Every time spoiler season rolls around, I eagerly pore over the commons, searching for Modern-playable… Rogues. Everyone has their guilty pleasures, their sick addictions. When it comes to Modern, mine is the interaction between tribal spells and Tarmogoyf. And my favorite tribal spell? A one-mana Impulse called Thieves’ Fortune. Just as Ancient Stirrings, powerful as it […]
Jordan Boisvert
Jordan is Assistant Director of Content at Quiet Speculation and a longtime contributor to Modern Nexus. Best known for his innovations in Temur Delver and Colorless Eldrazi, Jordan favors highly reversible aggro-control decks and is always striving to embrace his biases when playing or brewing.
Every spoiler season, you can catch me looking over the new cards and imagining how they line up in Modern. “I wonder if this card could work?” Invariably, I’ll make a bunch of lists and bring them to battle on Cockatrice. I lose. I fix the list. I lose some more. After a full day of […]
When players talk about Modern’s “high power level,” they are generally referring to how hard it is for Standard-legal cards to break into the format. After receiving archetype-spawning hits in Oath of the Gatewatch (Thought-Knot Seer, Reality Smasher), Shadows Over Innistrad (Nahiri, the Harbinger, Prized Amalgam), and Eldritch Moon (Eldritch Evolution, Bedlam Reveler), it’s a little disheartening to leaf […]
It’s that Friday again: the one where a new set becomes legal. The reception I’ve seen for Kaladesh has been surprisingly divisive, with some panning vehicles and others lauding the cycle of Inventions. For me, excitement surrounding a new set generally has to do with its constructed implications. My major takeaway from the Kaladesh spoilers was that for the […]
Modern is a format with plenty of decks, and many of those decks have multiple names. This problem becomes apparent as we move down the tier list, and rampant at the very bottom. There are many ways to name a deck, and this article explores some of the possibilities. It also introduces a three-level archetype system […]
I’ve been tweaking Temur Delver variants, especially my beloved Monkey Grow, for well over a year now. The archetype does everything I want to be doing in Modern: it throws Bolts, it attacks with efficient threats, it counters spells, it cantrips, and it steals games with Blood Moon. For a long time, it also struggled […]
In last week’s article, I considered a Death’s Shadow Zoo variant that gave up some speed for Modern’s most efficient interactive spells. The question at the heart of that project: what does a deck gain from leaning further towards interaction or linearity, in relation to the overall metagame? Even obviously linear decks like Infect and Affinity […]
Another PPTQ last weekend saw me again go 4-2 with Monkey Grow. I beat Jeskai Control, Affinity, and two Burn decks, dropping matches to Delirium Jund and Bant Eldrazi. The matches were interesting, but I’m wary of writing too exclusively for one niche. So I’ll spare you the tournament report and unveil a new brew: […]
My Eldrazi Stompy article from last week was relatively well-received, but some users had questions about my updated Monkey Grow deck from the week before. They’re in luck—I took the deck to a Face to Face PPTQ and went 4-2, loading up on insights along the way. This was my third PPTQ with the Bedlam Reveler-featuring Monkey […]
One of my favorite things about Modern: the power level is high enough to allow us to play with Lightning Bolt, but low enough for Standard sets to consistently impact the format. Eldritch Moon injected some welcome lifeblood into my pettest deck, Monkey Grow, with Bedlam Reveler. The set also gave a boost to another of my […]
Move over, Shiloh—It’s Modern season! The next few weeks in my calendar are full of Modern PPTQs, Opens, and GPs, and I think I finally know what to sleeve up. Two weeks ago, I introduced Traverse Delver, a mid-game-focused, Traverse the Ulvenwald/Bedlam Reveler-powered grow deck that finally solved Temur Delver’s miserable Jund matchup. It did so for a hefty […]
Wizards loves touting Modern as “wide-open,” a claim bolstered by the format’s incredibly diverse pool of viable decks. With so many options available to them, deckbuilders are bound to ask broader questions about archetype superiority. Is Allies just a worse Merfolk? Goblins, a worse Zoo? Bubble Hulk, a worse Grishoalbrand? Whatever the answers to these questions, someone will play those […]
I remember scrolling through Eldritch Moon spoilers and passing over Bedlam Reveler, the last card I hadn’t read that day. The image was in Portuguese, and my hopes were low. “A 3/4 for 8,” I actually thought to myself. “There’s no way I could ever have a use for this card.” But I read it anyway, and […]
