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Don’t Level Yourself: Metagame Limitations

David Ernenwein — Wed, 27 Oct 2021 16:00:26 +0000

How valuable is metagame data? What can it actually tell us? How does studying it translate into winning more games? David answers these questions and more.

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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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Remember Me: Forgotten Lessons

David Ernenwein — Wed, 17 Mar 2021 16:00:31 +0000

The time after a set release or a major ban is always exciting. The format is in flux, the metagame undefined, and everything seems playable. This is even more true right now, thanks to the ban taking away a metagame pillar. This has in turn renewed interest in Modern, bringing an influx of players and […]

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Building a Sideboard Redux: 2020’s New Rules

David Ernenwein — Wed, 30 Sep 2020 16:00:56 +0000

Time waits for no man, as they say, and Magic is the same for all players. Good advice will always be good advice, but relevance is relative. By the same token, Magic players need advice that is relevant to formats as they actually exist. And that must be re-evaluated periodically. The second Beginner's Guide article […]

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2020 Visions: Modern Cantrips, Part 2

Jordan Boisvert — Fri, 21 Feb 2020 17:00:25 +0000

Back when Opt was spoiled, I wrote "Opting In: Modern Cantrips," a piece dissecting the intricacies of and nuances between Serum Visions, Sleight of Hand, and other Modern draw-a-cards. Two years and some change later, Modern is all but crawling with cantrips, albeit not even the ones we had access to in 2017. Today, we'll […]

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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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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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Rule of Law: Ethics and Fun in Modern Magic

Jordan Boisvert — Fri, 08 Feb 2019 17:00:24 +0000

Yesterday, Brian Braun-Duin published "When Playing to Win Is a Loss," an article detailing the dangers of getting caught up in the competitive spirit. It admonishes angle shooting and makes a case for sportsmanship in a gaming environment. Brian's thoughts resonated with some of my own, especially as relates to the place of ethics in […]

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Green Sun’s Zenith Testing: Quantitative Results

David Ernenwein — Tue, 13 Nov 2018 17:00:34 +0000

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 […]

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Complexity, Power, and Playability

David Ernenwein — Tue, 02 Oct 2018 16:00:54 +0000

There's an old saw in Standard: play the best deck with the best cards. Standard is about the cardpool's restrictions and the disparities in card power. Therefore, it makes sense to only play the most powerful cards, or to play as many as can work together. Modern's far greater size means there are far more options […]

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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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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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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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Bloodbraid Month, Pt. 1: History of a Ban

David Ernenwein — Tue, 02 Jan 2018 17:00:30 +0000

Happy New Year! At least, I'm assuming it's the new year. Hard to say; I'm typing this article from the bottom of what used to be a barrel of eggnog. Anyway, let's not let less-than-optimal writing conditions get in the way---it's Bloodbraid Month! Which is an excuse to hold off revealing the data from the […]

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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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Careful Study: Determining the Fairness of Modern Decks

Roland F. Rivera Santiago — Thu, 07 Dec 2017 18:00:46 +0000

Fair and unfair can prove contentious terms when it comes to deck discussion, perhaps especially in Modern. This week, I’d like to expand upon some of the ways to categorize and define decks that I initially touched upon in my articles on how to tune a deck’s mainboard flex spots and sideboard to an open meta. […]

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Testing Preordain: Quantitative Results

David Ernenwein — Tue, 03 Oct 2017 16:00:44 +0000

The time has (finally) come to actually reveal the results of my latest banlist test. Looking back, testing two different decks made this harder than it needed to be. Focusing just on Storm would have yielded more satisfying data, though not a more significant result. As you will see, it appears that Preordain would not […]

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Testing Preordain: Qualitative Results

David Ernenwein — Tue, 22 Aug 2017 16:00:37 +0000

Once again, it is time to start rolling out my results from the latest Banlist Test. As usual, I will start with the experimental setup and the unquantifiable results. I know that what most readers care about are the hard numbers, but I'm not done gathering the data yet. That will be coming sometime in […]

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Push It: Analyzing Modern’s Kill Spells

Jordan Boisvert — Fri, 04 Aug 2017 16:20:38 +0000

In The Bolt Test: Modern's High-Water Mark, I revisited an old Mike Flores article on toughness. Flores claimed a format was often defined by the amount of damage its red removal spell dealt. Burn spells generally serve as some of the most efficient—and versatile—removal spells in a given card pool, for their cheap costs and ability to […]

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Jund’s Demise: The Hidden Metagame Warp

David Ernenwein — Tue, 11 Jul 2017 18:00:28 +0000

Everyone is fixated on Grixis Shadow. And rightly so—the deck is very powerful and has been sitting at the top of every metagame chart since April. And I think this is incorrect. I have some reason to believe that Shadow is a symptom of the metagame, not the cause. The Modern PPTQ season starts at […]

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