Finally we’re back! I’d like to formally apologize again for the extended delay on the postings of these metagames but I was delayed for much of last week and couldn’t get everything together in a satisfactory fashion for myself. This week we’re going to do something a little different; rather than tackling each metagame individually we’re going to look at the shift in the metagame and what that means for the future!
February 16th Metagame
UR Tempo
UG Tempo
Infect
BUG control
Pattern Rector
2 Mono Green Combo
Grixis Aggro
Naya Aggro
2 Grixis Control
Storm
Rock
Academy Combo
GR Aggro
RUG Midrange
Wildfire
Esper Control Reanimator
Reanimator
Goblins
UWR Tempo
BW Aggro
Mono Black
2 Bant Midrange
February 23rd Metagame
UR Panoptic Mirror Control
Five Colour Big Zoo
Four Colour Dredge Flash
Naya Aggro
2 Bant Midrange
Grixis Tempo
Goblins
Grixis Control
Eggs
Pattern Rector
UG Control
UR Vault Staxx
2 UR Tempo
RUG Midrange
Reanimator
Grixis Control
2 Mono Green Combo
2 Esper Control
UWR Tempo
BUG Tempo
Storm
Bant Infect
What common trend can we draw from these two metagames? Well one of them is that creature decks are very much on the rise in recent weeks. Between the first and second week listed here decks looking to fight with creatures were extremely popular. In fact decks that contain no creatures (or functionally no creatures i.e. <5) represented a paltry 20 percent of the metagame or less! Besides the occasional combo deck and a few storm combo decks in the form of eggs and Robin’s tendrils deck there are almost every deck was playing some kind of creature. These creature decks were roughly split between tempo and aggro in both weeks though in the most recent week aggro almost completely dropped off the map. These blue based tempo decks are capable of fighting some of the control decks that are fairly persistent in the format often times better than the aggressive decks. That being said these same tempo decks have tended to struggle against the very fast aggressive decks as demonstrated by Spencer’s trip to the finals this week.
Between week 1 and 2 there was also a slight increase in the number of midrange decks as well. These decks are designed to straddle the metagame and have game against both the aggressive decks by playing solid creatures that outmatch their aggro opponent’s creatures to take over the board and they also have game against the control decks because all of their threats are so relevant. If midrange decks begin to occupy more of the metagame then combo decks certainly could become more relevant.
With midrange decks in mind its time to talk about the Spicy decks of the weeks! For February 16th the award goes to Doug for his very cool BUG mid range. BUG is a fairly classically under explored archetype in the meta but Doug put the together a potent combination of creatures and removal in order to dominate the board and kill their opponent. The Spicy deck of the week for the 23rd goes to me! I have resisted drawing attention to my own decks thus far however this week I played a 5 colour big zoo deck that I’m very excited to talk about! Expect a deck tech on the zoo deck this week!
Apologies again for the delay!
-Liam Coughlan