Metagame: The Charlotte Regional Championship and this week's Challenges!

The Charlotte Regional Championship made this an important weekend for Modern. The format, which has undergone some changes with the arrival of Ketramose, the New Dawn and the rise of Orzhov Ephemerate decks, was put to a new test to demonstrate, in a high-level tournament, that it solved the problem presented by the large-scale events in January, and failed: Grinding Breach continues to demonstrate troublesome patterns in the hands of skilled players in tabletop tournaments.

In addition, the week was marked by the RCQs that took place in the Standard and Modern formats at the same event, which brought some innovations such as a Ketramose, the New Dawn list in Standard, as well as some small changes and innovations coming from Magic Online Challenges.

Check out the main news in the competitive Magic metagame in the last week below, with the highlights from the Charlotte RC.

This week's competitive Standard featured some side events during SCGCon Charlotte and also the usual Magic Online Challenges, where we could see some changes from last week's Metagame solidifying as a possible next step in the format's evolution.

The main one was the inclusion of Stock Up in Bounce decks, which has become more common, but still far from being the predominant choice.

The advantage of Stock Up is how it allows Bounce to keep the gas running even against archetypes with very targeted hate and using a card and effect that the opponent has no way of interacting with without counterspells. The need to expand the number of sources of card advantage in Esper Bounce has become clearer, and the slots are now split between Stock Up, Kaito, Bane of Nightmares and Entity Tracker, with some lists using up to four copies of the spell.

Esper Paragon didn't see much success at Pro Tour Aetherdrift, but players continue to experiment with the plan of reusing permanents from both the board with Nurturing Pixie and the graveyard with Serra Paragon, and since this is a more attrition-oriented version of Bounce decks, a full set of Stock Up, plus several inherent attrition tools from Azorius Control like Tishana's Tidebinder, Jace, the Perfected Mind and Beza, the Bounding Spring provides more resilience and make it an excellent midrange hybrid that can go a bit more Control if needed.

The news of the week was the $5K RCQ at SCGCon Charlotte, where Robert Graves presented a Ketramose, the New Dawn list with a dozen cards that exile permanents to create an Orzhov Control, where all removals exile permanents and generate value with the new Aetherdrift card.

Typal decks were the highlights of the Challenges for Pioneer this week. With the lack of competitive support in the RCQ season, the format did not have any major side events in the US RC, so the most relevant results were only in the Challenges.

KingHairy was the runner-up in the March 7 Challenge with this new version of Orzhov Zombies with Zahur, Glory’s Past as an engine to sacrifice creatures that return from the graveyard and create Zombie tokens in the process, as well as Unstoppable Slasher as a powerful threat.

Boros Goblins has made a few Top 32 finishes before and reached the Top 8 in the March 9 Challenge. Its plan remains the same of running low-cost creatures and micro-interactions with Rundvelt Hordemaster and Skirk Prospector to generate card advantage by sacrificing their Goblins and then returning them to the battlefield with Raise the Past.

Another relevant detail of this list are the copies of Nahiri, the Harbinger and Moonshaker Cavalry, which allow for an efficient “combo” to win longer games.

The player kaikas also stood out in one of the events by bringing a Mono Black Midrange in the most classic version possible: without Unholy Annex, combos, or Sunken Citadel. Only with Planeswalkers like Sorin the Mirthless, efficient threats and Invoke Despair as the main source of card advantage.

Modern was the main stage of this weekend's Regional Championship, which had 1338 players. The overall Metagame of the event can be seen in the images below:

And the Top 8 featured the following players and archetypes:

Grinding Breach has already shown troublesome patterns in the last wave of Regional Championships and had basically very similar results in this tournament:

17 Decks in the Top 32.

Not only did it have the highest conversion from Day 1 to Day 2, but it also had the highest conversion from Day 2 to the Top 32, Top 16 and Top 8 with impressive numbers.

There was an expectation that the new versions of Orzhov Blink running the Ketramose, the New Dawn engine and an efficient graveyard hate package with Emperor of Bones and Relic of Progenitus in the maindeck would be enough to decrease Grinding Breach's win rates, so much so that it was the second most played deck in the event and the one with the second-highest conversion rate - but, in the end, it only managed to place one copy in the Top 16 and none in the Top 8.

This effect has been occurring in Challenges since the release of Aetherdrift, and it has been more common to see, in online tournaments, Grinding Breach, Boros Energy, Eldrazi Ramp and Orzhov Blink forming a rock-paper-scissors in terms of share and Top 32 placements, but there are two reasons why, when we get to an RC or another major tournament, Breach dominates the Metagame:

It has a high skill ceiling. The average Magic Online player can commit more misplays than a considerable portion of the best players in a country, especially considering the fatigue factor and the constant need to click to perform the combo.

The result is an “illusion” that the format has been solved and that Ketramose, the New Dawn worked to police Grinding Breach, but this weekend's RC shows another scenario that could, by the end of March, culminate in the banning of Underworld Breach or Mox Opal returning to the Modern banned list - everything will depend on the results of the Magic Spotlight Series that takes place next weekend.

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Outside the spectrum of the current “problem” archetype, we had some news this weekend for Modern. Like a Merfolks with Mindspring Merfolk in the Top 8 of the RCQ $10k at SCGCon.

In the $5k event of the same tournament, a version of Azorius Affinity with the new Voyage Home and Memory Guardian reached the Top 4.

In the Challenges, a version of Mono Black Eldrazi was one of the highlights, combining Nethergoyf and Emperor of Bones with Thought-Knot Seer and Kozilek’s Command, enabled by Eldrazi Temple and Urza’s Saga.

Legacy

Legacy didn't see much movement this weekend and the biggest highlight of the format remains Stock Up, which in addition to boosting the placements of OmniTell and Mono Blue Painter, continues to find slots in the format's Tempo lists, now as a four-of in Jeskai Murktide and getting closer to being a permanent staple in the format.

Pauper

This weekend wasn't very busy for Pauper either. Mono-Black Sacrifice made another Top 8 in Challenges, now with the insertion of Unearth to give more recursion and resilience to the list's main threats, which now has fewer removals.

Another interesting list in the format was the Elves ran by Shiib in the March 8 Challenge, with a four-color Sideboard that includes choices like Gorilla Shaman and Mesmeric Fiend along with less played cards like Bakersbane Duo and Vitu-Ghazi Inspector.

Wrapping Up

That's all for today!

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

Thanks for reading!