Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “Michael Rapp”
Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths is certainly leaving a mark on Modern, as the format is being overrun with new companion cards. Midrange decks need to constantly adapt or risk losing metagame share, and Grixis Death’s Shadow is no exception. It’s rare that a single Standard-legal set can have this much of an impact on a deck like Death’s Shadow, or …
Welcome back to MTG Mindset, a series about the skills you need to succeed in competitive Magic. Today, I want to talk about confirmation bias: how to spot it, how it affects your plays, and why you should try your best to remove it from your game. What is Confirmation Bias? The definition of confirmation bias is “the tendency to …
At long last, it’s time for more new cards! Ikoria: Lair of the Behemoths is now available on digital Magic platforms and preselling at CardKingdom.com, which means we can start planning out what we want to plan in our favorite formats. As with any other set, the first thing I did was look to see which cards would make a …
Welcome to our new series, MTG Mindset! Many of us (myself included) want to improve as Magic players, but there’s more to that than understanding decks and mategames. Magic is a mental game above all else, and your mindset can often determine the outcome of your matches. The first step of the journey is something that I see a lot …
Times are tough for everyone right now, even more so if you’re a fan of the “gathering” aspect of Magic. If you’re primarily a tabletop Magic player like me, social distancing is putting a damper on your play time. Earlier this week, Tom Anderson wrote a wonderful article on how to play Magic from home, which provides a great introduction …
Editor’s Note: Two decklists in this article feature Arcum’s Astrolabe, which was banned from Modern on July 13, 2020. Read the full announcement from Wizards of the Coast here. During its preview season last summer, Modern Horizons was met with some criticism from players. It was hailed as “Commander Masters,” and players generally felt the set was underpowered for the …
On March 9th, Once Upon a Time was banned in Modern. As with any other banning, people had some questions. “What does this mean for my deck?” “What is Modern going to look like now?” Truth be told, those are both excellent and warranted questions. I don’t think a ton of people spend their time pondering how things will look …
The ever cyclical Modern metagame continues to swing toward fair decks, and Bant Snowblade is the latest deck on the rise. Gone are the days of “Draw-Go” Azorius Control decks; proactive decks with Stoneforge Mystic are much more popular. This past weekend, Bant Snowblade picked up a MTGO Prelim 5-0 with a list I found particularly interesting. Let’s take a …
A Jund article in 2020? I know, weird, right? Don’t close the tab, though — you’ll want to read this. If you’ve kept your ear to the ground in Modern recently, you may have heard some whispers that Jund is good again. Those whispers got some validation last weekend when Michael Farrell took down the Star City Games Classic with …
It has been a month since Theros Beyond Death was released, and some of you may remember the “Top Five Theros Beyond Death Cards for Modern” article I wrote around that time. I thought this would be a fun opportunity to check in and ask, “Where are they now?” As it turns out, all five of these cards have seen …
