Bannings | Quiet Speculation

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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Banned and Restricted List Update – July 13, 2020

Christopher O'Berry — Mon, 13 Jul 2020 15:33:18 +0000

The July 13, 2020 Banned and Restricted announcement is live!

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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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Insider: Post-Ban Standard Winners to Watch

Adam Yurchick — Fri, 22 Nov 2019 14:18:01 +0000

Bans have brought uncertainty to the Standard metagame, but the first tournaments have brought some clarity and some appealing speculation targets.

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Modern Movers After the B&R Announcement

Adam Yurchick — Fri, 30 Aug 2019 14:05:10 +0000

Monday's Banned and Restricted Announcement has turned the Modern metagame on its head, and Adam is here to explain what it means for the future of the market.

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Testing the Consistency of Ancient Stirrings

Max Magnuson — Thu, 27 Sep 2018 18:00:12 +0000

There was much debate a little while back about the Modern bannings. Should Mox Opal get the axe? Is the card selection of Ancient Stirrings too good for Modern? I saw a lot of people making arguments on either side, but I did not see a lot of solid evidence for either case. It was […]

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Testing Preordain: Qualitative & Quantitative Results

David Ernenwein — Wed, 27 Dec 2017 21:52:44 +0000

David is out for the holidays until next week. In the meantime, please enjoy his article from earlier this year where he presented results from the Preordain ban test. These results were originally presented in two separate articles (here and here), but I've divided them into parts for the purpose of easier reading. Part 1: […]

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“No Changes” – Reactions to the Banlist Announcement

David Ernenwein — Tue, 29 Aug 2017 22:10:27 +0000

It is inevitable. Every time a new Banned and Restricted Announcement comes out, speculation runs rampant. Everyone has their pet cards to advocate for or against, everyone is utterly convinced they're right, and they take offense to disagreement. Every single time. It's really tiring. I've written about this problem before. I have no problem discussing possible […]

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A Modern Proposal: Six Years Later

Trevor Holmes — Thu, 10 Aug 2017 19:41:50 +0000

This week, I’m doubling down. Modern is returning to the Pro Tour, and with that, banned list discussion is certain to resurface. I’ve chosen to get out ahead of it; my article last week speculated on a potential opportunity for Wizards of the Coast to "solve" the banning problem once and for all. Unsurprisingly, this […]

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The Bilbao Effect: The Chance to Change Modern Forever

Trevor Holmes — Thu, 03 Aug 2017 18:06:21 +0000

Modern Magic’s history under the lights has been… complicated. As a format, it was born into fire in 2011 with Pro Tour Philadelphia, and since then, the format has bounced from darling to redheaded stepchild to orphan and back, faster than strobe lights at a Skrillex show. Bannings, Pro Tours, more bannings (as a result […]

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Analyzing the April 24th Banlist Announcement

Jordan Boisvert — Fri, 28 Apr 2017 16:00:13 +0000

April 24th came and went, and besides some misguided grumbling about Death's Shadow, most Modern players were content. Without one deck consistently surpassing 10% of the metagame, a "no changes" banlist announcement was easy to predict. But Wizards went the extra mile with this particular announcement, including a blurb about Modern despite choosing not to shake it up. […]

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Finance 101: What Is Risk?

Jim Casale — Sat, 25 Mar 2017 17:31:43 +0000

In my past articles, when talking about buying a given card, the concept of "risk" has frequently come up. I've seen some confusion in the comments about my use of this term, which has lead to misinterpretation of the information I'm trying to convey. Some people were under the impression that I was predicting, or […]

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Modern Metagame Breakdown: 2/6/17 – 3/12/17

Jason Schousboe — Mon, 20 Mar 2017 21:49:45 +0000

Welcome back for another metagame update. I'm calling today's the "February update," even though it encompasses a week-and-a-half of March data as well. As we had extended last month's data, it made sense to do so this month too in order to avoid a three-week metagame with scant data. The astute reader will notice that […]

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Modern Metagame Breakdown: 1/1/2017 – 2/5/2017

Jason Schousboe — Tue, 14 Feb 2017 07:13:06 +0000

On January 9th, Wizards of the Coast brought the heavy weight of the banhammer down upon Modern, attempting to target several linear decks that ranked among the best-performing archetypes during 2016. On the one hand we had the aggressive, explosive creature combos with a gotcha! element, headlined by Infect. On the other hand we had Dredge, taxing […]

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A New Format! – Post-Aether Revolt Decklists

Trevor Holmes — Thu, 09 Feb 2017 17:45:37 +0000

With so many new changes to Modern recently, every assumption we’ve previously held regarding the format as we know it is suspect to change. Mono-Green Stompy is back, Zur the Enchanter is finally poised to take the format by storm, so prepare yourself for Vexing Devil mirror matches every third round. Now that we’re all […]

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Financial Deck Tech: Cheeri0s

Jim Casale — Wed, 08 Feb 2017 17:00:08 +0000

Magic cards don't take much to catch fire, huh? If you've been following along online, a bunch of people have been working on a new version of a combo deck called "Cheeri0s." If not, let's take a look at why this is one of the hottest new decks in Modern and what the most optimal […]

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Deck of the Week: Death’s Shadow Jund

Jason Schousboe — Mon, 06 Feb 2017 19:07:04 +0000

I had initially intended to bring you the January metagame update today, but looking over the data and consulting with Sheridan, we decided to wait a week in order to incorporate more post-banning data, including Star City Games Regionals. Instead, we'll be covering one of the early changes that has resulted from Wizards' recent format shake-up. The […]

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Back in the Woods: Probeless Temur Delver

Jordan Boisvert — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 17:00:08 +0000

When Wizards banned Gitaxian Probe on Monday, many players reached out to me to express their condolences and ask where Temur Delver goes from here. Probe was an integral part of my Monkey Grow deck, and starting games by paying 2 life for the sorcery was some of the most fun I ever had playing Magic. I will […]

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Parsing the Gitaxian Probe & Golgari Grave-Troll Bans

Ryan Overturf — Thu, 12 Jan 2017 17:00:58 +0000

I knew they were going to take actions in Standard with the new banlist update—especially with it being moved up to this week. The pessimist in me expected that Modern would be left untouched. To be fair, I enjoyed Modern prior to this announcement, much unlike Miracles Legacy, though I'm very happy that action was […]

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