Post-IKO Weeks 4-5 and Solving the Companion Crisis

I took a Week 4 blogging hiatus but continued to track format changes past our Week 3 article. Good news: Wizards finally acknowledged the companion problem in Ian Duke’s May 18, 2020 Banned and Restricted update. Duke even included a broader statement about multi-format companion impact, which we’ll unpack later today. Bad news: companion dominance got worse. Lurrus, Yorion, and the rest of the Ikoria Pokesquad have completely taken over Modern as the format collapses around a few top-tier decks. Burn and Prowess continued to exceed URx Delver shares at the height of the Treasure Cruise reign. The online Modern community is in peak outrage over companions specifically and format management generally: 17 of the top 20 Modern subreddit posts from the last month are criticizing Wizards, blasting companion, or lamenting Modern’s decline. There’s even a community of players who have lost so much confidence in Wizards they’ve taken format management into their own hands. I’m sensing the same despair and rage I wrote about in my inaugural 2020 article, “Fixing Modern: Redefining Format Mission,” which Wizards still has not addressed. All of this makes me fearful for Modern’s direction and future, but for now, we need to resolve the immediate companion crisis.

Today’s metagame breakdown updates the statistics from Week 1, Week 2, and Week 3. We’ll look at top-tier decks, companion prevalence, and changes from Week 3 to Week 5. I’ll then explore Wizards’ acknowledgement of the companion problem, and offer banlist and mechanical solutions Wizards can employ to fix this mess. Like most readers, I’m exhausted from constantly identifying and discussing major Modern problems. I just want to write about fun decks and play a fun format again. But until we pressure Wizards into decisive action on these formative problems, we’re not going to enjoy Modern the way we once did. This requires clear data to inform our conversation and clear conclusions based on that data.

Post-IKO Modern Weeks 4-5

One advantage of taking a Week 4 break was having an opportunity to absorb more Modern content. For instance, my former Modern Nexus colleague, David Ernenwein, wrote his own thorough metagame update the other week. I enjoyed reading his analysis and methods, although I disagreed with some of his conclusions (Lurrus, even downtrending to the mid-40% range, is still massively problematic) and presentation (“Other” decks should never be listed first on any metagame breakdown above a most-played Tier 1 deck). As today’s update will show, unlike Ernenwein, I identify an acute problem with Lurrus specifically and companions broadly, a metagame no longer trending towards diversity, and a format in deep trouble.

Metagame Breakdown

Our Magic: The Gathering Online dataset is now up to a respectable 38 events and 928 datapoints since April. Preliminaries continue to overlap with Challenges, Super Qualifiers, and other premier MTGO events, so I’m going to keep including them in the dataset to guarantee a larger sample. As always, curated Leagues are not included, and our ▲ and ▼ indicators show percentage changes from Week 3 into the end of Week 5. This week’s Tier 1 cutoff is 4%.

Post-IKO Modern Metagame: 04/18 – 05/24/2020 (n=928)

1. Prowess: 11.4% (106) ▲3.7%
2. Burn: 8.6% (80) ▼-2.1%
3. Jund: 7.9% (73) ▲0.5%
4. Amulet Titan: 4.6% (43) ▼-0.7%
5. Ponza: 4.6% (43) ▲0.3%
6. Devoted Devastation: 4.4% (41) ▼-0.7%
7. Eldrazi Tron: 4% (37) ▲1.4%
8. Temur Urza: 3.4% (32) ▼-1.1%
9. Bant Snow Control: 3.2% (30) ▼-1.3%
10. Humans: 3.1% (29) ▼-0.9%
11. Hardened Scales: 2.8% (26) ▼-0.6%
12. Ad Nauseam: 2.7% (25) -0%
13. Bogles: 2.4% (22) ▲1.1%
14. Mono G Tron: 2.3% (21) ▲1%
    
15. Scapeshift: 1.7% (16) ▲1.4%
16. The Rock: 1.7% (16) ▼-0.2%
17. 5C Niv: 1.6% (15) ▲0.1%
18. Azorius Control: 1.6% (15) ▲1.1%
19. Dredge: 1.5% (14) -0%
20. 4C Uro Snow Control: 1.4% (13) ▼-0.1%
21. Grixis Delver: 1.4% (13) ▼-0.5%

Let’s talk red decks. Prowess has been rising for the past few weeks with Burn on the decline. Specifically, we’re seeing a sharp increase in RBx Prowess, which pairs discard spells and Cling to Dust with traditional Prowess staples like Dart, Swiftspear, Manamorphose, Bauble, etc. I’ve seen scattered debate around whether or not these RBx Prowess upstarts are distinct from traditional Mono R or Boros builds, and by extension, if all of those are separate from Burn. We could theoretically unpack that macro “Prowess” category into at least 2-3 other sub-Prowess builds, which would paint a more positive top-tier picture where no single deck has a 10%+ share. We could also pretend Burn and Prowess are different when assessing format health.

I’m not buying any of that. Today’s Prowess flavors today are no more distinct than 2016’s Eldrazi. Fun fact: colorless, Azorius, and Izzet variants of Eldrazi still had between 30% and 50% of their slots vary from deck to deck. That’s less overlap than 2015’s Grixis Control and Grixis Twin (sharing about 66% of slots). And yet, despite Eldrazi lists sharing no more than half of their cards, these were clearly the “same deck” from a health and gameplay perspective. Rx Aggro presents a similar scenario today, constituting a profoundly unhealthy macro archetype. As I said in Week 3, there’s no appreciable difference between dying on turn four to Guides, Eidolons, and Boros Charms vs. Swiftspears, Mages, and Lava Darts. Or getting buried on turn six to all of that plus Lurrus and Bauble recursion. This Rx experience is at a distressing 20% of the format, worse than Treasure Cruise URx Delver variants at 17.5% in late 2014. Taken in context, the Rx rampage has elevated from an orange flag to a literal red flag. I struggle to remember any healthy Modern metagame where a macro-category like Rx Aggro had an upward-trending share around 20% (see the metagames of BGx Deathrite, URx Delver, Eldrazi, or most controversially, URx Twin) and that hasn’t changed in 2020.

Looking beyond the Rx takeover, we see other widening metagame cracks. Every top-tier Lurrus deck except Jund, Burn, and Prowess is down (poor Grixis Delver has been floundering ever since it appeared), defeating our cautious hopes that Lurrus could eningeer a midrange renaissance. Eldrazi and Gx Tron are lumbering back to the top, and Ponza is climbing with them to exploit big mana weaknesses. Meanwhile, grindy Astrolabe decks are declining (Temur Urza and Bant-X Uro Snow both down by over a perventage point) replaced by Yorion-powered combo kills in 80 card Astrolabe Scapeshift. At least Bogles is capitalizing on Rx’s rise, jumping 1.1% but not exactly contributing to the most enticing Modern gameplay. The only positive sign of format adaption is old-school Azorius Control peeking out of Tier 3 irrelevance into the big leagues. Thank Kaheera, the Orphanguard (in 73% of Azorius decks) for giving the control deck some direction.

The archetype breakdown captures all these worrisome developments from a bird’s eye sky noodle’s view:

• Aggro: 32.8% (304) ▲.2%
• Midrange: 23.6% (AA 61 + 158) ▼1.2%
• Combo: 15.8% (AA 23 + 124) ▲.6%
• Big mana: 15% (139) ▲1.7%
• Control: 11.2% (AA 75 + 29) ▼.6%
• Tempo: 1.6% (15) ▼.8%

Aggro, combo, and big mana are up, midrange, control, and tempo are down. This is a bad look for a format often accused of promoting goldfish-style Magic. Big mana’s continued rise remains unsurprising. As I predicted in basically every metagame update since Week 1, the companion hype died down and players inevitably returned to mainstays Eldrazi and Gx Tron. Except some of those Tron lists, particularly the 1% of players on Gruul Tron, have even upgraded to better support Jegantha. The midrange decline is even more worrisome than big mana’s ascent. I was initially hopeful Lurrus would create grindier games of Magic and incentivize midrange and control players to adopt the Cat into their lagging UBx control, Death’s Shadow, and similar strategies. My Week 1 hopes have imploded as Lurrus just keeps edging towards an increasingly unhealthy and linear metagame. Even grindmaster Yorion is having a similar effect, with the more interactive Bant-plus and Urza decks both declining in favor of a Scapeshift combo kill.

There aren’t a lot of positive metagame takeaways outside of snowless Azorius Control making a quiet entry into the top 20. Midrange and control keep trending down, aggro and big mana keep trending up or reinforcing already high shares. Our previous picture of “relative diversity” is suffocating under the weight of less interactive play patterns, repetitive games, and a mechanic that will likely go down in history as one of contemporary Magic’s most egregious and baffling design mistakes.

Companion breakdown

If the metagame picture is bad, the companion picture is worse. We’ve reached a point in Modern where you are either playing companions, a Titan strategy, or a Tron strategy. You can try and abuse metagame gaps with screwballs like Ad Nauseam, Dredge, or Azorius Kaheera Control, but you’re probably playing a worse version of the omnipresent companion decks. The Week 5 companion table really underscores this problem, with sizable jumps in virtually all categories.

Companions	Meta %	Top-Tier %	T8 %
Lurrus	46.3% (430) ▲.9%	49.6% (364) ▲.7%	48.8% (78) ▼.3%
Yorion	11.1% (103) ▲1.2%	11.2% (82) ▲1.2%	13.8% (22) ▲3.1%
Jegantha	4.3% (40) ▲1.6%	3.4% (25) ▲.8%	4.4% (7) ▲.6%
Zirda	1.1% (10)	0.1% (1)	0% (0)
Obosh	4.1% (38) ▲.4%	5% (37) ▲.8%	3.1% (5) ▲1.2%
Gyruda	0.4% (4)	0% (0)	0% (0)
Lutri	0.1% (1)	0% (0)	0% (0)
Umori	0.1% (1)	0% (0)	0% (0)
Kaheera	0.8% (7)	0% (0)	0.6% (1)
ALL COMPS	68.3% (634) ▲4.6%	70.3% (509) ▲4.1%	70.6% (113) ▲4.5%

2020’s companion coup continues to surpass even the most pessimistic expectations. 70% (!?) of top-tier decks and Top 8 decks are running companions. 50% of top-tier decks are Lurrus decks alone. We had a 05/16 Challenge where all but four decks ran companions and half of those companions were Lurrus. Remember from Week 3’s article that Once Upon a Time, Oko, Dig Through Time and Treasure Cruise combined, and Eye of Ugin never exceeded about a 44% format share. Lurrus at 50% and partner in crime Mishra’s Bauble at around 45% are committing historic diversity violations, to say nothing of Obosh, Yorion, Kaheera, and Jegs being virtually mandatory for the non-Lurrus half of the format. Even worse, all of these measures continue to trend up from week to week, with the Weeks 4-5 jump representing the most alarming increase so far. Week 1 had “only” 57% of all decks using a companion. Now that’s up to 68.3% and even higher for tiered decks. Lurrus has been hovering around 50% saturation since Week 1 and sees no sign of dipping anywhere below 45%, which would still beat the combined TC plus DTT share.

As with the metagame breakdown, I don’t have many positive conclusions to share. I had this conversation with some Modern colleagues on a discussion board, and it’s on my mind today. It’s tempting for data-driven authors to be nuanced and even-handed for the sake of appearances alone. Readers count on us to take that middle ground. I’m all for level-headed cautions and disclaimers, but sometimes we just need to call a spade a spade. Or call a Nightmare a nightmare. Equivocation for the sake of equivocation isn’t helpful, and it would be disingenuous to analyze this collapsed metagame and declare it anything other than a mess. Lurrus and companions are crushing even the rosiest interpretations of the format. For every positive observation (e.g. only 41% of Humans decks experiment with Jegantha despite fears the Elk would be a mandatory Gurmag Angler), there are many more negative ones (e.g. four of the seven Tier 1 decks are Lurrus decks. The remaining two are big mana decks or big mana slayer Ponza).

All of this forces us and Wizards to stop assessing the damage and start making repairs. Between the high-level metagame factors and gossip from the ground (Sanchez’s six Prowess mirrors into a Challenge Top 8 with three Prowess and one Burn), we need to switch gears from diagnosing the problem to identifying solutions.

Taking Aim at Lurrus and Companions

It’s been a relatively dismal two weeks of Magic content, with what feels like endless Wizards missteps and player outcry from even the game’s most loyal supporters. Thankfully, Wizards shined a rare ray of hope through this storm in its May 18 B&R update. The most obvious takeaways were Lurrus’s and Zirda’s exit from Legacy and Vintage. Also, removing obnoxious Winona and Magistrate from Arena. Add all four of these to the blossoming list of multi-format bans we’re going to see throughout 2020, but refocus your attention to the B&R’s last two paragraphs. Today, I’m going to do a close reading of this official acknowledgement as a jumpoff point to discuss potential solutions to the companion crisis.

Unpacking the official companion stance

Hats off to Ian Duke for having the courage to acknowledge companions as a growing, multi-format threat. We shouldn’t have to praise Wizards employees for transparent communication around obvious issues, but that yawning communication gap is a topic for another day. For now, let’s just focus on Duke’s and R&D’s stance on companions. I’m pasting his entire statement in segments for clearer breakdown (emphases added) with commentary:

While this set of changes has focused on Legacy, Vintage, and Brawl, we’re continuing to watch the evolution of the metagame in each other format, including Standard, Pioneer, and Modern. If changes become needed in other formats, we’ll provide those separately in a future announcement. As of now, we’re seeing a diverse and dynamic metagame that changes from week to week in each Standard, Pioneer, and Modern.

Duke starts with a basic acknowledgement of R&D monitoring other formats (i.e. Standard, Pioneer, and Modern). Longtime Moderners know this concession is rare, with Wizards often including no context beyond “No changes.” The existence of these pargraphs alone shows Wizards is having serious conversations about the problem. That said, as of Duke’s publication date, Wizards judged those formats to feature “diverse and dynamic metagame[s]” which did not require bans. I understand this stance and shared it for a few weeks. Data was less clear and less plentiful. We were seeing some exciting Lurrus decks (Grixis Delver, The Rock, 4C Control) competing alongside more tuned options (Burn, Prowess, Jund). We were enjoying widespread experimentation with other companions and cautious optimism. But as we’ve seen from Week 3 to Week 5 in today’s article, the format is rapidly veering off that course in the exact ways Wizards feared.

Before determining whether any changes are necessary, and what the right changes would be, we need to see the metagame come closer to an equilibrium state. Currently, these formats are shifting too quickly for data to indicate what, if any, card or archetype poses a problem.

The first bolded bit underscores my interpretation above. Wizards wants formats to settle into an equilibrium, or approach such a state, prior to action. Having analyzed the format for five weeks now, I understand their initial hesitation and also encourage them to admit the format has now reached this state. Bridge from Below and Hogaak saw decisive action on comparable timelines (particularly Bridge in the barely one month between Modern Horizons’ legalization and Bridge’s ban), and Modern is in worse shape today. As for the second bolded bit, I’m calling shenanigans. Wizards couldn’t identify a single “card” as the main problem? Lurrus was a visible orange flag within an hour of its preview, a budding problem as early as Week 0, and a historic violator by the end of Week 1. We’re over a month past IKO‘s release and it’s maintaining a +/- 50% share. Companions have also stabilized at the 70% level as the format slips further towards a big mana and aggro plurality. We might not be at the true equilibrium state, but it’s clear where Lurrus and Modern are now and will keep heading into June.

We are aware of some players’ concerns about the frequency at which they encounter decks using companions across several formats. While we’re not currently seeing problematic win rates in Standard, Pioneer, or Modern from decks using companions, we are looking at overall metagame share and potential for repetitive gameplay.

On the one hand, I agree win rates must be considered in banlist decisions. R&D has been better at promoting data-driven articles and decisions from 2017 through present and it’s good Wizards appreciates this gold standard of data. On the other hand, Wizards correctly identifies win rates alone do not determine bans. This is the exact consideration that led to Aetherworks Marvel’s and Lattice’s banning in their respective formats. Or even Once Upon a Time more recently (prevalence and win rates were responsible). Metagame share and repetitive gameplay are important R&D considerations. Lurrus plus companions as a whole are undoubtedly violating both criteria through the end of Week 5, whether by numbers (Rx should never sustain 20% of the format) or anecdotal experiences. This should push Wizards to actions less palatable in previous weeks.

If we see signs of long-term health issues resulting from high metagame share of companion decks, we’re willing to take steps up to or including changing how the companion mechanic works. For now, metagames need more time to evolve before we can determine whether changes are necessary.

This was by far my biggest takeaway from Duke’s article. Duke not only signaled Wizards’ awareness of the exploding companion issue, he also tipped the company’s hand at an unprecedented solution: changing the mechanic itself. Magic players across the content-sphere had been speculating on this possibility for weeks before Duke’s article, and his official position lends credibility to this approach. The fact Wizards mentioned it at all should encourage us to speculate on these potential changes.

For any Wizards staffers reading my article today, please reconsider your May 18 stance. The Modern metagame is flattening towards an equilibrium where Lurrus, companions, and ramp rule the roost. I understand the desire to preserve an exciting mechanic, maintain product viability, and allow formats time to organically adapt to issues, but we are past that point. Modern requires action that balances damage to the format against reduced sales and destabilized player confidence; hopefully some suggested solutions below will fulfill those demands. As for readers more generally, please spread this message and demand action from Wizards. Wizards does listen, even if their representatives can be puzzlingly silent, and we need them to know the Modern status quo is untenable.

Banlist solutions

I’m keen on mechanical solutions to companion, but also acknowledge the banlist as a viable management tool. Until Wizards addresses some fundamental issues in their set design and playtesting processes, bans are going to remain an inescapable part of the 2020 and beyond Magic experience. As yet another disclaimer, I acknowledge other Modern suspects might require close R&D scrutiny: see Astrolabe, Veil, and others on the Modern community hitlist. Today, however, we need to table those discussions until Wizards has tamed Lurrus and company. Here are some of the likeliest banlist responses, starting with the trap solution everyone is worried about:

NOT a Solution: Ban Mishra’s Bauble

This is a scary possibility I don’t want to even acknowledge. Unfortunately, Wizards has a alarming track record of banning an older card when a new release creates a busted synergy. See Opal (with Urza) and Lattice (Karn) this year, Bridge (Hogaak), Looting (Hogaak, Phoenix), and KCI (Trawler) last year, and many more before that. In these cases, Wizards hit the old card instead of the new enabler: pre-2018 examples include Electromancer breaking Storm but Song taking the hit, and Oath Eldrazi or SOI block graveyard cards busting their respective decks prior to Eye/GGT getting hammered. Wizards does ban newer cards (Oko, Hogaak, Once Upon a Time, or TC/DTT before), but even there we sometimes see an older card take the initial fall as in Bridge from Below. Wizards also has a record of hitting free or zero-mana effects and indicting cards that reduce variance (cantrips across all formats including Probe, OUaT, and P&P in Modern). All of this suggests Wizards could conceivably terminate Bauble instead of Lurrus, especially to deflect responsibility from their busted packseller to the Coldsnap old-timer.

This bad ban would not solve any fundamental companion problems. We’d still see unprecedented Lurrus saturation as players swapped Bauble with other free or even 1 CMC cantripping effects (Conjurer’s Bauble and Unbridled Growth are possible candidates). Lurrus is good enough on its own with all the other low-cost permanents; indeed, decks like Devoted Devastation don’t even run Bauble! That brings us to a Bridge 2.0 scenario where Lurrus decks evolve beyond a glancing ban and then get banned anyway. We must discourage Wizards from this disastrous approach.

(Real) Solution #1: Ban Lurrus

No surprises here. If Wizards does not change the mechanic, they at least need to ban Lurrus. The Cat has committed at least three bannable offenses in Modern, any one of which might not be damning, but all three of which are unacceptable. It has unprecedented Modern prevalence in excess of virtually every other card on the format’s banlist. That might be okay if we were entertaining a Legacy Brainstorm scenario, but Lurrus does not promote the same kind of high-skill, distinctive gameplay the venerable cantrip encourages. Instead, Lurrus pushes a metagame where Rx Aggro is 20% and all other non-Jund Lurrus strategies are on the downswing. Add repetitive gameplay due to Lurrus being “drawn” in every starting hand and its mechanical break of being a virtual 0-for-2 in most exchanges, and you have a singular design blunder to cap off a 2019 and 2020 season of offenses. This is exactly what bans are intended to address and if Wizards can’t fix the mechanic, Lurrus must go. This is too bad because I actually think maindeck Lurrus is an interesting choice that may promote some slower, interactive gameplay, but if Wizards won’t change the mechanic then maindeck Lurrus is a necessary casualty.

Solution #2: Ban Lurrus and Yorion

Lurrus feels like an inevitable ban in these models, but I actually think Wizards also needs to hit Yorion. Failure to do so will create a Modern where Yorion supplants Lurrus as the companion of choice, pushing into similar 40%+ territory over the summer. We already saw Bant Snow and Temur Urza decks leading the pre-IKO format, and with Lurrus gone, we would likely return to that Week 0 metagame with Yorion at the helm. This may result in a more interactive and grindy Modern revolving around Yorion value instead of Lurrus blitzes, but it would still suffer from similar prevalence issues. Wizards has a history of banning both the obvious problem and the natural successor (e.g. TC and DTT, Hogaak and Looting, Oko and Opal, etc.), and I’d be surprised if they didn’t take similar action here. This could also take the form of some kind of heavyhanded Astrolabe ban (and/or Bauble if Wizards really goes bananas), but that seems a lot less likely than just the companions.

Solution #3: Ban Lurrus and/or Yorion alongside a mechanical change

Kill it with fire! In this truly nuclear scenario, Wizards both enacts a sweeping companion change (see next section) and then bans either Lurrus and/or Yorion just to be safe. Even if you added Lurrus to your hand before the game started as a 7th card (drawing one less card to begin with or scrying one to the bottom), that inherent consistency boost of always having your Lurrus would still result in dominance issues. RBx Prowess and Jund are already outfitted for this change with ample discard spells in the maindeck to bin opposing companions. If Wizards changes the mechanic and bans its two worst offenders, however, R&D could allow the more offbeat companions to flourish (get ’em, Lutri) without risking future bans or rules changes in 1-2 months.

I still think pure ban approaches are less likely than mechanical ones. Banning your iconic IKO cards before we’ve been playing the cards in paper (thanks, COVID-19) is a risky economic proposition for a company that needs to generate sales. Mechanical changes might allow the cards to work as intended.

Mechanical solutions

Disclaimer: I have no background in game design and acknowledge there are more qualified experts to discuss companion changes. I’ve also struggled to keep up with the sheer volume of companion revision suggestions on Twitter and Reddit, and am happy to give credit where credit is due if anyone can cite some sources for these ideas. I do, however, know Modern and can discuss companion mechanical changes through our format’s lens.

Before talking companion, it’s important to understand how Wizards can change the mechanic at all without functionally rewriting card text. Indeed, companions have italicized text under the mechanic name which reminds you how the mechanic works. Keyword: “reminds.” This so-called reminder text is not actual game text per the comprehensive rules, specifically 207.2 (“The text box may also contain italicized text that has no game function“) and 207.2a (“Reminder text is italicized text within parentheses that summarizes a rule that applies to that card“). Wizards can change the comprehensive rule entry for companion without resulting in functional changes to the rules printed on the cards themselves. Only the reminder text would be obsolete, but if old-school players can get over the defender keyword materializing on all pre-2004 Wall creatures, we can survive this new change too.

Solution #4: Exile a card, cast the companion

In one of the more basic mechanical changes, players would keep companions in their sideboard and just tack on an additional cost of exiling a single card. Exiling that extra card eliminates one of the most troubling “8th card problems” of companion. This change still insulates companions from discard-based interaction but at least makes it harder to cast them from the sideboard. I suspect this change would not significantly impact the prevalence of Lurrus, Yorion, or any of the other top Modern companions, but it would at least increase their opportunity cost.

Solution #5: Draw fewer cards, add companion to hand

The next two solutions actually put the companion in your hand at the start of the game where discard effects can target it. It also addresses the 8th card problem by trading a card in your hand for the companion in your virtual command zone. Solution 6 does so by revealing the least information and giving player the least flexibility. Here, players who announced a companion would draw N-1 cards, where N is 7 minus the number of times mulliganed, and then make mulligan decisions. After making those decisions, they would add the companion. As an example, on the first hand of the game, a Jund player would announce they are playing Lurrus, draw 6 cards, make mulligan decisions, and then add Lurrus to their hand. This would bring it up to a starting 7 cards. If they mulled that 6-carder to 5 and kept, they would still end with a grip of 6 but one would be Lurrus. This allows players to build around a guaranteed companion, but makes your openers worse.

Solution #6: Scry away excess cards, add companion to hand

If Wizards wanted to give players more information when choosing opening hands, they players could draw as normal and then scry one for a companion to replace. Mechanically, players would announce a companion and draw N cards where N is 7 minus the number of times mulligan. They would then make a mulligan decision on that hand and, if satisfied, add the companion before scrying one additional card to the bottom. This gives players more information about what hand they should keep but results in a weird double-scry scenario. For example, consider a Burn player who drew 7 cards and then mulled to 6. They draw 7, scry an excess Eidolon to the bottom, and then add Lurrus to their hand. Now they scry yet another card to the bottom so their final hand size is 6. In theory, Wizards could keep companions pushed by allowing players to keep that companion in their hand without scrying the additional card, but then these players would be starting with literal 8 or 7 cards in hand. That seems like too much even for designers who created companions to begin with, and I doubt it would happen.

Solution #7: Prohibit the mechanic in certain formats

Technically, this is a form of a ban, but it’s still groundbreaking in that you wouldn’t ban any of the cards from maindecks. They’d just be banned as companions, and/or the entire companion mechanic could be barred from a given format. I doubt Wizards would pursue this option because of complexity issues, and because they seem to admit companion is a unique, multi-format problem that demands cross-format solutions. It’s still an option if Wizards doesn’t mind increasing the deckbuilding complexity of older formats while maybe working on mechanical adjustments in Standard.

I’d love to hear other changes by players more familiar with this debate, so throw some my way in the comments or on the various discussion boards we frequent. Overall, this is the direction I think Wizards wants to head, and I would be surprised if a subsequent announcement on companions doesn’t include some kind of mechanical revision.

The State of Constant Crisis

Beyond Lurrus, I feel like the Modern community and even the Magic community as a whole is just sprinting from fire to fire, trying to call 911 at Wizards while our Washington dispatchers Tweet at us about some cool new product being released in a few months instead of deploying the R&D firefighters. I’ve been zeroed on Lurrus in past weeks, but companions aren’t even close to the the biggest danger to Modern and other nonrotating formats. Those threats are a fundamentally broken design process that is guaranteed to create overpowered, multi-format mistakes, and a disturbing lack of consistent and transparent communication from Wizards’ leadership. I’m hoping Wizards takes actions on the immediate issues of Lurrus and companions so they can shift gears to more publicly and vocally addressing the cracks in the foundation. This will help us recover from our endless crisis states and get back to enjoying the game, especially competitive Constructed players who can’t escape the ceaseless parade of design disasters that have hit Standard (Yorion), Vintage (Lurrus), and everything in between.

As I’ve Tweeted at Wizards and discussed on social media, Wizards employees love this game and are some of its most tireless advocates. At the same time, new and perilous trends which have many veteran players worried. None of this makes folks like Mark Rosewater or Aaron Forsythe bad people or incompetent. It doesn’t mean Play Design needs to be fired, it doesn’t mean the game is going to die, and it doesn’t mean we’re all not going to load up MTGO or Arena less than 12 hours after quitting. It does, however, signal a potential shift in core elements many of us enjoy about Magic, and it might lead to a less rewarding, complex, and engaging game. We have an obligation to speak out about these issues and encourage Wizards to change course. Today it’s Lurrus in Modern but tomorrow it’s bigger issues like card balance and communication.

Thanks for reading and considering these major issues. Let me know in the comments, on Reddit, on MTG Nexus, or via Twitter if I missed anything or got something wrong. Feedback, criticism, ideas, and thoughts are always welcome. Hopefully we’ll see a true Wizards announcement about an announcement foretelling the doom of Lurrus before my next article hits and until then, stay healthy and stay sane in this increasingly polarized and tumultuous Magic world.

 

Post-IKO Week 3 Update and Lurrus Comparisons

Weeks 1 through 3 of our post-Ikoria Lurrus world are in the books. The 05/04 through 05/11/2020 period saw both expected developments (more sweet companion innovations, more online complaints about the mechanic) and some unexpected shifts (an unusually public debate with Mark Rosewater around companion, a refreshingly nuanced take by Eric Froehlich). We’ve also seen Lurrus. A lot of Lurrus. Lurrus is den-master of every format, except in Standard where its “sky noodle” buddy soars supreme. Lurrus’s eternal format impact is so dire we saw an ominous Wizards Tweet Monday evening which will likely spell the companion’s demise in at least Legacy and Vintage. Modern, however, is conspicuously absent from that update. This means Moderners will continue to debate Lurrus’s place in an uprooted metagame. As in previous weeks, today’s goal is contributing clear data to that conversation. This ensures opinions are informed and grounded in real metagame developments, not just gut instincts and anecdotes.

Week 3’s breakdown updates the same measures we’ve seen so far: Magic: The Gathering Online’s top-tier decks, archetype summary, and companion shares. But just as our conversation about Lurrus is evolving, so too must our analysis. To acknowledge the growing complexity of this major Modern issue, I’m also going to compare present Lurrus shares to those of other format icons: Bloodbraid Elf, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Stoneforge Mystic, and more. This will situate Lurrus in the broader Modern context and help us decide if the Cat’s presence is business-as-usual or a true feline nightmare.

Modern in Post-IKO Week 3

Most of us are familiar with the current state of Modern, so it’s less important to do full recaps of previous weeks. If you want a breakdown of Week 1 or Week 2, check out those respective articles. Today, we’ll just focus on the Week 3 picture with the same gains (▲) and losses (▼) indicators as last week.

Metagame breakdown

As of 05/11/2020, we’re up to 24 events in our post-IKO dataset. I’m still including Preliminaries alongside Challenges, Super Qualifiers, Premiers, and other major MTGO events because these samples continue to overlap. Of the top 21 decks in the major event pool only, 16 overlap with the Preliminary top-tier group. As long as Wizards keeps publishing all 3-2+ Prelim finishes and doesn’t curate the data like they do with Leagues, we’ll keep including them. Here’s our current MTGO top-tier, representing the top 75% of the format. If you need more granularity, we’d pin this week’s Tier 1 cutoff at around 4.5%:

Post-IKO Metagame: 04/18 – 05/09/2020 (N=625)

1. Burn: 10.7% (64) ▼2.4%
2. Prowess: 7.7% (43) ▲1.8%
3. Jund: 7.4% (45) ▲.6%
4. Amulet Titan: 5.3% (31) ▲1%
5. Devoted Devastation: 5.1% (31)  ▲.1%
6. Bant Snow Control: 4.5% (28) ▼.2%
7. Temur Urza: 4.5% (28) ▼.2%
8. Ponza: 4.3% (24) ▲.9%
9. Humans: 4% (25) ▼1%
10. Hardened Scales: 3.4% (21) ▼.2%
11. Ad Nauseam: 2.7% (15) ▼.2%
12. Eldrazi Tron: 2.6% (13) ▲.3%
13. The Rock: 1.9% (12) ▼.4%
14. Grixis Delver: 1.9% (12) ▼.4%
15. Infect: 1.6% (10) ▲.2%
16. Neobrand: 1.6% (9) ▼.2%
17. Dredge: 1.5% (9) ▼.5%
18. 5C Niv: 1.5% (9) ▼.3%
19. 4C Uro Snow Control: 1.5% (9) ▲.1%
20. Simic Titan: 1.4% (9) ▲1%

Burn is the big Week 3 loser, but Prowess is the big winner. This means you probably won’t notice any difference in the overall presence of Rx aggro, which remains a major format force (19% down to 18.4%). This is also one of the least healthy aspects of this breakdown. I know Burn and Prowess have technical distinctions, but from a MTGO gameplay experience perspective, there’s no appreciable difference between dying on turn four to Guide and Lava Spike vs. Swiftspear and Lava Dart. We’ll need to keep monitoring these shares to see if Lurrus is disproportionately benefiting these decks more than the rest. Outside of this worrisome trend, Week 3 sees many of the same top-tier decks as Week 2 in virtually identical positions. This suggests the metagame continues to crystallize around a competitive core, which thankfully represents a relatively diverse range of strategies beyond the Rx hegemony.

There are also new top-tier entrants. First is the 4-5C Astrolabe madness of Uro-powered control tying up the bottom slots with Dredge, Neobrand, and 5C Niv. This feels like a natural consequence of Yorion’s parallel rise; if you’re going up to 80 cards in an Astrolabe deck, why not play the best cards of every color? Incidentally, 100% of these decks use the Sky Nomad, not to be confused with the 100% of 4C Snow Control decks (N=6) using Lurrus in previous weeks. The second newcomer is Infect (mostly Simic, some Golgari) sneaking into 15th from Tier 3 obscurity. Infect is likely capitalizing on a simultaneous increase in big mana. And speaking of big mana, Simic Titan is the last newcomer. Uro and friends saw a huge boost from last week that aligned with my prediction of increased Titan prevalence. Between Simic Titan and its other variants (Amulet Titan on top, Golgari Titan, Titanshift, and others below), the macro Gx Titan archetype makes up a considerable 8.6% of the metagame: more than the Tron options by far! Don’t sleep on these Titan decks and have a plan to beat them.

Here’s our overall archetype breakdown. I note major Week 2 to Week 3 changes, as well as Astrolabe (AA) decks vs. non-AA options in parentheses:

1. Aggro: 32.6% (196) ▼2.8%
2. Midrange: 24.8% (AA 48 + 101) -0%
3. Combo: 15.2% (AA 6 + 83) ▼.1%
4. Big mana: 13.3% (73) ▲2.9%
5. Control: 11.8% (AA 54 + 18) ▲.5%
6. Tempo: 2.2% (14) ▼.5%

I wouldn’t read too much into the apparent aggro decline, as we’re still seeing a horde of different aggressive builds across top tables: Rx Burn/Prowess occupies 18% of the format and are the likeliest macro-strategy you will face. A more notable shift is the rise in ramp. Week 3 saw a troop of Gx Titan strategies lumber into the spotlight, especially breakout Simic Titan. This aligns with predictions from previous articles. Players likely boarded the companion hype train in Week 1, abandoning boring Modern regulars like Tron and Titan. With the initial buzz dying down, we should see more players returning to ramp staples as they realize Prime Time doesn’t need companions to excel.

There are some complicated questions about whether or not any of this represents a truly “diverse” metagame. Some claim the format is just fifty shades of Lurrus/Bauble/Seal of Fire decks running lean aggro/combo gameplans. Others believe Lurrus is supporting a range of distinct decks across the spectrum with different playstyles. I’m still leaning towards the latter. As Jeff Hoogland Tweeted last week, critics are performing Olympic-level mental gymnastics to justify their hatred of these new cards. Be very wary of anyone who asserts Devoted Devastation, Burn, Hardened Scales, and Jund are all “the same deck.” There are many legitimate criticisms of Lurrus, its play patterns, its variance reduction, and its metagame impact without grouping obviously different decks based on 10-12 card overlaps.

Going forward, I am developing a more data-driven method to tackle this question of “diversity,” but need more time to crunch numbers. I’m optimistic I’ll complete that analysis in 1-2 weeks. Until then, I’m leaving this as an open question which is much more complicated than extremists on both ends are framing it. Can metagames be diverse/healthy and see card prevalence over 50%? Yes; see many Legacy periods and their Brainstorm hallmark. Does Lurrus have a similar impact on Modern? Maybe, but probably not. If anything, Modern has a much more troubling history of dominant staples leading to unhealthy environments (see Oko and Once Upon a Time). All of this forces us to be careful and nuanced when assessing this diversity question.

Companion breakdown

I’m combining all companion statistics into a single table for easy comparisons. The “Meta %” column shows the share of all decks using a certain companion. Next over is “Top-Tier %” which solely evaluates companion play in the metagame’s top 75% of decks. Finally, we look at “T8 %”; companions as a share of major MTGO T8s. Our ▲ and ▼ indicators denote changes from last week, but I’m only showing those for categories most people seem to care about: Lurrus, Yorion, and companions collectively.

Companions	Meta %	Top-Tier %	T8 %
Lurrus	45.4% (284) ▲1.4%	48.9% (229) ▼.8%	49.1% (55) ▼.9%
Yorion	9.9% (62) ▲.9%	10% (47) ▲2.1%	10.7% (12) ▲1.9%
Jegantha	2.7% (17)	2.6% (12)	3.8% (4)
Zirda	1.1% (7)	0% (0)	0% (0)
Obosh	3.7% (23)	4.2% (22)	1.9% (2)
Gyruda	0.3% (2)	0% (0)	0% (0)
Lutri	0.2% (1)	0% (0)	0% (0)
Umori	0.2% (1)	0% (0)	0% (0)
Kaheera	0.2% (1)	0% (0)	1% (1)
ALL COMPS	63.7% (398) ▲2.8%	66.2% (310) ▲2.4%	66.1% (70) ▲2.3%

Obviously, our big story of the week is a certain cat. Specifically, THE RISE OF KAHEERA! Not only does Kaheera, the Orphanguard jump into Modern for the first time since Week 1, but it instantly claimed a Top 8 slot in a creature- and Astrolabe-free Azorius Control deck. Hats off to aspiringspike for not only ditching Snapcasters and boring Uro but even including a Terminus and Counterbalance (?!) playset. You’re my hero.

Dragging us back to reality, Lurrus continues to dominate despite negligible dips in each category. As a helpful Redditor reminded me last week, the last time we saw a new Modern card with this kind of format-wide penetration was the Treasure Cruise/Dig Through Time era (more on that comparison shortly), and even then we didn’t see those busted delve spells in literally half of all competitive decks. Even if different Lurrus decks are still doing different things, such as creature combo Devoted Devastation vs. midrange Jund, there are alarming parallels between Rx Burn/Prowess’s 18.4% share and the 17.5% share of 2014 URx Delver. The bottom line is this: when a single card is in 50% of your top-tier decks, you need to ask tough questions about the kind of format Moderners want.

Moving beyond what feels like the most polarizing card in recent Magic history, Yorion is another Week 3 winner. The Sky Nomad gains points in every column, even increasing its shares between categories. This overperformance from 9.9% of the overall metagame to 10.7% of the T8 metagame, although small in magnitude, does suggest Yorion is performing better than its baseline share. Continue to expect more Yorion as players, particular Standard refugees fleeing the Bird, experiment with its laughable deckbuilding “restrictions.” Of course, the other big winner is the companion category as a whole. Just shy of two-thirds of Modern’s best decks are playing the IKO poster-animals (56% of that is Lurrus and Yorion alone). I’m trying to shy away from the idea of companions as a macro category because the decks do different things and the brunt of that share is just Lurrus, but it’s still hard to not acknowledge their sheer takeover.

Overall, both the metagame and companion breakdowns continue to portray a Modern in varying states of crisis. Lurrus is still undermining even our most positive outlooks. For instance, although the top-tier metagame looks pretty diverse, that 18.1% Rx Lurrus aggro is a major blemish. And even though Yorion holds down a reasonable 10% share, the ~50% Lurrus share is staggering. We’re only on Week 3 of this metagame but these signs keep pointing towards pending Modern intervention by Wizards.

Assessing Diversity in Lurrus Modern

Last week, I participated in a very civil and engaging Twitter exchange about Lurrus. At one point in this exchange, @GermanSpaceAce posed the following question:

https://twitter.com/GermanSpaceAce/status/1259184657159139328

This wasn’t the first time I’d seen this kind of question: “how does Lurrus compare to the initial share of Insert-Modern-staple-here?” It was, however, the first time I realized this would be a great topic for a future article. I responded to their Tweet with some snapshot statistics, but realized I could draw this out even further to cover more staples and comparisons. This will provide important context to help us evaluate Lurrus’s sudden rise.

Historical cases: Oko, Bloodbraid, and more

The table in this section presents a variety of past Modern players and their respective shares of MTGO decks playing them in different periods: the first month of its legality (or for cards like Eye of Ugin, the first month after it broke out) and its peak share over its last three months (for banned cards) or three months after its legalization (for cards that never got banned). Events include any noncurated or randomly selected dumps, which means some older Leagues are included for earlier eras, like Eldrazi Winter. I won’t include any events after Wizards started throttling data to prevent solved metagames (tangent: this absurdly misguided policy has never prevented any solvable metagames from being rapidly solved).

As a final note, the table counts both maindeck and sideboard slots, but does not double count a deck with copies in both the main 60 and the board. For instance, a 2014 Delver deck with 3 Treasure Cruises in the main and 1 additional in the SB would only count as one representative, not two. But if it had 4 TC in the main and a DTT in the SB, it would contribute +1 to both the TC and DTT tallies.

Here are our companion test standards. We’re looking to see if these standards are above, below, or matched with our comparisons:

• Lurrus: 45.4% of the metagame after 3 weeks
• Yorion: 9.9% of the metagame after 3 weeks

And here are the comparison cases. As an example of reading the table, SFM saw play in 14.1% of decks in her first month, which settled at 9.4% by the end of month three. For a banned card, you’d read it as follows: Oko, Thief of Crowns saw play in 27.2% of decks in his first month, which was up to 37.6% of decks in the three months up until its January 2020 ban.

	MTGO EVENTS
	First month	Peak 3 months
Stoneforge Mystic	14.1% (52/368)	9.4% (65/688)
Bloodbraid Elf	10.7% (24/224)	9.4% (60/640)
Jace, the Mind Sculptor	17.9% (40/224)	10.8% (69/640)
Oko, Thief of Crowns	27.2% (74/272)	37.6% (356/946)
Once Upon a Time	20.2% (55/272)	37.8% (386/1020)
Eye of Ugin	40.7% (182/447)	37.6% (339/902)
Treasure Cruise	28.3% (197/695)	26.6% (583/2188)
Dig Through Time	12.4% (86/695)	17.3% (379/2188)

I had three big takeaways while compiling stats for this table. First, just look at how much data we had back in 2014! By the end of TC and DTT’s reign, we had an impressive 2,188 datapoints in our MTGO dataset. Compare with the three month retrospective for Oko and OUaT, with less than half of that data. The good old days.. My second takeaway was the upper end of these three-month peaks: all around the 38% range for the worst offenders. TC and DTT had minimal overlap, so we could even merge those two categories to get a macro Ux delve share of around 40% (+/- 2%). This is a potential warning threshold to monitor going forward.

And of course, there’s the third takeaways: Lurrus. Always Lurrus. I couldn’t believe the Den Master’s 45.9% monopoly is even greater than the combined shares of TC and DTT (43.9%) at their pre-ban heights. We can’t even explain this away as flavor-of-the-month hype either, as Lurrus handily outpaces the initial shares of much-hyped unbans like JTMS, BBE, and SFM. It’s surpassing the initial Eye of Ugin craze around Pro Tour Eldrazi. This truly suggests Lurrus is at unparalleled levels which pushes Modern into scary and uncharted depths. As for Yorion, our nomadic noodle appears to be at a perfectly acceptable prevalence relative to historical cases. For context, it’s seeing less play now than JTMS did three months after his release. This points to Lurrus being the problem, not other companions or companions generally.

Current staples: Astrolabe, Bolt, and others

While building the above table, I remembered the MTG Goldfish “Format Staples” pages. As of evening hours on 05/13/2020, I’m seeing Bolt at 42% of the format and Veil at 39%, both ahead of Lurrus at just 38%. There are obviously some data aggregation errors at play here (MTG Goldfish regrettably groups curated Leagues with the non-curated results), but this got me thinking. How do these more acceptable staple cards (or equally controversial, in the case of Astrolabe) compare with Lurrus?

To assess this, I checked the prevalence of established and contemporary Modern staples as an additional test. I focused on the pre-IKO and post-OUaT era for the analysis (03/10 – 04/17/2020). This was a period that led to no additional bans and represents our most recent “stable” metagame slice.

	MTGO SHARE 03/11 – 04/17/2020
Arcum’s Astrolabe	24.6% (380/1547)
Lightning Bolt	33.7% (522/1547)
Path to Exile	26.1% (404/1547)
Veil of Summer	38.5% (595/1547)

I enjoyed seeing the results of these stats for a number of reasons. For one, we actually have a lot more data than I thought we would in 2020. N is up to 1,547 in a 1.5 month period! I for one am grateful for the scraps our benevolent Wizards datalords have thrown our way and will beg for more. More seriously, this suggests the addition of Prelims to our data picture has greatly enhanced our understanding of the format. I’m also pleased we have some actual numbers behind the constant Astrolabe vs. Veil vs. Bolt debate which has raged for month.

Then there’s Lurrus. At this point, I’m not even surprised to see Lurrus enjoying more play than even the most venerable and versatile Modern staples from the pre-IKO metagame. I’m just disappointed (said in your most disappointed dad voice). It is quite alarming that the Lurrus draw/value package is seeing more play than not only the combined DTT/TC shares of 2014 Modern, but also the individual shares of Modern’s best, generic removal spells. If Astrolabe was an issue at 25% of the format with allegations it homogenized the format, I can’t imagine Lurrus at around twice that share should deserve more popularity. And this is coming from someone who thinks Lurrus has a partially positive effect on the format by pushing Modern to grindier games. Even acknowledging that potential effect, it’s implausible to me that a card at 50% of the format is healthy given these comparison cases. Finally, it’s worth noting that non-Lurrus companion shares as a whole (18.2% of the meta, 17.3% of top-tier decks) are significantly less than even just Astrolabe decks as a whole at 24.6%. Again, this points to Lurrus being a problem, not the mechanic.

In Store for Week 4

I don’t expect Lurrus’s share to get much higher than its current 50% throne. It will fluctuate +/- 5%, but it still can’t co-opt other companion decks. Obosh Ponza and the various Ux and toolbox Yorion strategies will still take up a number of top-tier slots, not to mention tried and true Humans or burly big mana. This puts a metagame cap on Lurrus’s likely share, which still isn’t too heartening given the sheer magnitude of that share.

All of this continues to point towards Lurrus, not companions collectively, being a problem. Unless we accept the Lurrus/Bauble package as the new Modern normal and an equivalent of Legacy’s Brainstorm, there’s just no way we can possibly find this kind of plurality healthy. I struggle to see a world where a format with 44% of decks rocking TC/DTT was so problematic to warrant 2+ bans and a format with 50% Lurrus is somehow “fine.” Doubly so when Lurrus is primarily driving a steady 18% Burn/Prowess reign. Barring some significant (and unlikely) metagame shifts, this will likely end with Modern Lurrus facing the same fate as Legacy/Vintage Lurrus on Monday, 05/18. At that point, the question is no longer “Should Wizards act on Lurrus?” but rather “What kind of action should they take?” I’d prefer a less nuclear option, e.g. banning it as a companion, but I’m open to just about anything to address what appears to be a card-specific problem.

I wish these articles weren’t so doomy and gloomy because I’m just as tired of ban talk as everyone else. But Wizards keeps printing themselves into a banning corner. Until we and Wizards address some fundamental, underlying Magic issues, we are going to keep seeing Hogaaks, Okos, Lurrus’s, and other broken monsters Play Design keeps missing. For now, we’re back in firefighting mode and need to extinguish the Lurrus blaze before we can go back to these bigger problems. As always, let me know in the comments here, on Reddit, MTG Nexus, or Twitter if you have any feedback or changes. See you all after the Week 4 dust settles and we’re invariably still living under Lurrus’s paws.

Modern Metagame Update: Post-IKO Week 2

The COVID-19 quarantine has been bad for Magic, worse for our social lives, but great for metagame updates. Last week’s breakdown had such a positive reception I’m bringing it back for a Week 2 encore. Between schedule shifts and shelter-in-place requirements, I’ve had more time than usual to compile decks and crunch the numbers. The Modern community needs clear data now more than ever as companions continue to scurry, crawl, fly, and slither all over every Constructed format from Standard to Vintage. This takeover has ignited a socially distanced debate over individual companions and the mechanic itself. Without accurate metagame statistics, these conversations will remain disconnected from format realities. We owe it to Modern’s future (and our own Internet sanity) to stay informed.

In today’s article, I’ll do a quick recap of pre-Ikoria and Week 1 post-Ikoria Modern to frame our Week 2 update. I’ll then assess top-tier decks, the overall archetype breakdown, and a companion footprint way too big for one little Nightmare Cat. Week 2 finds us with some lingering health concerns for the format but also some promising developments. To some extent, there’s only so much change to track in a one-week span. But with most of us stuck at home, it’s important to match the pace of data with the blistering pace of online conversation. Whether you’re trying to select your next Magic: The Gathering Online deck to take down the Super Qualifer, evaluating overall format health, or just want to see some eye-popping figures about companions, read on.

Ikoria Week 0 and Week 1 Recap

I can’t believe companions have only been in Magic for two weeks. The rate and rancor of social media posts makes me feel like we’ve been living in a Lurrus world for months, not days, and it’s easy to forget the Modern landscape before IKO hit digital shelves. It’s important to understand this shifting picture to appreciate format evolutions from late April through early May. This section summarizes takeaways from last week’s breakdown of pre-IKO Modern and post-IKO Week 1. For full details about the old metagame picture, revisit last week’s article.

Pre-IKO stability

Remember the good old days when Twitch chat would just complain about Arcum’s Astrolabe, Veil of Summer, and longtime format heel Tron? It wasn’t that long ago but it’s easy to forget the pre-companion picture. This was a format where Astrolabe decks were king but all archetypes saw top-tier representation. Overtuned 2019 and 2020 haymakers defined most games, and Modern saw a mix of standbys like Dredge, Humans, and Tron intermingling with newcomers like Temur Urza and Bant Snow. Here was our top-tier picture according to MTGO Challenges, Premiers, and Super Qualifiers:

Pre-IKO Metagame: 03/21 – 04/11/2020 (n=352)

1. Bant Snow Control: 11.6% (41)
2. Ponza: 8.2% (29)
3. Dredge: 7.4% (26)
4. Burn: 6.5% (23)
5. Eldrazi Tron: 5.1% (18)
6. Temur Urza: 5.1% (18)
7. Humans: 4.8% (17)
8. Prowess: 4.8% (17)
9. Jund: 4.5% (16)
10. Amulet Titan: 4% (14)
11. Mono G Tron: 3.7% (13)
12. Infect: 3.7% (13)
13. 5C Niv: 2.6% (9)
14. Death and Taxes: 2.3% (8)
15. Bant Snowblade: 2% (7)

My biggest takeaways from this metagame were the power of entrenched snow decks, overall archetype and strategic balance, and green’s hegemony over all strategies (especially interactive decks). To emphasize the strategic diversity, here’s an archetype breakdown with Astrolabe decks noted in parentheses:

• Midrange: 31.5% (AA 45 + 66)
• Aggro: 29.8% (105)
• Control: 16.2% (AA 47 + 10)
• Big mana: 15.9% (56)
• Combo: 6.5% (AA 6 + 17)
• Tempo: 0% (0)

(Note these numbers have changed a little since last week’s breakdown. I’ve split the Astrolabe decks into archetype bins, which will make a cleaner comparison to Week 2 numbers later. I’ve also reclassified some decks into more accurate categories)

Although this metagame looked balance on a spreadsheet, I heard many complaints it didn’t feel balanced in games. Big mana, UGx snow, and various aggro forms dominated events. If you played something else it would often feel like a willfully worse version of one of these format heavyweights. Except Ponza. Long live Ponza, one of the cleanest and clearest examples of natural metagame evolutions we’ve seen in year. Of course, this relatively neat Modern picture changed almost overnight once IKO brought us companions and their denmaster, Lurrus.

Post-IKO upheaval

It’s an overstatement to claim companions reshaped the format into something unrecognizably Modern. The post-IKO Week 1 picture was still very much Modern as we have seen in the past. It didn’t even have any “new” decks, unlike the post-Modern Horizons churn from Urza, Astrolabe, Hogaak, and more. But companions, especially Lurrus, both revitalized a bunch of bygone Modern decks and supercharged many existing Modern favorites. This reshuffled our tidy metagame in a short period of time. Here was the new Modern just one week after IKO arrived, adding MTGO Preliminaries into the analysis to boost our sample size. Relative % point changes from Week 0 to Week 1 are color-coded by gains and losses:

Post-IKO Metagame: 04/18 – 04/25/2020 (n=253)

1. Burn: 15.4% (39)  ▲8.9%
2. Jund: 8.3% (21) ▲3.8%
3. Humans: 5.5% (14) ▲.7%
4. Bant Snow Control: 4.7% (12) ▼6.9%
5. Prowess: 4.7% (12) ▲.1%
6. Devoted Devastation: 4.3% (11) ▲4.1%
7. Amulet Titan: 4% (10) -0%
8. Dredge: 3.6% (9) ▼3.8%
9. Grixis Delver: 3.6% (9) ▲3.6%
10. Hardened Scales: 3.2% (8) ▲3.2%
11. Temur Urza: 2.8% (7) ▼2.3%
12. The Rock: 2.8% (7) ▲2.5%
13. Ponza: 2.4% (6) ▼5.9%
14. Eldrazi Tron: 2.4% (6) ▼2.7%
15. Ad Nauseam: 2.4% (6) ▲1.5%
16. 5C Niv: 2% (5) ▼.6%
17. 4C Snow Control: 2% (5) ▲1.4%

No one skimmed this top-tier and confused it with a different format. We were still playing Modern, but this was a Modern in transition. Longtime metagame trackers will be familiar with Burn ascending in a Week 1 environment, especially with Lurrus pushing the archetype. Alongside Burn, we saw familiar contemporaries like Bant Snow Control, Prowess, and Urza. Devoted Devastation recovered after losing Once Upon a Time a month ago, and Humans, Titan, and Dredge maintained ground. But we also saw decks emerge from the ashes of older bans (Hardened Scales sans Opal, Grixis Delver without Probe) and from the netherworld of departed Modern options (The Rock? Ad Nauseam?). In total, five decks were big gainers, five decks were big losers, and a number of decks were just treading water.

All of this happened against a backdrop of continued archetype diversity, which I breakdown below by macro-strategies. AA vs. non-AA options are noted in parentheses, and archetype share changes relative to Week 0 are color-coded for winners and losers:

1. Aggro: 38.7% (98) ▲8.9%
2. Midrange: 23.7% (AA 16 + 44) ▼7.8%
3. Combo: 13.4% (AA 3 + 31) ▲6.9%
4. Control: 10.3% (AA 19 + 7) ▼5.9%
5. Big mana: 9.5% (24) ▼6.4%
6. Tempo: 4.3% (11) ▲4.3%

This remained a relatively balanced metagame where everything was still viable but proactive decks were gaining ground. Aggro, combo, and tempo all improved position with midrange, control, and big mana losing points. This mirrored what we knew about companions in Week 1, especially Lurrus. Although Lurrus improved a lot of interactive decks like Jund and Grixis Delver, it had a disporportionate impact on strategies like Prowess, Devoted Devastation, Hardened Scales, and especially Burn. These four decks collectively gained 16.1% points in the metagame. Even Jund, a staple Lurrus deck, only increased by 3.8% relative to the pre-IKO picture. When you add in all the losses in Urza and Astrolabe decks generally, the overall decline in these midrange/control options made sense. Doubly so because Lurrus was a much more natural fit in aggro and creature-based combo, not just grindy BGx Midrange.

Speaking of Lurrus, here were some top-level companion statistics from Week 1.

• % of total decks using any companion: 57.7%
• % of total decks just using Lurrus: 47.4%
• % of total decks using other companions: 10.3%
• % of top-tier decks using any companion: 63.1%
• % of top-tier decks just using Lurrus: 54%
• % of top-tier decks using other companions: 9.1%
• % of all companion decks just using Lurrus: 82.2%

It was tempting to characterize Modern as a “companion format,” but these numbers really show Week 1 was more of a “Lurrus format” specifically. Lurrus was rampant, with just under 50% of all decks across MTGO using Lurrus and just over 50% of top-tier decks pairing with the Cat companion. 13 of the 17 top-tier decks used companions in some form. Eight of those decks were distinctively Lurrus decks, and if we isolated the Tier 1 players (those with >4% of the format), we saw four of the seven focusing around Lurrus. None of this is to villify our new smoking, four-eyed overlord, as I think there are some real deck diversity benefits Lurrus is promoting. At the same time, it is important to highlight this disproportionate and rapid format impact.

I concluded last week’s article with five critical dataset limitations. We should never draw conclusions on any metagame pictures, let alone Week 1 following a new set, without remembering these reminders. Carry all of these over to today:

• Week 1 metagames almost always change.
• Players love experimenting with new cards.
• Hyped cards can promote echo chambers.
• Top-tier regulars are boring in new metagames.
• N was comparatively small.

Given those disclaimers, I concluded Week 1 Modern remained strategically diverse from an archetype and deck perspective, at least on paper. I gave a caution about high companion prevalence but admitted Lurrus was driving both existing top-tier options and reinvigorating old stalwarts (gogo Grixis Delver!). Finally, I emphasized Lurrus’ extremely high prevalence as both an observation about the metagame and a warning about potential Wizards action on such a prevalent staple. It’s impossible to not consider bans when we’re discussing a card that sees play in 50%+ of all top-tier decks, even if I am utterly exhausted by all the ban talk and ban announcements over the last 1.5 years.

We ended Week 1 with cautious optimism about the resurgence of old strategies and overall format balance. We also ended with general cautions about Lurrus’s metagame footprint and worries about companions collapsing into a few best options. It would be helpful if Week 2 of Ikoria Modern could provide clear answers to these pressing questions, but as we’re about to see, Week 2 just complicates an already complicated picture.

Post-Ikoria Modern: Week 2

Going into Week 2, I was monitoring two trends. First, I wanted to verify if a companion metagame remained a strategically diverse metagame. Second, I wanted to see if Lurrus stayed the driving Modern force or if other companions emerged as competitors. We may not have answers to our overall metagame questions, but Week 2 definitely offered strong indicators of where the format is trending. Unsurprisngly, companions are leading that march forward.

Metagame breakdown

Our event and deck sample increased to 443 in Week 2, representing a solid 200 additional datapoints relative to Week 1. We’re still including Preliminaries both to boost N and because Prelims continue to have relevant overlap with the Challenge/Premier/SQ metagame; 12 of the approximately 17 top-tier decks overlap between major events and the smaller Prelims. I will continue to include these events until I start to see big differences in their pools. With that in mind, here’s our metagame heading through the end of Week 2 noting all gains and losses:

Post-IKO Metagame: 04/18 – 05/03/2020 (n=443)

1. Burn: 13.1% (58) ▼2.3%
2. Jund: 6.8% (30) ▼1.5%
3. Prowess: 5.9% (26) ▲1.2%
4. Humans: 5% (22) ▼0.5%
5. Devoted Devastation: 5% (22) ▲0.7%
6. Bant Snow Control: 4.7% (21) -0%
7. Temur Urza: 4.7% (21) ▲1.9%
8. Amulet Titan: 4.3% (19) ▲0.3%
9. Hardened Scales: 3.6% (16) ▲0.4
10. Ponza: 3.4% (15) ▲1%
11. Ad Nauseam: 2.9% (13) ▲0.5%
12. Eldrazi Tron: 2.3% (10) ▼0.1%
13. Grixis Delver: 2.3% (10) ▼1.3%
14. The Rock: 2.3% (10) ▼0.5%
15. Dredge: 2% (9) ▼1.6%
16. 5C Niv: 1.8% (8) ▼0.2%
17. Neobrand: 1.8% (8) -0%

Almost every deck on this list switched positions with the notable exceptions of Burn and Jund. Despite drops for both decks, they remain on top. Other contenders maintained their metagame share (Bant Snow, Neobrand), but saw relative position changes. Bant Snow dropped to 6th from 4th as Prowess and Devoted Devastation climbed the rankings. Neobrand was just under the Tier 2 threshold last time, but a four way tie among the 1.4% decks (4C Snow Control, Golgari Titan, Infect, Grixis Shadow) snuck in the Griselbrand combo deck on a technicality. Neobrand has also replaced 4C Snow, the only deck that actually fell out of Tier 1 and Tier 2 over the week. In between these shifts, we also see the usual Modern suspects of Humans, Urza, Titan, Ponza, and others.

Here are some additional observations on Modern’s current top tier:

• Tier 1 is wide open. We’d define Tier 1 decks as all those with >4% share, and we see an impressive eight decks meeting that criterion. Incidentally, Tier 1 also represents a healthy mix of archetypes (more on archetype balance shortly). This suggests the overall format is healthy, at least from a strategic diversity perspective. We’ll talk about companion impact later.
• Top-tier Modern has an encouraging mix of format regulars and hungry upstarts. As in the Week 0 picture, this includes; classic Jund, Burn, and Titan decks; contemporary favorites like Prowess, Devoted Devastation, Urza, and Bant snow; and throwbacks like Ponza, Grixis Delver, The Rock, and Ad Nauseam. Again, this underscores widespread diversity across the top-tier landscape.
• The lower end of Tier 2 is unstable. There’s a weird four-way tie between 4C Snow, Golgari Titan, Infect, and Grixis Shadow just under Neobrand and 5C Niv. I doubt all four of these decks are truly Tier 2, but I suspect one or more will beat out the rest to join the top-tier club. I’d bet on Titan (a deck seeing less play because Moderners want to play companions, not boring Prime Time), and a Shadow variant (Grixis or otherwise; the collective Shadow share is about 2.7% and may narrow to one Lurrus-powered option).
• Ad Nauseam feels like post-IKO Modern’s Ponza. Like Ponza, the combo veteran is a weird throwback to an older Modern era taking advantage of new cards (Thassa’s Oracle). It also benefits from a grindy companion metagame where players eke out advantages from Lurrus Bauble recursion, Yorion Astrolabe draws, or just the virtual 8th card edge. Neobrand is likely benefitting from similar dynamics; keep your eye out for other decks which can exploit the companion grind.
• RIP Mono G Tron. I truly don’t remember the last time I did a major metagame breakdown where Mono G Tron was absent. It’s also not like Tron is barely out of Tier 2 reach. It’s way down the list scavenging for metagame points with Bogles, Yorion Chord, and frikkin Goblins. This doesn’t necessarily mean Gx Tron is out of the picture for good, as I suspect the deck is better than its share reflects. But for now? Wow. Cya. Tron.

The overall archetype breakdown reflects this diversity. Note winners and losers relative to Week 1:

1. Aggro: 35.4% (157) ▼3.3%
2. Midrange: 24.8% (AA 38 + 72) ▲1.1%
3. Combo: 15.3% (AA 3 + 65) ▲1.9%
4. Control: 11.3% (AA 39 + 11) ▲1%
5. Big mana: 10.4% (46) ▲.9%
6. Tempo: 2.7% (12) ▼1.6%

Aggro’s sizable decline (which is almost entirely from Burn and Dredge) has opened up the format to small shifts across other archetypes. Combo was this week’s big winner, reflected in a gaggle of Zirda, Umori, and Lurrus creature combo strategies emerging across events. Midrange and control are also trending up, driven in large part by an increased willingness to experiment with Yorion as a companion. Big mana enjoyed a parallel rise as players realize Titan decks remain amazing, even if they may feel a bit dull relative to the new companion hotness. My only red flag here is the tempo decline. I fear Lurrus players will shift away from UBx Delver strategies and revert to either Shadow decks (still a plus for diversity) or to more tested aggro/combo Lurrus builds (less healthy). This is an important balance to monitor; are Lurrus players coalescing around a few best options or using the Cat to promote underdogs decks?

As a whole, there aren’t too many warning signs in this metagame breakdown alone. The format looks pretty sweet with a lot of exciting options for players across the strategic spectrum. Unfortunately, as with last week, the Bird Serpent’s-eye view of a spreadsheet misses all the companions playing on the battlefield below. We might be comfortable with this companion dominance if it means a healthy archetype breakdown like we’re seeing above, but we still need to acknowledge their share to honestly assess Modern.

Companion breakdown

Week 1 saw Lurrus break records for fastest and widest-reaching clawprint on top-tier decks. Week 2 is more of the same, with a few other companions gaining a foothold on the edges of Lurrus’s throne. Here are overall companion statistics comparing Week 1 to Week 2 increases and decreases across the broader metagame:

• % of total decks using any companion: 60.9% ▲3.2%
• % of total decks using just Lurrus: 44% ▼3.4%
• % of total decks using other companions: 16.7% ▲6.4%

No one should be surprised with companions trending up or featuring in 61% of Modern. Lurrus, Yorion, and company are just such powerful additions to so many decks that the only decks which aren’t using companions probably can’t: see Titan, Tron, and Dredge strategies. The sole exception to this is Humans, which can easily run Jegantha but is actually ghosting the poor Elk and sticking with its old-school core. Don’t be fooled by Lurrus’s slight dip either. Lurrus remains a major format force even if the +6.4% increase in other companions is an interesting anecdote. This is particularly true because companions, especially Lurrus, remain extremely dominant in the top-tiers. Positive/negative shifts track changes from Week 1 to Week 2 in both the top decks…

• % of top-tier decks using any companion: 63.8% ▲1.9%
• % of top-tier decks using just Lurrus: 49.7% ▼2.9%
• % of top-tier decks using other companions: 14.2% ▲4.9%

…and in Challenge, SQ, and Premier Top 8s:

• % of T8 decks using any companion: 63.8% ▼2.3%
• % of T8 decks using just Lurrus: 50% ▼1.8%
• % of T8 decks using other companions: 13.8% ▼.5%

If you’re tired of companions, these statistics deliver some good news. Lurrus’s share has declined across not only the entire metagame (-3.4%) but also in both top-tier (-2.9%) and Top 8 (-1.8%) lists. This suggests Lurrus’s current share may overrepresent its true power. We’re also seeing a small downtick in companion T8 prevalence, suggesting players have realized they don’t need the virtual 8th card to succeed.

There’s also bad news. Despite the small downward changes in companion shares, the discrete shares themselves remain extraordinarily high. Half of all T8 decks are using Lurrus in the first two weeks. More than 60% of all top-tier and T8 decks are using companions, and Lurrus is seeing slight, increasing shares (44% –> 49.7% –> 50%) progressing from all decks to T8 decks. This suggests additional overperformance on the Cat’s part. Contrast with other companions which collectively see decreasing shares from the format-wide picture into T8s (16.7% –> 14.2% –> 13.8%). Despite scattered success of cards like Obosh, it’s possible the other companions just aren’t as good as Lurrus, and/or players haven’t figured out how to use them. To repeat an earlier disclaimer, none of this is to say this is an actionable problem. We still have reassuring archetype diversity. At the same time, we also need to be calling out these unprecedented shares.

On the topic of top-tier companion prevalence, the table below shows companion usage by deck and the percentage of those decks running a preferred critter in crime. As an example of reading this table, 93.3% of Jund players are running Lurrus, but only 36.4% of Humans players are running Jegs. Companion % ▲/▼s indicate changes in the percentage of a specific deck using companions relative to Week 1 (i.e. 36.4% of Humans players ran Jegantha, down 6.5% from Week 1):

Rank	Deck	Meta %	Comp %	Comp of choice
1	Burn	13.1%	91.4% ▲1.7%	Lurrus
2	Jund	6.8%	93.3% ▲2.8%	Lurrus
3	Prowess	5.9%	84.6% ▲9.6%	Lurrus
4	Humans	5.0%	36.4% ▼6.5%	Jegantha
5	Devoted Devastation	5.0%	86.4% ▲4.6%	Lurrus
6	Bant Snow Control	4.7%	19% ▲10.7%	Yorion
7	Temur Urza	4.7%	90.5% ▲19.1%	Yorion
8	Amulet Titan	4.3%	0% (same)
9	Hardened Scales	3.6%	100% (same)	Lurrus
10	Ponza	3.4%	66.7% ▲33.4%	Obosh
11	Ad Nauseam	2.9%	0% (same)
12	Eldrazi Tron	2.3%	0% (same)
13	Grixis Delver	2.3%	100% (same)	Lurrus
14	The Rock	2.3%	100% (same)	Lurrus
15	Dredge	2.0%	0% (same)
16	5C Niv	1.8%	50% ▼10%	Jegantha
17	Neobrand	1.8%	0% (same)

For the most part, every deck previously using companions is still using companions. We’re just seeing more of these decks sticking with the companion formula for success than in Week 1. Some represent neglibile upticks from already high numbers: 91.4% of Burn players use Lurrus up 1.7% points from Week 1. Others are more significant. In particular, Yoion sees much more Week 2 play than the Sky Nomad enjoyed in Week 1. Yorion is a virtual Temur Urza staple with 90% of these decks using the companion, and even holdout Bant Snow Control is trending up with about 20% of Bant Snow mages adopting Yorion. Similarly, Obosh is rising as a Ponza mainstay, and I expect we’ll see all of these numbers keep climbing into Week 3 and beyond.

Then there’s Jegantha. Poor Jegs. Only two decks are using the big, dumb Gurmag Angler imitator, and both have seen marked dips in their willingness to give up the sideboard slot. Humans is a fascinating case study in this regard. This is a Top 5 deck that can use Jegantha and is simply choosing not to. Same with 5C Niv, even though Niv Mizzet looks like the ideal home for the 5C Elemental! Maybe Jegantha will reverse its fortunes, but for now, it looks like a “free” 5/5 just isn’t enough to keep the Elk on rosters.

Finally, for those who can’t get enough companion and want to see how Lurrus’s and Yorion’s less successful cousins are competing, here’s a format-wide companion breakdown as we wrap Week 2:

Companions	Overall %	Top-Tier %	T8 %
Lurrus	44% (195)	49.7% (158)	50% (40)
Yorion	9% (40)	7.9% (25)	8.8% (7)
Jegantha	2.9% (13)	3.1% (10)	3.8% (3)
Zirda	1.6% (7)	0% (0)	0% (0)
Obosh	2.5% (11)	3.1% (10)	1.3% (1)
Gyruda	0.5% (2)	0% (0)	0% (0)
Umori	0.2% (1)	0% (0)	0% (0)
Lutri	.2% (1)	0% (0)	0% (0)
ALL COMPS	60.9% (270)	63.8% (203)	63.8% (51)

Blah blah Lurrus Yorion blah. Look at all the cool showings by Zirda, Obosh, and even lovable ooze friend Umori! There are significant gulfs between top companions and those underneath (and even within that, between Tier S Lurrus and everything else), which indicates players are still tinkering with these cards. I had the same reaction as Bob Huang to the amazing Umori experiment that stole 10th in the 05/03 Challenge, and I’m hoping more decks play around with companions. I fear Lurrus will continue to dominate the conversation because it’s often better to just play a Lurrus combo deck than a Zirda variant, or a Lurrus aggro deck than an Umori one, but maybe the brewers will prove me wrong.

Taken as a whole, Lurrus (and other companions to a far lesser extent) remain decisive Modern influencers. As in last week’s update, it’s hard to compare this current Modern epoch to a previous period; I don’t remember a time where a card had such a titanic format imprint but still empowered an overall diverse range of decks. This puts us in a challenging position when assessing metagame health and this is where we are stuck heading into Week 3.

Week 2 Takeaways

My Week 1 disclaimers are still in effect as the format continues to take shape. In particular, even though we enjoy a respectable N=443 sample, we still need a lot more data and time to really see where Modern is heading. Disclaimers aside, here are my biggest conclusions from the Week 3 picture:

• The format remains strategically diverse. You can play all archetypes, as well as different decks within archetypes. At least from a high-level perspective, the Modern metagame is healthy.
• Lurrus is still everywhere. This is somewhat true of other companions, but it’s mostly just Lurrus. There are more decks playing Lurrus now than played OUaT when that abominable cantrip got banned. At the same time, Lurrus has a very different metagame impact than the Eldraine design mistake and appears to support many distinct, diverse options, not just a herd of big mana bruisers. This makes it harder to positive or negatively assess Lurrus’s impact.
• Companion shares are increasing. Players are getting better and bolder at building around these powerful cards, and we will continue to see breakout performances as these decks keep improving.
• Tier 1 is crystallizing, but Tier 2 remains open. It’s hard to imagine a Tier 1 that looks significantly different from our current Big 7 (Burn/Prowess, Jund, Humans, Devoted Devastation, Bant Snow, Temur Urza, Amulet Titan). But it’s easy to see how Tier 2 and 3 decks will continue to scrap for top-tier presence. Perhaps the biggest indicator of this is Gx Tron’s steep decline, a deck so powerful it is likely to return… even if it’s currently struggling in the muck with Bogles and Goblins.

Weeks 3 and 4 will clarify our metagame picture and give us a better sense of where things are heading. Expect more shifts like Burn dropping, Yorion rising, and Amulet Titan staying exactly where it is as the format progresses.

Bring on Weeks 3 and 4!

I can’t guarantee I’ll have the bandwidth to crank out another metagame update next week, but you can bet we’ll be back for more analysis as May continues. We’re also still waiting for Wizards to release a Modern format vision update, and to generally address many of the sweeping Constructed issues rankling every Discord and Twitter feed online. Personally, I’ll be happy once we get Forsythe’s much-anticipated and badly-needed Modern update. Any day now. Please?

Let me know in the comments here, on Reddit, on Twitter, or on the MTG Nexus Modern subforum if you have any feedback for the article. Ideas, criticism, thoughts, and corrections are always welcome, especially corrections if my Excel automation missed some numbers. See you all soon and until next time, keep your socially distanced friends close and your Modern companions closer.

Modern Metagame Update: Post-IKO Week 1

The last time I wrote a true metagame update was for Modern Nexus. Back then, we were emerging from the darkness of Eldrazi Winter with a Tier 1 that included decks some darn kids these days ain’t even heard of: Affinity, Jeskai Control, Abzan Company, etc. Today, however, we’re just up to our necks in cats. Plus birds, elks, and whatever the heck you call Gyrudas and Oboshes. Ikoria’s new companion mechanic has riled the online Modern community into a frenzy and redefined every Constructed format where it is legal. I don’t remember the last time I saw a ban-related Reddit thread hit almost 1,000 upvotes, let alone in the first week of a new set. Players are clearly concerned about the metagame and companion’s impact on every format from Standard to Vintage. This has led to intensive, ongoing debate about the mechanic itself and whether or not it violates fundamental Magic rules. Unfortunately, there has been one element missing from most of the discussion, especially in Modern: clear metagame data.

I normally post Challenge and Super Qualifier (SQ) breakdowns to the Modern subreddit with a mini write-up. These are generally well-received and always spark interesting conversation. In light of the companion crisis, however, I think it’s much more important to bring back Modern Nexus-style metagame breakdowns. It’s impossible to have meaningful conversations about the format without understanding its landscape. Today, I’ll show the pre-IKO picture before companions hit, present the changed format using non-curated MTGO data from Week 1, and offer takeaways about the format’s health and direction.

Pre-Ikoria Modern

It feels like it’s been over a month since we first met Lurrus, Yorion, and company, but it’s actually been just eight days since we got our post-IKO Challenge results last Sunday. The COVID-19 quarantine time warp has never felt so real. As someone who regularly posted pre-IKO MTGO results, I’ve been in a unique position to notice overall metagame shifts, not just the prevalence of companion. Community members must also understand these shifts to have meaningful discussions about where Modern is heading.

Let’s start with a pre-IKO Modern metagame breakdown. This includes Challenges, SQs, and Premiers on MTGO, totaling 11 events from 03/21/2020 (the first date of published SQ data) through 04/11/2020. There are 352 decklists in this sample. I originally only included SQs under the assumption Challenges were less competitive and couldn’t be merged with SQs, but as I assessed in a separate MTG Nexus forum post, this assumption actually didn’t withstand scrutiny. Challenges actually had fewer Tier 3 spice/jank than SQs while still having the same top-tier representatives. Because of this, I think it’s appropriate to combine the two both to increase N and capture a fuller metagame picture. Here are the Tier 1 and Tier 2 decks of the previous Modern era representing about 75% of the entire format.

Pre-IKO Metagame: 03/21 – 04/11/2020

1. Bant Snow Control: 11.6% (41)
2. Ponza: 8.2% (29)
3. Dredge: 7.4% (26)
4. Burn: 6.5% (23)
5. Eldrazi Tron: 5.1% (18)
6. Temur Urza: 5.1% (18)
7. Humans: 4.8% (17)
8. Prowess: 4.8% (17)
9. Jund: 4.5% (16)
10. Amulet Titan: 4% (14)
11. Mono G Tron: 3.7% (13)
12. Infect: 3.7% (13)
13. 5C Niv: 2.6% (9)
14. Death and Taxes: 2.3% (8)
15. Bant Snowblade: 2% (7)

This is what Modern looked like just over a week ago. Arcum’s Astrolabe (AA), big mana, Jund/Ponz midrange, and aggro defined this format, with virtually all strategies (just over 80%) fitting into one of those categories. Extending the analysis down to Tier 3 and lower strategies (e.g. Infect, Simic Nexus, Ad Nauseam, Mono U Tron, etc.), we can categorize all decks by macro-archetype to capture overall format trends:

• Aggro Decks: 30.3% (103)
• AA Decks: 28.2% (96)
• Midrange Decks: 17.1% (58)
• Ramp Decks: 16.5% (56)
• Combo Decks: 5% (17)
• Non-AA Control Decks: 2.9% (10)

I know many Modern players bemoaned a metagame they experienced as Astrolabe vs. Ramp, but the MTGO reality was more diverse. Pre-IKO Modern had a ton of strategic representation, even if the power-level of deck staples and matchup deciders was incredibly high. This probably led to a feeling of swingy gameplay even if the metagame itself appeared balanced on a spreadsheet. As a whole, here were a few takeaways from this older format:

• Bant Snow was probably the secret, not-so-secret best deck, coming in about 3% ahead of the next best options. This notion of a “secret, not-so-secret” best deck is a recurring concept in my writing. It denotes a deck that is not so obviously the best deck where everyone plays it (e.g. Hogaakvine, Simic Oko Urza, Eldrazi, etc.), but is probably the best from a match-win-percentage (MWP) standpoint (e.g. Twin, KCI, Phoenix, etc.).
• All strategies saw representation, but some had fewer options. I’d characterize this as healthy but somewhat restrictive. Want to play ramp? E Tron, G Tron, and Titan variants await. Want to play aggro? Take your pick of Burn, Prowess, Humans, Dredge, and others. Midrange? You’re mostly stuck on Jund and Ponza. And control? It’s Bant Snow or bust, unless you want a midrange/control hybrid in which case it’s Temur (Snow) Urza or bust.
• All fairer, more interactive decks played green. The sole exception was Death and Taxes, eking into Tier 2 behind another Astrolabe variant. This isn’t necessarily an issue (Legacy is the blue format, maybe Modern is the green format) but it’s an important observation about Modern’s direction.

Overall, there were both advantages and disadvantages to this metagame. You could play any archetype you wanted, but players sensed a huge power gap between the best decks and the lower-tier options. You could enjoy a range of archetype vs. archetype matchups, but it often felt like swingy haymakers disproportionately influenced game outcome. There was also the Ponza factor. A longtime low-tier player, the Gruul upstart rose through the ranks to become the second most-played deck. Depending on who you asked, that was either metagame adaptation at its finest or an indicator of a warped format. There wasn’t a lot of consensus around this old metagame and I know many players, myself included, were looking for a little bit of a shakeup to see if Ikoria could change the picture. As they say, careful what you wish for.

Post-Ikoria Modern: Week 1

Enter companions. Or, as we’ll see later, enter Lurrus. Although IKO definitely brought us a variety of new Modern playables (check out last week’s Top 25 playable countdown on this site: a fair number of hits!), it’s misleading to compare something like the solid General Kudro to the meteoric impact of companions. And when I say “companions,” I really mean Lurrus of the Dream Den. I don’t remember the last time a single card and its core mechanic had such format-wide penetration. Companions (read: Lurrus) are absolutely everywhere. Our job today is to assess the overall metagame, evaluate the prevalence of companions specifically, and gauge our comfort with this picture.

Metagame Breakdown

Week 1 of Ikoria Modern saw only a few Challenges, SQs, and Premiers, even counting the SQ and Challenge published yesterday. We can increase N by including Preliminary results. To be very clear, this is not going to give us a perfect apples-to-apples comparison with the pre-IKO metagame. Our earlier sample did not include any Preliminaries and only encompassed major events. I’m fine with this for a few reasons. For one, our biggest priority in Week 1 is not necessarily predicting the most competitive metagame in Week 7. It’s establishing an accurate picture of the metagame right now. In that regard, we want to increase N using as many noncurated MTGO events as possible, and Preliminaries show all 5-0 through 3-2 decks. This makes them a natural dataset fit. Leagues, however, are a delibeately filtered list of 5-0s Wizards uses to show off different ideas: we would never include these curated events. Second, and perhaps more importantly, the approximately 75 Prelim decks in this first week mostly align with the SQ/Challenge/Premier picture. Of the top 20 decks in the Prelim-only sample, 15 overlap with the top 20 of the SQ/Challenge/Premier sample. This makes me reasonably confident we can merge the two, acknowledging a bit of rogue deck noise.

Here’s the post-IKO metagame across our 11 events and N=253 decks:

Post-IKO Metagame: 04/18 – 04/25/2020

1. Burn: 15.4% (39)
2. Jund: 8.3% (21)
3. Humans: 5.5% (14)
4. Bant Snow Control: 4.7% (12)
5. Prowess: 4.7% (12)
6. Devoted Devastation: 4.3% (11)
7. Amulet Titan: 4% (10)
8. Dredge: 3.6% (9)
9. Grixis Delver: 3.6% (9)
10. Hardened Scales: 3.2% (8)
11. Temur Urza: 2.8% (7)
12. The Rock: 2.8% (7)
13. Ponza: 2.4% (6)
14. Eldrazi Tron: 2.4% (6)
15. Ad Nauseam: 2.4% (6)
16. 5C Niv: 2% (5)
17. 4C Snow Control: 2% (5)

Although this is still a visibly Modern format with tons of recognizable decks, Ikoria has brought a lot of changes. Burn has dethroned Bant Snow. Jund has replaced Ponza as the midrange deck of choice. Devoted Devastation has risen up from complete irrelevance to a top six deck, and some bygone Modern decks are back in the fight: Hardened Scales, Grixis Delver (!), The Frikkin Rock (!!). We also see some decks remaining relatively stable, such as stalwart Humans, trusty Prowess, and the veteran Amulet Titan. As a whole, this is mostly a healthy assortment of decks and archetypes, even if the exact rankings have changed from just a weekend ago. Burn is definitely higher than we’d want to see any single deck, but a) Burn is often a great Week 0/Week 1 choice in any metagame, and b) people want to play the companions and Burn is a natural home for Lurrus. These factors could be artificially increasing Burn’s share so I’m not too concerned about that 16% for now.

The table below summarizes shifts in the pre- to post-IKO metagames. It lists all Tier 1 and Tier 2 decks from both metagames (the four at the end were only in the pre-IKO top 15). It then shows the change (delta, ▲) in rank and percent share. Darker blue indicates a bigger increase, darker orange indicates a bigger drop.

Rank	Deck	Rank ▲	% ▲
1	Burn	+3	+8.9%
2	Jund	+7	+3.8%
3	Humans	+4	+0.7%
4	Bant Snow Control	-3	-6.9%
5	Prowess	+3	+0.1%
6	Devoted Devastation	+27	+4.1%
7	Amulet Titan	+3	+0.0%
8	Dredge	-5	-3.8%
9	Grixis Delver	New!	+3.6%
10	Hardened Scales	New!	+3.2%
11	Temur Urza	-5	-2.3%
12	The Rock	+15	+2.5%
13	Ponza	-12	-5.9%
14	Eldrazi Tron	-9	-2.7%
15	Ad Nauseam	+8	+1.5%
16	5C Niv	-3	-0.6%
17	4C Snow Control	+12	+1.4%
Pre-IKO	Mono G Tron	-10	-1.7%
Pre-IKO	Infect	-8	-1.7%
Pre-IKO	Death and Taxes	-7	-0.3%
Pre-IKO	Bant Snowblade	Gone!	-2.0%

Big winners are Burn, Devoted Devastation, Jund, Grixis Delver, and Hardened Scales. Delver and Scales are particularly exciting, as the latter hasn’t been viable since Opal’s ban four months ago, and the former hasn’t been viable since Gitaxian Probe ate the banhammer in 2017. Incidentally, every single one of those decks is playing Lurrus; more on that later. The big losers are Temur Urza, Eldrazi Tron, Dredge, Ponza, and Bant Snow Control. Most of these decks do not use companions at all, although both Temur Urza and Bant Snow are experimenting with Yorion, while Ponza tinkers with Obosh.

Despite the clear influence of companions, and the overrepresentation of Burn, it’s still important to emphasize Week 1 presents a mostly healthy metagame picture with multiple viable strategies. Here’s our rough archetype breakdown with changes relative to the pre-IKO breakdown noted in blue/orange:

• Aggro Decks: 38.7% (98), +8.4%
• Midrange Decks: 17.4% (44), +.3%
• AA Decks: 15% (38), -13.2%
• Non-AA Control Decks: 12.3% (31), +9.3%
• Ramp Decks: 9.5% (24), -7%
• Tempo Decks: 4.3% (11), +4.3%
• Combo Decks: 2.8% (7), -2.2%

Aggro is up by basically the same margin Burn increased. Astrolabe decks are way down with a ton of non-Astrolabe control entering the picture. We’re also seeing the return of true Delver tempo decks (as opposed to Shadow decks, which are also back but folded into the midrange category), which are up 4.3% from a fat 0% in the old metagame. In addition to Astrolabe’s lost ground, big mana decks are also down. With both strategies struggling to adopt Lurrus and pals, players may be shifting away from these format standbys to hot new Ikoria tech.

Overall, the high-level metagame review is relatively positive. If this was any other Week 1 of Modern, there would be nothing remarkable about these Tier 1 and Tier 2 standings. Burn might warrant a footnote about its overrepresentation, but it’s nothing we wouldn’t expect to change as the metagame matures. Unfortunately, this higher level deck breakdown misses the cards that are really driving the changes: IKO’s companions and all those dang Lurrus copies.

Companion Breakdown

Up until this point, I’ve seen a lot of conversation about companions as a general mechanic. I was doing this too but today’s analysis exposed a gap between the prevalence of all companions not named Lurrus, and Lurrus itself. This section will show the huge divide between companion/Lurrus decks and those not running the Nightmare Cat.

Here are summary metagame and companion statistics to describe the Week 1 format. For reference and the sake of simplicity, “top-tier” refers to all Tier 1 and Tier 2 decks.

• % of total decks using any companion: 57.7%
• % of total decks just using Lurrus: 47.4%
• % of total decks using other companions: 10.3%
• % of top-tier decks using any companion: 63.1%
• % of top-tier decks just using Lurrus: 54%
• % of top-tier decks using other companions: 9.1%
• % of all companion decks just using Lurrus: 82.2%

That’s a lot of Lurrus. I emphasize Lurrus individually because the overall prevalence of non-Lurrus companions is relatively tame. Lurrus sees twelve times (!!) more play than the next most-played companions in Jegantha and Yorion across Week 1 Modern. More than half of the top-tier decks are running just Lurrus alone with only 9.1% running some other companion. To put that in perspective, there are more decks running Tarmogoyf in Week 1 than are running non-Lurrus companions. This is a critical observation because it shifts our Week 1 scrutiny off Yorion, Jegs, and the companion mechanic generally towards Lurrus.

Of course, this aggregate analysis misses the distinct prevalence of companions/Lurrus within specific decks. Amulet Titan and Dredge can’t run any of the current companions without major changes. On the other hand, about 90% of Burn and Jund decks rely on Lurrus to enjoy their Week 1 success. And then there’s Hardened Scales and Grixis Delver, which wouldn’t be here at all if Lurrus wasn’t joining their 75. Aggregating these decks miss individual Lurrus/companion impact.

To capture these distinctions, the table below presents post-IKO top-tier decks, their prevalence, and the percentage of those decks running both a companion and Lurrus specifically. As an example of how to read the table, 42.9% of Humans decks ran a companion but 0% ran Lurrus; they opted for Jegs instead. For Devoted Devastation, however, 100% of its pilots used a companion, and all of those were Lurrus.

Rank	Deck	%	Companion %	Lurrus %
1	Burn	15.4%	89.7%	89.7%
2	Jund	8.3%	90.5%	90.5%
3	Humans	5.5%	42.9%	0.0% (Jegs)
4	Bant Snow Control	4.7%	8.3%	0.0% (Yorion)
5	Prowess	4.7%	75.0%	75.0%
6	Devoted Devastation	4.3%	81.8%	81.8%
7	Amulet Titan	4.0%	0.0%	0.0% (none)
8	Dredge	3.6%	0.0%	0.0% (none)
9	Grixis Delver	3.6%	100.0%	100.0%
10	Hardened Scales	3.2%	100.0%	100.
11	Temur Urza	2.8%	71.4%	0.0% (Yorion)
12	The Rock	2.8%	100.0%	100.0%
13	Ponza	2.4%	33.3%	0.0% (Obosh)
14	Eldrazi Tron	2.4%	0.0%	0.0% (none)
15	Ad Nauseam	2.4%	0.0%	0.0% (none)
16	5C Niv	2.0%	60.0%	0.0% (Jegs + Yorion)
17	4C Snow Control	2.0%	100.0%	100.0%

Again, that’s a lot of Lurrus. Of decks that tried to run Lurrus at all, we’re seeing 92.1% of them on average sticking with the Cat. Other companions aren’t having this kind of effect except Yorion in Temur Urza (71% of Urza pilots are rocking the Sky Nomad). It’s true there are a few decks which can succeed without any companion. Bant Snow Control is crushing it at 4th place with only 8% of decks trying out Yorion (for now…). Amulet Titan and Dredge don’t even need fancy IKO nonsense to stay in the top 10. But these decks are the exception and not the rule. 13 distinct archetypes in the top 17 are using companions in some capacity. 10 of the top 17 see more than half of their players trying out companions. Of our seven Tier 1 decks, which we’d roughly define as those with >4% shares, four of them are Lurrus decks including the top two, which incidentally have a higher metagame share (23.7%) than the next five decks combined (23.3%).

All of this points to Lurrus redefining the Modern format in the span of a week. I hesitate to call this a totally “new” format because all of the decks are recognizably Modern decks on paper. At the same time, Lurrus is clearly presenting new dynamics Modern has never seen in the past. This pushes us to assess our comfort with Lurrus and the new metagame reality.

Week 1 Disclaimers and Takeaways

I condensed my pre-IKO conclusions into a few bullet-points in the first section. Our post-IKO picture needs a more thorough treatment. Before we get into takeaways, we need to talk about some metagame forces which influence the numbers. We must remember these qualitative caveats before making strong statements about post-IKO Modern:

• Week 1 metagames almost always change. Players don’t know the best cards, best decks, and where the format is heading. This is true in both genuinely open metagames and formats that are secretly solved. As an extreme example of this, check out Modern just before Pro Tour Oath Eldrazi. Not only did its lone Eldrazi variant have just 5.7% of the metagame, it was probably the worst variant of the lot, a Bx style built around cute Wasteland Strangler synergies over outrageous Eye/Temple/Mimic openers.
• Players love experimenting with new cards. When new sets enter a stagnant environment, everyone wants to try out the exciting technology. This is why we saw a huge uptick in Stoneforge decks immediately after her unbanning and a quick decline when people realized SFM was merely okay in a much more powerful format.
• Hyped cards can promote echo chambers. In the absence of high viewership tournaments, accessible written content, and ongoing Twitch coverage, players tend to default to whatever has the most social media buzz. We saw this effect in events like 2015’s PT Fate Reforged, where a huge segment of the pro community talked up the Abzan gameplan and willfully missed out on playing the best decks of the year: Amulet Bloom and URx Twin.
• Top-tier regulars are boring in new metagames. We just exited a Modern period where most of the online community argued constantly about Astrolabe, Veil, ramp decks, etc. Who wouldn’t want a break from those tired decks to try out the new hotness?
• N is comparatively small. This obligatory sample size disclaimer is particularly important in Week 1, where we have fewer events and need to include less appropriate events (i.e. Preliminaries) just to boost N.

These reminders will temper our conclusions and prevent us from making sweeping, overstated claims. I’m sure there are other data limitations we need to consider, and if I missed any major ones worth remembering, let me know and I can add them to future articles. With the disclaimers in mind, here are my big Week 1 takeaways:

• Modern is strategically diverse. You really can play any archetype you want, as long as you are building around a few established pillars. Current pillars include Astrolabe, Tron lands, Titan, and, of course, Lurrus. Those four pillars represent a whopping 75% of the entire metagame, and 83% of the top-tier metagame. At the same time, those four pillars cross all archetypes and give you a lot of options. You can also play a linear strategy that doesn’t necessarily need any of these pillars at all (Humans, Dredge, Ad Nauseam, and Infect are currently in the vogue).
• Lurrus is improving decks across the tiers. It’s both sharpening existing competitive decks (Burn, Jund) and breathing new life into dearly departed friends (Grixis Delver, Hardened Scales). This may be a net diversity positive if Lurrus keeps spreading the love. It becomes a net negative, however, if the Lurrus decks collapse into just 1-2 best options.
• The exact metagame breakdown is going to change, but high companion prevalence is not. In fact, I suspect we have not reached peak companion levels yet. Lurrus is a relativey easy buildaround and players will continue to optimize their Dream Den decks. The other companions are harder, especially if fewer people are playing them. This forces brewers to create without the benefit of the hive mind or previous iteration. As Moderners continue to grind on MTGO, expect to see even more of the group, especially Yorion, Zirda, and Jegantha. Yorion in particular is poised for a big uptick as people figure out how to build manabases and cores in 80 card decks, realizing Yorion’s consistency offsets the usual risk of an 80 card strategy.
• Lurrus. Is. Everywhere. I can’t emphasize this point enough because it’s such a breakout appearance by a new card. For now, it would be disingenuous to offer any Modern metagame analysis that doesn’t carefully track this companion’s prevalence.

Our biggest, lingering questions are about Lurrus. The companion is rampant but how rampant is too rampant? This notion of card prevalence has at the forefront of the last decade of competitive Magic. This is still true today. Prior to IKO there were a number of Reddit posts about the Modern prevalence of Veil of Summer and Lightning Bolt. One was serious, one was snarky, but both set a rough baseline for staple prevalence in Modern in the mid-30% range. Back when Once Upon a Time was legal, the defining cantrip saw play in about 40% of MTGO decks, higher than both Bolt and Veil individually. History offers other examples of problematic card prevalence, although they aren’t all Modern-specific. In the good old Caw Blade days, Aaron Forsythe famously noted that 88% of Day 2 decks at a Grand Prix had Jace, the Mind Sculptor copies. 70% had Stoneforge Mystic. More recently, we saw an Eldrazi Winter with 38% of major event Day 2 decks rocking Eldrazi strategies, peaking at 47% of Detroit and 40% of MTGO. These rough numbers provide important context for Lurrus’s current takeover.

In that regard, I’d classify Lurrus somewhere between an orange flag and a red flag issue. On the one hand, the overall metagame looks good, at least  in an Excel table. You can play a lot of strategies and those strategies cross the archetype divide. Modern sans Lurrus will likely lose a lot of these options (maybe Ozolith could keep Scales around?), especially if Astrolabe decks refine their Yorion options and Bant Snow returns to number one.

On the other hand, there are just so many decks using Lurrus that it’s hard to not draw comparisons to previous banlist announcements. There are more decks using Lurrus than OUaT. There are more decks using Lurrus than Eye of Ugin. It’s not clear if those comparisons are entirely appropriate because Lurrus has a different metagame impact than OUaT/Eye, but it’s still hard to ignore the comparable play rates. Personally, I don’t want to talk about bans anymore and avoided it in my Top 25 last week, but there are just so many people playing Lurrus/companions that it’s hard to avoid the topic. In that regard, Lurrus is either an orange flag issue (if you’re willing to accept the Lurrus/Bauble package if it means strategic diversity/balance), or a red flag issue (if you are reasonably fixated on Lurrus being in 63% of top-tier decks).

Either way, we need more data to see where the metagame heads. It’s going to be an interesting few months.

Modern: Lair of Companions

Wherever you see Modern going by May and June, it’s hard to deny companions will be a big part of its future. Especially Lurrus. It’s also hard for even the most ardent opponent of ban talk to avoid the issue when so many decks are using this card. If we can’t avoid the banning conversation altogether, at least metagame pieces like this will hopefully keep the debates informed.

As a final note before we end, there are a ton of weighty Modern issues this article either dances around or ignores completely due to our limited scope. Examples include the outrageous uptick in Standard power-level, the failures of Play Design to prevent pushed cards from breaking formats, Wizards’ alarming history of banning older cards when newer cards break a format (be afraid, Mishra’s Bauble, be very afraid), ongoing silence from Wizards representatives about multi-format Constructed concerns, continued data restrictions in thoroughly solved formats, and still no word on an updated Modern vision/mission. We have a lot of work ahead of us to address these issues and others. As long as we focus our arguments around researched cases and evidence, however, we’ll continue to make a strong case for change.

Let me know in the comments, on Reddit, or on MTG Nexus if there’s anything I missed or got wrong. See you all around the forums. While we’re all sheltering in place, where else are we going to debate our favorite format?

Ikoria in Modern: The Top 25

(Note: I intended to release this as a 2-3 part article before Ikoria became legal on MTGO. Work got in the way all week, so I’m rushing it to the presses as a single piece over the weekend before we get our big MTGO data dumps)

Even before Wizards released the full Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths gallery, IKO was generating significant community buzz. Part of this hype was everyone being trapped at home due to COVID-19 quarantines with nothing else to do but consume Magic content. But most of it was pure IKO boldness. Mutate brought silver-bordered build-your-own-monster mechanics straight to black-bordered constructed. Cycling returned with everything from new Living End goodies to a fetchable tri-colored land cycle (Triomes Tricycles). Wizards even brought mini-commanders to every constructed format with the controversial companion mechanic. And speaking of companion controversy, MTG Commander banned Lutri, the Spellchaser before the full set was released! Also, sick comic book alternate arts! And GODZILLA MONSTERS! Preview season has been exciting but now it’s time to play our new cards and, more importantly, have socially-distanced Internet debates over IKO playability.

Today, I’m jumping into the card evaluation arena to countdown my Modern IKO Top 24. Between StarCityGames’ premium consolidation and Channel Fireball’s shift to the pro model, there are even fewer sites with regular Modern content. The explosion of formats (Brawl, Commander, Pauper, Limited, Standard, Cube, Pioneer, etc.) and rise of Arena hasn’t helped, pulling even more content creators away from Modern. That’s a community loss during ordinary times and even worse when we’re all stuck inside during a global pandemic. Hopefully, this #25 to #1 review will give folks a classic long-form article to enjoy in between Netflix binges.

#25 – #17: The Sleepers

We’re kicking off our Top 25 countdown in brewer’s paradise. The nine cards in this section represent unique opportunities for new decks or innovative avenues for existing strategies. A few of them might just be slim upgrades that make their decks viable after a long competitive hiatus. Others might push new archetypes into Modern relevance.

25. Yidaro, Wandering Monster (aka GODZILLA!)

Anytime I see a “free” giant monster, I’m going to give it Modern bonus points. Yidaro takes some investment to get going, but it’s hard to do better than a 1R flash, uncounterable, trample, haste 8/8 in even the most hostile matchups. I expect a lot of Izzet or Jeskai mages to try out Yidaro as a lategame finisher with varying degrees of success. It probably won’t cross the finish line because these URx control decks are floundering to begin with, but if I learned anything from Hogaak Summer, it’s never underestimate cost-reduced 8/8 tramplers.

24. Winota, Joiner of Forces

This Boros warrior-woman meets two Modern playability benchmarks: cheating mana costs and having impact the turn she hits play. Just drop Winota on the battlefield with a few non-Human tokens at the ready and then move to combat. Each attacker will trigger a separating joining of forces as Winota gets the gang together. Steal your opponent’s best cards or hamstring their mana with Agent of Treachery. Cheat in a game-winning aura (Eldrazi Conscription! Colossification!) with Auratouched Mage. Detain your opponent’s entire board with Lavinia of the Tenth, and copy whatever effect you want with Sakashima, the Imposter. With literally hundreds of Humans in Modern and tons of potential Winota triggers, there are bound to be other combinations which end the game in short order. Even just something like Kessig Malcontents and Angrath’s Marauders could be an instant win. I wouldn’t typically give a lot of stock to these kinds of strategies, but Winota digs enough to find the pieces needed to assemble a win and does so the turn she comes into play. Word of caution: avoid attacking triggers as the fetched creatures will already be attacking and won’t trigger those abilities.

23. Footfall Crater

My Modern Nexus counterparts are keen on Crater for many of the same reasons I’m going to talk about later with Sharknado: Crater is an easy way to get an enchantment into the yard. On top of that, it gives relevant keywords to enormous Shadows and Tarmogoyfs (unlike the stinker Call of the Death-Dweller and its useless menace/deathtouch). I’m not sure this will make it in a Modern where Shadows and Goyfs are barely hanging on to begin with, but it’s a unique set of abilities in an extremely cost-effective package so I’m giving it a “Sleeper” nod. As an IKO bonus, this has great synergy with Lurrus; cycle the Crater early on to fill the yard and dig, rebuy it later to send a lethal Goyf or Shadow into the red.

22. Dire Tactics

Unconditional one-for-one removal can be very strong in Modern at the right price, and Tactics does a reasonable Path impression without the ramping drawback. The life loss can be problematic in aggro matchups, but in grindier contests against ramp and Uro/Urza strategies, a clean exile is worth that cost. There are also worse lines you can take than exiling recursive Dredge threats, and Shadow players (wherever they are) can even take advantage of the lost life points. Control mages really want the sweet synergy of flashing back Dire Tactics off Snapcaster Mage for maximum value; who doesn’t want Esper Midrange or Esper Control to be a thing again? Ultimately, Dire Tactics competes alongside both Path and Dismember for valuable slots but may still come out on top as a bullet in the right list, especially due to Dismember missing some key x/6s in the current format: Titans, Uros, Kroxas, Wurmcoils, etc.

21. Emergent Ultimatum

As far as “resolve spell, win” options go, it doesn’t get much better than Emergent Ultimatum. Seven mana is a lot in Modern, especially if it’s not colorless, but ramping into a guaranteed one-card combo win makes it more enticing. Here’s the pile I would brew around: Enter the Infinite, Omniscience, and Jace, Wielder of Mysteries. This forces the opponent to give you Jace and Omniscience or lose on the spot, and you should be able to draw/dig/tutor your way into a win from there. I’ve also seen other options involving Fork effects and either Searing Wind/Sorin’s Vengeance, and I’m confident there are other cool combos in Modern’s enormous cardpool to optimize the “I win” button even more. If MTG Goldfish doesn’t run a Modern “Against the Odds” on the Ultimatum by the end of May, send Tweet.

20. Titans’ Nest

Delve is a broken mechanic that saw multi-format bannings of previous Modern staples. For a four-mana investment, Nest effectively gives all of your non-X colored spells delve. Brewers: start your engines! Colorless spells like Emrakul and Karn are sadly off the table, which means you’ll generally need another source of colored mana to immediately abuse the delve effect. A brief Gatherer search turns up a number of potential haymakers on either the turn Nest hits play (Worst Fears) or the turn after (Primal Surge), and I’m confident you can sculpt a Scryfall query to optimize your bombs even more: try to focus on cards with only one colored mana in their cost so Nest-delve can offset the colorless requirement. Realistically, Nest is likely going to be a bit too slow for ultra-efficient Modern, but I’ve seen enough runaway cost-reduction mechanics in the format to give Nest some bonus playability points on effect alone.

19. Song of Creation

I’m a longtime Cheeri0s player (rest in peace, Mox Opal) and remember the unbeatable position of casting a 0-mana equipment with both a Sram and a Puresteel Paladin in play. Song replicates the best element of that deck by doubling your draws off every spell (creatures included!), and even giving you a mini-Opal effect in the additional land. The bar for a four-mana enchantment in Modern is incredibly high, but just as four-mana Past in Flames effectively wins the game once resolved, Song too might find format footing. Although you could brew Song around cogs like Paradise Mantle and other 0ld-sch00l equipment, it’s probably better to focus on legitimate playables like Mishra’s Bauble, Mox Amber, Engineered Explosives, Manamorphose, and others. Throw in an Underworld Breach at some point and you should be able to buzz through your deck to find your win (don’t forget Noxious Revival to draw cards and rebuy binned pieces). Once you’ve drawn and ramped enough, win with some combination of Simian Spirit Guide and Grapeshot. I doubt this strategy will turn out significantly better than the existing Breach Station lists that see minimal MTGO presence, or even just old-fashioned Storm, but the Song static is so strong that I’m not betting against it.

18. Sea-Dasher Octopus

Flash is a very powerful mechanic, and I’m always looking twice at any instant-speed permanent in a new set. Flash Curiosity, even at 1U, could be strong in the right shell and I expect this to be a huge pain in Standard where I still have nightmares about Mist Herald into Curious Obsession. In Modern, however, I think this might struggle due to format context. None of the Curiosity variants see sustained Modern play. This includes Sea-Dasher forerunner Ninja of the Deep Hours, the namesake enchantment itself, Obsession, or even Bogles-friendly Keen Sense. Flash is sick for a tempo advantage or a sneaky hit, but if you’re suiting up a hexproof attacker to begin with, you almost just want the discounted mana of Curiosity/Keen Sense. Octopus wants to see play in a blue tempo deck anyway, not Bogles, but none of those exist in top-tier Modern. So why is this card at “Sleeper” status? It has to do with a bizarre side effect of mutate, which is virtual haste. This allows you to swing in with a creature that just hit play or just use an EOT Octopus to ensure you start drawing cards next turn. That versatility is a boon to decks like Merfolk, Faeries, and maybe even bygone Delver.

17. Sprite Dragon

Speaking of Delver… Izzet and URx tempo decks have storied Modern pasts with few recent, relevant finishes. Dragon is a huge boost to these decks which need cheap, sticky threats that close the game quickly. I don’t think Dragon would be particularly strong in a format where Force of Negation wasn’t legal, but a T2 Sprite with FoN backup is a nasty tempo play which will keep the URx player ahead for multiple turns. Throw in Mishra’s Bauble, a natural complement to high velocity decks anyway, and you have a winning recipe. I’d be a lot more optimistic about Dragon’s chances if URx tempo was a better performing deck to begin with, but in this current Gx metagame, Sprite has quite the climb ahead of it. Dragon might also find a home in the various Prowess variants and even spell blitz variants that haunt MTGO Leagues. I’m a longtime fan of Twitter and Twitch personality Daniela Diaz (h0lydiva) who loves all things related to Kiln Fiend, Become Immense, Mutagenic Growth, and Temur Battle Rage. Dragon is a natural boost to these strategies which already check a few Modern boxes in their aggressive, proactive playstyle.

#16 – #10: The Roleplayers

Cards in this category are likely to provide niche upgrades to both recognizable and fringe Modern strategies. Some of the benefitting decks already see Tier 1 Modern play with others lurking in the Tier 2 or Tier 3 outskirts. Even small upgrades can be a big deal for these strategies, however, and we should expect these cards to show up in their corresponding homes.

16. Fire Prophecy

See Beyond is one of the only ways for Modern players to reshuffle drawn cards into their deck. This is a critical effect in most of the URx Emrakul strategies (e.g. Possibility Storm, Through the Breach, Polymorph, etc.), and historically you’ve had few options to get your Eldrazi back into the library. Fire Prophecy either stores your combo finisher for later or just digs you deeper to a needed combo piece. It even does so at instant-speed, unlike See Beyond’s bad Brainstorm imitation. Missing planeswalkers stinks, but 3-damage burn is totally passable in Modern’s aggro environment. I expect those Emrakul decks to use at least a few copies of this between the maindeck and sideboard.

15. Blitz of the Thunder-Raptor

Why are we playing Blitz over MH1’s Magmatic Sinkhole or the utterly garbage Spite of Mogis? Two words: Primeval Titan. In all seriousness, Blitz fills a niche in Izzet decks that currently concede to many 6+ toughness creatures (Uro, Kroxa, Titan, etc.) and struggle to deal with high-loyalty planeswalkers. Sinkhole is almost never going to remove a Karn. Blitz, however, might be able to on a good day. Blitz also has better synergy with Snapcaster than Sinkhole, and works better in multiples. Not only does Blitz keep cards in your graveyard, but you can Blitz-Snap-Blitz in a pinch to deal with truly monstrous targets. Bolt and Sinkhole will generally struggle to do this. As a final edge, the Thunder-Raptor Kindle exiles its target, which is highly relevant in a Modern defined by recursive threats like the previously mentioned elder giants. As long as you acknolwedge Blitz’s limitations (there are gamestates where your GY is lean on Blitz fuel), this could be a strong new tool for struggling Izzet decks.

14. Titanoth Rex (aka MORE GODZILLA!)

Hello, Living End. There are a number of cascade combo maybes in the set, but Rex is the likeliest to make the cut. It truly is the biggest, beefiest thing you can zombify. 11/11 plus trample is enormous and laughs at chumps like Coatl that would otherwise ruin your stomping fun. As Living End specialists noted to me in online discussion, this drives the deck to a more aggressive style of play where it tries to win the turn after End resolves. Previously, many decks could at least hold the line for a single turn with a few chumps, but a pair of 11/11 tramplers would make that an impossible last stand. Given these edges, why is Rex merely a roleplayer and not a Living End staple? If anything gets in the way of Rex’s Living End glory it will be slots. The vast majority of LE’s creatures cycle for just one mana, and you don’t want to lose velocity with too many 2+ cyclers. In that regard, Rex might not have a clear home in Living End and competes with Archfiend and Pyromancer for a space. It remains to be seen if a speedy win is better than a gradual sweeper plus evasion, which is why I’m more reserved on Rex’s prospects.

13. Gemrazer

Our first and only mutate hit in the set gets there because of Bogles. This is a maindeckable way to give your little hexproof jerks +3/+3 and trample while also Naturalizing (or should I say, Wilting) a potentially relevant permanent. Bogles can’t currently negotiate effects like Bridge and Gemrazer pulls double-duty by imitating Seal of Primordium for removal and boosting your attacker. In a pinch, you can even start suitng up a naked Gemrazer if you ran out of better creatures. I’d be surprised if we didn’t see at least a few of these make their way into the Bogles 75.

12. Shark Typhoon

Love or hate the flavor cheesiness, it’s hard to deny the card’s Modern potential. The floor of a 2U uncounterable, flash, flying, cantripping 1/1 is decent in a number of matchups and totally gamebreaking in others. Cycling this into a downticked T3feri is particularly nasty. This card will be color-defining in Standard control for this very reason, but Modern is obviously more than just T3feri dynamics. This is what sinks Sharknado to a “Roleplayer” rating instead of “Mainstay” status: there are too many matchups where even the 2U floor mode just isn’t good. It’s a passable chump against aggro but virtually useless against big mana. Even in aggro matchups, it doesn’t trade up like its Coatl counterpart, which is fine if you’re digging for a sweeper but can feel like treading water if you need major on-board impact. I fear all of this will limit Typhoon’s impact. That said, Typhoon has added utility in sending an enchantment to the bin for either delirium or Tarmogoyf growth, which is something my former colleague at Modern Nexus is always on the lookout for.

11. Mythos of Nethroi

This is an optimistic prediction because Abzan isn’t exactly excelling these days, but catchall, instant-speed removal is a really solid way to get Junk back into the fray. Missing Tron lands and Temple is a loss over Assassin’s Trophy, but you won’t miss the awful Trophy ramp effect. This means Abzan players can freely Nethroi-ize artifacts and planeswalkers without worrying about accidental acceleration into other threats. Jund is still playing 1-2 Pulses, depending on the metagame, and an instant-speed upgrade is huge in a tempo-defined format. I’ve played a lot of Pulse in my Modern career and I’m mostly just using it to eliminate single, troublesome cards, not multiples. Holding up three mana for an instant, however, can be critical if the Abzan mage needs to respond to an emergent threat on the opponent’s turn. I don’t expect this to completely revitalize Abzan strategies, but it’s likely to see maindeck or sideboard play as the format keeps growing and Abzan comes back into vogue.

10. Drannith Magistrate

Anytime you see a 2 CMC Human with a static ability, pay attention. Magistrate can join a number of competitive rosters in Humans, Death/Eldrazi & Taxes, any deck with Collected Company or Chord of Calling, and all the Azorius decks running Spell Queller. There’s strong incentive for all those lists to try him out as Magistrate messes up a bunch of relevant Modern staples. Uro, Kroxa, and Dredge’s Ox get stuck in the graveyard. Bloodbraid Elf can’t cascade into value in either Jund or Ponza, and Dredge loses Conflagrate. Emry can’t recur value, Urza can’t spin to win, and Prowess can’t abuse either Lava Dart or Light Up the Stage. These are just a few of the card Magistrate neuters, not to mention a bunch of other random hits like 5C Niv’s Bring to Light, Titanshift’s Search for Tomorrow, and all of the wretched Breach Station combo deck. Unfortunately, Magistrate has some painful metagame misses where it does very little or nothing: Mono G Tron, Eldrazi Tron, Amulet Titan, and Burn in the top tier alone. This makes Magistrate viable sideboard material for the right metagame. Bonus for brewers: Magistrate is a redundant hard-counter effect alongside T3feri, Tim3 Rav3ler with Spell Queller and/or Delay.

#9 – #5: The Mainstays

The following cards represent direct upgrades or noteworthy improvements to known Modern decks. In particular, these cards are likely to see maindeck play in major events, not just FNMs, even if not necessarily as a full playset.

9. Of One Mind

At this point, there’s not much new to say about Modern’s newest Thoughtcast. Is it good with Urza and his construct buddy? Certainly. Could it be nifty in Delver and Young Pyromancer decks? Sign me up. Still, I’m not entirely convinced this is the card any of these decks need to get even better. You’re often doing just fine if you resolve Urza and friend. At the same time, Modern is getting increasingly grindy and a simple draw-two could be a big boost to push decks over the threshold. To evaluate Of One Mind, you need to figure when it’s better than, worse than, or matching Thoughtcast. The affinity draw spell sees virtually zero play in any archetypes so Of One Mind must be better in order to succeed. Assuming Urza averages 2-3 artifacts in play in the critical first 2-4 turns of the game, Thoughtcast tends to cost 2-3 mana. Meanwhile, Of One Mind will generally cost 3 (same as the Thoughtcast floor) and cost a mere 1 if Urza resolves. This is where I believe OOM has the edge; you can Goose into Urza on T3 and still cast OOM, but could never do the same with Thoughtcast. This elevates spirit-horse (what the heck is an “eludha?”) Divination to maindeck stock, and I expect we’ll see a few copies in Urza variations.

8. Fiend Artisan

Although I believe the Birthing Pod and Green Sun’s Zenith comparisons are overblown, Artisan does fulfill an important role in Collected Company and Chord of Calling strategies: redundancy. Artisan lets you recycle unused creatures or obsolete mana dorks into combo pieces, whether a Bird for Viscera Seer, a Finks for a recurring sacrifice outlet (Vizier needs to be on-board already), or a redundant Vizer/Druid for the missing half of the combo. The Nightmare serves a similar function in Golgari Yawgmoth strategies, trading your mana critters for combo pieces to get the chain going. Artisan would have been crazy if it ramped up mana costs, but even just breaking even is relevant in strategies where creatures cluster around the 1-3 CMC range. As a final bonus, Fiend Artisan gets big in a hurry and does a fine Tarmogoyf impression in a pinch: who doesn’t want a beatdown plan B if the combo plan is stuck on the ground?

7. The Ozolith

Hardened Scales decks never recovered from the loss of Mox Opal, but if any new card is poised to revive the archetype it’s IKO’s nifty one-drop artifact. Acknowledging my “Not A Judge” disclaimer, Ozolith works exactly how you probably think it works in a Hardened Scales strategy, doubling up on counters and growing your modular and XX creatures to obscene levels. It works particularly well with a Scales in play. Ozolith itself has the added benefit of Ancient Stirrings synergy, something the deck’s namesake lacks. You can also sacrifice Ozolith to Ravager after attackers for even more fuel, and can defend it from removal with Welding Jar. It remains to be seen if Hardened Scales can scrape back to relevance after the crushing loss of Opal, but if it gets there, Ozolith will certainly play a part.

6. General Kudro of Drannith

Before jumping into the more busted IKO designs, we wrap up our solid Modern additions with a surefire Human hit. General Kudro is going to be just as legit for Humans in practice as he is on paper. I haven’t seen the new M-Files articles yet, but I’d be shocked if Modern Humans wasn’t at the top of Kudro’s design notes when Wizards sat down to slap a bunch of randomly relevant abilities on Humans’ new lord. Low mana-cost? Check. Relevant stats? Check. Global pump and immediate ETB impact? Double check. Kudro goes even further by turning all of your Humans into additional graveyard hate (potentially at instant-speed, thanks to Vial). This is an invaluable ability in graveyard-centric Modern, especially because maindeckable Kudro frees up valuable sideboard slots for other options. Kudro probably would have been playable with just those abilities so far, but just to make sure they didn’t miss the mark, Play Design tacked on an efficient (and ruthlessly flavorful) removal option for a deck that historically can’t maindeck removal. This gives Humans multiple dimensions to attack pesky Uros, Titans, Goyfs, and most of Eldrazi Tron’s ground force while trying to push in those last points of damage. Expect to see most Humans lists adopt 1-2 or even more copies of General Kudro as IKO establishes itself in the metagame.

#5 – #1: The Broken

Our IKO top five goes beyond just maindecked slots in top-tier decks. These are the cards that could define formats and leave long-lasting impacts on the Modern metagame. In particular, IKO‘s best cards represent a truly pushed collection of Play Design nonsense that clearly had very little testing outside of Standard and Limited. These cards have high potential to reshape both top decks and even the format as a whole, and I’m still scratching my head at the process which led a few of these to see print. In all honesty, all of the companions could probably sneak into this list as a proverbial “4.5” on our Top 5 countdown. Free cards are strong. Free cards you don’t have to spend real cards to get are even stronger. Companions push acceptable Magic design by invalidating the basic variance of Constructed 60 card decks, guaranteeing a relevant (or gamebrekaing) threat exactly when you need it without any prior investment.

5. Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy

Modern is all about cheating mana curves and no one provides such consistent ramping as Kinnan. Unlike unplayed Leyline of Abundance, Kinnan turns Arcum’s Astrolabe into legitimate acceleration and converts Mox Amber into a free Sol Ring. This leads to a lot of really unfair T2 or T3 lines. T1 Astrolabe into T2 Kinnan ensures four mana for Urza by T3. T1 dork into T2 Kinnan off lands frees up anywhere from 2 to 4 mana depending on whether you have an Amber in the mix. When you untap with Kinnan on T3 with some combination of Astrolabe, Goose, and/or Amber, you’re looking at a virtual Simic Tron assembly of 7+ mana. Use it to jam a massive threat or just hold up all the mana you need for Cryptics and Archmage’s Charms. Kinnan even fulfills the Human half of Of One Mind for decks that need more velocity. Thankfully, Kinnan bombos with Urza himself, but even with dorks and mana rocks he’s pushing a huge, early advantage for decks that can use him. Kinnan even addresses the classis mana dork weakness of late game irrelevance with a built-in mana sink. All of this makes for a promising addition to Modern’s already potent Simic Suite.

4. Gyruda, Doom of Depths

Sigh. Here come the companions. One of the advantages of this week’s writing delay was seeing the flood of silly Gyruda combo decks hit social media. Gyruda was not on my initial list, but by Friday afternoon, I was a believer. Combined with clone effects like Phantasmal Image and Spark Double, or just flicker stalwart Restoration Angel, Gyruda can rip through both players’ decks for a mill finish or an eventual win with Thassa’s Oracle and a high devotion count. This synergy is comical in Legacy, where the companion mechanic completely negates the drawback of mulligans and Lion’s Eye Diamond discards. This combo flurry gameplay is likely unacceptable in lower-powered Standard, but is probably appropriate in Modern. Here, a T4 Gyruda off accelerants threatens to win the game in a Twin-like (sans flash) trigger cascade. This may feel weaker than T3 Karn or just T4 wins with Burn and Prowess, but this assumes Gyruda is a naturally drawn Magic card playing by card game rules. It’s not because it’s a companion. In that regard, Gyruda highlights two of mechanic’s sillier design consequences. First, Gyruda is totally insulated from discard spells, which eliminates one of the weakness to historic combo finishers like the Demon Kraken. Second, the mechanic itself automatically tutors Gyruda into your virtual hand with no cost of cards or clunky search mechanics. This frees up dozens of slots for combo pieces to ensure Gyruda’s initial trigger wins the game, and opens up room for protection like classic combo defenders Pact of Negation and Defense Grid. Gyruda has the potential to be a new Neobrand of sorts in Modern, a hyper-linear combo deck that trades the T1 and T2 speed for crushing inevitability and resilience to interaction.

3. Jegantha, the Wellspring

Big, dumb Jegs really emphasizes another iffy companion design element: low opportunity cost to get a “free” threat whenever you want it. There are a ton of Modern strategies which can slap a Jegantha into the sideboard with few if any changes. In exchange, they get a beefy Gurmag Angler impressionist whenever they need to call up a reserve threat. Humans can add the Elk to its ground force with virtually no adjustments. Infect can use Jegantha as a backup beatstick. Prowess can run it (if they’re not too busy running Lurrus), Storm can run it as an up-your-sleeve Tarmogoyf if the combo plan goes sideways, Tron can run it at the expense of Walking Ballista, and 5C Niv Mizzet can even take advantage of the Wellspring’s mana acceleration. Plus Slivers. Don’t forget Slivers. Can your opponent kill or chump Jegs? Sure, but remember that your opponent had to spend a whole turn or spell drawing that answer. You just dropped the Wellspring out of the aether. As Modern continues adapting to IKO newcomers, a number of decks are going to ask themselves if they want to modify a few core slots to have a “free” 5/5 in their hand at all times. The more we play with companion and realize just how much advantage it provides, the more decks are going to answer that question in the affirmative and make the necessary cuts.

2. Yorion, Sky Nomad

If Jegantha emphasized the low opportunity cost of jamming free creatures into random stragegies, Yorion emphasizes the mechanic’s consistency. Toolbox decks have always weighed the pros and cons of pushing beyond 60 cards to include even more searchable technology for Chord of Calling and Eladamri’s Call to find. The biggest reason to avoid this in the past was, you guessed it, consistency; it was often better to draw your best card in the deck than pluck a random tool from the shed. Enter Yorion. It doesn’t really matter what your ETB creatures and permanents look like when you are guaranteed to cash in on all of them again whenever you want. Do it as early as T4 or T5 to keep up with an opponent, or save Yorion for later when you need to cement a board position. The Sky Nomad is particularly strong in tandem with Modern mainstays Coatl and Astrolabe, which guarantee card advantage even if your board isn’t particularly developed. Now add Eternal Witness and throwback Restoration Angel for maximum value. I’ll quit Modern if Nassif doesn’t try Yorion in a Soulherder shell and would be horribly disappointed if Hoogland didn’t return to his Kiki Chord roots with Yorion leading the way. Final brewer’s bonus: Yorion’s restriction is significantly less restrictive than most of the other companions. I’d be surprised if we didn’t see the Sky Nomad wander into other strategies with relevant ETB effects, even if it’s only the Astrolabe/Coatl combo.

1. Lurrus of the Dream-Den

Believe the hype. Lurrus is exactly as insane as you think it is and probably even better. Remember our discussion of companion effectively creating guaranteed 0-for-1 exchanges if opponents choose to interact? Lurrus has the potential to create 0-for-2s on just the turn it enters play by recurring a threat prior to opponents getting priority. The Cat becomes a true grindy Nightmare if allowed to live beyond that, replaying everything from combo pieces in Devoted Devastation to threats in Burn or Jund to pure card-drawing value in anything that can play Mishra’s Bauble (financial protip: buy Bauble now before it gets even pricier). Modern decks that can even theoretically support Lurrus will need to completely reevaluate their deckbuilding basics to accomodate this companion, challenging even the most sacred archetype cows. For example, I was initially skeptical of Lurrus in Mono R Prowess due to the loss of refueling machine Bedlam Reveler. But a few helpful Redditors pointed out that the combination of Mishra’s Bauble and old-school Seal of Fire could easily make up for that loss. Same with Death’s Shadow strategies which would never abandon Street Wraith in earlier times. This ain’t your grandpappy’s Modern, however, and Lurrus more than makes up for Wraith’s lost velocity with immediate Bauble recursion and a zero-investment way to rebuy dead Shadows. We are going to see this card everywhere as people experiment with it, and once players have figured out the best Lurrus strategies, these are going to rapidly ascend to Modern’s top-tier. As I said before: believe the hype. Lurrus is going to change Modern decks in ways we won’t be able to predict until well into 2020, but at least you won’t be spending too much money on the singleton sideboard bullet to reoutfit your deck.

Prepare for Impact

I’m about 2,500 words over an acceptable article length and a few days over my deadline, but readers have all the quarantine time in the world to get through the list and I’m my own editor in chief. Overall, I’m excited to see where Ikoria takes the Modern metagame in the weeks to come. Modern is rapidly feeling pretty solved with clear format pillars and overtuned Tier 1 tyrants, and I’m hoping IKO can sprinkle a bit of spice on the format.

From a clasically ModernMetrics standpoint, I intend to track IKO playables as the weeks go by to see how we did on our list. If we hit a bunch of homeruns, we’ll have some good datapoints to inform a later article. If we strike out, we’ll see where we went wrong on false positives (e.g. overhyped duds like poor Kaya’s Guile) and false negatives (e.g. undersold disasters like Oko). Either way this will lead to more accurate evaluations going forward.

Let me know in the comments here or on Reddit if I missed anything or need to address a card or concept further. Depending on the feedback, I might throw in an “Honorable Mention” section or some other tasteful edits to answer common questions (no lowly ninja edits; trust me to timestamp any changes!). Here’s to an exciting new Modern environment as 2020 unfolds, and if anyone from Wizards is reading, don’t forget that “Fixing Modern” Mission Statement update Mr. Forsythe promised!

Changelog (Updated 04/19/2020)

1. Added card images to all entries. Fixed Ozolith spelling. (04/19/2020)

Fixing Modern: Redefining Format Mission

2019 was a year of Modern upheaval. I’ve been playing and writing about Modern since its birth, and the last time I remember a more formative 12 months for Modern was the inaugural 2011. Only one other year came close: 2016. See the polarizing Splinter Twin ban, Eldrazi Winter, two unbans, and a (later reversed) decision to limit Modern’s exposure on the (later renamed) Pro Tour. Also, Dredge cards. Lots of Dredge cards. But not even 2016’s turbulence stands alongside the rollercoaster of 2019, which saw seismic Modern shifts from new staples to format direction and everything in between.

All of these changes require Modern players to reflect on what happened in 2019 and understand what this means for Modern in the next decade. In this opening 2020 Modern Metrics post, the first of a new “Fixing Modern” series, we’re going to talk about Modern’s position in from 2019 into early 2020 and how this warns about a potential crisis state for the format. I’ll then propose concrete steps Wizards can take to restore format confidence and get Modern back on track, starting with today’s call to action: Wizards must update and redefine Modern’s core mission as a format. To be very clear before we start, Wizards also needs to take other actions to preserve Modern, including aggressive bans (the January 13 update was a good start), better communication, more support, etc. I will unpack these ideas later, but those actions will be ineffective on their own unless paired with a statement about format direction.

Modern Warning Signs

Before we jump into action steps, we need to survey the scope of the current problem. I suspect many readers may not even be convinced there is a problem and I don’t necessarily blame them. It’s tempting to write off claims about Modern’s decline as hyperbolic, social media doomsaying. You’re right to be skeptical. 2019 may have been an uproarious year for the format, but I admit it was by no means entirely negative. Major changes, both good and bad, include the following:

1. More bannings in any single year since 2011 (KCI, Bridge, Hogaak + Looting)
2. Three more bannings in early 2020 (Oko, Opal, and Lattice)
3. Stoneforge Mystic unbanned
4. The first direct-to-Modern set ever in Modern Horizons
5. Two Mythic Championship (MC2 and MC4) spotlights in just five months
6. Most Modern Grand Prix in format history (14 events vs. 12 in 2018)
7. Redefining staples for every top-tier archetype: Light up the Stage/Skewer, Karn, T3feri, Narset, Blast Zone, Once Upon a Time, Veil of Summer, Oko, Urza, Astrolabe, Coatl, Wrenn and Six, Yawgmoth, etc.
8. Endless social media buzz and hot takes about bans, unbans, and format health generally
9. The announcement of Pioneer, a competing nonrotating format that will eventually make its way to MTG Arena, Wizards’ premier esport product

This list of changes represents a mix of positive and negative, and there are definitely others I could have mentioned (streamlining MTGO events, increase in community-driven data analysis projects, etc.). But even though it’s a mixed list, it feels like the overall tide across online Modern communities has been much more negative.

Reddit is infested with ban and format health threads on a weekly basis. Major Twitch personalities like Jeff Hoogland and Caleb Durward cut back on Modern streams or stopped altogether, with SaffronOlive at MTG Goldfish debating a similar drop. Social media is full of murmurs about local game stores ditching Modern for Pioneer and Modern prices feel like they are slipping even more usual in the off-season. Audiences of some of the most Modern-biased channels, such as Masters of Modern, have also been tepid to the format. In their January 2, 2020 poll, the MoM folks found even their Modern diehards weren’t excited about the format:

It’s true these are anecdotal indicators. It’s also true some of these indicators saw promising reversals after the January bans (although Hooglandia ultimately did drop Modern again even after the bans). But two more notable measures of engagement also lagged in 2019 and early 2020. Moderners need to be paying attention to the warning signs of Grand Prix attendance and R/ModernMagic subreddit engagement to get a pulse on where our format is faltering.

Recent Grand Prix Flops

Grand Prix are some of the most important indicators of format popularity. When a format is ugly, Grand Prix attendance is uglier. We’ve seen it in the season of old Caw Blade and the recent reign of Field and Oko in Standard. Unfortunately, we’re seeing the same trend in late 2019 and early 2020 Modern. Let’s start with 2019’s GP Columbus over the November 22-24, 2019 weekend. This should have been an exciting and significant Modern event. There was no Hogaak to ruin things, Looting was gone, and we had a format reshaped by numerous staples with no clear front-running strategy. The attendance of the first non-team GP to kick off this brave new Modern world? 657 players.

If you track GP attendance as much as I do, you know this is a disaster for a premier format like Modern. In case you don’t have the “List of MTG Grand Prix events” Wikipedia page bookmarked, a) do that right now because it’s a great data source, and b) here are some comparisons:

• GP Columbus had the second lowest Modern GP attendance in any country over the format’s history. It was ahead of only 2013’s GP Brisbane in Australia (466 players), a country with historically far lower GP turnout. The third-place loser on the list, 2012’s GP Lincoln (716), at least had the honor of being Modern’s inaugural GP. It’s deeply alarming a GP in this mature period of Modern history falls behind its first GP ever.
• The last time a Modern GP came to Columbus was in July 2012. That GP brought a respectable 1,046 players, even though this was in Modern’s first year on the GP scene.
• Hogaak Summer represented a truly solved metagame that should have turned hundreds of players away from GP. All of the Hogaak GP still had higher attendance than Columbus: Minneapolis with 981, Las Vegas with 1,854, Dallas with 1,256, Barcelona with 1,514, and Birmingham with 911.
• GP Columbus had the worst attendance of any November/December Modern GP in history. December GP ranged from 1,051 at 2012 GP Toronto to 1,812 at 2018 GP Portland. November GP ranged from 789 at 2015 Porto Alegre (a low outlier) up to 1,115 at 2012 GP Chicago and beyond to 2,679 at 2015 GP Pittsburgh. This suggests it wasn’t just a seasonal drop; GP Columbus was an indictment of the format.

By all these measures, GP Columbus was a significant flop for Modern. How did 2020’s GP Austin, with the promise of long-await Twitch coverage, fare a little more than a month later? Almost as bad with a paltry 802 players. 802 isn’t quite as bad as Columbus’s 657, but in the larger GP context, it’s effectively the same story:

• GP Columbus may have had the worst American attendance, but GP Dallas is in the running. It’s bottom four for the U.S. and sixth-worst globally across all 74 events. The others are 2013 Brisbane, 2019 Columbus, 2012 Lincoln, 2013 San Diego (759), and 2013 Porto Alegre (789). Notice this group consists only of GP from Modern’s earliest years and two from winter 2019-20.
• Previous Texas Modern GP did not have attendance issues. 2016’s GP Dallas brought 2,019 players, putting it in the top 20% of all Modern GP. 2019’s GP Dallas, which happened during the first wave of Hogaak Summer, still saw 1,256. Dallas is just 3 hours from Austin and it’s worrisome this later Texan GP saw a drop of 450+ players less than a year later.
• January GP historically have some of the lowest attendance relative to other months, but GP Austin was low even by those standards. Modern GP average about 1,600 players from 2012 through present. January GP never got better than 2019 GP Oakland (1,139) and bottomed out at 2013 GP Bilbao (988). GP Austin still came in under those standards to set a new January low.

Admittedly, these are just two events. It’s also true non-Modern Grand Prix suffered similar attendance hits, which suggests game-wide, or at least cross-format, issues. It also suggests event organization issues, whether entry fees, side event offerings, reward structure, etc. These confounding variables could suggest GP Columbus and Austin were just outliers to be ignored. At the same time, Grand Prix attendance has always been a gold standard of of format health. If two U.S. Grand Prix like Columbus and Austin aren’t drawing crowds in an established format that should be exciting for players, we should seriously question Modern’s standing with the community.

Declining R/ModernMagic traffic

R/ModernMagic saw an unprecedented drop in traffic through late 2019 relative to any other year in the subreddit’s existence. In many regards, this is an even more critical indicator of Modern popularity than tournaments, as it’s one of Modern’s most visible entry points for players of all experience levels. It costs $70+ to enter a GP, on top of travel and lodging. It costs $0 to go on Reddit as long as you have data and/or internet. This makes Reddit one of the better proxy variables for format engagement.

Below, I draw from both Pubshift Reddit Search data and the Google BigQuery reddit_comments dataset to plot and analyze subreddit comments from July 2013 through December 2019. I needed to use both data sources because the BigQuery dataset doesn’t go past July 2019 but the Reddit Search tool only allows searches in 30-day (not monthly) increments. I also needed to filter out duplicated comments, a BigQuery glitch in a few months like July 2019, and exclude MTGCardFetcher comments. The results are below:

The top labels indicate the month and year of some major Modern events, along with total number of subreddit comments in that month. This peaked at 30,043 comments in May 2019 during Modern Horizons previews. On the bottom, I’ve circled November/December points in any given year, noting comment totals. These circles highlight the natural comment decline every November and December as Modern season winds down. But despite this natural decline, and despite overall upward subreddit participation, November and December 2019 stand out as particularly bad months:

• 2019’s November and December had the lowest raw number of comments for any combination of November/December except 2013 (1,338+1,380) and 2014 (6,178 + 5,330), when the subreddit was in its infancy.
• In 2019, November (12,239) and December (12,188) individually had the lowest numbers of monthly comments in any month since August 2015 (12,130).
• R/ModernMagic hasn’t seen any month with fewer than 13,000 comments since 2015, let alone two in a row.
• Although R/ModernMagic sees declining traffic in every winter stretch, 2019 had the biggest percentage change relative to the year’s peak comments, suggesting a unique disinvestment as the year ended:
  • 2013: +0% (December had the most comments all year)
  • 2014: -26% from August peak to December low
  • 2015: +0% (December had the most comments all year)
  • 2016: -46% from January peak to December low
  • 2017: -40% from March peak to December low
  • 2018: -32% from February peak to December low
  • 2019: -59% from May peak to December low
• We can also average monthly comments for any given year to see if December counts are uniquely low relative to average annual traffic. Again, 2019 stands out as a steep dropoff:
  • 2013: +14% (increase as subreddit/format kept growing)
  • 2014: +10% (another increase as subreddit/format were still growing)
  • 2015: +8% (last year of December growth)
  • 2016: –21% (first year with the observed winter dropoff)
  • 2017: -23%
  • 2018: -12% (slight reversal of dropoff from previous year)
  • 2019: -46% (worst December dropoff on record; more than twice the next worse in 2017)

These datapoints suggest there is a unique downturn in Modern engagement (as captured on this subreddit) as 2019 closed and 2020 begins. January 2020 isn’t done yet, but it’s on track to be under 20k comments, which would be the worst start to a year since 2015. January 2018 technically saw lower engagement, but February 2018 (JTMS/BBE unbanned) had a huge 25k comments. January 2019 will be well under that benchmark even with the galvanizing Opal/Oko/Lattice ban update. Overall, we’ve never seen a decline of this magnitude in R/ModernMagic history.

As an added check, I also compared r/ModernMagic traffic with r/MagicTCG traffic to see if this phenomenon was unique to Modern. It’s possible November/December 2019 were slow for even Magic’s most-trafficked subreddit. Maybe Magic players were generally disengaging from Reddit discussion after a hard year. Unfortunately, it really was just a Modern trend.

• Relative to all Decembers from 2013 through 2019, R/MagicTCG saw the second most comments in December 2019 (112,253) behind only December 2015 (126,788). December 2019 even beat out 2016, 2017, and 2018. By contrast, R/ModernMagic had its worst December since 2014.
• Comments on the main subreddit weren’t even at their 2019 lowest in December. December 2019’s 112,253 comments were still ahead of February (108,025) and October (100,870). Modern’s December 2019 comments were both the lowest for all of 2019 and worse, the lowest in any year since 2015.
• Unlike R/ModernMagic, 2019 R/MagicTCG comments saw an expected drop from their annual average to their December low. The December 2019 drop was just 20%, which was actually more gradual than the drops in 2018 (-25%), 2017 (-32%), and 2016 (-25%). In comparison, Modern’s 46% drop was the worst ever and was actually twice as steep as its second worst drop in 2017.

Based on these datapoints, it is clear R/ModernMagic’s experienced a unique 2019 decline in comments. Moreover, this decline was specific to this subreddit, not the broader R/MagicTCG community. These observations force us to take a hard look at the biggest element R/ModernMagic represents. Not its players, moderators, topics, etc., but the Modern format itself.

Collective signs of crisis

It’s impossible to know if these observed issues will extend into 2020. It’s also tempting to explain away any one or even all of these issues as isolated or statistically irrelevant events. Maybe Modern is just currently unhealthy and after a few (more) bans/unbans it will be back to its former glory. Perhaps R/ModernMagic traffic and GP attendance aren’t good indicators of engagement to begin with. It’s also possible people are just more interested in Pioneer right now and are focusing their efforts elsewhere. I admit none of the above observations are causally related to, or even necessarily correlated with, a declining format. We also lack some of the best indicators of format engagement like MTGO tournament attendance, reports from local game stores, attendance at mid-sized tournament, Modern product sales across sites, etc. Any of these datapoints might undermine the bleak picture I’m trying to paint.

This is one of the few times in my content creation history where I am asking readers to suspend skepticism and ask yourself a question: how does Modern feel at the beginning of 2020? If you’re being honest with yourself and surveying the state of your local and online game scenes, I suspect the answer is “Not good.” Something feels different about our current Modern issues and to me, something feels broken. Not broken like the rampaging threat of Hogaak with a quick-ban fix. Broken like the gradual, sad transformation of format fanatics into a herd of disinvested, 3/3 elks or the feeling that everything in Modern is just broken and unfun. Add in Pioneer bearing down on our player and tournament bases and our future looks even more uncertain, even after the January bans.

As 2020 starts, Modern players feel bitter, frustrated, upset, and exhausted. The January 13 ban update was a great first step at changing these emotions, but Wizards and the community can’t stop there. The quantitative measures I’ve presented simultaneously contribute to this sense and are indicators of broader discontent. I would be thrilled if  these measures are proven to be irrelevant anecdotes a few months down the road. But I fear the collective picture is one of a gradual but noticeable format decline that ends with Modern fading from tournament and competitive relevance. We need to take steps to rebuild from 2019 before the decline becomes irreversible. This needs to move beyond mere banlist changes as we saw with Oko/Opal/Lattice. Wizards must address foundational Modern issues essential to long-term format stability.

Action Steps to Redefine Mission

Back in 2016, I wrote a series of Modern Nexus articles called “Fixing Modern” to call attention to major format issues that erupted in the early part of that year. Never before and never since has there been a more urgent time to revive that series and demand Wizards action. Today, that starts with revisiting and updating Modern’s format mission.

Defining format mission in 2016

Wizards defined Modern’s mission in its inaugural 2011 “A Modern Proposal” and “Welcome to the Modern World” articles. These articles pledged Modern as a diverse, nonrotating format without the reprint issues of Legacy. This minimalist vision sustained Modern for years until January through March 2016, Eldrazi Winter, when many in the Modern playerbase developed similar feelings to those we are having today. Some felt betrayed by the Splinter Twin ban. Others didn’t care about Twin so much as the questionable relationship between bans, format stability, and the Pro Tour that came to light in the months following Twin’s exit. Still others just hated the broken format. Once the Eldrazi menace ruined two months of otherwise exciting Modern, the community felt a collective uncertainty in a way they had never felt since Modern’s dawn in 2011.

Channeling this discontent in March 2016, I wrote two Modern Nexus articles on two major steps Wizards needed to do to fix Modern. The first, “Defining Format Mission,” identified a lack of clear format identity Wizards needed to clarify. The second, “Improving Communication,” talked about the need for streamlined, centralized Wizards updates on the format in this fast-moving digital age. Both articles had a solid Nexus reception and I know they generated a few Tweets at Wizards staff. I don’t know if anyone at Wizards read them, but I do know on April 24, 2016, Aaron Forsythe (in)directly responded to both of them by publishing one of the best Modern articles Wizards has ever produced: the seminal “Where Modern Goes From Here.”

Forsythe wrote his article as a companion piece to Helene Bergeot’s (director of Organized Play at the time) controversial announcement about pulling Modern off the Pro Tour. Wizards ultimately reversed this misguided decision, but Forsythe’s article continued to stand on its own as a triumph of Wizards communication. In his article, a must-read for any Moderner, he laid out nine guidelines for Modern as a format. If you want an exhaustive breakdown of these guidelines, check out my old Nexus piece “Pro Tour Ends and New Beginnings” for the scoop. For the purposes of this article, I’m just going to quote Forsythe’s guidelines below. As he writes, Modern should…

1. “Be a fun way to play Magic (first, and easy to forget, but very important!)”
2. “Let you tap into your collection to expand upon established decks and familiar strategies from Magic‘s recent past”
3. “Offer different types of decks and gameplay than what you typically see in Standard”
4. “Not rotate, allowing you to keep a deck for a long period of time”
5. “Consist of cards that we are willing and able to reprint”
6. “Have a diverse top-tier metagame featuring over a dozen archetypes”
7. “Not be dominated by fast, non-interactive decks (consistent kills before turn four are a red flag)”
8. “Be at a power level that allows some newly printed Standard cards to affect the format (we don’t have other ways to introduce cards into the format, and we like it when cards or decks can transition)”
9. “Have as small a banned list as possible that accomplishes all the previous goals”

Although these nine guidelines were good signposts to get Modern from 2016 through present, they are no longer enough to sustain the format. In that spirit, here are three fixes Wizards can make to modernize Forsythe’s article.

Fix #1: publish an updated article

Wizards has gotten a lot better at communication since 2016, but there are still significant gaps between what Wizards is communicating and how players expect Wizards to communicate. On the one hand, I acknowledge players are often unrealistic in their expectations; Forsythe will not, and should not, reveal R&D’s 10-year master plan in a 2:15 AM Tweet on a Saturday night. Wizards balances thousands of projects, priorities, and outreach campaigns. Modern is just a small piece of that. On the other hand, in this rapid-fire age of social media, Wizards needs to meet consumers where they are. Players rightfully expect official, semi-regular statements on the format, not just a series of cryptic, decentralized Tweets we continue to research like History Ph.D. students digging through old archives.

To that end, Wizards should publish an updated “Where Modern Goes in 2020 and Beyond” article in which they revisit Forsythe’s 2016 guidelines. This updated article will have three major effects on the community. First, it will give Modern players a recent reference point they can use when discussing the format. Wizards can even link their article at the top of the “Modern Format” page on their website for added visibility. This will reduce some of the hyperbolic, unsupported opinions about the format and give us all a common language to talk about where Modern is heading.

Second, this new article will address some of the big changes Modern has seen since 2016. Between Pioneer’s overlap with many of these guidelines (more on that in the next section), Modern Horizons directly contradicting elements of guideline #8, Standard putting more than its fair share of playables into Modern circulation, and some dated/ambiguous language, there’s a lot Wizards can expand on since 2016.

Finally, “Where Modern Goes in 2020 and Beyond” will show the community Wizards is listening and cares about Modern. This will directly address the sense of exhaustion, anxiety, fear, and outright hopelessness many Moderners are feeling these days. Players need Wizards to rally them. We can’t do it on our own and need some words from the top to show the Magic powers-that-be care about our format’s future. This will go a long way towards rebuilding the goodwill Wizards spent in tumultuous 2019.

Fix #2: revise guidelines to reflect new developments

Once Wizards publishes “Where Modern Goes in 2020 and Beyond,” they can’t just recycle the old guidelines. Most of them need some kind of update or clarification to remain in dialogue with new player anxieties, broader Magic developments, and the overall changing Modern landscape. Wizards should update, clarify, and/or refine all nine of the original 2016 guidelines in its new 2020 article. 

Here are suggestions for each of the guidelines. These are just ideas and Wizards does not need to make these exact edits for the “2020 and Beyond” article to be a success. I’d be open to any number of revisions on these themes as long as Wizards make

1. “Be a fun way for experienced players to play and compete in Magic (first, and easy to forget, but very important!)”

“Fun” is always going to be subjective, especially in a wide format like Modern, but Wizards needs to clarify what kind of fun players can expect. This update tries to do this in two ways. First, it connects Modern’s unique brand of fun to a more “experienced” playerbase. Veteran, enfranchised players who graduate from Standard should know Modern is going to offer a different type of fun than you’d expect in newer formats. This fun will include powerful, cheaper, and more broken gameplay than you’d see in Standard, and I believe shifting the audience focus to “experienced” players captures that.

Second, it build Modern’s competitive nature into its opening guideline. Modern is not a format you should just play at the kitchen table, cafeteria, or other casual venues. Modern must be a viable avenue for enfranchised, experience players to compete, make money, attain Mythic Championship invites, and fulfill their Spikey desires in the game.

2. “Let you tap into your collection to expand upon established decks and familiar strategies from Magic’s recent past second decade and beyond“

There’s nothing “recent” about Modern’s scope and Wizards should not box our format into this ambiguous timeframe. Magic started in 1994. The first Modern set, 8th Edition, started in 2003,  nine years later. It’s now 2019, 16 years since that first Modern set; we’re further away from Modern’s start point now than the starting point was from Magic’s birth. That’s not “recent” by any definition and that term needs to go. Moreover, this guideline as written has considerable mission drift into Pioneer; both formats could literally use it as a talking point. By redefining the time frame, I separate Modern’s scope from Pioneer’s. This is one of many ways the guidelines must differentiate two formats. It also captures the significant gap between Pioneer’s start in Return to Ravnica (October 2012) and Modern’s in 8th Edition (July 2003).

3. “Offer different types of decks and gameplay more powerful than what you typically see in Standard and Pioneer“

As noted above, Modern’s guidelines have too much mission drift into Pioneer; this revision further distinguishes the formats. There was a great Reddit post the other week by u/Vaitka, “Defining a New Modern Format Identity,” where they proposed Modern as a format of permanent and boardstate interaction. I love that they started this conversation but think it’s hard to pigeonhole Modern into one particular type of gameplay experience. This proposed revision keeps it broad while capturing the fundamental difference between Standard, Pioneer, and Modern: Modern is a much “more powerful” format. This leaves room for Wizards and player interpretation while also acknowledging you are going to see crazier stuff in Modern than elsewhere.

4. “Not rotate, allowing you to keep a deck for a long period of time” (nailed it!)

At its core, guideline #5 is really about Modern being a nonrotating format with a fixed start point, and Forsythe’s initial version captures that perfectly.

5. “Consist of cards that we are willing and able to reprint” (nailed it!)

This one was also a home run. It both encapsulates Modern’s purpose as a nonrotating format unburdened by the Reserved List (“able to reprint”) and captures Wizards’ push to move away from certain older card designs (“willing… to reprint”). I’d love it if Wizards explicitly cited the Reserved List in this core guideline, but I acknowledge that might not be realistic for legal or company policy reasons. I’ll add that Wizards does need to print Modern staples even if it messes with Limited/draft considerations. Whether that means more standalone products like Secret Lair or just sacrificing rare slots to a needed reprint, Wizards needs to make that change.

6. “Have a strategically diverse top-tier metagame featuring over a dozen archetypes”

This is a small edit that dramatically shifts the guideline from raw, deck diversity to meaningful, strategic diversity. In its current form, guideline #6 suggests a Modern format with 12 different aggro decks and 1 control deck would meet the diversity requirements because it represents 13 different archetypes. That’s not what players want and it’s not good for long-term format health. Players want strategic diversity among top-tier decks, not simply twenty shades of turn-3.5 aggro. This revision commits Wizards to supporting different top-tier strategic categories like control, midrange, big mana, aggro, combo, tempo, and others, addressing some of Modern’s central criticisms over the last few years (i.e. the overused but sometimes true “two ships that pass in the night” complaint).

7. “Not be dominated by fast, non-interactive decks (top-tier decks with consistent kills before turn four are a red flag)”

This guideline refers to Modern’s “turn four rule,” which Wizards loosely defined in 2011’s “Welcome to the Modern World.” Unfortunately, the guideline as-written does not actually include one of the most important criterion for turn four rule violators: that a deck be BOTH “top-tier” AND consistently winning on turn three or earlier. This will eliminate some player confusion around the rule. Decks are allowed to win on turn three or earlier without being in the banning crosshairs; they just can’t also be top-tier while doing so. I know some players want Wizards to eliminate the turn four rule standard altogether, but I don’t see this happening. If the rule is sticking around, Wizards at least needs to define it correctly in its guidelines.

8. “Be at a power level that allows some newly printed Standard cards to affect the format (we don’t have other ways to introduce cards into the format, and we like it when cards or decks can transition)“

That’s not a typo; I want Wizards to delete this entire bullet point from their guidelines. It is outdated, artificially limits Modern’s power level, and creates more mission drift into Pioneer territory. Standard sets consistently add top-tier staples to Modern decks and there’s no reason to set limits on Modern’s power level for new sets to do this. Just look at War of the Spark and Throne of  Eldraine; it’s not like Wizards needed to limit Modern’s power for those cards to break into the format or break it altogether. More importantly, Wizards can literally introduce cards into Modern bypassing Standard with Modern Horizons products. This gives them a non-Standard avenue of manipulating Modern’s metagame levers

Finally, this bullet point is much more suited to Pioneer than Modern. If we accept that Pioneer isn’t going anywhere, we must look for ways to distinguish Pioneer from Modern. In Blake Rasmussen’s “Announcing the Pioneer Format” article, literally shifts this guideline from Modern’s wheelhouse to Pioneer’s:

The oldest Modern set came out in 2003—sixteen years ago. And now that Modern’s card pool is this large, it no longer serves the needed role of “format where you can use your Standard cards after rotation.” For players who started more recently and still want to play with their favorite cards after rotation, Pioneer, like Modern before it, bridges that gap…

Given Pioneer’s adoption of this guideline, Modern no longer needs it. This again differentiates Modern as a powerful format that is not limited by Standard’s power-level. Modern must be a safe haven for older, powerful strategies even if Wizards must curtail Pioneer’s power to allow Standard cards a home after rotation.

9. “Have as small a banned list as possible Ban cards as needed that to accomplishes all the previous goals while limiting damage to the core identities of decks“

Wizards should not artificially limit the size of the banlist, which is already quite long, and should instead be willing to ban as many cards as needed to promote format health. At the same time, they must avoid hurting the core of decks players invest in and love. In my experience, Modern players don’t really care how long the banlist is as long as the format is fun, their cards don’t lose too much value, and their decks remain relatively secure and competitive. This means moving away from bans like Splinter Twin and towards bans like Deceiver Exarch: surgical nerfs to decks that preserve their cores but make the decks weaker.

Similarly, this philosophy allows Wizards to hit more decks at the margins with  while not disturbing the main gameplan. This could include banning overly-efficient sideboard cards like Veil of Summer, Nature’s Claim, and/or Force of Vigor to weaken unfair decks that lean on this hyper-efficient counterplay to answer cards like countermagic, discard, Stony Silence/Rest in Peace, etc. To be very clear, this does not give Wizards license to obliterate format strategies that vocal critics dislike. Urza’s Tower, Valakut, Blighted Agent and Amulet of Vigor don’t all get banned in this model. But if Wizards can hit those decks at the fringes (e.g. sideboard and supporting cards), people can still play Tron, Scapeshift, Infect, Amulet Titan, and other decks. They’ll just be less resilient, consistent, and powerful. I’ll also note Wizards should not deliberately ban around obvious problems (the Bridge and Hogaak debacle). If something needs to be banned, ban it even if it might upset some players.

These revisions are the most complicated part of a hypothetical “2020 and Beyond” article. I’d also accept any number of edits to my own proposals and had a dozen other ideas that I would have been happy to publish. Regardless of which versions Wizards goes with, this will still require substantial time investment from key R&D members and at least a month to get together. That investment will be worth it in the end. If Wizards needs more time to parse through different drafts, it would be enough to announce an early March 2020 release date for this pending statement and then honor the deadline a few months out. That would stabilize a distraught playerbase and give Wizards time to put work into this critical product.

Fix #3: add a pledge for ongoing support

As part of its updated design and product philosophy, Wizards has started to more aggressively support non-Standard formats. This includes Brawl, Historic, and Pauper on Arena, Commander and Pioneer in paper, Cube through new product releases, Modern through Modern Horizons, and other examples of Wizards embracing different ways players enjoy Magic. Modern has been Wizards marquee nonrotating format for years and with all this shuffle, especially the Pioneer push, it can feel like we have been left behind. To that end, Wizards must set clear expectations for Modern’s future by including a realistic commitment to ongoing Modern support.

Since 2011, Wizards has sold and supported Modern as the premier nonrotating format without Legacy’s card availability/reprint issues. This makes Modern a long-term commitment. Wizards has continued to reduce large-scale Legacy support in recent years, particularly with respect to paper events. If this trend continues, Wizards needs to honor its commitment for players to have a longstanding, nonrotating format where they can do powerful stuff. Modern used to fulfill this promise while also serving as a bridge for players transitioning cards/decks out of Standard. With Pioneer in the mix, that no longer needs to happen.

Based on this, here’s my proposed final guideline:

10. “Be one of our regular competitive experiences for experienced players who want to compete in a nonrotating format.”

Keyword: “regular.” I understand Wizards can’t commit to N Modern events over X years. I also understand Wizards is not going to remove Pioneer from the competitive rotation, as Pioneer does serve as an important bridge from Standard to Modern. Acknowledging these realities, this guideline commits to some degree of regular, competitive Modern play for the “experienced players” who want to enjoy “nonrotating” Magic formats. This guideline also allows Wizards some space to adjust Modern visibility as other formats rise and fall out of the spotlight.

Bans, Unbans, and Next Steps

Taken together, these three fixes in the hypothetical “Where Modern Goes in 2020 and Beyond” article will re-anchor players and rebuild both player confidence and Wizards’ capital as format managers. But Wizards can’t stop there. Earlier in the article, I made it very clear that Wizards can’t just redefine format mission with a glitzy new “2020 and Beyond” statement. Wizards also needs to take concrete action to eliminate some persistent Modern problems, and this needs to happen in the form of bans. Specifically, here are the kinds of surgical bans I’d like Wizards to consider:

• Powerful tools used by over-represented strategies without hurting the deck’s core identity, e.g. potentially Nature’s Claim, Force of Vigor, etc. (Lattice was a great example of this banning style in action)
• Overpowered roadblocks that narrowly define archetypes and push others out of contention, e.g. potentially Veil of Summer, Teferi, Time Raveler, etc.
• Dominant metagame decks; banning at the fringes is good but sometimes a core card needs to be hit, e.g. Opal recently or KCI in the past. No more Bridge bans when the proverbial Hogaak is still loose!

Wizards also needs to revisit the banlist to identify unban targets, or at least release public statements about popular unban suggestions. Splinter Twin, Birthing Pod, and Green Sun’s Zenith are possible considerations in this regard. It might even be worth unbanning multiple cards simultaneously to do a Pioneer-inspired, bottom-up approach; I’d start with all cards that don’t violate the turn four rule. On top of this, Wizards needs to make significant Play Design changes to ensure we don’t see a repeat of 2019’s design mistakes which broken formats across the play experience spectrum. This is in addition to more regular communication on Modern, defining a regular Modern point of contact for the community, releasing even more data for metagames that already crystalize in mere weeks, addressing Modern’s apparent disconnect from Arena, and other top-level changes. I’ll unpack these ideas and more in future “Fixing Modern” articles.

Of course, the burden to fix Modern isn’t entirely on Wizards. Players have an important role too and I will explore our own action steps in later articles. This includes pushing back against ban mania, reducing our tendency towards hot takes, memes, and one-liners, and generating more quality Modern content even in the off-season.

Clearly, there’s a lot of work to do for everyone. But I believe Modern is worth fixing and worth saving in the long-term, and I believe players and Wizards can come together to achieve this goal. I hope this article generates some important talking points for the community and inspires Wizards to take action along these lines. Feel free to reach out to me on Reddit, the MTG Nexus forums, or through this blog with comments/ideas/feedback/criticism and I look forward to hearing from Moderners soon.

Hogaak Summer 2019 Articles

I haven’t been updating the blog in a while, but you can bet I’ve still been writing Modern content! I’ve mostly moved my writing over to MTG Nexus, with a few other “pieces” posted directly to Reddit. MTGN is a community project intended to give staff/users more freedom than the MTG Salvation forum I used to participate in (which has changed hands a bunch of times, hurting forum consistency). I’m moderating the Modern forums over there, so feel free to come over and join the discussion.

Here are some of the major pieces I’ve published all summer, complete with the same kind of statistical/data-driven approach you’ve come to expect from MTG ModernMetrics and related content.

• 08/11/2019: “Hogaak’s Emergency Ban Case: Data and Historical Precedents” on Reddit
  • I’ve never advocated for an emergency ban before, but this time I went all in. In summary, Hogaak represented a uniquely broken Modern deck like 2016 Eldrazi. We have more than enough data at this point, both pre-Bridge and post-MC4, to prove the deck’s abnormally high performance. The metagame does not appear to be adapting and Wizards should act now, banning Hogaak before GP Birmingham and GP Las Vegas to improve those experiences. In doing so, Wizards is not simply emergency-banning a card (a dangerous precedent). They would be emergency-banning a card following from a recent ban that clearly missed the mark.

• 08/07/2019: “MC4 Data Deep-Dive: Hogaak and Graveyard Hate” on MTGN
  • This article focuses on two questions: how dominant was Hogaak and how much graveyard hate did successful decks pack? In addition to the data-driven answers to those questions, I also give some framing about the limitations of both T8-level data and MC/PT-level data.
  • Reddit discussion here

• 07/16/2019: “Unpacking the Bridge From Below Ban” on MTGN
  • In this article, I do a line-by-line reading of the Bridge ban to highlight some major ban policy implications going forward. This will help guide our future ban predictions and assessments of format health so we are more in line with Wizards’ thought process. I also contextualize some of the Bridge ban elements alongside previous bans.
  • Reddit discussion here

In the future, I will make sure to crosspost more consistently so everything is in one place.

Most of these pieces should be considered historical analysis at this point: the Looting/Hogaak ban and SFM unban (!!!) have fundamentally changed the Modern landscape. This puts the summer’s articles in new context. Some of the Bridge ban conclusions are now undermined. For instance, Wizards said MC2 Dredge was a good example of an acceptable graveyard deck, but then banned Looting just a few months later. Similarly, all the Hogaak datapoints are irrelevant now that the deck is extinct, but could serve as indicators for future health assessments. If graveyard hate ever looks like that again, we’ll be in trouble.

As for the emergency ban case, Wizards has largely undone the potential damage of Hogaak Summer with the bold and unprecedented move of a Looting ban and SFM unban at the same time. This was a strong move by Wizards to keep Modern exciting after a summer that could have crippled Modern popularity for the rest of 2019. Overall, I’m excited for post-Hogaak Modern and looking forward to writing more on this dynamic and exciting format.

2018 Top Deck Performance Review

Happy 2019! We’ve seen quite a few Modern developments since we last checked in and it’s an exciting place to be as we start the new year. This has included a series of Grand Prix Top 8s featuring numerous breakout strategies, none less influential than Arclight Phoenix decks which have swooped onto the tournament scene and scored significant finishes. Bant Spirits may be replacing Humans as the format’s premier disruptive aggro deck, Grixis Death’s Shadow has returned with a vengeance, and mainstays like BG Rock and UW Control have clung on with high profile finishes. Meanwhile, Krark-Clan Ironworks (KCI) continues to post outstanding performances, including a commanding 4 slots in the Grand Prix Oakland T8. All of this has led to extensive discussion. Online Modern communities are ablaze with conversation about format health, possible bans/unbans, the viability of various strategies, and an overall retrospective on 2018 Modern. Today, I want to contribute to this discussion with an overview of top deck overall match win percentages (MWPs) and matchup MWPs (MMWPs) from 2018. Plus a little 2019 data courtesy of GP Oakland.

One of the most pleasant surprises of late 2018 was a series of ChannelFireball articles by contributor Tobi Henke. Henke would be on my shortlist for Magic authors of 2018 with his data-driven analyses of Modern, Standard, and tournament scenes. This has returned quantitative data to the forefront of our conversation, and I am looking forward to more of Henke’s articles. I am particularly impressed with his two deep dives into GP Portland conversion rates and GP Portland MWPs; I strongly encourage everyone to read them. His newest entries have inspired me to continue updating the Modern MWP dataset I drew on in my last post.

The Data and Limitations

The MWP dataset has grown to include results from GP Prague, Vegas, Sao Paulo, Barcelona, Atlanta, and Portland. It also includes matches where decks were known via coverage/Twitter/articles/etc. from all StarCityGames Opens from May through August (6 in total). This results in a dataset with over 15k matches; a relatively robust sample of 2018 Modern results. Of course, as with all datasets, this one has limitations that must be considered when interpreting the MWP results. Some of the biggest are below:

• Most GP data was self-reported through online surveys where players submitted the deck they piloted. See my previous post or Henke’s articles for more on this method and the community members who deserve credit for it. This skews the sample towards enfranchised/knowledgeable players who are plugged into online communities where they see and value such a survey. These players may also be more skilled or experienced overall, and/or have better records that they are willing to share.
• A chunk of GP/SCG data comes from cross-referencing Twitter/articles/video coverage decks with results/standings/pairings. This could bias the sample towards better and/or higher profile/knowledge players, i.e. those who are more likely to be featured or report on their performance.
• Not all GP/SCG results from any given event are included; just the sample that we have decklists for. This will miss the broader tournament context and might skew results in favor of the most-played decks.
• SCG and GP results/data may not be compatible. Some community members and authors have argued that different types of players play at one event type versus the other. There have been debates about relative competitiveness which, to my knowledge, are unresolved. This might jeopardize our data’s validity as a measure of a deck’s “true” or “overall” MWP.
• MTGO data is not included. As many of you know, Wizards has dramatically cut our access to MTGO data, which makes it very difficult to include in this project. Wizards is likely to make their own MWP calculations primarily from their massive MTGO datasets, as we have seen in previous Standard banlist updates. MTGO and paper dynamics can be very different (e.g. different timing systems, different deck function regarding loops, etc.) and this analysis will miss the MTGO dimension.
• Events are taken from across 2018. On the one hand, this increases N and makes for potentially more reliable results. On the other hand, this might cross-pollinate our sample with incompatible time periods or even decks playing different cards. For instance, Phoenix wasn’t even a legal card for most of 2018. KCI was not using Sai. Dredge did not have Creeping Chill. UW Control did not have to battle Dredge with Creeping Chill. All of these cases and the countless others we can identify show potential issues with mixing time periods. Ultimately, I believed an increased N was worth those costs, but I’d be happy to discuss adjustments if that’s an issue for readers.
• Despite all this work, N is still smaller than I would like for most of these observations. It gets even worse when we look at the MMWPs later. I’ll try to account for this with confidence intervals and transparency in showing the sample N, but there’s no substitute for more observations. Unfortunately, we simply don’t have access to bigger samples and need to work with what we have.

I am sure there are other notable limitations that I have not mentioned here. As with all data-related articles, I encourage readers to not get too stuck on the limitations of a dataset. One of the common criticisms of statistics is that you can twist stats to describe anything. This can be true, but it is also true that we can wring out limitations to invalidate any dataset we look at. This often causes us to miss out on valuable information because we are too busy trying to pick it apart. If anyone has data questions or comments, I’d be happy to discuss them in the comments or another community platform.

Overall MWP Results

The list below gives overall MWP results for all decks with >300 observed matches in the dataset. This data only includes known opponents and excludes mirrors. It represents roughly 75% of all data we have, with N>300 being a cutoff that is about one standard deviation over the average number of matches for any given deck. I’ve ordered the list by MWP but provided Ns for all decks as well. Finally, I give the 95% confidence interval for all deck MWPs (i.e. the likely low- and high-end of the MWP estimate) assuming a normal distribution. As an example of reading the list, KCI averaged a 56.9% MWP over 693 matches, but the true MWP is 95% likely to fall somewhere between 53.2% and 60.5%. But there’s still a 5% chance it’s even lower or higher. For more on confidence intervals and working with MWP data, I highly recommend you read Karsten’s excellent “How Many Games…” article on ChannelFireball.

1. KCI: 56.9% (N= 693, 53.2%-60.5%)
2. Dredge: 55.1% (N= 314, 49.6%-60.6%)
3. HS Affinity: 55% (N= 460, 50.5%-59.5%)
4. Bant Spirits: 53.9% (N= 323, 48.4%-59.3%)
5. Counters Company: 53.7% (N= 419, 48.9%-58.5%)
6. Humans: 51.8% (N= 1520, 49.3%-54.3%)
7. UW Control: 51.6% (N= 888, 48.3%-54.9%)
8. Gx Tron: 51.5% (N= 1026, 48.4%-54.5%)
9. Hollow One: 50.8% (N= 494, 46.4%-55.2%)
10. Storm: 50.1% (N= 425, 45.4%-54.9%)
11. Grixis Death’s Shadow: 50.1% (N= 485, 45.7%-54.6%)
12. Infect: 49.6% (N= 510, 45.3%-53.9%)
13. Burn: 49.6% (N= 1136, 46.7%-52.5%)
14. Jeskai Control: 48.4% (N= 833, 45%-51.8%)
15. Titanshift: 47% (N= 483, 42.5%-51.4%)
16. Jund: 46.3% (N= 734, 42.7%-49.9%)
17. Mardu Pyromancer: 46% (N= 678, 42.3%-49.8%)
18. Affinity: 44% (N= 609, 40.1%-47.9%)

Some big takeaways according to this data:

• KCI remains the top performing deck by MWP in Modern. Incidentally, it is also the top-performing GP deck of 2018 by GP/PT T8s (14 T8s total vs. 11 for Gx Tron and 12 for Humans).
• Of the 11 decks with >50% MWP in this large N dataset, literally all of them play either Hierarch, Stirrings, Looting, or SV/Opt. These are Modern’s pillars: play them.
• The shift from Humans to Bant Spirits appears to be reflected in the MWP data, showing Bant pull ahead by a few percentage points with admittedly a smaller N.
• Hardened Scales Affinity has supplanted traditional Affinity by MWP but the GP results are a lot closer: 4 T8s for HS Affinity vs. 3 for traditional. That said, Affinity has not made T8 at a GP since 07/2018, whereas HS Affinity has secured 4 slots in that time. This further vindicates the shift.
• By MWP alone, UW Control appears to be plain better than Jeskai. They have similar Ns and similar reporting patterns in the data, but UW Control is way ahead on MWP. Indeed, UW Control’s low-end MWP confidence interval is basically the same as Jeskai’s average. GP T8s do not quite reflect this, with 9 T8s for UW Control and 8 for Jeskai.

Just for fun, here are the decks with 100<x<300 matches. I wouldn’t be as confident in these MWP for a variety of reasons, but it’s interesting data to have. One problem with this data is that N is starting to get smaller. This really amplifies the existing dataset limitations. Second, for the higher values, I believe they are heavily biased by what I believe are specialists reporting their own performance. It’s not that Merfolk or Eldrazi Tron (who the heck even plays E-Tron anymore?) actually have 55% MWP across all Modern games. It’s more likely that a few specialists play those decks well and sustain a 55% MWP with them. Keeping those and other possible limitations in mind, here’s the data:

1. Eldrazi Tron: 55.2% (N= 116, 46.1%-64.2%)
2. Merfolk: 55.2% (N= 116, 46.1%-64.2%)
3. UR Phoenix: 53.9% (N= 43, 39.1%-68.6%)
4. Death and Taxes: 52% (N= 196, 45%-59%)
5. Bogles: 51.7% (N= 290, 46%-57.5%)
6. Abzan: 51.7% (N= 120, 42.7%-60.6%)
7. Bridgevine: 48.6% (N= 185, 41.4%-55.9%)
8. Elves: 47% (N= 279, 41.1%-52.8%)
9. Amulet Titan: 46.5% (N= 129, 37.9%-55.1%)
10. Blue Moon: 45.4% (N= 152, 37.5%-53.3%)
11. Ad Nauseam: 43% (N= 107, 33.6%-52.4%)
12. Ponza: 36.4% (N= 151, 28.7%-44.1%)

Matchup Results

As many of you will note, overall MWP doesn’t tell the whole picture. Matchup MWPs (MMWPs) are in many regards more important, especially in a format as diverse as Modern. Imagine a hypothetical deck with MMWPs of 50/50, 40/60, and 60/40 against top decks. That would average to a 50/50 overall MWP. Now compare to another hypothetical deck with a spread of 50/50, 80/20, and 20/80. That’s still a 50/50 overall MWP, but with a huge and variable spread in individual matchups. Full MMWP results give us a sense of that variance and help you decide what decks to bring to tournaments based on expected metagames.

First, here’s the MMWP cross-tabulation for our top 18 decks (i.e. all decks with >300 observed matches). When reading the table, always read the deck on the left Y axis as having an N% MMWP against the deck on the top X axis. The other deck’s MMWP is always 100% minus that value. The number in parentheses is the matchup sample N. Here are two examples of reading the data:

• Humans beat Bant Spirits in 37.2% of their 43 matches. By contrast, Bant Spirits beat Humans in 62.8% of their 43 matches.
• UW Control beat Humans in 52.9% of their 85 matches. By contrast, Humans beat UW Control in 47.1% of their 85 matches.

With that in mind, here’s the data, both as a screenshot of the table and as a linked Google Sheets table:

2018 MMWPs for Top Modern Decks (all Ns)

Here’s the embedded Google Sheet:

As you can see, we have a few robust sample sizes here that should give us extreme confidence in the estimated MMWP. For instance, Gx Tron and Humans had 137 observed matches in the entire dataset, so the estimate of about a 60%-40% matchup in Gx Tron’s favor is probably quite accurate. Unfortunately, not all of our observed matches meet that standard. About half have fewer than 20 observed matches and almost 1 in 5 observed matches don’t even have 10 datapoints. I can hear the angry Internet comments about small Ns already.

One way to account for this is just removing everything that doesn’t meet a sample size threshold. The table below does just that, excluding any matchup that didn’t have an above average number of matches (30 in the sample). This one is color-coded to reflect better matchups (blue) to worse matchups (yellow):

2018 MMWPs for Top Modern Decks (N>30 matches)

And the Sheet:

A better way to account for a smaller N is to construct confidence intervals around the average observed MMWP. This is similar to our MWP confidence interval calculations above, but our samples get a lot smaller. Karsten linked to a great online calculator that automates these calculations using different methods. Unfortunately, this was a pain to automate in Excel on a cross-tabulation, so I’m using a wider and less exact interval estimate that I could actually code. If someone wants to go through the legwork of applying other interval-calculation methods to the data, please go ahead. For example, the Clopper Pearson Exact method is a great tool that Karsten recommends, but if you try to code that in Excel, you’re gonna have a bad time. The binomial distribution is a lot easier to work with, even if the intervals might be less accurate. The table below shows 95% intervals for all decks with 10+ observed matches.

2018 MMWP Confidence Intervals for Top Decks (N>10 matches)

Plus Sheet:

This interval table is overwhelming for me, let alone readers, and I struggled to figure out a better way to format it. You’ll read this similar to the normal MMWP matrix, but accounting for its representation of a spread. For example, there’s a 95% chance (our confidence interval) that Hollow One’s true MMWP versus Affinity is somewhere between 3% and 41.4%. That’s a pretty wide range because we only observed 18 matches in the sample. For larger N samples, you’ll still see a range: Humans vs. Grixis Death’s Shadow had 54 datapoints in the sample, and there’s a 95% chance that the true MMWP is somewhere between 46.2% and 72.4% in favor of Humans, or 27.6% and 53.8% in favor of GDS.

As a whole, these confidence intervals might seem overwhelming, needlessly wide, unhelpful, and/or overly technical. They become more helpful if you have your own expectations about the matchup and can triangulate them with these intervals. For instance, you might believe that Bant Spirits is favorable against KCI. Looking at our MMWP intervals, we see the matchup went 63.9% in Bant Spirits’ favor over 36 matchups. You also know that there’s a 95% chance that the true MMWP is somewhere 48.2% and 79.6%. Based on all three of those observations, you could reasonably conclude this was a “favored” match that is probably in the 55%-60% range in favor of Bant Spirits. You could apply similar logic to any matchup in the grids, shifting your MMWP expectations accordingly.

Overall MWP/MMWP Conclusions

I’m about as exhausted looking at numbers as you are (probably more by now). If you can’t stand to read another table, here are some big matchup takeaways for top decks and their relative performance against each other.

• Want to beat Gx Tron? Strong options with larger samples to back up their performance are Burn (58.7%), Infect (68.2%), KCI (61%), and Storm (63.2%). If you want to play a so-called “fair” deck and still have game against Tron, check out UW Control and its 50-50 matchup.
• Want to beat Bant Spirits? Look at UR Phoenix (65.7%). All other decks are either unfavorable for the opponent or so close to 50-50 that they might actually be even instead of slightly favored. This is probably one reason Bant Spirits has surpassed Humans; far more 50-50 matchups.
• Speaking of Humans, the tribe posts weak matchups against Bant Spirits (37.2%), Gx Tron (40.1%), Jeskai Control (45.6%), and Titanshift (43.2%). This is further evidence supporting a shift away from Humans towards Bant Spirits for large, unknown metagames.
• Bant Spirits had the most matchups in the 45%-55% range at 9 total, followed by Gx Tron and Humans at 8 each. Incidentally, all of those decks had only a single matchup that was sub-30% in the opponent’s favor. KCI had the least 45%-55% matches at just 1, followed by UR Phoenix and Storm at 2 each; these are polarizing strategies with most MMWPs outside of that 50-50 band.
• Gx Tron, Hardened Scales, KCI, and UW Control all had the most matchups that were >50% in their favor at 10 each. Bant Spirits could also be here, depending on where you place their MMWPs in a confidence interval. These are all solid choices with lots of even or better matchups.
• UW Control appears better than Jeskai Control. Jeskai has the edge in five matchups over UW Control (Bant Spirits, Humans, Jund, Storm, Titanshift), but UW Control is still positive in the Humans and Jund matchup. Both are still negative against Titanshift. If you expect lots of Bant Spirits and Storm, play Jeskai. Otherwise, play UW Control. Incidentally, Jeskai has the edge in the mirror, so factor that into your selection as well. As a final influencing factor, UW Control is dead even with Tron at 50-50 with 60 matches played. Poor Jeskai is in the 30-70 range with 87 matchups played. Yuck.

As usual, please moderate any of these takeaways with the associated sample sizes and all the other limitations I already mentioned. I’m excited to hear more conclusions from readers in the comments and on any online communities this data finds its way to.

Thanks for reading and for looking to the limited data we have to help make sense of the format. Wizards may not give us as much data as many of us might want, but there’s still a lot out there if you have the patience to dig through what we have. Data-driven analyses like these should always be taken alongside the qualitative and opinion pieces; it’s a mistake to assume that data/stats totally invalidate other content. Let me know if you have any questions, suggestions, criticisms, ideas, or other thoughts, and I look forward to another year of Modern.

P.S. Unban Stoneforge Mystic.

Top Modern Deck Win Percentages

Back in 2015, a few intrepid MTGO data-miners were able to bring us the win percentages for top Modern decks. They achieved this through programs which interpreted visual and textual clues from MTGO replay screens to identify decks and their records in matches. Different authors and analysis then aggregated all those results. In the end, this allowed Modern content creators to calculate two of the gold standards of Magic data analysis: Match Win Percentages (MWPs). More specifically, they were able to find:

1. Overall Match Win Percentage against all decks in the field.
2. Matchup-specific Match Win Percentage in certain Deck A. vs. Deck B matches

From what I remember, the two most prominent authors who published these results were Frank Karsten of ChannelFireball and SaffronOlive of MTGGoldfish. Karsten’s “Magic Math – The New Modern by the Numbers” is still up to this day, and you can see what some of those old MTGO data-scraping techniques were able to calculate. These numbers busted some myths (e.g. the allegedly unfavorable Twin vs. Jund matchup was actually 50/50), and supported some widely-held beliefs (e.g. Tron really was a 44/56 dog to Twin). Unfortunately, Wizards later requested that content creators remove some of this data. For example, SaffronOlive’s “28K Games of Modern Analyzed” article itself is still live, but many of its associated data tables were long-ago deleted.

Wizards ultimately changed the MTGO client to stop these data-scraping analysis techniques, primarily by preventing replay viewing for games that a player did not participate in. Between this technical change and deliberate throttling of League results, it has been challenging to compile accurate data on any Magic metagames, let alone the MWP gold standard.

Thankfully, other Magic community members stepped up to carry the data torch. The most recent data heroes have been Reddit users mindspank and Erzel_. Both users solicited input from the broader Reddit, Twitter, and online communities to determine what players brought to various paper GP events. Both users published their work in well-received Reddit posts: mindspank for GP Vegas and Erzel_ for a triple GP dump plus GP Prague alone. Erzel’s recent infographics are particularly helpful at providing both a Modern metagame picture, as well as an MWP analysis for many top decks.

Both users did so much work on their respective datasets that I didn’t have much to add. I did notice, however, that Erzel’s recent analysis did not aggregate MWPs from the previous GP they collected: GP Vegas, GP Barcelona, and GP Sao Paulo. This gave me a unique opportunity to combine all the data into one concise picture of top Modern deck MWP across multiple events.

The Data

Raw data for this post comes from Erzel’s GP analysis Google sheets:

• Triple GP Analysis
• GP Prague Analyis

In summary, Erzel_ creates a survey that respondents can self-submit to identify their GP decks and the decks of their GP opponents. Erzel then aggregates those survey responses, tabulates them, and cross-references findings with the GP pairings and results pages on the Wizards website. This allows him to determine which decks are winning which matches, even for matches that aren’t reported, and then again to determine overall MWP and metagame picture. His response rate for the surveys hovers around 50%, which gives us a satisfying picture of who is playing what. We’ll talk about some limitations of this data collection method later.

I cannot emphasize how much hard work Erzel_ must have put into building, cleaning, and aggregating this data. Another huge shoutout to him for that labor. I encourage everyone to contribute to his surveys/projects as much as they can; I would never have the time to do these initial steps, and this post is only possible because of the gathering and cleaning work he did up front.

Reviewing Erzel’s data and analyses, I simply combined all the GP results (Vegas, Barcelona, Sao Paulo, Prague) to get some aggregated overall MWPs and matchup MWPs for top Modern decks across the tournaments. I didn’t do additional analysis because, again, his work was already so comprehensive.

Overall MWP for Top Modern Decks

The list below shows the MWP for all Modern decks with more than 200 recorded matches in the combined GP Prague/Triple GP samples. This represents their overall win rate across matches against all known opponents. It does not include matches against unknown opponents. So if UW Control beat Infect 2-1, that match would count towards the total. But every time that UW Control beats an unknown deck 2-1 or loses to another unknown deck 0-2, these would not count. See the “Data Limitations” section on how this can create some issues, but it’s overall an effective and transparent approach.

The numbers in parentheses represent total recorded known match-wins vs. total known matches (e.g. we saw KCI win 272 of its observed 469 matches).

1. KCI: 58% (272/469)
2. Counters Company: 54.8% (181/330)
3. UW Control: 54.5% (362/664)
4. Humans: 52.1% (551/1058)
5. Gx Tron: 51.9% (402/775)
6. Bogles: 50.7% (113/223)
7. Burn: 50.6% (383/757)
8. Hollow One: 50.5% (222/440)
9. Infect: 50.2% (155/309)
10. Grixis Death’s Shadow: 50% (182/364)
11. Storm: 50% (148/296)
12. Jeskai Control: 47.8% (314/657)
13. Mardu Pyromancer: 45.6% (259/568)
14. Titanshift: 43.8% (144/329)
15. Affinity: 43.8% (224/512)
16. Jund: 43.6% (158/362)

Notable omissions from the list include Bant Spirits, UW Spirits, Hardened Scales, and Bridgevine. These lists all had strong GP Prague performances, but were unknown or underplayed at GP Vegas, Barcelona, and Sao Paolo for a combination of reasons (card legality, under-appreciated power level, etc.). If you just look at GP Prague performance, here are those MWP for reference (just remember that those extra MWP figures are only from a single GP, not from the four-GP pool):

• UW Spirits: 56.3% (40/71)
• Hardened Scales: 54.9% (89/162)
• Bant Spirits: 53.3% (49/92)
• Bridgevine: 52.9% (72/136)

Given these numbers, here are some high-level takeaways. Note that all caveats that will be described in the “Data Limitations” section apply to all takeaways and analysis:

• The majority of top-played Modern decks have MWPs at 50%+: Including the four GP Prague-only decks (UW Spirits, etc.), there are 15 top Modern decks with 50%+ MWP. This suggests that you have a lot of options for tournament-viable strategies.
• KCI presents as a really good Modern deck: KCI has won multiple GP, it placed in the Top 4 of a Team PT, and it now posts the highest MWP of any widely-played Modern deck. This deck is exactly as good as people give it credit; maybe better!
• Midrange may be struggling relative to other decks: Mardu and Jund have MWPs under 50%. GDS is struggling right at the 50% edge. This isn’t necessarily a problem as these decks are often touted as 50/50 decks in the format. But with most other top decks over that 50% mark, it could suggest a deeper weakness.
• Counters Company might be a sleeper hit: Many of the top 51%+ decks are widely-appreciated format pillars that appear in tournament after tournament. Counters Company, however, appears to get far less press than the other decks. Its MWP is behind only KCI, which suggests the deck might be better than its prevalence suggests.

Feel free to post any other takeaways in the comments section or other related discussions. I’m curious to hear what you find.

Matchup-specific MWPs between Top Modern Decks

Next we turn to the matchup matrix. This only considers the 16 decks in with combined match samples greater than 200 observed cases. The table below (click for a larger image) shows the MWP of the left/Y-axis deck against the top/X-axis deck. So Affinity appears to have a 38.2% MWP against Bogles, Humans is 45.2% against Gx Tron, etc.

To adjust for smaller samples, the MWPs represent a weighted average of the observed MWP and the expected MWP between two decks. I calculated expected MWP using one of my favorite sports formulas, Bill James’ Log5 probability estimate. This formula calculates the expected win percentage over time between an entity with MWP of P(a) and an entity with MWP of P(b). Like every statistical method we can use, Log5 has some limitations, but it works really well to boost up a small N in samples like ours when we have an unknown true MWP. This helps us account for small N in a sample like Infect vs. Jund (only 7/10 in Jund’s favor in observed games) by giving an expected MWP on Infect’s and Jund’s individual MWPs. From what I can see, this is also a different calculation method than Erzel’s weighted average in his own charts/sheets.

(09/05/2018 edit to address a relevant criticism). The other reason I am using log5 is that many Modern matchups have historically gravitated to the MWP mean. That is, if two true 50-50 decks battle, the match is often closer to 50-50 than we initially believe, even if it is ultimately unfavorable. We saw this in the 2015 MTGO dataset in Karsten’s earlier article. In that large N dataset, numerous matchups clustered far closer to the 50-50 range than we initially believed they would, including allegedly bad/good ones. Examples included Twin vs. Jund (51/49), Twin vs. Tron (56/44), Delver vs. Twin (52/48), Burn vs. Tron (54/46), etc. There we’re very few matchups outside of the 45/55 bracket, and only 4 of the 42 recorded matches were sub-40/60. This further suggests a gravitation towards an MWP equilibrium point, which is the exact effect log5 induces. This historical precedent suggests a log5 adjustment will accurately normalize most small N matchups to that gravitated mean point.

Here’s the table (again, click for a larger image).

And here’s an embedded Google Sheet (also linked):

There’s so much information in this matrix that I struggle to come up with a succinct list of conclusions. That said, here are some standouts for me:

• If you want to beat Humans, play Gx Tron (54.8% MWP) or KCI (56.7% MWP).
• If you want to beat KCI, play Grixis DS (57.1%), Infect (57.4%), or Storm (54.3%).
• If you want a deck that is basically 50/50+ against everything, play UW Control (only sub-50% matchups are Jeskai at 47.8% and Storm at 43%).
• I’d avoid Titanshift. Only three of its matchups are over 50%, and it has the most matches in the 30% and lower ranges (6 total).
• The most polarizing matchup is KCI vs. Titanshift, which is 78% in KCI’s favor.
• Humans vs. UW Control is effectively a 50/50 matchup.

Even with our adjustment, sample size is still an issue for most of our matchups. If we were to develop N% (90%, 95%, etc.) confidence intervals around those MWP calculations (i.e. knowing with N% certainty that the true MWP is between a certain lower and upper bound around the calculated MWP), we’d find that the true MWP could be anywhere from +/-5% to +/-10% around the recorded MWP. So UW Control vs. Humans might not be 50.9%/49.1%. It could actually be anywhere from 45/55 to 55/45. For a lower N sample, such as Grixis DS and Infect, the gap is even larger: it could be anywhere from 27/73 to 47/53. This is why we will need to increase N to really sharpen our MWP picture.

Data Limitations

As with all analysis projects, both the data collection and analysis methods come with limitations. In my experience with statistical work, both professionally and personally, it’s very easy for people to find limitations and objections to any posted analysis. It takes much more time and energy to acknowledge the known limitations and adjust accordingly based on those limitations. With that in mind, here’s a list of possible limitations which readers will want to consider when reading and interpreting this post. I also suggest some possible adjustments for those interested in taking the analysis a step further.

1. Reporting bias in the surveys: If I bomb out of a GP at 1-4 on Day 1, I am less likely to report my embarrassing performance than someone who goes 11-4 all the way to Round 15. This means the sample is probably skewed positive towards the players who are reporting their own finishes. To adjust for this, we could find the overall MWP of all players at the GP and then the overall MWP of all players who filled out the survey (they provide their names). The difference in MWP could be used as a coefficient to adjust our numbers.
2. Small sample size: Some matchup samples are based on 50+ matches. Some are based on 10, even across all four GP. No single matchup had more than 100 observations in the entire pooled dataset. Even with our Log5 formula adjustment, this means that our numbers could be skewed too favorably or unfavorably. The best adjustment is adding more observations. Confidence intervals also help.
3. Limited event relevance: GP dynamics, players, and deck choices might shift our MWP away from what they would be on MTGO or even at a local/regional event. For example, a deck like KCI or Counters Company is much harder to play on MTGO than in paper due to loop rules. This means that MTGO players may find these GP-generated numbers less useful for their Magic medium.
4. Log5 adjustment sensitivity: The Log5 formula assumes very large input MWP (i.e. a “true” MWP). Our MWP aren’t actually “true” MWP; they are just MWP calculated from larger samples. This means that our weighted averages of the observed MWP and the expected Log5 MWP lean could place undue weight on the expected MWP when maybe we should just trust the observed rate. You can adjust this by changing the weighting factors depending on how much/little you trust the observed MWP.

I am confident there are other limitations, just as I am confident we can come up with possible adjustments for any limitation we encounter. Feel free to post other suggestions in the comments.

More Analysis to Come!

I’m excited to see more Reddit work done on GP/Modern data collection. Hopefully this further builds the MWP/matchup datasets. I’m also going to keep tinkering with ways to apply those adjustments mentioned in the limitation section to sharpen our Modern understanding even further.

My next step is likely to add MTGO Challenge/PTQ/MOCS, and even potentially SCG results, into the matchup matrix. This should increase N dramatically, but I foresee some issues. For one, I’m not certain it’s justifiable to cross mediums like this; MTGO and paper are two different beasts, and SCG vs. GP events also tend to see different fields. Second, I would need to confine my analysis to feature matches and T8s, which naturally skews the field towards better, or at least more prominent, players. All of this could be worth it for a larger N, but we need to be careful in widening our net too much.

Let me know if you have any questions, comments, or criticisms and I look forward to seeing you all in our next ModernMetrics data dive.

Benefits of Byes in Modern and Standard

Inaugural post! ktkenshinx here. First, a big welcome to Modern and Magic players. I really enjoyed all the stats and content work I did on my old site, Modern Nexus, but stepped away from the writing gig due to life. Now I’m back at it with some more limited, personal content creation to dig into some of Modern’s biggest issues. No more hosting issues! No more editor deadlines! (sorry to all my previous editors who are invariably reading this). Just some old school blogging. We’ll do some data-driven analysis of metagames, matchups, bannings/unbannings, tournament performance, differences between formats, etc., digging through the numbers to sharpen our understanding of Magic’s most popular (and polarizing!) format. Hopefully, some solid analysis can convince at least a few  kappas to put their pitchforks down. Enter MTG ModernMetrics, and I’m excited to be back in the game.

I’m kicking off the blog with an issue familiar to anyone who plays tournament Magic, especially at the Grand Prix level: byes. In particular, what effect do byes have on your performance in tournaments (specifically Grand Prix) and what does that effect say about different formats? This is a hot button issue that often comes up in debates about Modern performance and variance. If you hang around the same Modern communities that I do, you’ve read or heard versions of the following statements before:

1. “Players with more byes are likely to perform better at a Grand Prix than those with fewer byes.”
2. “Byes benefit Modern players more than Standard players because they allow Modern players to dodge more high variance matchups in the early rounds.”
3. “It’s hard to do well at a Modern event without byes: too many high variance matchups early on.”

In our first post, we’re going to analyze some Grand Prix data to determine the extent to which these statements are true. Spoiler alert: byes really do matter, but not how a lot of players think.

The dataset

Every MTG ModernMetrics post will start with a dataset. If possible, I’ll get it up in a Google Sheet so readers can unpack it for their own analysis. It turns out this is a lot of extra work between labeling and organization, so it won’t always happen. But when it does, that dataset will appear here. I can also return to old posts and add the data later. Procrastination in action!

For today’s article, I compiled the Round 15 standings of players at 2018 Modern and Standard Grand Prix to-date. This consisted of 6 Modern Grand Prix and 5 Standard Grand Prix, totaling over 10,000 Modern players and about 8,000 Standard players. I then used Round 1, Round 2, and Round 3 data on the respective Wizards’ coverage pages to determine which players had byes and how many byes they had. All players were divided into groups of 0-3 byes. I then performed various tests on the overall dataset and the different bye groups (players with 0 byes, players with 1 bye, etc.). This allowed me to assess the effect of byes on tournament performance in these two formats. Unique players are double-counted between events, as they had distinct performance within each tournament. Finally, both Standard’s Grand Prix Memphis and Modern’s Grand Prix Toronto are excluded because there are problems with their data on the Wizards’ site. Memphis has identical data on the Round 1 and Round 2 pairings pages, and Toronto has an incomplete Round 15 standings page.

What the heck is a “bye”?

Before we get to the analysis results, let’s talk about byes. According to the Magic Judge Rules Blog:

[A bye] means you don’t have to play against anybody in that round. Lucky for you, it also means you automatically win that round! It counts the same as any other win, giving you 3 match points and 3 Planeswalker Points (before the multiplier at certain events). The only difference from a regular match win is that since no games were played against an opponent, this round will not have any direct effect on your tiebreakers.

Byes are round waivers. Got a bye? Don’t play the round and get a win. It’s a great deal for players, and you can get them in a few ways. The least exclusive way to earn a bye is being the odd one out in a tournament pairing. If it’s Round 5 and there are 41 players and 40 get paired in 20 matches, the lucky remainder gets to sit out the round and earn a free win. #EZmode. These byes are comparatively rare, with literally 0-1 happening every Grand Prix round. Earned byes are much more common in tournament pairings. In general, a subset of players can earn up to 3 byes at a Grand Prix level event based on a few factors. This includes your Pro Players Club level as well as Planeswalker Points for the current and previous season. Earned byes go into effect in the first 1-3 rounds of a tournament and allow these players to skip out on the early action.

In today’s dataset of 2018 Modern/Standard Grand Prix, we see more players with byes than without, but still a fair number with these waivers. The table below break down the percentage of total Modern/Standard Grand Prix players by number of byes.

Table 1: Percentage of total tournament players with byes

	0 byes	1 bye	2 byes	3 byes
2018 Standard Grand Prix	55.1%	17.2%	25.8%	1.9%
2018 Modern Grand Prix	66.5%	13.8%	18.8%	1%

As we see, most players don’t have byes, but many still do. Interestingly, more Standard players go in with byes than Modern players. There are a few possible explanations for this. Perhaps Modern is the more popular format so it attracts more overall players, which likely means more “average” players with lower planeswalker point totals. It could also be because Modern has a reputation for being a higher variance format, so those players who are grinding planeswalker points might prefer the allegedly low-variance Standard. Like with most observed differences, it’s probably a bit of both and ten other factors I haven’t thought of. Despite these differences, there’s an overall similar distribution of byes between Modern and Standard players. Now let’s see how those byes affect player performance at their tournaments.

Byes correlate with increased tournament performance

• Takeaway 1: Players with more byes ultimately have higher final standings at Grand Prix.
• Takeaway 2: Average GP standing is identical between Modern and Standard regardless of how many byes a player has. 

Common wisdom holds that byes make a big difference in tournament standings. Players with more byes appear to earn more free wins and a enjoy better chance to advance to Day 2 and the Top 8. In this case, common wisdom gets it right.

I divided players by their number of byes and I averaged their tournament standings across all events within the two formats. I then compared them between formats. Here’s the breakdown:

Table 2: Average tournament standings of players with different byes

	0 byes	1 bye	2 byes	3 byes
Standard	9.8 points	14.6 points	18.8 points	26.4 points
Modern	9.9 points	14.9 points	18.5 points	26.9 points

The first thing we see here is the huge difference in performance between players with 0 byes and those with 3 byes. If you’re Average-Jane/John-Magic-Player with 0 byes, your average performance is about 10 points in both formats. That’s disheartening. You’ll typically win 3 rounds and probably go home. If you’re a Pro Club members with 3 byes, however, your average performance is 26-27 points. Welcome to Day 2! The first two byes correlate with a performance increase of 5 points, and that third bye correlates with an 8 point increase in your overall standings. These are huge effects.

It’s tempting to say that byes are causing this increase, but it’s not totally clear what is driving these differences. On the one hand, it could just be free wins from not playing multiple rounds, i.e. a causative effect. This makes it easier to make Day 2 and Top 8, which suggests that byes directly improve one’s chances of higher performance. On the other hand, players with more byes are generally more experienced and potentially higher-skilled players. This is certainly true of the 3-bye club, which represents some of the best Magic players on earth. This might suggest byes aren’t directly improving performance, but are instead indicators of better players who leverage their skills to advance in events, i.e. a correlative effect. In the end, it’s probably a little bit of both.

The second thing we notice: there is basically no difference between average standings in Modern and Standard regardless of how many byes you have. This undermines the notion that byes benefit Modern players more than Standard players, as average tournament performance is virtually identical between the formats.

Table 2: Differential between average player standings across formats

	0 byes	1 bye	2 byes	3 byes
Standard	9.8 points	14.6 points	18.8 points	26.4 points
Modern	9.9 points	14.9 points	18.5 points	26.9 points
Standard -> Modern Δ	+.1 points	+.3 points	-.3 points	+.5 points

There are no significant differences between these average standings. In fact, the differences are barely observable, let alone statistically significant. If you play Standard and get N byes, you are likely to have the same average performance as if you play Modern with N byes. This discredits the argument that byes benefit Modern players more than Standard ones, as their final tournament standings are basically the same between formats.

Byes benefit Standard more than Modern

• Takeaway 3: If you have 1 or 2 byes, your average tournament performance is identical in Standard and Modern GP. 
• Takeaway 4: If you have 3 byes, your average GP performance is slightly better in Standard than in Modern.
• Takeaway 5: If you have 0 byes, your average GP performance is significantly worse in Standard than in Modern.

Averages only tell part of the story. We also need to think about spread and variance. Imagine a dataset of 100 Modern players who alternate between winning 30% of matches and 70% of matches. Now imagine a dataset of 100 Standard players who alternate between 45% and 55%. Both of those datasets would present a 50% average performance standing, but the Modern one would be significantly more variable.

To assess this, we can compare the interquartile ranges for our data. The IQR measures the difference between the 25th percentile of values and the 75th percentile, centered around the median. It’s a basic, reliable, and easily explained measure of data variance. If we applied IQRs to our hypothetical 30%/70% and 45%/55% metagames above, we would find a Modern IQR of 30%-70% (40% difference) and a Standard IQR of 45%-55% (10% difference). In that model, the formats would still have identical average performance, but Modern would be much more variable.

Let’s apply this spread measure to our 2018 Grand Prix data. The tables below show the IQRs for Standard and Modern players broken down by total byes. First, here are the Standard IQRs:

Table 3: IQRs for Standard tournament performance by number of byes

	0 byes	1 bye	2 byes	3 byes
Standard 1st Quartile	0 points	9 points	12 points	15 points
Standard Median	0 points	13 points	15 points	30 points
Standard 3rd Quartile	7 points	15 points	28 points	36 points
Standard IQR	7 points	6 points	16 points	21 points

Next, we have the Modern IQRs:

Table 4: IQRs for Modern tournament performance by number of byes

	0 byes	1 bye	2 byes	3 byes
Modern 1st Quartile	3 points	9 points	12 points	16 points
Modern 1st Median	9 points	13 points	15 points	28 points
Modern 2nd Quartile	12 points	16 points	27 points	33 points
Modern IQR	9 points	7 points	15 points	17 points

In Table 2, we saw identical average standings between formats regardless of byes. Tables 3 and 4, however, show some notable differences in the spread of those standings between formats. Let’s start with the similarities. In both Modern and Standard, your performance spread is basically identical whether you have 1 or 2 byes. The low end performance is the same for both formats (9 and 12 points), as are the medians (13 and 15 points). The high end points are off by only 1 in each category (15 vs. 16 and 28 vs. 27). The IQRs are also only off by 1 point (6 vs. 7, 16 vs. 15). All of this suggests that if you have 1 or 2 byes in both formats, you have the same expected Grand Prix performance.

Now let’s look at the differences. If you have 3 byes in Standard, your performance spread is 21 compared with Modern’s 17. That’s the difference between winning or losing an entire round. Moreover, this difference is concentrated at the upper end: 33 points in Modern vs. 36 in Standard. In Standard, the third bye is often the difference between winning a match, not just losing one. In Modern, that effect is absent. This means that having 3 byes is a bigger benefit in Standard than in Modern, to the tune of one whole match.

Finally, we get to the most interesting takeaway of the entire article. If you have 0 byes in Standard, you are likely to get 0 points in the entire event and are likely to max out at 7 points. Yuck. Not a good run. In Modern, the 0 bye camp can get anywhere from 3 to 12 points with a median of 9. That’s a huge difference. Moderners with 0 byes are likely to win 3 more matches than those in Standard, who are likely to win about 0. Do poorly in Standard and you’re getting 0 wins period. Do poorly in Modern and you probably still have 1 win. This means players with 0 byes are significantly more likely to have better performance in Modern than in Standard. That should be good news for average Modern players with 0 byes who want to enjoy a Grand Prix, as your expected performance is way better in Modern than it would be in Standard.

Using byes to analyze Modern variance

The bye question is not just about player performance at a single tournament. It is also fundamentally about format variance. One of Modern’s biggest criticisms relates to the alleged matchup lottery and its effect on tournament performance. Channelfireball’s Riley Knight summed this up in a recent article: ” It’s difficult to adequately prepare for a tournament format where there are upwards of 25 or 30 viable decks, and the lottery of the pairings board will determine a good number of matches.” Riley is not alone in this belief, and I regularly encounter players and pundits who believe Modern variance is a significant factor in determining how you do at any given event.

Implicit in this statement is that other Constructed formats, notably Standard, are lower variance and see rounds determined less by a matchup lottery and more by player skill. Hang around on Twitch for one cycle of the chat window and you’ll see these same comments, but they’ll probably be a little less eloquent than Riley’s. Many MTG ModernMetrics posts will assess this claim in one way or another, and byes give us a unique way to approach the issue.

If Modern was as variable as players claim, we should see this in the relative performance of players with different numbers of byes. Modern players with 3 byes should do better in Modern than Standard players with 3 byes do in Standard. After all, the Moderners will be dodging three high variance matchups along the way to a better performance. Similarly, Modern players with 0 byes should do worse than Standard players with 0 byes, as they have to contend with more polarizing matches along the way. As we saw above, however, the reality couldn’t be farther from the myth. 3 byes benefits Standard players more than Modern ones. 1-2 byes benefit players of both formats equally. And players with 0 byes actually do better in Modern than those with 0 byes do in Standard, to the tune of 3 whole matches.

I will say that the data does suggest a degree of Modern variance, but not to the extent that it affects performance. Players with 0 byes in Modern have a larger IQR than those in Standard: 9 vs. 7, ranging from 3-12 vs. 0-7. This suggests Modern may have slightly more matchup variance than Standard. But here’s the thing: this variance is not affecting performance. Tournament performance averages are identical between Modern and Standard. In fact, even though the Modern spread is slightly higher at the 0 bye level, players with 0 byes do better in Modern than in Standard. This leads me to believe that Modern may have slightly higher matchup variance than Standard, but this has no negative effect on Modern performance. If anything, the alleged variance only benefits players at the Grand Prix level; see the happy 0 bye camp with their median standing of 9 points vs. Standard’s median standing of 0.

More metrics on the way!

That wraps it up for our first post. There are plenty of other areas we can take this analysis, including Limited Grand Prix, Pro Tours, StarCityGames events, and other tournament formats. We can also extend the analysis into 2017. It’s also not the last time we will confront the Modern variance question. There’s endless Modern and Magic data out there, and countless conclusions we can draw from it.

Let me know what you think of the analysis and first post in the comments. Questions about the analysis? Other considerations I should account for? Observations from your own experience? What issues do you want me to look at next? Take it to the comments and I’ll see you all around the community.