I've been playing since the Ice Age, literally, and I've seen the ebbs and flows of fun Standard formats and just awful ones. In the days of Cawblade, prior to the banning of Stoneforge Mystic and Jace, the Mind Sculptor, garnered more than 50% of the metagame. My first big tournament win was with Burning Psychatog, a simple Dimir control deck that splashed Anger for the Upheaval turn, and 6 of the top 8 also played the same deck. Does anyone remember Pickles from Time Spiral? Rebels in Masque? Siege Rhino meta? Thragtusk? And so on and so forth, for just about every Standard format. So when I hear is the Standard format is so unfun, I wonder, what is fun? The last great Standard, in my opinion, was Innistrad-Return to Ravnica. And since then we've had to deal with energy from Kaladesh, Teferi, all of Eldraine, and the Ikoria companions. And now, Mono-Green/Gruul/Temur and URx Dragons/control make up close to 50% of the meta powered by 3 main cards: Esika's Chariot, Goldspan Dragon, and Alrund's Epiphany. After those, there's also the multitude of Mono-White Aggro.
Tag: Magic the Gathering
The Most Open Modern Metagame Ever?
It's been a bit since my last article, and while I have sat back and kept a general eye on how Modern has been going, so much of the Magic Twitter drama has been focused on other formats. While it's been quieter about Modern, one of the most common refrains I have been hearing the last couple weeks is just how wide open the format feels. Sure you can register one of the Top 10 decks I will be discussing today (at least according to Goldfish) and probably have a decent night against a lot of opponents, but even decks outside the Top 10 can show up and wreck face. Modern is definitely a format where your matchups matter....a LOT...but given how in the last few years we would often see multiple decks above 10% of the meta and 4 or 5 taking up over 60% just by themselves, it's refreshing to see more variety.
A Modern Take on Magic’s Third Trip to Innistrad, Midnight Hunt
Greetings programs!! We have a new set out in the world, and it's our third time visiting the gothic-horror plane of Innistrad. Midnight Haunt focuses on the Werewolf side of things, and the upcoming Crimson Vow set is built around a vampire wedding. I wanted to take a look at the new set and see what cards I thought would be strong in Modern, as well as the usual chunk of cards that are questionable or really need things to align for them to do much. I've been avoiding other articles and results so I can give my opinions untainted. Let's go ahead and dive in. You can see the whole set here on the Mothership or over at Scryfall.
A Look at What is Coming Next in Magic the Gathering in 2021, 2022 and Beyond
Tuesday was WotC's Showcase 2021, which lets us know about some cool things happening before the end of the year. A lot of this stuff was given with minimal information and rather than try and go in linear order as presented, I'm going to try and discuss things in a chronological order, by release date.
Feeling the Burn – Burn in a Post-Modern Horizons 2 World
Hello again everyone. It's been awhile since my Modern Horizons 2 (MH2 the rest of this article) review and it was time to write something else about Modern, and I was having some issues with inspiration. Between a new job and my family, there hasn't been much of a Magic focus for me besides trying to acquire MH2 cards that don't cost unreasonable amounts. Stupid Ragavan. So I was thinking it was time to discuss the deck that I've played in various forms in formats all the way back to when I first started in '95'. Burn.
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