End of Penny Dreadful's Season 21 and PD500

Innistrad: Midnight Hunt is out on MTGO and with it comes our season deadline for Penny.

With a possible entry of new strong cards in the format in its next rotation coming from Eldraine, Theros Beyond Death and Ikoria that are no longer Standard-legal. I believe we will see many changes and new possibilities.

What's happened a lot this season is that with the entry of new cards from MH2, we've seen the birth of Rakdos Madness with the additions of Kitchen Imp, Rakdos Headliner and Blazing Rootwalla. We also saw the use of indestructible artifact lands as an interesting option in tricolor decks that abuse Cleansing Wildfire in their lands as draw+ramp.

On the other hand, we also had some old decks such as Azorius Wave or JAC (Jeskai Ascendency), but which have achieved incredible consistencies and have been doing great, while aggro decks, mainly mono- red, had some difficulty to establish themselves.

Season: 21

Current week: 8

Weeks until rotation: 2

Number of events: 49

Number of players: 176

Types of decks used: 131

With just 10 weeks and an average of 21 players per event, this is one of the shortest seasons on Penny, which is as fun, diverse and challenging as the others.

The decks currently to be beat? Azorious Wave and JAC (Jeskai Ascendency). Wave being the second most present deck in tournaments and the champion of crowns, it reached the TOP 8 no less than 67% of the times it participated - 48 tournaments, 32 making it to the podium, 7 of these being first place and 8 second places.

Very expressive numbers, even interesting when we look at this deck and see that from these numbers I mentioned, one player stands out: Ribbonsofnight has been collecting trophies this season with the deck, from all seven times the deck finished on first place, all were his as well as 7 within the 8 second places.

The deck uses Parallax Wave like a Swiss Army Knife, being a toolbox where the main weapon is the creatures' ETB effects. Be careful if your opponent manages to put Parallax with Nevermaker on the field, this will certainly create a lock that is difficult to get around, and depending on the game state, it is even impossible.

Its weak point may be the speed and cost of its spells, without Ephemerate the deck starts playing at the 3rd/4th turn, so gain an advantage in this beginning and get ready for a game that can last a long time. But don't think that the deck revolves around Parallax, it also manages to surprise unprepared opponents with Dream Trawler.

The second mentioned, JAC, despite being shy in the number of participation, only 18, has been very consistent even in dealing with the sideboard pieces against them. The main mana-generating creature, Sylvan Caryatid has hexproof plus 3 toughness, making it difficult to remove.

Fatestitcher works best when coming from the graveyard, so discard or destruction might not be as effective, and even removing the two creatures, the deck manages to go off using Life // Death to turn lands into creatures. Another way to try to stop it is to take the engine off the deck, the enchantment that names it: Jeskai Ascendency. However, even cards focused on taking out commonly used combo pieces, such as Lost Legacy, didn't have the expected effect, as the deck has Fae of Wishes and 1 enchantment on the sideboard.

This way, even if they remove the 3 copies from the deck/hand/graveyard, you still have a copy that can be used on the sideboard. That's why the deck, although not very present, has a winrate of 70% and 9 placements in finals (reaching 4 top1 and 3 top2) from a single pilot, _mojo, who has a lot of experience with the deck.

It's also worth remembering that this deck has won events like the PD500 in past seasons. So get ready for tough games if you find these players in the big event!

Another deck that is very present is Mono Red. Despite the deck being the most played so far and second with more Top 8s, it has a winrate of only 48%.

No one has managed to reach a first place with it yet, and most of the top8 haven't made it to the quarterfinals. This is due a lot to the deck having lost strength with some good cards like Rift Bolt and Ghitu Lavarunner being gone this season.

Price of Progress which would be a promise and great threat against control decks with more than one color has been shown to be somewhat ineffective, as many decks manage to dodge it using snow-covered lands + Arcum's Astrolabe.

Without the option to deal with enchantments (enchantments are fundamental parts of the main decks this season), one of the few ways to beat certain decks is to win fast, counting with Leyline of Punishment to prevent the opponents' lifegain effects, I recommend at least 3 on your sideboard if you are going to choose this deck.

With the inclusion of black, Rakdos Madness is a fast and explosive option that manages to bypass some GAPs that Mono Red has, cards that can be added like Duress, Feed the Swarm, Lost Legacy and the new Sudden Edict make a huge difference in certain matches by being available on the sideboard.

Rakdos Reanimate is an aggro combo that also received an upgrade this season with Vilis, Broker of Blood which, if reanimated, creates a huge advantage by making the player draw 8 cards. Another novelty that the deck gained was the MH2 card The Underworld Cookbook, which is a good option to return to come back to the game by generating food tokens and gaining life, as well as being a low-cost and permanent discard source.

In 4th and 5th place of most used, these two Rakdos decks have a better winrate than Mono Red, but still below 60%: 54% and 56% respectively, adding 26 podiums, 13 top8 for each, reaching 3 top 1, 2 for Madness and 1 for Reanimate.

Now it's time to talk about some new recipes! With MH2, we saw affinity decks gaining ground in several other formats, which caused the departure of several of its pieces on Penny.

But our Brazilian colleague has been developing a list since the season's beginning and has already reached the top1, which is an aggro deck focused on Mono W artifacts, which uses Tempered Steel to give an extra power boosts to artifacts. The deck is the third in tournament attendance and also third in the top8, with 20 podiums, with 8 finals (3 top 1 and 5 top 2) with a 60% winrate.

Among these main actors we also have the Dragonstorm, a combo that appeared a lot in weeks 3 and 4, but which has been having fewer representatives in recent weeks, appearing in 4th at top 8 spots, and in 6th in other representatives. With a 59% winrate, it wasn't very consistent like the other combo decks.

Other decks that I will also leave the lists at the end of the article and that should appear in the PD500 are Mono Black Zombies, a strong aggro deck, but not very consistent. SImic Infect has been gaining ground in recent events as an aggro/combo deck, we also have Mono Black Control/Devotion, Rakdos Midrange, Mono Blue Cloudpost, Simic Snow, Jeskai Jokulhaups and Azorious Control which are very difficult decks to play against, very well-built and consistent, but not always fast enough to stop the combos or hold the aggros. On the combo side, we also have two decks that shouldn't be underestimated: Dimir Tendrils Storm and Oops all Spells.

With a date set for the September 25th, the PD500 marks the end of season 21, and when it happens we will already be in check week for season 22 which is scheduled to start on November 1st.

For those who don't know, the event bears this name because there will be 500 tix in prizes distributed as follows:

1st 130 tix

2nd 90 tix

3rd to 4th 60 tix

5th to 8th 30 tix

9th to 16th 10 tix

It's free, and you can sign up on the Gatherling website here.

Remember that everyone who has a top1 tournament of the season will start the PD500 with a bye, that is, starts with a win.

And about the rotation, we still don't have the bot's link, but you can follow the checks that happen through the official site, which will start on the September 29 and will continue until October 1st, all cards that receive half of the valid checks (84 valid out of 168 checks) will be legal in the next rotation.

To finish this article, I brought up the Tier decks of the format, and also some decks that might appear based on the data collected from this season's tournaments, as we have a really cool variety of types and colors. We have decks for all tastes:

Thanks for reading, and see you next time!