The Theory of Elves

Many of you may not know this, but Elves is one of my favorites, and if not my favorite, deck in modern. However, I have always been one of those people who enjoyed very out-there strategies over proven-to-be-good strategies (It’s a hard life for the tier 2 deck lover). I can’t exactly tell you why I have always been attracted to Elves, RG Tron, and Kiki-Jiki combo decks, I just kind of am. The satisfaction of winning with a less-than-adequate deck is certainly a selling point, along with the fact that many of these decks reward you for being familiar with them. Elves, unfortunately, has yet to quite cross over into the tier 1 category. It has put up results before, but never consistently got there. A good Elves player can certainly dominate a tournament, as we saw with Liam Lonergen who took his Elves deck all the way to first place in the recent New Jersey invitational. But, Elves has always had a big problem with the fact that it is easily disruptable along with being easy to hate out. However, today I would like to take a moment and show you why this deck has the potential to be great. I want to show you what the deck is, the different variations of it, and the things people are overlooking for it. I hope by the end of this article you see why I love this deck and why it has such huge potential.

Weapon of Choice: Mardu Tokens

The Modern format is in a place where decks of all shapes and sizes are coming out of the woodwork. Being able to fight Tarmogoyfs and Liliana of the Veils is just is just as important as being able to hang with Glistener Elf, or Goblin Guide, or Death’s Shadow. A meta game this diverse requires a deck that can control, race, and also be less-than-impossible to pilot. I would like to propose Mardu Tokens as a great answer to the question “What should I play?”

Unbans: The Speculator's Pitfall

With every new set there is a window where people get very excited about bans. It is in these little windows that all eyes turn to Modern, because Modern is where the shake ups happen. Standard doesn’t have a ton of bans (and when there are bans, they are much needed) and Legacy has too small of a player base to make waves in the greater MTG community.

In recent years, Modern has been met with a wave of bannings (some warranted, some not so much) that have really changed the face of the format. Starting with Deathrite Shaman in February of 2014, Birthing Pod in January 2015, and Splinter Twin in January 2016, Modern players have seen the decks that defined the format get tossed by the wayside. Generally, these bans are upsetting to a large number of people who have invested hard earned time and money into purchasing and piloting these decks. But in these same moments of anguish, there is often excitement when cards come off the banned list. Cards like Golgari Grave-Troll, Bitterblossom, Wild Nacatl and most recently Ancestral Visions have returned to a changed Modern landscape. And the impact of each of these cards can be hotly debated, however it isn’t the playability that I want to talk about today. It is the ever looming question that a lot of MTG finance dabblers ask themselves, Should I buy into banned cards and hope for a spike?

Quick Update

Hello again all!

I just wanted to let everyone know our schedule for the foreseeable future.

We will be posting monday, wednesday, and friday of each week so look back for us then! Parker will be posting mondays, myself will be posting wednesdays, and Alex will be posting fridays. Check back friday for Alex's first installment of his "Price of Progress" series and have a great day!

-L

In Regards To The Modern Ban List

Hi everyone! Welcome to the very first article on the Modern Day Magic blog! I just want to say thank you for checking this out and I hope you all enjoy this article!

Modern is a weird format, a cool format, a great format, in all honesty the best format, but still a weird format. When i’m not stuck doing work, school, or listening to “Hamilton” (It’s really good guys), I’ll try to get down to the lgs to play some modern. It’s always been my favorite format, but it hasn’t always been the best format. It’s had a long, sometimes dark, history. We’ve been through the combo pro tour, eldrazi winter, The eggs GP, Bloom-titan week (More on that later), and many, many price spikes. Modern is a format that isn’t particularly perfect at every point in it’s history, but is, in the end, the most balanced and fun format when it’s in its prime (OBVIOUSLY THIS POINT IS SUPPOSED TO BE SUBJECTIVE BECAUSE SOME PEOPLE DON’T LIKE MODERN OK GUYS). The biggest problem with modern has been its fragileness, many oversights happen because the format isn’t tested (Treasure cruise, eldrazi, deathrite shaman,etc.). Even a single card being printed can literally ruin the format for months. While it is fragile, it has a lot of high points, this current meta is actually a very high point for modern, it’s diverse, not full of combo decks, it’s a turn 4 format, and even ridiculous decks like suicide zoo are winning things. However, there is a certain 33-card list that people haven’t really been talking about. Now, why the hell am I talking about the ban list if modern is in such a good place right now? Well, because modern still has plenty of it’s problems, and while we can’t fix all of them, we can at least talk about the ups and downs of each banned card in the format, let’s dive right in.

What Is "Modern Day Magic"?

Modern Day Magic

Hi all! My name is Levi Pitts and this is my magic blog! Well, it’s not just my blog. We have a few people here in our Modern Day Magic crew. Now, this blog is about the game “Magic: The Gathering”. It’s a fun game i’ve been a part of for a while now and I’m happy I get a chance to write about it. But this blog isn’t just about any old articles of “Magic”, it’s specifically about the format that all of us here are most passionate about; Modern. Now, if you’ve never heard of modern before, I would suggest looking into it. The modern format is a non-rotating format that includes all cards printed from 8th edition until today, besides a few banned cards (we’ll get to that later). The modern format allows for many unseen and incredibly fun interactions, it’s relatively easy to get into (as long as you’re committed) and despite it not rotating, it’s constantly able to change because new sets can actually have a very big impact on what happens in modern. The modern format is really awesome and I hope you all can see that through our posts and the format in general. Now, let’s meet the team, shall we?

Parker Lewin

Parker is a well-versed modern player (mostly because he switches decks on a weekly basis) and knows plenty about the format to be our resident deck-builder. He’ll pretty consistently tell you he is terrible at playing, but don’t let that fool you, he can play like a champ when he needs to. Parker’s real skill, however, comes out in his innovative ideas for decks. He’ll try anything, even when he’s 90% sure it’s bad, it’s always worth at least one week of testing out. In his upcoming series “Weapon of Choice” he’ll take you through his thought process and his deck choices with a brand new deck each week. So look out for some out there decks that will get you thinking and will keep you hooked.

Alex West

Alex is another innovator, but not in the same way most people are. Alex is an innovator because of his financial innovation. Alex is our finance guy. He is extremely skilled with his speculating and his use of cheap decks to great success. In his “Price of Progress” series, he will present budget alternatives to tier 1 decks, show his ideas about speccing and why cards move in price, and will cover as much as he can about finance every week. Don’t forget to watch his articles closely as he explains what is on the up or down, you won’t regret it.

Levi Pitts

Hey, that’s me! I know what all of you were wondering, “These guys are cool and all, but what about that super cool and handsome guy who was talking at first?”. Well, I’m essentially going to be the general modern musings guy. I’ll tackle decks, tournaments, metas, and even the banlist once or twice. I’m here to cover everything from the pro tour to the local modern night at your LGS. I hope you all enyoy!

So now that you know what purpose this blog serves, I have to let you go. But we shall meet again! Very soon in fact! I will see all of you on official launch day; September 21st. Get pumped! Get ready! Get a glass of water you seem dehydrated! Get hyped! I’ll see you all right back here next week.

-L