Metagame: The Highlights of the Second Week of Challenges from 2025

We're getting closer to the official previews for Aetherdrift: starting January 21, Magic players will get their first look at the new features of the game's first expansion for 2025, themed around vehicles and two-color teams in an interplanar race.

These last few weeks before the spoilers, however, were marked by a dozen Challenges that solidified the position of some archetypes in the competitive scene: in Standard, Bounce lists grew significantly and are now considered by some to be the best decks in the format, including discussions about the interaction of cards with Hopeless Nightmare - a strategy that is also starting to take its first steps in Pioneer.

On the eternal formats' side, Modern is experiencing the constant rise and fall of Boros Energy in each tournament, with Dimir Murktide seemingly taking over as best deck in the format this week while its main competitor adopts new cards to adapt to the new environment, while Legacy is still adapting to bans as the triad of Delver, Reanimator and Mono Red Stompy permeate the position of main competitors, but the results in the Top 8 of the events still demonstrate a wide diversity of archetypes.

Check out the main highlights of the Challenges from January 8th to 13th below!

Bounce decks are here to stay. From the Esper Pixie variant to the new Dimir colorways, the combination of Hopeless Nightmare and other enchantments with This Town Ain’t Big Enough has dominated the Metagame and grown every week, with new variants and some updates.

Dimir, for example, has started to show signs of a more Control-oriented list, reusing cards like Mazemind Tome as sources of card advantage and Cryptic Coat as a win condition. Not to mention the interaction of Thundertrap Trainer with This Town Ain’t Big Enough to generate even more value in longer games.

The Esper versions, on the other hand, retain almost the same essence as when the archetype was born, with additions that are less off-theme but still essential, such as Defiled Crypt for its combo with Fear of Isolation and Nurturing Pixie to return any number of them from the graveyard indefinitely, or Restless Anchorage on lands to serve as a complementary threat.

What is clear now is: if you play Standard, you need a good plan against Bounce. Wilt-Leaf Liege and Obstinate Baloth are two efficient cards against Hopeless Nightmare while there are a dozen ETB effects that can benefit the player by having their cards returned to the hand, and starting the search for them should yield some results

Currently, Selesnya Tokens is this deck, and it reworks the list repeatedly until it finds the ideal version for the current Metagame, full of Hopeless Nightmare and This Town Ain’t Big Enough everywhere. In fact, it had the best win rate against Esper Pixie at the Magic Spotlight Series in Atlanta and was the third archetype with the highest win rate at the event, which is a good indicator of it as an answer to the pre-Aetherdrift Standard

Bounce decks have also arrived in Pioneer, and with a look already known in the format!

Waste Not benefits greatly from an archetype capable of reusing one or more copies of Hopeless Nightmare for a very low cost and can complement the already famous game plan with Liliana of the Veil and Thoughtseize, in addition to Fatal Push as cheap and efficient removal.

The surprise of this weekend, however, was Simic Oculus, a pure Tempo list aiming to put Abhorrent Oculus into play as early as possible with Neoform and protect it with Essence Flux, Tyvar’s Stand and Stubborn Denial while extracting value from the card turn after turn.

This is a very straightforward archetype and its strategy is simple to understand and even to pilot, but it still had impressive results in two Challenges and deserves a little more attention in the next events!

Another new feature in the Challenges was this list of Boros Equipments that gives up going completely to the Hammer Time plan to try another proposal involving Leyline Axe, Thran Power Suit and Fervent Champion to win games quickly while betting on cards like Adanto Vanguard and even Apostle of Purifying Light as creatures that protect themselves on their own to complement its game plan.

Almost a month has passed since the last banned and restricted update that brought a dozen changes to Modern. The first results of the Challenges and other events showed a format in which Boros Energy, the main target of the bans, was still the best and most reliable deck for tournament play, and it should retain its position as a top contender in the metagame for quite some time, but the Modern landscape is much more diverse than it was before the bans.

This week, for example, Energy has seen a decline compared to previous weeks. Perhaps the format is adapting to it, and more importantly, another archetype is taking shape to respond well to Boros Energy while dealing with the dozen or so unfair strategies that have grown with the unbans.

Dimir Murktide was the deck with the most share in last week's Modern Challenges. Perhaps the archetype is returning to its role as the format's "regulator", where it tries to respond to everything, has a high skill ceiling and maintains a consistent game plan that rewards players for their good decisions - and with the Metagame becoming more solid, Dimir Murktide can improve its maindeck and sideboard choices and its player can optimize their plays more often.

Boros Energy, however, seems to be starting to adapt to play more around attrition now that it has lost The One Ring for this purpose. Recent lists, including those with good results in Challenges, now opt for the combination of Fable of the Mirror-Breaker and Showdown of the Skalds in the maindeck to have more range, giving up Blood Moon - Big Mana is also declining - and Seasoned Pyromancer despite its interaction with Phelia, Exuberant Shepherd.

Several other archetypes have also seen their fair share of Challenges, including Merfolks. But Overlord of the Balemurk continues to stand out in Challenges, and now appears in distinct archetype variants, often alongside Ephemerate in a deck that would once have seemed impossible to run in Modern, but that now stands out as a potential contender.

Legacy remains in the same state we saw last week, with a decline in Eldrazi Stompy in favor of the rise of Delver and Reanimator decks, which consequently keeps Mono Red Stompy as a hot archetype in the current Metagame.

Sudden changes to the format should only happen in the weeks after Aetherdrift's release, and only if the expansion brings some cards that are relevant enough to one of Magic's power level peaks. Otherwise, we will only have real news in Legacy when something strong enough comes out in one of Magic's six expansions, or when large-scale in-person tournaments happen, where we can measure the impact of Nadu, Winged Wisdom decks on the Metagame's equation.

That's all for today!

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

Thanks for reading!