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Decks come, and decks go. The metagame has no sacred cows. A deck must find its niche and then hold it to maintain relevance. Strength in a vacuum doesn't matter, nor does the dedication of the player base. Three years ago, Grixis Death's Shadow was an absolute monster of a deck, to the point that some called for its banning. Today, the metagame has moved on, and GDS is Tier 3 at best. One might be dismissive and say that it's all survival of the fittest, but that's not necessarily true. Just ask Mono-Green Tron, a deck that has fluctuated between Tier 1 and unplayable over the years. Relevance is relative, and so long as they inhabit a valid niche, a Modern deck is never truly gone.
Which is an elaborate way of introducing the fact that for the first time in years, I'm going to discuss Merfolk today. While I've always thought the deck was underrated, I had to admit that Spirits and Humans were doing Merfolk's thing a lot better, and set my baby aside. However, everything changes, and due to a quirk of the current metagame, Merfolk is better positioned than it has been in years. Whether this translates into a more permanent role in Modern remains to be seen, but the current version is a textbook example of correct metagaming and positioning. And much better than other so-called metagame solutions.
Merfolk's Return
Whenever I hear chatter about a deck's return, I'm always skeptical. Modern is very much an enthusiast format, and players like to play their deck. This is a good thing, as Modern also rewards mastery of your deck. However, I'm not so blind as to think that means that any deck is actually good. Because I used to fall for that very trap. I've played Merfolk in the face of some very broken decks out of a combination of stubbornness and genuine belief in its potential. And I was mostly let down. I thought I was out for good. And then I saw something that drew me back in.
UW Merfolk, MissTrigger (1st Place, MTGO Challenge 8/10)
Merfolk hasn't been completely absent from Modern since I stopped playing it. However, it's never put up decent results or had much of a metagame impact. This is despite some aggressive printings in Ixalan. Yes, it does often appear in League data, but that means nothing; anything can go 5-0 in a League. The bottom line was always that the deck has a very strong linear attack, but without the disruption of Humans, Merfolk struggled to hang with the combo and control decks. What piques my interest now is that MissTrigger won a Challenge---the whole thing. That's a strong signal of quality, and worth looking into.
I've Got History; Also, Bias
I will admit that at least part of this is simply that I'm me. I've been playing Merfolk a long time. It very convincingly won me the PTQ that took me to my only Pro Tour. I had lots of solid results with the deck over the years. And I was always playing UW and extolling the virtues of the deck in the face of everyone else jamming mono-blue. To see my pet deck getting results is certainly going to draw my eye more than most.
That Said...
It also means that I understand what the deck is going for and why it worked. And the fact that MissTrigger won that Challenge is no accident. Merfolk, particularly that version of Merfolk, was expertly positioned for a field well represented by the Top 32. Whenever the format moves towards slow blue decks, I expect Merfolk to see more play thanks to islandwalk. However, MissTrigger's version was prepared for a field of not only UWx decks but Prowess, Eldrazi, and Ponza. The only question is how they got past all the Toolbox decks.
The metagame is dominated by (in order) Prowess, Eldrazi Tron, and GRx midrange decks. Stoneblade is up there, too. Given that Humans has always been strong against Eldrazi and taxing effects are strong against velocity decks, I thought I'd be shouting about the virtues of Humans in this meta. That isn't happening, and the problem is Prowess.
Simply put, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben isn't good in that matchup. The problem is not that taxing effects aren't good against Prowess. They are. The problem is that Thalia is too fragile. Prowess universally runs Lava Dart maindeck, and most have a few Gut Shots between maindeck and sideboard. A turn two Thalia is barely a speed bump, and without that delay, Humans struggles to keep up. In fact, most Humans die to a single Dart hit, and there's not much Humans can do about that.
Doing the Right Thing...
And this is the first place that Merfolk shines. Unlike Humans, the vast majority of Merfolk's creatures have 2 toughness. Thus, Dart's effectiveness is muted from the get go. Then, MissTrigger replaces Thalia with Unsettled Mariner. Mariner is generally much weaker than Thalia since it only taxes spells that target. However, that is almost everything in typical Prowess decks. Coupled with the above mentioned resistance to Dart, Mariner is far more effective and breaking up the big Prowess turns than Thalia.
...With the Right Tools
The next critical adaptation is relevant interaction. Humans has getting enormous and Reflector Mage as maindeck answers for creatures. Merfolk can also get big, though lords are more fragile than counters. There is the advantage that Prowess has islands and does a lot of damage to itself, but that's minor compared to Merfolk's other advantages. See, Mage 
is very good, but it costs three. And Noble Hierarch only lives past the first turn in games Humans is never going to lose against Prowess. Thus, Mage is too slow most of the time.
Merfolk has more interaction, but it's also all the right interaction for the matchup. Merfolk vs Prowess is very much about tempo, and the interactive Merfolk creatures offer far stronger tempo plays. Back when I played Merfolk, I was always skeptical of Harbinger of the Tides. It was a good card, but the old metagame was more about attrition or combo than racing, meaning Harbinger was mediocre. Prowess is another story. Tapping Stormwing Entity with Merfolk Trickster or bouncing it during combat with Harbinger is a huge swing. There's the tempo of getting a your creature down and bouncing theirs, but there's also card advantage, since Prowess pumps so many spells into its creatures. They're actual spells, not cantrips, so Prowess does run out of gas. Plus, the Merfolk also only cost two, so they'll see play early enough to make a difference.
Bring a Spare
Finally, there's the sideboard. Chalice of the Void is obviously huge game against a deck 
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.
However, the real genius is running Tidebinder Mage. I also never ran Mage back in the day because Jund doesn't care if it can't block for a turn and Elves just hemorrhaged too much stuff for icing one creature to matter. But against Prowess, Mage becomes a Time Walk. Prowess must kill Mage the turn it's played, or they lose an entire turn killing the Mage, and not attacking. And doing anything on the opponent's turn is bad because it gives up prowess triggers. Trickster can fog a single attack, but Mage represents multiple combats lost and can attack itself. Merfolk thus has the right tools to really kick Prowess around.
Splash Damage
However, if the only criteria to being a good deck was a strong matchup against the top deck, then Soul Sisters would see more play. Modern is too broad and diverse to target the top deck and achieve success. Fortunately, Merfolk has a number of strong matchups, many of which are top decks right now. Merfolk has always been decent to very good against Eldrazi decks: you just swamp the board and swim past because Chalice is too slow and Merfolk plays Cavern of Souls. Blue decks, particularly ones without sweepers are similarly good. That Merfolk is good against Ponza was a real surprise to me.
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.
See, without that acceleration, Ponza just starts clunking. And Merfolk uniquely attacks Ponza's mana. Dismember on Elf is obvious, but the real killer is Spreading Seas. Sprawl is an "enchant forest" card, and should Seas flood that forest, Sprawl falls off. Thus, Merfolk can attack both parts of Ponza's main advantage while largely ignoring Blood Moon. This makes Ponza play more like its older, and far worse, incarnations, which were good matchups back in the day. It's hardly a cake walk especially after board, but much better than expected.
That Pernicious Metagame Deck
Ultimately, that's the key to a good metagame deck. You have to hit the deck you're targeting without losing sight of the rest of the metagame. Not only that, a metagame deck needs to be reasonable on its own within the Modern ecosystem. Again, Modern is too diverse to 
really target a single deck, and if a deck's gameplan is only good against a single type of deck (or just one specific deck), it is doomed to fail.
I've warned against trying to metagame a lot. The problem is that players tend to tunnel vision on one aspect of the format and forget about the rest. On top of that, they often fixate on specific interactions that they think are good and miss the wider context. Or worse, they miss the actual reason that a deck or interaction is good, and miss their target. MissTrigger's deck is a case study in how to do it right: have a generally good gameplan; hit the right things about the deck(s) you're targeting; hit other good decks too; and most critically, don't play into the gameplan of the deck you're targeting. They wanted to live in that world for a reason; do you really think you can come into their house and do it better?
Theoretically Correct...
The worst offender for this is BW Tokens. Practically since the dawn of Modern, players have tried to make the deck work, and it hasn't ever been a metagame force. Or even worth considering. Every few years, I see it getting attention as a metagame deck and it's frequently called a Jund killer. The argument is that Jund can't win an attrition fight against a token deck. Jund has to trade a full card of removal for a token, which is only part of a card. The sheer volume of tokens then overwhelms Jund while discard rips up Jund's hand. After all, Lingering Souls is a major reason that Junk is favored over Jund, so more of that is better. Right?
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.
When Jund was big at my LGS back in 2015-2016, I made BW tokens and was continually disappointed by how mediocre my Jund matchup was. Unless I hit my planeswalkers, my tokens could not race any reasonable board state. My creatures were too small, and if I had to start blocking, I probably couldn't stop. And that's not mentioning the impact of sideboard sweepers. Worse, discard was very good against tokens. The underpowered discard deck fighting a powerful discard deck is disadvantaged.
...But Flawed in Reality
Which is a lengthy set-up to me warning against playing the Mono-White Tokens deck that appeared at the end of July.
Mono-W Tokens, Marxelo (7-2, Modern Champs)
This deck is touted as a new and potent metagame deck. The idea is to race Prowess by chumping while beating in the air, especially now that Crash Through sees little play, while going wide and tall with all the anthem effects against everything else. After testing it myself (and watching a lot of Youtube while researching this article), I've come to realize that it's fallen into the same pitfalls as the old BW deck.
The token makers all cost a lot of mana. There's no acceleration, just various ways to pump the tokens. Thus, its speed is more like that of a beatdown deck. When it all comes together and the tokens get a few pumps, the deck looks good. But Force of Virtue is hard to use, Venerated Loxodon is not good tempo, and when tokens starts to fall behind, it stays behind. There's no reset buttons or other ways to catch up; you just make more tokens and hope. Thus, as the linked Jim Davis video shows, Tokens is great at snowballing, but if a single thread comes loose, the whole sweater shreds. He didn't even beat Prowess because, again, Dart is great against x/1s.
The Lesson of Good Metagaming
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.
Be more like MissTrigger and have a good gameplan that targets the right parts of the matchup. I don't know if Merfolk is going to remain a force in Modern, but as long as the metagame remains as it is, there is a chance.
Stoneforge also gives a juicy turn two option, and a proactive one at that, for a deck that's historically lacked such options; in the past, UW Flash has slammed creatures as unappealing as Wall of Omens (provides card draw down the road with Restoration Angel, maybe) or otherwise hoped opponents give them something to Mana Leak or Remand. Since neither of those counterspells are particularly alluring in a deck that likes going long, Stoneforge lets Flash decks totally omit them in favor of a question rather than an answer---many decks, still, will lose to Batterskull if they can't immediately take out the Kor. Wielding that threat allows the deck to 
Slamming Puresteel Palladin and then a series of 0-cost equipment not only refills a pilot's hand, but allows them to suit up Palladin to survive Lightning Bolt and the like. Alternatively, equipment can go to the evasive Ornithopter, itself especially fond of Cranial Plating. Still, the star of the artifact show is Colossus Hammer, a cheap weapon that benefits greatly from Palladin's cost reduction; while the trinket generally costs a whopping 8 mana to attach, in this deck doing so often costs 0, letting players toss it around freely between their 0-drop creatures until opponents run out of Fatal Pushes. Even though it energized Cheeri0s the first time around, Sram, Senior Edificer dodges inclusion here, as it doesn't synergize well with Hammer; instead, Sigarda's Edge is employed to add consistency to the Hammer plan via more cost reduction.
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.
Both creatures roughly ask the same thing of pilots: that they cast instants and sorceries during their turns. And while Phoenix is robust in that it comes back from the graveyard each turn, Stormwing is by virtue of resisting Lightning Bolt (with an instant), Fatal Push, and Inquisition of Kozilek. It helps, too, that the graveyard hate frequently employed to deal with Arclight, such as Grafdiggers' Cage and Surgical Extraction, does absolutely nothing to Entity, a feature the Elemental shares with Thing in the Ice---that said, conditionally disrupting opponents with Thing and still dying to Push seems a lot worse than just getting them dead with Stormwing while staying strong against more disruption.
And then there were the games where I actually was behind. I've experience hopeless matchups before because I've lived through 
efficient that it just pushed through every other deck. If it fell behind, the burn would hold the line and Snapcaster Mage cleaned up. Jace was legal by that point, but I wasn't playing it because it cut into the highly proactive gameplan. The opponent was never safe from being burned out and struggled to gain traction. Thus Jeskai still ended up playing from behind, but it could do that and still win.
The real bonus as far as I'm concerned is the aggro matchup. While the main interaction is still Path, Bant runs Supreme Verdict which is a literal lifesaver. Bant can get overwhelmed just like UW, though activated Ice-Fang helps considerably. The difference is that Bant has Verdict as an actual out and a means to regain a lost board. Add in Uro's lifegain and games against Prowess, Dredge, and Ponza feel infinitely better.
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 
Spellstutter Sprite: While not a Rogue, Spellstutter synergizes with a key enabler in Faerie Miscreant and gives us precious stack interaction. Grabbing Sprite for value in the mid-game is a great way to secure a lead.
Brazen Borrower: Another excellent newcomer for the archetype, Borrower is itself a Rogue with flash, lending itself well to enabling Fortune. At the same time, it's a searchable bounce spell and multiple spells rolled into one card.
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.
Not too long after I started messing around with Rogues again, Stormwing Entity came to be, which prompted 
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.
and plays new cards, so there's excitement for the deck and higher adoption as a result. However, Dragon and Entity genuinely seem like upgrades to the deck, so this might be no accident.
Everything else that eventually made Tiers 1-2 was very consistent. Were it not for those spikes, the top 2 decks wouldn't have been on top by the margins they were and Tier 1 would have been a very level playing field. Thus, I regard the top decks with suspicion.
Flying totally off the rails is 
It's been over a year since my last 
Kamigawa Block Constructed was a 
However, it was never as popular as in Block. This was primarily due to overshadowing from Tron in Standard and then Loam decks in Extended. That said, it remained viable until the end of 
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.
Against Counters, the effect was still present, though less pronounced. As a creature deck with mana dorks, Counters Company can win too quickly for D&T to do anything. When that doesn't happen, Jitte becomes a chainsaw, since so many creatures are x/2 or smaller. This was tempered by Counters having tutors to find Reclamation Sage, but doing so pulled attention from the Rest in Peaces and Phyrexian Revokers that were keeping the combos down in the first place. I don't know how this matchup would have played out, but I do know that the dynamic had been shifted as a result of 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.
