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.

Is Lurrus of the Dream-Den the most broken card in Modern right now? David examines the effect this companion has on the modern metagame. Is it banworthy?

How do you measure the health of a metagame? Is the Modern metagame healthy right now? David attempts to unpack these questions, and what their answers mean.

It’s time for spooky season in the US, and for the monthly metagame update. Can anything challenge the boogeyman that is HammerTime?

The pandemic persists, and consequently Wizards has yet to restart their premier paper events. Which might not be a bad thing. Considering how badly the MPL went and the lack of clarity over what comes next, it’s better to give them time to figure it out. However, that does mean that many players with the […]

How apropos that the Metagame Update is falling on the same day that Innistrad: Midnight Hunt spoilers begin. It’s a perfect transition from the metagame we knew to the new one to come. However new it actually is or isn’t is irrelevant. The addition of new cards creates new possibilities which alone change the metagame dynamics. And […]

New month, new metagame update. It is the way. And I’d like to kick this one off by tempering expectations. The near-perpetual spoiler season we now inhabit did spit out another set. However, Adventures in the Forgotten Realms is no Modern Horizons 2, and did not have that much impact on Modern. The resulting July metagame […]

It’s the first Tuesday of the month, so it’s time for the metagame update. Yes, even in the middle of spoiler season. Because, serious question, when aren’t we in spoiler season? This year’s release schedule is ridiculous; I could spend all my time just discussing cards and never run out of gas. I’ve got to draw […]

I’m interrupting this spoiler season with an important bulletin: it’s time for the metagame update! And this will be a strange one. Although… I’m not entirely clear on what a normal metagame update might look like. I mention that there’s something unexpected happening every month. It’s never the same weird thing, but it’s always something […]

The new month brings a new metagame update. And this time, there’s nothing disruptive to report. No bannings, no weird and still-unexplained data gaps; just a perfectly normal bit of data gathering. Which means that I’ll be delivering a straightforward metagame update. Which will be nice, since there’s another Modern Horizons coming, and that might […]

Despite a glitch in the Matrix which led to less data than usual last month, the March dumps nonetheless did betray a grip of Modern movement both among established archetypes and lesser-played brews. Today, we’ll look at a few of the ways two of the format’s premier strategies—Omnath and Jund Shadow—have adjusted to the recent […]

First Tuesday of a new month? Must be time for the metagame update. Yes, I realize that there wasn’t one last time, but those were special circumstances. A major ban invalidated more than half of February’s data. There’s really nothing statistically valid from ten days of results. Of course, March wasn’t much better. Thanks to […]

And now, back to our regularly scheduled metagame analysis. Let me just take a look at what’s been winning… oh. MTGO’s reporting system is bugged; there’s been no new data since March 10. Huh. Ok, well, let me just see what’s happening in the community… wait, really? Heliod Company is considered the best deck now? […]