Marco Del Pivo knows something about starting over.

He's a renowned master of Modern. He won the European Regional Championship in Ghent earlier this year and went to Pro Tour The Lord of the Rings last year, making the Top 8 there playing Modern as well. And he did so both times with his favorite deck, Rhinos.

But then came the Violent Outburst ban—it reset the format and reset Del Pivo's go-to deck. Now with Nadu, Winged Wisdom leaving the format open to the rest of Modern Horizons 3, Pivo's time spent in the mines of Modern is a blueprint for competitors looking to get ahead of the new metagame.

"After a change, I like to look at all the decklists I can and play most of them to learn how they play," he explained. "It's only at the final focus when I'll pick one that fits my playstyle."

It's a straightforward piece of advice, but one that I think cuts to a core truth that Del Pivo highlights: the Modern that exists today is not "the format that existed two weeks ago, except without Nadu now." That's not how competitive Magic works—every little piece builds upon the next, with one deck innovation being met by another. A deck might resemble what came before it but will never be exactly the same.

That's why you can't just assume that Modern will stay the same, but with one card gone. Wrath of the Skies, for example, has been a key card since its printing. It's a powerful card, to be sure, but you have to understand its place in the Modern metagame in relation to Nadu. Against the powerful combo deck, control decks needed to wipe the board as early as the second turn, lest they lose to Chord of Calling on the third turn. In a format without that pressure, one should ask if Wrath of the Skies and the requisite energy package is necessary. Supreme Verdict could return; Spell Snare even has made a comeback to Modern in recent months after years away.

Take that a step further. The One Ring has become a top-end, tap-out bomb that many decks angle for. In response, we've seen a rise in Through the Breach variants of Eldrazi, which can use a hasty Emrakul, the Aeons Torn to get around the protection clause on The One Ring—you can't protect against Eldrazi annihilator triggers. Through the Breach is traditionally weak to countermagic, but in a format where end-step Breach can even play around Force of Negation, you can begin to see the planks of the format being put into place, one by one.

This is the kind of understanding that's invaluable you're navigating a Top 8 win-and-in match in Round 16 of the Pro Tour. That's why Del Pivo likes to put in the work across a large swath of the format, perusing Magic Online for decklists to give a spin even if he has no intention at the time of playing them in a large-scale tournament.

And he's having a lot of fun doing exactly that in Modern right now.

"Valakut has been what has surprised me the most," the Magic World Championship 30 qualifier explained. "It didn't see much play after Amulet Titan came out, but thanks to The One Ring I can see it moving up as a deck."

Tired of Eldrazi or Boros but still own 4 Rings!? No Worry! PIVOULIVO is here for you!
Fastest 4-0 at Modern's Preliminary:
Eldrazi Ramp 🌋🌋
Boros Energy 🌋☔️🌋
Tron ☔️🌋🌋
Mardu Energy🌋🌋 pic.twitter.com/S2K5Ot0EF4

— Marco Del Pivo (@PivoUlivo) September 3, 2024

The truth is there's no one-size-fits-all answer for how to get ahead. But for Garett Young, a tournament grinder with decades of experience and results on the Grand Prix and regional circuits, his preferred approach is to actually look back. Way, way back.

"Whenever I expect a ban, I look at the format before the offending cards surfaced," he explained. "There's something else great out there, you've just got to find it. Don't be afraid to attack the game from new angles."

In looking back at Modern decks that do exactly that, Young came back to a brew that had been finding success pre-Modern Horizons 3 and he believes is primed for a comeback with the Bird combo threat gone.

"I've learned that prison-style decks really scratch the itch; I played Lantern Control for years and keep Armageddons in my wallet. Martyr of Sands is the current iteration of prison decks," he explained, elaborating on why he prefers to approach a time of uncertainty in the format by attacking from a completely unexpected angle. "You just attack the game at a different angle than everyone else. Most people's goal is to get a life total to zero, a poison count to 10, or an opponent's deck to zero, but Martyr's goal is to create a situation where you can't lose."

"The White Orchid Phantom-Flagstones of Trokair synergy has been helpful for getting your copies of The One Ring out sooner and it also helps to combat the big-mana strategies. I also saw a version that splashed black for Sorin of House Markov to one-shot opponents off a Martyr activation and I'm quite excited to explore that. And I feel like I have a big edge going into an open field mostly because they have no idea what's going on when an Emeria, the Sky Ruin enters play tapped on turn one in the 3-0 bracket."

Young's thesis on post-ban decks brings up another consideration for Modern, Pioneer, and Legacy players adjusting to refreshed formats. Should players focus on a widely-recognized deck archetype, or get experimental with a new brew?

"I often try to 'tune' tier one decks for a weekend, but I feel formats are often under-explored so I often start by trying to do the work that others won't and start from scratch," posited Mason Clark, a Nashville native who has qualified for every Regional Championship since their inception. "Players are quick to tell you why something doesn't work, and not willing to try and figure out why it might work. I can easily swat away most ideas, but it's my job to understand the idea and figure out when it's best to pull the trigger on that idea. A lot of my best success comes from listening and entertaining some ideas that seemed outlandish at first."

Clark concurred with his colleagues that predicting what emerges from the fray is unpredictable and that in an information age where data is easily available for the top decks, there are opportunities missed, sometimes in plain sight.

"When I first heard the announcement, I knew the single best card in the format was The One Ring. I also knew that the first deck that most people would turn to was Boros Energy," he explained. "There were decks that Nadu kept from rising. People assume the deck that was the second best will become the best. It might end up being that way, but when cards enter and leave formats, it dramatically shakes things up. It's a lot like an ecosystem in the wild: remove the lion, and you expect the tiger to become the top predator. But there's compounding effects that take time to reveal themselves."

There you have it. The stage is set for an all-new, all-different Modern as of September 2024. And whether you're grinding every decklist you can find like Del Pivo or going as deep as Young, there is a commonality in every approach discussed here: no one is simply picking up the next deck and carrying on. Put in the work, and players are rewarded on their path to the Pro Tour.

The Road to Magic World Championship 30

That brings us back to that path, which has its next stop at MagicCon: Las Vegas next month from Oct. 25-27th where we will crown our next World Champion at a milestone event. It's a huge gathering that will feature Standard and Duskmourn Draft in the main event, while hundreds of players compete in open tournaments like the Secret Lair Showdown or the Las Vegas $100,000 Limited Open.

To commemorate the occasion, column mate Frank Karsten and I are looking back at each of the previous 29 World Championships that brought us here, from the earlier days of Kai Budde and Jon Finkel's dominance to the rise of international champions to the incredible runs we've seen in recent years including Jean-Emmanuel Depraz's gripping victory 12 months ago.

This week takes us back to 2017 which, as it turns out, isn't all that far back. In fact, I can vividly remember watching the 24 competitors who traveled to Boston for the World Championship that Hall of Famer William "Huey" Jensen rolled past in one of the most difficult individual feats we'll ever see, even among World Champs: he went a perfect 12-0 to start off the tournament with a teched-out Temur Energy deck. While we've seen this kind of run many times across various events, it's impossible to overstate just how much harder this was. The average Pro Tour player is among the very top percent of the top percent of Magic players in the world at a given time; this World Championship field was the top percent of the top percent of Magic players ever. Hall of Famers and former champs littered the field, but no one could stop Jensen.

It was the peak of Jensen's powers, and along with teammate Reid Duke defined an era of Magic. It was a perfect deck for the tournament, a perfect run to the Top 4... it was a perfect story as the hometown hero won the World Championship of the game he had devoted most of his life to chasing. It was a well-deserved storybook ending for an ambassador of the game who continues to shepherd Magic today in his role as Director of Play Programs.