Every few weeks, speculation begins to rise about the next Banned and Restricted Announcement. Whenever something actually does happen, I frequently see laments over being blindsided and calls for Wizards to implement a banning watchlist. While an official list will never happen as it would unduly influence the secondary market, I do think it useful […]

The Modern metagame cycles, though the process is slow and hard to see. This complicates determining which trends are just flashes in the pan and which must be accounted for and adapted to. Metagame-specific decks, like Death and Taxes at GP Las Vegas 2017, can look like real decks, at times frustrating players trying to […]

Finally, it’s time for everyone’s favorite part of the banlist test: the experimental data. After playing 500 matches with GB Elves over several months, I can finally put some data to the speculation about the impact of unbanning Green Sun’s Zenith. I will be revealing the hard numbers and their statistical significance. As always, these […]

At last, GP Las Vegas is upon us. Unfortunately, work-related complications mean I will not be going. But that won’t stop me from examining the latest Modern results to anticipate the metagame. While these results are not entirely unexpected, interpreting the data with care ensures a more accurate metagame read. The data from the past […]

I’ve been doing a lot of theoretical work over the past few months. With Dominaria’s release there was plenty of need—and opportunity—to explore and brew. During this process I was constantly underwhelmed by Modern’s ostensible top deck, Humans. It was a fine deck, but it didn’t really shine. As I explained last week, this left me perplexed about […]

Humans is currently the best deck in Modern. The data is very clear about this: Humans is on top everywhere and has been for most of the year. This is causing a kind of dynamic stability to take over the format. The top decks have remained relatively the same for some time while the rest […]

I’ve largely avoided repeating decks for this series to keep the content fresh and interesting. That said, I think the Humans deck has gone through a slew of changes, and while the core of the deck remains the same, the gameplay can be quite different. On top of that, it seems we still haven’t found […]

It begins, gentle seekers of glory. Today is a day of great opportunity and gangrenous rot. The pallid sun meekly illuminates the great ravenous hordes as they linger, eager and anxious, waiting for their moment, when they shall be unleashed upon the world to slack their unending hunger for inadequately-proportioned sugary confections. For those whose […]

What a crazy week for Modern. This week I’ll be exploring Collins Mullen’s 5-Color Humans deck which he took on an undefeated run to a trophy at the most recent SCG Open in Cincinnati. Tons of great content has already been written about this feat, including Trevor Holmes’s article just recently posted, so I will […]