2015

Hey Everyone! I was really struggling with what to write about the metagame for this past week and it wasn’t until I built my deck for this week that I decided on what to say!

The last week was dominated by aggressive and midrange decks with both of those types of strategies pushing tempo out of the metagame. Noel continued his heater with another finals appearance playing Bant Aggro. This deck has been incredibly successful this year and it appears that that particular colour combination contains the necessary creature quality and speed to outclass other aggro decks and out race combo and control decks. The white element in the deck also allows for enough disruptive hate cards such as Armageddon and Thalia to either steal games or eek out the few extra turns required to close out a game.

Jeremy’s Mono black epitomizes the midrange strategies that have started to crop up in the metagame as well. These midrange decks have decent game against pretty much everything and really take advantage of powerful cards in their respective colours. Several RUG Planeswalkers decks also appeared which capitalized on the synergies of planes walkers and time walks. Both Nelson and AD had a some fairly ludicrous board states where they got to activate Planeswalkers several times at once before their opponent got a chance to respond.

Chris Sutherland took down the tournament this week with his UWR tempo deck. Though many tempo decks got pushed out of the top tables by the aggro decks Chris’ combination of red and white cheap removal are potent enough to sure up that match up a little bit.

The Spicy deck of the week aware goes to Jeremy White for his Mono Black deck. This midrange deck is powerful and consistent and produces some fairly broken draws with cards like dark ritual and necropotence.

The metagame as always!

Read More »The Monday Metagame(April 20th)

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!

Read More »The Monday Metagame (April 13th)

Hey friends and welcome back to Monday Metagame! I took forever to process this weeks metagame as it was large and very complicated. Most archetypes were fairly well represented in the meta with blue decls tending to rise to the top. The four 3-0 decks at the beginning of the fourth round were BUG tempo, Bant tempo, UR tempo, and UB control. What was incredible about this particular week was that despite the 30 person attendance there were almost no repeat decks! In a field as varied as this one there are a few things that are particularly important in deck selection. Firstly the deck needs to have game plan that is streamlined and focused. With so many different strategies possible in Highlander it is not realistic to craft a deck that is partially good against some match ups and partially good against others as this deck will often lose to itself being too slow and unfocused just as often as it loses due to piloting. For instance a deck that I played very early in my time in Highlander was a BUG infect deck that played a bunch of tempo counter spells and pump spells to go along with a suite of infect creatures. The problem with this deck was that I would have really awkward draws where my hand would contain a bunch of creatures and counterspells but no way to end the game or I would end up with hands of just pump spells and counterspells. What I discovered was that the most powerful draws were those where I had both creatures and pump spells and maybe one counterspell to protect my creature. My deck suffered greatly from being extremely unfocused but if I had perhaps built with more pump spells and fewer counterspells perhaps it would have yielded better results. The second aspect a successful deck in a very diverse format requires to have multiple angels of attack. This doesn’t mean that the deck needs to be able to attack its opponents life total as well as threaten to mill it out or kill its opponent with infect. Rather attacking on multiple angels means that a deck has multiple means of accomplishing its goal. A good example of this is the BG rock deck that both Alasdair and Alistair (if only they spelled their names the same way) have favoured recently. This deck’s ultimate goal is to take control of the board and neutralize potential threats from the opponent. Within the core strategy are many different angles, the deck plays creatures like Tarmogofy, Thrun, and Thragtusk, large resilient creatures which exert a lot of pressure  as one its angles of attack however it is not limited to these. The deck also plays many planeswalkers which exert pressure on the board by making creatures or pressuring the opponents life total. The opponent is now obliged to both deal with a tarmogofy and planeswalker both of which require very different types of interaction. Having multiple angles of attack is especially important in a diverse metagame because in any given round you have a reasonable equal chance of playing a deck which excels against one particular aspect of your deck but might struggle against others. The third aspect a successful deck in an extremely varied metagame requires is an unbeatable draw. Obviously this is slight hyperbole but each deck needs some sequence of opening plays that should win most games. This can manifest in a bunch of different ways. For a tempo deck this opening might involve playing Delver on turn one and then having 6 counterspells as back up for the rest of the game. An aggressive deck might curve out perfectly with a Mox and play a powerful 2 drop into a 3 drop into a 4 drop that kills its opponent. For combo decks these broken starts are quite obvious and just involve getting a combo together quickly. Control decks have some of the more interesting broken starts as they typically involve a curve of Sol Ring into some powerful planeswalker. Regardless of what this broken start is a powerful deck in a broad field needs to have this potential. You’re going to play enough games in a given tournament that having the potential to just acquire a free win is essential. The spicy deck of the week award goes Serge for his 4 colour Lands deck which he titled “Maximum Picante” this is a super cool list and features a lot of highly underused cards!

Here’s the meta as always!

Read More »The Monday Metagame (April 6th)

Welcome back everyone! This week we had 28 players show up for Monday night Highlander which meant that we had a large and diverse metagame! This week was marked by a departure away from the GBx decks that had previously been dominating the metagame. This may well be partly due to the recent changes to the points list, Mind twist and Treasure Cruise both went to 1 point and Intuition and Grim Tutor both went to 0. These changes were largely motivated by the power of Twist and Cruise in Midrange decks and the relative lack of power of both Intuition and Grim Tutor. So far the changes do not appear to have an enormous impact on the format though it is worth noting that all 4 of the cards did not see a great deal of play on Monday.

The biggest change that occurred this week was that players actually began to play aggressive decks. Prior to this week there were only a few aggro decks in the meta each week however this week there were many more. This was probably in reaction to the fact that more people had chosen to play midrange decks. The faster aggro decks have the potential to go under some of midrange decks and more importantly they pressure the combo decks that have cropped up as a response to the midrange decks.

There are some very interesting tensions that developed from the shift in the meta. While the Tempo decks that cropped up this week perform well against the combo decks they tend to struggle greatly against the aggressive decks. Similarly the aggressive decks that perform well against the tempo decks and have some game against the midrange decks and control decks but struggle to interact with some of the extremely fast combo decks like storm and eggs. There’s a great deal of pushing and pulling going in the meta right now and working out the best deck is no easy task. I look forward to seeing how players attempt to compensate for how varied their potential opponents might be. Above all else it is clear that currently it pays to have a very clear and defined game plan. Decks are getting more and more tuned and if your strategy is too slow to develop and does not have considerable interaction then you’re likely in trouble.

The Spicy deck of the week award goes to Nick Picard for his UW Tempo deck. There have been several attempts at this deck before but Nick really hit the mail on the head with his rendition of the deck. What’s interesting about his list is that he chose to go a bit bigger than typical other tempo decks playing quite a few 4 drops and far fewer 1 and 2 drops than the standard tempo strategy. Furthermore his deck featured several new Dragons of Tarkir cards in Myth Realized and Ojutai Exemplars. Well done Nick!

The Meta as usual is listed below:

Read More »The Monday Metagame (March 30th)

Hey everyone! This is going up a bit late since I was very busy on Tuesday so I’m writing it now! The metagame for this Monday was a little more varied than it has been in which past though interestingly the results were similar. The green black based midrange decks still rose to the top with Doug and Stefan facing off in a finals in a BUG mirror where Doug’s ability to go slightly larger with cards like primeval Titan and his active attacking of Stefan’s mana netted him the victory. These green black decks continue to over power many of the other midrange decks with their powerful card advantage engines and suite of removal. Combatting these decks is still proving to be challenging for many players the decks do not have one area in which they are particularly vulnerable though at times their mana has looked like the thing to attack.

There was a distinct increase in the amount of aggressive decks this week with mono red and green red aggro putting in reasonable performances. These decks trade out value for redundancy and speed. In a metagame where people continue try to go larger and larger planning to simply goldfish a turn 4-5 kill against most people and being capable of doing this consistently seems like an excellent place to be. The other interesting aggressive deck that appeared on Monday was the mono blue skies deck that Riley played. This deck’s principle plan was to play a 3 power evasive creature and have some kind of mana disruption in the form of cards like trinisphere, sphere of resistance, chalice of the void, or back to basics. It is capable of doing thee things quite quickly too with cards like mox diamond and ancient tomb. I’m not exactly sure what Riley’s record was but he beat me in two quick games and the deck seemed quite powerful against decks lacking explosive starts.

Combo made a bit of a resurgence this week with a variety of decks appearing in the meta. Storm continues to perform though it has yet to put a truly dominant performance. Time Vault also continues to be a potent archetype and Garret is beginning to consistently perform well with the deck. Noel put away his green cards for a week and decided to play blue cards this week, managing a 3-1 performance with his Esper reanimator deck. These three different types of combo decks have all continued to have success in the metagame and will likely to continue to do so unless tempo decks become more popular.

Speaking of tempo decks, there has been a complete and utter lack of tempo in the metagame for the last two weeks. Besides Jeremy’s UWR tempo deck this week there were almost no other tempo decks in the room. Tempo struggles against aggro but has a good match up against most of the other decks in the format. The large departure from tempo might partly be because aggro was more popular previously however in the current metagame it is less present. Potentially tempo decks are the answer to these midrange decks as they have the potential to interact with the midrange deck enough to keep them off kilter.

The spicy deck of the week award goes to Riley for his mono blue skies deck. Riley was inspired by Brett who sent him a sweet list fairly similar to this. As I mentioned above this decks aggressive evasive creatures plus its hateful permanents can often keep its opponent off balance enough to end the game. There are some especially spicy choices in the deck as well such as Timetwister and Windfall as cards to refill after playing some fast disruption.

As usual here is the metagame!

Read More »The Monday Metagame (March 26th)

Hey everyone! A new set is on the horizon and with that in mind a few members of the community have done a set review!… Read More »Dragons of Tarkir Set Reviews!

This Monday I’m reporting on two different metagames. Highlander for staples happened on the day before Monday night Highlander this week which resulted in an interesting shift in the meta. Stefan Bard took down the staples event with his BUG control deck and then successfully ran it back on Monday to take a huge lead in the year long race with three qualifier points. Stefan’s deck choice is emblematic of the recent Victoria metagame; players are either playing GBx decks, or they are trying to find ways to go under or over those decks. In general those strategies haven’t been able to counteract these GB strategies. The GB decks take advantage of the fact that they are almost always going to be acquiring more value than their opponents. Whether they are of the junk variety and use white cards to disrupt the opponent and play quality removal or splashing blue for counter spells and card draw the deck is very efficient and its individual card quality is usually higher than the opposing decks’.

The decks that have had a good match up against these value decks are the combo decks. Both High Tide and Storm went 3-1 this week and Mono Green Combo had a reasonable showing as well. These decks are either fast enough or interactive enough to get around the discard spells that many of these GB decks play. The one deck that these decks still struggle against is the blue version of the GB deck which potentially demonstrates the true genius of Stefan’s metagame decision.

Lost in these midrange and combo decks are the aggro and control decks. The few aggro decks that people played at the staples event did okay with both Matt and Pat Berdusco making their way into the top 8 with goblins and jund aggro. On Monday however aggro was less present and many of them struggled. Control on the other hand is almost always present due to how attractive it is to experienced players who can gain some advantage out of outplaying their opponents. Alistair Norman made it all the way to the finals on Monday piloting Esper control and Nick Picard also piloted a BUG midrangy control deck to a 3-1 record.

In the current metagame most archetypes are reasonably healthy with the exeception of aggressive decks. They are currently having some issues with the GB decks with a lot of removal and good creatures. Possible directions that the aggressive decks could go in to improve their match up against those decks likely include playing more green based creatures and trying to attack the mana bases of these other midrange decks. Even the straight GB decks play a lot of non basic lands and be vulnerable to cards like wasteland and blood moon. In addition to this these decks are fairly reliant on spending a lot of their mana each turn in order to play their large effective spells. Attacking that mana with cards like Armageddon has the potential to be extremely potent.

The spicy deck of the week award this week goes to Stefan Bard. His BUG control deck is simply too powerful to be ignored. There have been other attempts on this archetype in the past but Stefan has enjoyed particular success of late. The strength of this deck lies in the fact that it maintains all of the benefits that a typical GB shell has such as strength against creature decks while compensating for it’s major weakness, it’s struggle with combo decks, with the blue counter spells. Hopefully we’ll have a deck tech on that deck soon enough!

Here is the metagame!

Read More »The Monday Metagame (March 16th)

Welcome back to the Monday Metagame! This week the metagame shifted slightly further towards midrange. In addition to moving even more towards midrange the metagame… Read More »The Monday Metagame (March 9th)

It was the week of combo in sunny Victoria this week as Josh Layne took down the tournament playing Academy combo. He was not the… Read More »The Monday Metagame (March 2nd)