Metagame: The first week of Adventures in the Forgotten Realms

Players, in this week's Metagame, we'll be reviewing the initial impact of Adventures in the Forgotten Realms on competitive formats in this first week of the new set for the digital formats.

Obviously, Adventures in the Forgotten Realms is a set made for Standard and with a power level comparable to a Core Set, which means that despite having good cards, its impact is much more noticeable in formats that have a smaller card pool than in eternal formats with a wide variety of cards, such as Modern and Legacy.

In this article, I will be trying to emphasize the novelties that the set brought to the competitive scene, while analyzing an overview of each format. When that's not possible, I'll do the usual analysis, emphasizing the decks that stood out during the week.

This week, we didn't have too many expressive Standard events going on for a broader analysis of the impact of the new set, so let's stick to the Challenges.

Saturday's Standard Challenge ended with the following Top 32:

7 Sultai Ultimatum

4 Mono-Green Midrange

4 Mono-Red Aggro

3 Jeskai Cycling

3 Rakdos Sacrifice

2 Dimir Rogues

2 Temur Lukka

1 Esper Doom

1 Naya Adventures

1 Gruul Aggro

1 Mono-White Control

1 Naya Winota

1 Mono-Black Devotion

1 Dimir Control

And the following Top 8:

2 Dimir Rogues

1 Rakdos Sacrifice

1 Jeskay Cycling

1 Temur Lukka

1 Sultai Ultimatum

1 Esper Doom

1 Mono-Green Midrange

On Sunday, the event finished with the following decks:

9 Sultai Ultimatum

4 Dimir Rogues

3 Jeskai Cycling

3 Mono-White Aggro

2 Mono-Red Aggro

2 Naya Adventures

2 Rakdos Sacrifice

2 Mono-Green Midrange

1 Izzet Dragons

1 Mono-White Control

1 Mono-Black Devotion

1 Sultai Nest

1 Temur Lukka

And the following Top 8:

3 Sultai Ultimatum

2 Jeskai Cycling

1 Mono-Red Aggro

1 Naya Adventures

1 Mono-Black Devotion

It is always important to mention that it is very common for a new set to have a low-impact first week in the Challenges and this is because the event has a relatively higher entry fee (30 tix), which is a bit steep to test your new ideas, especially when you have a platform like Magic Arena to try them out.

Therefore, it is more common to see new ideas and decks emerge after two or more weeks since the launch of the set on digital platforms. But that doesn't mean we didn't have some new decks this week:

Let's start with a deck that didn't deliver impressive results, but that certainly generated a lot of buzz and frustrated statements this week: The Mono-White Control that resorts to The Book of Exalted Deeds and Faceless Haven combo to create a lock where you can't lose the game.

The combo consists of turning Faceless Haven into a creature and then activating The Book of Exalted Deeds's ability to give an angel a counter that won't let you lose the game. Since Faceless Haven has all creature types, it can become the target of this ability and, after receiving the counter, simply never turn it into a creature again to create a permanent lock for the opponent, since there is no deck in Standard that uses land destruction and there aren't good land interactions in the format.

Although the combo seems inconsistent and takes a lot of mana, the deck has ways to speed up mana with Solemn Simulacrum and tutor the necessary pieces with Search for Glory, as well as several elements to hold the game like Doomskar, Skyclave Apparition, and Portable Hole.

Once that's done, the objective of the deck is essentially to hold the game until the opponent loses because they don't have any more cards to draw or use Emeria's Call to create angel tokens and win the game with them.

However, even though you can neither lose the game nor the opponent win, you still follow the rules dictated by the platform you play from and the game clock. If your clock reaches zero before your opponent's clock, your opponent will be declared the winner, it's inevitable.

To avoid this possibility, especially against aggressive decks, and to also catch opponents who remove their efficient removals off guard, the deck has an aggression package with Baneslayer Angel and Starnhein Unleashed.

Although this version has seen the most game this week, it's not the only one, as I've seen versions of Azorius Control appearing occasionally in the Arena and, honestly, this version doesn't seem to me to be the best build the combo can have either.

A point to consider is that, if this combo becomes popular, including some number of answers against it in Standard may become a viable option and, although there are not the best options in the format today, cards like Cleansing Wildfire and Lithoform Blight are present and are good responses for the combo.

One deck that reappeared this week was Mono-Green Midrange, which received two powerful additions with Forgotten Realms: Werewolf Pack Leader and Ranger Class.

Werewolf Pack Leader interacts very well with the game plan of the deck, being a great mana-sink in late-game and offers a threat and card advantage engine in a curve where normally the archetype had difficulties in having a good threat on the board.

Ranger Class is probably the best card in the new set which offers a 2/2 body for two mana, Luminarch Aspirant's ability for two more mana, and a Future Sight for creatures per four more mana. With all of its effects being relevant and the mana investment being usable in the long run, the card has the potential to become one of the biggest Staples of the format and the main card in Adventures in the Forgotten Realms for Standard.

The deck's clean manabase also allows the archetype to use Lair of the Hydra without major difficulties, giving even more resilience to your game plan even against decks that have many removals.

Another deck that came out this week and did a great result in Sunday's Challenge was Mono-Black Devotion.

The cards for this archetype have always been present in the format, but never had enough room to accomplish great feats in the Metagame, but it looks like the inclusion of an Aristocrats base that takes advantage of cards like Shambling Ghast and Lolth, Spider Queen and that allows your cards to interact incredibly well with each other makes the archetype a viable option in this new Metagame.

The most interesting part on the list is the interaction of death triggers with cards like Nightmare Shepherd and Lolth, Spider Queen, which allow the deck to further abuse its effects, create more bodies on the board, among other options.

It's interesting to mention that player Mazuku94 decided to respect the combo of Faceless Haven and The Book of Exalted Deeds, using a playset of Lithoform Blight in his sideboard.

A novelty that the release of Adventures in the Forgotten Realms brought was the inclusion of the Standard 2022 format in the Magic Arena, which essentially consists of an “early rotation” format where the sets that will rotate when Innistrad: Midnight Hunt is released are illegal.

This format allows players to get an idea of ​​what the next Standard might look like, prepare for it and, most importantly, get rid of Throne of Eldraine, which essentially set the course for the entire format during the current season.

Independent organizers have already started to organize events of this format this weekend and, given their good reception, I consider it valid to mention it in the coming weeks before the rotation.

It is important to mention that, from July 16th, the card The Book of Exalted Deeds will be banned from the format.

For example, the Insight E-Sports event had a total of 66 players, and its Top 32 was composed of:

13 Izzet Dragons

10 Mono-Green Aggro

2 Dimir Control

1 Rakdos Midrange

1 Abzan Snow

1 Mono-White Aggro

1 Mono-Black Aggro

1 Jund Midrange

1 Boros Aggro

1 Temur Ramp

And the Top 8 was:

3 Izzet Dragons

3 Mono-Green Aggro

1 Dimir Control

1 Rakdos Midrange

The Hooglandia Open had 53 players, and the Top 32 finished with the following decks:

9 Mono-Green Aggro

7 Izzet Dragons

2 Mono-White Aggro

1 Golgari Elves

1 Orzhov Angels

1 Mardu Midrange

1 Rakdos Control

1 Grixis Control

1 Azorius Control

1 Orzhov Aggro

1 Orzhov Midrange

1 Abzan Snow

1 Temur Ramp

1 Izzet Midrange

1 Naya Midrange

1 Simic Aggro

1 Azorius Midrange

And the following Top 8:

3 Mono-Green Aggro

2 Izzet Dragons

1 Orzhov Angels

1 Mardu Midrange

1 Mono-White Aggro

There are too many lists at the event to be able to mention them all in this article (and I plan, in a few weeks when we have more results and more events, to give an overview of the format), but today I'm going to highlight the main decks from this week.

With 20 copies in the Top 32 of both events, the main standout of this week was the Izzet Dragons, which essentially functions as an “updated” version of the archetype we commonly see in Standard, without much newness and not surprisingly it has become the best deck this week, as cards like Goldspan Dragon Expressive Iteration and Alrund's Epiphany are powerful in the current Standard and have a high chance of becoming Staples in the future Standard as well.

The archetype that won both events and had a total of 19 copies in the Top 32 of them was Mono-Green Aggro, which uses the same base as the deck mentioned in the current Standard, but due to the departure of Ikoria and Throne of Eldraine, it makes room for some cards that seemed to be interesting options for the format, such as Old-Growth Troll as a low-cost, high-powered threat capable of delivering a powerful 2-for-1 effect, Gnarled Professor as an evasive threat that offers card advantage and Froghemoth as a replacement for Questing Beast that offers a big impact on the board when it enters the battlefield

The deck also has card advantage mechanics with cards like Ranger Class and Esika's Chariot to invalidate the 1-for-1 effects that decks like Izzet Dragons often run to deal with aggressive decks, making the deck a major competitor in this format, as its creatures are significantly larger than other aggressive decks while the deck is also less susceptible to losing long games due to its 2-for-1 and card advantage effects.

The other decks of the format had a minimal appearance, with the third most present deck being the Mono-White Aggro with 3 copies.

Although it currently looks like a two-deck format, it's always worth pointing out that this was the format's first week and players went after decks that seemed like obvious options within the Metagame, and both Izzet Dragons and Mono-Green with the inclusion Ranger Class seemed like perfect lists for the new format, as they already contained a good foundation on top of what we see in the current Standard.

So, you need to consider how the format will adapt in the coming weeks, before we think the Standard 2022 Metagame is already broken.

This weekend, the Gouda Wars event had 40 players and finished with the following Top 8:

2 Selesnya Company

2 Izzet Phoenix

1 Mono-White Aggro

1 Azorius Auras

1 Mono-Black Aggro

1 Selesnya Angels

There weren't any big news this weekend for the format, apart from some Izzet Phoenix lists tentatively experimenting with the Demilich, in what would commonly be slots for Crackling Drake.

Saturday's Pioneer Challenge had the following Top 32:

4 Bant Spirits

4 Vampires

3 Izzet Phoenix

2 Enigmatic Fires

2 Niv-to-Light

2 Boros Burn

2 Dimir Control

2 Four-Color Ascendancy

2 Mono-Black Aggro

1 Mono-Green Stompy

1 Mono-Red Aggro

1 Simic Spirits

1 Azorius Control

1 Azorius Ensoul

1 Four-Color Ultimatum

1 Gruul Legends

1 Gruul Aggro

1 Boros Cycling

And the Top 8:

1 Enigmatic Fires

1 Izzet Phoenix

1 Azorius Ensoul

1 Four-Color Ascendancy

1 Vampires

1 Niv-to-Light

1 Mono-Green Stompy

1 Boros Burn

And on Sunday, Pioneer Challenge had the following Top 32:

5 Bant Spirits

4 Rakdos Pyromancer

4 Izzet Phoenix

4 Azorius Ensoul

3 Selesnya Angels

2 Boros Burn

2 Niv-to-Light

2 Dimir Control

2 Vampires

1 Jeskai Control

1 Jeskai Fires

1 Four-Color Ascendancy

1 Mono-Green Walkers

And the event finished with the following Top 8:

2 Rakdos Pyromancer

2 Bant Spirits

1 Selesnya Angels

1 Boros Burn

1 Izzet Phoenix

1 Azorius Ensoul

As I mentioned in my Pioneer review, The Book of Exalted Deeds seemed like the perfect option to let Historic's Selesnya Angels find a way to migrate into Pioneer, as the artifact interacts very well with the plan of the deck's lifegain strategy and has the lock combo with Mutavault.

Selesnya Angels' game plan is essentially to be a lifegain tribal that preys on Aggro decks while managing to build up enough pressure to be a problem for Midrange decks, and so I'm not surprised it took shape in Pioneer.

However, the deck is fragile against Combo decks or decks that have many removals like Control decks and doesn't usually play well against sweepers, so I don't think the archetype will come to predominate in the format, despite being a great addition to Pioneer, plus it is another deck that was exported from another format.

Apparently, the inclusion of The Blackstaff of Waterdeep and Portable Hole was far more impactful for Ensoul decks than I initially expected, and the deck made its presence noticeable this weekend by taking up space in the Top 8 of both events.

The Blackstaff of Waterdeep gives the deck the ability to always have an Ensoul Artifact on the board, which interacts very well with a significant amount of your cards like Ornithopter, Stonecoil Serpent, Gingerbrute, Hope of Ghirapur, among other cards, being a great help in making the deck maintain its consistency.

Another deck that came up this week with cards from Adventures in the Forgotten Realms was Gruul Legends, which essentially uses the base of the more aggressive versions of Gruul Aggro and tries to take advantage of Bard Class to make some of the legends that the format has like Kari Zev, Skyship Raider, Hazoret the Fervent, and Questing Beast even stronger threats at the board, as well as allowing an investment in mana to make these cards cost much less than they would normally cost.

Saturday's Modern Challenge finished with the following Top 32:

6 Izzet Tempo

6 Hammer Time

5 Rakdos Midrange

2 Temur Cascade

2 Izzet Blitz

2 Living End

2 Jund Midrange

1 Dimir Mill

1 Ad Nauseam

1 Jeskai Monkeyblade

1 Urza’s Kitchen

1 Grixis Shadow

1 Merfolks

1 Humans

1 Four-Color Turns

1 Boros Stoneblade

And the following Top 8:

2 Rakdos Midrange

1 Temur Cascade

1 Izzet Tempo

1 Hammer Time

1 Izzet Blitz

1 Living End

1 Dimir Mill

And on Sunday, we had the following Top 32:

6 Hammer Time

4 Izzet Tempo

3 Four-Color Turns

2 Bant Stoneblade

2 Five-Color Scapeshift

2 Dimir Mill

1 Azorius Whirza

1 Rakdos Midrange

1 Elementals

1 Eldrazi Tron

1 Infect

1 Humans

1 Niv-to-Light

1 Amulet Titan

1 Living End

1 Gruul Scapeshift

1 As Foretold

1 Jeskai Control

1 Four-Color Cascade

1 Heliod Company

And the following Top 8:

4 Hammer Time

1 Four-Color Turns

1 Azorius Whirza

1 Izzet Tempo

1 Gruul Scapeshift

Modern remains in its cyclical nature as seen last week, and the deck that stood out this week with the highest number of placements in Challenges was Hammer Time.

The deck is part of a long range of Modern decks that have benefited from Urza's Saga, and possibly, one of the best decks at doing so as the land allows the deck to create bodies to hold equipments and tutor Colossus Hammer for essentially no cost, giving the archetype greater consistency while you can just continue playing the game normally using your spells and creatures.

What makes Hammer Time a mighty deck in format is the fact that the archetype has an efficient mix between speed, consistency, efficient cards for the deck's proposal and even a combo-kill with Inkmoth Nexus and Colossus Hammer, which is not essential to winning the game, but it is something the opponent needs to be aware of in every turn that Inkmoth Nexus is at the board.

A new addition to Adventures in the Forgotten Realms for the archetype was Ingenious Smith as a means of having yet another low-cost body that essentially functions as a Militia Bugler for equipment, allowing the deck to dig the top four cards and reveal an artifact among them.

Whether this is a better option than other creatures the deck uses, as in the case of this list, where the player has chosen to substitute Giver of Runes, is something that still needs to be considered and probably depends a lot on the Metagame that you are facing.

However, in case that's a worse option, the fact that this deck won the Challenge even using an under-optimized card demonstrates how powerful the archetype is as a whole.

We've seen several Urza deck variants reappear in Modern since the release of Modern Horizons II, as yet another archetype that benefits significantly from Urza's Saga and, although we've seen versions using The Underworld Cookbook as the main reference, this week it was Whirza's turn to return to the format.

Whirza uses Whir of Invention to create an archetype that has a powerful toolbox with cards like Engineered Explosives, Ensnaring Bridge, and Thopter Foundry combo pieces with Sword of the Meek.

The combo operates when both cards are in play, where you can pay one mana and sacrifice Sword of the Meek with Thopter Foundry to create a 1/1 Thopter.

This will trigger the ability of Sword of the Meek, which will return to play equipped in the token, so you can repeat the combo, creating a token for every mana you have. With Urza, Lord High Artificer, you can tap Sword of the Meek to add a blue mana, and in that way you can make infinite tokens, infinite life, and infinite mana.

The Adventures in the Forgotten Realms new feature for this list comes from Portable Hole, which works as a very efficient removal in the format, as it can respond to any nonland permanent and matches so well in handling a format which has lowered its mana curve, and with the deck's strategy, as it can be tapped to add blue with Urza, essentially being played for free.

Although it doesn't have Adventures in the Forgotten Realms additions, it's interesting to see a version of Titanshift that uses the base of the classic versions of the deck, from a time when the archetype's plan was to try to close the combo quickly with a clean manabase, instead of looking to invest in a value-oriented game plan, using multiple colors and technically functioning as a Midrange with a combo-kill.

On Saturday, Pauper Challenge's Top 32 had the following decks:

11 Affinity

6 Rakdos Storm

3 Tron

2 Burn

2 Dimir Faeries

1 Dimir Delver

1 Elves

1 Orzhov Pestilence

1 Mono-Blue Delver

1 Jund Ponza

1 Mono-Black Control

1 Soul Sisters

1 Orzhov Sisters

And in the Top 8, we had the following deck:

4 Affinity

2 Rakdos Storm

1 Tron

1 Mono-Blue Delver

On Sunday, Pauper Challenge had the following Top 32:

10 Rakdos Storm

8 Affinity

3 Dimir Faeries

3 Tron

1 Dimir Delver

1 Burn

1 Jeskai Ephemerate

1 Mono-Black Control

1 Soul Sisters

1 Mono-Black Ponza

1 Gruul Cascade

1 Jeskai Metalcraft

And the Top 8 had:

3 Rakdos Storm

2 Affinity

2 Dimir Faeries

1 Tron

Pauper continues, for its sixth week, in a broken state with Storm and Affinity as the absolute best decks in the format, with the vast majority of Challenges during this period having more than half of their Top 32 decks made up of these archetypes.

There's not much to say about Pauper, we're still without a solution and no banlist update.

However, Soul Sisters is a deck that has been standing out this first week with Adventures in the Forgotten Realms, and that received two very interesting cards: Celestial Unicorn is a common version of Ajani's Pridemate, a card which allows the deck to attack from an angle it couldn't previously, and Priest of Ancient Ways which is essentially a Phyrexian Rager, who gives you one life rather than losing life, and interacts very well with Celestial Unicorn and allows the archetype to maintain its flow of cards.

This archetype is an interesting meta call against the Chatterstorm decks, as it gains a significant amount of life, uses Suture Priest as a great maindeck hate that interacts well with the archetype's game plan, and has enough elements to put some pressure on the opponent while it doesn't close the combo.

On the other hand, this archetype would probably not succeed in a “normal” Pauper Metagame, as it has significantly bad matches against many of the decks that are currently declining like Orzhov Pestilence, Elves, Jund Cascade, decks with Fiery Cannonade, between others.

Saturday's Legacy Challenge ended with the following Top 32:

9 Izzet Delver

4 Sneak and Show

2 Jeskai Tempo

1 Bant Midrange

2 Aluren

1 Miracles

1 Doomsday

1 Omni-Tell

1 All Spells

1 Death & Taxes

1 Selesnya Depths

1 Food Chain

1 Rector Fit

1 Temur Delver

1 Cheerios

1 Izzet Painter

1 Four-Color Loam

1 Painter Welder

And the following Top 8:

2 Izzet Delver

1 Jeskai Tempo

1 Miracles

1 Cheerios

1 Sneak and Show

1 Izzet Painter

On Sunday, we had the following Top 32:

5 Izzet Delver

5 Jeskai Tempo

3 Doomsday

3 Bant Uro

2 Death & Taxes

1 Miracles

1 Cloudpost

1 The Epic Storm

1 Omni-Tell

1 Hogaak

1 Jeskai Stoneblade

1 Maverick

1 Selesnya Depths

1 Snow Miracles

1 Reanimator

1 Izzet Painter

1 HollowVine

1 Grixis Delver

And the Top 8:

2 Izzet Delver

1 Jeskai Tempo

1 Miracles

1 Izzt Painter

1 Bant Uro

1 Cloudpost

1 Death & Taxes

Have you ever heard of the name “good card tribal”?

It is essentially a deck that seeks to use the best cards in the format as efficiently as possible. We've had a significant amount of these decks in Legacy over the past few years, all commonly driven by now-banned cards like Deathrite Shaman and Arcum's Astrolabe, which made it much easier to build these decks without restrictions due to their low susceptibility to cards like Wasteland and Blood Moon.

That's how decks like Four-Color Leovold and Snowko came about.

Since there aren't as many ways to facilitate manabase as before, today these decks need to find alternative ways to abuse the best cards in the game and/or to maintain a consistent manabase.

In the case of Bant Uro, the deck bets on a Bant base using green for Ice-Fang Coatl and Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath, two cards that have become major Staples of the format since they came out in their respective sets. The archetype also counts Abundant Growth as the closest card to Arcum's Astrolabe the format has.

The inclusion of the enchantment even allows the deck a slight splash towards red to utilize the much-needed Pyroblast, which serves as the main response against the numerous blue decks that Legacy has.

Another deck that came up with this same nature is the Jeskai Tempo, which some have called the Jeskai Standstill, a valid name as the archetype uses one or two copies of the enchantment but doesn't seem to capture the essence of the deck.

In fact, the name of this deck could be “Modern Horizons II Tribal”, as it uses almost all the best cards the set has to offer: Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, Murktide Regent and Urza's Saga.

What is created from this junction is an archetype that can play an efficient Tempo plan with its creatures, while also being able to extend the game more efficiently than Delver decks usually do, betting on cheap and efficient answers and having as one of its main Card Advantage engines combine Urza's Saga with Retrofitter Foundry to create an army of creatures in the long run, while also strengthening Urza's Saga Golem tokens.

What remains to be seen is whether this combination is more effective than current Delver decks and how this deck can still evolve as it grew in popularity on the last few weeks.

Not to mention that we didn't have any news from Adventures in the Forgotten Realms in Legacy, this Aluren list sought to use Acererak to close the 2-card combo.

However, as you might expect, Acererak the Archlich is an awful topdeck because it does very little or nothing on its own, and the best way to solve this is to use Living Wish to leave it on the sideboard and make room for a significant number of creatures that you can fetch from the Sideboard, thus creating a “toolbox” element and making room to deal with the most different occasions in the game.

This was my review of this week's Metagame, seeing the impact of the first week of Adventures in the Forgotten Realms.

We see that, despite a still shy way and possibly that won't change next week, the set appears in essentially all formats in some way, without necessarily breaking the structure of some of them.

I would like to emphasize, as I do after the launch of each new set, the need to know how to filter your opinion of the facts that are presented and how things are in statistical terms, and not because a format seems broken or solved in the first weeks that it really is.

Also, it's not because the set had a timid impact in the first week that we should invalidate its potential. Players are still experimenting with ideas, analyzing new decks, analyzing how functional some cards can be, while other cards become useful as the Metagame continues to evolve.

Give it time.

Thanks for reading!