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Metagame: From Regional Championships to Challenges, a big week for Modern!

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With three Regional Championships and a dozen Challenges, the last week of January saw competitive Magic racing at max speed. Check out this article for the main news from this weekend's tournaments!

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traducido por Romeu

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revisado por Tabata Marques

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Índice

  1. > Standard
  2. > Pioneer
  3. > Modern
  4. > Legacy
  5. > Pauper
  6. > Conclusion

With Aetherdrift previews in full swing, the last weekend of January turned on the engines of competitive Magic with a dozen major Modern events, including the Regional Championships in Brazil, Canada, and Europe, where the Ultimate Guard Open also took place. Magic Online Challenges also brought a wide variety of new archetypes that have resurfaced in tournaments after a long hiatus.

In Standard, Bant Poison presents itself as another possible answer to Bounce decks, whose results are starting to show up more frequently in Pioneer. A Splinter Twin list finally broke the archetype's long hiatus since its unban, while Iname as One appeared in Legacy as a combo piece - combos were also a highlight of Pauper, where a Poison Storm player won one of the Challenges with a 9-0 score.

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Check out the main news from the competitive Metagame this weekend below!

Standard

Bant Poison was a popular deck in last season's Standard due to its ease in dealing with Domain Ramp, but went missing from the format after the rotation, where it lost March of Swirling Mist - which enabled some combos with Venerated Rotpriest while protecting your creatures from Sunfall.

Now, Poison is back with a new setup - and can take advantage of This Town Ain’t Big Enough.

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The combination of the Outlaws Instant with Venerated Rotpriest already guarantees two poison counters to the opponent while protecting your permanents from removal. Additionally, Fynn, the Fangbearer has its own version of Toxic 2 with its ability, and its interactions with Aspirant’s Ascent and Skrelv, Defector Mite are capable of generating a powerful clock against the opponent.

Venerated Rotpriest is a good way to “respond” to Bounce decks by punishing them with a trigger, and copying it with Mockingbird greatly increases the consistency of having one or more of them on the board.

Some adjustments can be made to this list to increase consistency against Bounce, but the results of this version prove that there is still room to adapt to Standard before Aetherdrift makes its changes to the format.

Pioneer

Bounce continues to emerge in Pioneer. Due to Magic's recent design, creatures like Fear of Isolation have been moving closer to being Snapcaster Mage for ETBs, and should prompt a reevaluation of the viability of effects like this in competitive Magic in the long run.

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Last week, Dimir versions were all the rage. Now, we see an Esper Bounce list with the traditional core of Nurturing Pixie and Optimistic Scavenger winning one of this weekend's Challenges, with the addition of Legion's Landing as another token producer that can ramp Yorion, Sky Nomad and Treacherous Blessing as a source of reusable card advantage.

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It was also a busy week for Atarka Red players, an Aggro variant with a more go wide plan than the Rakdos versions, and whose presence in Challenges has increased since last week.

Modern

This weekend was huge for Modern with three Regional Championships taking place in Brazil, Canada and Europe.

Image: CCG Eventos
Image: CCG Eventos

Image: Ultimate Guard
Image: Ultimate Guard

The overall Metagame and Day 2 conversion for events point in the same direction: a stable Modern, finally free of the absolute best deck category. Now, it's possible to debate which archetype stands out the most, which win rates raise concerns, or even whether the format is healthy at all - the upcoming Spotlight Series, which takes place on March 15th and 16th, will be the key moment to assess Modern's long-term health.

Today, if you want to compete in the format, these two sample sizes are a good reference for what to expect and what the most appropriate options are. I still believe we need to keep an eye on Grinding Breach and its ability to be too quick in some games with eight Moxen, with the fact that its win rate can be disruptive similarly to what we've seen with archetypes like KCI, where the archetype's learning curve is high, and any misplay literally costs the game for inattentive players.

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Below are the winning decklists from each Regional Championship:

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That said, this week was busy in Modern for Challenges as well, including a Splinter Twin deck winning one of the events running Bounding Krasis, Tarmogoyf and Snapcaster Mage along with cards from Magic's latest designs, such as Flame of Anor, Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student and Expressive Iteration.

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The journey through “old Modern” was not limited to Twin’s victory, but also to the reappearance of other classic decks such as Boros Burn and Dredge in the Top 8 of some events.

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Necrodominance, which disappeared from the format after Grief's ban, also was the winner of one of the Challenges, using cards such as Emperor of Bones and a splash of Magic Symbol G for Culling Ritual and Abrupt Decay.

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Another relevant highlight this weekend was an Esper Frog variant. While splashes are not rare and the one in this list only involves Pest Control and Stony Silence in the Sideboard, a key choice on this list was to include Overlord of the Balemurk as another Mill source to feed Abhorrent Oculus and late-game recursion/threat.

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The Ultimate Guard Open, with 609 players, also brought an innovation in its Top 8: the player Christian Rothen ran a Rakdos Delirium list which forgoes interactions with Hollow One in favor of the combo between Archon of Cruelty and Persist for quick victories in unfair matchups, also counting on the inclusion of Troll of Khazad-dûm to increase the number of targets in the graveyard and easily feed Detective’s Phoenix.

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Legacy

Necrodominance is known in Legacy for enabling some similar combos with Storm, using Beseech the Mirror and other cards to find the enchantment and close out the game in one explosive turn. But player Sprouts brought an innovative version of the enchantment to Legacy, using the interaction of Ancient Cellarspawn with Nourishing Shoal and Sickening Shoal to turn Iname as One into a combo piece.

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Since Ancient Cellarspawn makes the opponent to lose life equal to the difference between the mana you paid for a spell and its total cost, we can use Iname to cast any of the Shoals for free and, upon triggering Cellarspawn, deal 14 damage to the opponent. Two copies of Iname and two Shoals are enough to win the game, and Necrodominance provides easy access to the necessary pieces.

The combo can also be played with Soul Spike, which will deal seven damage with Ancient Cellarspawn and four more to the opponent when it resolves, establishing a solid alternative line.

Pauper

The player Skpchino achieved an impressive 9-0 result in the Pauper Challenge on January 26th with a Poison Storm list - a deck that tries to use the spells that add poison counters to create its own version of Grapeshot.

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In this case, the chosen spells are Infectious Inquiry and Prologue to Phyresis. Combined with several Proliferate effects spread across spells that draw cards in addition to poisoning the opponent, Poison Storm manages to establish an efficient cadence that, despite not winning in a single turn, generates pressure that is almost impossible to interact with.

To take advantage of the cheap spells and the theme of its list, it includes four Weather the Storm as the “payoff” to sequence spells - it may not win the game, but all Poison Storm needs to win is a few extra turns, and Weather the Storm guarantees those turns better than any other card in Pauper today.

For a non-Tier 1 archetype to go 9-0 in a Challenge is an impressive feat and will put Poison Storm on players' radars for some time. It remains to be seen whether Spkchino has unraveled the archetype to the point where it becomes a new competitor, or if the circumstances of an unprepared Metagame favored its victory.

Conclusion

That's all for today!

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

Thanks for reading!