Forbidden fruit tastes the sweetest. No Ban List Modern and even Vintage have a certain allure to many players, myself included, as they promise the opportunity to play with the best cards ever. In Yu-gi-Oh, I spend most of my time playing Traditional Format, the unpopular Vintage analog wherein banned cards are restricted. And even today, I […]
Modern
Adam explains how Modern is reacting to Aether Revolt and the recent bannings, plus some of the opportunities that have come up in response.
With Dredge now officially (re)axed, Infect presumably hindered as well, and a new set in the mix in the form of Aether Revolt, Modern Magic as we know it is primed for a potentially significant change from the norm. The relatively stable Modern landscape we’ve become accustomed to has suddenly transformed into the Wild West, […]
For the first time this year, welcome to The Beginner’s Guide! For those new to this series, I am trying to simplify Modern to make it more approachable and comprehensible for those players new to the format. Previously I’ve covered sideboarding strategies, deck diversity, and an in-depth look at the aggressive strategies. Today, it’s time […]
It’s been an exciting week for Modern. Fatal Push was sanctioned last Friday, and the SCG Columbus Classic gave players a highly anticipated datapoint for the new metagame. A linear combo deck won that event, and a purely reactive control deck just missed the Top 8. Combo and control are famously underpowered archetypes in Modern, giving us […]
I have a secret to tell about the Aether Revolt prerelease a few weekends ago: I didn’t play. Sure, the format was Limited, and I didn’t know the cards, and the days are getting longer—we can sit here and make excuses all day. What I was actually doing was playing Star Wars: Destiny, which, as […]
Given my poor Standard performance in Columbus this weekend, I got to experience my first foray into the new Modern format at the Star City Games Classic. No Gitaxian Probes, no Golgari-Grave Trolls, and some Fatal Pushes peppered into a handful of decklists. David Ernenwein did a solid job of breaking down the published winning decklists, […]
Now that we’re living in a post-ban world, I’m ready to do another financial deck tech for players new and old looking to change up their Modern deck. This time I’m going to try not to touch decks that are likely to be affected by the newest bans because there is likely too much churn […]
The first major event after a new set is released is both very significant, and yet worthless for the analyst. On the one hand, this is the first glimpse the world gets at where the wider metagame is heading. On the other, it is a single data point in an entirely new experimental condition. In […]
After playing 18 rounds of Magic across two formats in SCG Columbus, Brian has a good idea of where Standard and Modern are headed. He shares his picks for this week.
David reviews Aether Revolt for potential eternal playables, covering the cards he believes show the most promise in Modern, Legacy, and Vintage.
Cost reduction mechanics are among Magic’s most powerful—delve and affinity have terrorized many a constructed format, and the legendary moxen remain among Magic’s most fabled examples of “Power” to this day. Granted, Enraged Giant is no Black Lotus. But improvise may very well be Modern-playable. This article is the one I had planned to write last week, before Wizards announced its […]
Aether Revolt’s Fatal Push and the bannings of Gitaxian Probe and Golgari-Grave Troll mean big things for the Modern market…
