I love Modern. It isn't broken in the way that Legacy and Vintage are (even though my deck, Storm and Eggs, can win on T2, it practically folds to Thoughtseize or even Lightning Bolt ) while having the power and the eternity?? that Standard lacks. You can also play your old Fairies Standard deck as a Modern T2 deck for about $100.

I think you should get rid of the fancy font. While it's cool and all, it completely throws me off while reading it. It also contrasts too much with the "Follow up..." tab and the other text as well, and it's practically an optical illusion while you scroll it.

Besides that, this is a great article and I'm just waiting for more now that your hibernation is over. What will the next article be about?

I'm a Vorthos and refuse to netdeck like a cheap scrub. So in spite of his situational power in Modern, I run Tajic, Blade of the Legion in my R/W Midrange, Knights of the 21st Century. His beard alone warrants his inclusion in a Boros deck and its reorganization from Aggro Burn to Midrange Controlled Burn.

I love modern.. This standard, despite the pros saying is "soooooo" diverse, comes down to this: turn 1, thouhtseize or turn 1, cloud fin raptor.

So I dropped from the standard scene for a bit and got down to business... My favorite format.

I dabbled with pod. Beat face with dead guy and even messed with tron. But then my tax return came, and I went Jund.

It is by far my favorite deck in modern, even with death rite getting banned! I have to work a lot, but the three Sunday modern events that have taken place, including a tag max point tournament... I have absolutely destroyed. Nobody knows how to react to a deck that has every good card in it. Do they counter the Bob? Or let it stick so they can see if I slam a goyfs next turn? It's a real headache, lol. I love it..

Im one of those people you mentioned who is getting a little tired of Standard and wants to try Modern - but no idea how to start.

Xenagods Full Moon

is my first deck and im not at all sure what i should be sideboarding, as i have no idea what i could face!! Least standard you could guess due to the three main archetypes haha.

your article was a good read, thank you!

I've been doing really good at my LGS regularly getting 3rd with a pretty budget infect deck I made to get myself into modern. It isn't so much a budget deck anymore, since I've fell in love with the deck and have started buying full art promos or foils for all the cards haha. But, without the foils/promos, the deck costs about ~$70 and can easily win turn 3-4 with pretty common turn 2 wins!

Here's the deck list for anyone who is interested: U/G Blitzkrieg Infect

I have been playing Standard, Modern, Legacy, and EDH for quite sometime.. and recently, I have found to stick with Modern and EDH... To be putting out so much money every 3 months was getting to be quite a pain...

As for the decks ive been running, I designed a Combo Elf deck Legacy Elves .. wait no Modern Combo? utilizing beck and call, a deck called Modern Heartless Architect, designed a RUG Delver list. And recently I designed a new prion deck, which has done wonders, placed 1st the first week played. UW Flicker Prison

I got into magic borrowing a friend's cards and playing EDH, draft, and Modern. Of those three EDH is by far my favorite because it is designed to be fun more than competitive.

In terms of raw creativity and fun per dollar, though, Modern is the format to go. Standard can be brutal on the wallet. Modern isn't perfect, of course. Modern is brutally fast and competitive, two things I'm not amazingly keen on as a casual player. Modern is the only format I would ever look forward to seeing a few cards banned in.

I just finished putting together my new modern control deck, Critter-Swapper 9000. I haven't actually played it that much, but it tends to fall victim to the fast format. It does round-table decently, though, particularly if one of the other players is running an exalted or a sliver deck with a slow start.

I love Modern, and couldn't agree more with the sentiments expressed above.

My deck is a five color T3 winning combo deck.

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My Modern decks:

UB Faeries(hooray for Bitterblossom unban!)

Melira Pod(i love this)

GW HateBears(my first Modern deck)

Esper TurboMill(more casual than competitive, but can make dem playz)

I don't know that I agree about Modern being cheaper in the long run. I can play 3 different competitive decks at around ~$300 a piece for 3 years and it be the same cost as a single modern. If you decided to play the same deck for 3 years, sure, I suppose it's cheaper. But who does that? Everyone gets bored of a deck and wants to try something different. You play a deck for a year or so and get interested in another archetype.

Not necessarily. I'm very set into my habits, one type for Modern, one for EDH and one for casual Legacy.

I went mono black with a splash of green for artifact and enchantment hate :)

I am using this deck at the Grand Prix in May in Minneapolis :D Check it out below and give me ideas if you want!

No One Can Save You Now

Yep I love modern, I have my deck and I am happy with it.

Its the only format I play competativaly as I hate standard, legacy I have budget issues and I dislike the vairance of limited.

gnarlicide Standard actually is a diverse format by the numbers. I think the problem is more deeply rooted though. All the decks are essentially just lands, creature and spells. It's a bunch of powerful cards with very little synergy, for the most part.

I would love to play against your BW Token Superfriends vs my GR Token Superfriends. Mine has won 3 FNMs as well as top 8 multiple times. It has become such a threat people have begun to setup their sideboards against me.

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I am still looking for 2 cards to go into the deck to replace my old Purphoros's that were in the build (currently I added 2x beast within for main board). Suggestions welcome.

Let me know if you want to try heads up on www.Untap.in

Slycne, maybe I was speaking too broad here... I mean to say, at my LGS, it's the turn 1 thoughtseize, or turn 1 cloudfin raptor. I was not doing bad in that meta. Mind you, this was pre born of the gods. I haven't played standard while it has been out. I went to a couple sealed events and got cards I wanted, but that's about it.

I may try standard after journey into Nyx releases, just to see if things are fun. Maybe I just lost interest.

I agree with Slycne. For the most part standard seems to be "lets throw a bunch of good cards together" without any real synergy there. That's why i'm enjoying my build, orzhov humans is based off of the synergy between the cards though on their own all of them are powerful in their own right. But i digress, I'm just rambling at this point.

Dalektable. It's funny that you mention that, because it doesn't make deck building easy, per se. But I have a hard time committing to a deck if it doesn't mesh well. But, ironically enough, I have no qualms about Jund in modern, as it fits the "throw a bunch of good cards together" strategy. I guess I am a lost cause.

gnarlicide No it doesn't make deck building easy, I personally just need a deck with more synergy throughout it to keep me interested. The difference between Jund in modern and what we see in standard i believe is the diversity. In modern Jund is one of the "good stuff" type decks, but in modern a lot of the top decks are relying on synergy so every match up can be different and interesting. In standard I think the overwhelming majority of decks are "good stuff" decks with no real synergy, which can make games seem somewhat stale IMO.

Thanks for all the support guys, It makes me want to keep writing!

Devilsmage Your deck scares me, lol. I've seen it around the site, it looks sick.

yeah nice article... Horrible font against the background of the site though, needs to have a backboard ( like the comments do) or a different color

fatality292 Yeah, it's not the best. I was just experimenting, wanted to see how it would work. I'll probably just revert back to no color next time (Matsi883).

Nice article. I couldn't agree more: hooray for homebrews! I run Illusions and a deck themed around the battle cry mechanic. Modern can be so much fun!

Ok, I played Magic wayyyyy back in the day (Revised through Urza's Saga) where things like the Power 9 and incredibly unbalanced cards allowed all kinds of decks. However, this was 1995, and believe it or not: the internet was just developing a web based browser and there was no deck tech, lists, or strategies.

Then I quit for 15 years.

About 1 1/2 years ago I came back to Magic. playing just standard. I would love to get into modern, but by the time "Modern" came out I had retired and know almost nothing about the cards in those sets, the major deck archetypes or how they are played/match-up, etc. So I don't even know where to begin. What I would love to see is a breakdown of the format based on archetypes, their strength/weaknesses, and how they matchup against each other. I would find that extremely useful...

Apoptosis I might eventually do an article about that. My only problem with that is, well honestly, I don't believe I have quite enough knowledge yet to do that myself. I am learning as I go. I had absolutely no information about sets before Innistrad so going into modern took a bit of learning. I would try to spend some time doing homework, reading articles and learning up on the top decks. That's what i've been doing it'll just take some time to learn the in's and out's of it.

I was running a black infect discard and it has been horrible actually. The fun factor is a 10/10 but the highest I was ever gotten was 8/16 the very first match I played it. Still fun though!

Do tribal decks work in modern? Probably the only one I could put together with cards on hand is a zombie based tribal deck.

Modern doesn't have to be expensive, you could also just get the cards needed a little at a time making the accumulative cost expensive like I did with my artifact deck. Although it is technically legacy I count it as modern due to the bounce lands being worse than newer ones but...dat artwork. That's another thing, it would be pretty difficult to build a good artifact deck in standard.

Apoptosis Yes, they can certainly work. I am, well am working on, building a couple modern tribal decks that do well in testing. (Werewolves and Elves) Zombies are fun, go for it. Like I said, you can build practically whatever you want.

Here's the thing about Modern vs. standard- first, I still remain in standard because it does have a few neat little cards that I can't quite fit into my modern decks. However, I'm a dedicated Green player, splashing either black or red into my decks. The current standard... well, green usually plays well as aggro in my experience, and green just doesn't work for aggro in the current meta. In modern, I have a very budget deck that I use for modern (not even $100), and it not only uses some of my favorite cards (which were all from the Innistrad block, Dark Ascension to be more specific), but the deck that I built wins consistently.

Modern is by far my favorite format, as a Standard quickly gets stale and the machinations of Legacy are not my cup of tea (why are all the good decks blue?). I enjoy and appreciate greatly every deck in Modern, and it's the format that you can do anything you want with and still have fun. The most popular decks are fun to play and fun to watch play out.

I personally consider myself to be the resident Infect Combo expert on the site, as it is my Modern deck of choice and I have been experimenting with it and perfecting it for a very long time. You can check out my current list here:

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I have also experimented with a variety of my own takes on strategies, including Splinter Twin, Birthing Pod (my fourth favorite deck), Affinity (my third favorite deck) and Naya Zoo (my second favorite deck), in addition to some random rogue decks that are still quite powerful. If you are interested in any of these archetypes, check out my profile for what I think is a great starting build for any of these.

As for picking up a Modern deck, my advice is to not mess around. If you want to play werewolves, some random hodgepodge of cards, or something that doesn't have a good way to cause or solve lots of big problems, it's better left for the casual scene. If you want to have fun and really enjoy Modern, play or proxy a deck that is very strong. My recommendation would be to find a deck that fits your play style and mess around to make it more unique to you.

I'd also like to make myself available to write that article about the Modern metagame. I think my rather strong understanding of the format and its development would be well used I'm doing so.

personally, i'd say that anything interesting i see while looking through card sets, or searching for pieces to go with it on gatherer would suit my playstyle, i probably wouldnt notice the interactions otherwise (or probably just didnt notice that one card); in many cases i'd prefer to avoid beatdown, unless i'm swinging with infinite [infinite/infinite] tokens or something like that :D

i'm a person who likes card interaction, so i usually stick to modern and casual

Matsi883 Legacy isn't broken, neither is Vintage.

I'm running a U/B mill deck but am slowly building my way to Melira Pod. It seems strange to me that Modern is dominated by combo and Legacy isn't, but I guess that's what happens when you have access to FoW and Daze.

I'm not saying that Legacy and Vintage are broken, but I guess I am, in a way. Legacy and Vintage have a healthy metagame where there are T1 combo decks, but those die to the very efficient countermagic there is in Legacy and Vintage. In Modern, there are T1 wins, but either the chances of one are so low or the T1 folds to Lightning Bolt and then the player just loses.

Show me a T1 win in modern.

@iamacasual

Opening hand: Griselbrand , 2x Simian Spirit Guide , Swamp , Faithless Looting , Goryo's Vengeance , irrelevant card

T1: Exile Simian Spirit Guide to cast Faithless Looting , discarding Griselbrand and an irrelevant card. Exile Simian Spirit Guide and tap Swamp for Goryo's Vengeance targeting Griselbrand . Attack with Griselbrand , putting your opponent to 13 and you up to 27. Draw 21 cards, going to 6. Exile two red cards (usually Faithless Looting , Izzet Charm , or Simian Spirit Guide , which are usually found in this deck) to cast Fury of the Horde and attack again with Griselbrand , putting your opponent to 6 and you up to 13. Draw seven more cards if needed to find the two more red cards and the second Fury of the Horde to untap Griselbrand once again for the third, lethal attack.

There's your kill. This deck is somewhat of a dark horse in Modern, and is the only reanimator-style deck outside of Gifts Ungiven . It requires a great deal of luck of the draw, which is true of any T1 combo, and does fold to Thoughtseize or any sort of disruption/countermagic.

The difference between the Modern deck and the Legacy one is that the Modern deck requires all your cards, and no space for protection. Legacy Storm and Sneak and Show decks can combo off turn 1 or 2 with at least 1 (usually 2 or more) piece of disruption or protection to ensure they do so. Modern is much more fair, but you are still able to do broken things.

Heres my deck on Modern. I used to play standard, but I grew tired of the constant deck change and budget issues. Modern is ever-lasting, and my first deck is heavily based on defense and combo-breaking, things I really like and I bet it will see play for a long time in my hands...

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The thing about modern that gets me, is that it is not as friendly to new players. I have only been playing about a year, and while I'd like to think I'm a fairly decent player and I am comfortable with standard, modern poses the problem of lack of knowledge. I know all the cards in standard right now because they are current, and I see them very often. At least half of the cards in previous comments, I have never heard of before. How do you prepare for something you have no idea about? I do feel like modern is a fantastic format, I know it has a wide variety of deck archetypes and some very impressive cards, but I also feel like it may be more of an expert/older player's format.

Its just hard to know what to expect, and how to deal with it. I think that's what keeps newer players in the standard format. Plus, while things do rotate out of standard, only 1 block of what's in rotates out, so it usually doesn't take your whole deck. And these days if you're running something like GR monsters, rotations probably not even gonna hurt you at all. If you are a Modern AND Standard player, rotation could mean that you just have some new cards available to brew modern with.

Anyway though, this was a good, well written, and informative article that peeked my growing interest on Modern, and I am that much closer to getting into it.

Current modern deck...

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Deck does awesome most of the time. Weak point is vs midrange decks running Tarmogoyf . ...that's okay though, when modern season ends, I plan to pick up a Goyf play set of my own. xD

APPLE01DOJ I'm a huge fan of both your Modern and Standard deck, definitely good stuff.