Wrapping up the year with more Modern!

Lax, Mullen, and Thompson deliver Modern diversity, fundamentals, and year-end feel goods!

Newsletter Thursday, December 7th

The usual December Magic silence before the new year storm has been replaced by Unstable and early previews for Rivals of Ixalan! While what we have so far may not be more than a few Planeswalker Deck hints, it's a strong hint that Rivals will be coming ashore very soon! Until then, Modern is in the spotlight as Ari Lax talks about the true metagame underneath the deck diversity for Grand Prix Oklahoma City! Meanwhile, 2017 SCG Tour Leaderboard runner-up Collins Mullen continues his string of excellent columns on Magic's easy-to-miss fundamentals. And if you just need to sit back and feel good about the world, Gerry Thompson's newest piece is one of the best of the entire year! — Danny West, Content Coordinator

January 20-21 Standard     January 27-28 Team Constructed     February 17-18 Modern     Finding Your Solid Ground In A Modern That Won't Stop Moving   By Ari Lax     Modern was such an easy place to be for a long time. Once Death's Shadow showed up, there were definite rules: "don't lose to Death's Shadow," followed by "don't lose to Chalice of the Void or Thought-Knot Seer," then "don't lose to Primeval Titan," and then "don't lose to Goblin Electromancer." Somewhere along the line, everyone just lost the thread of the format. Maybe it was that all the Eldrazi Tron players drew one too many "Wastes, Ghost Quarter, Urza's Mine" hands or their opponents stopped just dying to Chalice of the Void for one. Maybe Storm players had to play against one too many opponents with Relic of Progenitus and Pyroclasm. Maybe Humans just was too easy to figure out how to beat compared to the last couple of big decks. I really have no idea. People now have this idea that everything and anything is reasonable. I'm here to ruin your fun. It's not. Eli Kassis triumphs at the Season Two Invitational!   Benedict Chukwuma Modern  Open     Andre Euler Standard  Classic     Mark Stanton Modern  Classic     What Sort Of Mistake Did You Make?   By Collins Mullen   Don't focus on the mistake itself; instead focus on thinking about the consequences of said mistake. The mistakes you make are more a symptom of not thinking about the right things in the context of your game. If you only focus on the mistake itself and try to remember that mistake going forward, you will fill your brain with a bunch of mistakes, but you still won't be equipped to prevent these mistakes in the future. By focusing on the consequences that arise out of your mistake, you will have a tool that you can use in a broader range of scenarios. Here is a scenario that came up for me recently where I made a mistake that I could have avoided had I been thinking through the consequences of my action. In this scenario, I'm playing U/G Pummeler against Temur Energy in Game 1, on the draw.

The Magic World Cup And Sultai Are Both Incredible   By Gerry Thompson   I started by trying a playset of Greenbelt Rampagers, planning to play two maindeck and the other two in the sideboard. They were great at holding down the fort early, but would frequently lose to the "go big" sideboard plan of Chandra and Glorybringer. Next, I tried a couple of copies of Bristling Hydra and those were excellent. While I was now much better at stabilizing the early game, I still had the lack of velocity issue, so that's when I started keeping in more Rogue Refiners. Adding the fourth Walking Ballista back in gave me something great to do on Turn 2 against their best draws and allowed me to save my premium two-drops for Turn 3 alongside a Blossoming Defense. Soon, I was winning the vast majority of the games on the play but was struggling somewhat on the draw. The Greenbelt Rampagers weren't necessary. My teammates convinced me that with my new plan, The Scarab God might be the sticky combination of threat and answer I wanted from Bristling Hydra, and that ended up being very true. Suddenly, Ramunap Red couldn't play a longer game than I could, and it was very likely that they wouldn't know that. Going long with Rogue Refiners and The Scarab God put me in a fantastic position, especially against their sideboard plan. This was my final sideboarding plan against Ramunap Red, which I stuck with the entire tournament.

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