On June 14th, 2019, Wizards of the Coast released Modern Horizons: a groundbreaking new set that seeded cards directly into Modern — something players had been requesting for years. Modern Horizons was supposed to fill holes in Modern by providing new cards tailored just for the format while bypassing Standard. Naturally, there were some growing pains involved in designing and …
If you were playing Modern before the release of War of the Spark and Modern Horizons, you may not think that putting Cryptic Command in your deck is a winning strategy. Modern decks have long been built for speed and efficiency, and tapping out for a Cryptic Command could often leave control players in a tenuous spot. You’d usually be …
Wait! Before you close this tab, yes, this is a Modern Niv to Light article. Many of you may know Niv to Light from its success in Pioneer, but it’s been making the rounds in Modern, too. If, like me, you’ve played the Pioneer version of this deck, it’s worth giving the Modern equivalent a look — especially if your …
Chances are if you’re a Death’s Shadow fan, or in tune with the movements of Modern, you’ve noticed a certain divide between Jund Shadow and Four-Color Shadow. Naturally, when two variations of a deck are close in power, there will often be questions about which version they should play, and today I’m going to make a case for Four-Color Shadow. …
For a long time, Ponza wasn’t considered a competitive Modern deck. It emerged in an environment with strong combo decks, where it was often at a disadvantage, and lacked the card quality to keep up with other midrange decks. But now, Ponza — more commonly known as Gruul Midrange — is among the best-performing decks in Modern. What happened? How …
Over the last few months, red-based prowess decks in Modern have adopted a variety of secondary colors. The first stop was white, largely to use Path to Exile to gain some advantage in the mirror and against Eldrazi Tron and Primeval Titan decks. Then came Lurrus of the Dream-Den, and the prowess decks moved to black to incorporate Fatal Push …
Patrick Chapin once said that every creature in your deck should either be a Mulldrifter or a Baneslayer Angel. Of course, he didn’t mean that literally. Mulldrifter is a classic example of a creature that generates a resource advantage the turn it comes into play. Baneslayer Angel, meanwhile, has high stats for its cost and a generally powerful ability. Each …
The Magic community loves to speculate whenever Wizards of the Coast announces an update to the Banned and Restricted List, and I’m no different. Sometimes there is an obvious offender that Wizards wants to remove — Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis is a good example — but often, there is some room for interpretation. Speculation has some amount of competitive value as …
As its name implies, it’s not hard to see that Conspicuous Snoop is already a player in Modern. Snoop was one of my Top 5 Modern picks from M21, and it wasted no time making an impact on the format. A mere two days after M21 became available on Magic Online, a B/R Goblins combo deck like the one I …
Wilderness Reclamation in Modern? It isn’t as strange as it sounds! After the reign Wilderness Reclamation had in Standard, Modern decks are starting to utilize it as a way to go even bigger than opposing midrange decks. Unlike its Standard counterpart, Sultai Reclamation isn’t committed to maxing out on Wilderness Reclamation to enable a large combo turn; instead, this midrange …
