Weekly Metagame: The calm before Kaldheim

Players, we are here with yet another Metagame of the Week, doing that classic analysis of the Top 8 Challenges of the competitive formats last weekend!

NOTE

: Unfortunately, due to the fact that the Sunday Challenges lists (1/10) are not available on the official website until 18:00 (GMT -3.0) today, I am publishing this article only with the Saturday lists. The Standard Challenge's Top 8 on Saturday, January 9th, was composed by: 3 Gruul Adventures 1 Mono-Green Food 1 Dimir Control 1 Dimir Rogues 1 Midrange Rakdos 1 Boros Control After a weekend filled with Gruul Adventures and Mono-Green Food, Standard again presents a Top 8 with a significant range of decks, including MChilperico's Boros Control, which uses the Mono-Red Ramp base algonside more efficient responses to the current metagame like Skyclave Apparition and Elspeth Conquers Death while holding and controlling the game until Ugin, the Spirit Dragon hits the table. Standard is still in the same state it was in the past few weeks, demonstrating a metagame where although Gruul Adventures is the best deck, we have a range of decks coming up and making results. Saturday's Pioneer Challenge's Top 8 was composed of the following decks: 2 Temur Reclamation 2 Four-Color Omnath 1 Mono-Green Walkers 1 Sultai Reclamation 1 Boros Heroic 1 Boros Burn Pioneer seems to be slowly taking the form of a metagame where there are Value-Based decks like Reclamation and Omnath as the main decks of the format, followed by decks like Burn, Auras, Heroic, among others like All Spells that try to "go under" and decks like Mono-Green Walkers and Niv to Light that try to generate more value than these decks. While this does not mean that the format is unhealthy, it is important to note that Standard's range of absurd and banned cards over the past year has become the cards that define Pioneer's metagame: Omnath, Uro, Wilderness Reclamation. How long these cards will remain healthy in the format is still a question to think about, as they have been problematic in other competitive formats at some point. Until then, I intend to stay playing "under" these decks with decks like Burn, Heroic or Auras. The Top 8 of Saturday's Modern Challenge featured the following Top 8: 2 Four-Color Omnath 2 Titan Amulet 1 GW Company 1 Dredge 1 Bant Stoneblade 1 Izzet Blitz Amulet Titan was a deck that was sporadically out of shape in the past Challenges, but it seems that the combination of Primeval TItan with Dryad of the Ilysian Grove] and [[Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle, in addition to the absurd mana acceleration with Arboreal Grazer and tutoring with Summoner's Pact are still good reasons to play with this big mana deck. Modern still presents itself as a diversified and cyclical format, where the decks that appear in the Top 8 of the Challenges are not always the same. The Saturday Pauper Challenge presented the following Top 8: 4 Flicker Tron 3 Stompy 1 Izzet Faeries Despite the absence of large numbers of the archetype in the Top 8, it is worth mentioning that we had 11 Faeries in the Top 32, which represents about one third of the decks present in the format. However, the deck that really stands out today is Tron, whose list seems to be more and more adapted to the current Metagame, but which still prevails much of its nature as a "toolbox" deck where it seeks to respond to the opponent's threats with cards that can be tutored with Mystical Teachings and reused with the combination of Mnemonic Wall and Ephemerate. Pauper still seems to be trying to find its place and a defined metagame from adding Commander Legends to the format. The rise of Tron and the absence of Blue-Based decks in the Top 8 demonstrates another seemingly cyclical attitude in the format where decks like Stompy appear to prey on Faeries and Tron resurfaces to prey on Stompy. The Top 8 of Saturday's Legacy Challenge was composed of: 2 Miracles 1 Temur Delver 1 Temur Pyromancer 1 Doomsday 1 All Spells 1 Nic FIt 1 Elves Here, I highlight the Jund list of the player Koike, a Jund Nic Fit using several interactions such as Greater Gargadon with Veteran Explorer to ramp and use the Titania, Protector of Argoth and Terror of the Peaks "combo" to create its own Valakut, in addition to the extra spice of including Sarkhan Vol to give Haste to all tokens and other creatures. An extremely off-meta deck, but that made a great result, demonstrating that Legacy still has a lot of room for surprises in the metagame. And this was the Metagame of the week. Unfortunately, due to the setbacks on the official website, the article ended up being shorter and shorter than usual, but let's hope this problem is resolved in the coming weeks! With the release of Kaldheim approaching and the Spoiler Season in full power, it is possible that we will see the formats going through this moment of calm before the new set stir things up and bring new lists.