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Modern Deck Spotlight: Tameshi Bloom

Adam Cohen — Tue, 12 Apr 2022 14:00:00 +0000

Adam highlights the new Tameshi combo deck in Modern. If drawing cards and overkilling your opponent sounds like fun, this is an article you don't want to miss!

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Rebuilding Time: A Store Championship Report

David Ernenwein — Wed, 08 Dec 2021 17:00:32 +0000

David has much to report on the metagame from his local game store's Store Championship event. How can this knowledge prepare you for your next Modern event?

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Buying Into Modern

Paul Comeau — Wed, 16 Jun 2021 11:00:46 +0000

With all the hype from Modern Horizons 2 spoilers, you’re excited to dive into the Modern format for the first time. So where do you begin? Understanding what makes Modern tick as a format, apart from the obvious of what cards are legal, is the best place to start.

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Testing Hypergenesis: Qualitative Data and Conclusion

David Ernenwein — Tue, 09 Mar 2021 17:00:24 +0000

And now, to wrap things up. I've talked about the setup and the hard data, but that doesn't tell the whole story. It's usually the intangible or at least unquantifiable observations that most inform decisions. I made a number of observations and ancillary impacts during my testing that changed how I see Hypergenesis. Today, I'll […]

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No Middle Ground: Kaldheim Spoiler Week 2

David Ernenwein — Tue, 19 Jan 2021 17:00:48 +0000

It's an odd set where there doesn't appear to be anything amiss. As I'm writing this sentence, there is nothing that even vaguely resembles anything dangerous. Which is not a bad thing. It's just weird, given that we've had the companions, Astrolabe, Uro, Oko, and Hogaak in the past two years busting everything. And that's […]

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Snow-Thing to Consider: Kaldheim Spoiler Week 1

David Ernenwein — Tue, 12 Jan 2021 17:00:46 +0000

It's time for that quarterly tradition of reviewing the latest spoilers! Which for the past few iterations has been oddly trepidatious. Prior to 2019, Modern never had to worry about a new set coming out. We maybe had one or two cards make lasting impressions, which kept the format stable. Then Wizards seemed to lose […]

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Wild Speculation: MH2 Speculation, Part 2

David Ernenwein — Tue, 15 Dec 2020 17:00:19 +0000

With the metagame update done, that ends the heavy content for 2020. It's time to coast to the finish! I think we've all earned a nice easy December considering how 2020's gone, so going into the new year, let's destress and remember what hope felt like. I miss FNM. To that end, I'll be picking […]

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Omnath Impresses: A Study in Variations

David Ernenwein — Tue, 20 Oct 2020 16:00:10 +0000

Zendikar Rising has had a notable effect on Modern, but it's been mostly positive. Whether it's making Death and Taxes finally viable or shaking up the Prowess decks, the new additions seem to be providing the right incentives without being oppressive. However, one card is drawing ire, mostly by association rather than anything it's actually […]

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Busted Doesn’t Equal Good: Testing ‘Belcher

David Ernenwein — Tue, 22 Sep 2020 16:00:42 +0000

Magic can get weird at times. There are utterly incomprehensible cards like Ice Cauldron. Sometimes it's rules weirdness, like Blood Sun not stopping Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth's ability. Other times it's a deck that makes no sense, like Inverter of Truth combo. And sometimes it's because of logical paradoxes and other contradictory truths. Case in […]

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Twin’s Alive: Modern Dimir Inverter

David Ernenwein — Tue, 21 Jul 2020 16:00:37 +0000

The greatest problem I face as an article writer is finding something to write about. Inspiration is fickle, as motivation can also be. This is made especially difficult by the pandemic choking off my easiest content source: actual Modern tournaments. Without much happening in greater Modern to discuss and limited source material, I find myself […]

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Conspicuous Snoop: The Goblins’ Twin?

David Ernenwein — Tue, 16 Jun 2020 16:00:24 +0000

Spoiler season is rolling on. However, my prediction at the end of last week's article has been holding: Core 2021 spoiled the obviously Modern-playable cards early. Sure, there have been plenty of interesting cards, but they're all role-players or interesting build-arounds rather than massive shake-ups. And that's rather welcome, considering how often Modern's been churned up […]

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Feb ’20 Brew Report, Pt. 2: Combo Cannoli

Jordan Boisvert — Fri, 28 Feb 2020 17:00:04 +0000

Nothing screams "Modern" like a bunch of crazy combos. And that's exactly what February's second half had in store for us. Turns out there are some decks that don't run Arcum's Astrolabe, after all: the ones that kill out of nowhere! "I Was Inverted" A the "Top" of our list is an inside-out version of […]

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Should the London Mulligan Be Banned?

Jordan Boisvert — Fri, 15 Nov 2019 17:00:39 +0000

The London mulligan has been with us now for four months, and players are speaking up on what they think of it. As a lover of the London mulligan and of mulligans in general, I've followed this topic with particular interest. One piece that recently caught my attention was Zvi Mowshowitz's article "Ban the London […]

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Dem Boyz Is Here: Assembling Modern Goblins

David Ernenwein — Tue, 01 Oct 2019 16:00:23 +0000

There's an odd lull in Magic right before the set release. There's no point discussing spoilers anymore; the set's known and being tested. However, those testing results are questionable. There hasn't been enough time to process the new cards and produce results, nor has the metagame adjusted to reflect these new cards. This means content tends […]

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Belch Please: What Is Hogaak?

David Ernenwein — Tue, 06 Aug 2019 16:00:44 +0000

In terms of data, it seems Modern is at a crossroads. This is the problem I found myself with last week. Half the data said that Hogaak was a busted, dominate deck. The other said that it was successful, but only as a function of its popularity. The narrative coming out of last weekend is that […]

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Tales from the Buylist #9 – Lightning Fast Movement

Christopher O'Berry — Thu, 11 Apr 2019 13:46:33 +0000

Chris has some great thoughts on Commander, Legacy, and Modern this week. Welcome to Value Town.

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Karn, the Great Creator in Colorless Eldrazi

Jordan Boisvert — Fri, 05 Apr 2019 16:00:52 +0000

A year ago, Colorless Eldrazi Stompy received a potent new tool in Zhalfirin Void. I described the card's potential for the archetype in detail, cursing Karn, Scion of Urza under my breath in the intro paragraph. In War of the Spark, the deck is all set to receive yet another potential game-changer, if a less […]

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Guilds Under Surveillance: Surveil in Modern

David Ernenwein — Tue, 25 Sep 2018 16:00:14 +0000

Oftentimes, new mechanics are set aside, to be discussed only in terms of their impact on cards. Today, I am going to flip the script and go into detail about surveil. This mechanic is the most interesting part of Guilds of Ravnica to me, and while it may not happen immediately, I expect that it will […]

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Hold ‘Em & Fold ‘Em #9

Edward Eng — Fri, 07 Sep 2018 14:51:33 +0000

This week has a nice focus on lands, but we're not referring to the Legacy deck. Eddie also starts touching on Guilds of Ravnica spoilers.

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The Cheeri0s Series: GP Vancouver Deck of Choice

Sheridan Lardner — Wed, 15 Feb 2017 17:00:56 +0000

Confession time: I'm a Cheeri0s guy. No, not the cereal, although I've been known to start off the day with a bowl of Honey Nut goodness. I'm talking about Modern Cheeri0s, the speediest combo deck in the format. The blistering fast engine combo has been my back-burner deck since 2013 when Paladin was running solo. Then Aether […]

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