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Modern Banlist Watch List: 2022 Edition

David Ernenwein — Wed, 29 Dec 2021 17:00:35 +0000

David's back with his annual Modern ban watch list. What was banned in 2021? The format now appears healthy, but what is on his radar for the future?

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All That Remains: An Unban Examination

David Ernenwein — Wed, 15 Dec 2021 17:00:34 +0000

Banning problem cards helps build healthy metagames. For this, Modern is no exception. Today David examines a different approach: unbanning.

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You Can’t Go Home: The Unban Problem

David Ernenwein — Wed, 25 Aug 2021 16:00:21 +0000

Being unable to play with your cards sucks. No one will dispute this. What is also unequivocally true is that cards need to be banned. Sometimes Wizards makes mistakes while making cards, and the likes of Oko, Thief of Crowns proceed to wreck their havoc. Other times new cards interact with old ones in unexpected […]

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Testing Hypergenesis: Experimental Setup

David Ernenwein — Tue, 23 Feb 2021 17:00:29 +0000

It's been quite a while, but your eyes do not deceive: this is another full banlist test series! It's been almost two years since I did one of these. Not for lack of trying, mind you, but there are only so many viable test subjects in the first place, and I've done a few already. […]

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Alien Zoo: Colorless Eldrazi Stompy Post-SSG Ban

Jordan Boisvert — Mon, 22 Feb 2021 17:00:30 +0000

On February 15, 2021, Wizards banned a card near and dear to my heart: Simian Spirit Guide. The Asking-for-It Ape was featured prominently in my go-to Modern deck, Colorless Eldrazi Stompy, which must mutate dramatically if it is to keep pace in the format. With a week of testing under my belt, I'm ready to […]

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Nuked From Orbit: The February ’21 Banning

David Ernenwein — Tue, 16 Feb 2021 17:00:36 +0000

Wow. There are bannings, and then there are bannings. This was definitely the latter. Wizards looked at non-Standard Constructed, saw that it was poor, and nuked it. All of it, Historic, Pioneer, Legacy, and most importantly, Modern. Vintage also saw an unbanning. Because somebody had to get thrown a bone. Monday morning, Wizards dropped the largest […]

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Modern Banlist Watchlist: 2021 Edition

David Ernenwein — Tue, 29 Dec 2020 17:00:38 +0000

Final article of the year! Good riddance, 2020. Hopefully, things start to turn around quickly and we can have the gathering part of Magic: The Gathering back again. But, this isn't about a virus or vaccine. Today, I have business that must be finished before 2021 begins. For the third year running, it's time to update my […]

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Alternative Medicine: Modern’s Land Problem

David Ernenwein — Tue, 24 Nov 2020 17:00:24 +0000

It's important to consider alternative solutions to any problem. No matter how clear the solution to a given problem may be to you, never discount the possibility of other perspectives offering insight. Or that biases can blind to us to potential solutions. Either way, entertaining alternatives can get the creative juices flowing. Which is why […]

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Uro on MTGO: Lessons from the MOCS

David Ernenwein — Tue, 17 Nov 2020 17:00:28 +0000

Continuing on with article types that have been vanishingly rare this year, it's time to look at the lessons from a specific tournament. I haven't done this since February because there just haven't been any Modern tournaments. Wizards has neglected every other format in order to push Arena. Which means that other competitive formats have been neglected. […]

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Banned and Restricted List Update – August 3rd, 2020

Christopher O'Berry — Tue, 04 Aug 2020 04:33:57 +0000

Today brought one of the most significant bans in recent memory, and at breakneck speed. Surprise?! The August 3rd, 2020 Banned and Restricted announcement is live!

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Underestimation Escalation: Umezawa’s Jitte

David Ernenwein — Tue, 28 Jul 2020 16:00:31 +0000

There are many old sayings about plans going awry. Even when it seems like everything lines up perfectly, there's always a chance for something to go wrong. Throw in a global health crisis, and everything goes out the window. The shutdown seemed like the perfect time to run another banlist test. It's been over a year […]

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Late Summer Thaw: Arcum’s Astrolabe Banned

David Ernenwein — Tue, 14 Jul 2020 16:00:53 +0000

But for copyright concerns, I would have led off this article with the lyrics to "Another One Bites the Dust." I hope perfectly reasonable intellectual property law is happy with itself. There's been another B&R Announcement. This time something actually is banned in Modern. So that's nice. Even if it does moot a number of […]

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A Banlist Visitation: Scraping the Barrel

Jordan Boisvert — Mon, 25 May 2020 16:00:06 +0000

Discussing the Modern banlist has always been a favorite pastime of the format's aficionados. In times like these (and I don't mean COVID-19, but that other c-word), player attention is turned towards what needs to be banned; pundits have suggested all the companions eat the bullet, or that Wizards implement sweeping errata. But personally, I've […]

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One Time at Banned Camp: The March ’20 Ban

David Ernenwein — Tue, 10 Mar 2020 16:00:23 +0000

Well that was fast. It's only been two months since Oko, Thief of Crowns was banned. It's pretty rare for Wizards to issue Modern bans in consecutive announcements, except for during emergencies like Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis's reign of terror. So I wasn't actually expecting anything to happen in Modern. However, last Thursday, that changed; I […]

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N’Oko: Parsing the January Bans

David Ernenwein — Tue, 14 Jan 2020 17:00:53 +0000

Well, everyone should have seen another ban coming. There was no way that Wizards wasn't going to let their last scheduled banned and restricted announcement go by without doing something about Oko, Thief of Crowns. However, I didn't expect it to go this far. Three cards banned would be a fairly substantial shift by itself, […]

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Modern Banlist Watchlist: 2020 Edition

David Ernenwein — Wed, 04 Dec 2019 17:00:11 +0000

The competitive year has come to a close for Modern, and now it's time to look ahead. This means it's time once more to informedly speculate on the future of Modern's banlist. It's been a wild year for the list, and while I always hope that the metagame can adapt to new decks, I don't […]

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Batt to the Bone: Five Guys and the New Modern

Jordan Boisvert — Fri, 30 Aug 2019 16:00:56 +0000

Hogaak and Looting are banned, and Stoneforge Mystic is free at last from the Modern banned list. What do these changes promise for our beloved format? And what does equipment searching have to do with fast food chains? Let's find out! Elephant in the Room Before even thinking about the void left by Hogaak, or […]

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Ashes to Ashes: Should Wizards Address Phoenix?

Jordan Boisvert — Fri, 22 Mar 2019 16:00:18 +0000

Each tournament, Izzet Phoenix's impressive, sustained numbers start to look less like an outlier and more like a pattern. Patterns like these have a history of being addressed by Wizards via the banlist. So how does Izzet Phoenix stack up against past offenders? Do the deck's decriers have a case for caging the bird? Let's […]

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The Banlist in 2019: My Christmas Wishlist

Jordan Boisvert — Fri, 14 Dec 2018 17:00:55 +0000

When it comes to Modern, I'm always up for a surprise. I penned an article last week declaring the death of midrange as a Tier 1 strategy in an aggro-combo metagame. But it seems the meta has already corrected itself: last weekend's GP Portland Top 8 featured a finals between Grixis Death's Shadow and BG […]

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Modern Top 5: Graveyard Hate

Jordan Boisvert — Fri, 09 Nov 2018 17:00:53 +0000

Creeping Chill has been sanctioned for a month now, and Dredge is steadily regaining its former status as format boogeyman. David's article from last week met the deck's rise with an optimism I'm no longer sure I can personally espouse: despite the hate, Dredge put three copies into the Top 32 of GP Atlanta and, more […]

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