Hello again everyone! The metagame for this week was very intriguing so let’s dive right into it!
There were still a lot of players present for this Monday though the numbers were slightly lower than they have been in the past few weeks. That being said the meta was still extremely diverse. Ultimately Colin ended up triumphing over the rest of the competition with his mono red deck!
One of the more interesting developments is the slow rise of true combo decks that has been happening over the past few weeks. For a while the only notable true combo deck appearing each week was Robin Sorenson’s storm deck but slowly other players have started to move in that direction with Josh Layne picking up Flash Hulk again and Trenton returning with mono green combo. One of the factors that has benefitted these players greatly is their experience playing these combo decks and it certainly shows in the results that it’s quite rare for players who are very new to a combo deck to be very successful.
The rest of the field was fairly balanced with control aggro and tempo making up the bulk of the metagame. Tempo ended its reign of terror from last week as only one tempo deck made it to the 3-0 bracket and it lost playing to get into the finals. In its place rose a variety of different aggressive decks from the eventual winning mono red deck piloted by Colin, to the very disruptive black white hate bears deck played by Rowan, to the very robust and powerful Bant deck that Noel played. All of these aggressive really prey on the tempo decks in the format. In fact the presence of these aggressive decks is likely what keeps tempo from being the best deck in the format as it is their only really bad match up.
Ultimately if these aggressive decks begin to push more and more of the tempo decks out of the format playing control and midrange become more exciting deck options! Winning the midrange and control mirror is also a concern that these decks will likely need to take into account! It is there that balance lies, finding a way to both beat up on the aggressive decks without conceding too much against the other decks looking to go big!
The spicy deck of the week award goes to Nelson for his super cool Jund Land destruction deck. This deck looks to curve early mana acceleration into land destruction into some large threat to end the game. The deck is certainly capable of ending games with its opponents having no permanents and has some ferociously punishing opening hands. Nelson has been on a bit of a slump lately but with great deck design like he’ll be out of it in no time!
Here is the meta as always!
Jund Aggro
Storm
Flash Hulk
UR Tempo
Jund Land Destruction
BW Hatebears
Grixis Time Vault
Mono Green Combo
2 Mono Red
Bant Aggro
UG Midrange
BUG Tempo
UR Tempo
GR Aggro
Bant Bad Stuff (AKA Bant Control AKA My very poorly built deck)
Grixis Control
BUG Control
Esper Control
2 BG Rock
Esper Academy
BW Pestilence
RUG Midrange
Junk Aggro
RUG Tempo
UWR Control
Thanks
-Liam Coughlan