Strategy | Quiet Speculation

Tournament Fundamentals: How to Prep

Adam Cohen — Tue, 16 Aug 2022 14:00:00 +0000

Adam takes a step back to go over how he prepares for a tournament, what decisions go into his deck choices, and the ways to tweak a deck for a winning result.

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Thoughts on Improving at Magic: The Gathering

Daniel Goetschel — Thu, 16 Sep 2021 14:01:57 +0000

Quiet Speculation is proud to welcome Daniel Goetschel to the team with his first article of tips to improve your Magic game.

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Partial Resurrection: Assessing the New Dredge

David Ernenwein — Tue, 30 Oct 2018 16:00:41 +0000

As the metagame shifts, decks rise and fall. Sometimes, that churning is explosive. Such events are exciting and foster discussion and articles. However, it is important to remember to temper excitement with reason. Spikes and oscillations are just that, and only matter if they're sustained. After Golgari Grave-Troll was banned, Dredge dropped out of sight. […]

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Dropping Destructive Revelry: Why to Keep Your Burn Board Boros

Andreas Breuer — Wed, 19 Sep 2018 17:00:25 +0000

The earth is round, the pope is catholic, and Destructive Revelry belongs in the sideboard of every Modern Burn deck. While the first and the second principle might be unbreakable, I’d like to smash the third one to smithereens. In this article I'll explain why I think Destructive Revelry is overrated in Burn, and lay out […]

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The Hidden Strength of Krark-Clan Ironworks

David Ernenwein — Tue, 31 Jul 2018 16:00:52 +0000

I've spoken about Krark-Clan Ironworks on several occasions now, but continued testing has reinforced my belief that many Modern players don't really understand how it works. The combo itself is incredibly complicated once it gets going, and as a result, players frequently misplay. But the strategy's true strength isn't its density, but how much Engineered […]

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Just a Phase, Pt. 3: Mains and Ending

Jordan Boisvert — Fri, 25 May 2018 16:00:38 +0000

Experienced Magic players stress the importance of testing matchups sideboarded—after all, more than half of all games in a given tournament are played sideboarded. So too must I stress the importance of mastering the main phases, of which there are two per turn! Just a Phase focuses on the nuances of priority and phase manipulation […]

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Why Not Control? – Attacking the Humans Meta

David Ernenwein — Tue, 15 May 2018 16:00:45 +0000

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 […]

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New Tricks: A Dominarian Merfolk Interlude

David Ernenwein — Tue, 08 May 2018 16:00:17 +0000

Merfolk has always been my workhorse Modern deck, but I haven't written about it in months. The metagame has shifted to a place I don't like with Merfolk, and so I've been playing other decks; as such, I had nothing much to say. However, I'm finding the deck's potential new includes from Dominaria promising enough to get […]

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Damping Sphere and the Silver Bullet Problem

David Ernenwein — Tue, 01 May 2018 16:00:34 +0000

Dominaria has many solid Modern candidates (and some questionable ones) but none have generated quite as much buzz as Damping Sphere. The hysteria may have died down, but many players are still high on the card. Given the context of the card, this is hardly surprising. However, I am not convinced. There are a number […]

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One Step Ahead: Avoiding Being Metagamed

Roland F. Rivera Santiago — Wed, 25 Apr 2018 16:00:42 +0000

As Magic tournaments are held and results gathered, certain decks establish themselves as the top contenders, and attract attention from anyone seeking an edge. The format then shifts to combat these best decks as players "metagame" against them. This phenomenon occurs in competitive gaming scenes ranging from small-scale FNMs to Grand Prix and Pro Tours. Correctly […]

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So Wrong It’s Right: Accepting Tension

Jordan Boisvert — Fri, 06 Apr 2018 16:00:32 +0000

The Modern community is ruthless in its dismissal of new decks. When one hits the scene (and one frequently does), pundits invariably point out instances of tension on paper: these cards can't possibly work together, the sentiment goes. And yet, the deck placed high enough to draw that attention in the first place. Tension is […]

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Colorless Eldrazi Stompy Mini-Primer: Play Tips

Jordan Boisvert — Fri, 02 Feb 2018 17:00:55 +0000

I've long considered myself a Delver die-hard when it comes to Modern. But I haven't been on much Delver at all since the Gitaxian Probe ban. Rather, the deck I've come to be known for in Boston is Colorless Eldrazi Stompy. In past weeks, I've reacted to local and online enthusiasm for the deck by […]

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Colorless Eldrazi Stompy Mini-Primer: Sideboarding

Jordan Boisvert — Fri, 22 Dec 2017 17:00:37 +0000

A couple weeks ago, I wrote a strategic guide to mulliganing with Colorless Eldrazi Stompy, a deck I've championed on Modern Nexus for almost two years now. Today's follow-up piece focuses on the deck's second-most-challenging (and important) aspect: sideboarding. This article covers build variations and possible sideboard includes before jumping into the matchup guide. But […]

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Colorless Eldrazi Stompy Mini-Primer: Mulligans

Jordan Boisvert — Fri, 08 Dec 2017 17:00:23 +0000

I've written that the average Magic player is too afraid of taking mulligans. That goes double for Modern, where card advantage matters less than in other formats, and triple for Colorless Eldrazi Stompy, which is built to mulligan aggressively into lean, powerful openers. Whether it's because of my own results with the deck, the attention it's […]

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You’ve Got Another Thing Coming: Building Sideboards in an Open Meta

Roland F. Rivera Santiago — Wed, 15 Nov 2017 18:40:28 +0000

Modern remains wide-open, which carries implications for deckbuilding. Last week, I talked about mainboard flex slots. This week, we’ll tackle a significantly thornier topic: sideboarding. Due to Modern's wide variety of linear decks, and the relative lack of powerful catch-all answers that you see in formats like Legacy or Vintage, ours is a format that puts […]

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Enter Clean-Up Step: Metagame and Ixalan Updates

David Ernenwein — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 17:00:23 +0000

Sometimes it's necessary to revisit older topics. Whether it's previously unavailable data coming in, or assumptions and beliefs evolving, it's good to revisit previous statements and articles to see if they're still valid. Today I will first finish off my Regionals update, then I need to revisit some Ixalan cards both because I missed them and […]

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Defining RPTQs: A Guide to Success

Trevor Holmes — Thu, 09 Nov 2017 20:59:21 +0000

Regional PTQs for Pro Tour Rivals of Ixalan start next week, and the RPTQ format is Modern. For those of us who are competing (I’m not one of them, but I know a few), there are a few angles of attack that I wanted to discuss today. I'll also provide some general thoughts on the […]

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King of the Hill: Using Your Flex Slots in an Open Meta

Roland F. Rivera Santiago — Tue, 07 Nov 2017 19:00:42 +0000

If you’ve been playing Modern over the last few months, you may have noticed an interesting trend in the metagame results: no one deck is top dog. While a familiar cast of characters inhabits the top of the charts, it seems as if any one of them can do well in a given tournament, all […]

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Pushing Back: How to Goyf in 2017

Jordan Boisvert — Fri, 03 Nov 2017 16:00:24 +0000

In "What's in a Goyf? Benchmark Creature Playability in Modern," I considered the bar creatures must meet to make the cut in this format. Aether Revolt gave us Fatal Push, and that bar has since changed—but no creature has felt the shift like Tarmogoyf. Today, we'll zone in on Goyf's fall from lofty heights and examine the […]

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Deep Dives: Understanding Death’s Shadow

Trevor Holmes — Thu, 28 Sep 2017 16:00:41 +0000

This past week I found myself looking back at some of the first articles I wrote here at Nexus, for some reason or another, and discovered something interesting about my writing. No, it’s not that I love control, or have a tendency to play tempo-oriented decks, or really really like to talk about context in Magic, […]

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