Penny Dreadful: Season 21's first analysis

And the start of the Season 21 of Penny Dreadful was given!

After the arrival of D&D, as expected, several decks like Affinity lost steam, including some combos, and even Burn. But it also brings new possibilities and old decks like Zombies and Elves back in action.

Season: 21

Current Week: 3

Weeks until Rotation: 5

Number of events: 14

Number of players: 103

Number of archetypes: 85

After two weeks, we can already say the metagame that has been formed. Yes, you didn't get it wrong, maybe this is the shortest season so far, with spoilers from Midnight Hunt knocking at our door, soon we'll have the rotation again, and also the Standard rotation; with that, many cards that will fall from this format have a great chance of becoming legal for the PD. Exceot for staples of which sees play in other formats like Brazen Borrower, I believe we can see some cards from Eldraine, Ikoria and Theros Beyond Death debuting or returning to the format as Soul-Guide Lantern or maybe Lovestruck Beast to reinforce a possible Stompy, or even see 80-card decks with Yorion, Sky Nomad.

Unlike what has usually happened in previous seasons, red or blue didn't predominate in this beginning, being black the color that predominates with a presence in more than 60% of decks. Followed by green with almost 40% presence.

We have a reason that can explain the increase in green: Elves have appeared with 3 lords and Ezuri, Renegade Leader this season.

With the entry of MH2 as well, we had good inclusions for the Madness archetype in Rakdos colors like Kitchen Imp and Rakdos Headliner which must have motivated players to try to build more options for this deck, which it already existed in past seasons, but lacking something to boost the deck's strength.

And without a single deck being overused like Affinity in the last season, we have a good average across several archetypes being slightly pulled towards the aggro theme if we add Madness with RDW, White Weenie and Elves, but in return, we also have Control/Midrange decks with Azorious Wave, Jund, Mono Black and Azorius Control. Some pseudo combos with Reanimate and Infect tries to appear as representatives of the combos among the Ten-Most played decks of the format.

Quantity is not quality, is it? Well, they forgot to mention that to Azorious Wave, as out of the 14 representatives, 10 reached TOP 8 in different tournaments and 3 of these were first placed. This deck, whose main strategy is to use ETB effects plus Parallax Wave, received reinforcements this season with Detention Sphere, Karmic Guide and the check land Glacial Fortress, and all this without losing the snow-covered lands and Arcum's Astrolabe.

Zombies appear as the second deck in Winrate, with more than 70% of wins, but reaching few TOP 8s - only 3. In my opinion, it's only a matter of time until players build the ideal list and especially the sideboard, the deck has plenty of potential.

And before finishing the analysis, we have the most affordable decks. Dragon decks (Dragonstorm and Izzet Dragons) have had quite a few victories for a very reasonable price, as has Mono Black. We still haven't seen the two always powerful budget decks: Cycling, which hasn't lost any pieces (as usual) and Mono White Heroic, maybe due to the loss of two important pieces: Alseid of Life's Bounty and Karametra's Blessing. There are decks in leagues testing Legion's Landing, legal for the first time in the format, and Emerge Unscathed which is back after 2 seasons. Let's see if Heroic has enough to make a comeback.

To play the format, most tournaments take place on the Gatherling website every day (except Wednesday). You can also register on the format's official website and play the monthly league.

Another way to play is on Wednesdays in the championship that our well-known Weber is organizing right here at Cards Realm, you can find it at at the tournament page from this website. With that, we have Penny tournaments every day!

Check out below a few decklists that appeared on the tournaments during this Season.

That's all for today, folks!

If you have any questions, feel free to leave it in the comments!