gods are secretly great. The last two even have the side benefit of filling the graveyard.
However, there are a number of spells with Modern-playable effects that have surveil. Were Preordain legal I'm certain every blue deck would play a full set, so Discovery is plausibly playable. The question is whether surveil's extra power warrants the additional cost.
That doesn't necessarily mean that they should. As noted, surveil cards cost about a mana more than their non-surveil counterparts. The 
The only deck I know of that fits this description is 
Pelt Collector: While it's not by any means a top-performing deck, Mono-Green Stompy does have its Beliebers, and surely welcomes Pelt Collector to its ranks. The card's "dies" clause makes it an apparent upgrade to Experiment One, although Pelt does lose regenerate. What I think is likely to happen is Stompy begins running both creatures to increase its aggressiveness and gain the redundancy of multiple functional copies of Champion of the Parish.
Creeping Chill: I've heard musings about this card in Dredge, and while I was initially skeptical, I am starting to come around on the idea. The deck can struggle against proactive aggro strategies like Humans and Spirits, and milling Creeping Chill might sometimes buy Dredge the extra turn it needs to get Conflagrateonline. Chill also makes Conflagrate lethal faster. 4 Chill equates to 12 points of damage lurking within the Dredge deck, perhaps incentivizing opponents to play differently against the deck when at low life totals. But of course, it's an awful draw. I do think the card is better-suited to the sideboard.
Chemister's Insight: Glimmer of Genius was run by control decks for awhile as an instant-speed way to restock on cards. Chemister's Insight seems much better thanks to jump-start. Now, control mages can draw two twice at the low cost of a superfluous fetchland land or other unwanted card. But another card was printed between Glimmer and Insight that may prevent the latter from truly shining in Modern: Hieroglyphic Illumination. Cycling lets this draw spell dig for answers when mana is tight, even bypassing checks like Thalia, Guardian of Thraben. I expect Insight to be more popular in control-heavy metagames such as the current one, but Illumination to remain the favorite in this slot over longer stretches of time. Modern is simply too wide-open to discount the aggro-combo decks outright.
Knight of Autumn: This creature gets my vote for most playable Guilds card other than Assassin's Trophy. Reclamation Sage is already a Modern staple, and Knight of Autumn is leagues more versatile. Sage so popular in part because it's never dead; at worst, it's a 2/1. Knight more than doubles those stats at 4/3, and has the added versatility of being able to gain a whopping 4 life should pilots choose. These benefits come at the cost of Sage's eminently splashable price tag; it's much harder to run Knight in Valakut decks, for instance, and the newcomer is a less reliable answer to Blood Moon out of something like Amulet Titan. But plenty of Sage-featuring 75s can cast Knight, and will probably be looking to trim copies of Sage and Qasali Pridemage to make room for the creature. Another exciting factor: Knight is totally acceptable off a Collected Company, making it a potential mainboard inclusion in those decks.
Crackling Drake: Huge creatures in Modern all have their drawbacks. Some are soft to artifact removal, like Hollow One. Others open pilots up to certain plans from across the table, such as Death's Shadow. And many rely on the graveyard, including Tarmogoyf, Gurmag Angler, and Bedlam Reveler. This final category tends to be the best-performing overall, since filling the graveyard is a given in a fast format full of fetchlands.
Mission Briefing: A huge draw to Snapcaster Mage is the body. Snap can chump an attacker, trade with a smaller body in combat, psuedo-haste attack a planeswalker, or put a clock on opponents. That body seems far better than surveil 2, no matter how "good" surveil 2 is (and it's way nicer than scry 2). Mission Briefing also has a prohibitive cost. With all that said, I still wouldn't count Briefing out completely; there may yet be a Modern deck that doesn't care so much about a body but still wants to flash back its crucial spells. Briefing can also be cast in desperation, like Snapcaster; it surveils before targeting, giving pilots the option to play instant/sorcery spells off the top of the deck. Oh, did I say targeting? The word "choose" actually allows pilots to get around hate like Surgical Extraction when casting Briefing.
Ionize: Of the three-mana counterspells in Modern, Counterflux and Disallow have seen play in Modern. Ionize may compete with those by giving UR decks a Countersquall of sorts that hits anything. With Snapcaster, the instant produces an impressive 4 damage. I can see Jeskai potentially adopting Ionize.
Nullhide Ferox: Cute design, cuter art. I know people who have tried Dodecapod in Delver shells out of the sideboard to combat BGx (
Goblin Cratermaker: This little guy offers a surprising amount of versatility, threatening Eldrazi creatures and Tron's haymaker planeswalkers all at once, not to mention artifact lock pieces like Chalice of the Void and Ensnaring Bridge or game-enders such as Krark-Clan Ironworks and Cranial Plating. Hitting utility creatures is also a nice touch, giving players the option of disrupting combos and quelling aggression. But I can't think of a deck that would ever want it in the mainboard, and superior artifact hate exists in red for the sideboard.
Maximize Velocity: Jump-start gives players the opportunity to haste their guys twice, and simply having Velocity in the graveyard might make opponents respect it by holding back attackers. It's probably best in an aggro-combo shell like BR Kiln Fiend. These decks tend to run Faithless Looting for consistency reasons anyway, making Velocity essentially free in terms of card economy. Arclight Phoenix, despite 
Beacon Bolt: URx decks lacking black or white have long struggled to remove big creatures. My experiments with Spite of Mogis as a solution to this problem once payed off 
Risk Factor: Browbeat is not a playable Modern card. True! By now, a natural aversion to punisher mechanics is common among Magic players. After all, opponents will choose the lesser evil. But Vexing Devil 
We almost always want to resolve a delve threat in the first few turns of the game, something that's quite feasible. With that out of the way, we own the battlefield until the creature is removed, generally by Path to Exile or Assassin's Trophy. These spells ramp us into Crackling Drake. Once we enter that stage in the game, we're basically chaining Drakes into each other for value until opponents can't remove one and die to it in one or two swings.
My overall approach to building with Trophy is to play efficient threats and ways to recoup the card disadvantage inherent to the card. Cards like Tarmogoyf and Tasigur, the Golden Fang are good at presenting a big clock on the cheap, while Tireless Tracker and Dark Confidant are powerful ways of generating card advantage. Tasigur in particular is going to be key to the deck. It is both a cheap threat and a way of generating card advantage—hence why I am playing it over Gurmag Angler.
Winners in the Assassin's Trophy metagame include decks that are good at grinding, and spell-based combo decks that are resilient against the kill-any-permanent spell. If I wanted to play a fair deck, I would look towards something like Mardu Pyromancer as it has a powerful late-game engine to outgrind BGx decks. As for combo, I would consider Storm or Ad Nauseam. A pile of kill spells does not really interact well with the stack, and Storm is resilient enough to beat a couple hand disruption spells. Ad Nauseam is one of my favorite decks in Modern, so I may be a bit biased on this one. Traditionally Thoughtseize is pretty good against a deck trying to assemble two specific cards in hand, but without a clock to back it up sometimes it is not enough. That said, if Humans continues to take up a significant portion of the metagame, I cannot recommend anyone play this deck.
incomprehensible as that sounds to me. On the other, less rational hand, the venue is in a somewhat odd and isolated place for western Denver. It's in the middle of a residential area quite far from major roads, which could make it difficult for non-local players to make the trip. I live relatively close by, so I wouldn't know.
Round 3 is against Humans. It's also the same Humans player I seem to keep hitting from 
The sideboard is built to do three things: address problematic matchups, take advantage of ramp from opposing Path to Exiles and Assassin's Trophies, and sidestep graveyard hate with alternate win conditions.
Counters Company and GW Valuetown, GR Eldrazi, UW Control, Jeskai Control, Jund, and myself. I'm paired against one of the hybrid decks for the quarterfinals; game 1 he draws the Valuetown part of his deck and I win easily. Game 2 he has a turn three Sigarda, Host of Herons with Gavony Township, and I am too far behind to catch up. He also has Worship, but honestly it wasn't going to matter. For game 3 he goes has the combo part of his deck and that kills me.
More impressive is the pilot's inclusion of 4 Blightning. Here's a card that was once a staple in Jund... 
Evaluating The Antiquities War is fairly nuanced and relies on two assumptions. It must be castable, and it must reliably win you the game in a reasonable time frame.
The difference in power level between making a large Construct and looking at the top five for an artifact are much closer than they would seem. Making a Construct is immediate and somewhat comparable to casting Master of Etherium. It is consistent at what it does, and will always put a lot of pressure on unfair decks. War’s first two chapters will not consistently put on that same amount of pressure, but it digs ten cards deep to find a Cranial Plating or Arcbound Ravager, which will often threaten to kill the opponent. I would give a slight advantage to Karn’s -2, but it is fairly close.
All that being said, the deck has gained some serious tools over the past year. While their only hope was once to string together 20 damage in reach, Search for Azcanta and Teferi, Hero of Dominaria give Jeskai mainboard ways to successfully grind us out. To maintain our lead in the matchup, we need to play with these two cards in mind. The simplest way is by hiding our answer cards in hand until the right time: Ghost Quarter to pop a transformed Search and Reality Smasher to attack a resolved Teferi.
Sarkhan, Fireblood would make an appearance; even Stormbreath Dragon's in the sideboard, along with 4 Leyline of the Void, a card pilots love to loot away.
Reflector Mage was appreciated against Humans, though not as much as Image copying their Mage. This tournament didn't really give me useful data on my current configuration.
Current Modern players should expect to run into all sorts of removal. Toughness stats of 2 and 3 finally matter: Collective Brutality and Electrolyze don't kill Spell Queller, nor does Gut Shot nab Goblin Guide. But the former two play important roles in their respective decks, and the latter has become a necessity for color-light decks like Eldrazi Tron and Humans to keep up with small creature strategies.
Hollow One: With its early creatures dealt with, Hollow One enters the phase of recurring Flamewake Phoenix and soaring over the battlefield. This plan decimates 
Once again, I didn't have any particularly outstanding deck for the weekend. Both UW Spirits and Jeskai Tempo were doing well for me, but both have their bad matchups that cycle in and out of the metagame. Tron is declining locally while Collected Company decks were returning after months away, a negative for Spirits and plus for Jeskai. I was also still undecided on the flex slots for Spirits; Reflector Mage was fine, but it didn't shine. I was definitely leaning Jeskai as my default this week.
For example, in round three, Game 3, I had the choice of Repealing either Engineered Explosives or Flameblade Adept in response to Burning Inquiry, hoping he discards one. Taking Explosives means Empty the Warrens is an option, but I don't have one in hand, nor could I storm for very much at the time.
Since Growth doesn't tax us mana, it's the ideal answer to these kinds of boards, even beating out red removal. We can spend that extra mana on chasing the combat phase with Tarmogoyf or making other proactive plays. And since Growth costs 0, we can chain cantrips pre-combat seeking it; Serum into Looting gives us a whopping five looks before we take to the red zone.
One of Growth's more passive effects is complicating enemy decision trees, as playing around the card requires different lines than our other combat spells do. Say opponents have two 1/1 Spirit tokens and we swing with Bomat. Should they single-block, they open the door for us to remove a token and keep the card under Bomat, only to attack again next turn for an overall net of two cards. Double-blocking prevents that from happening, but also opens them up to a blowout from Mutagenic Growth, killing both their tokens and leaving us with Bomat.
battlefield. The sweeper outs boards of Lingering Souls tokens for Bomat Courier to continue attacking, or cleans up a gaggle of growing Humans while Delver chows down in the air. The added versatility of sometimes not wanting to hit ground creatures makes Firespout a welcome addition to the Bomat build.
aren't perfectly serviceable cards available, such as swapping Rest in Peace for Leyline of the Void. Shifting from relying on a single mana cost denies Ironworks the chance to solve all its problems with one fell swoop. Make Ironworks work harder, and it is likelier to stumble.
leaves players open to losing to topdecks, but that's why a clock is critical. Even the slowest UW Control deck can drop a Vendilion Clique end of turn and then hold up counters. To not lose to Explosives, don't make it matter.
The deck's top-end likewise gets a makeover, with lynchpins Genesis Wave and Primal Command finally taking a bow. Gigantosaurus can be cast during board stalls even without much mana; so can Wurmcoil Engine. A couple bigger threats in Ruric Thar and Craterhoof still appear out of respect for Nytkthos, Shrine to Nyx. But can the deck reliably find these closers? Nope! This build of Devotion plans on drawing them naturally.
Mana dorks probably evolve into Steel Leaf Champion most of the time, while Strangleroot Geist makes up the bulk of Evolution's diet. Geist lets it tutor up Cremator or any of the deck's bullets. There are some neat interactions in the 75, too, like Fauna Shaman searching for Obstinate Baloth in response to discard.
Based on observations, personal and second hand, the most played decks in the Denver area are Tron variants, Elves, Burn, and various blue based control decks, particularly UW. Affinity, Collected Company decks, Grixis Shadow, and various graveyard value decks are frequent contributors. I also know that many grinders gravitate to Jund and Burn when there's no clear best deck in the overall metagame. There are also several that play whatever deck is the flavor of the month, which right now is either Ironworks or Infect.
for Merfolk with Hibernation, but I can't fix the UW Control matchup. Merfolk doesn't do well against multiple sweepers alongside Field of Ruin for Mutavault. D&T has a better time with all its two-for-ones, but it's still not favored. Merfolk has the additional problem that its only plan game 1 against combo is to race, which isn't reliable enough for me. Tron was good for D&T, but the local players have been maxing out on sideboard sweepers recently, and it's become even at best.
Continuing the discussion of cantrips, I've gone back and forth on Serum Visions in the list. The original list that I saw on Twitter posted by Jeff Hoogland had no cantrips at all, but that felt a little too clunky for my tastes, and required the deck to play too many lands. I've also tried lists with Opt in the place of Visions. When you boil it all down, the Opt vs. Visions debate is centered around one thing: whether you more frequently flip your Delvers because of the deck manipulation offered by Visions or more frequently need to hold up interaction alongside Opt. I've found that I am rarely using Serum Visions to set up Delver and frequently wanting to wait on my cantrips so I can hold up Mana Leaks, Remands, and Spellstutter Sprites. As such, I am more likely to continue playing Opt in the future.
The sideboard plans in this guide are not set in stone. I encourage you to try different configurations and adapt your decisions based on an opponent's play, as I often do. Rather, the plans presented in this article are examples that aim to give readers a sense of the important and expendable cards in each matchup.
However, that may not be possible. The opponent across the table may be living the dream with a completely off-the-wall deck that nobody's seen before. There was no way to prepare for the deck, and now you're completely lost. This is where I've seen a lot of players, myself included, get tilted and give up. It's very dispiriting to be so lost and confused.
could never combo-kill with Deceiver Exarch because every Exarch made was countered by a point of lifegain. Two sisters stopped Pestermite.
A novel take on WR Prison, Nicksnack's WR Planeswalkers focuses more intently on the deck's planeswalker aspect. Chalice of the Void is notably absent from the deck, despite the continued omission of one-drops. Big additions here include Cast Out, a flexible removal option; Urza's Ruinous Blast, a one-sided exiling Oblivion Stone; and Glorious End, the deck's most intriguing card.
Murmurs of a more counters-based Affinity deck 
One complication is that Magic is a game between two players. I am thinking about how my deck interacts with my opponent and how to sideboard against them, and so are they. 
Amulet of Safekeeping - Probably the most talked about card, Amulet of Safekeeping is clearly designed to answer Storm. The first ability Mana Tithes anything that targets you (meaning Grapeshot) and the second blanks 1/1 tokens (meaning Empty the Warrens).On paper that is fine, but Amulet only protects against Storm's win conditions. Storm is still free to combo off, during which it can tutor for an answer with Gifts Ungiven and win anyway. Thus, the card doesn't actually disrupt Storm's gameplan nor protect you from Storm. As an answer to Mardu Pyromancer, Amulet may seem more promising, but Mardu can easily pay the tax or use Kolaghan's Command. Because it doesn't actually accomplish its stated goal, Amulet is not a good sideboard card.
Infernal Reckoning - While I would have appreciated this card two years ago, these days Infernal Reckoning is not a good sideboard card. It answers any Eldrazi at a very good rate, but that's all. It doesn't really cripple or disrupt the strategy, and one-for-one trades aren't exciting as sideboard cards. There's a reason control decks side in sweepers instead of Terminate against creature decks. Swords to Plowshares is a very good card, but there's no reason to only have it in the sideboard. If Eldrazi Tron was more prevalent, I could see an argument for Reckoning. As is, it's too narrow and low impact to be justified.
Shield Mare - On the other hand, I could see myself boarding in Shield Mare against Burn in the right deck. While not the most potent hate card, Mare does substantially disrupt the opponent and/or protect against Burn's gameplan, depending on how you evaluate lifegain. Mare also trades for an entire burn spell when it enters and happily blocks all Burn's creatures. Atarka's Command sees no play anymore, so the only way to kill Mare without triggering her is via prowess triggers on Monastery Swiftspear. Kor Firewalker may do that more cheaply, but it has the weakness of Path to Exile killing it for no value, whereas Mare still gains life when targeted. I'd certainly try Mare in Death & Taxes.
Spell-worthy effects on limited-playable bodies frequently survive the journey from Standard to Modern, and Militia Bugler is no different. Rather than return a card from the graveyard like Eternal Witness, Bugler digs deeper into the deck, scouring the top four cards for a utility creature with the right text box for a given situation. Choice hits that spring to mind include Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Meddling Mage, Thalia's Lieutenant, and Phantasmal Image. Oh, and one more thing: Bugler's a Human!
These cards merit testing immediately, and will probably appear in some number in the 5-0s once M19 becomes legal online. But a small-scale result or two doesn't mean they're here to stay.
Mistcaller; Remorseful Cleric: A twofer! These creatures automatically slot into their respective tribal archetypes, Merfolk and Spirits... or do they? Spirits may just not care about any graveyard-related thing people are doing, especially since it has access to Rest in Peace already. But the incidental mainboard hate can't hurt.
Infernal Reckoning: This spell isn't the godsend against Eldrazi that Grixis players might have hoped for—Ceremonious Rejection, which also hits the increasingly relevant Krark-Clan Ironworks, handily trumps it there. But Reckoning does have its uses, chief among them providing Jund with a clean out to Wurmcoil Engine, otherwise a game-ender if not a massive resource swing. Unfortunately, this card has few other uses, and is further limited in application for Death's Shadow decks thanks to the lifegain clause.
Tracker, although both of those are functional four-drops when it comes to card advantage. Armasaur's plenty conditional too, though, requiring opponents to activate abilities before pilots draw their cards.
Thud: A two-mana effect on an instant shifted to a one-mana effect on a sorcery. I can't argue with the principle's elegance, but Temur Battle Rage has brutally power-crept this sort of Fling effect already.
Amulet of Safekeeping: Here's where Wizards' drive to create multi-purpose Modern sideboard cards spiraled out of control. Amulet mashes two mostly unrelated effects together into one weird-looking trinket. Sure, they combine to stop Storm's win conditions, but don't de-sleeve those Damping Spheres just yet—Storm can just go off, find Repeal, and then kill you, while Sphere prevents them from doing even that. And Amulet marginally slows down Burn, but the token clause does nothing there.
Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma: The latest in a long lineage of cards that get people excited about trying to cast Myr Superion in Modern, Goreclaw features an exciting build-around on an aggressive body. But that body also has three toughness. And Bant Eldrazi doesn't want this anyway; it's already emptied its hand by then, and has evasion redundancy with Smasher, Drowner, and Displacer.
Doran, the Siege Tower decks have existed 
The supremely versatile Lingering Souls is all that's left of the backup Abzan plan. Without Goyfs and Knights to nurture, Ensnaring Bridge becomes an option out of the sideboard, as does Rest in Peace. Another interesting spell is Tower Defense, which at first glance is crazy with Souls and Doran, but upon further inspection has more to it. Defense reads a lot like Temur Battle Rage, enabling wild comebacks or quick wins and forcing terrible blocks. Even with a couple of 0/5s in play, the instant can often present lethal out of nowhere, a threat we may want to take advantage of in the mainboard.
To compensate for its dip in proactivity relative to Affinity, Legends becomes interactive; à la 
Humans is another deck that begs comparison to Legends. Like Affinity, it's an overall better deck thanks to its proactivity and consistency, which Legends rarely achieves. Humans also takes our disruptive gameplan to the next level with Kitesail Freebooter, Meddling Mage, and Reflector Mage, and even runs both Thalias.
Oviya Pashiri, Sage Lifecrafter: Oviya is probably the worst one-drop legend in this deck, if only for her overlap with Rhys. We prefer the latter because of its mana smoothing qualities when combined with Mox Amber. That said, she's still a one-mana legend, and we can't get enough of those; the more names we run, the less chance we have of bricking with identical legends or opening anemic Moxen.
Running all three colors lets us play every relevant one-drop legend in Modern. Combined with a full set of Hierarchs, all those cheap legends maximize the odds of getting to three mana on turn two, and to four mana on turn three.
There's more black stuff in the side. Dreadbore teams up with Cast Down to take care of nasty creatures, while Collective Brutality gives the deck some much-needed points against spell-at-premium aggro-combo decks like Company and Burn. But I'm still struggling to understand Cast Down at all—why not Terminate? Isn't it fun to kill Thalia, Guardian of Thraben sometimes? Or Baral? Or, like, Shalai? Cast Down is a cleaner turn two play after leading off an Island, but with just a single copy in the mainboard, I don't see that coming up more often than the extra utility from Terminate.
That pressure is often supplied by Young Pyromancer, the deck's Tarmogoyf analogue. Mardu also boasts a Snapcaster analogue in Bedlam Reveler, a creature it uses to pull ahead in midrange mirrors. Kolaghan's Command returns these two creatures to the hand from the graveyard, negating the need for more threats in the main besides Lingering Souls, which plays multiple roles.
Finally, as the last time a player receives priority, the end step is an ideal time to activate spells or abilities that want to be activated during the turn cycle but cost mana or other resources. Waiting until now keeps more options open with that mana, but barring holding up a critical counterspell for instance, players are highly incentivized to activate something like Desolate Lighthouse here. Creature decks may also want to hold off on acting to complicate opposing removal; if opponents decide to kill off some threats, that may give the creature deck an opportunity to resolve something like Collected Company.
Love is a two-way street—beloved decks can't be expected to deliver on all fronts. Enjoying a strategy is one thing, but taking the time to learn its strategic intricacies is critical to success. To do that, pilots must play attentively, with an open mind and an appetite for growth.
Declaration in Stone seems strange, but it is the right solution to the control problem. As previously mentioned, putting creatures into the graveyard is a liability and the power of Hollow One comes from dumping multiple Hollow Ones, Bloodghasts, and Flamewake Phoenix's into play during the first few turns. Declaration is the cheapest way available to Jeskai to deal with those threats permanently. You also don't care about giving them clues very much. Hollow One has few threats so turning creatures into clues usually just lets them draw more air. Declaration also has the benefit of cleaning up token swarms. It's not the best against Humans, but Declaration can be good against Jund when they play multiple creatures. I've been very impressed in my testing.
Relative newcomer Reckless Rage makes its Modern debut here, acting as an instant-speed Flame Slash in conjunction with any of the deck's creatures. With Lightning Bolt Modern's most-played removal spell, 
past, this was fine, because Merfolk's goldfish speed sat at 
Trickster can be used similarly to swing races, but its greatest ability is clearing out defenders. Tapping creatures may not be as powerful as removing them from play, but in a tempo deck, it can be functionally identical. The additional text after the tap ability is irrelevant in most creature matchups; critically, the creature will not attack or block for a whole turn, allowing Merfolk to swing through for the win.
counters aren't very special against Jund or Jeskai. If the meta swings more toward combo, then Retort is definitely strong, but being weak against the most popular deck is a huge strike against the card. Also worth mentioning: Retort gets awkward around Mutavault, which counts as a Wizard but doesn't tap for blue.
Architects of Will replaces 2 Mishra's Bauble in this build, a stark departure from what we've known to be standard fare for Traverse Shadow since the deck 
The sad fact is that, unlike with some hate cards, affected decks can brute-force their way through Sphere. Ironworks can partially go off a few turns in a row to build up enough artifacts and draw enough cards so they can win while only playing a few spells; Ad Nauseam only needs to resolve two spells to win. Storm is more strongly affected, but they too can string small Grapeshots together over a few turns.
Lightning Bolt was surprisingly bad, and my testing wasn't going well overall; in testing games over the past two weeks, I went 6/12 against Jund and 8/19 against UW Control. The main issue was that I didn't really have any haymakers or evasion to finish games. A few sweepers or the right removal and I just petered out.
Just because Legacy-style prison hasn't worked so far doesn't mean it can't. Early Blood Moon is still incredibly powerful and while not having Sol lands hurts, it is 
More Cards in Hand
Does that mean people should always be choosing to play Bogles? No, of course not. However, likeliness to make mistakes should play a larger factor than I think it currently does. That said, am I more likely to play Bogles than Titan in a coming event? Realistically, no; you're way more likely to see me slinging Primeval Titans than Gladecover Scouts. There are factors other than simplicity at play. I enjoy Amulet a lot more, I have relatively established sideboard plans for most matchups, and I've played the deck a lot more.
To its credit, ours is the sort of combo that makes opponents paranoid. Much like Melira combos, with a piece or two on the field, opponents will never really feel safe. In test games against Jund, my opponent felt compelled to use real cards against Prospector to make sure he wasn't just dead. My opponent admitted that he may have done it anyway to make sure he didn't get swamped the following turn, but the fear of the combo pushed him. This dread may be enough to make the combo worthwhile in aggressive decks.
We'll start with the card I personally am most excited about. Unlike Sorcerous Spyglass, the last newcomer that 
Another new toy that has my attention is Precognition Field, which 
I bet Broken Bond finds a home in a specific type of big mana deck that runs a lot of lands and relies on putting them into play quickly. That excludes the land-light, cantrip-heavy Tron, as well as the creature-centric Eldrazi decks. Rather, Bond seems tailor-made for RG Valakut and maybe Amulet Titan.
Mox Amber
of 15 scrys in Ironworks Combo helps the likes of Chromatic Sphere draw into critical pieces more often, but the bird doesn't directly contribute to any synergies there, so I don't know if it belongs. Even more tenuous is the idea of Assistant in a deck like Lantern Control or Affinity, which quickly dump their hands, don't need scry effects, and have access to Glint-Nest Crane as a superior option.
Counterspell and Lightning Bolt are some of the most iconic Magic cards of all time, and in some ways, Modern cards—players have clamored for a straight reprint of the former for years, while analogs Logic Knot and Deprive have seen intermittent play over the format's lifespan. In Dominaria, the pair are reborn as the tribe-specific Wizard's Retort and Wizard's Lightning.
The final card in our maybes is The Flame of Keld, which on its surface looks like it could do something in Burn. I think its conditions are too hard to meet in that deck, though. Sure, there are plenty of instances where Burn will wish it could topdeck Flame, but also plenty where Flames actually in the deck will cost it the game. Burn needs a critical mass of spells that do the exact same thing, and Flame does something different.
As of Dominaria, any deck in the format can spend four mana for a heap of loyalty. But loyalty's not worth much in Modern, and 
Four mana for a 7/7 trample is a pretty good rate, so naturally Traxos comes with a drawback. And in Modern, that drawback isn't even so significant—players can easily build decks that cast heroic spells each turn should an adequate payoff demand it. But in this Construct's case, the payoff simply isn't big enough to warrant that kind of deckbuilding.
I've heard murmurings about this card in Jund as a way to fire off Liliana of the Veil's ultimate the turn after she comes down, but nah. Jund is not a combo deck, and has little interest in firing off Lili ultimates as fast as possible. It's an aggressive attrition deck that takes its time chewing through opposing resources so that it can take over the game with Tarmogoyf or a manland.
As is the case with many fair-looking cards entering Modern from Standard, the exciting aspect of Scriptures lies in its abuse potential. Since its big mode is on II and not III, removing a counter from the enchantment somehow gives players access to repeated Wrath effects, all while their newly christened artifact beats down.
An interesting sidenote is that planeswalkers are hard to place on this spectrum. On the one hand, their initial effect is extremely fair: you pay the mana cost then use an ability. If compared to a spell, that is perfectly fair, especially considering how marginal a lot of planeswalker abilities are for their mana cost. However, the point of planeswalkers is that they remain in play and continuously generate advantage. This moves things towards unfair in my opinion. By how much and how quickly is the question, and I have no answer. It may simply be that planeswalkers are neither fair nor unfair.
Functionally, Mox Sapphire is an Island that you cast, meaning it replaces Island. This is how 
enter play. This means you need extra lands in your hand when you play it, and as a result, you couldn't cut lands for the mox. Thus, it never saw widespread play, instead serving as an accelerant in
close to the originals as any mox has come and Chrome Mox has seen widespread play. In Standard it was everywhere. 
Colorless is not a color, so Karn and Hope of Ghirapur don't work.
misunderstanding, and I've watched pros and Modern dabblers alike experiment with misguided technology "upgrades" to the deck like Cavern of Souls and Sorcerous Spyglass. I'm excited the deck has struck a chord in the Modern community, and for innovations regarding its future developments to eventually roll in from elsewhere. But as things currently stand, I want those picking it up to have access to where I stand on card choice, since I've already tested most possible includes in my two years on the deck.
From a non-virtual card advantage viewpoint, Void is worse than many of our other lands. I've heard players, after much deliberation, roughly equate "draw a card" with "scry 3;" in that sense, Void counts for just a third of an extra card. Compare with Mutavault, which is a creature and can often trade with opposing removal; Scavenger Grounds, which says "draw X cards" depending on the amount of Eternal Scourges in our graveyard; and Sea Gate Wreckage, which literally draws us cards every turn once its condition is met.
Scavenger Grounds is a must when our deck's so apt at finding Eternal Scourge. It gives us a powerful mainboard way to hose attrition decks while buffing our graveyard-based matchups like Storm and Traverse Shadow. I tried a third Wastes after Worcester, and found it superfluous in a lot of matchups; it was best against UW Control, but a third Grounds shines there, too, and has wider applications overall. Still, we can't drop below 2 Wastes, as we need ways to punish players for firing off Path to Exile, Field of Ruin, and Ghost Quarter against us.
After Worcester, I was itching to cut one of these. I originally liked 2 Sea Gate to ensure I could draw into one after exiling a copy to Powder, but it's dead in so many matchups that I now think 2 is too many. Scavenger Grounds largely fulfills the same purpose against attrition decks, and does more elsewhere, too. The main benefit of Sea Gate is that it's a recurring value engine that attacks from a unique angle: drawing us cards from the deck. It can also be activated on an opponent's turn after representing other utility lands activations for a cycle (i.e. Ghost Quarter for a petrified Raging Ravine).
This past weekend Andrew Richardson asked, 'Why not both?' as he piloted a Jund Elves deck to a 25th Place finish at GP Phoenix. I had seen other content creators trying similar decks after the unbanning, but this is the first notable result I had seen, so it regained my attention. The list has the small black splash that others have used in the past for both Shaman of the Pack and some sideboard action. Additionally 4 Bloodbraid were present, alongside 2 Lead the Stampede—and not a Chord of Calling to be found.
I believe that players are picking up on the 
Azami certainly has her problems, chief among them costing five mana. Each time I tried a Wizards shell, I found it much better to include a powerful, on-theme non-Wizard or two over the clunky 0/2. So I benched the project indefinitely.
Field is a "fixed" Future Sight in that it only lets pilots cast instants and sorceries from the tops of their libraries. But in a deck full of instants and sorceries, the restriction is trivial. Manamorphose and Opt let us filter through our decks blazing-fast, but the strongest enabler is Serum Visions. Seeing three cards is great with Field, as it puts useless lands and creatures to the bottom while usually "drawing" us a card or two in the process. Of course, Lightning Bolt and Wizard's Lightning are the actual best cards to pair with Precognition Field, as they single-handedly turn the enchantment into a win condition. Whenever we see either of these cards on the deck, we can simply point them at opponents and continue digging.
As far as boarding strategy with this deck, I have found it ideal to keep cheap threats in against linear decks like Burn, removing card advantage engines like Bedlam Reveler for more interaction. Fair decks tend to bring in lots of removal against us, so siding out Delver for Fields is a winning strategy there. The only way for decks like Jund to beat Field is to Maelstrom Pulse it or just go under us.
Bloodbraid Elf-fueled aggression: Wall of Omens. It blocks the Elf cleanly, maintains card parity by drawing an extra card, and only costs two mana to put down.
Next, we'll talk about what I feel is an underrated piece of anti-Jace tech in Dreadbore. While sorcery-speed removal is not very popular in Modern, certain cards that perform functions you cannot find elsewhere (like Maelstrom Pulse for BGx) will see the light of day. I believe Dreadbore's high degree of versatility is enough of an incentive to merit serious consideration.
Then there's the win condition. I actually had two Searches initially, but traded one for Elspeth because I was struggling to actually win the game. I could establish control easily enough, but actually winning was frequently challenging. There's just not many options. Obviously, you can attack with Gideon, Snapcaster, and Colonnade, but that's not always reliable and never quick. Path to Exile and Dismember are quite prevalent. You also can't always just slam down Jace and win. Plusing Jace on opponents is great, but it's not always the right play. Brainstorming turn after turn is also great, but doesn't actually win the game. There's a surprising amount of tension between the two modes, and knowing when to switch from one to the other is hard. All this combines into a deck that wins the game easily, but takes forever to actually kill the opponent.
Each list featured cards I wanted to cut immediately: worse-Nacatls Kird Ape and Loam Lion out of the Mantis build, and unexciting meta-breaker Loxodon Smiter out of the Flayer build.
the deck. While miss-sequencing land drops often impacts decks, you can lose on turn two with an Amulet deck by playing or bouncing the wrong land. I can't find the thread, but I remember after 
Serum Visions: Serum's a Temur staple that's in kind of a weird spot here. It's a crummy cascade hit, although not truly a "miss," but can also set up cascades in the late-game. I still think it's necessary in some number to smooth our our early-game and grow Goyf past Lightning Bolt, something likely to become more relevant as 
Turns out, Kessig Malcontents is a house. After playing just a few games with it, you'll find yourself yearning to draw it in nearly every game. In close games it is often your best closer, and sometimes your only out. In that regard, it feels very similar to Mantis Rider. On average, I find the two cards serve nearly the exact same function the turn they come into play, each with their own unique upside. Malcontents is generally a Lava Spike in a removal-heavy matchup, Mantis Rider is often the same. Obviously the value of these cards relative to each other can easily change from situation to situation, but functionally they serve a similar purpose. They give you that much needed reach to close out tougher games.
While a Top 16 finish is certainly nothing to sneeze at, I do feel like I left a Top 8 berth on the table with a couple of less-than-optimal moves that would have allowed me to steal games from bad matchups. My sloppy play aside, I think my run clearly demonstrates my initial claim: Merfolk has game against the current field. The proactive plan is strong and consistent, most of the matchups I faced were 50/50 or better, and you can generally scratch together enough disruption to affect your opponent's gameplan and help the rush hit home.
It has long been the standard in GR Tron to run Pyroclasm as the removal spell of choice. In fact, Gx Tron is the main deck that's kept Pyroclasm on the map in Modern for so long. 
Vampires have almost exclusively made their Modern impact via powerful stand-alone cards like Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet and Olivia Voldaren, rather than in a synergistic tribal deck. However, both Innistrad blocks and some cards in Magic 2011 and 2013 have pushed the concept of Vampires as a cohesive archetype in the vein of Elves or Merfolk. Creatures such as Vampire Nocturnus and Stromkirk Captain suggested that once the tribe accumulated a critical mass of cheap, efficient creatures like Gifted Aetherborn, it would have enough Vampire-specific payoffs to make a dedicated tribal deck a possibility.
The first standout card in Rivals for Vampires is Legion Lieutenant. While it does lock you into splashing white, it's also a very promising tribal payoff card. Decks like Merfolk have long demonstrated the power of lord effects, and Lieutenant is the cheapest such effect available to Vampires.
When ahead, nothing went further to ensuring you stayed there than Bloodbraid Elf. And that was as true during our testing as it was back in 2012.
Moon is occasionally played in Modern for help against nonbasic utility lands, sure. But most of the time, It's rushed out as a means of colorscrewing opponents, something Blood Sun by design cannot do. That said, Sun prevents fetchlands from activating, while Moon at least allows them to tap for R.
2017 saw Merfolk carve out a genuine niche for itself for the first time in years, preying on color-hungry Shadow decks and creature-based Tron variants alike. But the deck's always been soft to removal-packed strategies like Jeskai and Mardu, which it can still beat with a critical mass of early beaters.
One of the year's biggest stories was the breakout success of Mirran Crusader, and to a lesser extent Chameleon Colossus, as Death's Shadow cemented itself as Modern's archetype-to-beat. These cards essentially brickwalled the entire deck, which ran no ways to remove them and generally played to a combo finish with Temur Battle Rage once one hit the table.
Of course, Become Immense generated buzz this year independent of Probe in the RG Hollow One deck. There, it threw back to Death's Shadow Zoo with Monastery Swiftspear and Street Wraith to produce eight or more damage out of nowhere, and combined with Temur Battle Rage to end games on the spot. But as more players began experimenting with Hollow One, Immense's weaknesses in the shell became apparent—it softened the deck to instant-speed removal, for instance, and overall took up too much space as a full package compared with other possible engines.
because most of the time Preordain was Sleight of Hand. I will include the actual numbers when I circle back to this, but most of the time I kept one card and bottomed the other. You do get extra value from having options, but I didn't utilize them very often. It is entirely possible that I was wrong about that, but it certainly didn't seem that way to me or my team.
+ 1 Gut Shot
What I would do differently is how I would apply them. I want the format to be as fun as possible for everyone. I think that everyone should have the opportunity to play the kind of Magic they want, even if I'd rather you do it very, very far away from me, Lantern players! I don't have a problem with decks that purposefully create non-games. What I do have a problem with, and what I will take a more aggressive hand against, are consistent non-games. If decks can consistently lock players out early, that is a problem. I'm fine with prison decks as long as it isn't too easy to spring the trap or it's reasonably possible to escape.
Blinkmoth Nexus, Ghost Quarter, Dismember, Eldrazi Mimic, Simian Spirit Guide, Chalice of the Void, Eternal Scourge
Tierings are calculated individually for MTGO and Paper metagames, then compiled together with additional points from large-scale major events for the final metagame picture.
The other positive development is the presence of 
Humans are one of the biggest stories of the last month or so, and they seem to have delivered on their promise. Ixalan was good to the Human tribe with Kitesail Freebooter and Unclaimed Territory. It doesn't hurt that their matchup against two of the strongest decks (Shadow and Storm) is favorable. I don't think we've seen the last of this archetype, and it's only getting more tools as Wizards releases new sets.
The Lesson of 8-Rack
It is an interesting piece to side in against control and mirror decks, or even in some midrange matchups where they are already hard-pressed to find a solution to your other artifacts. On the other hand, Search for Azcanta gives you more power to filter your draws, and a very reliable card-advantage engine once it has flipped. I could see both of these being relevant in the grindier matchups, but Tezzeret also provides a much needed win condition outside of the painful (and possibly draw-inducing) Millstone plan.
Cartouche of Solidarity. This is clearly a (relatively) new adoption by Bogles, seeing as the card itself is only about a year old. Much like its creature-combo brethren Infect and Death's Shadow, Bogles often struggles with a painfully low threat count. Each of these decks has a different way of mitigating this problem. Infect and Bogles attempt to protect their creatures (via instants and hexproof, respectively), while Death's Shadow has several library manipulation and recursion tools that let it run extra virtual copies of its threats. Of these, Death's Shadow is probably the best at addressing the issue—cantrips and card advantage tend to do that—whereas Infect and Bogles have traditionally struggled with it more. When creatures die, there aren't many more to be found.
Leyline of Sanctity. Speaking of edict effects, those maindeck Leylines seem to be working overtime in this strategy. The obvious application is clearly to shut off Grapeshot, but it also does a great job of protecting versus black control elements. Both Thoughtseize and Liliana of the Veil don't play with a Leyline out, which means the lone threat you had to mulligan to find stays firmly in hand, and won't fall to a Lili minus. As a Storm player, seeing these in the maindeck is the scariest aspect of the list. We can theoretically counter with our own maindeck Empty the Warrens or Echoing Truth, but too much of that will dilute our game-one advantage. I would say jamming white Leylines randomly into most decks is a suspect strategy at best, but in Bogles, where the card shores up several weak points at once, it seems like an excellent meta call.
I am simplifying this, but when two decks oppose each other, they tend to attack each other on one axis. Control vs. aggro being consistently about threats is one example. When you transform, you have pivoted to an entirely new axis; one utterly different from your initial gameplan. When you reposition, you're shifting out of the way of the incoming attack. It's not about dramatically changing your gameplan, but invalidating your opponent's strategy. It's picking the ground where you are ready and advantaged to fight on.
For an older but much clearer example, think back to Ravnica/Time Spiral Standard. The default aggro deck of the day was Gruul Aggro. It had all the best (read: biggest) creatures at the low slots, including Tarmogoyf. It was hard for other decks to compete in the same space. I was running Boros Aggro and absolutely crushed crushed the Gruul decks that Regionals. My deck ran 20 creatures, 20 burn spells, and 20 lands, and I was using Boros Garrison to cheat on land. The typical Gruul deck was mostly creatures and ~22 lands. I had Inherent Card Advantage (go back to Dave Price), so I just embraced it. I traded every creature I played, burned all of their creatures, used Jotun Grunt to contain Tarmogoyf, and I won the attrition fight every time.
One look at this list and you'll notice that this is a control deck. With seven card disruption spells on the main deck, it is able to get rid of Humans's troublesome cards like Meddling Mage, Kitestail Freebooter, and Thalia, Guardian of Thraben. By taking away that element of their deck, you'll be able to draw out your army of planeswalkers with ease, or wipe out any board presence that they've established with the help of Wrath of God and Damnation. The singleton Baneslayer Angel will always come in handy as soon as it hits the battlefield whether you're ahead or defending.
Infect
All that to say this: oftentimes the deck you choose to play and your resultant success is just as dependent on the type of event as all the other factors we are familiar with. The metagame, the rock-paper-scissors theory, deck familiarity, and more are all factors we take into account—but the type of player and quality of event we are playing in can influence results just as well. Packing Grixis Death’s Shadow at SCG Charlotte a while back—on the very weekend when everyone was gunning for Grixis Death’s Shadow—is a bold move, and must be considered during deck and sideboard construction. Were that event a Grand Prix, I would have spent less time teching for the mirror and opposing hate cards, and more time preparing my deck (and my comfortability) for an open field.
Is Thalia's Lancers actually good? I question it, but I shouldn’t, because I haven’t played it yet. And neither should you. I’m not above any card or strategy if it’s the one that’s going to help me win, and if that’s the attitude you have going into an RPTQ event, then you just aren’t meant for the Pro Tour. Sorry. Playing on the largest stage requires suspending disbelief, putting aside pride, and looking under every possible rock for the edge it takes to be a champion. For me, that card was Stratus Dancer. My final round, my Pro Tour win-and-in, came against Mono-Red, and I won the match by beating down for a few turns with a Stratus Dancer, then casting Silumgar's Scorn and Foul-Tongue Invocation to survive his lethal. Make the Pro Tour with a card that makes your opponent read it. It’s a memory you will never forget.
I know from experience that taking down an event with a deck you’ve played for weeks and weeks, perfecting it to the best of your ability, culminating finally in ultimate victory… It’s something special. RPTQs, in my mind, bring out the type of player you are, whether you realize it or not. How do you respond to a challenge? Do you face it head on, putting all of your faith in how you play your signature deck on game day? Do you bank on preparation, essentially betting your results on how accurately you were able to figure out the field? Or do you roll the dice on something you might not be too familiar with, but nevertheless feel will give you a hot-hand type effect?
Not every decision is so small, however—dependent on the metagame you could make broad shifts in the decklist to attack in a different way.
It wasn’t until later, when Gatecrash brought in Frontline Medic, Boros Elite, Burning-Tree Emissary, and Experiment One, that Humans finally got its time in the spotlight…and by God did it shine.
I can’t leave without talking about the sideboard, which is an absolute deckbuilding masterpiece. Fifteen creatures, all Humans, all toolbox, all the time. Ethersworn Canonist for Storm, Vithian Renegades for Affinity, Anafenza, the Foremost for graveyard shenanigans, and a ton of value creatures for removal of all types. Were it not for Aether Vial, this deck wouldn’t have a Stubborn Denial target in the 75.
Of the four Storm decks to Top 4, only one list (Kazu Negri placing third in the Classic) chose not to play Opt and Pieces of the Puzzle in some number. You can say he Opted out. Pieces of the Puzzle doesn’t necessarily count as new tech. But as David explained in his article, how we view the metagame and decklist iterations is changing—so waiting to see MTGO technology make its way into paper lists is a good line in the sand to draw.
The tried-and-true method for video content in Magic, "let’s play" content aims to put the viewer in the driver's seat (or at least provide a third-person view) as they watch the content creator play games, either online or over-the-table. This type of content accounts for the majority of the video offerings out there, as it's easy to watch, entertaining, and offers something for everyone. Players looking for a strategic edge can watch a deck being played to gain matchup insight, and glean info on both how to play or how to beat a specific archetype. Twitch content most often falls in this vein, but with a more casual "live atmosphere" effect thrown in.
Personally, I like to look at new cards in a vacuum, on my own in silence, preferably with a skeptical eye and a ton of sighing and grunting. Still, this type of content is instantly recognizable for what it is, and has a perfect home on YouTube. Quick, flashy, meant to generate excitement—for the most part, this work skimps on analysis and caters to hype. That's not to sound disparaging, as spoiler content does what it does well.
Most removal in Modern costs one mana, which means her ability is annoying, but not burdensome. And irrelevant in the late game. You are much better off maindecking Kira. However, as a sideboard card Kopala has promise, as she's very effective alongside Kira. Requiring two spells and four extra mana to kill a creature is very good. I've run an extra Kira in my sideboard forever, and against decks like Jeskai control I would happily take Kopala instead of Kira the third.
In other words, they're cards that you almost always play in the deck, but they're not critical or always four-ofs.
Whisper sees play as a one- or two-of in 
Drawing for turn
can't imagine any of them making the jump into Modern. However, this is Wizards of the Coast, and messing up free mana is their thing. Energy may not have made it into Modern, but it was 
8-Rack wants to bring games to a low-resource state for both players, so Tom Ross avoids high-curve cards and value engines. BW Shadow Pox has a different gameplan, though. We use Smallpox to pull ahead of opponents early on, and induce stumbling across the table. That way, they'll have a harder time dealing with the threats we throw at them, which each attack from different angles, or keeping up with us once our value engines get going.
As a brief aside, I started getting into competitive Magic around Zendikar time, even though I was still relatively green. I remember my dad pulling a Verdant Catacombs as a rare, getting disappointed, and neither of us understanding why you’d want to pay life to get a land when Evolving Wilds does it for free.
It’s possible that the extra utility of scrying makes up for it, but the answer to this question revolves around context, as most things in Modern do. How aggressive is the format? Is Tarmogoyf seeing widespread play, or are people flooding the board with one-drops? What about problematic permanents? Is there even a control deck that wants this?
Still, stopping Thought-Knot Seer and Primeval Titan is pretty good, as well as hitting Snapcaster Mage (though we weren't targeting him specifically). It will be interesting to see if Hatebears wants this guy, as it hurts our own deck as well, but giving up Flickerwisp and Tidehollow Sculler to turn off the cards that really hurt us seems like a fine tradeoff to make. Plus, don’t forget there’s value in sequencing to get those effects before we shut them down.
So, as a quick recap, the spoiled cards from Ixalan I think have the greatest chance of making it into Modern are Opt, Kopala, Warden of Waves, Growing Rites of Itlimoc, and Tocatli Honor Guard. Of these, potentially Tocatli Honor Guard might provide a minor bump in Hatebears’s value against the field, but Growing Rites of Itlimoc has the most potential for making a larger shift.
The other factor for me is that I'm known now. For years, I was underestimated because I wasn't particularly successful or well known. That has changed. During the first year of PPTQs I had a lot more Top 8s than this year, but I was also very well-positioned playing Merfolk in fields of Splinter Twin, and I surprised a lot of players. They didn't know what to expect and I was able to use that information advantage well. I don't get that boost anymore. I think that this shift away from my most familiar deck and players knowing what to expect from me is partially to blame for my only making two Top 8s this year.
[/tippy] into a Delver of Secrets shell.
It isn’t better than Jace Beleren (my favorite planeswalker of all time) and Baby Jace doesn’t see play—but for a minute, what would a deck that plays this look like? Naturally, blue decks with creatures that deal damage makes me wish it created Merfolk Illusion tokens, but alas.
[/tippy].
[/tippy] doesn’t make it in a crowded two-drop class, but I applaud it for trying. Two lords, Phantasmal Image, Harbinger of the Tides, and Silvergill Adept are for the most part unbeatable at this point. [tippy title="Deeproot Waters"]
[/tippy] is slow, but it rewards us for filling our deck with a ton of the same effect. Twenty-sixish ways to generate "free" value is fine, and at worst, those tokens can chump as we’re racing. At best, they get pumped to 2/2s or 3/3s and we look like geniuses.
[/tippy] does most of what we want, while also gaining us a little bit of value along the way? I’m not impressed. The matchups we lose to graveyard decks comes when they answer our answer or power through somehow, and I don’t think 3-5 life at best will save us in those situations. Rest in Peace is just way more impactful, exiling everything forever so that even when they find their answer, they're starting from ground zero.
Opt
[/tippy], which transforms into [tippy title="Spires of Orazca"]
Living End has not performed exceedingly well for me so far, but frankly, I think this list could potentially go through some changes to help alleviate that. I think the white splash is likely to be a hindrance far more often than it is helpful. Traditionally, some lists have looked toward Kessig Wolf Run for a utility land. That said, I'm more inclined to give up on the utility lands altogether and stick with a more solid manabase. In a deck with so few lands, I'm not sure I want to continue taking the risk that a colorless land gets in the way. I've seen some lists experiment with Blood Moon, and I am also interested to see where that might lead. It feels like the archetype could definitely support it when built appropriately.
Hibernation had a standout performance two weeks ago, but it just wasn't good enough anymore. Elves and Counters Company have virtually disappeared from my regional meta while white-based creature decks are rising. This necessitates a change to Supreme Verdict. Wrath of God was a serious consideration for quite a while, but Verdict was the clear choice. Yes, I do remember what I said about Cavern making color-intense spells awkward, but that was mostly in relation to triple blue. Double-white, single-blue is easier to manage. Uncounterability was also important because the mono-blue Grand Architect deck has been showing up in force recently and it sucks losing to Judge's Familiar.
The other problem, and I don't have a clear solution, is the land count. You have lots of three-drops and often want five or six lands to maximize your spells and protection, so 22 lands is critical. However, flooding is a problem when your only card draw is Ninja of the Deep Hours, and there's really no room to add ways to smooth your draws. It would just change the deck too much.
Ashes of the Abhorrent: Combines Grafdigger's Cage's ability with a bizarre lifegain clause, and while each are respectable tools for a sideboard, they don't work on one card. At the end of the day, Modern players will always prefer the card that does its job better than one that provides two watered-down effects useful in different matchups. In this case, that card is either Rest in Peace or Grafdigger's Cage, depending on the deck.
And for what? A marginal flavor gain? 
Kumena's Omenspeaker: Omenspeaker gets +1/+1 if controllers also control an Island or other Merfolk. I've seem some suggest Omenspeaker as a possible beater in Merfolk, where it might take the place of Cursecatcher. I just don't think the power/toughness increase is worth the latter's utility, or a splash. That said, 
Old-Growth Dryads: Wild Nacatl is certainly 
Tocatli Honor Guard: This one will see play if Torpor Orb becomes a playable card again. I just don't see that happening in the near future. Guard is still a welcome addition to Modern's ever-growing toolbox of white hatebears, and lovers of Death and Taxes-style decks should pick up their playset when the card inevitably settles at bulk prices post-prerelease.
Against removal-heavy attrition decks, having a pair of sideboarded Waters in the deck allows Merfolk to play very conservatively and build a gameplan around resolving the enchantment. Once it sticks, those hexproof 1/1s are sure to make short work of an opponent stockpiling Snapcasters and Paths. Waters is similar to Affinity's Ghirapur Aether Grid in this way, and in line with the way I like to build my sideboards, even if I'm totally off-base about Merfolk ever wanting this card.
Jace still costs three mana, a magic number for Modern planeswalkers. Liliana, the Last Hope has become a staple, as has Gideon of the Trials, and Liliana of the Veil makes a strong case for being the best card in the format, period. Even Nissa, Voice of Zendikar has enjoyed fringe play in 
I doubt the change propels any of these archetypes to new heights on its own, but it will definitely be interesting to see how deep midrange decks go into employing planeswalkers over creatures. Should the multi-Lili decks prove a force to be reckoned with, we'll have Sorcerous Spyglass with which to battle them, not to mention Liliana's Defeat!
Tapping the Reflecting Pool
There is no mana in Yu-Gi-Oh! Some Magic cards exist in Yu-Gi-Oh! at no cost: 
Commenters on Trevor's article noted the potential benefit of spending time with another game. Indeed, playing Yu-Gi-Oh! again over the last year or two has given me what I consider some unique insights into Modern, as well as the away-time needed to generate perspective. I also think Trevor was on to something when he mentioned that Destiny decks all play differently from one another, while Magic decks all feel the same; I don't entirely agree (playing with or against Affinity feels totally different from playing with or against Burn, and each has a clear identity), but the thought merits exploration. What kinds of deck identities are present in Modern? Which does the format lack? Yu-Gi-Oh!, like Destiny I presume, does a great job of giving each deck (or, shoved-down-your-throat-via-a-bunch-of-synergistic-cards "archetype") its own identity and playstyle.
I have a confession to make. I’ve been seeing someone on the side. It’s not you, it’s me. When I said I had been testing Grixis Death’s Shadow, what I was really doing was playing some Star Wars: Destiny on the side. I can explain. Grixis is great, but things have just gotten so routine between us. Matches are predictable; the fire is gone. I just don’t feel the energy anymore, you know? Star Wars: Destiny, on the other hand, it's dangerous. I feel like I get it, and it gets me. There’s violence in it, it’s real. I can’t explain it; when I play it, I just feel so alive. And I think I can fly.
Part of this comes from best-of-three matches. I’m not advocating for Magic to remove this feature, as the game probably wouldn’t survive. It’s just… winning doesn’t really feel like winning. Take down game one, and you don’t feel "happiness" or "victory." I feel relief most of the time—relief as I dodged the game-one loss and avoided the feeling of dread that comes with having to claw back two victories to take the match. Games of Magic often feel like work, but the work I’m doing is minesweeping explosives out of a desert of cancer. Every step is a wince as my life flashes before my eyes. Phew, avoided the mull to five. Phew, avoided the nut draw. Phew, avoided the mana screw. Phew, avoided the unwinnable matchup. Phew, actually saw my sideboard card! Magic is addicting, because it delivers its drug in continuous drips. The constant drip of relief as disaster is dodged.
#2: Rest in Peace
The Bilbao Effect is a reference to this event—a singular building, constructed by a quirky architect, became singlehandedly responsible not only for revitalizing a city on the brink, but also for reimagining its identity as a city and for the profession of architecture itself. In that sense, an interesting parallel can be drawn between Gehry’s bold work of art in 1997 and Wizards of the Coast’s bold choice to re-introduce Modern to the Pro Tour spotlight. Gehry’s design was originally condemned in the architecture community, and reviled by the locals it "intruded upon." While Gehry is almost universally despised by his peers, his contributions to the profession can't be ignored. In the same way, Modern has had its own successes, but not without similar struggles with community acceptance.
So, I think it’s clear that we need to come around to the facts. Bannings assuredly have some impact on Magic’s playerbase, but neither their frequency nor their size will ever be the death of the game. Players will play, because deep down we are all addicted, and while we may not welcome bannings, we shouldn’t be scared of them.
I was generally very happy with my deck, but there was an interesting conversation about it after my Round 5 loss. I had both my Crossroads in play by then, and several observers commented that if they had been Horizon Canopys, I would have won. After checking my game notes, I believe this is wrong.
With the Galvanic Blasts back in the deck, I had to decide what would get cut to make room for Bomat Courier. I settled on cutting the Masters, one Steel Overseer, and a land.
Again this is a race. Your end goal is similar, except these games will typically involve drawing multiple cards off of Bomat Courier. Focus on card advantage and dealing damage in quick succession before they can get Tron online. These lists typically do not play Oblivion Stone, so rain the aggression on them.
This becomes a great matchup with the inclusion of Bomat Courier. Navigation around their namesake card is everything. Keep some creature threats in your hand so that you can discard them as part of Bomat Courier’s effect. Reanimating two Etched Champions and a Vault Skirge while drawing four cards with Bomat Courier feels amazing, not to mention that it will come back to join the party as well. Remember to do this in response to Living End going on the stack and not in response to the cascade trigger, so they can't choose to whiff. This match is also won with Arcbound Ravager.
As a result, the larger the square the more likely it is to accurately reflect that analysis. Smaller cubes are more likely to miss a color entirely, or even contain some that the big analysis will filter out. How many FMN metas contain lots of janky weirdness that never shows up on any standings? Mine definitely does. As a result, statistical modeling breaks down on the small scale. This is natural. Statistical analysis is intended to take lots of little numbers, aggregate them, and then model the totality of reality. The smaller the scale you're working with, the harder it is to get meaningful results. I've mentioned this about my sample sizes in 
problem, despite billing as if he did, and then despite the ruined trip absolutely not being the driver's fault, the rest of the car never quite forgives him.) You can however get a sense of who might go and what they are likely to play.
Therefore, just listen to what your fellow players are saying. Even those who intend to play a different deck at every event or never publicly say what they're playing have opinions and will share them readily. Whether it's chatter between matches or social media discussions, you can find out what players in your area are thinking. This gives you a sense of their perception of the metagame and how they're preparing. Oftentimes players will reveal their deck choice just by revealing their biases.
As I mentioned, Colorado has had a reputation for being a Burn state for a very long time. It's not undeserved. It also tends to have lots of Jund and Tron. This has been the trend, but it isn't guaranteed. My local game store is arguably the center of Modern in the Denver area. We have the most Modern tournaments and the highest turnout every week. There has been a high amount of Burn and Tron, with Eldrazi recently having the edge on traditional Gx, but Jund has disappeared and there's only one GB Rock player left. Some have simply been turned off by all the Tron, others jumped ship to Death's Shadow. There has also been a surge in Living End and Affinity, both of which were big players two years ago but disappeared last year. Generally, every player talks about their deck as their deck and plays them at every event, so I'm not worried about left-field choices.
For UW Control I'm more worried. As I noted above, there's been an upsurge in UW recently. While my technical play in the mirror is good thanks to years playing the deck, my deck is weak to other control decks. I don't play Ancestral Vision because it's too slow most of the time, but it really aides the mirror and I know that many other control players have Vision. This leaves me weak to the mirror.
There is no easy solution, but by sticking to a linear progression of events, wherein the higher-weighted events are contributing more lists, we can build in some protection against inaccurate conclusions.
Onto the cards that Burn will actually play. I want to begin with Blur of Blades. This card will not see any play right now, but if this were last year I would be gushing about how Blur shines against Infect. Infect was tough for Burn because it was faster and Wild Defiance/Mutagenic Growth killed Burn's interaction. Blur ignores those cards thanks to the -1/-1 counter, ensuring that the infector will die once the pumps wear off (give it up for 
The next possibility is Wildfire Eternal. I want it on record that I wrote "Elemental" there three times. I find the names in this set dyslexic (more on this to follow). Anyway, this card is unlikely to see play because four mana for a 1/4 non-evasive creature is too much (Afflict is not evasion, even though it's unlikely anyone will block an Eternal). However, 
make it with the big decks. Which is a shame; the deck is different and fun, and I believe that unfair combo is a necessary part of a well-balanced metagame. It just wasn't to be.
The deck seemed fun, and I rationalized to myself that having Kozilek's Return to survive the early-game, Tireless Tracker to pull ahead in the mid-game, and an incredible top-end threat in Fiend put me in a solid position to go over the fair decks (of which Standard is almost entirely comprised) without first losing to the aggro decks.
I've clamored for an Unearth reprint since I bought my Goyfs in 2012, and Claim // Fame is as good as it's gonna get. Unlike Unearth, the card is sometimes dead, and therefore worse overall. But it's definitely better in some matchups, where it provides value in the form of immediate damage. Having Fame in the graveyard forces opponents low on life to respect the threat of a creature coming down and closing the game right away, which can provide sizable tempo gains over many turns, 
Up next is the new card I'm most excited about, which is a shame since we won't get it for a few months. Sorcerous Spyglass is a two-mana Pithing Needle that allows casters to see an opponent's hand before naming a card. It doesn't even target, allowing it to get around Leyline of Sanctity.
Liliana's Defeat: [Sorcery. Destroy target black creature or black planeswalker. If it was a Liliana planeswalker, its controller loses 3 life.] I mentioned this one above, and man, is it a doozy. Here's a card that kills any of Grixis Shadow's high-impact cards, no questions asked, for one mana. It can even be Snapped back! Expect Defeat to be a staple in black sideboards as a one- or two-of while Grixis Shadow remains Modern's premier 
Ramunap Excavator: Giving beloved noncreature permanents legs is nothing new for Wizards, but these kinds of reveals still manage to energize the community. Excavator represents Crucible of Worlds on a body. Talk about a card Todd Stevens wishes he had three months ago, when he actually played the clunky artifact in 
Oketra's Last Mercy: Whether or not this card breaks into the competitive circuit (double white is a pretty intensive color cost for the white decks that struggle against Burn, like Bant Eldrazi), you can bet your bottom you'll see it at FNM for years to come. Burn players, beware: someone's got it out for you. Fortunately for Lava Spikers, Mercy can still be countered with Skullcrack and Atarka's Command; 
Nimble Obstructionist: Vendilion Clique is a powerful card, and one that's seen its fair share of tournament play. But it's always had a tough time in Modern, where it dies to Bolt and heavily taxes manabases. Of course, Bolt isn't great right now, so three-mana, 3/1 flying bodies may have more relevance than usual---Kelsey has even been liking a Clique in her 
Bontu's Last Reckoning: Not untapping your lands sucks, but it doesn't suck as much as dying. Modern is a very fast format. Reckoning gives black decks a fairly unconditional sweeper that I think will definitely see play in sideboards. Killing an Angler and a Shadow with one card isn't something currently available to Modern players for three mana, and that price point makes it easier to flash back with Snapcaster Mage than something like Damnation. Reckoning also provides a highly impactful effect to decks that don't often get to four mana, and one that practically loses its drawback in late-game topdeck-mode situations, despite still costing the same amount.
Scavenger Grounds: [T: Add C to your mana pool. 2, T, sacrifice a desert: Exile all cards from all graveyards.] I almost put Grounds into my above Colorless Eldrazi Stompy list over that flex-spot Relic, but I'll have to test with the card to see if it makes the cut there---after all, we only have room for 2 Mutavault, a card we'd like to run more of if able. Either way, Grounds is an obvious shoe-in for Eldrazi Tron, a deck that not only likes its disruptive effect but has a way to consistently access the card thanks to Expedition Map. Since Grounds can sacrifice any desert to activate its ability, it even plays nicely with our next card...
Hostile Desert: [T: Add C to your mana pool. 2, exile a land card from your graveyard: Hostile Desert becomes a 3/4 elemental creature until end of turn. It's still a land.] Yet another inclusion I'll have to test in Colorless Eldrazi Stompy, Hostile Desert costs more to activate than Mutavault, but also brings significantly more power to the table. 3/4 is freaking massive! For reference, that's the size of many young Goyfs, and of Stirring Wildwood---a land that costs a whopping three mana (including two of different colors) to activate, and still sees play. Hostile Desert is very pushed as far as colorless manlands go, and I'm interested to see if it breaks in to many non-colorless Modern decks as a result (as Mutavault historically has). Resisting Bolt is a major plus in this format.
I have another land-light hand with Vial while my opponent has the combo turn three and is visibly irritated when I have Path to not die. I continue to develop my board while he just has more mana dorks. After counting his mana, I know that he can Chord of Calling for Devoted Druid and combo next turn. He already telegraphed at least one Chord by rereading my Cursecatcher. I have Vial on two and five mana, so I play Seas and two Adepts looking for Cage. I find it. He has Chord, but only for one thanks to Cursecatcher, and gets Viscera Seer. He draws nothing relevant before dying.
Luckily for John, "boring" does not always equal "bad." In fact, the deck looked positively awesome when it dismantled Brad Nelson's Grixis Shadow two games to zero 
The seeds of Eldrazi Tron’s demise were planted two weeks ago, in the form of Ceremonious Rejection. Grixis Death’s Shadow proved to the world that it was possible to tune your maindeck to fight a large portion of the field, while at the same time retaining a core strategy, leaving the sideboard to shore up a few concentrated matchups. Three Ceremonious Rejection is a statement—one that, if adopted, will cause things to change, for better or for worse. Eldrazi Tron could adopt Cavern of Souls, but in doing so would have to lose Ghost Quarter, and it’s possible Cavern of Souls might not even be enough. Forcing Eldrazi Tron to become one-dimensional, losing out on their Karn Liberated top end (not to mention a ton of their fixing) could prove to be too much for the archetype, and might sponsor a change at the top. If this happens, expect midrange to return, individual archetype representation to fall across the board, and (potentially) a more diverse spread of archetypes to find a foothold.
straightforward and easy to understand. If I show you decks like 
It seems whenever a new deck breaks out at a streamed tournament, ban-mania consumes the online Modern community. Or does it? When 
Another recurring theme with banlist discussion is players' fixation on having a 
However, control isn't Foretold's only possible shell. A number of players that I've run into online and at my LGS have tried to build around the card more centrally. I don't think there's any collusion between them, and it would be anomalously coincidental to the point of paranoid conspiracy if the paper players were also the online players, but they've all arrived at Jeskai Restore Balance decks. I don't have their lists, but each one is built around Greater Gargadon, Restore Balance, As Foretold, and Nahiri, the Harbinger. In addition, they have a number of cheap interactive cards, Ancestral Vision, and sometimes Wheel of Fate. I've never actually seen them cast Wheel, but they are trying it. Their idea is that you are Jeskai Control but get to play a prison-style game with Restore Balance enabled by Gargadon. To my knowledge none of these decks have won any events, but they've done reasonably well for the past week.
When they assemble their pieces, the decks I've seen are very potent. There's just not much you can do when you have no lands against a Greater Gargadon, a full grip of cards, and free spells every turn. However, the operative word in the first sentence is when. More than other decks, these Balance decks need to draw the right cards at the right time to have any chance of victory. Failing to draw Balance can prove fatal. Not setting Balance up with Gargadon can spell doom. Failure to draw Foretold may cause the deck to do nothing. I've played a number of games against the deck where Foretold never resolved and I won with lots of my opponent's scary suspended spells several turns away from resolving. There is power there, and where there is power there is potential, but as far as I'm concerned, these decks are unforgivably fragile.
I cannot say that this disproves my overall theory, because I'm told the strategy actually works in Lantern decks. I've even received testimonials on this subject. I don't know if they're true or even plausible, as I'd rather chew my own head off than play Lantern. That may be the real answer though. If you have to go as far as to play Lantern Control for an idea to be good, it might not be worth it.
Affinity is still Affinity, but I have noticed more Master of Etherium and Blood Moon than normal in the lists. Master of Etherium has always been great as a way to add some bulk to boards and to present a large target in one card, but sleeving it up over Etched Champion, which is usually swapped out in some number for the three-drop, says something about how you expect the field to be on game day. It’s clear that Affinity these days is worried less about dodging removal-heavy decks like Jund and control, and more about quickly producing lots of damage. While I don’t normally like Blood Moon out of Affinity, as most players will fetch basics post-board anyways, it's hard to argue that dropping it on turn two on the play isn’t powerful, especially against Eldrazi Tron and Death’s Shadow (two of the other top five decks).
really care about getting hit by the now-ubiquitous Ghost Quarter.
Consider the problem of building around the bicyclers. You need the bicyclers obviously, and they're pretty bad on their own in Modern. You need Loam, which doesn't really do anything on its own. And then you need the rest of the land base, the payoff spells and finally some enablers to help set it all up. It was a very slow and awkward combo deck, and they were ultimately terrible. So few cards matter in a vacuum that when you cannot find them fast enough in a real game your deck is blank.
The specific presence of Condemn may not have done much to stop Modern's 
+1 Fatal Push
As far as legality of the deck is concerned, I don't view Merfolk as a potentially game-breaking deck that could see a ban coming in the future. Generally, small creature decks are not at the mercy of a banning announcement. Merfolk doesn't have the dominance numbers necessary even for a conversation about bannings.
Past this, I would probably look to get Mutavaults squared away. While we are getting a tribal Commander set, where they could appear, we've seen other under-printed cards seeing heavy play increase in price after a reprint. The last Commander product had four-color decks, and only one of the five included a Chromatic Lantern. Chromatic Lantern dipped to about $5, but when everyone else realized they still needed one it went back up to $9.50. If there is only one deck with a Mutavault, we might have the same problem. Assuming the other tribal decks might want one too (like Elves or Goblins) then we could see a big rise in the card's cost. As for the Modern deck, Mutavault is too integral to the Merfolk plan to avoid playing them in your deck.
No, Dredge doesn't count. It uses Loam, but it doesn't abuse it. Loam's just another dredger there, and not an engine the deck is built around. 
However, I don't think that is necessarily optimal. The problem I had was that playing the Loam engine encouraged me to slow down, and I'm not sure it was correct to do so. Without Thicket and Slough, Jund Loam felt like a grindy aggro deck. With them, I was encouraged to try and play a longer game. And this made the deck clunkier somehow. Maybe it was because I just made the mana worse, but having the cycling lands meant that you could do less in a turn if you were trying to make the engine work. It made little difference if you didn't try to actually use the Loam engine and just played the deck as if it didn't exist. This leads me to believe that the new cycling lands are considerably worse than the old Onslaught cycle.
With Push in the mix, we have enough juicy targets to want to max out on Snapcaster Mage. 4 Snap, 4 Bolt is a real plan, and complemented by Chandra and Brutality, it becomes even better. This Moon-less deck gets Creeping Tar Pit, which deals plenty of damage and is very tough to stop when we strip an opponent's hand with Brutality and Restore Balance. Greater Gargadon also goes to two copies in this build, giving us yet another way to win the game.
I thought I curved out fairly well with a scryland for a Plains into Prism, then Unlife and Serum Visions. Had I found Ad Nauseam off Visions or a Temple I would have won. As it was, my opponent dealt a whopping 14 damage on turn three thanks to two resolving Rift Bolts and Atarka's Command. On turn four, I went to zero, and then to two poison thanks to Boros Charm and Goblin Guide. Had Burn drawn a spell instead of a land turn five, I would have died, but I was afforded an extra meaningless turn. I can see why Ad Naus players like Unlife in this matchup; most of the time it will gain you over than 10 life. The math this time just favored my opponent. Interestingly, I drew an Angel's Grace on my last turn but it doesn't actually prevent damage so I would have died during cleanup had I tried to save myself.
For one, there's no limit to the amount of creatures we can play per turn, so Vizier can possibly draw us more than one card on the same turn. Courser caps out at one extra card per turn, barring the presence of some goofy effect like Azusa, Lost but Seeking's. Creature-heavy decks in the market for some card advantage, like Bant Eldrazi or any Genesis Wave-style deck, might be able to employ Vizier profitably.
Weird colors, weird abilities, weird casting cost. Fortunately for Nissa, Modern is a weird format. Her ability to scale in long games makes Nissa very interesting, despite her inability to protect herself. The decks that will try her out are ones that tend to have lots of lands in the mid-game and struggle with consistency issues—again, Bant Eldrazi springs to mind. It helps that her 0 ability works best in decks full of lands and creatures, but light on noncreature spells. I could see Nissa working in some ramp-happy creature deck that also wants Vizier.
Ribbons domes opponents for X, only costing pilots an extra BB. That's exactly the kind of mode Removal.dec wants on its binned cards. Grixis Control has all but inherited UR Twin's title as Bolt-Snap-Bolt deck of the format, and Ribbons meshes perfectly with that gameplan.
Here's the most boring of the spoiled cards covered today, but Cast Out nevertheless deserves a mention. The main reason to play Cast Out over Oblivion Ring (or, alternatively, Detention Sphere) is its flash keyword.
Pull is probably the worst of this bunch. This card would have been awesome for UR Twin, but with that deck 
A beautifully designed card with plenty of unintuitive interactions. Time Stop has never been a competitive staple due to its steep mana cost, but Glorious End might be cheap enough to actually make some waves in Modern. If it does, we'll finally learn how to properly cast this kind of card!
Regal Caracal's whopping converted mana cost of 5 forces us into lots of lands, which luckily also supports two of Modern's most aggressively-costed cats, Steppe Lynx and Scythe Tiger. Another blessing in disguise is Tarmogoyf's Lhurgoyf creature type. Later, pal—let's run Rest in Peace instead!
It’s hard to look at Amonkhet's Gods without comparing them to the Theros Five. While none of the old cycle made a significant impact in Modern, Thassa, God of the Sea did show up in a few Merfolk lists here and there before eventually being dropped for stronger, more powerful options. I have seen a few tokens lists try and make Purphoros work, but for the most part the Gods lorded over Standard without doing much in Modern.
The comparison here is Nahiri, the Harbinger, except that Champion is probably worse. Yes, we can put Emrakul into play, but why are we playing Emrakul in our probably-aggressive green deck? 3/3 stats are unfortunate as well, especially when we have to pay four mana. If Champion were a 3/2 that cost 3, or even a 3/1, I’d be excited, as RG Breach decks could play it alongside Tarmogoyf and Lightning Bolt to just beat down opponents loading up on counterspells, discard, and Stone Rain. Still, the math works out right that this thing is coming down on turn three in that deck anyways, so maybe it can still be considered a three-drop.
The problem is that I don't know what combo deck actually wants either of those cards. Storm and Ad Nauseam get along fine as is. While both can make use of extra mana, Foretold looks too slow to be useful.
Channeler Initiate/Exemplar of Strength
Similarly, if you lead with Khalni Garden then you can target the plant instead of the original creature.
Failure to Comply: This card fascinates me. Orim's Chant and the Modern-legal Silence were billed as control cards and yet were actually used as prison and combo cards. This latest version is hard to place. The first half is worse than Unsubstantiate, a mediocre tempo card that sees virtually no play. The second half is more promising. There are too many cards you would want to name for it to protect a combo and it's too narrow for prison decks. The best use I've come up with is as an answer to suspend cards. When you remove the last time counter you attempt to cast the spell, but if you cannot cast it then it just stays in exile. No Visions for you. Not a control-mirror breaker on its face, but maybe a good tool. It's very much a puzzle to be solved.
Lay Bare the Heart: Likely too expensive to see play, but it does hit 99% of all cards in Modern. Outside of a few creatures like Melira, Thalia, and Kiki-Jiki, there are no legendary creatures in Modern, making this effectively Thoughtseize. Assuming the mana cost is not the barrier to play I think it is, the unanswered question is whether we need Thoughtseize numbers 4-8. Probably not, considering that Thoughtseize is really just extra Inquistion of Kozilek, but 8-Rack does play Blackmail.
for Chord of Calling decks to run the Sage anymore. The beast will also challenge for the Elves job too, not because of the minimal stat boost but because of the Kismet clause. Manglehorn is too costly for this effect to be relevant against Affinity, but artifact combos will suffer. Eggs, Cheeri0s, and even Thopter combo all rely on their artifacts entering play untapped and were incidentally good against decks that ran Reclamation Sage. Manglehorn not only destroys a key component but breaks up the combo. Eggs' Chromatic Stars and Spheres cannot be sacrificed, Mox Opal cannot be tapped for mana, and the Thopters cannot block. I expect this to see considerable play.
Wheel of Fate is a bit trickier to evaluate, since it has one of the 
Gideon hasn't blown me away yet, but he takes pressure off our life total with his plus ability and usual planeswalker bulk, and forces opponents to interact with him to get us dead. This last dimension is useful in just about every matchup. Combo decks like Ad Nauseam have no way to beat a Gideon in game one, and aggro decks won't be able to just ignore the 'walker and attack our face. Leyline of Sanctity also works well with Gideon, since it requires opponents to defeat him in combat. Lightning Bolt, Lightning Storm, and company can't target us with Leyline in play, so that damage can't be redirected to our planeswalkers.
All that left me looking to Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver. Milling opponents out is as demoralizing a strategy as any. Ashiok has some tension in this deck, though, since it turns on enemy removal. Stealing a Goyf feels great until it promptly gets Pushed. Having Liliana of the Veil in play greatly mitigates this issue, since we can empty a hand first. Another problem with Ashiok is that we rarely want to use its ultimate, so opponents don't really care about attacking it. Ideally, our planeswalkers draw enemy fire.
These elements, of course, appear in most of the Death and Taxes shells, but they're not flanked by the usual assortment of other hatebears and Aether Vials. Instead, we have Simian Spirit Guide and Gemstone Caverns to power them out faster, and Chalice of the Void to cheese out opponents.
Bolt decks existing back then and Cawblade was still the best deck and you still always Brainstormed because it was just better. The other thing to consider is that Bolt just isn't Bolt anymore. When Splinter Twin was legal, Bolt was omnipresent and this argument held quite a bit of weight. Now though? Our 
Except they didn't. Nobody had predicted that Dragon's Maze would flood the market with even more Steam Vents and Overgrown Tombs. In the case of Magic cards, this threat of reprint is one of the perennial risks. Even when it seems quite unlikely, if a reprint does hit, you may be out quite a bit of money. Successfully managing risk essentially boils down to measuring the expected value of a given investment. The savvy investor doesn't just consider the upside, but also the downside. The greater the risk, the more it will mitigate any potential upside. If the risk is too great relative to the gains, the investor will look elsewhere.
The big upgrade here, of course, is Secure the Wastes and Sphinx's Revelation as our endgame. Those let us truly bury the hatchet and pull way far ahead, as opposed to grinding constant two-for-ones with the Kolaghan's Command-Snapcaster Mage-Tasigur chain.
To really move up the tiers, DnT either needs the format to be more restrictive, so it can target decks more easily, or it needs better win conditions. The former is undesirable and unlikely to occur, so that leaves us hoping for a new creature. Gideon, Ally of Zendikar has sometimes been that threat, but he's poor in enough matchups that I'd keep him in the sideboard. My experience suggests that we need a more resilient disruptive three-drop that flies. Mindcensor and Wingmare's stats are too low, but another three-power flier like Flickerwisp would likely do the trick. There are some three-drop 3/xs already, but they don't really do anything other than beat. We need something disruptive. Alternatively, seeing protection return could also work.
Bushwhacker Zoo makes a triumphant return on the back of revolt. Bushwhacker Zoo is back to Tier 2 after several months wavering between no ranking and Tier 3, and it's received a little bit of a face lift. Some outlets have called this deck "Revolt Zoo," for the prominent use it makes of the new mechanic out of Aether Revolt. Burning-Tree Emissary was always a central component of this deck's plan, and Hidden Herbalists just ensures it's that much more likely to spew its hand out in the early game. The archetype also gained access to the newest Kird Ape impersonator, Narnam Renegade. While it will be harder to turn on to full power than the Monkey, Renegade gets to attack into anything, Goyfs and Thought-Knot Seers included. It also offers a deck like Bushwhacker Zoo a rare defensive tool against the likes of Death's Shadow when it falls behind. Builds are still pretty non-standard (some have even included copies of Greenwheel Liberator), so it's anyone's guess where this archetype goes from here.
All but one of the eighteen CMC 1-2 creatures that did not transition to the current list (the "one" being a lone Lord of Atlantis, the 50th most-played creature at the time) can be traced to Bushwhacker Zoo, Infect, and Abzan Company. In place of the creatures lost, the ten newcomers represent fourteen different decks:
One possible conclusion from this data: a few dominant aggro strategies (BGx, Infect, Zoo, Abzan Company) kept diversity low pre-Push. Push's printing and the subsequent metagame shifts have resulted in a net diversity gain for Modern, essentially pulling shares away from Tarmogoyf (long the format's most-played creature) and the decks fast enough to get under it, and redistributing them among a host of different strategic archetypes that now have room to breathe.