Weekly Metagame: 2020's Last Challenges !

Hello Players !

We're here today for the last weekly review of the Metagame !

This time, we have a small setback: The official Wizards website did not post Sunday's Challenges lists until 5pm (GMT -3.0) this Monday. Therefore, I will be summarizing the article only to the Saturday lists.

The Standard Challenge's Top 8 on Saturday, December 26th was composed of:

5 Gruul Adventures

2 Dimir Rogues

1 Dimir Control

After an apparently diverse week, this Saturday's Challenge was dominated by Gruul Adventures, occupying a total of 19 of the 32 decks in the Top 32.

I am not surprised: The combination of efficient creatures, modal spells, a card advantage engine with Edgewall Innkeeper and a "free-win" button with Embercleave gives Gruul Adventures plenty of reasons to be the best deck in the format today.

In addition to Gruul, Dimir Rogues remains one of the best options for Standard, while Dimir Control continues to grow as a competitor.

The format is unlikely to (and does not need to) have a direct intervention until the release of Kaldheim, where we hope the new collection will not break the format once more.

Saturday's Pioneer Challange finished with the following Top 8:

2 Temur Reclamation

2 Four-Color Omnath

2 Orzhov Auras

1 Sultai Reclamation

1 Lotus Combo

For another week, we see the rise of the Temur Reclamation decks, but the highlight here is Orzhov Auras, which seems to have taken Burn's place as this week's "fun police".

Overall, Pioneer seems to be in a healthy moment, but where Metagame has already stabilized and the best decks are already well known, you just need to select the one that best fits your playstile and use it.

This week's Modern Challange has shown another highly diverse metagame with the following Top 8:

2 Infect

1 Izzet Prowess

1 Dimir Control

1 Gifts Storm

1 Hammer Time

1 Dimir Urza

1 Azorius Control

Here, the return of Infect catches my attention, a deck that stands out in a Metagame where the decks have a tendency to not interact much with each other, and which gained a great addition in the past year with Scale Up

Another deck that had been absent from Metagame since the ban of Arcum's Astrolabe and Mox Opal were Urza decks, which uses the combination of several cards that interact well with artifacts along with the Thopter'sFoundry and Sword of the Meek combo.

The inclusion of Erayo, Soratami Ascendant stands out as an early-lock piece in the game thanks to the amount of permanents of cost 1 or 0 that the deck runs.

Saturday's Top 8 of Pauper Challange was composed of:

3 Izzet Faeries

2 Tron

1 Cascade Walls

1 Mono Blue Faeries

1 Dimir Faeries

1 Stompy

For another week, we see the impact of Fall from Favor in the format, which pulled the blue decks from the format to the top of the Metagame and made them the best deck of the format by a margin.

Today, I'm starting to wonder about how negative it really is to have a Blue-Based Tempo deck at the top of the format, as it lessens the presence of another problematic deck: Tron

I must also highlight the winning list: The Cascade Walls that has replaced the combo version of the deck lately, leaving the combo on the sideboard and betting on creatures with immediate impact and relevant body to win the game.

After all, it is much more complicated to deal with several large creatures than with a piece of a 3-card combo.

Overall, Pauper is predominantly blue, and we can expect the rise of decks like Stompy to try to combat Faeries' decks. The format is likely to undergo direct intervention sometime in 2021, for better or worse.

Saturday's Legacy Challange Top 8 was composed of:

1 Temur Delver

1 Burn

1 Izzet Delver

1 Temur Pyromancer

1 Four-Color Snow

1 Temur Snow

1 Eldrazi Post

1 Mono-Green Post

Here, we can see the diversity of the format in its purest form, with eight different decks reaching the Top 8 of the event, among them a Burn, a relatively Budget deck that can be built with less than 100 tix.

Despite the skepticism that the archetype can bring because it depends much more on its opponent not interacting or doing too little, the player pablohotdog managed to come in second place with his list:

I also highlight Temur Pyromancer's list, which uses Krark, the Thumbless to effectively double the effect of its spells, in addition to Noble Hierarch, which interacts well with the Of One Mind playset used in the list.

And here we close the last Metagame of the Week of the year, with a mixture of apprehension and excitement for the impact the next sets may bring in the competitive scenario of Magic: The Gathering.

Have a great new year eve and see you in 2021 !