You can bask in the false glory of a new supposed "Tron Killer" all you like. You can "WOW FUCK" us to your hearts' content. It won't matter. We are sticking around: Dorito dust, neckbeards, man boobs and all.

Modern Horizons 2 and its contents are no threat to us. [[Break the Ice]]? Good luck even getting to six mana against us, and we can easily replace the one land you manage to pop. [[Obsidian Charmaw]] is a joke, easily removed. They will join the ranks of all the other hopeless cards you swore would finish us off for good. [[Unmoored Ego]]? [[Blood Sun]]? [[Alpine Moon]]? [[Pillage?]] [[Cleansing Wildfire]]? [[Assassin's Trophy]]? [[Ceremonious Rejection]]? Yeah, we're still here. We'll survive these cute new additions to the format, too, while we tell your creatures to fuck off with our new [[Cursed Totem]]. Who needs [[Walking Ballista]] when we've got Karn and Ugin, anyway?

We will continue to be a thorn in your side. We will continue to do what we do best: take a glance at whatever janky brew you've thrown together in a naive, passion-fueled bid to take down the Modern meta and remind you why it doesn't belong here. We'll remind you that 1 + 1 + 1 equals 7, not a fair turn 3, and that we don't need brain cells to win a game of Modern because most of us don't have many to start with. I'll never forgive my mother for drinking while pregnant...

It must be so much fun spending 80% of your deck budget and shitty paycheck on your mana base, when you could be splurging on splashy threats that don't require any skill to wield. But no, the cards that are supposed to actually win you the game are where you suckers choose to save money. And aside from jerking off to disturbing hentai, nothing quite titillates us Tron players like beating the crap out of decks that cost twice as much as ours. Most expensive L's you've ever paid for. Get fucked, GBx Midrange players.

Next time you think about singing the praises of a new card that you swear will be the one to finish us off, just remember that we're still drinking all of your salty tears from the countless times [[Karn Liberated]] and Ulamog tore your deck and hand apart. Daddy Karn and Ugin give zero shits about how much skill is required to pilot your deck.

We'll keep collecting those tears, thank you. Until WOTC bans the Urza Lands, nothing will change.

Have fun brewing with your new toys from Modern Horizons 2, and good luck making rent! We'll be too busy saving money from not having to constantly change our decks to stay afloat in this format.

Yours truly,

The Tron Players

WOW. FUCK. US.

Edit: Your Gold has brought more pleasure to my orifices than Emrakul’s THICC tentacles ever could...

Edit: That Platinum just made me nut all over Liliana’s face after I beat another Jund player.... much appreciated.

They did it with Hogaak.

They’re doing it with Urza.

And now they’ll do it with the Companions.

Wizards allowed Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis to ravage the format for two months from June until the end of August. He took Faithless Looting down with him, and before that Wizards threw Bridge from Below under the bus as well in a hopeless attempt to nerf the deck for at least a little while so Modern Horizons packs can keep selling. Great decks like Mardu Pyromancer, Hollow One, and Izzet Phoenix paid the price. In the end Wizards admitted that Hogaak was a mistake.

While it is evident that Urza, Lord High Artificer is a problem by turning zero mana artifacts into Mox Sapphires...in Modern...Wizards allowed Mox Opal to take the fall. Mox Opal, an iconic card from modern’s rich history that, before Urza’s release, was totally fine and allowed cornerstone archetypes like Affinity and other spicy artifact brews to keep pace with Modern’s best. Urza himself was mentioned in every paragraph detailing Opal’s transgressions in the B&R announcement. Affinity died for Urza’s sins to delay the inevitable: Wizards admitting that the flagship mythic of their prized experimental summer 2019 set was also a mistake.

Wizards allowed Oko to wreak havoc in all of competitive Magic for over three months before finally relenting and banning him in 4 out of 7 formats. Even then, in the B&R announcement where he took his final swan dive out of Modern he was cited as a key factor in the success of URZA decks...when in reality he was everywhere to include Burn decks splashing Simic just to play him.

I’d bet everything I’m worth in Vegas if I could that Wizards will do no different with Companions, specifically Lurrus of the Dream-Den. And while I’m at it, Gyruda once MTGO works correctly again. They’ll ignore the issue for a couple months, say they “don’t have enough data” and that “a couple online tournaments isn’t a good enough representation of the meta”. Then after Ikoria has had about two months of solid pack sales post-quarantine, they’ll label Mishra’s Bauble as “the biggest enabler in Lurrus decks” and then ban it. They’ll label Spark Double and Phantasmal Image as “the biggest enablers in Gyruda decks” and then ban them. Maybe they’ll axe Ancient Stirrings first, as it “enabled” decks to dig for Baubles and other cheap artifacts to loop. Numerous decks will die for the sins of Lurrus. They’ll let the format linger another month before finally banning Lurrus and Gyruda. Maybe another Companion leads a degenerate tier 1 deck in the meantime.

And then after Companions are gone, Mishra’s Bauble and all the other scapegoats will not be coming back even though Wizards’ prized experimental mechanic was....a mistake.

The format will not die, but my trust that it’s a non-rotating format already has.

Long post incoming! With this post, I intend to be very thorough and will be covering many card choices. Grab a drink and enjoy.

Any UR Gifts Storm player will tell you that the deck has been in a rough spot for a while. However, recent events in the meta have caused this deck to become genuinely tier one with just a few changes.

To see what I mean, let's first look at the mainboard of the first Gifts list on MTGGoldfish:

Creatures:
4 Baral, Chief of Compliance
3 Goblin Electromancer

Spells:
1 Grapeshot
2 Past in Flames
4 Serum Visions
2 Wish
4 Desperate Ritual
4 Gifts Ungiven
4 Manamorphose
4 Opt
2 Peer Through Depths
4 Pyretic Ritual
3 Remand
1 Repeal

Lands:
1 Fiery Islet
2 Island
2 Misty Rainforest
1 Mountain
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Snow-Covered Island
4 Spirebluff Canal
3 Steam Vents

This list is fairly stock and serves the purpose of the deck, but it's not quite there in terms of staying power. I think a few pieces need to change in order to make this deck truly where we want it to be.

The first is that our cantrips are really lacking in the synergy department. I've decided to cut 4 Opt for 4 [[Thought Scour]]. This ability to put cards in our graveyard for our eventual storm turn is much stronger than a slight bit of card selection in the form of a scry. This may change with the printing of Consider but I am very high on this card at the moment.

Up next is that we really need card advantage when it comes to the super grindy and drawn-out games that this current meta seems to lead to. For this reason, I'm including 4 copies of [[Expressive Iteration]]. What am I cutting? Well, the two-drop slot is quite packed with this addition, so I think that it's time for Pyretic Ritual to go. In said long games, it just feels bad to topdeck this card, whereas I am ALWAYS happy to see iteration due to the card advantage it provides at just two mana.

Next, Gifts players will always tell you that the weakness of the deck is resilience. The cost-reducing bears are easily removed by the efficient spells of the format. To circumvent this, I ended up cutting all of them. Yup. With the cutting of the 7 bears as well as Repeal due to the now lost synergy, that gives us 8 slots to work with. Now what creatures can fill this slot that will make us more resilient in this meta? Well we need something that can provide mana and card selection in the same way that Baral does. Well what better candidates than playsets of [[Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer]] and [[Dragon's Rage Channeler]]? These are staples for a reason. Generating treasure with the monkey and choosing what to draw with DRC make it much easier to storm off when we want to, not to mention the card advantage monkey gives. Great cards overall.

Now of course, a sacrifice was made with the loss of Pyretic Ritual as I mentioned. Sure we will have less mana, but we can do more with the mana we do have. That said, the more I tested this deck, the less I liked Desperate Ritual as well. Sure, we can splice it for more mana, but having no Pyretic Ritual in the deck makes this far less consistent. To stay on theme of doing more with our little mana, I'm cutting all 4 Desperates for 4 copies of [[Lightning Bolt]]. It will serve not only as removal for things like Eidelon or other hatebears, but also to make our kills come easier when it comes time to storm.

On the subject of efficiency and grindiness, our opponent will be able to put more on the board due to our now admittedly slower clock. Because of that, we need even more removal. It seems mandatory now to run 4 copies of [[Unholy Heat]] in order to keep up with hatebears and walkers that may give our opponents the edge. To make room for this addition, I'm cutting our 2 Peer through the Depths due to the loss of our other splice card as well as the 2 Wish copies. I've noticed over time that our mainboard is becoming quite the monster, lowering our reliance on Wish overall. Truly needed pieces can simply be boarded in G2.

Now in order to make Unholy Heat as strong as possible, we should make it easy to reach delirium. This also makes DRC stronger lest we forget. Because of this, we need to run 4 [[Mishra's Bauble]] for the card type as well as the draw it provides. Since we're essentially adding a draw spell, we can go ahead and cut our 4 Manamorphose for the Bauble. This is because without our bears, Manamorphose is no longer mana positive, making it less reliable in a storm deck.

Now that we actually care about the card types in our graveyard, I think it's time we let Past in Flames go. The last thing we need is to exile things out of our yard and lose delirium. Not to mention we're not even running rituals anymore. With two more slots open, I think it's safe to include two [[Archmage's Charm]]s. The modal nature of the card makes it good in almost all situations. It lets us counter threats, steal them, or even draw cards to punish inactive players.

With our now solid card draw package, I think it's also time to say goodbye to Gifts Ungiven, our titular card. I've observed that it is no longer needed when we already have the strongest selection that the format has to offer. We should pretty easily find what we need. For the same reason, I've also cut a single Serum Visions for one [[Spell Pierce]]. That option of further interaction makes us that much more deadly, I've observed.

Well with Gifts gone, we still have 4 slots to fill don't we? Why yes we do. Since our draw is now in order, we want to put the pressure on our opponent and really make them deal with us. That's why I think [[Murktide Regent]] is the perfect inclusion for this part of the deck. With more cards to exile due to the cutting of PiF, this sudden body will force the opponent to have an answer before they die to our evasive threat.

Of course, we want to make full use of Murktide's second ability. In order to do so, we have to exile instants and sorceries with it on the field. The perfect card to do so would definitely be [[Snapcaster Mage]]. The recursion on our value and disruption cards is nothing to sneeze at, not to mention the blowout potential during the block step. In order to make room for our snappy friend, I've cut a pretty lackluster card in the form of Grapeshot. With testing, the card just doesn't do much and I'm surprised that so many people are running it in this deck.

Finally, we come to our last bit of interaction. Remand has felt quite weak without Baral so I'm cutting it for a better counterspell. And what better counterspell than [[Counterspell]]? Down 3 remand and up 3 counter just feels so good since the opponent no longer gets their card back when we interact with it.

With all that out of the way, our new mana cost ratios create a need for an adjusted mana base. Combine that with our changes and we come to this final list:

Creatures:
4 Dragon's Rage Channeler
4 Murktide Regent
4 Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer
1 Snapcaster Mage

Spells:
4 Expressive Iteration
3 Serum Visions
2 Archmage's Charm
3 Counterspell
4 Lightning Bolt
1 Spell Pierce
4 Thought Scour
4 Unholy Heat
4 Mishra's Bauble

Lands:
2 Fiery Islet
2 Flooded Strand
3 Island
1 Misty Rainforest
2 Polluted Delta
1 Scalding Tarn
4 Spirebluff Canal
3 Steam Vents

And we're done! We've turned Gifts Ungiven Storm into a real contender for the meta. I would recommend you guys look out for this deck in your leagues because I suspect it's going to make a big splash in these coming months. Good luck out there storm players!

TLDR; Don't. This explanation is very comprehensive so I recommend you read all of it in order to grasp its future stance in the meta.

Greetings! After posting a lengthy response to a post asking for a recap of what had happened in the last two years as far as the Modern format goes, I had some users ask me to make a recap going as far as the inception of the format. First and foremost, I would like to give a shoutout to /u/sdparquinn who has already made an amazing series of posts recounting the history of Modern. Now, what sets this post apart from his? Well, sdparquinn had to stop at 2017, as he had not played much since then, and I am going to try and make a very "bullet-point" style post instead, so I felt my contribution could be helpful to some.

Fair warning, the majority of the information in the following post is based around data that I could find from mtgtop8 and some pointers from sdparquinn's post, as I was not playing then. Therefore, there will be very little talk about metagame shifts throughout the years and much more talk about the inception of archetypes and the history of bannings. I will try and post this whole thing as one single post, but if it exceeds 40k characters, I might have to extend it with a comment.

2011

In August of 2011, Modern became a sanctioned paper format, having been played as a community format on MTGO for some time and essentially replacing Extended as the "larger-than-standard" format. As the format would now be endorsed by WotC, it would have to include a pretty strict banlist from the get-go: [[Ancestral Vision]], [[Ancient Den]], [[Bitterblossom]], [[Chrome Mox]], [[Dark Depths]], [[Dread Return]], [[Glimpse of Nature]], [[Golgari Grave-Troll]], [[Great Furnace]], [[Hypergenesis]], [[Jace, the Mind Sculptor]], [[Mental Misstep]], [[Seat of the Synod]], [[Sensei's Divining Top]], [[Skullclamp]], [[Stoneforge Mystic]], [[Sword of the Meek]], [[Tree of Tales]], [[Umezawa's Jitte]], [[Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle]], and [[Vault of Whispers.]]. There were three reasons for a card being on the initial banlist: having dominated an Extended/Standard format to an unhealthy point, having stood out as a turn-three combo deck in the first Community Cup earlier that year or being a "Legacy-power" card. Regarding the second reason, in the initial announcement, WotC made it clear that they were willing to allow decks that won on the fourth turn consistently, while being wary of any decks which could win on turn 3 reliably (and lower).

The next month, Pro Tour Philadelphia, which had its format changed from Extended to the new hotness, Modern, six powerful decks stood out in the Top 8:

-UR Splinter Twin was a heavy combo list at the time, running [[Deceiver Exarch]] and [[Pestermite]] to flash out on turn 3 and win the game on turn 4 with [[Splinter Twin]] or [[Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker]] as an alternative; it played very little interaction, sporting playsets of [[Ponder]] and [[Preordain]] to dig as quickly as possible for the combo, while playing [[Remand]] and [[Firespout]] to interact with the opponent.

-Blazing Infect, another combo list using the combination of [[Blighted Agent]] and [[Blazing Shoal]] to get a consistent 2-card Infect kill on turn 2. Again, this used the best cantrips available (Ponder and Preordain) and also relied on [[Spell Pierce]] and [[Disrupting Shoal]] to defend its gameplan.

-UR Pyromancer Ascension, the third and last combo list, which ran the 8 cantrips along with 4 [[Gitaxian Probe]] to churn through their decks, [[Rite of Flame]] and [[Manamorphose]] to generate mana and [[Lightning Bolt]] to win the game, all revolving around the incredible power of Pyromancer Ascension, when combined with an efficient shell.

-Breachpost, a ramp deck using [[Cloudpost]] and [[Glimmerpost]] and other ramp pieces to either hardcast or [[Through the Breach]] out [[Emrakul, the Aeons Torn]] or [[Primeval Titan]] in a very efficient and quick fashion. It also used [[Green Sun's Zenith]] as a manasink, representing 4 extra copies of Titan or providing the classic turn 1 ramp into [[Dryad Arbor]].

-Zoo, or Counter Cat, which ran all the best aggressive creatures available, [[Wild Nacatl]], [[Tarmogoyf]] and [[Knight of the Reliquary]] and backed them up with [[Lightning Bolt]] and [[Path to Exile]] to interact with all the combo decks running amok. It also utilized Green Sun's Zenith as additional copies of these aggressive creatures and to fetch disruptive creatures like [[Gaddock Teeg]] and [[Qasali Pridemage]] which could also shutdown some decks.

-Affinity, a powered down version of its famous Standard ancestor, it ran many small artifact creatures ([[Ornithopter]], [[Memnite]], [[Signal Pest]], [[Vault Skirge]], [[Frogmite]]) along with manlands ([[Inkmoth Nexus]], [[Blinkmoth Nexus]]) and relied on [[Arcbound Ravager]], [[Atog]] and [[Cranial Plating]] to win the game. This was supported by the ramp provided by [[Mox Opal]] and [[Springleaf Drum]].F

Following the creation of the format, there had been much brewing and playing with the format online and in paper, bringing about some first iterations of popular decks in today's meta:

-Jund, running a large suit of removal with [[Terminate]], [[Lightning Bolt]] and [[Maelstrom Pulse]], backed up by [[Tarmogoyf]] and [[Bloodbraid Elf]]. This was one of the first midrange decks available in Modern and would go through many changes throughout the format's history, always keeping its position as the prime midrange deck. While I will not go through all its very numerous iterations, I would recommend you check out MTGGoldfish's detailed article on this very history: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/deck-evolutions-modern-jund.

-Ad Nauseam, using cantrips to reach the now famous [[Ad Nauseam]] and [[Angel's Grace]]/[[Phyrexian Unlife]] combo, albeit leaning heavier on the Mystical Teachings plan as a way of getting Ad Nauseam/Grace more reliably. Interestingly, not much has changed since that first recorded build, except for the use of [[Coalition Relic]] instead of [[Pentad Prism]].

-UW Tron, a slower variant than the green-based variants we have come to love and hate, which was essentially a slower UW Control with the potential to ramp into [[Mindslaver]] (combo with [[Academy Ruins]]) and [[Sundering Titan]] as its primary wincons. It utilized [[Thirst for Knowledge]], [[Gifts Ungiven]] (for value) [[Condescend]] and [[Path to Exile]] as its control package and playing [[Azorius Signet]] to ramp into board wipes, such as [[Wrath of God]].

-"Eldrazi Ramp", which was a different build of Cloudpost that leaned heavily on the Post and Eldrazi/Artifact ([[Emrakul, the Aeons Torn]], [[Kozilek, Butcher of Truth]] and [[Wurmcoil Engine]]) package, with [[Expedition Map]] and [[Ancient Stirrings]]. This build looks very much like our current builds of green-based Tron.

-I will come back to this archetype when it actually begins making waves, but I was able to find Merfolk builds dating as far back as the month after PT Philly, although they were UB, featuring hand disruption and relying less on Merfolk lords.

On the 20th of September, Blazing Shoal, Cloudpost, Green Sun's Zenith, Ponder, Preordain and Rite of Flame are banned. Shoal, Post and Rite were viewed as inhibiting the turn-three wins that WotC had stated they were against; Ponder and Preordain were deemed to provide over-powered card selection to blue-based decks, which was the main reason that Shoal Infect and UR Ascension were able to have such great success. Green Sun's Zenith is a more difficult one: while it didn't promote blazing fast combo decks, it did provide the potential to get any hatebear or powerful aggressive creature on turn 2 if you had a mana dork, which WotC seemed to deem unhealthy, and I would personally have to agree.

By the end of the year, we would see a few decks added to the format; some would stay at the top tables for years to come, while others would go in and out of competitive status.

-URx Tempo was a tempo shell usually based around [[Delver of Secrets]], [[Snapcaster Mage]] and another color-appropriate threat ([[Tarmogoyf]], [[Young Pyromancer]], [[Geist of Saint Traft]]) as its threats and leveraging [[Lightning Bolt]] effects and counters ([[Mana Leak]], [[Remand]], [[Deprive]]) as its interaction, all while supported by the new de facto cantrips, [[Serum Visions]] and [[Sleight of Hand]].

-Melira Pod, an Abzan creature-based combo deck, centered around the powerhouse that is [[Birthing Pod]] and some number of [[Chord of Calling]] to consistently fetch [[Melira, Sylvok Outcast]], [[Viscera Seer]] and [[Kitchen Finks]] to generate infinite life or [[Murderous Redcap]] for damage. Of course, when a deck features creature tutors, it also brings with it situational creatures (Gaddock Teeg, Qasali Pridemage, [[Tidehollow Sculler]], [[Linvala, Keeper of Silence]]). Also, like most creature-based decks, it hinged heavily on the acceleration that manadorks ([[Birds of Paradise]], [[Noble Hierarch]]) provides.

-UW Control, now one of the best decks in the entire format, saw its first iterations in 2011. By using powerful interaction in the form of [[Cryptic Command]], Path to Exile, Mana Leak and [[Supreme Verdict]], it could slow down the opponent enough to land one of its defensive creatures ([[Kitchen Finks]], [[Blade Splicer]], [[Vendilion Clique]]) or a planeswalker ([[Elspeth, Knight-Errant]], [[Jace Beleren]]) to eventually grind out a win.

-Living End, one of the few decks that has never stopped being playable in the format, but could never reach the top of the metagame, appeared alongside the first few decks in 2011. By playing creatures that cycle for a single mana for the sole purpose of cycling them, you are able to find your 3-mana Cascade spells ([[Violent Outburst]], [[Demonic Dread]]) that will cast one of your [[Living End]], which can be anywhere in your deck, and return all these previously cycled creatures to the battlefield.

-Martyr Proclamation, a white weenie, lifegain-based deck that used [[Martyr of Sands]] in conjuction with its payoff [[Serra Ascendant]] to grind out wins, using [[Proclamation of Rebirth]] as a way of recurring Martyr so much that it became essentially impossible for your opponent to get enough damage in, all the while beating down with Ascendant. By being in mono-white and having ways to recur creatures, they were able to run [[Path to Exile]] and [[Wrath of God]] to handle most aggressive strategies.

-Red Deck Wins, a deck centered around aggressive creatures and burn spells, posted its first results. This is pretty clearly the "ancestor" of the Burn lists we have today.

-Notable mentions to 4c Gifts and Death Cloud, which posted their first results in 2011 and have remained playable since then.

In December, Wild Nacatl and [[Punishing Fire]] are banned. Punishing Fire had become somewhat a staple in the latest builds of Zoo and, with Zoo just dominating almost every format, WotC deemed it required bannings to take it down a notch.

2012

Throughout the year, URx Delver, Pod, Zoo, Control, Tron, Affinity and Burn traded wins at the top of the metagame, many janky decks placed somewhat highly in tournaments, Storm was making a resurgence, recovering from the 2011 ban by relying on [[Grapeshot]], due to its much higher number of rituals ([[Desperate Ritual, [[Pyretic Ritual]], [[Seething Song]]), while Ascension became a secondary gameplan, Merfolk was slowly approaching towards its current form, making for a fairly pleasant Modern metagame, from what I gather. This made for an unexciting year in terms of new competitive archetypes and no bannings were required.

In September, [[Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle]] is unbanned, letting Scapeshift (a popular deck in the early days of online Modern) make a come back. Scapeshift consists of a very efficient ramp package that allows the player to reach a critical mass of lands, where [[Scapeshift]] can win the game instantly, using Valakut to deal lethal damage.

A month later, Pro Tour Return to Ravnica takes place: Scapeshift puts up a top 8 record and, lo and behold, Eggs comes out of nowhere and takes down the entire tournament. Eggs was an artifact-based combo deck that used "eggs", like [[Chromatic Sphere]], [[Chromatic Star]], [[Elsewhere Flask]], along with [[Lotus Bloom]] to generate mana and [[Reshape]] to fetch it out and its gameplan essentially revolved around [[Second Sunrise]] bringing back all these artifacts that had gone to the graveyard that turn to generate card advantage and mana and keep doing this until it found a [[Pyrite Spellbomb]] and then just loop 10 times to kill your opponent. The reason this combo deck had so much success was that it was very difficult to interact with, as the majority of the metagame was composed of creature decks and midrange/control decks trying to kill those creatures, leaving some sort of "hole in the meta" for a strange combo deck like Eggs to come in and put up convincing records. To be fair, though, no matter the metagame situation, it is undeniable that Stanislav Cifka played incredibly well throughout the PT, having only lost a single match. Another new deck that had a strong showing at the PT was UG Infect, which had been showing up in MTGO Leagues for some time, a new build of the Infect archetype running [[Glistener Elf]], Blighted Agent and some [[Ichorclaw Myr]] along with a really high amount of pump spells like [[Vines of Vastwood]], [[Mutagenic Growth]], [[Groundswell]] and [[Might of Old Krosa]] to get in lethal Infect damage very quickly, although not anywhere near the 2-piece combo that Blazing Infect used to be.

2013

In January of 2013, Bloodbraid Elf and Seething Song were banned. It was deemed that Jund had become much too strong as the format's clear best deck (GP Lyon won by Jund, GP Chicago had a Jund-on-Jund finals, GP Toronto won by Jund, 7 Jund decks in top 16 of GP Bilbao). It had been extremely pushed by the printing of [[Deathrite Shaman]], which is often called a "1-mana planeswalker", not only because of its set of abilities, but also because of how much he would make the game revolve around him. While UR Storm was not an oppressive deck at the time, it still broke the rule of turn-three combos so WotC felt they had to ban a card from it, choosing Seething Song as it was the best Ritual available to the deck.

In March, we saw the first appearance of the Bogles archetype, which uses [[Slippery Bogle]], [[Gladecover Scout]] and [[Silhana Ledgewalker]] with really powerful auras, like [[Rancor]], [[Ethereal Armor]], [[Hyena Umbra]] and [[Daybreak Coronet]], as the hexproof ability removes the risk of auras (having the creature they are enchanted on removed). Another archetype that had its first big showing is Junk or Abzan midrange, a midrange deck quite similar to Jund that opts to run [[Lingering Souls]] to clog the board down and use Path to Exile instead of Lightning Bolt/Terminate as its removal. Merfolk is beginning to opt for a Lord-heavy build, running minimal interaction in [[Vapor Snag]] or counterspells at the time, which is much more similar to today's builds. U-Tron and G/R Tron also show up in Top 8s for the first time, the mono-blue version is quite similar to old UW Tron decks, using Condescend, Thirst for Knowledge, [[Remand]] and [[Repeal]] to slow down the game, but it leans more heavily on Tron, running [[Expedition Map]], having more colorless payoffs in Wurmcoil Engine, [[Platinum Angel]], Sundering Titan and Mindslaver, which can all be fetched with [[Treasure Mage]]; the GR build is a dedicated Tron deck, which uses Expedition Map and Ancient Stirrings to find Tron lands, Chromatic Sphere and Chromatic Star to fix the mana and run as little basic lands as possible, with payoffs such as [[Karn Liberated]], Wurmcoil Engine, Emrakul and [[Oblivion Stone]] (at the time, the red splash was necessary to have access to board wipes like [[Pyroclasm]] and better artifact removal with [[Ancient Grudge]]). Finally, the first Hatebears deck, a GW variant, puts up a top 8 result in a Qualifier: running [[Leonin Arbiter]] and [[Thalia, Guardian of Thraben]] to prevent your opponent from enacting their gameplan and strong beatdown creatures ([[Loxodon Smiter]] and [[Thrun, the Last Troll]]) to apply a reliable clock.

In May, Second Sunrise is banned, putting an end to the Eggs archetype. While the deck was only putting up a top 8 result every once in a while, it presented a very unique logistical issue: as the combo turns often took a very high amount of time, they caused the majority of tournaments at the time to have rounds that were much too long.

For the rest of the year, there would be no bannings and no new archetypes. Jund is still the strongest deck around and many other archetypes share Top 8s. The only important change was the resurgence of UR Twin, which had remained very quiet in 2012. Also, towards the end of the year, the first iterations of Bloom Titan, a deck using [[Azusa, Lost but Seeking]] and [[Summer Bloom]] to ramp very quickly with bounce lands ([[Simic Growth Chamber]]), which, when combined with [[Amulet of Vigor]], can generate tons of mana on early turns; all this available setup is meant to ramp into a Primeval Titan (can be found with [[Summoner's Pact]], like Azusa), which can get utility lands that lead to a quick win ([[Boros Garrison]], [[Slayers' Stronghold]] > [[Boros Garrison]], [[Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion]]).

2014

In February, WotC decides that Jund has held the "tier 0" spot for too long and realizes their mistake in simply banning BBE when the real problem was Deathrite Shaman, so they finally ban it. They also deem that it is time to revisit the banlist and they unban Bitterblossom, which now seems way underpowered in comparison to the rest of the format, and Wild Nacatl, giving a small boost to Zoo, as it had been clear that the Nacatl ban did not make a huge difference for the archetype over a year prior.

This ban resulted in a massive resurgence of Twin, as Jund had always been the worst matchup possible for the deck and, now that it was on a huge downswing, Twin quickly took the deck's spot at the top of the metagame. Following this change, the meta sort of became a complex game of rock-paper-scissors between Twin, Pod, Control and Zoo, along with some outliers in Storm, Scapeshift and Affinity. While the format had a ton of diversity, much like in the days of Jund pre-ban, Twin was the obvious "best deck" and often made for poor gameplay against a lot of decks that struggled against it. Now, I realize that is a controversial statement as many people adore the deck, but I personally found and have read countless accounts of the deck's ability to win as soon as an opponent taps out on turn 3 being quite unpleasant to play against, which in turn made for unhealthy gameplay.

Towards the end of the year, Khans of Tarkir is released and brings with it the allied fetches ([[Polluted Delta]], [[Flooded Strand]], [[Windswept Heath]], [[Wooded Foothills]], [[Bloodstained Mire]]), which were a very welcome addition, and the infamous [[Dig Through Time]] and [[Treasure Cruise]], which would pass under the radar for a bit and then, once people realized how insanely easy it was to fill their graveyard quickly in most Eternal formats, completely break Vintage, Legacy and Modern in an instant.

2015

In January, only a month or two after the appearance of decks using DTT/Treasure Cruise, namely UR Aggro (Delver, [[Monastery Swiftspear]], burn spells) and Jeskai Ascendancy (combo deck revolving around the interaction between Ascendancy and mana dorks/[[Fatestitcher]] and cantrips/free spells), would disappear with the banning of DTT, Treasure Cruise and Birthing Pod. To give some context, Pod had begun to rival with Twin for the top spot of the meta, really abusing its access to hatebears, and WotC also felt that Pod would slowly create a gap in power between Pod creature decks and other creature decks, therefore reducing diversity. Once again, WotC reviews the banlist to see if they could add more diversity to the format and they decide to unban Golgari-Grave Troll to enhance Dredge as a strategy, which had not seen any success over the last 3 years.

Following this announcement, Abzan rose through the tiers due to the printing of Siege Rhino, which had been a Standard powerhouse, as a top-end, Twin remained a topdeck, Bloom Titan became increasingly better and gained popularity and Burn was refined into the Boros list it has kept since then. Zoo, Affinity, Infect and Living End also put up decent results. Throughout the year, the now Podless Melira Combo deck picked up Collected Company as a way of both reaching its combo pieces and helping the weaker aggressive nature of the deck. Also, Naya Zoo, a much more aggressive take combining the lower-CMC creatures of Zoo with burn spells, began putting up results. Finally, Lantern Control, an artifact-based deck ([[Mox Opal]], [[Ancient Stirrings]]) using [[Lantern of Insight]], [[Codex Shredder]], [[Ghoulcaller's Bell]] and [[Pyxis of Pandemonium]] to control your and your opponent's library in order to prevent them from playing their spells, while locking down the board with [[Ensnaring Bridge]] and gaining information and protecting yourself with [[Inquisition of Kozilek]] and [[Thoughtseize]], began popping up after the unexpected successful run by Zac Elsik at GP Oklahama City popularized it greatly.

Another significant effect of the printing of Khans block was the experimenting with Delve creatures ([[Gurmag Angler]], [[Tasigur, the Golden Fang]]) that ensued. What came out of this experimenting was many Grixis Control, Grixis Delver and Grixis Tempo builds that were now enabled by the printing of a large, efficient body that offered them a clock they never had access to before. Another tool that was brought about by this block was [[Kolaghan's Command]], a Tempo powerhouse that did pretty much everything you wanted in these colors. Grixis decks had certainly been viable before, but this marked the beginning of a new era, where Grixis became a color combination that could apply a powerful clock and a lot of pressure with Anglers, Tasigurs and Delvers along with Lightning Bolt to back them up.

2016

On January 18th, Summer Bloom and Splinter Twin are banned in what was probably the most controversial ban in the history of the format. In the case of Summer Bloom, it simply enabled turn-three combos, which WotC has never been comfortable with keeping in Modern, so its ban was imminent through the deck's history. Now, in the case of Splinter Twin, which, as I mentioned before, was one of the most loved decks in Modern at the time and still has a strong following to this day, WotC only gave a single reason: stifling deck diversity by being a "tier 0" deck.

Four days later, Oath of the Gatewatch comes out, releasing [[Endless One]], [[Eldrazi Mimic]], [[Matter Reshaper]] and [[Thought-Knot Seer]] into the format and beginning the infamous "Eldrazi Winter". Eldrazi Aggro was an extremely powerful aggressive deck that used [[Eye of Ugin]], [[Eldrazi Temple]] and [[Simian Spirit Guide]] to power out a ton of Eldrazi on the first turns of the game very consistently. As soon as the first competitive league results were posted, it was clear that this deck was the real deal and it would go on to take over the format completely. While there were a couple of builds (UB, UR, mono-G), the shell was always the same and the differences were slim. Eldrazi Winter consisted of these decks: Eldrazi Aggro, by far the best deck available, Affinity, Melira Combo and Burn/Zoo. A couple of combo decks (Valakut, Storm, Living End, Infect), along with UWx Control popped up every once in a while, but, again, the deck remained far at the top.

On April 4th, Eye of Ugin is banned, ending the reign of Eldrazi Aggro. Again, it was time to revisit the banlist and WotC decided to unban [[Sword of the Meek]], which was a left-over from the Extended days, and [[Ancestral Vision]], another left-over from older formats. To be honest, like most "revisit unbans", these are cards that almost everyone is happy to see taken off the banlist, as they just added diversity and were not really oppressive.

As the year progresses, Zoo shifts to a much more aggressive build, with Naya Zoo (fast creatures and burn spells) and Big Zoo (Tarmogoyf, Path to Exile) being no longer enough to deal with the diversity available in Modern at the time. Bushwhacker Zoo played the aggressive creatures (Wild Nacatl, [[Experiment One]], [[Kird Ape]], [[Goblin Guide]]) and allowed them to be even more aggressive with [[Goblin Bushwhacker]] and [[Reckless Bushwhacker]], which were fueled by [[Burning-Tree Emissary]]. Another aggressive strategy also appeared in the form of Suicide Zoo which was able to play many colors by benefiting from the damage caused by fetchlands and shocklands, along with [[Gitaxian Probe]] and [[Mutagenic Growth]], just to fuel [[Death's Shadow]] and turn it into the best creature in your deck, along with Swiftspear also getting bigger with these free spells and other standard aggressive creatures ([[Wild Nacatl]], [[Steppe Lynx]]) that also benefit from the manabase Following the ban, RG and Bant builds of Eldrazi Midrange/Aggro also appear, mostly benefiting from more typical ramp in Noble Hierarch and Birds of Paradise, while adding more interaction in Path to Exile or Lightning Bolt. Surprisingly, Dredge finally makes a comeback after all this time due to the release of Shadows over Innistrad ([[Insolent Neonate]], [[Prized Amalgam]]; Dredge is a graveyard deck that focuses on its namesake mechanic, it plays looting effects ([[Faithless Looting]], Insolent Neonate, [[Burning Inquiry]]) to discard cards with Dredge ([[Stinkweed Imp]], [[Golgari Grave-Troll]]) and self-mill yourself by replacing your draws with these, which enables your payoffs ([[Narcomoeba]], [[Bloodghast]], Prized Amalgam, [[Conflagrate]]). Finally, the printing of [[Nahiri, the Harbinger]] breathes life into the Jeskai Control archetype, bringing a very powerful finisher to the archetype in the "combo" of Nahiri and Emrakul, the Aeons Torn.

Towards the end of the year, Amulet Titan would come about, keeping the same shell as Bloom Titan, but using [[Sakura-Tribe Scout]] and [[Lotus Bloom]] to replace Summer Bloom. From that point on, this build would change a bit and would have more or less success depending on the metagame at the time, seeing the most success in 2018.

2017

In January, Golgari Grave-Troll and Gitaxian Probe are banned. With the printing of Cathartic Reunion, Dredge had become much too consistent and powerful, which they deemed was an unhealthy presence in the format, therefore they had to ban a Dredge card, with GGT being the obvious most powerful option. In the case of Gitaxian Probe, they felt it simply did too much for a single card: for 0 mana, one would draw a card, gain information on their opponent's hands (very important) and fill their graveyard with a sorcery, which made it unhealthy by enabling many fast combos. With this ban, Dredge again took a huge hit, making it less favored for some time, Suicide Zoo was no longer a deck anymore, as it relied very heavily on Probe as their best phyrexian spell and Storm took a big hit, also making it much less consistent.

Following the release of Aether Revolt, [[Fatal Push]] would send shockwaves through the format, as it was essentially a black [[Path to Exile]], meaning that it was one of the most premium removal spells available. This would allow for a resurgence in the GB Rock archetype and much better and efficient removal for multiple midrange and tempo decks (Grixis Control, Grixis Delver, GDS, Jund, Abzan, WB Control, mono-black Control). Also, with Gitaxian Probe banned and a new powerful removal spell being added to many decks that greatly benefited from it, the reign of Infect, which had been one of the top tier decks for many years now, was over (for the time being).

Another change that came from Aether Revolt's arrival was a new Storm build begins making the rounds in MTGO Leagues, built around [[Baral, Chief of Compliance]] and [[Goblin Electromancer]] to allow for 1 mana rituals (Desperate Ritual, Pyretic Ritual, Manamorphose), which was supported by ~12 cantrips and Gifts Ungiven fetching out Past in Flames and a bunch of rituals to Storm off with very few resources.

As soon as Suicide Zoo stops being a competitive deck, Jund Death’s Shadow appears and quickly turns into Grixis DS, possibly the best (only?) tempo shell in Modern upon appearing and following its appearance. What was so interesting about GDS is that all the cards in the deck had been in Modern for a long time, but it had never been tried before (I believe). It essentially wrecked the format and saw many calls for a (somewhat justified) ban at the time, it was very close to tier 0. Since then, GDS has remained a very strong force in Modern, going in and out of Tier 1 status.

In April, KCI appears, it is based around [[Krark-Clan Ironworks]] and [[Scrap Trawler]] and supported by the Eggs shell ([[Chromatic Star]], [[Chromatic Sphere]] and [[Ichor Wellspring]]), which uses [[Ancient Stirrings]] as selection to dig for its combo pieces, especially KCI. Over the following year, it would keep putting up decent results, until Matthew Nass put up an incredible record over consecutive GPs in a short time and popularized the deck and earned it a somewhat ominous name very quickly.

In the same month, we witness the first showings of Mardu Pyromancer, which uses the Mardu Control shell of hand disruption (Inquisition of Kozilek, Thoughtseize), removal (Lightning Bolt, [[Fatal Push]]) and grindy spells (Lingering Souls, [[Kolaghan's Command]], using Faithless Looting as its primary card selection, with Souls being a "free" pitch, with [[Young Pyromancer]] and [[Bedlam Reveler]] serving as the primary wincons that has great synergy with the instant/sorcery-heavy shell.

Soon after, Ixalan is released, bringing with it [[Kitesail Freebooter]] and Unclaimed Territory, which allows for 5C Humans to be created. The aggressive potential of [[Champion of the Parish]], [[Thalia’s Lieutenant]] and [[Mantis Rider]], the disruptive potential of [[Thalia, Guardian of Thraben]], [[Meddling Mage]] and the aforementioned [[Kitesail Freebooter]] and the acceleration provided by [[Aether Vial]] and [[Noble Hierarch]], while backed up by a sturdy 5C manabase featuring [[Cavern of Souls]], [[Ancient Ziggurat]] and [[Unclaimed Territory]] and a host of situational Humans for utility. *

Towards the end of 2017, Hollow One begins appearing on MTGO: essentially, it used a discard package of [[Faithless Looting]], [[Burning Inquiry]] and [[Street Wraith]] to churn through the deck and enable its payoffs in [[Hollow One]], [[Gurmag Angler]] and [[Flameblade Adept]], with discard payoffs in [[Bloodghast]] and [[Flamewake Phoenix]]. Initially, the deck used [[Call to the Netherworld]] and [[Fiery Temper]] as additional discard payoffs. In the following months, it would leave these Madness payoffs behind and opt for [[Goblin Lore]] for additional consistency.

2018

In late February, [[Jace the Mind Sculptor]] and [[Bloodbraid Elf]]are unbanned, a controversial move from WotC which sees a big rise in UWx Control decks and Jund. As the dust settles from this shift in the metagame (I apologize for the lack of detail, I’m struggling to remember the specific aftermath), Dominaria is released in late April, bringing with it the ridiculously pushed [[Teferi, Hero of Dominaria]], which leaves UW standing at Tier 1 status, supported by a set of game-ending planeswalkers in Jace and Teferi, often utilizing Terminus in tandem with Jace, as the format progressively shifts to graveyard-based creature decks.

In May, following the release of Dominaria, Magic Aids, a YouTube creator, features a [[Hardened Scales]]-based Affinity deck on his channel, which utilizes the eponymous enchantment in conjunction with modular creatures ([[Arcbound Worker]], Arcbound Ravager), XX artifact creatures ([[Hangarback Walker]], [[Walking Ballista]]) and counter-based "lords" ([[Steel Overseer]], [[Metallic Mimic]]), all being supported by typical artifact ramp in Mox Opal, along with [[Aether Vial]] and [[Sparring Construct]] to also provide speed. Quite quickly, the deck would be picked up by players on MTGO, getting rid of the more clunky Vials and Metallic Mimic and focusing on [[Throne of Geth]] and protection in [[Welding Jar]] instead. Coming about as Affinity had been losing popularity for some time, it saw a lot of play from fans of the archetype and became one of the two Affinity variants available from now on: Traditional Affinity and Hardened Scales.

Following the release of Magic 2019 and the printing of [[Supreme Phantom]], what had once been a low-tier deck in Bant Spirits was given the exact power-up that it had needed for so long, following the printing of its very powerful Shadows block spirits. Using a combination of lords ([[Drogskol Captain]], Supreme Phantom)) with disruptive creatures ([[Mausoleum Wanderer]], [[Spell Queller]]) and defensive spirits ([[Selfless Spirit]], [[Rattlechains]]), it was able to utilize the speed and consistency that Noble Hierarch, Aether Vial and Collected Company gave it to become a tier 1 deck that could handle the faster decks with their disruption while also being resilient to slower, interactive decks, due to their defensive nature.

In August, UR Prison (or Whir Prison) makes its first showing in an SCG Classic and slowly replaces Lantern Control as the artifact prison deck of choice. The great advantage of Whir Prison is that it is able to run [[Chalice of the Void]], which has been very powerful in the last year of Modern, is able to consistently fetch out Ensnaring Bridge and plays Whir of Invention to fetch out silver bullets to hate out specific strategies.

In October, Guilds of Ravnica is released, bringing with it [[Arclight Phoenix]] and [[Creeping Chill]], two very unique and powerful cards which push two individual archetypes: UR Phoenix and Dredge. The first utilizes the many UR card selection spells, free spells like [[Manamorphose]], [[Gut Shot]] and [[Surgical Extraction]] and spellslinger payoffs ([[Thing in the Ice]], [[Crackling Drake]], [[Pyromancer Ascension]]). The second is essentially the same Dredge deck that had been used since the GGT ban, with its clock sped up by a turn or so with the addition of [[Creeping Chill]].

2019

After a widely disliked cycle of Phoenix, Dredge and KCI at the top of the metagame, WotC pulls the trigger and decides to ban [[Krark-Clan Ironworks]] in January 2019, citing similar logistical and format health-related reasons as they did when banning Eggs. Following this, the format unfortunately did not change very much, as Phoenix, Dredge, Tron and UW Control kept their hold on the top of the metagame.

Quite recently, War of the Spark, a set with 36 (+3) planeswalkers, was released. The idea behind this new design was to make planeswalkers with higher base loyalty, static abilities and only minus abilities at the uncommon level and a static ability replacing the ult at the rare level. Upon release, three planeswalkers stood out: [[Narset, Parter of Veils]], [[Teferi, Time Raveler]] and [[Karn, the Great Creator]]. In UW Control, Narset provides card advantage and selection along with (virtual?) card disadvantage for your opponent and Teferi gives you the ability to cast instant-speed board wipes and deny most interaction from your opponent, throwing in a bounce effect to boot. In Tron (and Amulet Titan), Karn brings with it a hardlock with Mycosynth Lattice, which can be kept in the sideboard and is a powerful low-CMC play which also scales with more mana available, a tool that Tron rarely had access to.

Now, Modern Horizons is about to be released and is sure to shake up the meta a fair bit.

* Fun fact, Magic Aids, a MTG Youtuber, was among the first to publish a good decklist, along with strong results, which sort of sparked the creation of the entire format-defining archetype

Edit: thanks for the gold, strangers!

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/format-staples/modern

• Tired of not being able to play creatures that don't have ETB value.

• Tired of playing answers like Pithing Needle and having them be bounced the next turn by a different Planeswalker.

• Tired of playing cards like Magmatic Sinkhole and Fry against Oko that can tick up to 6 loyalty when he lands on the board.

• Tired of being told to "just play Abrupt Decay" because people think that BG is a playable color combination right now outside of Sultai Shadow (which runs Oko...).

• Tired of WotC printing busted Planeswalkers and no good interaction.

• Tired of the best cantrips and counterspells in the format being in Green.

• Tired of seeing the argument that Oko promotes "fair" Magic as though there's a moral high ground to go along with that sentiment. Oko has inarguably made Modern a less diverse format and has invalidated a number of archetypal strategies like aggro, control (unless you're playing Oko), and combo. A format dominated by a single card doesn't make for interactive or interesting games. The only interaction that ends up mattering is whether or not you're able to stick your own Oko or remove your opponent's.

Nadu’s development, which states “ultimately, my intention was to create a build around aimed at commander play” is infuriating. It’s just pathetic that wotc directly sacrifices the competitive formats because it makes them more money within the casual formats. I just want the modern focused sets to be modern focused.

Also hot (not really) take: commander was far more fun without the addition of commander focused cards.

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/august-26-2019-banned-and-restricted-announcement-2019-08-26?querys

I don’t think this is a particularly unpopular opinion; everyone I’ve chatted to, both common players and opponents of t3feri, agree that this card is obnoxiously unfun, and borderline too powerful. However in the shadow of hogaak I feel like the consensus was ‘yeah this card sucks the fun out of any game it sees, but it’s not as bad as hogaak so whatever’.

Hogaak was a clear ban and has gone. I think the apathy has to change. I think we should rant and discuss and get wizards to admit this card was a design mistake. I think it should be banned.

Some points to consider:

Control mirrors in modern used to be the favourite matchups for control players, whatever flavour. Both players got to play magic their preferred way, the playstyle they build control decks for in the first place - caring about complicated interaction on the stack. This is also arguably the most fun magic to watch. T3feri was clearly designed as a card for control players, and it has turned the matchup into an awful, warped race to land T3feri, who immediately stops the other person playing magic. The game is warped around this soul sucking card and is no fun to watch or play.

This problem is exemplified and most ironic for control mirrors, but applies to any match T3feri sees. Any cards that stall interaction are famously unfun, but T3feri kills interaction in its entirety. Removing the stack from magic makes the game not magic.

Aggro/combo decks are playing him. Bant infect splashing solely for a a three mana control planeswalker should send alarm bells ringing.

A 1WU Enchantment with T3feri’s static ability and ‘when this enters the battlefield, draw a card’ would be playable. T3feri is also a bounce spell and a leyline of anticipation.

T3feri without the curse would be a very playable card.

If the static was reworded it could say: ‘Your opponent cannot play spells during your turn, cascade spells or counterspells. All your spells are uncounterable’. That would turn heads and that’s STILL not as good as t3feri’s static.

Imagine if Blood Moon and Chalice of the Void cantripped. Oh, and were one-sided.

Every UW control player who plays this card says the same thing: ‘I hate it so much, but I have to play it because otherwise I’ll come up against it in the mirror and then I’m fucked’. This is not the sign of a healthy game.

Recently creatures have got a lot better. This is kinda ok, because creatures have been around for ages, so the available creature removal suite is wide, varying and effective. Planeswalkers have not been around long enough and are therefore too difficult to interact with. This was ok when the worst you’d come up against was a 4 mana Garruk, or planeswalkers that only served to benefit the owner, but has become a real problem now they’re printing obnoxiously pushed cursewalkers like T3feri. Hero’s Downfall is not a card I want to run mainboard.

Three mana: 4 loyalty, bounce near anything without dying, draw a card, leyline of anticipation, your opponent isn’t playing magic anymore. Three. Mana.

The card is too strong. It’s arguably the least fun card in magic. It has caused people to stop playing both Modern and Standard. It needs to go.

The main reason I bought into modern was because I wanted to invest in cards that I could play for a long time. I've never owned a standard deck, because I never liked the idea of spending money on a deck that would no longer be legal after 1-2 years. Unfortunately, these days it feels like my modern decks rotate every 3-4 months. The opportunity cost of not playing a Companion is just too high if you want to win games in modern. To varying degrees, the same has been true of Oko, Uro, Once Upon a Time, Mystic Sanctuary, Hogaak, Urza, Astrolabe, and several others over the past year.

This hasn't happened by accident. Wizards has explicitly stated that their goal was to increase the power level of standard legal sets. By this point, the consequences for older formats should be clear. Why play Thoughtseize when companions are cast from outside the game? Why play Snapcaster Mage when you can fetch for Mystic Sanctuary? Why play Jund or Mardu when the Astrolabe snow piles get to play the best value cards in every color? The writing has been on the wall for a while now, it just took until today for me to accept that 2019 was not an aberration - this is the new normal.

I still love playing magic, and I've had a lot of fun drafting Ikoria on Arena. But Modern no longer resembles a non-rotating format, and I can't afford the time or money it takes to start from scratch every 3 months. For my own good, I've resolved to begin divorcing myself from the more competitive side of modern, and instead will focus on enjoying more casual games with my obsolete cards from a bygone era.

Hello,

I just recently moved to Warsaw and I was wondering if there are any good modern events in the city that were friendly and with some good card supply to buy from.

Thanks for the read and any info given.

I heard you like ban list posts so we banned ban list posts so you'll be banned if you post about the ban list.

Seriously, no ban list posting until August. Learn how to metagame. The next B&R is August 28th. Also, /r/magicthecirlejerking has been leaking into some of the good quality posts here, so no fluff posts for a while.

Comments and posts that break these rules should be reported and will be removed. I'll be swinging the ban hammer with reckless abandon until things calm down, keep it civil /r/modernmagic.

With the recent ban of Mox Opal, each and every expansion set on Mirrodin has a card on the banned list:

-Mirrodin: Artifact lands, Chrome Mox, Cloudpost, Seething Song, Second Sunrise
-Darksteel: Skullclamp, Mycosynth Lattice
-Fifth Dawn: KCI
-Scars of Mirrodin: Mox Opal
-Mirrodin Besieged: Green Sun's Zenith
-New Phyrexia: Mental Misstep, Birthing Pod, Gitaxian Probe

Anyone hyped for Return to New Phyrexia?

Source: https://scryfall.com/search?q=banned%3Amodern&order=cmc&as=grid&unique=cards

Modern sucked me into to the competitive scene by allowing me to be semicompetitive with low time commitment. It was slow to change and I could keep up with the format with the handful of hours a week I was able to play. I could go to FNMs for months and months and play the same list with minor tweaks. My decks would rarely change, and if they did it was usually a small adaption to the meta game or a small improvement to the sideboard or occasionally main board.

When new sets launched, the meta game would only shift slightly if at all. New decks would occasionally pop up but they were generally niche or slow in their spread.

This is no longer the case. It seems like now every new set completely alters the modern meta game. There will be dozens of cards that are flat out stronger than anything we’ve ever seen before, and they often have no trade offs. They are “no brainer” improvements to current meta decks and often result in huge shifts in the meta.

I simply do not have the desire, or the time to spend countless hours scouring new deck dumps every time a new set launches to keep up with modern. I have no desire to constantly be spending money to keep my decks power level up with the constant power creep.

Who is the target audience for the current direction of Magic’s power creep?

It seems like working adults will be filtered out because they can’t invest the time to keep up with a rapidly evolving format. Anyone with enough time but not enough money will also he filtered out due to these new “upkeep” costs being forged into modern. Who is left at the end and why is this a good approach to making your game more accessible?

ALL FURTHER UPDATES CAN BE FOUND AT https://www.reddit.com/r/ModernMagic/comments/8mu8i0/the_jank_tank_20/

Hi /u/SaffronOlive

Hello /r/modernmagic! I am RDDR_CEO, Plum_Plum_ on twitch, and also known as Plum on Discord, a member of the fantastic group of brewers known as Team Foonen, and an avid player of all things jank and full of spice. I've collected over 230 250 decklists that I have deemed weird, interesting, and of course, jank. Now I would like to share these lists with this subreddit.
If you have any questions about a list feel free to comment, but I'll do my best to provide a short description of what each deck aims to accomplish.
I'd also like to mention that obviously I am not the creator of all of these decks, but I didn't think to write down all their names. So you'll most likely see a deck you'll recognize as some of these are from mtggoldfish.com and other such websites.

PS: Some of these lists have not been updated in a while, so they may be missing what might seem like obvious inclusions or even include cards that are now banned in the format.
PPS: Sorry that there's quite a few decks that are very similar to one another. I know they have similar game plans but I thought there was enough difference between lists to recognize each as a separate deck.

EDIT: If you have a deck that you think should be included in this list or a current list for something you see is outdated, feel free to leave a link in the comments and I'll do my best to update this post.

1.) Grixis Pits - An interesting take on grixis control. It uses mostly damaged based removal to stall until it can play Death Pits of Rath and turn those same spells into hard removal.

2.) Evo Journey - A 4-color value list trying to abuse an engine created by Evolutionary Leap and Journey to Eternity.

3.) Journey Nic Fit - A list with a similar game plan to the one above but with more of a midrange feel and an engine using Journey to Eternity and Eldritch Evolution.

4.) Dredgios - A different take on a vengevine list that also tries to abuse x costed creatures cast for 0 to power out zombies with Bridge from Below.

5.) Meatball Ponza - Named because of all the spicy one-ofs, it's a fun take on GR Ponza, with a toolbox of interesting creatures.

6.) Baral Reanimator - A somewhat average take on esper reanimator, but the interesting addition is Baral. An early Baral helps to hit turn 3 gifts and power out a beater on turn 4 more consistently than other lists.

7.) 5c Coco - Probably the craziest Coco list I've seen since that the deck is almost completely singletons. Not consistent, but definitely fun.

8.) Holy Quest - A Quest for the Holy Relic and Soul Sisters combo build. Use cheap creatures to up-tick Quest and then crack it for some powerful equipment.

9.) Artifact Prison - A Prison list that uses the tron lands to try and land some big artifacts early. Lock your opponent out with Ensnaring Bridge, Pithing Needles, and Chalice of the Void.

10.) God-Pharaoh's Combo - A list that I've only got to work once, but it tries to dredge some interesting reanimation targets into the grave, reanimate them with God-Pharaoh's Gift, and then tries to one shot your opp with Gisela, and Aurelia.

11.) GrowBots - An affinity-esque aggro deck that wants to abuse Hardened Scales and Winding Constrictor with Modular creatures.

12.) Glittering Walls - A list from /u/URLSweatshirt. Stall with defenders and useful sideboard cards until you can land a worship and a Sigarda and start beating down.

13.) Gideon Tribal - A bunch of Beef Slabs jammed into one deck. Not much else to say.

14.) GB Spores - Honestly not a competitive deck at all, but the best attempt at trying to make saprolings work in modern that I've come across.

15.) GB Shadow - A deck outclassed by current shadow lists, but with the ability to scavenge Death's Shadows out of the grave and put 13 counters on your other creatures.

16.) GB Delirium - Similar to common GB rock lists, but with a twist. This list tries to enable delirium quickly and use Traverse the Ulvenwald to search out eldrazi beaters. Sometimes you just hit early temples and power out a turn 3 Reality Smasher though.

17.) Free Win Red - Spirit Guides and Rituals are used to get an early Blood Moon or Ensnaring Bridge, which is hopefully enough to stop your opponent from doing anything before you can land a threat.

18.) Esper Rally - Dump a bunch of little dudes into your grave, use Rally the Ancestors to get them all back and sac them to trigger Blood Artist and drain your opponent. Repeat.

19.) Maze's Wits - A personal favorite of mine. A 5 color Battle of Wits list with so many combos and synergies, I'll let you take a look at the list and find them all.

20.) Marvelous Dragonstorm - An energy list in modern with the goal to hit Dragonstorm off of Aetherwork's Marvel. Plan B is to use Spell Twine to cast it instead.

21.) Mardu Walkers - This might seem like a pretty normal list, until you realize that the maindeck is 74 cards. I'm not sure where the list is from, but I vaguely remember that the author had a bunch of math to go along with it that showed it would still be consistent.

22.) Mardu Vehicles - An adaptation of the successful standard list ported into modern.

23.) Mardu Pyromancer - A mardu tokens lists with Young Pyromancer and Monstery Mentor.

24.) Madcap Naya - GR ponza splash white for Nahiri, which can be used to fetch out Platinum Emperion if the Plan A of Madcap Experiment doesn't work out.

25.) Mono-W Devotion - Use free cards like Leyline of Sanctity and Borderposts to get early devotion and power out some powerful creatures.

26.) Lupelines - Jam a bunch of Leylines turn 0 and hopefully play Lupine Protype or Starfield of Nyx to beat down the opponent.

27.) Lava Storm - Generate tokens and use Battle Hymn to get large amounts of mana and continue to storm off before casting Haze of Rage and swinging out.

28.) Landfall Combo - A fun deck trying to loop landfall triggers with cards like Walking Atlas and Retreat to Coralhelm and then winning with Hedron Crab or Tunneling Geopede.

29.) Land Extraction Mill - Use Surgical Extraction and Extirpate to pull out lands from the opponent's deck, and then cast Mind Funeral to mill them for a large amount.

30.) Kuldotha Goblins - A simple goblins deck that wants to cast Kuldotha rebirth turn 1 off of 0 cost artifacts.

31.) UR Coin Flip - I'm sure many of you have heard of this deck. Use Krark's Thumb to try and change the outcome of the coinflips that let you take extra turns like with Stitch in Time or deal more damage with cards like Mana Clash.

32.) Jund Dragons - WELCOME TO THE JUNDER DOME^{now with more dragons.}

33.) [Asendancy Loam] (https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/865957#paper) - I've honestly never tried to play this deck but I'll assume it works like normal Ascendancy Combo, but with a fancy Gifts package.

34.) Mono-U Illusions - Lord of the Unreal is honestly not too shabby for a tribe that many forget exists. Plays like a slow merfolk deck.

35.) Humanator Combo - An old standard deck ported to modern. First Dredge humans into the yard. Then reanimate Angel of Glory's Rise, exile the angel with Fiend Hunter, then use the mana from Wild Cantor to sac the Fiend Hunter with Undercity Informer's ability. This puts the angel back on the field and returns all those humans you just sac'd so you can rinse and repeat until you mill them out.

36.) Hollow Red - A RB version of the popular Hollow One decks.

37.) Heartless Eldrazi - A deck that tries to replace the Eye of Ugin effect that was used in combination with Eldrazi Temple in early eldrazi lists with Heartless Summoning.

38.) Heartless Architect - Take the known power of Blue Steel lists, and try to make it faster and stronger by adding Heartless Summoning.

39.) Heartbeat Combo - Use Early Harvest effects in combination with Heartbeat of Spring to generate a large amount of mana to cast Emrakul or a giant Blue Sun's Zenith to deck your opponent.

40.) GW Lifegain Aggro - Use cheap lifegain to power up cards like Ajani's Pridemate or Voracious Wurm and start the beat down.

41.) GW Humans - This is a 2 color take on the aggressive Humans deck using Collected Company.

42.) GW Enchantress - An enchantment based GW prison-esque deck that can switch to a beat down plan through Starfield of Nyx and Yavimaya Enchantress.

43.) Grixis As Foretold - Use As Foretold to cast wheeling effects every turn to get value out of Waste Not.

44.) Grixis Emerge - Uses creatures that can be cast for free (Hollow One, Bloodghast, Prized Amalgam) as early ways to get sac fodder that can be used to cast Elder Deep-Fiend.

45.) Mono-G Devotion - A interesting take on mono green devotion with some fun card choices such as Elspeth and Painful Truths.

46.) Graveshift - A Scapeshift deck that uses Splendid Reclamation to pull all the lands that we dump into the grave onto the field to kill with Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle.

47.) Graft Ballista - A deck similar to the GrowBots list above, but this one aims to finish off the opponent with a large Walking Ballista.

48.) GR Eldrazi Delirium - A GR eldrazi list with the ability to run Traverse the Ulvenwald to keep up the pressure by tutoring up more Reality Smashers or Tarmogoyfs.

49.) Goryo's Deathvine - This is what happens when you combine a Hollow one build with Death's Shadow and put in Griselbrand as a backup plan.

50.) RB Hollow Call - Another RB Hollow One build but with the addition of Call to the Netherworld which can grab Street Wraiths and other creatures from the grave.

51.) Rats and Taxes - Death and Taxes with a twist. Chittering Rats and Eldrazi Displacer let you lock your opponent out of their draw step.

52.) Rally the Zuberas - A Rally the Ancestors aristocrats style deck that can get value by using Zuberas and their death triggers.

53.) NyxWave - Ramp into a very large Genesis Wave and swing out with all the creatures you get.

54.) Nivmagus Cannon - Play free spells to build storm and then cast Ground Rift and eat all the copies with Nivmagus Elemental and try to one-shot your opponent.

55.) Naya Swans - Hit our Swans, draw some cards. A different take on the known Seismic Swans list. Glittering Wish gives you a fun toolbox sideboard and Knight of the Reliquary is a good beater.

56.) Nexus Control - Give all your stuff cascade and cast spells. Pretty straight forward.

57.) Black Moon - A RB version of common Blue Moon lists. Pack Rat is a fun card.

58.) Puresteel Toolbox - An artifact based toolbox list that uses Puresteel Paladin and Stone Haven Outfitter to give your artifacts a little extra oomph. Puresteel Paladin + Viridian Longbow + Basilisk Collar + Creatures = Machine Gun.

59.) Naya Midrange - This is what you get if you try to make Jund without black.

60.) Puresteel Gift - Another artifact based toolbox deck but with Sigarda's Aid and more aggressive creatures.

61.) Naya Heroic - The popular Theros standard deck ported into modern.

62.) Naya Eldrazi Evolution - A somewhat standard Naya Eldritch Evolution but it replaces the utility creatures for Thought-Knot Seer and Reality Smashers.

63.) Naya Dragons - A list from /u/imperialtrace. Dragon Midrange.dec

64.) Werewolf Prison - Use Spirit Guides to hopefully land an early blood moon, and hope that your opponent is unable to cast spells which helps flip your wolves.

65.) Mono-U Martyrs - a modern port of Gregory Hatch's legacy list. Use your counters on a stick to gain incremental value along side Sky Hussar.

66.) Mono-U Airforce - An aggressive list filled with evasive flyers.

67.) Mono-R Tron - Take Tron, but instead of casting Karn, cast Banefire. Better yet, cast 2 copies with Pyromancer's Goggles.

68.) Mono-R Prison - A list somewhat similar to free win red, but now with another "oops, I win" in the form of Through the Breach and Emrakul.

69.) Liliana Tribal - Take a bunch of Lilianas, put em in a deck together, boom.

70.) Twiddle Storm - Use Twiddle effects along side Utopia Sprawl effects to make tons of mana before casting Gifts Ungiven or Bring to Light and Grapeshotting the opponent.

71.) Mono-G Control - A list I believe the discord created. It seems to play like GR Ponza.

72.) 7 Land Belcher - Fetch out all your basics and try to fire off a Belcher activation. If that doesn't work, Plan B is to use all the defenders along side Assault Formation to go for a beat down plan.

73.) Mono-G Superfriends - A superfriends list that can cast an array of multi-colored walkers thanks to Oath of Nissa.

74.) Mono-U Living End - Dump some fatties in the yard and then reanimate them by casting Living End for free off of As Foretold.

75.) Blue Steel - The blue artifact based aggro deck popularized by Zac Elsik.

76.) Mono-B Panharmonicon - A devotion-ish deck that tries to abuse the etb effects of creatures and Panharmonicon.

77.) Mono-B Burn - An unconventional burn list that gets incremental value with some basic discard synergies and some value creatures.

78.) Modular Ballista - A combination of the GrowBots and Graft Ballista decks mentioned above.

79.) Metal Reanimator - A BR list that uses Trash for Treasure and Zombify to reanimate bulky artifact creatures.

80.) Primal Surge - A ramp deck that aims to cast primal surge and dump it's whole deck on to the field.

81.) Primal Door - A deck similar to the one above, but this has a built in combo of Ugin's Nexus and Seal of Primordium to give you an extra to turn to swing out and kill the opponent.

82.) Pokemon Scapeshift - A Scapeshift list that gets its name from the fact that it plays 150 cards.

83.) Oops, All Spells! - A deck ported into modern from legacy. Runs a combo similar to the Humanator list mentioned above, but can use Endless Obedience to get back Angel, which then grabs Laboratory Maniac and Alchemist's Apprentice so you can sac and draw with an empty library to win.

84.) Obzedat's Vengeance - Goryo's Vengeance 's trigger can be stacked to resolve after Obzedat's so you can reanimate him for only 2 mana. The rest plays like an esper midrange list.

85.) RG Shamans - An aggro list that spams a bunch of small shamans and then tries to finish off the opponent with an alpha swing using Rage Forger or Atarka's Command.

86.) BW Myr Combo - Loop Myr Retrievers or Perilous Myr by reducing their costs with Heartless Summoning and Enduring Renewal. The payoff is exiling the opponents library with Bitter Ordeal or milling them out with Altar of the Brood triggers.

87.) Mono-R Hatebears - A red taxes list that uses some lesser known red hatebears along side damage based removal.

88.) RB Death Vine - Yet another Vengevine/Hollow One list that plays Death's Shadow.

89.) Shifting End - A list that combines classic Living End lists with a Scapeshift strategy. Cause' why not?

90.) Season's Past Combo - A Complicated combo deck that allows you to loop Early Harvest, Gifts Ungiven, and some cards with Season's Past until you only have Season's Past left in your deck. Then you can generate inifinte mana and deck your opponent with Careful Considerations or Thought Scour.

91.) Savor the Moment - An aggressive Jeskai strategy that wants to keep attacking for those last few points of damage by using creatures with vigilance along side Savor the Moment.

92.) Jeskai Machines - The Saheeli combo put into a shell similar to that of UB Tezzerator but in Jeskai colors.

93.) RW Stax - A different take on the well known Sun and Moon decks. This list doesn't play Blood Moon but can still go for a land denial plan.

94.) Redvine - A simple GR Vengevine/Hollow One list.

95.) Redvine Zoo - A list very close to the one above but with more small creatures commonly found in zoo decks.

96.) Esper Trading Post - An artifact based control list that utilizes Trading Post as a pseudo planeswalker to gain incremental value.

97.) Suicide Grixis - It's a Suicide Bloo list with Death's Shadow.

98.) Bandit Lord Vizier - An all-in Vizier combo list that aims to win in the first few turns off of Hall of the Bandit Lord and Pacts.

99.) Sonic Boom - What I believe was an old standard list ported into modern. Who knew Plumeveils could be so menacing when you give them chariots to ride?

100.) Slivers - Self Explanatory.

101.) Skred - Skred is a pretty well known deck, my list is a little outdated but it's basically a red control list.

102.) Temur Polymorph - A deck makes tokens so that it can Polymorph them into something much bigger, but now it has copies 5-8 in the form of Indomitable Creativity.

103.) Temur Hollow One - By now your tired of all these Vengevine lists but this one gets to use Stubborn Denial. Other than that its pretty stock.

104.) Temur Ascendancy Zoo - Play a bunch of cheap 4-power creatures that gain haste off of ascendancy, while refilling your hand at the same time.

105.) Taking Turns - This deck is pretty well known. Chain extra turn spells together and win.

106.) Sultai Walkers - A Sultai superfriends list.

107.) Sultai Walkers - A list from Todd Stevens that wants to power out a turn 2 Ashiok or Liliana.

108.) Sultai Illness - Negate the etb triggers of the Hunted creatures and Forbidden Orchard with Illness in the Ranks. This also gives you free death triggers for Blood Artist.

109.) Sultai Death Cloud - Stall until you land a walker and then cast Death Cloud to wipe the opponent's board. Goryo's Vengeance can get back Jace and Liliana for the late game.

110.) Sultai Vengevine - A deck that resembles what Vengevine lists looked like before Hollow One showed up.

111.) UG Gifts - A pretty basic mono green devotion lists that also runs a Gifts reanimation package.

112.) Tezzeret's Intuition. - An engine formed by Artificer's Intuition and Myr Servitor that can fetch silver bullet artifacts, put in a Tezzerator shell.

113.) UB Delvdrazi - A weird mash up of UB Delver and eldrazi.

114.) Temur Sarkhan - An attempt to make a RUG version of Jeskai Nahiri, using Sarkhan and Dragons instead of Nahiri and Emrakul.

115.) UB Control - Control is not uncommon in modern, but straight UB is.

116.) Twiddle Defenders - Twiddle + mana producing defenders = Emrakul.

117.) Token Storm - Mardu tokens with Possibility Storm thrown so that you can cast Squadron Hawk, which pulls out all the creatures except Emrakul.

118.) Token Friends - A superfriends list geared at making a lot of tokens.

119.) RW Pyrohemia - A RW control deck with the all-star being Pyrohemia. Its activated ability can help keep the board clear of small creatures, draw cards of off Swans of Bryn Argoll, or deal double damage with Boros Reckoner.

120.) UG Warp - A Taking Turns variation but with less focus on the idea of chaining turns together, and more focus on going for a midrange strategy.

121.) UG Pili-Pala Combo - The Pili-Pala and Grand Architect combo put into a Collected Company shell. Make infinite mana and then kill with Walking Ballista.

122.) UB Zombie Combo - A combo deck with neat synergies revolving around Gifts Ungiven and Haakon, Stromgald Scourge.

123.) 8-Scales - My personal brew created with the help of the mtggoldfish discord and Team Foonen. Stall with Culling Scales and Porphyry Nodes until you can land a decent threat such as Nahiri or something from the wish board.

124.) Unexpected Results - Ramp into Unexpected results and hope you hit something good.

125.) Abzan Curses - Use Bitterheart Witch to cheat out curses and exhaust your opponent's resources.

126.) Elemental Breach - A tribal Through the Breach deck that wants that wants to cheat out and swing with Liege of the Tangle.

127.) Zombardment - A Jund aristocrats deck.

128.) WR Prison - Another well known deck. Self explanatory.

129.) Westvale Worship - Hide behind Worship and defenders until you can flip Westvale Abbey.

130.) Waste Foretold - Another list featuring As Foretold, Waste Not and wheeling effects but with some spicy tech like Shadow of the Grave and Molten Psyche.

131.) Venser Blink - A Collected Company deck featuring an array of creatures that gain value whenever they enter the battlefield.

132.) UW Turns - Another turns deck with a splash of white for some better removal and sideboard options.

133.) UW Spirits - An aggressive tribal deck with a few controlling elements to help push through damage.

134.) UW Sceptor - An interesting list with a small focus on wizards and using Isochron Sceptor to have access to a counter spell every turn.

135.) UW Renewal Control - A UW control list with a combo finish. Loop the x cost artifact creatures with Enduring Renewal for infinite etb triggers and mill your opponent out with Altar of the Brood.

136.) UW Quest - A Quest for the Holy Relic deck. Play a bunch of cheap creatures, and then grab a sword or Argentum Armor.

137.) UW Pride Spirits - More spirits! This time with Pride of the Clouds.

138.) UW Monument - Use Oketra's Monument to make all your cheap creatures cheaper and get an extra body each time you cast one.

139.) UW Hatebears - A fun take on taxes with some under used cards that work well with Aether Vial such as Skaab Ruinator or Serra Avenger.

140.) UW Hexproof - A color shifted version of Bogles.

141.) UW Airforce - Yet another fliers list, but this one had the fun inclusions of Erayo and Thunderclap Wyvern

142.) UR Tutelage - Hide behind ensnaring bridge as you mill your opponent out with Memeric Orb and Sphinx's Tutelage.

143.) UR Improvise - Play a bunch of free artifacts and then jam an Enraged Giant or other improvised dudes in the first few turns of the game.

144.) Aethermage Sultai - Kind of plays similar to the Unexpected Results deck from above. Cast Aethermage's Touch and try to get a creature with a decent etb effect.

145.) Death's Shadow Infect - Take one of the biggest creatures you can get in modern (Death's Shadow), and give it infect with Tainted Strike.

146.) Solemnity Combo - I'm sure many people already know about this since there was discussion about it as soon as Solemnity was spoiled.

147.) Ultimatum Combo - A fun deck. Try to dump Omniscience into the grave and reanimate it with Obzedat's Aid. Then chain together ultimatums and try to win.

148.) Esper Rally - Another Rally the Ancestors deck but this one includes Bridge from Below to get some more bodies after you sac your board.

149.) GB Ooze Combo - A bunch of combos thrown into one deck, even if part of the combo hits the grave, you can use Necrotic Ooze to go off anyways.

150.) Paradox Engine Combo - An updated version of what's commonly known as dice factory. Use Surge Nodes and Coretappers to give your mana rocks a boost and generate a bunch of mana by untapping them over and over again with Paradox Engine until you can kill them with a giant Walking Ballista.

151.) Esper Turbo Friends - What you get when you want to play turbo fog and superfriends at the same time.

152.) Esper Jet Planes. - An Esper vehicles list that makes use of creatures with Inspire to crew them.

153.) Mono-B Zombies - A simple zombie tribal list.

154.) Charged Destruction - A variation of Dice Factory that tries to ramp into an early Wildfire to leave your opponent short on lands and you with mana via mana rocks so you can pull ahead.

155.) Simic Faeries - Basically mono blue, but with a splash of green for Lead the Stampede and Scryb Ranger.

156.) Crucible Control - A prison deck created by Randall Thompson (a huge contributor to Lantern Control). The only win condition is a single Inkmoth Nexus. Your goal is to loop Ghost Quarters and take out all your opponents lands and then slowly kill them with Inkmoth.

157.) Dark Crimes Combo - Cast Spellweaver's Helix imprinting Raven's Crime and Dark Petition and loop them until you can cast Emrakul.

158.) Descendant's Treefolk - Treefolk tribal, but by using Descendant's Path and a changeling, you can tutor up Emrakul with Congregation at Dawn and cast it for free since it shares a creature type with Chameleon Colossus.

159.) Dragon Rally - A Jeskai Rally deck but instead of bringing back creatures and sacrificing them to win with Blood Artist, we take advantage of Dragon Tempest and the fact that most of the creatures are dragons.

160.) Dredgless Dredgevine - More Vengevine! Plays like a weird dredge deck but doesn't include any cards with dredge.

161.) Ensnaring Aggro - A list from /u/BACEXXXXXX. Stop your opponents from attacking you while you get over Ensnaring Bridge with low power creatures that get buffed as they attack.

162.) Esper Blink - A deck that kind of plays like Eldrazi and Taxes but with more emphasis on flickering synergies.

163.) Bio-Weaver - Play a bunch of creatures including Biovisionary, and then cast Mirrorweave to get 4 or more and win the game.

164.) Sultai 2 Drops - Another Team Foonen brew. Play a bunch of 2 mana cards and ways to tutor them up for any given situation.

165.) Esper Flyers - Self Explanatory.

166.) Blistering Rage - A Suicide Bloo variation featuring Blistercoil Weird.

167.) Golden Zoo - A zoo deck that uses the multi-colored aspect of its creatures to its advantage with cards such as Knight of New Alara.

168.) Blood Funnel Combo - Cast a creature like Riddlesmith and then play Blood Funnel. From there you can chain together 2 mana artifacts that get countered but draw you into more. As you do this you can either be creating an army with Monastery Mentor or try to draw through your deck and win with Lab Maniac.

169.) Bloody Humans - A Free Win Red deck that beats down with assorted humans (sometimes holding swords or riding dragons).

170.) Counter Crop - We have Counterbalance in modern but no top, so it got replaced with Cream of the Crop to help manipulate the top of your library.

171.) BR Curses - Use Footsteps of the Goryo to bring back Bitterheart Witch and start cursing your opponent.

172.) BR Tokens - Pack Rat makes rats, Rabblemaster makes Goblins, Young Pyromancer makes elementals, etc.

173.) Transformable Belcher - A Belcher list that turns into Oops, All Spells!

174.) BUG Salvage - A more midrange approach to a Death's Shadow list that utilizes the graveyard more heavily.

175.) 5 Color Humans - An older list that doesn't include cards from Ixalan or Shadows Over Innistrad.

176.) 5 Color Glittering Scales - The original version of the 8-Scales deck posted above.

177.) Elemental Blast - Hit hard and fast with a bunch of elemental creatures.

178.) Abzan Truths - Make use of taxing effects by paying more colors of mana for Painful Truths.

179.) Act of Bees - Boros Reckoner and Hornet Nest have a best friend named Blasphemous Act.

180.) Bant Helix - Lock your opponent of the game with Knowledge Pool and Curse of Exhaustion.

181.) Bant Saheeli - The Saheeli combo put into a shell full of value creatures kind of like Kiki Chord.

182.) Bant Spirits - I'm sure this deck is pretty well known and self explanatory.

183.) Hunted Company - Put the Hunted creatures into a Collected Company build and add Illness in the Ranks and Blood Artists.

184.) Double Moon Walkers - A superfriends list that takes advantage of the ability to cast walkers of any color through Blood Moon via Oath of Nissa.

185.) 4 Color Seance - Fill the yard. Get Value. Win the Pro Tour.

186.) Venser Chord - A variation of Kiki chord with out the combo. Your goal is to assemble Venser and Stonehorn Dignitary to lock your opponent out of attack steps.

Note: These decks are in no way all supposed to be competitively viable. I'm just trying to inspire a few people to try something new and exciting or maybe spark an idea for a new brew.

Below will be decks posted in the comments, updated versions of some of the lists mentioned above, and lists that I forgot to put in when I originally made the post.

187.) Varolz Shadow - A list from /u/lithzz that is another take on the GB Shadow list from above, but tries to put the scavenged counters on to Walking Ballista.

188.) Gro-Bots - A list from /u/Entrei6. An updated version of the Growbots list from above, but it has a combo finish using Rite of Passage + Hardened Scales and Walking Ballista.

189.) Blood Angel's Pact - A list from /u/Xicadarksoul. "The deck's goal is simple: Cheat in play Platinum Angel with Madcap Experiment, and ride it to victory."

190.) Jankrakul, the Combo's Torn - A list from /u/blong217. "So this is just a deck I've wanted to create for ages. It's really a simple concept with a simple execution. Basically you create a token with Dragon Fodder , Spawning Breath or Abstruse Interference then sac it to Polymorph or Indomitable Creativity. Then you cheat out Emrakul, the Aeons Torn."

191.) Jeskai Belcher - A list from /u/john_dune. "Uses a combination of [[Proteus Staff]] and [[Goblin Charbelcher]] to set up a recursive beatdown win con. Can power out a Blightsteel Colossus on T4, or gum and and control any creature game. Isochron Sceptre (the 3rd stick) to help bring back massive threats for the win. Nahiri for fun, Gifts Ungiven to make your opponents cry... Enjoy"

192.) Bant Bellower - Use Painter's Servant to turn all your creatures green, then chain Bellowers and Phantasmal Images with the last creature being Hellraiser Goblin to give all your Bellowers haste.

193.) Bant Martyr Proc - Play this if you like gaining life, playing a wish board, and casting Supreme Verdict.

194.) Beck Alarm - A deck filled to the brim with Intruder Alarm combos created by Conley Woods.

195.) Mono-B Infestation - Make zombies using Zombie Infestation and Squee as well as enabling madness creatures.

196.) Combo Mill - Tutor for Archive Traps and then force your opponent to search their library with Field of Ruin so you can cast all the traps for free.

197.) UR Battle of Wits - A list from /u/URLSweatshirt. Self Explanatory.

https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/banned-and-restricted-december-16-2024

Going into this announcement, it was clear that Modern needed the most help among our competitive formats. Our previous actions in August addressed the most glaring issue with the format: Nadu, Winged Wisdom. But things haven't gotten much better. We analyzed a handful of options to try and get the format into a spot that our players would enjoy and be excited about. However, we felt more was needed.

Our players are the backbone of competitive Magic. We can observe tournament results, analyze the metagame, and dig into win-rate numbers all day long. But it's all of you who are playing these formats, and at the end of the day, it is our job to ensure you're having as much fun as possible.

Modern isn't the same format it was years ago. There are several cards we banned years ago. Since then, several new sets have been released. Specifically, Modern Horizons sets have made a sizeable impact on the format. As such, we've decided it was time to set free a handful of cards. We'll start by talking through each banning. Then, we'll move on to the cards that will be unbanned.

It's no secret that The One Ring has been a large part of the Modern metagame since its introduction eighteen months ago. In the August announcement, we had stated that there wasn't a dominant One Ring deck and that it appeared in a variety of strategies, even propping up some more fringe archetypes. While it does appear in many different archetypes, it has also solidly become a part of the most dominant strategy in Modern: Boros Energy.

The opportunity cost of including The One Ring in nearly any deck is too low, and its presence in events has become tiresome for many players. Acting as a tool for self-preservation and a source of card advantage, it requires no commitment to any particular color. We believe it is clear, as it has been for many of you, that Modern would be a more enjoyable format without its inclusion. And thus, The One Ring is banned in Modern.

Removing The One Ring is certainly a hit to Boros Energy, Modern's most played and most consistently dominant deck. But it also impacts several other strategies. We'd like to ensure that we reduce the overall win and play percentages of Boros Energy directly, though we don't want to eliminate it from the format like we did most recently with Nadu, Winged Wisdom. We considered many cards in deciding how to knock Boros Energy down a few pegs, with Guide of Souls; Ajani, Nacatl Pariah; and Phlage, Titan of Fire's Fury among them. However, we landed on Amped Raptor.

Each of those options could reasonably be included in a few other archetypes, while Amped Raptor only appears in Boros Energy. Amped Raptor allows for some of the deck's most explosive starts, acting as an energy enabler and a payoff, and often amounting to an extra one to four mana in the early turns of the game. So, Amped Raptor is banned in Modern.

As far as banning Jegantha, the Wellspring, many of the same reasons Arya explained above apply to Modern. Ultimately, the decision to avoid cards that have more than one of the same mana symbol isn't a very interesting or fun one to make. By making a couple swaps in deck building, you can get access to a mostly free 5/5, earning you a couple of percentage points in the win column. This reduces the pool of options you might consider when building decks, which in turn makes for an overall less-diverse format.

Jegantha is clocking in at around 40% of all Modern decks, from Energy to Zoo and several more fringe strategies. To reduce the dominance of Boros Energy and increase the amount of diverse card choices available in Modern, Jegantha, the Wellspring is banned.

The bans above should do a decent job of making Modern more fun and balanced. But could it be even better? When we ban cards, we tackle problems as they arise, using tournament data and community feedback to navigate the format into a better place. This combination of objective and subjective reasoning has its flaws. Namely, the more sets released into a given format, the more powerful it becomes. We've examined several cards on the banned and restricted list and reintroduced some to the Modern format.

It is worth noting that this is the beginning of a new era. Many of you have given feedback time and again about the good old days of Modern, before Modern Horizons sets started increasing the power level of the format and making iconic decks obsolete. After long consideration, we've chosen an initial list of cards to unban. We'll closely monitor how these cards impact competitive Modern events over the upcoming Regional Championship season and come March 31, 2025, evaluate how things are looking.

Did we make Modern a better place? Can we handle a wave of nostalgic and infamous cards to reenter Modern? Was there something we released that's making Modern less fun? Only time will tell, so let's get into it!

For much of Modern's history, artifact decks have been a pillar of the format, with decks like original Affinity, Krark-Clan Ironworks Combo, and even Lantern Control! But it has been a while since we've seen such a strategy be competitively viable. We took a couple shots to elevate artifact strategies in Modern Horizons 2 and Modern Horizons 3, but alas, the power simply wasn't there. Mox Opal was banned in 2020, after the introduction of Modern Horizons, which included our good friend Urza, Lord High Artificer. While opening hands containing Mox Opal can be quite explosive, it's not like we ever stopped printing strong anti-artifact cards. (Looking at you, Meltdown and Wrath of the Skies.)

Our expectations are that the reintroduction of Mox Opal will give rise to several interesting artifact strategies both new and old without adding any power to strong decks. And so, Mox Opal is unbanned in Modern.

Green Sun's Zenith has been banned in Modern since 2011. Banned during a time where green decks were too strong, the card offered a level of consistency and flexibility that was difficult to combat, often narrowing the range of cards you'd consider playing. In fact, the logic we used to ban Jegantha this time around applies to why Green Sun's Zenith was banned in the first place. But that was over a decade ago.

Today's green creature–based decks are few and far between. Even Basking Broodscale combo decks can't use Green Sun's to find its namesake. Yawgmoth Combo has basically fallen off the map, and while finding Grist, the Hunger Tide is nifty, key cards like Orcish Bowmasters; Yawgmoth, Thran Physician; and Zulaport Cutthroat are unable to be tutored.

Can Elves make a resurgence? Modern Horizons 3's new-to-Modern reprints Sylvan Safekeeper and Wirewood Symbiote might be tasty targets. Maybe old favorites like Dryad Arbor and Primeval Titan will be entering more often. To help increase metagame diversity, Green Sun's Zenith is unbanned in Modern.

Back in 2019, after Pro Tour Barcelona, it was clear that Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis was stronger than intended. One of the cards that died for Hogaak's sins was Faithless Looting. But Faithless Looting had propped up a multitude of strategies. Arclight Phoenix, Hollow One, Dredge, and even some fair midrange decks featuring cards like Young Pyromancer and Seasoned Pyromancer all played Faithless Looting.

Now, five years later, we're interested in seeing what Faithless Looting can do without a certain giant Avatar rearing its ugly head. Much like with the discussion of Mox Opal, we've introduced several anti-graveyard options into Modern since Looting's removal, namely Endurance and Boggart Trawler. Faithless Looting is unbanned in Modern.

It's a question for the ages: would Splinter Twin be strong in today's Modern? Twin was banned back in 2016 after consistently being at the top of the metagame and taking down a few Pro Tours. The fear of tapping out into three open mana and dying was real. Do you hold mana open for removal or try to progress your board state in hopes of getting the game over before they can assemble their one-two punch of Pestermite and Splinter Twin. History tells us that replacing Splinter Twin with Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker doesn't cut it. So, can eight years of format evolution keep the Twin combo in check? We think it can.

Answers exist that once didn't, including several zero-mana cards that can keep you alive if the opponent decides to tap out for their four-mana enchantment. Solitude, Force of Negation, Force of Vigor, and Flare of Denial have all seen competitive Modern play, and each of them can solve the play patterns that Twin decks once exhibited.

Unlike Mox Opal, Faithless Looting, and Green Sun's Zenith, which can each support multiple different strategies, Splinter Twin only supports one strategy. But the whole point of today's reversed bans is to call back to the Modern of yesteryear. Each card was justifiably removed from Modern in the past, but times change, and we've realized that Modern isn't what it used to be. Splinter Twin is symbolic of an era of Modern that people look back on fondly, and it is now free. Enjoy the memes.

first person to make a GSZ package that's complimentary to a stoneforge package earns my support for a lifetime of 3-2 league finishes

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Nearly one year since the last change to the Modern banned list, R&D has continued to monitor the evolution and health of the format. During this time period, Krark-Clan Ironworks decks have risen to prominence at the Grand Prix level of play, posting more individual-play Modern Grand Prix Top 8 finishes than any other archetype, despite being only a modest portion of the field. In fact, only one other archetype, White-Blue Control, has posted more than half as many Top 8 finishes as Ironworks in those events. With no signs of the Ironworks deck's dominance at the GP level slowing down, we've decided to take action by banning the card Krark-Clan Ironworks.

In many ways, this was not a clear-cut discussion, and R&D considered data over an extended period of time before coming to a decision. Ironworks decks require detailed rules knowledge and careful practice to master, resulting in a high win rate among pro players and other experienced pilots at the highest levels of play. In contrast, for quite some time, we hadn't seen Ironworks be as popular or as winning in less competitive play environments. With Ironworks's interactions being difficult to execute on Magic Online, it's been more challenging to gather data reflective of its win rate in the hands of a practiced pilot in tabletop play.

With these challenges in mind, we've taken additional time to watch the environment evolve. By now, we've gathered sufficient data to conclude that Ironworks poses a long-term threat to the health of competitive Modern play. This is the right time to make a change. While the primary reasons for banning a card from the Ironworks deck are its raw win rate and high GP Top 8 conversion rate, we also considered its highly polarized Game 1 (pre-sideboard) win rate, sometimes long turn length, and difficult rules interactions as secondary factors.

Games with Krark-Clan Ironworks can often involve excessively arcane rules interactions using mana ability timing windows, the understanding of which are necessary for players to agree on the game state. This can create a barrier to entry to Modern for players playing against the deck and to those who would feel obligated to play with it because of its strong win rate. We're sensitive to community feedback that the combination of polarized matchups, complex interactions, and long turns can lead to unenjoyable gameplay and viewing experiences.

Make no mistake—R&D wholeheartedly embraces the strategic depth and robust rules system of Magic, and the player skill it takes to master them. In many cases, a deck's difficulty to play is a pressure against needing to ban a card, insofar as it suppresses the metagame population and win rate of the deck in the short term. This a major factor as to why R&D had not previously needed to take steps against Ironworks. As time goes on and more players master the deck, we ultimately have to make decisions based on how the deck is performing in the hands of those experts in practice.

I'd like to emphasize that, while Ironworks did perform well at the recent Grand Prix Oakland, we do not make B&R decisions based on a single tournament alone. It's the long-term performance of Ironworks over the last year that has given us cause for action. Grand Prix Oakland results reflect that this trend is not slowing down as the metagame adjusts.

We considered three possible cards from Ironworks to ban: Ancient Stirrings, Mox Opal, and Krark-Clan Ironworks itself. Given that Modern has looked healthy and diverse at many levels of play outside of Ironworks's dominance at the Grand Prix level, we decided to target the card that only affects the Ironworks deck: Krark-Clan Ironworks.

Ancient Stirrings and Mox Opal represent two categories of cards that R&D keeps a careful eye on: card selection and fast mana. One factor we consider is that Ancient Stirrings, unlike more general card selection spells like Ponder and Preordain, brings deckbuilding restrictions. When we examine the effect of powerful cards, we consider whether they are increasing or decreasing the number of viable decks in the environment. In the current state of the metagame, the build-around nature of Ancient Stirrings supports decks that look very different from a simple collection of the strongest rate cards, and that otherwise may not exist. The recent resurgence of a new generation of Amulet Titan decks is a good example of this. Mox Opal is a similar case. In addition to showing up in high-profile decks like Hardened Scales, we also see Mox Opal enabling a variety of more fringe artifact synergy decks. As a category, we think these are generally healthy provided they appear in small doses and have reasonable win rates. As Modern stands, our metagame data does not indicate a need to impact the other Ancient Stirrings or Mox Opal decks.

Bear in mind that this is based on the current state of the metagame, and that Ancient Stirrings and Mox Opal are not being given a free pass in perpetuity. While we have no current plans to take action against these two cards, we'll continue to monitor the health of the environment and the strength of decks that use them. If the metagame reaches a point where we determine these cards are doing more to suppress archetype diversity than enable it, we will certainly revisit this discussion. At this time, we're choosing the surgical ban against Krark-Clan Ironworks itself and avoiding "splash damage" against other archetypes.

During the game 2 of the RC Denver finals an illegal play completely flipped the outcome of a match and I felt it warranted attention.

During that game the Rhinos player casted a violent outburst while missing green mana and won the game off of that illegal play since neither the opponent, the spectators or the judges noticed.

In g3 the rhinos player got an unreal stacked hand and promptly won the match.

I am very disappointed that no one noticed this at the finals where such a mistake ended up costing the loser 15k dollars. Clip for reference below. If the clip doesn't work you can check the day 2 Vod at around 8:25:30

https://www.twitch.tv/dreamhackmagic/clip/BlushingCredulousOxTebowing-Y6QZKoWdjLwGIVsu?filter=clips&range=7d&sort=time

I played a game earlier this week that rubbed me the wrong way. My opponent Pacted for Primeval Titan and cast it by tapping a Sakura Tribe Scout for the mana he needed and using a Cavern of Souls for green. He searched for Boros Garrison and Slayers' Stronghold, and I Echoing Truthed the Titan before declare attackers.

At this point, my opponent didn't have the double green mana to actually pay for the Pact, but he could potentially untap with Scout and put a land into play to pay for it. Unfortunately I didn't have removal for the Scout to guarantee the win, so I did my stuff and passed it over.

My opponent then immediately draws a card for his draw step and starts thinking about his turn. I point out that he missed his Pact trigger and now lost the game. He brings up the new Ravnica Allegiance rulings and says that he in fact doesn't lose but instead I get to choose to put the trigger on the stack now, after his draw step. So I tell him to put the trigger on the stack, and in response he taps the Tribe Scout to put a Gemstone Mine into play.

Now I have four problems with this. One, I have no way of knowing if that Gemstone was in fact his draw for the turn. What if he didn't have the second green mana in hand at the upkeep? Why then should he be allowed an extra draw step to find the green mana he needed?

Two, why should he get the free information of his draw for the turn before deciding on how he should tap his mana for pact? Amulet Titan plays more than a dozen unique lands and has all sorts of color requirements for different plays, so it is a considerable advantage to see your draw before deciding which lands to tap.

Three, I thought Magic was a game of decisions, not reflexes. How do I protect myself from my opponent rushing past his upkeep into their draw phase in this situation? Is it now my responsibility to remind him to pay his pact before I state that I end my turn (are we no longer responsible for our own triggers?), or do I need to have lightning fast reflexes to immediately shout "STOP!" and grab his hand as soon as I see him reaching towards the top of his library (assuming paper play)?

Four, why in the world do Pacts not do what they say they do anymore? The text on the card literally says that if you don't pay the mana on upkeep, you lose the game. This ruling functionally errata'd that to be "During your next turn, your opponent may say "Gotcha!" The first time they do, pay 2GG or you lose the game." What's the point of the word "upkeep" if this trigger can go on the stack at any point of the turn?

I could not find a single source on the web that says my opponent's line of play was cheating, but rather that it was completely acceptable by the current rulings. Doesn't that make it strictly better to always "forget" your Pact triggers, or negative triggers in general? If it's no longer an infraction or game loss, then there is literally no downside to it. The upside is that you get all sorts of free information, more card resources (like drawing the Gemstone for turn), and even the upside that if your opponent forgets the trigger and begins their turn, now the trigger is permanently gone.

Am I just misunderstanding the situation or what? If not, then I'll opine that this new ruling completely undermines the competitive integrity of the game by rewarding angle shooting, rushing, and deliberate forgetfulness.

By MTGGOLDFISH metrics
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/format-staples/modern

Top Cards Overall

1 Lightning Bolt 34% at: 3.6 per deck
2 Arcum's Astrolabe22% at: 3.9 per deck
3 Veil of Summer 36% at: 2.3 per deck

Lightning Bolt shows in 34% of overall decks in modern, at an aproximate of 3.6 copies per deck. This card alone pushes out of the format classic decks like devoted druid, merfolk and every single x/3 card. Thanks to the presence of Lightning Bolt every card needs to either have an ETB/on cast ability or be an X/4 to be playable. Card design is held hostage by this one card, it's thanks to this that we got Dryad of the Illysian Grove as a 1/4.

I know there is a lot of fuss about Arcum's Astrolabe lately, and I believe the astrolabe its a powerful card, increasing playability of UGx mid range its overall a positive thing. However lightning bolt has homogenized red decks since times immemorial, forcing every deck runing that color to run lightning bolt. The one exception being decks with chalice of the void.

Everyone knows here why jund is still good in a veil of summer meta, because its capable of exerting such presure and closing games really fast using lightning bolt, which in my opinion says a lot about the sheer power level of such a card.

I wanted to shine some light on the stats and ask everyone what they think of having a red on drop dominate both the metagame and card design so much. A red drop that was also in the same cycle as ancestral recall if I may add.

Guy at the lgs was arguing that drill bit was the new best hand attack spell in modern, went down like this

"But you can't play it on turn one"

"All you have to do is gut shot them first"

"Gut shot costs 2 life"

"2 Life is worth getting to take any card on turn one"

He still hasn't clued in

https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/july-8-2019-banned-and-restricted-announcement-2019-07-08?f

Bridge from Below Banned.

F5 keys all over the globe could be heard loudly clacking under the strain of constantly being pressed with midnight right around the corner. Millions of Magic players wipe their sweaty brow with bulk commons, eager to see the first spoilers.

The clock strikes twelve and, boom. Well, maybe more of a light snap accompanies an underwhelming reprint of Stony Silence to kick off spoiler season. However, the anticipation of Innistrad being included in this year's Modern Master's set excites those praying for a Liliana of the Veil reprint, or those foolish enough to actually want to pick up Snapcaster Mage with his now anemic Tier 2 status.

Many are upset to see a now blank spot where collector numbers used to be. Wizard's official Twitter announced soon after that this change is a way to prevent "number crunching" for Masters sets. "We like spoilers, but it's more fun when you have no idea what to expect!" Whispers start flying around, asking if there's anything special about MM17 that prompted this change.

The Mothership kicks online around 7:30 AM PST as always Monday morning with a few reprints that get everyone a little more hype. Mishra's Bauble is demoted to common, making many OG Jund players breathe a sigh of relief that they waited a few weeks to hop on the bandwagon. Voice of Resurgence is happily revealed as the first of what looks to be 15 Mythics. In unrelated news, renowned Kansas City FNM end boss Rob Basta manages to find a reason to complain about the first gold card reveal, claiming, "What am I supposed to do with my three cases of Dragon's Maze now?"

Tuesday starts off with a good one to say the least. MM17's first planeswalker is none other than Liliana of the Veil. Preorder prices rise a solid chunk, and /r/magicthecirclejerking changes its theme in celebration of a Skaab Goliath reprint, Magic's only 6/9. Conversely, we see Modern Master's first Comet Storm in Worldspine Wurm. "At least it's playable in Modern this time..." says Reddit user elvish_visionary at -6 in the /r/magicTCG thread, proving the subreddit truly will downvote anything, but soars to +57 for an innocuous "Nice to see you again, Tiago" in response to a Snapcaster Mage reprint with original art. Many assume Ancestral likely seals up the last blue Mythic slot, with a few jokes about "lol what if they unbanned jace with a reprint" quickly downvoted to oblivion after countless replies of, "No fuckin' way WotC has the balls to unban big poppa Jace."

Tron players of all variety go nuts with the only two Mythic colorless cards revealed on Wednesday in Oblivion Stone and Chalice of the Void. However, in order to calm down the angry group of Lantern players with Ensnaring Bridge still proxied, Wizards employee Aaron Forsythe actually comes forward and makes an unusual announcement, "Lantern Control is the kind of deck that's not oppressive enough on the metagame to warrant a ban, but we decided to not include it in Modern Masters 2017 because it is still kind of horseshit. The larger the barrier of entry the better."

Later in the afternoon, we see another lull in set value with Ral Zarek, praetor Urabrask, and Godshire at Mythic, along with a couple bulk rares like a few from the Avatar cycle and Fortune Thief. But all the whining is quickly quieted with a tweet from Mark Rosewater, "We heard you loud and clear, Magic players. I'm pleased to announce we are reprinting DAMNATION! And at uncommon!"

MagicTCG actually causes downtime at Reddit due to the collective explosion of threads asking if the Limited format is as ruined as they're thinking, and endless posts asking about what to cut from their EDH deck to include the famous black boardwipe. 7 hours later, the servers kick back on and the Damnation talk quiets down slightly with a Koth reprint and a controversial reveal of Scapeshift. "Definitely needed a reprint, but it's sad that we no longer get the thrill of the Goyf lottery." Mythics slots are going faster than a fresh case of Mountain Dew at a prerelease with just the two white and a blue slot remaining.

Thursday begins with an early reveal of the reanimator sisters in Elesh Norn and Iona, accompanying the infamous Gifts, Unburial Rites combo in the set. This leaves just the Blue mythic slot after a surprising early set reveal that Thurday morning. You heard right, the full spoiler has one card missing, signified with an ominous black box. Rumors of a JtMS unban are spreading through every Modern circle faster than your mom's legs last night after a quick tweet tells Magic players to check back early Friday morning for a "special reveal".

The price of Jace, the Mind Sculptor goes through the roof at $150, and strangely Jace Beleren is bought out everywhere apparently because some old timer forgot how the new Legend rule works. In the mess of it all, Corey Burkhart books a flight to Washington that morning to organize a protest outside WotC headquarters, rounding up a few other Magic pros to join his cause. Wafo-Tapa tweets out a new version of Esper Control with Leyline of Anticipation and a full set of Teferi main, stating the only thing that matters anymore is winning the Jace mirror. The term "Blue Summer" is coined for what is soon to come.

A select few "Jace deniers" remind everyone that "it could still be Ancestral Vision guys, remember we don't see the collector numbers anymore!" Jace decklists flood every Modern related subreddit, with many players asking if it's worth playing in everything from Storm to U Tron, or even splashing for in Jund and.. Burn? Hours tick away, every Wizards employee out there tweeting out vague statements like "you won't guess what we have to announce tomorrow!" "Yeah, that's what you said about Emrakul in Eldritch Moon, dumbass," snarks one user.

Dawn breaks in in Renton, Washington. Mark Rosewater barely makes it out of his house alive, Aaron Forsythe reportedly called off saying "it's like Dawn of the Dead out there". The SWAT team is called in to break up riots outside Wizards Headquarters. Picket signs line every block with phrases like "32 JtMS GP TOP 8s DESERVED TO DIE IN STANDARD", "WE ALREADY HAVE TWO ETERNAL FORMATS DOMINATED BY BLUE", "THANKS TRUMP". One employee finally makes it through the doors late morning after surviving a mean pelting of D20s. She races to her computer and hits launch.

"Hopefully they know this is for the best.."

The crowds outside quiet down as they check their smartphones and murmurs of confusion start to erupt as their eyes scan through the article titled "FINAL 'BLUE' MYTHIC REVEAL".

"Here at Wizards we wanted to do something special for the third Modern Masters release. As many of you know, we pick at Modern like a meth addict's scabs, so we decided to combine the excitement of B&R updates with the last Mythic reveal.

We've heard a lot of criticism regarding Blue in Modern. Blue has always been a favorite for masters of the game to play, but its success over the past year has been limited to just those elite few. Many have called for better tools to play fair, a long term solution, but we wanted to juice up these strategies in the interim.

With that said, I'm excited for this dual spoiler/unban all in one. Some may be a little confused to see a non-Blue card below, but I can assure you Splinter Twin should make your favorite Blue deck much better with its inclusion alongside Deceiver Exarch and friends! Happy Remanding!

—Aaron "You're Tapped Out?" Forsythe"

Does he really need an introduction? Congratulations spike! The trophy races have been VERY fun to follow. With competitive modern moving primarily to MTGO, streams like this (and cross-stream collabs like the twin/pod experimentation that happened a few months ago) are increasingly becoming the center of content for the format!

I hope you'll all join me in proclaiming that timeless saying: It's too free for the bean!

https://clips.twitch.tv/AntediluvianEasyHerringHeyGirl-Y7no-_RO08DPwB2J

Played a league last night with this awesome Grixis Delver list. I did alright, went 2-3 with one loss because of a misclick and the others because Magic is hard and I'm an idiot. Deck is super fun though and can't wait to play more and get better with this deck.

Anyway, to the Tron player in my match 3, I'm sorry. You tried to crack a map on my turn 2 end step to get your next Tron piece. I responded in a manner that can probably be considered rude. I flashed in 2 [[thieve's guild enforcers]] and milled a tower, and then cast the [[surgical extraction]] I had in hand.

I'd like to apologize for this. I'd also like to apologize for the dancing you couldn't see, and certainly for the erection you couldn't see but almost assuredly knew I had. It was wrong of me to pop champagne at your misery. I further regret throwing a parade and firing t-shirts at passers-by that had "Ha! Get Fucked Tron!" hastily scrawled on them in sharpie.

I hope you can forgive me. I'll buy you a beer and we can have a rematch. I have learned my lesson and certainly won't be running main board surgical.

Cheers and Happy Holidays, Rick "Can't Tron If I Take Your Tower" Hardpack