Metagame: The Second Week of Foundations in Competitive Events

Magic: The Gathering's new core set, Foundations, had its second week of testing in Magic Online competitive events and in-person tournaments this weekend. While some cards are still trying to adapt to established lists, others are already showing signs of becoming staples in one or more formats.

Kiora, The Rising Tide and Sire of Seven Deaths had another relevant week in Modern, while Leyline Axe was the motivator to try new combos in Pioneer. In Standard, cards like Zombify and Kaito, Cunning Infiltrator were the highlights of Challenges.

Check out this article for the main news from the second week of competitive tournaments after the release of Foundations. The Pauper format will not be covered in this article, as it has not changed from what was already in Challenges before the expansion's release, while Legacy will have its own coverage of Eternal Weekend in a separate article.

Spurred by the Zombify reprint, Reanimator has returned to the format, with a few lists appearing in this weekend's Challenges. This time, the lists focus on a shell to discard Atraxa, Grand Unifier and Valgavoth, Terror Eater to return them to the battlefield as soon as possible.

Other highlights this week were Planeswealkers. Ajani, Caller of the Pride has found a home in Azorius Aggro, where its combination with Regal Bunnicorn or any other creature with sufficiently high power can win games suddenly, while it interacts well with vehicles and Warden of the Inner Sky.

Kaito, Cunning Infiltrator is starting to show up in Dimir Midrange lists, both in the maindeck and in the sideboard. In the version below, player Kampo includes two copies of the Planeswalker in the maindeck, where it interacts with Kaito, Bane of Nightmares and grows relatively quickly with the list's evasive threats.

The biggest news of the week, however, was a deck that runs only Burst Lightning as a Foundations card: the combination of Urabrask with Artist’s Talent establishes a “Storm” variant with damage spells and card-drawing effects, and player Matsukasa10 took advantage of this interaction between cards to reach seventh place in the November 23 Challenge.

Gruul Storm was the most intriguing and innovative list in the Standard events this weekend. I plan to explore its potential on Magic Arena in the coming days, so expect a deck guide soon!

Leyline Axe was the highlight of Pioneer this weekend. While it didn't produce any significant results, three lists tried to use the artifact that comes into play on Turn 0 to interact with other cards.

One of these versions uses it with Metalwork Colossus to reduce its mana value similar to how the deck already does with Brass Knuckles and play its key creature early. It's worth mentioning that the new equipment interacts with large creatures like the Colossus itself to deal lethal damage with a single attack, in addition to interacting with the tokens created by Simulacrum Synthesizer.

The second variant includes Leyline Axe to interact with Legion Extruder and Gleeful Demolition, increasing the potential for explosive turns with Reckless Bushwhacker while the equipment can turn Fervent Champion and other creatures into threats.

This version has potential, but seems like it needs more polish. Perhaps the plan of Atarka's Command and cheap one-drops isn't exactly where Leyline Axe wants to be, and variants with Fervent Champion and Legion Extruder could take advantage of more impactful creatures on the board.

Elenda, Saint of Dusk is here to stay. Despite only having one or two copies, she has become a staple of Niv to Light and is already appearing in most lists for the archetype in this weekend's Challenges.

Hexproof from Instants practically protects her from all or most of the removal in Pioneer today, and requires spells like Sheoldred's Edict to deal with her, making Elenda a respectable threat in some of the most popular matchups in the current Metagame!

Kiora, the Rising Tide continues to find new homes in Modern and solidify herself in some. This week, in addition to remaining in the Goryo's Vengeance variants, Kiora has also found a place in Dimir Murktide and a Four-Color Goodstuff list.

Unearth and its interaction with Abhorrent Oculus have started to gain more prominence in Dimir Tempo lists since Kiora, the Rising Tide, which now forgoes Murktide Regent to favor more interactions between its cards.

As expected, Sire of Seven Deaths has found its home on Tron. The slot that used to belong to cards like Wurmcoil Engine has seen the addition of the new Eldrazi to the maindeck as a card that fits perfectly into Urza's lands math, while its keywords soup makes it very resilient and difficult to remove.

The last Foundations card to find space in Modern lists this weekend was Alesha, Who Laughs at Fate in Mardu Energy. In such an aggressive archetype full of creatures with a lot of value on the board for a low cost, we can take advantage of Alesha's ability every turn to increase the archetype's attrition potential.

Its presence in this deck, however, may suffer with the likely changes that Modern may undergo in the next Banned and Restricted announcement scheduled for December 16th, since Boros Energy and Mardu Energy make up more than 30% of the Metagame and have a presence percentage well above the other main competitors in the format.

Legacy and Vintage had their most important event of the year this weekend with the Eternal Weekend, where 1155 players competed and this deserves its own article about the changes that the format has undergone and what the results of these tournaments say about the health of these scenarios.

Our Legacy writer, Elton Fior, will do a more in-depth analysis of the event's Metagame and the winning decks in his weekly column here at Cards Realm.

That's all for today!

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

Thanks for reading!