Metagame; The Winning & Losing Decks from World Championship 31

The World Championship has come to an end, crowning Seth Manfield as a two-time Magic: The Gathering champion after winning the final match 3-0 against Akira Shibata, both using the tournament's standout deck, Izzet Lessons.

With the hype already at its peak, it's time to evaluate the tournament results and how the changes to it might affect competitive Standard in the weeks leading up to Lorwyn Eclipsed, and as usual, we'll use the event's win rate matrices as one of our references.

Izzet Monument Lessons

From an underexplored archetype to a higher conversion rate of competitors for the Top 8 to winning the whole thing.

Izzet Lessons was the highlight of the weekend and the main topic of conversation on social media regarding how much its color combination seemed to benefit in Standard throughout the year. However, there is a crucial difference between the results of the two variants of the archetype, and therefore we must separate them: the lists with Artist’s Talent and Monument to Endurance had the best overall aggregate win rate with 63%, but proved ineffective against the lists with Badgermole Cub and Ouroboroid despite the large number of removal spells used in those lists.

The coming weeks will be dominated by the hype surrounding Izzet Lessons, and its ability to adapt to the Metagame will define its position in the format. However, if you want to invest time in this deck, your best route is probably to bet on the "combo" between Artist’s Talent and Monument to Endurance.

Sultai Reanimator

With the hype for Izzet Lessons, Sultai Reanimator is well-positioned as it's one of the archetype's potential predators, losing mainly when the opponent finds an answer too quickly or when its own topdeck doesn't cooperate, since it's a combo that has a "certain half" that we want to draw and another "half" that we wish to put in the graveyard as soon as possible.

However, it seems poorly positioned against Izzet Prowess and Dimir Midrange, which also had decent win rates against Lessons. Furthermore, one of the responses players might adopt in the coming weeks is to increase the amount of graveyard hate, which will also affect the viability of Reanimator as a competitive strategy.

Dimir Midrange

Despite being partially absent in the tournament, Dimir Midrange still delivers solid results and confirms itself as a safe bet for those already experienced with the deck.

Its sample size in the tournament was relatively small, which may have manipulated the 68.8% win rate in its favor, but the mix of cheap answers and powerful threats backed uo by Kaito, Bane of Nightmares should remain a common and competitively relevant strategy until the release of Lorwyn Eclipsed.

Golgari Ouroboroid

Golgari proved to be the most reliable version of the Badgermole Cub and Ouroboroid decks at the World Championship, with a 53% win rate and a positive match against Izzet Lessons, surpassing the Simic versions, which had a poor conversion rate during the event.

It is possible that the addition of Overlord of the Balemurk to resort to threats and the increased redundancy in finding Ouroboroid with a full set of Nature’s Rhythm accompanied by two copies of Lively Dirge made a difference in giving the archetype more ways to complete its main game plan while being less susceptible to removal and sweepers.

Izzet Prowess

Overall, Prowess had a positive win rate against Lessons, Reanimator, and also performed very well against a dozen other archetypes, solidifying its position as a reliable choice for competitive events. However, there's one detail that could make a difference in the coming weeks: despite the small sample size, it didn't win against Monument to Endurance lists and also performed very poorly against Golgari Ouroboroid.

Perhaps all that Izzet Prowess lacks is adapting to the format's new features from this point onward, or perhaps it truly has definitive problems dealing with these strategies, and their growth could hinder its progress in the Metagame.

However, its overall numbers were very positive, and combined with the archetype's popularity, it wouldn't be surprising if it remains one of the top competitors in Standard.

Izzet Lessons

While the version with Monument to Endurance was one of the best decks at Worlds, the same cannot be said of the variants without the artifact. The Izzet Lessons had a 45% win rate and a notorious loss rate in the mirror match against Monument, in addition to having a terrible conversion rate against Izzet Prowess and Jeskai Control, two strategies where the other variant dominated most matches.

Perhaps there are benefits to opening more slots for other cards, and a blended version of both could emerge in the coming weeks, but today there is a clear right way to build Izzet Lessons, and it requires using a win line that doesn't make the archetype so reliant on the graveyard.

Temur Otters

Despite placing two players in the Top 8, Temur Otters had a terrible conversion rate against Lessons, Reanimator, and Golgari Ouroboroid, coupled with a positive win rate only against archetypes that also performed poorly in the tournament, such as Simic Ouroboroid and Bant Airbending.

It may grow in the following weeks if players bet on lists that interact less with its game plan and/or if they improve the list from this new point, but the feeling is that Temur Otters is the kind of deck that appears once every three months, tries something cool, and disappears in the following weeks for not being good enough.

Izzet Looting

Izzet Looting had terrible matchups against Lessons in any variant and was also notoriously bad against Ouroboroid decks, and if it already had problems establishing itself as the best version of Izzet in competition with Prowess, it may have difficulties with Lessons as well.

However, Looting is the Izzet strategy that suffers the least from incidental hate against Lessons and possesses a very distinct strategy, which may help keep it in a viable position in the Metagame in the coming weeks.

Bounce

Besides its low presence, Bounce had a poor performance during the World Championship, with an average win rate of 43.8%, most of which were against Bant Airbending, which also had a bad weekend despite being the pick of players like Javier Dominguez.

Now, Bounce also faces the challenge of proving itself a better archetype in its own category than Lessons or Izzet Prowess decks. It shouldn't die in the format, but if you're going to use a Dimir list, Midrange is probably the best route.

Simic Ouroboroid

Simic Ouroboroid is being considered one of the underdogs due to its abysmal win rate of 38.7%, which puts it at a clear disadvantage compared to Golgari variants. However, we can look at the archetype's performance from another perspective: it had a decent win rate against Izzet Lessons and Izzet Looting, while it was catastrophic against Temur Otters, which was also an underperforming archetype.

Another factor that certainly contributed to its performance was the amount of hate directed against it: everyone expected Badgermole Cub to be a common threat and prepared their lists accordingly — Simic was the most popular Ouroboroid deck before the World Championship, so it had a target on its back from the start of the tournament, and the target was hit.

Bant Airbending

Despite its combo-kill potential and the various playstyles that make it one of the most flexible creature archetypes in the format, Bant Airbending was one of the worst-performing decks during the World Championship and had no advantage against almost any archetype that stood out in the tournament. It was also a common target for most of the answers players expected for the event, which, added to how bad it was against the most picked deck of the tournament, culminated in a 35% win rate.

This isn't the end for Bant Airbending, and players will continue to use the deck in competitive events, but at the moment, it seems like it's trying too hard and that the way Standard shaped itself in the World Championship metagame was too hostile for it.

That's all for today!

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment!

Thank you for reading!