Well! Boy Howdy!
Please allow me to introduce myself…. I’m a man of no wealth and no taste…. I’ve been around for a long, long time… stole many a man’s soul and faith… *struts about like a rooster on LSD*
Hi there! Some of you might already know me from the numerous events I’ve been running over the years, or from when this article series was at PureMTGO. But now, I’m here! Woo hoo! The folks here at MTGO Academy have decided to open themselves up to ridicule and shame by bringing me on board, and damn the torpedoes!
For those of you reading this series for the first time, it’s basically a shameless plug for the Modern format events I run every week on MTGO, and for me sharing my views on anything and everything Modern. From the mundane to the macabre, if it has to do with Modern, I’ll probably throw in my two cents.
Modern: Huge Tracts of Unexplored Land
It has been said of Modern: “The most important thing about Modern is diversity. It’s by and far the most open format right now, there are huge tracts of land no one has explored. It’s the new frontier of competitive Magic.” and “The nice thing about Modern is that the format is very open. There’s a lot of room to explore and find decks that can work.” And just to hammer that point, here are maps from some recent explorations:
5cc Tribal Flames - cjlack92 (4-0) Modern Daily #4413858 on 10/07/2012
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A nasty little Geist of St. Boros build that stomps down with Steppe Lynx alongside Tribal Flames. In other words, fast aggro with a “five-to-the-dome” finisher.
5cc Wish - zahori (3-1) Modern Daily #4413858 on 10/07/2012
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Just a few articles back, I was talking about Glittering Wish, and whether Return To Ravnica would have this card see play. I believe Glittering Wish could be one of the premiere players in the Modern meta that will soon unfold. There are a great many powerful cards in the format already that are multicolor, and RtR is bringing more. Woo hoo! I’ll take Bloodbraid Elf for 100, please, Alex!
The MTGO Modern Meta
We’re two weeks into this quarter’s meta. While it may look fairly “normal” at this point, it won’t be that way for long. There’s a whole new block coming in, and I fully expect it shake the Modern meta to its core.
Delving Into Delver
The Delver sub-meta has been in a constant state of turmoil, and I don’t expect this to change. In fact, I expect it to get even more twisted as the different Delver flavors explore the new streets.
Does This Look Infected?
The Infect archetype has only recently started plaguing the Modern meta. Prior to September, Infect was only a “fringe player”. But these days… Better have your vaccinations up to date!
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Last quarter, Naya Pod was the dominant deck of the Pod sub-meta. This quarter, Blue Naya seems to be taking that role.
PT Seattle!
PT Seattle starts Friday! Woo hoo! I don’t know about you, bubu, but I plan on watching as much of it as I can. Will Valakut be searing players? Will Dredge rise from the grave? Will Infect make the cut? I can’t wait to find out!
Since my articles are now biweekly, rather than weekly, by the time you see my take on all the brouhaha, it’ll be old hat, and Modern will be in turmoil. I fully expect Return To Ravnica to shake things up.
Monster Garage
As sometimes happens in these hard economic times, I had to liquidate my collection at the end of August for a cash influx. After collecting quotes and cashing out, this left me with my PRM Guru Basic Lands. Period. However, since I’m such a dedicated pimp, I do have a continual weekly budget* that I can rebuild with. So I’m going to chronicle my rebuilding somewhat, along with prices, just to see how expensive it is to get into Modern in a vacuum.
(*As you may or may not know, hosts running sponsored events often receive bot credit on the sponsor’s bot for running the events. I also “get coin” for writing these articles. Now that I’m under the MTGO Academy umbrella, all of this is right here at one spot. Woo hoo! All prices shown from here on out are MTGO Academy prices at time of acquisition.)
When I left off last week, I had just finished building Soul Sisters/Soul Taxes and WB Tokens to the “semi-casual” level. Semi-casual means that it’s based off a 4-0 decklist from the Daily Scheduled Events, but is missing one or more “key” cards. Usually something in the manabase (Shocklands), or expensive cards like Karn Liberated, Cryptic Command, or Tarmogoyf.
I was in a weird mood, so I started picking up pieces for Kangaroo Court, as well as some hasty red fliers. I was shocked how cheap Chandras Phoenix has become. I remember buying and selling them in the three- to five-ticket range earlier this year, and now they’re less than 0.50.
I also filled up on Blackcleave Cliffs, Teetering Peaks, and some Clifftop Retreats. And some green mana-fixing dorks. And some walls. And some green stompers. And some Ultimatums. Blarg. Not very focused, I know. Like I said, I was in a weird mood. That weird mood cost me 12.31, with the SoM and Innistrad duals being the “money cards”.
So. Focus! I think it’s time to start getting the Affinity basics. I aready have PRM Memnites, and Inkmoth Nexus from building Infect.
Affinity/Robots
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9.32 for what’s shown, the “money cards” being Darksteel Citadel and Etched Champion and at 0.5 a pop. Cranial Plating was 0.30, and everything else was 0.25 or less. So the “basic” outfit for Affinity is cheap. 
Arcbound Ravager and Mox Opal are a different story.
Blippy's Bling and Lands
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Total spent: ~300
28 Built Decks:
- Affinity (Semi-casual)
– Bloodcrank (Casual)
– Bump x2: Bump, Vex Bomb Bump (T1.5)
– Delver Snapcaster x4: Grixis, UB, URW (Semi-casual), BUG (Casual)
– Infect x3: BUG, G, MBC (Semi-casual)
– Jund x2: Goyfless Death Cloud (Semi-casual), Goyfless (Casual)
– Kangaroo Court (Casual)
– Lifegain Aggro x2: Soul Sisters, Soul Taxes (Semi-casual)
– RDW x3: RDW Burn, White Lightning, Vex Bomb (T1.5)
– Stompy (Casual)
– Textless Casual x5: Jund, BRW, Boros, RDW, GR
– Tokens (Semi-casual)
– Tron G Junk (Casual)
– Vampires x2: B, RB (Casual, Tribal)
– No “real” sideboards built yet.
The deck collection is coming along nicely, if I do say so myself. I think I should be ready to start entertaining thoughts of entering sanctioned events towards the end of the month. I could enter them now, in theory, using a R(x)DW list of some sort. But dunno, man. Every time I’ve entered w/R(x)DW, I’ve gotten show down. I think I’d want to go in with Affinity, Delver, Goyfless Jund, or Merfolk. We’ll see.
*doing a bad Donna Summer impression* He works hard for the money… So hard for it, honey…
A Brief History of Overdrive!
Overdrive! began as an Overextended event with little fanfare at 830PM Eastern time on July 4th, 2011. I had fallen in love with the Tuesday evening Overextended events, hosted by Gavin Verhey, now an R&D intern at WotC. As one can see, they were huge melees: wild games with a wilder meta. We see some of the first incarnations of decks we still have to beat, or which have been killed by the banhammer, in Modern today. I think the most notable being “Project Melira”, first popping up in the lists in early July.
I am also a sci-fi buff, and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome is classic despite its cheese. Tina Turner in chain mail? Cave Kids in some forsaken oasis? And most of all… Thunderdome! Chant it with me now: “Two men enter, one man leaves! Two men enter, one man leaves!“
Let’s not forget Highlander. Or Emelio Estevez’s memorable performance in Maximum Overdrive, with its killer AC/DC soundtrack. More classic, glorious cheese.
It just so happened I did a Mad Max marathon one Sunday, watched Highlander the following Monday, and then played in the Tuesday OXT event. Someone mentioned they wanted more OXT events to me during a break between rounds, I was listening to AC/DC’s Highway to Hell, and *click*! It really just all came together in its entirety in that split second. I lined up a sponsorship, hammered out the details, and a few days later we were ready to rock. And the 4th of July was just too serendipitous. I “put up the ads” and the rest… is history.
A fight to the death. Last man standing. There can be only one. It’s not for the faint of heart.
In those times, there was heated discussion on the joys of one format over the other. I was on the OXT side of the fence: I loved the wide and wild meta, the weird decks, the general atmosphere of “we are the world” (Mainly because nothing had happened in the Modern world since the Community Cup Challenge in June of 2011). I did notice early on, however, that a good many of the Overextended decks were almost Modern legal. So while I was then very biased against Modern, I was at least willing to see how it went.
When WotC officially announced the Modern format, Overdrive! attendance took a steep nosedive, but we slogged onwards, and the last Overextended game on MTGO was played on August 22nd, 2011. Modern became an officially sanctioned format online with the downtime on August 24th, 2011, and Overdrive! jumped right into that arena, keeping the same Thunderdome principle: two men enter, one man leaves.
People were hesitant at first about the Modern format. That which they’d only spoken of until now was real, and it was a scary pool to jump into, with its Twelve Posts and Splinters and Zoo, oh my! And new bannings were coming soon, so the uncertainty meant still more weren’t really brewing.
But time progressed; more and more people played the format casually. Now it’s not uncommon to see multiple Modern games going on at once, and Modern is a proven and popular format. Modern has been played in PTQs and GPs, and will very shortly see PT play! We’ve come a long way, baby!
I have seen a great variety of decks running through the Overdrive! doors, and the meta is constantly in flux. The event became so popular, a “Euro-friendly” version was created that takes place on Saturdays at 1200 GMT. Eurodrive! has the same format, rules, prizes, everything as Overdrive!, just scheduled at an easier time zone for other parts of the world.
Overdrive! #65
Pelao28 is now the clear leader, with 8 Overdrive! Championships!
Eurodrive! #46
One-year Eurodrive! is coming up right after PT Seattle!
Where Angels Fear To Tread #26
Players: 6
4-0: None
3-1: romellos, Realms_Uncharted
Players, pairings, and results from WAFTT #26 can be found here.
All decks from WAFTT #26 can be found here.
Interesting Tidbits
Don’t forget that the Community Cup Challenge 2012 takes place the weekend after PT Seattle! Be sure to cheer on your Community Team as they make the Poobahs cry!
Modern attendance continues to track well:
Hmmm, this article is (mildly?) confusing. It covers a bit to many topics and the mix of ironic, humouristic pics and ‘serious’ graphs made me lose foucs more than once.
You write:
“For those of you reading this series for the first time, it’s basically a shameless plug for the Modern format events I run every week on MTGO, and for me sharing my views on anything and everything Modern”.
I guess that’s an acceptable goal to have with this collumn, but if your article is about ‘the ‘modern’ world as Blippy sees it, then I’d like to read a self-introduction, that’s a bit more coherent.
/MOBZ
There is a small mistake when you talk about affinity. You said the money cards are raveger and chro e mox. Chrome.mos is bannee in modern. You meant mox opal.
I really enjoy your articles and have been reading for a while.
These articles were unreadable, uninformed piles of garbage at PureMTGO and they haven’t gotten any better here.
Lose the superfluous graphics, reel in the word count and get the focus tighter.
This ain’t amateur hour here, you need to meet a higher standard if you want to make it at the academy.
Fixed, Anonymous. That may have been my editing mistake, even. Of course, Chrome Mox would be pretty bad in Affinity.
I’ll let Blippy field the other questions, but I’ll also state here that we like hosting a variety of content types which appeal to different sorts of readers. Blippy’s Overdriven! series will be scheduled for every other Monday, and we think his PRE coverage and style constitute a unique approach we don’t really feature anywhere else. With that said, there’s no reason that we can’t work to make every piece read smoother and look more awesome.
@Mobz – A bit more self intro, eh? Ok…
So a bit about this life of mine
Which started back in fifty-nine
In a little town in Germany
Sandkrug is where I came to be
Dad left mom to come to the states
But he couldn’t go far enough to escape his fate
As mom tracked him down in sixty-three
Coming over on a ship, carrying me
I was there when they were wed
So yes, I’m a bastard, born and bred
Raised in the suburbs of Detroit
We’ll skip my youth and teen exploits
I left home in seventy-seven
For some harsh military lessons
Some of which I cannot relay
But I can never go back to Thailand they say
After three years I came home again
But soon left for the land of the setting sun
In San Francisco I became a punk
And finished my schooling of computer junk
(Peter Norton used to sneer at me
I was the only mohawk at P.A.R.C.
So now whenever you move your mouse
A tiny snippet of code from my house
By now buried so deep it can’t be found
But I was there, making the mouse go ’round)
I also played bass with a band called Sluglords
Thrashing punk rock, which society abhorred
I met my wife in eighty-six
In eighty-seven I was in a fix
Continue with music, which was doing well
Or be the dad, with nine to five in hell
Needless to say I chose my family
That crazy world of genetic alchemy
And there you have the first twenty seven
The last twenty five have been hell and heaven
@ Anon – Thank you! And yeah, the Chrome Mox was my bad, and I did mean Mox Opal.
I’m old and senile.
@SP – To quote a famous philosopher: “I yam what I yam.” (Aaaakekekekekekek!) (Supposed to be a Popeye laugh)
A lot of the appearance and content had to do with the tight schedule following so quick on the heels of the previous article at Pure, and unfamiliarity with how the finished product would look. Now that I know what the end results look like, future articles should have a bit more style and substance. But since you didn’t like them there either, oh well. Too bad, so sad.
When it comes to the internet, people like videos and flashy stuff because too much text hurts people’s brains. I liked the stuff on pure, but you need to put up videos of modo modern since the new season started and this is the prime time for this.
Now I need an honest opinion on a modern deck I built since I am new to modern and it is PTQ season.
If you care to tell me an honest opinion:
4 Path to exile
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Noble Heiarchs
3 Qasali Pridemage
1 Gaddock Teeg
3 Thalia
2 Zealous Persecution
4 Mirran Crusaders
3 Kitchen Finks
4 Sword of Feast and Famine (Or I can play W&P)
4 Lingering Souls
1 Thrun
2 Elspeth Knight Errant
Lands I have a ton of, so that’s not the issue, fetches, shocks, etc.
I was thinking about a man land
And my sideboard has regular stuff in it, like Mindbreak trap, Surgical Extraction, Extirpate, Torpor Orb.
Be honest, what should I do with it to make it good.
@sp
yes, this is internet card games, it is srs business.
idk, these articles aren’t exactly my style either, but i do appreciate the manic energy and unique perspective. there’s already lot of srs business mtg writers, there’s something refreshing about an insane ramble here or there and there’s usually some interesting content in there.
Hmmm… lessee… other than the obvious (Goyf, Knight of the Reliquary, and *MAYBE* Bob), it looks like a decent enough build, but a bit slow. You’re not really swinging til turn 3 or 4, and leaving yourself tapped out those crucial first few turns. Your deck wants to establish a powerful board presence, and Mirran Crusaders is generally a good call, even if it does come out late. Experiment with the swords, that’s a meta call.
With Finks, Crusader, and Elspeth requiring WW, I’d make the manabase accomodate that.
Board wipes?
However, the big caveat:
GBW archetypes as a whole (rock, aggro, etc) have not been doing well overall in the online meta. Local paper metas may and will vary.
Hi, and welcome to the site! It’s cool to have some more Modern coverage here. Are you planning on doing an analysis of the Pro Tour decks in the near future? Also, I’m on the fence about getting into either T2 or Modern. The main issue is budget. I have about 60% of the Soul Sisters deck, and not much in the way of T2 cards. I guess I’ll have to wait to see what the T2 metagame is like, but from a budget perspective do you think one format is more accessible than another? Thanks.
The budget question is easy for me to answer, because I’ve been chronicling my rebuild from scratch in the “Monster Garage” section. The Soul Sisters/Soul Taxes deck is very budget friendly, totaling out in the 50 range (in a vacuum) with Proclamation and Windbrisk Heights.
IMO, Modern can be very budget friendly. You don’t *NEED* Goyf. (But he is great to have)
As far as Modern vs Standard budget, keep in mind that Standard changes every rotation, which means another buy-in *EVERY YEAR*.
I think the biggest issue here is that it really does seem jumbled together and have thought so for quite awhile. You can likely lose the Monster Garage section entirely as it doesn’t apply to modern as much as it’s your personal journey in magic which is a all together different subject and detracts from the rest of your content.
However the Articles do tend to have plenty of relevant information if you are willing to look for it.
I believe that at first it might be a little confusing to see that the slugs cards are used as dividers so maybe i can look into making you so custom dividers for the articles. to help with that.
Overall great to have you on board here at MTGOAcademy.com Blips.
I love your column, I followed them first on puremtgo and now I read here, do not change anything
Always followed Blippy’s article and the State of the Game on puremtgo, only reason I made it to this board now is for Blippy’s article. I’ll keep an eye on the other content and see how it goes.
If you follow Modern at all check out the mtgs forums as well, he keeps daily updates on the meta, provides updates on the PRE’s etc. There are plenty of places to get serious information, but few to find dedicated Modern articles.