Weekly Metagame - Is Magic Healthy Again ?

Hello players !

Martinez is kinda busy today, so I took the steer of the Weekly Metagame ship to update you from this week's Challanges results !

We'll start our analysis on Standard, which the Saturday Challange was composed of:

3 Dimir Control

2 Gruul Aggro

2 Mono Green Food

1 Mono Red Aggro

The highlight of this week was Dimir Control, which uses the classic Control decks formula with several Card Advantage effects along with difficult to remove threats such as Shark Typhoon and Lochmere Serpent.

On the Sunday, the following decks made it to the Top 8:

2 Dimir Control

2 Gruul Adventures

1 Mono White Aggro

1 Mono Green Food

1 Mardu Doom

1 Dimir Rogues

Again, Dimir Control stands out as it matches Gruul Adventures and places two copies in the Top 8, using a list essentially different from Saturday's list, more focused on using Ugin, the Spirit Dragon as wincondition and as a way to keep the board clean, since the Planeswalker is still the absolute Late-Game card in the format.

Despite the growth of Temur Ramp in Metagame this week, the Challanges had a complete absence of the archetype in the Top 8 of both events, which means that perhaps the decks are already adapting to the archetype.

The following decks composed the Saturday Challange's Top 8:

2 Boros Burn

2 Niv to Light

1 Mono Red Aggro

1 Sultai Reclamation

1 Four-Color Omnath

1 Mono-Black Aggro

Challange was won by the player ShowTime_, with a list of Mono Red that resembles the versions of Mono Red Prowess found in Modern:

The exclusion of the white splash for Lurrus of the Dream-Den allows the deck to have a manabase that can support using Ramunap Ruins as a way to have more reach, and includes a difficult to remove threat for Burn in the form of Bonecrusher Giant.

Another list that stood out to me was the 4-Color Omnath piloted by the player Rav104, using two Part The Waterveil, trying to reproduce what some lists of the Modern archetype try to do with Time Warp.

On Sunday, the following decks were at the Top 8:

3 All Spells

1 Big Red

1 Jeskai Lukka

1 UW Yorion

1 Esper Control

1 Niv to Light

The highlight of the event and the weekend is the Big Red list used by gottelicious, which tries to accelerate as much mana as possible to make bombs like Ugin, the Spirit Dragon as soon as possible, while maintains a great fair-game plan with cards like Bonecrusher Giant and Thought-Knot Seer.

Meanwhile, the All Spells deck continues to grow on Pioneer, and is likely going to be further respected in the upcoming events of the format.

Modern was incredibly diverse this week, here is the Saturday's Challange Top 8:

1 Mono-Red Aggro

1 GW Titan

1 Eldrazi Tron

1 Hardened Scales

1 Heliod Company

1 UW Control

1 Ad Nauseam

1 All Spells

Altogether, there were eight different decks composing the Top 8, which represents the sign of an extremely diverse and healthy format, which is a positive point for a format that had some troubled moments in recent years as was the case with Modern.

Here I highlight the player Tweedel, who not only came first in this Challange with his Mono Red Aggro, but repeated the result the next day with practically the same list:

On Sunday, the Challange was as diverse as Saturday with the following Top 8:

1 Mono Red Aggro

1 UB Mill

1 Esper Mentor

1 Eldrazi Tron

1 Rakdos Midrange

1 UR Twinless Twin

1 All Spells

1 Amulet Titan

This Top 8 was also pretty interesting, as it included options that are not entirely popular in format like UB Mill, Esper Mentor and Twinless Twin.

Here, I need to highlight the Esper Mentor list, which came in third place as piloted by daibloXSC

Honestly, after a few years of being a format that seemed to go through some chronic problems, Modern has never looked so fun to play again.

In Saturday's Pauper Challange, we had the following Top 8:

2 Fog Tron

1 Jeskai Affinity

1 Mardu Monarch

1 UB Control

1 Skred Faeries

1 Dimir Delver

1 Mono Blue Delver

First, I highlight the fact that Fall From Favor was the fourth most played card in the tournament, with a total of 39 copies in the Top 32.

And it is obvious that this would happen, since the card is extremely efficient to use, especially on decks where you tend to be able to stay ahead on the board, like Faeries, Delver and Affinity.

I have been using copies of the card on my Jeskai Affinity, and my real regret at the event where I am using it is not to have put more of them in my 76 cards because the card is absurdly good in the archetype.

And, apparently, the Brazilian player Hamuda had exactly the same conclusion and won the event with his list of Jeskai Affinity:

Not only did Hamuda take first place in the event, he took the same list to the next day and won first place in both events this weekend !

Of course, Affinity is a deck that suffers quite easily against many dedicated hate sideboard cards, but the deck's flexibility between playing aggressively while it can accumulate constant value with Fall From Favor or Kor Skyfisher interactions is something that needs to be respected from now on.

On the Sunday's Challange, we've had the following Top 8:

2 Fog Tron

2 Mardu Monarch

1 Jeskai Affinity

1 Mono Blue Faeries

1 Bogles

1 Orzhov Monarch

I need to point out that one of Mardu Monarch's lists, piloted by the player _Batutinha_ is using a blue splash for Fall From Favor:

But the highlight of Sunday is the Orzhov Monarch of the player Ravager.pe, which looks like a good Meta Call for a format that is starting to to use the blue enchantment more often alongside small creatures to keep ahead on the table.

Despite a significant increase in Fall From Favor, which is already among one of the most played cards of the format, this result was expected since the card spoiler and we will have to wait to see if this will become a problem in the long run or if the format can adapt.

Thhis weekend's Legacy Challange also demonstrated some diversity.

On Saturday, the Top 8 was composed of:

1 Mono-Green Post

1 Dredge

1 Temur Painter

1 Eldrazi and Taxes

1 Dimir Death's Shadow

1 Lands

1 Hogaak

1 Yorion and Taxes

There are so many lists outside of what is usually seen at the top of the Metagame in this Challange that I have no idea which list I should give more emphasis, but I am opting for the Death's Shadow list because we haven't seen the archetype in a while and it always has some potential in a format like Legacy

On Sunday's Challange, the Top 8 was composed of:

2 Mono Blue Echoes

1 Naya Yorion

1 Sultai Ninjas

1 Mono-Green Couldpost

1 Four-Color Snow

1 Storm

1 All Spells

Here I highlight Mono Blue Echoes, which achieved two positions in the Top 8 and received a significant addition in the form of Hullbreacher that allows the deck to accelerate its game plan significantly by making any Brainstorm of the opponent turn into almost a Black Lotus for you.

Another deck that also appeared in this Challange was the All Spells, which basically appeared in all formats where it was allowed and feels even more like a good investment option, in case you want to play several formats with a single archetype.

And so I end the review of this week’s Top 8 of the Challanges, with the feeling that Magic looks healthy and diverse again in most formats.

The most notorious archetype of this weekend was All Spells, which appeared in all formats where Undercity Informer is legal and has grown in Magic as an archetype of its own that is gaining more and more space.

While the Pioneer version still seems to be trying to find its best build, the Modern and Legacy versions already seem to be well defined and have conquered their space in the Metagame of these formats in a significant way, which means that the archetype is safe for you to invest, but that any mistake made by Wizards by the printing of certain cards, for example, a variant of Dread Return from here on out, can simply pull it from a "good deck across the formats" to a broken deck quite easily.

Time will tell.