Metagame: What's New in the Last Challenges of 2024

We've reached the last day of 2024. This year has been, by far, one of the most intriguing for Magic: The Gathering, and especially for competitive formats.

On the one hand, some managed to maintain a very healthy environment for a long time. This year's Standard was the most fun we've had in a long time. In return, we got Modern Horizons 3, an absurd design mistake with Nadu, Winged Wisdom and the worst competitive Metagame in Modern history for almost six months. In between, Pioneer had its share of problems and MH3 did Modern Horizons things to Legacy as well.

With the storm over and a dozen bans later, the calm arrives. While Modern and Legacy try to redefine themselves after the mid-December interventions, Standard and Pioneer continue to present a healthy scene.

In this article, we present the main news from the last Magic Online Challenges of 2024!

The last week of 2024 for Standard was not full of big news. The Metagame continues to be diverse and with a good share of different archetypes each week, including a new strategy emerging since the Super Qualifier, the Esper Pixie.

If you play Pauper, this deck will be strangely familiar: its focus involves cards with efficient ETBs like Stormchaser’s Talent and Nowhere to Run alongside creatures that return permanents to their owner’s hand, like Nurturing Pixie and Fear of Isolation.

Since we return many enchantments this way, we take advantage of Optimistic Scavenger and its ETB triggers to increase the pressure on the board. Yes, in many ways this strategy resembles the famous Boros Synthesizer from Pauper, and you can expect a guide for it soon.

Despite the lack of an official competitive circuit for 2025, Pioneer is not standing still: Challenges continue to happen, and new proposals have emerged this past week, especially with the five-color piles starting to mix up game plans.

The list above mixes Enigmatic Incarnation with Bring to Light and without Niv-Mizzet Reborn to create a more efficient toolbox since the spell can be 5-8 copies of Incarnation and/or find some of the creatures we would look for with the enchantment, such as Beza, the Bounding Spring against Aggro, or even the one-of Zur, Eternal Schemer to transform some enchantments.

This version relies entirely on the plan of Zur, Eternal Schemer, but with the inclusion of Enigmatic Incarnation to also create a toolbox with Linvala, the Preserver or even with Atraxa, Grand Unifier for value.

In both cases, the concession is in deckbuilding with the inclusion of Yorion, Sky Nomad to support two gameplans in one list. It may not make that much of a difference since five-color piles are historically good Yorion decks, but the risk of breaking part of the consistency of Four-Color Zur, for example, cannot be ignored.

Another surprise this weekend was the victory of Simic Merfolks in a Challenge with a version using Agatha’s Soul Cauldron to give the ability of Kiora’s Follower to its creatures with +1/+1 counters, allowing the combo that two copies of it would make with Deeproot Pilgrimage with more ease thanks to Kumena, Tyrant of Orazca, which puts counters on all Merfolks.

A Midrange version of Selesnya Enchantments was also present in the Top 8 of this week’s Challenges. The list tries to take advantage of the interaction between Calix, Guided by Fate and the Overlords cycle of Duskmourn, where whenever an enchanted creature or Calix deals damage to a player, one of the Overlords can be copied to increase the pressure on the board.

Except for Elvish Mystic and Jukai Naturalist, in addition to adaptations of the mana base, this deck is also mostly legal in this Standard season, and it is worth checking if it is possible to take advantage of this same theme in the rotating format.

Greasefang, Okiba Boss also made appearances this week in the Mardu shell with Fear of Missing Out or in Esper with the interaction between Unholy Annex and Raffine, Scheming Seer, which fits the type of creature that the enchantment requires to generate card advantage.

Modern is healing. The last wave of Challenges in 2024 was much more diverse than the first week after the unbans, with several strategies adapting and finding space at the top of the tournaments. The main highlights were the Murktide lists, some Energy decks and also the return of Crashing Footfalls, but it is still too early to define what the new Metagame is.

Ephemerate was a card that grew this week with the appearance in two “new” decks for Challenges. The Orzhov with Aether Vial and a toolbox of Recruiter of the Guard had already made a splash last week, and its reappearance this week only proves that it has some competitive viability.

The Selesnya variant feels, in part, like it was lifted straight from old Modern with the addition of just a few key cards from MH3 like the interaction between Guide of Souls and Ocelot Pride while using Solitude, Ephemerate and Eternal Witness as attrition and card advantage, in addition to Birthing Ritual to dig into the deck for answers.

As for the mid-December unbans, Mox Opal seems to have been the most impactful card this week, and out of all the archetypes that used it, Broodscale Combo remains the most consistent option, solidifying its position as the best combo right now. The addition of Mystic Forge is an important update, with lessons to be learned from Legacy.

Mystic Forge has also shown up in Affinity. This version takes advantage of the increased pool of 7-mana creatures to feed Ugin’s Labyrinth and try to explode early with its cards. If that fails, the interaction between Glaring Fleshraker and Mystic Forge can provide extra range and a few more points of damage to close out the game.

Jeskai Control is back and taking full advantage of Faithless Looting for card advantage by stacking it with Deep Analysis, Phlage, Titan of Fire’s Fury, and also with Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student and Kiora, the Rising Tide, establishing a new version of the archetype that forgoes more “pure Control” cards like Teferi, Time Raveler in favor of a more proactive plan to interact with the Metagame.

The first few weeks of Legacy after Psychic Frog and Vexing Bauble left the format are tough to read. There is a good diversity of archetypes making the Top 8, some decks continue to adapt to the new Metagame, but the representation in the Top 32 has pointed to three strategies as the best options at the moment:

Without Psychic Frog, the Tempo archetypes returned to Izzet versions, some with slight splashes for green or black. As expected, the bans took Legacy back to what it was just before Modern Horizons 3 in terms of Delver of Secrets and cheap cantrips, and this is always a good gauge of the format's health.

Eldrazi, on the other hand, has the other MH3 cards that interact with the archetype at its disposal and no limitations to using cards like Kozilek’s Command and Glaring Fleshraker with the benefit of accelerated mana from Ancient Tomb and Eye of Ugin.

Another highlight of this week was Red Stompy, which lost Vexing Bauble, but still has Pyrogoyf as a gift from Modern Horizons 3.

Both have in common the history of being good Delver predators, being excellent archetypes with Chalice of the Void and also taking full advantage of The One Ring for value.

It's still too early to say whether this will be the new Meta for Legacy, and several other archetypes made the Top 8 over the weekend. Including one that has been debated for a long time.

Nadu, Winged Wisdom is still a concern in Legacy. Although its results and representation are not impressive on Magic Online, it's hard to ignore the many limitations that its combos impose on a platform like Magic Online.

It will take mid- to large-scale Legacy tournaments in the coming months to assess the true impact of 2024's biggest design mistake on the format, and depending on the results, Nadu may dominate in tabletop play while having very little presence on digital platforms - a bad spot for a format that has little spotlight on Wizards' competitive scene.

That's all for today!

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

Thanks for reading!